Lethal Measures

by Leonard Goldberg

  “You can still see the threads where the inner pockets were torn out. Chances are a human hand jerked out those inner pockets.”

  “To make sure there weren’t any papers or identification items hidden away,” Hurley said dispiritedly.

  “So we’ve got a torn-up empty wallet,” Farelli said.

  Jake smiled thinly.

  “Oh, we may have more than that. A lot more.” Farelli studied the wallet again and saw nothing new.

  “Show me.”

  “Take your wallet and let it drop to the ground.” Jake stepped back and watched Farelli’s wallet hit the grass.

  “Now pick it up and give it to me.”

  Farelli stooped down and handed the wallet to Jake.

  “Here you go.”

  “Look where your thumb and fingertips are.”

  Farelli stared at his fingers for several seconds as he turned the wallet from side to side. Suddenly his eyes widened.

  “Fingerprints! The guy who picked up the wallet to rip it apart left his fingerprints.”

  “On smooth oily leather,” Jake added.

  “It’s a perfect surface for prints.”

  “Lord knows I hope you’re right,” Hurley said.

  “But the guy might have been wearing gloves and left no prints.”

  “That’s possible,” Jake conceded.

  “But let me ask you a question. What would you do with gloves particularly those that are bloodstained after you’d used them?”

  “I’d discard them,” Hurley said at once.

  “Would you take them back to your car first?”

  “No. I’d ” Hurley stopped in mid-sentence and nodded to himself.

  “If he were wearing gloves he would have stripped them off and buried them.”

  “Where?”

  “In the duffel bag.”

  Jake picked up the duffel bag with his stick and turned it inside out.

  “No gloves.” Friday, April 9, 2=40 p.m.

  Jake could sense the somber mood the moment he entered the forensics laboratory.

  The technicians were huddled together talking in hushed voices. Lori McKay was staring at the computer screen in Joanna’s office. On the desk beside her was a bunch of flowers with a card attached.

  “Where’s Joanna?” Jake asked.

  “She left early,” Lori said.

  “She wasn’t feeling well.”

  “What was wrong?”

  “A phone call from a guy in New York.”

  “And?”

  “And she listened, then left her office in tears.”

  “How did you know she was talking to a guy in New York?”

  “I went out after her and caught her in the parking lot. She told me all about it.”

  Jake glanced down at the bouquet of flowers. On the card he could make out the word Love.

  “Are they getting back together?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  Jake hesitantly knocked on the front door of Joanna’s condominium. He was now sorry he had come. The questions he had for her weren’t crucial and could have been asked later. But he wanted to see her, and he wanted to know if she was getting back together with her new boyfriend. Jake knocked again.

  Kate opened the door.

  “Hello, Jake. Come on in.”

  “How is she doing?” Jake asked.

  “Not too bad, considering the emotional roller coaster she’s been on.”

  “I thought it was over between them.”

  “So did she.” Jean-Claude came galloping into the living room on his broomstick. He was wearing a cowboy hat that was tilted badly off to one side.

  “Jacques!”

  “Hello, Jean-Claude,” Jake said warmly. He reached down and tickled the toddler’s stomach, making him laugh. Then Jake carefully straightened the child’s cowboy hat.

  “Now you look like a real cowboy. Go get those bad guys.”

  Jean-Claude happily rode out of the living room and into the den, where a television set was playing loudly.

  Jake turned to Kate.

  “Where’s Joanna?”

  “In the library.”

  Jake knocked on the library door and entered. Joanna was seated at her desk, staring at the phone. A small wastebasket beside her was overflowing with used Kleenexes.

  “I hear the guy called again,” Jake said.

  Joanna nodded.

  “Bad news travels fast.”

  “What happened?”

  “He told me he loved me and that the reason he acted so badly was the pressure he was under,” Joanna said unemotionally.

  “He had closed his deal successfully and things were great. Now we could start again.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “That I wasn’t a lightbulb he could turn off and on,” Joanna continued.

  “That really set him off. He said some very unpleasant things and harped on the fact that I wasn’t married and approaching middle age. He said I was too fixed in my ways and would never get married.”

  “Not as long as you keep dating horses’ asses like him,” Jake added.

  Joanna managed a weak grin.

  “I’ll be more selective in the future.”

  “Do you feel like doing some work?”

  “There’s no way I could even begin ” Joanna stopped and stared up at Jake, trying to read his face.

  “You’ve got some new evidence you can’t figure out. Is that it? Is that why you’re here?”

  “Naw. I came around to make sure you were all right.”

  “Liar,” she said, smiling faintly.

  “Well, there are one or two things,” Jake admitted.

  Joanna sighed wearily.

  “Tell me what you’ve got.”

  Jake told her about the buried duffel bag that contained Jose

  Hernandez’s remains and the blown-apart mannequins. As he gave her the details, he watched Joanna nod and mentally sift through the findings, separating the important from the irrelevant. Now she was asking questions about the mannequin pieces, questions that even he hadn’t thought about.

  “Where did they get those mannequins?” Joanna asked.

  Jake shrugged.

  “Probably stole them.”

  “Or maybe bought them,” Joanna speculated.

