“They got semen in the rape kit,” Floyd said, “crime lab emailed this morning, mister all business, all the time.”
“No shit, huh?”
“No shit, Dickie.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“Doesn’t mean much, given she’s a working girl.”
“See? Nothing makes you happy when you’re like this. Not even finding out we have some evidence.”
I started to respond when Floyd suddenly smiled, his eyes brightening as his attention was drawn past me, over my shoulder. He said, “Hey sweetheart, how are you?”
Detective Lacy Jones placed a hand on my shoulder, now standing behind me. I looked up and said, “Good morning, sis.”
With the same last names but very different complexions, we always joked that our daddy was a rambling man.
“You guys okay?” she asked, very sincere.
Floyd said, “Dickie here saved my life.”
I said, “I need to stop doing that.”
Lacy patted my shoulder, smiled and said, “Glad you guys are okay. I love you guys.” Then she walked away.
Floyd called out, “Love you too, Lace.”
I said, “Thanks, sis.”
My partner and I faced each other but neither said anything for a moment. Then Floyd picked up his notebook, flipped through a few pages, apparently found what he had been looking for, and said, “Okay, so you aren’t thrilled with semen, what about fingernail scrapings?”
“We get DNA?”
“Didn’t hear back yet,” he said, “but the coroner said we have tissue. I’ll give them a call after a bit.”
“Consistent with strangulation,” I said. “Good, she got a little of him while he had his hands wrapped around her throat. Let’s find out about that, put it at the top of your list.”
“Don’t get bossy with me.”
“Then let’s talk to Sandy’s little gangster.”
“He lawyered up, remember?” Floyd spat into a metal trash can between our desks. “Seems everyone’s got a lawyer around here, except me. Charlie Wright’s got one, Sandy’s gangster has one, your ex-wife has one . . . I think I need one too, Dickie, paternity suits being on the rise and all.”
“Sandy said she tried to talk to her suspect, based on what an informant gave her, and the suspect lawyered up. I don’t know I blame him. Bottom line is, if we don’t think he did it, we need to clear him. I say we get his attorney lined up and give it a whirl, go at him like that.”
“Make it happen, Dickie. That’ll give you something to do while I enjoy my soda, keep you off my jock for a bit.”
I picked up my phone. “I’ll set it up.”
Before we left the office, Sandy Landers stopped by our desks and viewed the photographs that were seized at James Scott’s house. She said yes, she was certain the guy in the skirt walking behind our victim was Steven Dubois, the victim in her case, who goes by Stephanie. Then she said she wondered what he was doing there, but didn’t give it much more than that before walking away.
“We got time to grab some lunch?” Floyd asked as we crossed the parking lot later that afternoon.
We crammed ourselves into the Ford Tempo the captain had assigned as a loaner until my bullet-riddled Crown Vic was out of the shop. I sensed he meant it to be a form of punishment.
“Sure,” I replied, “what do you feel like?”
“I don’t care, Manny’s?”
“I could do Manny’s. Steak burrito sounds good, some chips and salsa. Shit I might have a shot of tequila, after last night.”
“Now you’re talking, Dickie, something to take the edge off.”
I turned out of the parking lot and headed north on Eastern Avenue while playing with the A/C and vents. Floyd tuned the radio. He settled on a country station and said, “So, they still haven’t found Fudd?”
“I guess not. I don’t get how a guy disappears in broad daylight after blasting the shit out of two cops for an hour and a half.”
“Guess he had it all planned out, including an escape route. But I think it was about ten minutes, Dickie.”
“Makes me feel a bit uneasy,” I said, “knowing he’s out there.”
“With a rifle.”
“I hope he turns up somewhere, preferably alive. I would like to have some answers on this case.”
Floyd said, “I hope the fat bastard’s dead.”
