RCC05 - Some Degree of Murder

by Frank Zafiro

  I stood to push the door closed.

  “What did you find, Cam? What are we talking about here?”

  He removed his glasses and set them on the desk. “I found hairs.”

  “Where? On who?”

  He held up his hands to slow me down.

  “I finished going over the clothing from the Gonzalez case. I found a single hair on her shirt. At the navel or so. I’d have to put the shirt back on her to be any more exact, but definitely near the midriff.”

  “What kind of hair?”

  “Head hair. From a white male.”

  “Can you get DNA?”

  He shook his head. “Not likely. It was broken, not plucked. No mitochondria tissue.”

  “The root, you mean?”

  He looked at me as if he were considering chastising me for using such an unscientific term. “I can’t say for sure how the hair got there, but it’s the only piece of human or animal foreign matter I could find when I processed her clothing.”

  “So, if it belongs to her killer,” I said, “then we’ve narrowed the field down to a white male which gets rid of about seven percent of the city’s population. Leaving me only ninety–three percent to wade through.”

  “Forty-six,” Cameron said. “Roughly.”

  “What?”

  “Forty-six percent. The hair belongs to a white male. You can eliminate all non-whites and all females. That leaves forty-six percent. Roughly.”

  “Forty-six percent of four hundred and eighty thousand only leaves, what? A couple hundred thousand suspects?”

  Cameron smiled slightly. “Roughly.”

  “Well, then I guess we’re making progress. Did you find any carpet fibers at all?”

  “None. But there’s more on the hair.”

  I motioned for him to continue.

  “After I found the head hair on Gonzalez, I went back to the hair samples on the Taylor case. I checked over the clothing again, but didn’t find anything. But when I re-examined the pubic hairs from the combing and checked every single one, I found a foreign hair.”

  I sat up straight. “From Fawn Taylor?”

  “Yeah. It was broken off, too, so no mitochondria. But it was definitely an adult pubic hair belonging to a white male.”

  “Same guy?”

  Cameron shrugged. “No way to tell without DNA. Like you said, there’s a couple hundred thousand of them living in the area. And I don’t even know if we can get sufficient DNA material from either sample to test. The FBI has more sophisticated equipment, so I could send the samples to Quantico for analysis…”

  “But…?”

  “But that costs money.”

  “So? It’s a murder case. The department will pay for it.”

  “And it requires the M.E. to sign off.”

  “So?” I asked, but I knew what he was driving at.

  “So that means he’ll know I double-checked him. He’ll get pissed off. He’ll –“

  I held up my hand to stop him. “You just tell him what you told me. You found the hair. Then you called me to tell me about it. I asked you to do a second pass over the clothing and samples from the Taylor case. Everyone is so serial killer happy around here, anyway, so that’ll make sense to him. Just tell him ‘that’s the way you do it here.’”

  Cameron chewed his lip.

  “He can’t touch you, Cam. He’s a contracted employee. You’re civil service. He can make your life less than perfect for a while. But if he steps too far, he’ll be the one in trouble, not you. And, either way, his contract will be up at some point. But you’ll still be here. Because you’re a civil service employee. Get it? When he’s gone, you don’t want look back and realize that we could have done a better job.”

  “Okay,” Cameron said. “I’ll play it the way you said. He’ll probably buy it.”

  I stood, said “Thanks” and left the antiseptic smell of the dead behind.

  Serena Gonzalez was in the local computer system. She only had one entry and it was a month old. Patrol Officer Westboard stopped her at Sprague/Madelia for suspicion of prostitution and did a field contact report. I waded through the menus and got to his narrative. It was brief, but I read it anyway.

  Subject was walking down Sprague Avenue dressed in provocative clothing. Claimed to be staying at the Palms Motel at Sprague and Ivory. Said she was walking home from the Club Tip Top, where she worked as a stripper. California driver’s license provided. No wants. Released her with a warning.

  I was grateful that a patrol officer took the time to document a field contact. That five minutes of work he did a month ago probably saved me from tramping around the East Sprague corridor, showing her picture and trying to put together some idea of where she stayed and where she worked.

  I needed to go to the motel and verify she still lived there prior to the murder. If she did, I’d have to execute a search warrant on her room. Then go to the Tip Top and interview people there.

  I hit the Print button, sending Westboard’s field contact to the printer so I could put it in my case file.

  I could do the Tip Top interviews on my own. That was no problem. But I had to update Crawford if I was going to do a search warrant and by department policy, I couldn’t execute it alone. That meant help. Which meant Lindsay.

  I backed out of the Field Contact menu and went to the Main Menu. I typed in Gonzalez’s name and date of birth and sent it to California Department of Licensing. Less than three seconds later, the computer beeped at me. I pulled up the response. There were seven listings for a Serena Gonzalez, but the one with the matching date of birth was on top and highlighted. I selected it.

  Serena Gonzalez showed an address in Salinas, California. I had no idea where that was, but there was an atlas at the reference desk. Her license had been issued three years ago. That would’ve been her first license, I realized. And her last.

  So now I had to locate Salinas and give their Police Department a call. Something else I could do on my own. And not as pressing as the motel room search warrant.

