Interest of Justice

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “But I released the bastard. The man was standing right before me. I can still see his face.”

  “Honey, get a handle on yourself. You don’t know this man was involved in your sister’s death. Possibly he was released from the jail, needed money, and tried to burglarize all kinds of homes in that area or even did, for that matter. He might have hit ten places and it was a coincidence that he hit yours. You’re not far from the jail over there. And from what I know, there’s no definitive link between these two crimes.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence, Irene,” Lara said flatly. Normally when Irene, who was considerably older than Lara, used all her little terms of endearment, Lara just sopped it up. But today it all sounded trite.

  “Be rational. What kind of motive could this man possibly have? You released him O.R. You didn’t sentence him to prison. When you were speaking of the Henderson situation yesterday, an outright threat, that was a different matter. This you must put out of your mind.” She paused and then continued. “Honey, have you seen the paper this morning?”

  “No, I just woke up. It was a rough night. I don’t even know what time it is. What do they say? Do they have my picture in there or something?”

  “Lara, it’s far worse than that. I’d rather not be the bearer of bad news. Why don’t you get your paper and read it and call me back? I’m reading the Los Angeles Times. Do you subscribe?”

  “Yeah,” Lara said. “Call you right back.” Bad news, she had said. What kind of bad news could there possibly be now? She walked into the living room and saw Josh sprawled with one leg off the sofa. He’d evidently gone back to sleep. She opened the front door and then remembered she wasn’t at home. Seeing a newspaper lying next door, she took it. The people were probably at work already. She’d replace it before they got home.

  Paper in hand, she carried it back to the bedroom. Removing the rubber band, she used it to tie her hair back in a ponytail and stretched out on her stomach on the unmade bed. There was nothing in the cover story. Maybe Irene was referring to a case she had handled that had been overturned on appeal without her knowledge.

  Then she saw it. It was at the bottom of the front page.

  “sadistic sex murders in orange county.”

  She placed her hand over her mouth and glanced at the door. Then she ran over and closed it and returned to the bed, removing the paper and placing it on the carpet. She got on her hands and knees and read the text of the article.

  “The sister and brother-in-law of Orange County Superior Court Judge Lara Sanderstone were brutally murdered yesterday in apparent sadistic sex-related homicides. Ivory Perkins, 36, and her husband, Samuel Perkins, 38, were murdered in their home in San Clemente by unknown assailants. The couple’s fourteen-year-old son discovered the bodies on returning home from school. Insiders at the San Clemente Police Department advise that information has surfaced indicating the judge’s sister was involved in sex-for-hire, specializing…”

  She dropped the paper on the floor. Rickerson was to blame for this, and she was going to make certain he paid. Her eyes jerked to the clock on the nightstand, and she saw it was nine o’clock. Tossing on a pair of baggy jeans and an old shirt, she left the condo and jogged to her car in the parking lot, immediately calling the San Clemente Police Department on the car phone.

  “Is Sergeant Rickerson there?” she asked the woman who picked up the phone.

  “Yes, he just came in. I’ll transfer you.”

  Lara hung up. She punched the gas and pulled out into the morning traffic, honking her horn and screaming out the window like a madwoman when someone pulled in front of her. She didn’t try to control her anger. She let it build like a wave far out at sea, knowing that by the time she got to the police station, it would be large enough to wash over the entire department and half the town of San Clemente. But it was Rickerson that she focused her rage on. He was responsible for leaking this smut stuff to the press, and she was ready to yank his head right off his body.

  She parked illegally at the curb in a red zone. She flung the door open and marched into the police station, huffing and puffing like she’d just climbed six flights of stairs. Passing the receptionist without so much as a glance, she headed directly to the back of the building, where she knew the Investigative Bureau was housed. Rickerson was standing by a file cabinet in his shirtsleeves, drinking a cup of coffee and joking with another detective. As soon as he saw her, he moved in her direction, a look of concern on his face.

