Cold Hit

by Stephen J. Cannell

  “A little coincidental, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but not impossible, I guess.”

  She nodded and finished writing that down.

  “The Arden Rolaine murder book is a mess,” I continued. “Zack didn’t organize anything. Maybe because by then the spark was out and he’d stopped trying, or maybe it was all unfiled because he never planned on solving it. I was going through the binder, getting it in shape before giving it to Underwood and I came across this margin notation: ‘Re-interview VR, on timeline for June third.’ Zack told me he never spoke to Vaughn Rolaine. Couldn’t find him. They never met.”

  “Then how could he be re-interviewed?”

  “He couldn’t. Just before he jumped me, I asked Zack if it was his casebook shorthand for something else, like Victim’s Relative. He couldn’t remember at first, then changed his mind and told me that, on second thought, that’s what it stood for.” I waited for her to finish writing and look up. “How long you been a cop?” I asked.

  “Seventeen years.”

  “If you use shorthand in case notes, you think you’d ever forget what your abbreviations stood for?”

  She shook her head.

  “Me neither. So if VR doesn’t stand for victim’s relative, then it probably stands for Vaughn Rolaine, and that means Zack talked to him once before and was lying to me. Zack said he couldn’t find Vaughn because he moved around a lot. But the homeless people we talked to in Sherman Oaks Park two days ago said he was a fixture down there. So which is it?”

  “Where’s this going?” She stopped writing.

  “I don’t have a shred of evidence for this. It’s all total speculation, but I keep wondering if it’s possible that Zack was the one who killed Vaughn Rolaine. It’s the only construct I can come up with where all of these coincidences line up and make sense.”

  “What’s his motive?”

  “The missing money. Arden’s recording industry dough. His case notes say he and Van couldn’t find it in any bank accounts of hers, no safety deposit boxes. According to Zack’s theory, Vaughn forced his sister to tell him where it was before he killed her. So if her little brother found it and took off with it, then maybe Vaughn buried it in the park somewhere.”

  “And you think Zack waited four or five months until Arden Rolaine’s case cooled down and then went after it.”

  “His divorce probably helped determine the timetable, but yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. Zack goes to the park, drags Vaughn up into the foothills, stuffs a rag in his mouth and clips off the guy’s fingers to get him to talk, ends up killing him. Zack’s a cop. He’d know clipping off the fingertips and moving the body to the L.A. River would bitch up our investigation. With no fingerprints, there’d be nothing connecting him to the case, ’cause we’d never ID the body. And we almost didn’t.”

  Alexa blew out a long breath. “If your theory has him catching the Vaughn Rolaine murder himself so he could control the spin on the investigation, then the big question is how did he set it up so you two would get the case?”

  “The night we found the body in the L.A. River was a Friday. That previous afternoon, Zack and I moved to the top of the murder board. We knew we’d get the next one-eighty-seven. We even went home early to get some sleep. Zack would have known those mutilations would get the case sent to Homicide Special where we were on deck. He left Parker Center at four o’clock Friday afternoon. That gave him plenty of time to find Vaughn, torture him, get the money, and do the murder. That first body was easy to see from the riverbank, so he knew it would be found quickly. He also knew we’d probably catch the squeal because, as the killer, he had control of the timetable.”

  Alexa was still frowning as she made a few more notes.

  I picked up Agent Orange’s book and handed it to her. “According to Underwood, stress is the big precipitator for serial murder. The big stressors are marital, financial, and work related. Zack hits bars and stars on all three.

  “When we got to Vaughn Rolaine’s body it was midnight, and while we were waiting for the MEs, I remember looking into Zack’s car, and seeing that he was crying. Later he told me that Fran had thrown him out on Thursday and asked for a divorce.”

  “And you think that’s what snapped him,” Alexa said. “He’s lost his marriage; he knows the divorce will bankrupt him, so he goes to see Vaughn Rolaine to get the stolen money. Starts chopping off fingers, and kills him in a rage.”

  I nodded.

