The .22 Caliber Homicides: Book 1 of the San Diego Police Homicide Detail featuring Jack Leslie

by William Barrons

  “Captain, there was a get-away car out front as we came into the place. It’s a little sun-faded-red Honda. It’s right now going down Harbor Island Drive. Better tell the Harbor Police. Damn! I got hit pretty good in my left pants pocket but I don’t see any blood!”

  “Hold on, handsome Jack! Don’t hang up on me!” Noffsinger said as he began barking out to others for an ambulance and directing officers to the scene.

  Then Leslie heard in his ear, “Dammit! You say you can’t see any blood on you? But you’re shot?”

  “Sir, I’m looking. I’ve got a hole in my pants. Oh, I’m taking out my wallet. Captain, my wallet’s been murdered! There’s a revolver bullet buried in my wallet! It didn’t get through!” Leslie added nervously.

  “You mean to say you were shot in the ass?” he heard the Captain ask.

  “No sir, I always carry my wallet in my left front pocket so’s not to make it easy for pick-pockets”.

  “I’ll be damned! Leslie, you hang on there, I’m right now climbing into a squad and I’ll be there in a few. End of a damned dull shift anyway,” he said as the phone clicked.

  In minutes the shrill sounds of sirens filled the air, every car and every truck blaring raucously as though each was an entire fleet of emergency vehicles.

  The Robbery Detail Lieutenant called Leslie.

  “I got the word Jack, on you shot a robber at Tom Hams’ place. What’s happening right now?”

  “I hear sirens but they’re not here yet, Lieutenant Borrelli. I think the robber is dead. Didn’t think he’d resist but I couldn’t talk him down. Bleeding really badly, both sides of his chest. Arms, too. I guess my shot went right through his left arm and through his chest and into his right arm. Hit the biceps. I sure didn’t think he’d try to shoot me. Blood has just poured out; unbelievable how much blood’s on the floor.”

  “But you’re okay, Jack?” Borrelli asked.

  “Yes sir although my wallet’s very badly injured. I haven’t exactly had much time to look through it though.”

  “Very funny. Oh, you mean you were shot in the ass but your wallet stopped it?”

  “Sir, I always carry it in my left front pocket but I don’t suppose this fellow here was really aiming for that.”

  “Oh. Only one robber?”

  “Yes. There was a get-away car out front but whoever was driving must have bugged out when he heard shots fired.”

  “Didn’t see the driver?”

  “Didn’t notice.”

  “I’m on the way, Sergeant Leslie. Damn, I’m glad I don’t have to tell the media that our star Homicide guy was shot in the ass!” he laughed and hung up.

  Lieutenant Arne Borrelli was hardly a funny man, but Leslie saw he felt some humor in how he was shot. But his thigh hurt so it wasn’t exactly a big joke to him. It felt as though he had been kicked there.

  The McCarty woman and her Little Anne were off to the right side of the room, staring at the apparently dead guy on the floor.

  Others had streamed in from the dining room and workers from the kitchen had come too, all curious of course about the extraordinary shooting and shouting.

  The threatened girl behind the counter had hardly moved; but her sobbing had much subsided as others comforted her.

  “Jack,” Veronica McCarty said, edging over to him, “are you sure you’re alright?”

  “Yes, I’m okay. A little shook up is all. Don’t as a rule shoot people every day. Couldn’t believe that fool wouldn’t put his gun down. I’m sorry to ruin our first date with all this mess. Sorry Little Anne had to hear such foul language. How about you? You two okay?”

  “Yes Jack, we’re just worried about you. Are you sure you’re not hurt? I see where you were shot.”

  Leslie was still clutching the wallet in his left hand and then unstuck it and opened it to look more clearly. As he opened it and began to glance through it, firemen – of all people – came up the stairs.

  They routinely answered such emergency calls, often beating paramedics in their ambulances and police in patrol cars as well.

  “One of you,” Leslie called to them, “check out the young lady there. She’s had a rough time of it. That guy on the floor is gone, I’d say.”