  “How could you do this? Leak this stuff to the press?” Lara said, her body shaking, her hand moving back like she was going to slap him.

  Two other investigators were sitting at their desks. They stood, momentarily not recognizing her, and one moved toward her rapidly, his hand on his weapon. Lara turned and faced him. The look in her eyes was enough to stop him cold. Realizing who she was, he turned and walked back to his chair.

  “Let’s go outside,” Rickerson said. “There’s no use screaming in here and making a scene.”

  Lara’s chest was heaving and her face was crimson. She didn’t take her eyes off Rickerson. “Why did you do it? My God, I didn’t think I even had to mention this to you. Any damn fool would know not to leak something like that to the press.” She tore her eyes away from Rickerson’s and thought of Josh. Now he’d have to change schools. All his friends would know. The whole world knew now what his mother had been doing.

  The detective was pulling gently on her hand, trying to lead her out the back door. She resisted, planting her feet on the ground, refusing to move.

  “It wasn’t me,” he whispered, inches from her face. “If you’ll just step outside with me, we’ll discuss this like two civilized adults. Okay?”

  Reluctantly, she followed. “Okay,” she said, once they were standing on a little concrete porch with steps leading to the parking lot, “tell me and tell me fast. Who’s responsible for this?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “One of the other officers must have said something to the press without thinking, or maybe he said something to his wife or kids and they got wind of it that way. It could have been a file clerk here. Anyone. But rest assured, it wasn’t me.”

  She stared at him, trying to read his eyes, detect if he was lying. Her breath was coming slower now. “Retract it,” she ordered. “Call them right this minute and make them print a retraction.”

  The sun was bright and he was squinting in the glare. “Do you really want me to do that? Think about it for a few minutes. If they print a retraction, which I’m not even certain they will, it’ll only draw more attention. Do you really want that?”

  She didn’t answer. She looked out over the parking lot and the rows of police cars. It was a gorgeous day. The sun was bright, no fog. Even the air smelled clean and fresh, and there was a gentle breeze from the ocean. It didn’t seem right in some way. Lara wished it would cloud over and pour.

  “Mind if I smoke?” Rickerson said, reaching into his pocket for a cigar.

  Lara didn’t look at him. A few seconds later, she was waving the cigar smoke out of her face. He was right. The damage had already been done. Another article would simply fuel the fire. “No,” she finally replied, “you’re probably right.” Then she pointed her finger at him. “I want that person, Rickerson. You find the person who leaked this to the papers and bring them to me. I’ll handle the rest.”

  She turned and seized the door handle, yanking on the door. It didn’t budge and she almost fell backward off the porch. Rickerson stepped behind her and inserted a key. “Locks automatically,” he said, speaking with the cigar clamped between his teeth. “Let’s go somewhere and get a cup of coffee. I’ll meet you at Denny’s across the street. After this, it’s better that we don’t talk in the office.”

  A few minutes later, they were sitting in a booth at Denny’s. Lara was gripping her coffee cup with both hands. Rickerson had a large file folder that he placed on the table.

  “We’ve been goi
ng over the phone records. I have a printout from the telephone company. I made an extra copy for you, in case you recognize anyone.” He slid it across the table, and Lara stared at it without seeing anything but a white sheet of paper. “There’s a lot of calls here to a lot of different people. I have records working on it now. As you can see, we’ve already tracked down most of the calls and listed the names and addresses beside them. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “I want copies of the entire file.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You owe me.”

  “I told you I didn’t leak anything to the press.” He’d been moving the cigar from one side of his mouth and back to the other. Now he removed it and placed it in the ashtray.

  She slapped the top of the table, jiggling the coffee cups and silverware. “Get me copies of that entire file. I’m not anyone off the street. I’m an officer of the court, for chrissake. I want that file.”

  Rickerson’s acne-scared face was menacing. He wasn’t a man to be pushed.