  It was time to see the Crawfish.

  “I’ll give you Lindsay and Billings to help out with the search warrant,” Crawford said. “Let me know what you get at the motel,” he told me. He glanced down at his watch, signaling that our meeting was over.

  I left his office and the major crimes unit. I found Billings at this desk in Southside General Investigative Division. He was three bites into a sandwich bulging with mayonnaise.

  “Where’s Lindsay?”

  He motioned to his right with his head. I glanced over and saw Lindsay standing next to the secretary’s desk. He was leaning over and laughing with her. She was about forty and frumpy and appeared to be enjoying the attention.

  I called Lindsay’s name and he turned around. When he saw me, he got a look on his face like a kid who’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I waved him over. He about fell down as he scurried toward us.

  “What’s up, Tower?”

  “I might have to do up a search warrant and I need some help.”

  “Great! Let’s do it.” He slapped Billings on a fat shoulder and Billings gave him a dirty look. Lindsay didn’t notice. “Where’s it at?”

  I gave them the details.

  “Classy place,” Lindsay joked.

  Billings finished his sandwich and opened a plastic baggie full of potato chips.

  “You think she was a hooker?” Lindsay asked.

  “Not sure. But I’ll head out there and find out if it’s even a good location for her. For all we know, she gave the patrol officer a bad address. Or she could have moved. Or the motel might’ve cleaned her out already.”

  Billings nodded. “One can only hope,” he said through the crunching of his chips.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll check it out and give you a call. If the room is a good scene, I’ll need you two to sit on it while I write the warrant.”

  Billings crunched another chip. “It’d be a thrill.”

  Lindsay pick
ed up on his sarcasm and decided to play along. “You sure two of us are enough?”

  I didn’t reply, but only smiled tightly and left.

  “Serena Gonzalez? Yeah, she rents number eight.”

  The desk clerk was in her fifties and looked every day of it. Her hawk-like face held a constant suspicion. It was in her voice, too. I’d heard it when she asked if she could help me and then again when she demanded to see my badge twice.

  “When did she start renting here?” I asked her.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  “No, she didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Cause she’s a good renter. And that’s a rarity around here.”

  The room stunk of stale cigarette smoke. The lines around the woman’s mouth told me that she was the culprit. I glanced at her nametag and read it.

  “Peggy, are you the owner?”

  She snorted. “Hardly. I’m just the manager.”

  “Do you always work day shift?” I asked.

  “Why you asking?”

  “I’m wondering if there’s a night manager. I’d want to talk to him, too.”

  She reached toward the counter and her pack of cigarettes. As she picked up the pack, she glanced back at me. I thought for a moment that she was going to ask if I minded that she smoke, but she had no such inhibition. She looked me up and down as she lit up her cigarette and tossed her lighter back onto the counter.

  She took a deep drag and let it out. “Mister Detective, I’m the day manager and the night manager. The owner of this place lives in Portland, Oregon and has only been here once. He gives me my own room for free and eight hundred bucks a month. His beady-eyed little accountant comes by once a month to check the books and since they’re just fine, I never hear from him.”

  The smoke hung in the air between us.

  She took another drag and finished her speech. “So if there’s something going on with one of my tenants, I think you better just come right out and tell me.”

  “Peggy,” I told her, “your tenant was murdered two days ago.”

  Peggy was more helpful after that. She confirmed Serena was still a tenant and was paid up until the coming Friday. I called Lindsay and had him start out to the motel so I could go write the search warrant. Then I called Glenda and told her some of the details so she could at least get the beginnings of the warrant started. I sat in the hard chair of the small motel lobby making notes for the search warrant.

  Peggy watched me while I made notes, suspicion still etched in her face. When Billings and Lindsay finally arrived, I didn’t feel guilty at all about leaving them there. The three of them deserved one another. I sped back to the station and dictated directly to Glenda, who typed faster than I could talk. After a quick proofread and then an agonizing three minutes while Crawford looked it over and signed his approval, I hustled over to the courthouse and caught Judge Thompson still in his office. He was about to leave, but didn’t make a fuss about it. He read the warrant carefully, and then signed it without a single question.

  “Good luck, detective,” he told me as he handed the search warrant across his desk.

  Ten minutes later, I stood outside of room number eight of the Palms Motel. Lindsay was on the other side of the doorway, his gun drawn and at his side. Billings stood several feet behind, looking bored. Peggy, her suspicion now outweighed by curiosity, waited several doors down, watching us intently.

  I considered doing a knock and announce, which was required by law. But Peggy said that Serena never had any visitors and no one else was on the room registration. The odds of surprising anyone inside were slim.

  Lindsay noticed my hesitation. “You want me to announce?”

  “No.” I slipped the key into the door. Then I drew my pistol and swung the door open.

  The room was empty. The only place I couldn’t see was in the bathroom.

  “Police!” Lindsay called into the room. “Search warrant!”

  I made entry and went straight to the bathroom. It was empty, too. “Clear.”

  Lindsay holstered his gun and stepped through the doorway.

  I held up my hands. “Stop.”

