“Did you kill Ed?” I asked. After a prolonged silence, I said, “Answer the question.”
“I was there,” he said noncommittally.
“Where? The Deakins Building?”
“Yeah. I asked him to meet me there.”
“Why?”
“Because he was being a pain in the ass about the deal. I was just going to scare him a bit. Tell him it was better to sell.”
“Did Langford ask you to bring him there?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Was he there when Ed was killed?”
“No, he wasn’t there.”
“Who else was there?”
“I didn’t shoot him,” he said instead of answering. “I hit him but I didn’t shoot him. I never killed no one.”
“Langford. Did you kill Langford?”
“No, no—”
“What about Mike Wagner?” Again he denied it. “If you didn’t kill these people, then someone else did. Who was it?”
“They’re going to kill me,” he repeated.
“Who is? Who is going to kill you?”
Temekian was becoming more and more distraught. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept in days. I kept the pressure on and repeatedly asked him more and more questions, but he slipped into a mumbling mess, all crumpled up on the backseat floor. At one point, he erratically reached for the door handle and tried to get out of the car. The child safety locks for the children we never had kept him inside.
“Take it easy,” I told him in a soothing voice. “Take it easy, okay?”
“I’m tired,” he said.
“Okay, just take it easy.”
As we moved past Dodger Stadium the traffic eased up and cars began jockeying for position for the frantic rush out into the Valley. I stayed in the slow lane.
“I need help,” he said. “Rafi told me that you know lawyers. I need a white one, someone I can trust. I don’t want no Armenian. They’re crooks.”
The blanket condemnation of Armenian lawyers was telling. He knew how to navigate the system enough to steal from it but when it came time to legitimately manipulate it for his right to a defense, he was completely lost.
I was torn between two duties—the one I had with the authorities to fulfill our commitment of delivering a suspected criminal, and the one I had to a man who, according to the rule of law, was still innocent and had the right and need to prove it.
“I can make some calls,” I told him.
We pulled off the freeway at Colorado and swung around into Glendale. There was a run-down motor lodge not far from the exit. It was a remnant of the pre-freeway days when Colorado was still a major throughway. I pulled into the parking lot it shared with a small doughnut shop.
“Let’s get a coffee and talk options,” I said.
I stepped out into the sparsely populated lot. As I shut my door I heard a voice call out from behind me.
“What are you doing?” Cheli asked as she got out of her car.
Just then Temekian stumbled out of the back seat. He looked up and saw Cheli. His eyes flashed as he shouted out something in Russian.
“Don’t move!” Cheli shouted as she positioned herself behind her car door. She pulled her gun and trained it on Temekian.
Temekian shot me a look filled with contempt as if I had lured him into this trap he was now in. Although I’d done nothing, I felt like I had betrayed him.
“Cheli, wait!” I implored. Turning back to Temekian I could see him contemplating his next move. “Hold on. Don’t do anything—”
But he bolted toward the back of the motor lodge before I could finish. Cheli immediately gave chase, and I was left powerless to do anything other than watch. I drifted slowly in the direction of the pursuit. Temekian whipped around the back corner and disappeared into the darkened alley behind the lodge. Cheli threw herself into the corner of the building, carefully peeked around, and then took off after him.
The night receptionist cautiously poked his head out from the lobby.
“Call 911!” I told him. “Tell them there’s a—”
A shot rang out. The hotel clerk and I shared a look but neither of us made a move. A few seconds later there was another shot. This time the clerk ran back inside to call the police.
A FINE MESS
I crept along the walkway between the lower floor of motel rooms and the parking spots immediately in front of them. The few people who were staying there peered out through dusty blinds, but no one dared venture out from behind their doors. Apparently they knew a gunshot when they heard one. When I got to the back corner I did like Cheli and slowly peered into the dark alley. I let my eyes adjust to the change in light but still could not discern any movement.
Using the building as my guide, I worked my way deeper into the alley where dumpsters and a cinderblock wall framed out the one-lane stretch. At the far end busy Pacific Avenue glowed with the passing headlights. Suddenly, a figure in silhouette appeared from behind one of the dumpsters. It held a gun and scanned the alley. Then it saw me and turned and walked in my direction.
My head said stay and confront the figure, but my feet said run like hell. I tripped over part of an old engine block. Scrambling to my feet—
“Chuck!”
Cheli hurried over to me.
“He’s dead. I need to call this in,” she said, and dashed off to her car.
My eyes went back toward the dumpster where I could now see two feet protruding from behind it. Curiosity drove me closer. I kept my distance but angled around the dumpster to get a look at him. He looked deflated. His head and arms were in an unnatural position that you see only with the deceased. His eyes were open. I then noticed the shiny black pool that began from under his torso and formed a rivulet that bent and banked all the way toward me.
“What are you doing?” Cheli shrieked, returning to the alley. “You’re standing in the blood.”