  “Then if you’re an officer of the court,” he said softly, trying to calm her down, “you should realize why I can’t hand over evidence in a homicide. You could decide that some innocent person was responsible for your sister’s murder and go out and shoot them. The department could be sued.”

  She stood. “I’m going to follow you back to the station and wait in the parking lot while you copy that file. You have that stuff in my hands in fifteen or twenty minutes max, or you’ll be the sorriest cop to ever work in this county. I’ll make your life a living hell.”

  Rickerson remained in the booth and watched her stomp toward the door. “Like my life isn’t already a living hell,” he mumbled tossing a few bills on the table.

  When he looked up, he saw her marching back toward him. As soon as she reached the table, she placed her hands on her hips and glared at him. Then she reached down and snatched the cigar right out of his mouth and tossed it on the floor. “And for your information, I hate these stupid things. I never said you could smoke.” She spun around and left.

  Chapter 12

  “Your suspect’s on the run,” the sheriff’s deputy informed Detective Rickerson by phone. “We surrounded the place and went in ready for war. All we found was an empty room full of beer cans and cockroaches. No Packard Cummings.”

  “Fuck,” Rickerson said, slapping the top of his desk. “Can you tell how long it’s been since he was there?”

  “Guy across the street saw him come in early this morning. Looked like he’d been out all night. Said he went upstairs, came down with a bunch of garbage bags, probably with his clothes and stuff in it, tossed them in the trunk of his car, and split. We must have just missed him.”

  “And the landlord?” Rickerson said. “Do they know anything? You know, maybe a forwarding address.”

  “Just that he owes them a couple months’ back rent. This isn’t the type of place that runs TRW’s on their tenants, Sarge. This is a fleabag boardinghouse here. Landlord wasn’t even sure what the guy’s name was…said everyone pays in cash.”

  “Think he was tipped?”

  “By me, buddy. Anyway, we did our thing. Word’s out on the vehicle. Unless he dumped it, he’ll surface.”

  Rickerson hung up and finally reached Packy’s parole agent. The agent informed him that Cummings had basically absconded, had not reported for his weekly visit, and was presently in violation of parole.

  “Were you aware that Cummings was acting as a snitch for some local agency?” Rickerson asked, knowing this was something a man like Packy would brag about to his parole agent.

  “Not at all,” the man told him. “Never mentioned a thing.”

  After confirming the description and license number of the vehicle Packy was known to drive, the agent suggested several other possible locations he was known to frequent. Rickerson hung up, turning to the young detective who had been assigned to work with him on the case, Mike Bradshaw. Bradshaw was the son of the chief of police.

  “Here we go,” he said, placing everything he had on Packy on his desk in a manila file folder. “You want to prove yourself, kid, this is the case to do it on. Get some patrol units to follow up on these locations where Cummings might be, then call every law enforcement agency in Southern California and find out if anyone’s ever heard of this guy. He claims to be working as a C.I. Check it out.”

  Back at his desk, Rickerson took out the handful of Polaroids from his pocket and started shuffling them like a deck of playing cards. Then he studied each one. He’d waited long enough, he decided, stuffing the photos into a brown evidence envelope and jotting something on the front before he sealed it. It was time to go to the chief.

  “Okay, Ace,” he said to Bradshaw, “have someone get these to the crime lab downtown and fast. I want them hand-delivered to a Dr. Stewart and no one else.”

  Bradshaw placed his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone. “I’m speaking with the DEA now. What do you want me to do first?” he said, somewhat befuddled. “Try to find him, call the agencies, or get this to the lab?”

  “Everything,” Rickerson said, heading to the door. Then he stopped in the doorway and rolled a fat black cigar in his ringers. “The way it looks right now, hot shot, Cummings is our man. He ransacked Sander-stone’s house for what reason we don’t know, probably did the killings, and he’s on the run. Let’s bring him in.

  After returning from her encounter with Rickerson, Lara was weak and shaky. She took the newspaper and shoved it in the trash can in the parking lot of the condo. How could she ever face her friends, her peers? Her parents were respectable people. Common people but respected. Thank God they were not here to see this. It was a disgrace, a complete disgrace.