  “What else?”

  “Well, lots of stuff. None of it alone is very earthshaking, until you add it all up.”

  I retrieved Motor City Monster from her, opened it to a chapter entitled “Antecedent Behaviors in Criminal Profiling,” and then gave it back.

  “According to this book, the first murder done by most serial killers is close to home. Underwood calls it killing in the comfort zone. Zack and I worked for two years in the West Valley. That area was definitely in his comfort zone.”

  She was writing again.

  “After the unsub kills Vaughn, he goes postal. All the latent rage from his childhood comes out, the signature elements of the murder. He carves the Medic symbol on the chest—all the other postoffense behaviors. If these victims are father substitutes, he covers up the vic’s eyes so his dead father won’t stare at him. That chapter you’re looking at is about parental abuse and the early psychological factors that help form serial criminals. Parents play a big role. If his father sodomized him or abused him physically, that could be a huge factor. If his dad was a medic in Nam, that explains the symbol on the chest.

  “Zack told me a few days ago, when I was driving him to his brother’s, that he wished his father hadn’t done something. I asked him what, and he wouldn’t say, but said something about not being in control of his destiny. That his actions were written in his DNA long before he was born.”

  “And you think that’s why he’s killing father substitutes?”

  I nodded. “According to Underwood, most serial killers vacillate between extreme egotism and feelings of inferiority and self-contempt. They’re not in control of their lives or emotions, so they crave control in the commission of their murders and often look for jobs that give them a sense of authority.”

  “Like a cop,” Alexa said.

  “Exactly. There’s a thing Underwood calls the sociopathic or homicidal triad. It includes bed-wetting, violence against animals or small children, and fire starting. This book says if two of those three conditions are present, you’re heading for big trouble. They’re often precursors to serial crime. His psych evaluator hinted that Zack used to be a bed-wetter and I found out that he ran over the family dog the week after Fran threw him out.”

  She was just looking at me now, her notepad forgotten on her lap.

  “Stress plus rage equals blitz kills,” I said. “The doctor psychoanalyzed Zack for two days and said he appeared to be a cognitive disassociative personality, incapable of having relationships. He also said Zack might be a narcissist. According to Underwood’s book, that’s a pretty classic mindset for a homicidal sociopath.”

  “You want my opinion, Shane?”

  “Of course. It’s why I’m telling you all this.”

  “Okay, let’s take your points one at a time.”

  She looked down at her notes. “‘Re-interview VR’ could stand for re-interview victim’s relatives as you suggested, and Zack was so drunk, he simply forgot. But it could also stand for half a dozen other things. To name a few, it could mean ‘Re-interview victim’s Realtor,’ or ‘victim’s rapist’ if she had a prior sexual assault. You’ve still got some back-checking to do on that.”

  She kept her eyes on her notes. “Forgetting for a moment that huge leap you just made that Zack’s dad was a corpsman in Nam, let’s just deal with natural probabilities.” She paused, then asked, “How many of the homeless men in the West Valley would be Vietnam vets?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ten percent?”

 
“Maybe.”

  “That makes the odds of our unsub killing a vet about ten to one. So far, we’ve only identified three. It’s not impossible that it’s a coincidence they’re all vets.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s a coincidence. How could that be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just playing defense here. Putting in the exculpatory evidence.” She consulted her notes again. “If Zack was planning on stealing Arden Rolaine’s money, why would he include the fact that it was missing in his case notes? Wouldn’t it be smarter to just leave out that fact altogether?”

  “Van Kelsey was his partner. How could he leave it out?”

  “Yeah, but Van Kelsey retired well before Vaughn Rolaine was murdered. Zack could have easily gone back and removed that material from the Arden Rolaine case files. But he didn’t. Why?”

  She had a point.

  “Then there’s the whole question of Davide Andrazack,” she continued. “You don’t really believe Zack killed Andrazack, right?”

  “That’s right. It was a political assassination.”