  He stopped in mid-step. “Huh?”

  “I said stop. Go down to the car and grab some paper bags. Get six of each size. Have Billings maintain the crime scene there at the door.”

  Lindsay’s face fell. “I thought you might want help processing the scene.”

  “You are going to help me with the search. I just want to be orderly about it.” I motioned to the empty table next to the window. “We’ll use this as an evidence table.”

  Lindsay nodded, then turned around and nearly ran from the room.

  I suppressed a sigh and turned to the motel room.

  Serena Gonzalez was a neat and simple woman, I quickly learned. She folded her clothes and kept them in the drawers. Her empty suitcase was in the closet. She had typical toiletries in the bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  I found her room key on the nightstand next to the bed. She must have forgotten it that night, I figured.

  Lindsay followed me around the room with an armful of bags. I was grateful that he didn’t ask any more questions. Once it became clear that Serena Gonzalez did not have a lot of possessions to go through, I set him to work collecting her clothing and bagging it up. Since there was no next of kin to claim her belongings, we’d have to secure it at police property.

  I couldn’t find a purse anywhere in the motel room. I remembered that she hadn’t had one with her when her body was discovered, either. That bothered me. I wondered if the killer kept it. Or if robbery was the motive. Maybe it started out as a robbery and devolved into an assault. Then a rape. Then murder. Sometimes things get out of hand and it happens that way.

  In the drawer beside the bed, I found a postcard. On the front was a picture of the clock tower in Riverfront Park with the city slogan. River City. Near nature. Near perfect. I flipped it over and saw the beginnings of a letter in feminine hand.

  Queridisima Prima, the letter began. ¿Como estas? I got a good job here, working at the grocery store. It pays well and because I speak Spanish they said they might make me a manager.

  That was all she had written. I wondered if it were true for a moment, that she had started work at a grocery store, but guessed it was a lie. Who writes home and tells the ugly truth? The postcard wasn’t addressed, so that was no help.

  I slipped the postcard into a small paper bag and initialed the bag near the top.

  The bottom drawer of the nightstand was empty, except for the standby Gideon Bible. I almost closed the drawer, but then I noticed something. Reaching inside, I pulled out the Bible and examined it. There were two bookmarks. I opened to the first one. It was in Psalms. None of the chapters or verses were marked in any way. I flipped to the second bookmark. It was in the book of Matthew. Once again, no marked passages.

  I made an X on both book marked pages, in case the bookmarks fell out and slid the Bible into an evidence bag. Wandering over to the door, I glanced outside to see where Billings was. He wasn’t at the door. I looked down at their car and saw him seated in the driver’s seat, reading a paperback. I shook my head in disgust.

  “What’s wrong?” Lindsay asked. He held a bag full of toiletries and was initialing the top.

  I thumbed toward Billings. “Your partner’s a lot of help.”

  Lindsay stepped over and looked outside. His face showed no surprise. When he looked back at me, he said, “He’s, uh…he’s about ready to retire.”

  “Ready? I’d say he already has and the paperwork just hasn’t caught up to him yet.”

  “He works his cases,” Lindsay said weakly.

  I gave him a knowing look. “I’ll bet he does. I’ll bet he works the hell out of them.”

  “His clearance rate –“

  “Let me guess. His clearance rate is satisfactory. Which means he works just enough cases to keep Crawford off his back and suspends th
e rest because he’s just too busy.”

  Lindsay didn’t answer. I could see he was torn between defending his partner and admitting the truth. I had to wonder how much slack he was picking up for Billings, but I didn’t ask him.

  There was a silence. Then I asked, “Would you and Billings mind helping me put this stuff on the books? It’ll go faster.”

  He waved me off. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get it. Go on home.”

  I wished I could. But I had at least one more job to do tonight.

  “Thanks, Lindsay.” I told him.

  “Sure.”

  We packed the bags down to their car and loaded them into the trunk. Billings didn’t look too pleased about the prospect of checking in the items at property.

  I gave Peggy the key to the room and told her we were finished. She took the key from me without a word.

  Lindsay and Billings drove off and I started my car. The phone booted up and I dialed. Three rings and Teri answered. Our conversation was short and she said staying with Ben was no problem. We said our goodbyes and I hung up.

  The streetlights were coming on as I pulled out onto Sprague and headed east toward the Club Tip Top.

  Wednesday, April 14th

  Natalia Romanov’s House, Early Afternoon

  VIRGIL

  After I knocked, I could hear footsteps run to the door. The heavy wood door swung open and a young, dark-haired girl stood in the doorway. She wore tight black shorts and a black sports bra over barely forming breasts. Sweat was on her forehead and I could hear a workout program on the television in the front room.

  “Natalia?” I asked.

  She eyed me with suspicion.

  “I need to ask you some questions about Fawn Taylor.”

  Her eyes softened.

  “You’re Natalia?”

  “Yeah,” she said with the barest of accents. It was probably a learned trait from other household members and she’d lose it completely by the time she was an adult.

  “Can I come in and talk with you?”

  She shook her head. “No one’s allowed to come inside when my parents aren’t here.”