  She started to open the door to the condo and then decided against it. She crossed the grassy courtyard to Emmet’s.

  “Did you see the newspaper this morning?” she asked him.

  “Yes, Lara…I did. I’m sorry.”

  Emmet had a fresh pot of coffee. He told Lara to help herself. Bringing a cup for Emmet, she followed him to his office. “I have a problem, Emmet. It’s a serious one. I’m not certain there’s anything you can do to help me, but I thought I’d try.”

  He hit a button on his chair and spun around to the computer console, slipping his head into the metal contraption. “Tell me, Lara,” he typed. “I’ll do anything I possibly can to help you. And Lara,” he continued, “don’t worry about the article in the paper. You must not concern yourself with what people think. If I worried about what everyone thought, I’d never leave my home. You have enough problems now.” He turned the chair around and looked at her.

  “No one else knows this, Emmet, but I found a T-shirt with blood on it in Josh’s backpack. I don’t want to turn it over to the police unless I’m certain it’s valid evidence. After what happened this morning with the newspapers, there’s no telling what they will do if they learn about this. I thought I heard you mention a friend one time who was a biologist at Strand Laboratories. Could you get him to type it, see if it is my brother-in-law’s blood? I can check his blood type from the police records.”

  “Where…is it?” Emmet asked.

  “It’s in the condo, but I can get it.”

  “Get…it,” he said.

  “Then you think you can get it tested?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly. “Get…it.”

  “I’ll bring it over as soon as Josh goes out on his bike. And Emmet, I’d like you to meet him. Pray that it’s nothing.”

  The following morning, Detective Rickerson and Chief Bradshaw were walking down the corridor at the Los Angeles County Crime Laboratory after fighting the morning rush-hour traffic for over two hours. Chief Terrence Bradshaw was a very attractive man in his mid-fifties, with a full head of premature white hair and a deep tan. The only weak thing about him was his eyes; he wore thick glasses in heavy frames that magnified his eyes and made them appear enormous. To the men in the department, he was a diehard. Th
e man jogged seven or eight miles a day every single day of his life, regardless of the weather, lifted weights, read every book he could get his hands on, and still managed to put in a fifty- or sixty-hour work week. As fit as a man twenty years younger, he was actually in better shape than his twenty-three-year-old son. Law enforcement was his life.

  “Why in the hell did you insist on coming all the way down here for this?” the chief questioned Rickerson. “I mean, we have our own lab in the county. Everyone thinks they do outstanding work.”

  “Because of one woman,” Rickerson said, peering through the glass doors into the offices. “She’s fast and she knows her stuff.”

  “Who?” the chief asked.

  “Dr. Gail Stewart.”

  “I think I’ve heard of her, but I’m not sure where.”

  “She’s one of the foremost criminologists in the country. She can do it all. There’s not one piece of equipment in this lab that she doesn’t know how to operate, and her specialty is photographic evidence.”

  The woman stood when they walked in the door. Then she pumped both of their hands. It wasn’t the kind of handshake you would expect from a woman. It was hearty. Everything about Gail Stewart was hearty. She’d been waiting.

  “Gail Stewart,” she said to the chief. “Follow me.”

  Both men followed the heavyset brunette in the white lab coat. She was in her late thirties, at least forty pounds overweight, and walked like a storm trooper. She was also impossible to dislike. Her skin was soft and clear, her eyes round and expressive, and she absolutely loved what she was doing. She spent so much time at the lab that some people thought she lived there.

  “Give something to this gal,” Rickerson whispered to the chief, “and she’ll grind it between her teeth, chew it up, and spit back the answer. The woman’s dynamite.”

  She marched them to a corner of the room where there was a screen and a slide projector. “I have slides of the enlargements,” she said, “but they were Polaroids, which means the quality is extremely poor. I’ll give you the prints when we’re finished.”