I had stepped into the stream, which now coursed around me like a real river would around a boulder. Cheli pulled me away from the scene and led me back toward the parking lot.
“I’ll stay with the body. You go wait out front for the arriving officers,” she instructed. “Tell them I’m back here. I don’t want some hothead to shoot me.”
The sounds of the sirens signaled to the people behind the dusty blinds that it might be safe to come out. A pool of bystanders congregated near the front office. The first patrol car roared around the corner and nearly took out a minivan whose driver was surprised by the sudden flashing lights. The young officers jumped out of the car at the main entrance to the lobby; one unholstered his pistol, while the other held a shotgun. The clerk pointed to the back of the building and they sprinted off in that direction. I shouted that Cheli was back there, but they never heard me as two more patrol cars came bearing down on us from the opposite direction and drowned out my voice.
Luckily, I heard no more shooting, and Cheli eventually emerged from the back alley with the two officers in tow. She barked out a few orders that sent them scurrying off to do some thankless job, but happy to do it and feel like they were part of something important.
The scene devolved into a chaotic mess. The drivers of each responding patrol car insisted on keeping their lights flashing despite the lack of a need to do it. News choppers descended and hovered noisily overhead. The crowd of onlookers grew to the size of a small mob but was held back by the sanctity of the yellow tape.
“What happened?” Detective Ricohr asked and immediately noticed the blood on my shoe. “How’d you get that?”
I started to explain, but he waved me off and beckoned me to follow him back into the alley. Camera flashes lit up the scene. This was Glendale PD’s territory, but Detective Ricohr barreled into it like it was his own.
“Who shot him?” he asked one of the patrol officers.
“Detective Alvarado.”
“Temekian had jumped into my car—” I started to explain, but Ricohr interrupted me.
“Get a lawy
er before you talk.”
We walked into the alley together. Ricohr stopped and surveyed the scene. People were everywhere. Some searched the area with flashlights, but most congregated in small circles and milled around. At the far end of the alley a news van ran a live feed with a thousand-foot zoom lens. Ricohr sighed heavily enough to be heard over the thumping of the helicopter blades.
“We have ourselves a fine mess, don’t we?” he said.
In a nation increasingly uncomfortable with police-involved shootings, the Southland held tightly to its record of quick-to-draw shootings and very high kill ratios. Protests were muted or nonexistent. By and large, the people of the city accepted the violence as a necessary by-product of the work required to keep them safe.
The shooting of Temekian was met with the same apathy. Only dedicated readers of the LA Times Crime Blog got any details of the incident. By the limited number of comments posted under the article, I inferred it was a small group.
Standard procedure dictated that Cheli be put on paid administrative leave pending an internal review. She sequestered herself in a cabin up in Big Bear for most of the investigation. I took my own form of administrative leave from the office, but my sequestration was self-imposed and didn’t range far from my apartment in Lincoln Heights. I let the litany of friends’ emails and voicemails remain unanswered.
The first few weeks were filled with long sessions with investigators from Glendale PD’s internal affairs department. They asked the same questions again and again to the point that I no longer had to think of answers. The words jerked out of me as a leg jerks when prodded mercilessly with a reflex hammer. At first the investigators were curious about my involvement in all three murders. It wasn’t common to have someone so closely linked to all three victims. Eventually they chalked it up to what it was—a bored corporate hack who got himself into water way over his head. Behind their assumption was an indictment, not officially stated in their report but implied in the conversations with me—I should have stayed in my office.
Cheli and I spoke very little. At first we were advised to avoid each other until the investigators had time to work through each of our stories. We did have to admit to an intimate relationship—another issue investigators repeatedly dug at but eventually saw as nothing more than a harmless tryst. We were cleared to communicate again, but something happened in those few weeks following the shooting that changed things.
Our relationship had followed the peaks and troughs of the investigation. It started with Ed’s disappearance and was put to rest with Temekian’s death. I began to wonder if the connection between us sprang more from our own personal doubts about bringing the case through to its conclusion, rather than any kind of real intimacy. When it all came to its violent conclusion in the alley behind the motel, there was no more oxygen for the fire to feed off and it eventually just petered out. Phone conversations were reduced to exchanges of pleasantries. They grew shorter and shallower with each one and eventually stopped altogether.
The final report issued a few weeks later came with no surprises. It was heavy on the formality and light on the personal. Detective Alvarado was cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the death of Ardavan Temekian. She had properly conducted herself under the rules of engagement outlined in Glendale’s code. Temekian was a wanted criminal who was considered armed and dangerous at the time of the incident. Detective Alvarado’s actions were justified, and she showed great courage in helping to apprehend the wanted fugitive.
