by Miles Corwin
“Carducci’s saying doesn’t apply here.”
“I think it does. You should be proud that you got that gangster off the streets. If you start all over on this one, you know what that means for me? I’ll be pestered again with phone calls from the brass all fucking day. I’ll be badgered by reporters, asking why this case isn’t wrapped up. I’ll be hassled by the other detectives who want to know why they keep getting paged at three in the morning for new cases, while I refuse to put you back on the on-call board.”
“I think it would be worthwhile—”
Duffy held up both palms. “Ash, you know I respect your instincts. But frankly, you have a tendency to overthink a case. I think you’re doing it on this one. Still, I asked you to come back and solve the homicide. And you did. So I’ll give you one more week. I owe you that much.”
I shook my head. “I need a month to put this case together properly.”
“A week,” Duffy said. “You’re back on call next Monday.”
“Three weeks.”
“Ash, I’m not going to haggle with you. You get a week.”
“I need three weeks.”
Duffy narrowed his eyes. “One week. Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it.”
“But after your week,” Duffy said, pointing to the on-call board posted on a wall, “you’re going back up there.”
CHAPTER 20
The next morning, I opened up the Relovich murder book, but couldn’t concentrate as I flipped through the pages. I grabbed my cup from my bottom drawer, walked across the squad room, filled it with coffee, returned to my desk, and tried again.
Finally, I snapped the murder book shut and called the LAPD’s Behavior Science unit. In a hushed voice so no one in the squad room could hear me, I asked a secretary if Blau could squeeze me in today. She told me he just had a cancellation and could see me in a half hour.
I drove over to the bank building in Chinatown, sat in the waiting room for a few minutes, until the receptionist buzzed me in. I eased into a chair across from Blau.
“How are those stress headaches you were telling me about last time?”
“Better,” I lied.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m glad I’m back on the job,” I said, trying to change the subject.
“That’s good to hear.”
“I probably never should have left.”
“It seems you’ve adjusted pretty quickly to being back.”
I listened to his fountain burble for a moment and then I said, “I think I have. But I’m still having a problem with something. Remember we talked about that case—the murder of Bae Soo Sung, the Korean market owner? And I mentioned that a witness to the shooting, a woman named Latisha Patton, was killed?”
Blau nodded.
“Well, I’m still having a lot of trouble dealing with it.”
“Why is that?”
I thought about Latisha and felt queasy. The room began to blur. I filled my cheeks with air and slowly exhaled. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Like I told you, my partner and I pick up the case from the South Bureau Homicide. A few days into it, his back goes out and he’s off for two weeks. So I’m working it solo. But I don’t have shit. The case looks like a dead end. There’re a few wits around, but all they see is a guy in a Shrek mask run out of the store with a gun in his hand. He jumps into a car parked across the street and speeds off.
“Patrol found the car later that day, but it wasn’t much help. Car was stolen and the shooter was wearing gloves, so we got no prints. After a few days, the case is really getting to me.” I pounded my chest with a fist. “Every other day the wife calls me and asks in fractured English, ‘You find who kill my husband?’ And then she breaks down sobbing. She’s a widow with three young children. She’s working the store alone now, scared out of her fucking mind that the shooter will come back and finish her off. But she’s got no choice. She’s got no other way to support her family.
“I really feel for this lady and her kids. And I’m very, very pissed off. Sung cooperated completely. Yet asshole killed him anyway. For no reason. And destroyed four lives. I figure it’s only a matter of time until he does it again and shatters another family. So I vow to myself that I’m going to nail this guy. The first week I’m working fourteen, sixteen hours a day, rousting and questioning crackheads, gangbangers, bag men, and strawberries.”
“Strawberries?” Blau asked.
“A woman who exchanges sex for crack. I interview probably fifty people in the ‘hood. But I’m not getting shit. Every day, I’m looking for a revelation, I retrace the shooter’s steps, from the time he parked his car, walked down the street into the store, pulled out the gun, grabbed the cash, shot Sung, ran across the street, and drove off.
“The car was parked in front of a thrift shop run by a church. There was a woman who worked there by the name of Latisha Patton. When the South Bureau Homicide detectives first interviewed her, she told them she hadn’t seen anything. When I interviewed her, she told me the same thing. But, running out of leads, I went back to talk to her again. I press her and, bluffing, I tell her that I know she was lying, that I know she’d heard the gunshots across the street and ran to her front window and got a good look at the shooter.
“We go back and forth, but I keep pressing and she keeps lying and denying. Finally, she admits that she saw a guy in a Shrek mask park the car and walk across the street. A few minutes later she heard a shot and saw him run back to his car and speed off. She insisted she never got a look at his face.
“But I know there’s one thing wrong with her story. No armed robber would pull up to the scene wearing a mask. That would draw too much attention. He’d only slip the mask on right before the heist. She realizes that I had caught her in a lie. Finally, she admits that she did get a look at him when he first pulled up.