  “We’ve completed our computer sweep of the Glass House and none of the bugs we found in the police department was on computers that included Fingertip case information or a description of the chest mutilation. That means it’s still possible that Andrazack was killed by the Fingertip unsub and that it wasn’t a political assassination. So, which is it?”

  I didn’t know. “What about the polygraphs the chief was doing on the ESD techs?” I said. “If we could find out who planted those bugs, maybe we could roll him.”

  “Nothing yet,” she said.

  “What about the medical examiner’s computers?”

  “Still checking, but so far they’re clean.”

  Alexa was slowly shooting down my entire framework.

  “So you think I’m nuts.”

  “No, I’m just showing you some holes in your theory. So far, you have nothing that directly ties Zack to any of these murders. It’s just intriguing speculation. You better find some evidence if you want a municipal judge to write an arrest warrant.”

  “Alexa, believe me, I don’t want this to be true. It might just be a lot of coincidences, but don’t we need to find out?”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  “Zack lived in Tampa as a kid. Contact the police department there and find out if they have a record on him. You might have to get somebody to unseal a juvenile record if he had one. Next, we need to find out, was he a loner? Did he beat up younger kids? Did he kill or torture pets? Was his father a medic in Vietnam? You know the questions to ask, but we have to keep this strictly to ourselves. If we’re wrong and it gets out, it could destroy what’s left of him.”

  Alexa closed her book and frowned. “Of course, you know, either way this turns out, we’re gonna end up being wrong.”

  43

  After Alexa left I began to feel cooped up. It was impossible for me to be officially released until ten o’-clock the next morning, so I pulled a Zack, got my clothes out of the closet, and just split.

  The Acura was still in the visitor’s lot where I’d left it. Now that I was moving around, I could see how much damage Zack had done. I hurt like hell. My body ached and when I bent down to check under the car for new bugs, I almost passed out. I got behind the wheel, waited for my head to clear, and then dialed Emdee on the SAT phone. After three rings, he picked up.

  “Howdy.” His voice coming from outer space, and sounding like it.

  “It’s me. Number two or three. Whatever I am.”

  “You’re three.”

  There was a long delay after I spoke and before he answered. The scramblers were doing their work.

  “I’m outta the hospital.”

  “Good goin’, Joe Bob. Next time ya pick a partner, get one who won’t kick the caddie-wampuss outta ya when he gets spiky.”

  “Good advice. Where are you guys?”

  “Market. House ain’t got no protein, ’less you eat roaches.”

  “I’m on my way over. Where’s the key?”

  “Under the pot.”

  “Under the pot? Why not over the doorjamb?”

  “Before y’start complaining, wait’ll y’hear which pot.”

  The pot was on the front porch of a vacant house across the street. Okay. Not bad.

  I put the car in gear and headed toward the safe house. The dull pressure behind my eyes was spreading, morphing into a throbbing headache. I stopped at a 7-Eleven for a bottle of water and some Excedrin. As I walked down the aisle, the unexpected shadow of last night’s crazy dream flew over me. I remembered walking down the aisle of Yuri’s market with Marty Kobb at my side, buying forty-weight oil and windshield-wiper blades for a salad. Nuts.

  I paid at the counter, got back into my car, and swallowed three pills. Then I drove onto the freeway, still thinking about Zack. After Alexa shredded my murder theories, I was no longer happy with the dumb-ass criminal profile I’d done. As I drove, I came up with even more exculpatory information.

  According to another chapter in Underwood’s book, serial killers were fractured personalities who were marginalized by their early upbringing and subsequent life experiences. For this reason, they often had difficulty holding jobs. Yet Zack was a veteran on the LAPD. Was it possible that he could have existed in a stress-filled environment like police work and moved up the ranks to Detective II while still being a dissociative personality? I doubted it.

  I rode with him for two years in the Valley. Wouldn’t I have known if he was some kind of monster in training? Instead of a disassociative personality I had seen a savior. He’d protected me from that bunch of tail gunners at Internal Affairs for the better part of a year. I believed I had a true friend in Zack Farrell. How could I feel that way about a disassociative, narcissistic personality?