  “You’ll have to check out all the places that sell mannequins, particularly wholesale outlets.”

  “Maybe there’s a trademark on them,” Jake said, following her line of thought.

  “Or a store label or marking of some sort.”

  Jake winked at her.

  “You’re not so useless after all.”

  Joanna took a deep breath, the sadness now returning to her face.

  “I wouldn’t be of any real help to you, Jake. I’d be distracted. I couldn’t hold my concentration, and I’d miss things and make mistakes. Believe me, I’d be a liability, not an asset.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jake said, not believing it for a moment. Joanna Blalock at fifty percent efficiency was better than most investigators working at full speed on their best day. He would have to think of a way to convince her of that.

  “Can I show you one more piece of evidence that’s got us stumped?”

  “Sure,” Joanna said unenthusiastically.

  Jake gave her the torn piece of paper found in Jose Hernandez’s jean pocket.

  Joanna studied the paper:

  EV 2FL

  “It means nothing to me,” she said.

  “It’s obviously not a phone number, huh?” Jake asked.

  “No. It’s not that.” Joanna tried to concentrate, but her mind refused to cooperate. She thought about Paul again and the flowers he had sent and how thoughtful he’d sounded at first. Then the anger and bitterness had spewed out and he’d shown his real self.

  “I don’t know,” she said and pushed the scrap of paper away. Her gaze went to the calendar on her desk. She had written a note on it, reminding herself of a lunch date wit
h Kate. It read:

  KATE THE IVY 2 P.M.

  Joanna reached for the torn paper and studied it once more. She wondered if it was a reminder note of some sort. Those types of notes usually had the name of the person to be met first, the meeting place next. Her eyes suddenly narrowed.

  “What was the name of the street in West Hollywood where the bomb went off?

  Didn’t it start with an F?”

  Jake took out his notepad and hurriedly thumbed through it.

  “Here we go. It was Fletcher Drive. Two one two two Fletcher Drive.”

  “That’s what the 2 FL probably stands for.”

  Son of a bitch, Jake thought. It was right in front of his eyes and he missed it.

  “What about the V?”

  “I’d guess it was the first letters of a person’s name.”

  “Maybe Evelyn or Eva or Eve,” Jake guessed, thinking about the female terrorist.

  “We can have Hurley run it through their computer file on domestic terrorists.”

  “And now we know for certain that Jose Hernandez was a part of all this,” Joanna said.

  “He was at that West Hollywood house-or at least was planning on being there.”

  Jake looked at Joanna admiringly, now wondering if they would ever have gotten the answer without her.

  “What?” Joanna asked.

  “Nothing,” Jake said, needing her almost as much as he loved her. He thought about what his world would have been like if she had married her ex-boyfriend.

  Empty as hell, he decided.

  Joanna reached for Jake’s cigarette and absently puffed on it.

  “Damn, it hurts.

  It hurts so much, Jake.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “But sitting in this room isn’t going to help.”

  “I need to be alone for a while,” Joanna said softly.

  “I need time to put the pieces back together.”

  “You’ll have to do that later.”

  Joanna stared at Jake, her face hardening.

  “You’re not even going to let me get my head on straight, are you?”

  “Do it another time,” Jake said unsympathetically.

  “You go to hell!” Joanna blurted out.

  “And you can take your goddamn case with you.” “A lot of people are going to die, Joanna,” Jake said evenly.

  “Those blown-apart mannequins represent human beings who are going to be ripped into pieces. And only God knows how many will die. Ten. Twenty. A hundred. Maybe even more.”

  “And you think I’ll be able to prevent that?”

  “You just might,” Jake said.

  “Chances are my presence won’t make a damn bit of difference, one way or the other.”

  Jake walked over to a hanging skeleton in the far corner of the room. He pushed it gently and watched it swing back and forth.

  “This I can guarantee you, Joanna. If a building filled with people is blown to smithereens while you’re sitting on your ass in this library, you’ll spend the rest of your life asking yourself if you could have made a difference.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.” Jake gave the life-size skeleton another push.

  “And I’ll tell you why. I keep seeing those body parts we found at the West Hollywood bomb site. I keep seeing that fireman walking out of the rubble carrying a dead child. I keep seeing those images, even in my dreams. Now those images may not bother you, but they bother the hell out of me.”

  “All you can see is this case,” Joanna said and looked away.

  “All I can see are a bunch of terrorists who are going to kill again unless we stop them.”

  “For just a few minutes, can you think about me and what I’m going through right now?” Joanna asked. Her lower lip began to quiver, and she bit down on it.

  “Is that asking too much?”

  Jake stomped over to Joanna and picked her up out of her chair.

  “Now, you listen to me, and listen good. I care about you more than anybody on the face of the earth. And if you don’t realize that by now, it’s your problem. And I do know how much you’re hurting, and I wish to God there was something I could do about it. Like take you to Cancun and sit on a white sand beach and hold you and tell you everything is going to be all right and that the pain will pass and life will go on. I wish I could do these things, but I can’t because I have a bunch of murdering bastards I have to catch first.” He held her out at arm’s length.

  “Am I getting through to you?”