With bellies full of steak burritos and Diet Coke, Floyd and I walked from the parking structure at the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail to Main Control where we signed in, telling a young lady in uniform we had an interview scheduled with an inmate and his attorney. We were issued visitor badges and directed to the Attorney Room.
“Ms. Freeman,” she said, introducing herself as we stepped inside. It was a concrete box, really, with a polished metal table bolted to the wall and four plastic chairs, two yellow and two orange. Romper room for adults. Bad ones.
She offered a hand to Floyd, her flowing blonde hair framing a narrow face that held a pleasant smile.
Floyd put on the Baldwin charm: “Pleasure to meet you, Counselor. I’m Matt Tyler, this here’s my partner, Dickie Jones.”
“Dickie?” she asked and smiled.
“It’s actually Richard, ma’am,” I said.
“Oh, well it is nice to meet you both.” She glanced back at Floyd but then directed her question to me. “I understand you have an offer for my client?”
I glanced at Floyd and caught his gaze returning from the counselor’s short, blue skirt.
“Not so much an offer,” I said, “really more like a request.”
“Well, I may have been misinformed,” she said, sliding into a chair, careful of her skirt. She sat next to her client who had remained seated at the table. Floyd and I followed suit, sitting in the two available chairs across from her.
She said, “What would be your request?”
“He refused to give a statement to one of the other detectives in our unit, Sandy Landers,” I told her. “We would like him to consider speaking with us about the murder he was arrested for, and another case that may be related.”
“Those murder charges were dropped,” she said, glancing toward Floyd and smiling, “surely you know that. The D.A. rejected the case so my client only remains in custody on a probation violation.”
“I realize that,” I said, “however, it was rejected with a request for further investigation. That means technically, he isn’t completely off the hook.”
“What could he gain by speaking with you?”
“We don’t think he did it.”
Her brows lifted. “Oh?”
“That’s right, ma’am,” Floyd said, “we’d like the opportunity to eliminate him from our list of suspects. It would be helpful to our investigation.”
“Interesting,” she said, holding her gaze on Floyd. After a moment she said, “I don’t think I’ve had a detective ever make such a request before.”
Floyd smiled and said, “You’d be surprised the things we come up with.”
“I bet,” she said, and returned the smile. Then she turned to her client, his presence in the small room finally acknowledged. “I am curious to see where this is going, do you have any objections?”
The man in the orange jumpsuit replied, “Huh?”
“I would like to hear the detectives’ questions of you. Are you willing to speak with them? I’ll be right here, and if there’s anything I think you shouldn’t say, I’ll let you know.”
“I don’t really care,” he said, slouching further into his seat. “I ain’t got nuttin’ to say anyway.”
I glanced in my notebook to refresh my memory. Cedric Mayfield. “Cedric, they’re holding you on a violation, right?”
“Yup.”
“No other charges?”
“Nope.”
“We clear this up, I’ll call your probation officer, see if we can take care of this violation.”
“He said it’s ‘cause when y’all bus
ted me on this humbug, I had dat weed in my pocket, but I told him the po-po planted it, and he say dat what everyone say.”
Cedric sat back a little, curled one nostril and snorted loudly. The nostril stayed put, a permanent smirk now on his face.
“C’mon now, Cedric,” I said, “you know the po-lice don’t plant no marijuana. If we’re gonna put something on you, it’d be something good, like a bag of crack, or maybe the knife that was used to kill them girls.”
“A knife? I don’t even carry a knife, man. How am I supposed to kill a bitch with a knife if I don’t have one. Y’alls been hittin’ the pipe, man. I ain’t stabbed no bitches.”
“Why’d you tell someone you killed that prostitute?”
“Wait,” Ms. Freeman insisted, holding a hand up to stop him from answering.
She then leaned over and whispered something in his ear. He looked at her and said, “Huh?” She whispered again, and he just looked away. Then he looked at us and began.