“But she’s still too scared to cooperate with me. She’s got a daughter. Doesn’t want her involved in all this. Says she won’t look at any pictures I want to show her. So I tell her all about Sung’s kids, how they’re crying for their daddy every night, how tormented his widow is. I lay it on thick. Latisha knew the family, had frequently shopped at the market, and they were always nice to her. She finally breaks down. Says she’ll cooperate. She can’t ID the shooter, had never seen him before, but says she can definitely pick him out if she saw him again. But she knows that in her ‘hood, if word gets around that she’s cooperating with a detective, it’ll be a death sentence. She’s scared as hell now.
“But I tell her that I’ll move her and her daughter. I tell her I’ll protect her, I’ll keep her safe. So she agrees to look at stacks of pictures of local gangbangers and guys with armed robbery in their jacket that I want to show her.”
I closed my eyes and massaged them with my palms. “Three days later, she’s dead.”
“Why do you think you were responsible for her murder?” Blau asked.
“I know that just cooperating with me, agreeing to look at pictures, trying to pick someone out, puts her life in danger. So I go to the DA, submit my request for witness relocation funds, and request to move her. I want her out of the ‘hood. But without a positive ID on the shooter, their regulations won’t let me relocate her.
“She hasn’t IDed anyone yet, but I feel she’s still at risk. And she’s spooked, too, afraid to go home, but she doesn’t have the money to pay for the move herself. I promise to keep her identity secret. I meet with her at Felony Special—downtown—not at South Bureau where someone in the neighborhood could see her. Still, I know word sometimes has a way of getting out when a witness cooperates with the police. I go to the DA’s office again, really press the witness relocation coordinator, but he nixes the move. He says they can’t come up with money for people who might be able to ID shooters, who might someday be threatened. And LAPD regulations won’t let me relocate her without the DA paperwork.
“So I say ‘fuck it,’ find her an apartment in the West Valley myself. S
he sends her daughter to live with an aunt in Fresno. I pay first and last and security deposit out of my own pocket. I tell her to grab a few things, give the rest of her stuff to her mother, meet me out there, and not tell anyone where she’s gone. I tell her that within a few weeks, after I had shown her the picture of every gangbanger and armed robber in her neighborhood—and some surrounding ones—I’m confident we’ll have the shooter IDed. I’m sure asshole is a local boy who’s been collared before. I’d track him down, lock him up, and she’d pick him out of a live lineup—to really nail the case down. Then I could go through the DA’s office, get her and her daughter some funds for long-term relocation and maybe some job training. The Sung family would have justice. The wife wouldn’t have to worry about the killer coming back. And Latisha and her daughter could start a new life.”
I stood up and stared out the window, watching the cars stutter down Broadway. “Two weeks after I move her, someone kills her—I still don’t know where or how—and then dumps her body at Fifty-fourth and Figueroa—a block from the Sung’s market. Probably as a warning to anyone else who might have seen something the day he was killed.”
I fell back onto my chair and tried to stretch my neck, which was so tight I could barely move it.
“Why did the department come down on you?”
“Her family sued the LAPD. Because I’d given her the money for the move and found her the apartment, the LAPD, Latisha’s lawyers claimed, assumed responsibility for her safety. It was a liability issue. The city attorney settled before trial and paid Latisha’s family a nice chunk of change. The department was pissed. I got investigated by I.A. and Duffy hung me out to dry. Instead of arguing to the brass that I was just trying to protect a wit, Duffy suspended me. I was on my own.”
“I’ve heard of detectives doing things a lot worse, without being disciplined or having I.A. on their backs. All you did was come up with some money for her apartment.” Blau inched forward on the sofa. “So why do you blame yourself?”
“If I’d just stuck with regulations, maybe she’d be alive today. Maybe no one would have known that she’d seen the shooter. Maybe no one would have known she was cooperating with us. Instead, the shooter, somehow, found out.”
“How’d he find out?”
“Maybe he followed her when she drove out to the West Valley. Maybe someone saw us together at the apartment and word got out. Maybe when she made some calls, someone star eighty-nined her, found her phone number, and tracked her address.”
“Ash, that’s a lot of maybes. Too many for you to assume responsibility for her death.”
“I just know that what I did blew up in my face and my wit ended up dead. If I’d done things differently, the way I was supposed to, she might be alive today.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself. You did your best to protect her.”
I shrugged.
“It sounds to me that you did all that you could. I’d suggest you make a real effort to be as rational and realistic as you can about the situation. Because right now you’re over-assigning blame to yourself.”
“I had to do the death notification. When I told Latisha’s daughter her mother had been killed, well—” I swallowed hard and shook my head. “She blamed me. She was out of control. She screamed that I should have left her mother alone. I probably should have.”
“You need to focus on the reality of the situation. The reality is, this woman didn’t think she was safe where she was. Ultimately, you didn’t either. So you tried to protect her. The fact that you couldn’t keep her safe was not your fault. She might have been in danger no matter where she lived.”
“But I put her in danger.”