  Joanna nodded and tried to sniff back the tears welling up.

  “Would you really do all those things for me?” “And more.” Jake brought her close and hugged her tightly.

  “You just hang on to me. I won’t let you fall.”

  “Oh, Jake!”

  The cellular phone in Jake’s coat pocket rang. He touched Joanna’s nose with his index finger, then reached for the phone and spoke briefly.

  Joanna watched Jake’s face tighten. His eyes went icy.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s Farelli,” Jake said, his hand over the phone.

  “He’s in Maria Gonzalez’s apartment.”

  “And?”

  “She’s been murdered,” Jake said.

  “And whoever did it tortured her first.” Friday, April 9,4=02 p.m.

  Tarelli was waiting for them in the hall outside Maria Gonzalez’s apartment.

  The air was warm and still and filled with a nauseating odor.

  “I hope you don’t have full stomachs,” Farelli warned.

  “Bad, huh?

  “Jake asked.

  “Double bad,” Farelli said and waved his hand, trying to stir the air.

  “She messed herself while they were slicing her up.”

  Jack reached in his pocket for a small jar and opened it. He and Joanna placed small amounts of cream on the tips of their index fingers and dabbed it under each nostril. The cream was mentholated and would block out the strongest stench.

  “Tell us what you’ve got,” Jake said.

  Farelli took out his notepad and quickly flipped pages.

  “All morning the neighbors noticed a bad smell coming from the apartment. They contacted the building’s owner, who finally got here at two-forty p.m. He’s the one who found her.”

  “Did anyone other than the owner go into the apartment?” Jake asked.

  “Not according to him. He saw the body and got the hell out of there, locking the door behind him. Then he called the police.”

  “How did they know to contact us?”

  “A black-and-white unit was the first on the scene. They saw your card next to the body.”

  Farelli led the way inside. The living room looked as if a hurricane had gone through it. The sofa and chairs were turned upside down, their cushions and lining torn wide open. Cotton and foam stuffing were strewn about the floor.

  Even the dining table was turned on its side with its legs ripped off.

  “I wonder what they were looking for,” Jake said. “Whatever it was, they must have wanted it bad,” Farelli said.

  They stepped back as a detective from the Crime Scene Unit turned the table right side up and began dusting for prints. Another member of the unit was carefully examining the large picture of Jesus on the wall. Someone had slashed through it, leaving a gaping hole in the canvas.

  “And nobody saw a damn thing, right?” Jake asked.

  “If they did they’re not talking,” Farelli answered. His foot came down on a wad of cotton stuffing and crushed something underneath it. He moved the cotton aside and saw a woman’s gold wristwatch.

  “Do you think all this is connected to the terrorists?”

  “Could be,” Jake said, sensing that it was and still wondering what they wanted.

  “Well, I’ll tell you this,” Farelli went on.

  “This wasn’t some run-of-the-mill robbery. And it wasn’t done by one of the local Mexican gangs eit
her. They steal and kill, but they don’t torture. That’s not their style.”

  “It’s still possible some gang did it,” Joanna suggested, her voice flat and somewhat distant.

  “Maybe they thought she had something valuable hidden away.”

  Farelli studied Joanna’s face for a moment. Something about her was different, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something was off.

  “Are you okay, Doc?”

  “I’m fine,” Joanna assured him.

  “Good,” Farelli said, not believing her.

  “But this wasn’t just some robbery by locals, and I’ll tell you why. We found her purse emptied out on the kitchen floor. Her wallet had forty dollars and some credit cards in it. The local guys would never have left that behind.”

  Or the gold wristwatch on the floor, Joanna was thinking. She should have known to ask whether other things, like jewelry or money, were missing. That was the important clue in determining whether robbery was the motive. And it had gone right by her. Damn it! Get your brain in gear!

  Farelli applied an additional dose of mentholated cream beneath his nostrils. He took a deep breath, readying himself.

  “Twenty years on the force and you think it can’t get any worse. And then it does.”

  Joanna and Jake stopped at the kitchen door, stunned by what they saw. Maria Gonzalez’s nude body was taped into a high-backed dinette chair.

  Her ankles and legs, hands and arms, head and neck were fastened to the chair by masking tape. She couldn’t have moved an inch. Even her mouth was taped shut. Her body seemed to be covered with a thousand cuts, all of them outlined by crusted blood. But the most gruesome feature was her face, lacerated and bleeding and distorted by pure terror.

  “Oh, my God!” Joanna murmured, forcing herself to look.

  Jake swallowed hard. He had never seen anything like this, and he hoped to God he never would again. He wondered how long it had taken her to die.

  Girish Gupta was examining the floor behind the corpse. He stood and dusted off his pants legs, then came over to Jake and Joanna. He was wearing a mask and long rubber gloves.

  “This is savagery beyond belief,” Gupta said, shaking his head slowly.

  “What kind of person would do something like this?”

  Some psychopathic asshole like Charlie Manson, Jake wanted to say. But he didn’t see any of the usual signs that the real crazies left behind. Like notes or messages written in blood on the wall. And there was no evidence that this was some type of ritual slaying either. Jake moved in closer, now noticing a white powdery substance around many of the cuts.