“My homie caught me leavin’ there, he say to me, ‘Man, whatchya doin’ up in dat room, wit dem dudes, dress like bitches?’ See, he been knowin’ dat nigga was a dude, and now I’m over here on front street wit my niggas over this bullshit. So next mornin’ I hear what happen up in there, that faggot I’ killed, and I just said I did it. Told my homie soon as I found out it was a dude, I went back up in there and took care of bidness. Man, I got a reputation to protect.”
“How’d you tell him you did it?”
“Just said it to him like dat . . . said, ‘I kilt dat nigga.’”
“No, I mean, what did you say you did, like, how did you kill him?”
“Oh,” he said, sitting up straight now, “I said I beat dat nigga to death wit my bare hands. I don’t carry a knife—I done told y’all dat—I never even thought of sayin’ I stabbed the bitch, but I didn’t know how she was kilt.”
Cedric smiled for the first time, looking straight at me and then over to Floyd.
Floyd sat back and crossed his legs in front of the table. “We know you didn’t kill him, Cedric, your story makes sense and I think we’ll be able to clear you. Only other thing we need is a few pictures, a couple with your shirt off.”
“Why is that, Detective?” Ms. Freeman asked.
“Our killer will likely have some scratches, probably on the arms, maybe around the neck or on his face. From what we can see, he doesn’t have any marks or scratches. I’d like to document the absence of injuries.”
She nodded and Cedric rose to his feet, dropped the top half of his jumpsuit, pulled the county jail t-shirt off, revealing a lean and muscular frame. His light brown skin was blanketed with jail and prison tattoos, black and gray shades of ink portraying gangsters and women and marijuana leaves and a hard looking dude wearing shades and a bandana pointing a shotgun, a jailhouse with barred windows behind him.
Floyd pulled a camera from his brief case and stepped over, guiding Cedric to the wall. Stand like this, now turn that way . . .
He took several photos from different angles and when he finished, Floyd said, “Thanks, man.” He then turned to the counselor and extended a business card between two fingers and said, “And thank you, Counselor.”
She followed us into the hall. “So, this person, your victim, she was stabbed to death?”
I waited for the door to click shut behind us. “No ma’am. Your client didn’t have any of it right, he wasn’t beaten or stabbed.”
“We just cleared your client, Counselor,” Floyd said and smiled, “at least on this one.”
12
THE CLOCK DISPLAYED 6:37 when the doorbell rang the first time. Seconds later it rang a second time and then a third. I grabbed my pistol and hurried down the hall, thinking, this had better be an emergency.
My neighbor, Virgil Chamberlain, stood wrapped in a blue terrycloth robe over checked pajamas, his gray hair disheveled, tears welling up in his eyes. “May’s gone to see the Lord,” he said.
She’d been battling cancer for a couple years, had one lung removed a few months prior and recently learned the cancer had spread to the other. In spite of her condition, she and Virgil spent most of their time sitting in their open garage, smoking cigarettes and sipping black coffee as they watched the world go by. Seeing it had made me cringe at the thought of retirement.
They were both going to quit smoking, Virgil had said.
I said to him, “Come in, Virgil, let me throw on some clothes.”
He declined, saying he needed to be with her.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“Right over there, in the garage,” he said, turning partly that direction and nodding his head.
“In the garage?”
“Well yeah, where I found her, right over there in her chair.”
I discreetly placed my gun on a shelf near the door and stepped onto the porch alongside Virgil. I squinted across the street and saw her sitting there in her chair, her normal position and pose, looking this way.
I said, “Are you sure she’s dead?”
“She ain’t saying nothin’, or doin’ nothin’. She would’ve at least made the coffee by now, if she wasn’t dead.”
“I better have a look,” I said.