  Soon, Tom Ham’s Restaurant waiting room was absolutely filled with Firemen, Paramedics, Police Officers and Captain Noffsinger taking charge, shooing diners back to their tables.

  An officer quickly strung the usual yellow tape around, fencing off the body on the floor.

  Lieutenant Borrelli acted astounded at Leslie’s great luck to have his wallet stop the bad man’s bullet.

  “Leslie, I’ve been on the force twenty three years and I’ve never shot a crook; not one goddamned time. I’ve been shot at more than once but by God, I’ve never been hit. But what better luck can a man have than you – getting shot in the goddamn wallet! Lucky fellow, Leslie!” Borrelli said.

  “Yes sir, really lucky. I truly didn’t think that guy would try to get me since I had him dead to rights. It’s got to be that his thinking was suicide by cop! I’ve had enough excitement that I guess I’ll just go sit down,” Leslie said and looked for a chair.

  The McCarty woman heard that and led him to one at the edge of the room.

  Captain Noffsinger came over to him as Leslie was looking through his wallet, seeing nearly everything in it including money destroyed by the bullet which almost penetrated to the opposite side. But the backside was only bulged a bit.

  “Credit cards, driver’s license and all that’s got to be replaced now, eh Jack? Helluva chore,” Captain Noffsinger said. “Want the medics to check your hit?”

  “No Captain, there’s nothing to check. I expect my groin will be sore for a couple of days, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, I should say so! Damn, you look like a rich yachtsman instead of the usual wealthy lawyer! Please Jack, just go over with me exactly what happened; you’ll be doing that a lot for a while. I’ll record what you say with this thing,” Noffsinger said.

  As Noffsinger held up the tiny radio and recording device, identical to the one he carried when on duty for ordinary communications and to record witness statements, Leslie explained every second of time from the moment they got out of the car in the parking lot.

  “Good; thanks for that,” the Captain said. “Heard on the radio on the way here that a Patrol stopped a red Honda over on Grape, going for the freeway. It’s maybe the get-away and it’s probably stolen. Don’t know why those Japanese make their cars so easy to steal.”

  “Captain, my mom had one much like it and it was stolen twice by joy-riding teens.” Leslie said.

  “Yeah; happens a lot. By the way, I’ve just been told the robber there, he wasn’t all that bright. He had to have thought it was Monday and they’d have the weekend receipts ready to pick up Tuesday morning by the armored truck guys but its Sunday and that money bag was empty, of course. Anyway, high-class places like this, they’re paid almost always with credit cards or checks; not so much with cash. What a sap. But then, who in hell would guess for a second that the goddamned best and bravest police officer in San Diego might be right behind his back?”

  That was so unexpected from the grouchy old Captain that Leslie was taken aback.

  “Sir! You’re much too kind!”

  “Yeah, well just you wait ‘til the Chief hears about your shining example again, son. You’re exactly the kind of officer she – well, all of us, want all police officers to be.”

  With that, acting a little embarrassed at his own complimentary talk, the Captain turned, waved to Lieutenant Borrelli and hurried down the stairs.

  Leslie turned to his two companions.

  “You know, I think I’d like to go home. Would you please be so kind as to come home with me and I’ll fix us something to eat? It would help get my mind off all this.”

  They both nodded and Leslie told the Lieutenant he was off duty anyway so he was going home.

  Lieutenant Borrelli put a hand on Leslie’
s shoulder and said, “Damn good idea Jack because the TV people will be here in a few minutes and I know you’re careful not to get publicity. Thanks friend; thanks for being what you are; the very goddamn best!”

  As they turned to leave, Borrelli asked about the two females with him.

  “Lieutenant Arne Borrelli, this is Veronica McCarty and her daughter Anne. We were coming here for dinner but we’ll make it some other time, I hope. Ronica, he’s the Robbery Detail commander.”

  They managed to get through the crowd, down the stairs and out to the Ford Freestyle.

  Leslie let them in as before and headed off the island.