The police officially named Temekian as the perpetrator of three murders—Bedros Vadaresian, William Langford, and Michael Wagner. Ballistics confirmed that the bullets that killed all three victims were shot by the same gun. That gun was recovered during an initial search of the alley where Temekian had been killed. He apparently had the murder weapon on him and dumped it during the pursuit with Cheli. Temekian was linked to Langford, but it never went further than that. Neither McIntyre nor Valenti—nor anyone associated with them—was ever interviewed or considered involved.
I met the official conclusion with indifference. Nothing added up. Vague threads leading back to Valenti and higher powers persisted. The idea that Mike would have stopped in that area of town and allowed Temekian to walk up to him was hard to swallow. Details on the identity of the owner of the Holcomb properties beyond the name Salas were still missing. Why McIntyre went to such great lengths to revise the zones remained a mystery. Temekian’s prophecy that he would die at the hands of the police came true, but what he meant when he uttered it in my car was not clear. There were so many things to iron out, so much more work to do, so much light to shine on the dusky details of this investigation. And yet, I no longer cared.
I was wary of what would happen were I to continue searching for answers. I was fully resigned.
THE UPWARD TURN
The distractions of work had a healing effect. I found solace in the minutiae of my HR duties and jumped back into my old role with a laser-like focus.
Our operational group had recently run a cost analysis on the back-office units in Phoenix and decided that there were sizable savings if we outsourced the accounting duties to a third party. That third party, naturally, outsourced to another party and so on, until they reached a firm that was so low on the pole that there wasn’t anyone below them to send the work to. This decision meant 150 people were going to be laid off.
I organized a seminar on “Dislocation Management,” an overly sophisticated way of describing how human beings deal with change in their lives, which is itself another euphemism for losing their jobs. The sessions were led by an enthusiastic female duo that had parlayed an undergraduate psychology course and a natural gift for hucksterism into a lucrative consulting career. The formula they followed was pretty standard in their line of work—they took some widely understood formula, repackaged it with psycho-babble and pithy catchphrases to make it more accessible, positioned themselves as “experts” in their narrowly defined field, then let corporations pay thousands of dollars for them to impart their wisdom.
All they did was plagiarize the famous seven stages of grief and rewrite them for the corporate world. “Shock & Denial” became “Why Me?” and for “Pain & Guilt,” they settled on the more personalized “What Did I Do Wrong?”
They liked rhetorical questions.
I sat in the back of the seminar room and resented the success of this dynamic duo. Their Dislocation Management seminar was no Stoplight System, but as far as these things went, their effort was a home run.
“I’m really excited about today’s seminar,” my co-manager Paul said, selecting the seat next to mine. “This right-sizing process is going to be very challenging,” he stated solemnly but with a gleam in his eye.
“Terminations are always tough,” I replied, purposefully using one of the words the duo had explicitly advised us to avoid.
“Oops, that was on the ‘no-no’ list,” Paul warned.
“Yeah, it’s hard to remember to use these made-up terms when we have all these standard ones that fit so well.”
My administrative assistant rescued me from another laborious discussion with Paul. She looked annoyed.
“The girl won’t leave,” she huffed. “I told her to drop the package off at the mail room but she insisted on bringing it directly to you.”
“Who won’t leave?” I asked.
“Some bike messenger.”
“How have you been?” Rosie asked as she tossed a package across to me. She had her feet up on the table again. Her messenger bag sat on the floor. She scanned my office and made a face like she disapproved.
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” I told her.
“Well, it’s been quiet out of that office, but this package came through yesterday and I thought I’d see if you were still interested. Same deal as before.”
I looked down at the package with the respective addresses for Claire’s and McIntyre’s firms. It seemed so long ago when I’d first intercepted their co
rrespondence. Here was another, but it didn’t have the same excitement attached to it as the previous one. I slid the package back to Rosie.
“No thanks,” I told her. “I’m no longer interested.”
“Would you be interested in a discount?”
“No.” I laughed. “Not even at a discount.”
“You look like you could use some weed.”
“Nice try.”
“Oh well,” she said, getting to her feet. “Worth a shot.”
She gathered her bag and headed for the door.
“You forgot your package,” I called out.
“It’s a copy,” she said. “I got no use for it. You should try and incorporate some color in here,” she commented on her way out. “It’s too depressing.”
The package sat, unopened, on my table for three days. But I never threw it out. It was a staring contest between curiosity and closure. The former won.
The package contained a four-hundred-page contract for the sale of the Deakins Building, along with several other official-looking documents with language that would require a commercial real estate broker to translate. I did my best to review the material, but the jargon made it nearly impossible to discern anything of value from it. I was thumbing through the pages when I saw the signature of an unlikely person.
“What’s shaking?” my co-manager Paul asked. I had requested a quick catch-up in my office but didn’t tell him the reason for it. He plopped himself into the chair and tugged at the scraggly ponytail he had worn for the last twenty years. “This is coming off next week,” he announced. “I’m going buzz cut.”
The Silent Second Page 18