  I reached for my satellite phone to call Alexa and tell her to forget that background search in Tampa, when a random thought hit me. If you were a cognitive disassociative narcissist; if you were prone to fits of rage and excessive violence; who would you want as a partner? How about good old, drunk-as-a-skunk, throw-up-in-the-backseat, Shane Scully? Passed out most of the time, unable to observe anything except my own belt buckle, so self-involved and depressed that I wasn’t focused on anything. The perfect partner for a murderous sociopath. I put the phone back on the seat beside me and took the Coldwater off-ramp.

  The asset-seizure house on Rainwood looked small and unimpressive from the street. The LAPD wasn’t wasting any money on maintenance and the yard was overgrown. I pulled past and parked half a block away, then got out of the car and walked slowly toward the vacant house opposite the one we were using. There was a big, potted rhododendron on the front porch. I leaned down, my vision going gray for a moment as I bent to retrieve the key. I had to pause to let my head clear before walking across the street.

  I opened the front door of the safe house and entered a one-story, cheaply constructed California A-frame. Broadway and Perry had left a few lights on and I walked through the exposed beam, lightly furnished living room and out the back door onto a large wooden deck, which was cantilevered on long metal poles hanging precariously over the canyon.

  The view was the money with this place. To my right, a million twinkling lights spread across the San Fernando Valley. A soft wind blew through the canyon carrying with it the sweet, peppery smell of lilac, eucalyptus, and sage. I sat in one of the canvas deck chairs and looked down at the valley.

  I needed to get my mind off of Zack Farrell and Vaughn Rolaine, and back on Davide Andrazack and Martin Kobb. Right now there was nothing I could do for Zack. I tried to tell myself it was out of my hands.

  I smiled as my Kafkaesque dream resurfaced. Forty-weight motor oil for God’s sake, trani-fluid, and antifreeze? Some gagger of a salad that would have been. What the hell was that all about?

  And then, just like that, I knew. A series of memories tumbled over each other.
I took a minute to calm down then tried to put them in some kind of order.

  I started with Cindy Blackman’s notes and our brief discussion at Denny’s. Cindy didn’t think an experienced cook would buy fresh groceries five days in advance. Yuri Yakovitch said he was on the back loading dock of the market, supervising the vegetable delivery. He had a good view of the cash register but in his statement, said he somehow missed seeing the burglar, as well as Kobb, when they entered the store. Marty Kobb was supposed to have pulled his gun, and chased the robber out into the parking lot, where he was shot to death. But the money was, for some unknown reason, left behind in the cash register, Nobody saw a getaway car.

  I ran it over in my mind and marveled at the simplicity of it. How had we all been so stupid?

  An hour later, Emdee Perry and Roger Broadway returned, carrying groceries. They must have been in full Bubba mode when they shopped because their market bags were full of beer and chips. They left everything in the kitchen and we walked back out onto the deck. I returned my aching ass to the sagging canvas-backed chair.

  “ ’Bout time for us to all snap on our garters and get this case movin’,” Perry drawled.

  “You come up with anything new since we seen you last?” Broadway asked. I took a moment and then nodded.

  “What if Marty Kobb wasn’t buying food at the Russian market?” I said, giving voice to my new idea. “What if he was buying gas at the Texaco station?”

  44

  We sat on the back deck of the Coldwater house drinking beer and talking it over. If Martin Kobb had been at the Texaco station when he was shot, it was a major shift in case dynamics that could change everything. But it still didn’t mean we could solve his murder. On the other hand, if the killer was doing a gas station holdup instead of ripping the market, there could be witnesses we’d completely missed.

  One looming question doused some of my enthusiasm. If the shooting happened at the station, why hadn’t the manager or a customer come forward to clear up the misunderstanding? Still, it was a promising new direction.

  “If this turns out to be right, then the department just spent ten years paintin’ the wrong house,” Emdee observed.