This was payback, in a sense. Virgil, the retired electrician, had wired my shop, installed security lights, even ran the wiring for my Jacuzzi tub when I put it in, saving me a couple bills. Other than memorizing the license number of the occasional suspicious vehicle or talking to the kid who races that damn motorcycle around the neighborhood, my skills are generally useless in a crime-free community like ours. But now I could assist Virgil at a time of grief, march over there and confirm May was dead, tell Virgil, yep, she’s a goner. Put my skills to use.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, as we crossed the street together, headed toward May, “but I really didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t see no sense calling for an ambulance, what that would cost and all.”
“No bother, really, Virgil.”
“I knew you’d know what to do,” he said, his words coming out slowly, “you dealing with this stuff all the time.”
We stopped at the threshold of the garage. There she sat, posed in her chair, her mouth partly open. Her eyes were mostly closed, though the left one remained slightly open, peeking toward us. I stepped inside and checked her pulse, just to be certain. After all, she didn’t appear all that different than the last time I had seen her alive. There was no pulse, of course, and her skin was cold to the touch.
“We should go inside, Virgil,” I said, “make a couple phone calls.”
“Who we gonna call?”
“We’ll have to call the sheriff’s station, have a deputy come out. He’ll contact her doctor to see if he’d be willing to sign a death certificate, so you’ll want to have that information available. Probably get it from a pill bottle if you don’t know it offhand. You’ll also need to choose a mortuary, someone to give May a proper burial, or do whatever it is you two have decided to do when the time comes. You’re probably going to want to call some family, or maybe friends, let people know what’s happened. Maybe have someone come and stay with you a couple days, help out around the house, if it suits you. Of course, Val and I will be here for you too.”
“Ah damn it!” he said, pulling a wad of tissue from his robe pocket to catch the tears now rolling down his cheeks. “I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“I’m sorry, Virgil.”
“Are you—do you know for sure she’s gone? Don’t you have to check her with one of them machines or something?”
I told Virgil I had checked her pulse and explained how that worked, though I did not mention the rigor mortis and postmortem lividity, indicators she had been dead since sometime last night. Probably since he had gone to bed, May staying for that one last smoke, the cigarette still in her hand. Virgil seemed to accept it better once I told him, yes, I’m sure she’s gone, and no, she wouldn’t have suffered any at all.
The deputy who
responded to Virgil’s home looked familiar to me, probably someone I had run across at a crime scene. The homicide cases spread us throughout the various substations around the county, which meant a lot of new faces and names on every assignment. I always struggled to remember the names but recalled faces with ease. The uniformed deputy left his car running, parked on the street across the driveway, not far from the upright remains of May Chamberlain.
“Little casual today, Detective?”
He obviously recognized me. I glanced down at my gray sweats and flip-flops under bare feet. “Off-duty.”
“Yeah, I figured,” he said with a grin. “Relative?”
“Neighbors,” I said, nodding toward the yellow house across the street, the one with the American Flag and a beat-up Ford Tempo in the driveway. “Virgil came and got me this morning.”
“It’s a natural?”
“Trust me on that,” I said, “nothing more than a log entry for you. We’ve already called a mortuary.”
He studied the remains for a moment, then turned back to me, apparently satisfied with the assessment. “Whatever happened on that murder you handled, the one at the motel out on Sierra Highway? I think that’s the last time I saw you.”
“Sierra Highway?” I thought about it, trying to recall the case. “When are we talking, partner?”
“Six months ago, maybe. Guy was found dead in a car, shot in the head.”
I thought for a moment, then asked, “The Highway Inn?”
“Yep, has the blinking sign out front, the arrow pointing toward the place.”
“Yeah,” I said, now recalling the scene, “the motel owner was a hunched over little gal with long stringy hair, one eye bigger than the other, her glasses all cockeyed all the time.”
“Yep, dead guy was a Mexican, sitting in a Mustang.”
“I remember,” I said, thinking, Jesus, has it only been six months?
“What happened on that one?”
“I have no idea.”
He grinned, giving the impression he thought I was putting him on. After an awkward moment, he said, “What do you mean, you have no idea?”
A Good Bunch of Men Page 12