  Sure enough, a TV van sped by them on the way to Tom Ham’s, so he had escaped just in time. The last thing any Police Detective needed was to appear on television so every crook in creation would recognize him.

  He turned right onto Harbor Drive and around the Embarcadero with its many maritime attractions.

  Across the bay, four little orange specks of harbor tugs were docking a giant aircraft carrier at the North Island Naval Air Station. Ah, he saw the big number 68 on the carrier’s island so he knew it was the USS Nimitz, named for the great Commander in Chief of Naval Forces in the Pacific, in World War II.

  The traffic at the foot of Broadway was crowded as two huge cruise ships were docked there.

  He drove beyond the great USS Midway aircraft carrier museum to Market Street and finally right at Front Street and into his garage.

  As he parked his woodied Ford Freestyle, he pointed out to them that his family had previously taken up six spaces but now he had three; the third space, number forty six, was for his visitors.

  “Mom,” Little Anne said, “we must remember space forty six is where we park my Mustang when we come over.”

  Leslie turned around to her.

  “Little Anne, that’s about the nicest thought I’ve heard today.”

  FIVE

  He led them into his fifteenth floor condominium, mentioning that for the past two years it had been dreadfully quiet there. Giving them a tour of his place, he pointed out the bed cabinetry in the largest bedroom; his father had not only built the cabinetry, he had designed it himself.

  “He built it right here in this room and it took him three whole months in his spare time.

  Everyone, including myself, was astonished to see it when he finally finished for it was done so well. You see he stained the full inch thick wood cherry like your cabinetry but he couldn’t stand the imperfection of knots – that’s why he used number one clear pine lumber.

  “At first my mom said she didn’t like the idea at all; she’d prefer regular bedroom furniture. But he made the entire thing with nicely turned edges and all that. You see here, on each side of the bed there’s four drawers, each a bit deeper than the one above, a bedside table space and behind those lovely doors above are shelves for socks and things. The whole eleven foot wide ensemble is screwed together.”

  There were under-cabinet lights each side, linen storage behind the pillow rest above the bed, a five-foot wide shelf with a large mirror and lighting above it all.

  “He had mounted two long fluorescent lights above a two by four foot egg-crate plastic panel so that it made a sort of canopy sticking out three feet over the bed. It’s good for reading in bed and illuminates the whole room nicely.

  “Everyone said my dad had wasted his life in the Marines for he had a genius for making furniture; although this was the only thing he ever made besides a bookcase. In his years after the Marines he worked as a handyman in apartment buildings; that’s how he acquired tools.”

  There was a treadmill and weights in the corner of the room, where he forced himself to keep in good shape.

  “So, your dad had been a Marine,” Ronica said.

  “Oh yes. He was an eighteen year old Oklahoma orphan and a juvenile delinquent; a teen-age train wreck, a judge said. That judge told him he was a rather tough boy and he wondered whether he’d like to become a really tough man in jail or in the Marines? He picked the Marines and immediately found himself with a home and a family, as he put it.

  “He joined the Corps back in ’65 and was pretty quick into Viet Nam. He was there I think three times and won a bunch of medals, including the Navy Cross and two Silver Stars.

  “He got promoted pretty quickly too and went up rather fast. He was in for thirty years and was a Sergeant Major for the last sixteen of those years. He refused to become an officer. He said they only got him out of the Corps at the point of a very big gun. It was his life and he loved it.”

  “Those times must have been interesting for you,” the red headed one said.

  “Oh no, not much. He married my mom here in San Diego sometime after he got out of boot camp and he was simply not around for most of my life growing up. He was one outstanding Marine, I know, but he had slight paternal instincts and he said one kid was more than plenty for him.

  “He hardly knew I existed except he thought I should be trained just like he trained those young fellows over there at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. I thank God I had a strong mother. She actually protected me from the guy.

  “They surely loved each other all their married life and that saved me from a lot of being kicked around, I think. I knew other boys whose Marine dads were terribly rough on them but my mom would simply not allow that to happen to me so I grew up I suppose, sort of normal. Although, we sure moved a lot; all over the country. We even spent two years in England when he had embassy guard duty there. He was a ‘spit and polish’ kind of Marine. Everything had to be perfect, you know. You should see his closet in there; everything’s organized perfectly perfect!” he smiled.

  “Was your mother from Guadalajara like the papers said?” Ronica asked.

  “No, her parents were. She was born here in San Diego and she and my dad flew down to Guadalajara for the first time, to receive some family heirlooms her grandmother had willed her. But as you read in the paper, the cab they rode from the airport there took them to a place to be robbed and killed instead of to the hotel they wanted to go to.

  “Both were stripped naked, beaten, knifed in the back and discarded onto the street. Just for utter meanness I suppose, they left those big knives sticking out where they went in.

  “They were both only fifty nine. Just fifty-nine; such a shame. They were only identified because my dad had the Marine Corps emblem and his serial number tattooed on each upper arm, in case of death in battle.

  “So the American Embassy was notified and they found out everything about them. Their murderers will never be brought to justice down there; I’m quite certain of that. But then, we don’t do too wonderfully well here either.

  “We Americans only average about sixty four percent convictions for murder ourselves; especially here where crooks can escape south across the border. The Mexican police are inefficient, to say the least. Just to bring their bodies back here for burial was unreasonably difficult. Mexico’s a very different country from ours,” he sighed.

  “Not to change the subject Jack,” Ronica said, “but why not let me whip up some food? While I scrounge around your ‘fridge, tell me something. Your Donna told me you and she and your parents all bought this place together.”

  They walked to the kitchen, it being practically a duplicate of McCarty’s except the cabinets were grey-stained oak and the floor was Spanish-style ceramic tile.

  Leslie and the daughter sat at the snack bar while Ronica began her search.

  Behind them was the glass wall leading out onto a large balcony – the McCarty place had nothing quite like that balcony. The view was better too – of the bay, the ocean and far south into Mexico.

  “Actually, my dad and mom checked this place out before construction had advanced beyond a hole in the ground. We agreed with them and the deal was done before the prices shot up. But now, the real estate boom’s gone bust and the value’s dropped a few hundred thousand to about what we paid for it. Their insurances paid off the mortga
ge though, with some besides. So they left me a fine legacy.”

  He breathed a big sigh.

  “I’ve thought about selling and buying a different condo. I sleep in what was supposed to be the children’s room. I moved there when Donna died. Must seem strange; that I’d do that.”

  “Strange?” Ronica asked. “No sir, not at all. You’ve sure had more than your share of grief to trouble you. Are these eggs fresh? How’d you like a great big omelet and ‘taters and toast?”

  “That would be a real treat. I’ll help with the bacon unless you prefer sausage.”

  He hardly thought it necessary to mention he’d had that very meal in the morning at Hob Nob Hill.

  “No, I’ll do it Jack,” Ronica said. “Why don’t you and Little Anne pry those things out of your wallet?”

  “Good idea! First though, I’d best take some pictures of it; I might need them for evidence.”

  Leslie got his camera and made a few photos of the billfold.

  “Little Anne, here’s the wallet. You get started while I go change my ‘holier-than-thou’ trousers; okay? I just noticed there are blood splatters on these pants. Oh yeah, on my shoes too.”

  He changed into tan slacks and kept the “holy pants”, for evidence. The .38 caliber bullet had “mushroomed” such that it gripped the hole it had put in each card in his wallet.

  They had a time of it, getting the various cards out without tearing them further.

  Ronica served them on the island and as they began to eat, the girl asked, “Mom, do you suppose all cops try to impress their first date the way Sergeant Leslie did today?”

  They had a hearty laugh over that one.

  “I have no idea, sweetie, but I can tell you, I was very, very impressed by this officer. Our Jack Leslie here is one very good man to have around.” she grinned.

  “To tell you the truth,” he said with mock seriousness, “I hardly planned the events of the day at all. But thanks Ronica; you are so sweet to say such things. Little Anne, has anyone ever mentioned to you that you have ‘the gift of loquacity’?”