“You didn’t put her in danger. She was in danger before she even talked to you. She was in danger the moment she saw the man in the Shrek mask get out of his car. You can’t blame yourself, because when you moved her, you know what you were doing?”
“What?”
“Your job.”
“You know, whenever I’m in the middle of breaking down a case, I think of two phrases that always come up in Talmudic study: tsorikh iyyun—needing further study and b’makhloket—still in controversy.”
“Homicide detective as Talmudic scholar?” Blau asked, smiling wryly.
“I’m not giving myself that much credit. I’m just a cop who can’t leave a case alone.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes until I said the first thing that popped into my head. “Somewhere else in the Talmud it says something like, if you save a life, it’s like you saved the whole world. Sometimes I feel like that with my job.”
“You solve a murder, it’s like you’ve solved all the world’s murders?”
“That sounds like I’ve got delusions of grandeur.”
“Leave the psychological diagnosis to me,” Blau said, smiling. “But no one can dispute you have an important job.” Blau tapped his chin with his middle finger. “I get the feeling you’ve got something more to say about this woman, Latisha.”
I nodded.
“This is a good time to tell me about it.”
“I’ve got to be indirect about this.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to lose my job. So let’s say there’s this hypothetical detective with a witness who—”
“We’re not here to talk about the hypothetical. We’re here to talk about you.”
“What are your rules about confidentiality.”
“Typically, confidentially is absolute between a psychologist and patient.”
“Typically?” I asked.
“Well, I’m an LAPD employee, so the situation is a little more complicated because—”
I walked across the room, filled a cup with water, and downed it in a gulp.
“It just got too complicated for me, too.”
I crumpled the water cup, tossed it in the trash can, and walked out the door.
• • •
I sat in my car, staring out the windshield, my heart pounding, my throat dry, my hands shaking so much I couldn’t start the engine. I thought about that first night I moved Latisha to the apartment in the Valley. She told me she’d never felt so lonely in her life. She couldn’t go to work; she couldn’t see her daughter, her mother, or her friends. I went out and picked up a pizza, and we ate together on the sofa. She made me promise I’d return the next night. I picked up some pasta and a bottle of wine. She told me how grateful she was for the company. Robin and I had just separated, and I didn’t feel like being alone either.
After dinner, when I was leaving, my hand on the doorknob, she started to cry. I put my arm around her shoulder, trying to comfort her. She looked up at me, her eyes misty, and at that moment I realized, for the first time, how beautiful she was. She had high, sharp cheekbones and almond, amber-colored eyes. She was only a few inches over five feet, but had the willowy body of a dancer, and every move she made was fluid and graceful. While Robin was sarcastic and cynical and could be devious like me, Latisha was sweet and direct. “You’re my protector,” she whispered to me, her arms around my waist. She framed my face in her hands and kissed me; she led me to the bedroom. I felt like I was in a trance and I stayed in that trance, oblivious to the consequences. And there were many. My feelings for her were intense, the emotions complicated. During those last few days I thought about asking her to move in with me after the case was resolved.
Did Latisha’s involvement with me cost her life? Definitely. Did the fact that I was sleeping with her every night for weeks end up putting her at even more risk? Probably. I tried to be discreet, but who knows. Maybe someone tailed me from downtown. Maybe the killer attached a GPS to my engine block. Maybe Latisha told someone in the apartment complex about her dilemma. Maybe she slipped and talked to someone from the old neighborhood about our relationship or about where she was living. In the end it was on me. I convinced her to talk to me, to move, to testify against the killer if I ever caught him. I then decided to up the ante and make the relat
ionship personal.
Robin was the only one who suspected what was going on. After I moved out, Robin, shaken by the finality of the move, had second thoughts about the separation. She called me at home, late at night, a number of times. I was never there. After Latisha was killed, I stopped by our old house. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from Robin; I just felt like I needed to be with her. She wouldn’t let me in. She just stood on the porch, staring at me, frowning. She could see how Patton’s murder had shaken me to the core.
“I know you, Ash, and this woman,” she said with distain, “wasn’t just another witness.” She walked back inside, slammed the door, and that’s the last time I saw her. I called Robin a few months ago, and she advised me to hire a divorce lawyer.
Telling Blau all this would be a big gamble. I couldn’t even tell Ortiz. All I could do was wrap up the Relovich investigation and finagle some time so I could finally get to the real case that lured me back to the LAPD.
CHAPTER 21
I returned to the squad room, my head throbbing. I filled my coffee cup with water and downed three Tylenol. Moving my steno pad off the corner of my blotter, I stared at the picture of Latisha. When I started to choke up, I left the squad room and locked myself in a bathroom stall. Should I just dump the Relovich case now? No. I’ve got to do right by Pete Relovich. Latisha’s homicide is a very cold case, a year old. Waiting another couple of days won’t hurt. I’ll finish off the Relovich case. Then I’ll go after Latisha’s killer.
After splashing cold water on my face, I returned to the squad room. Still feeling shaky, I opened up the Relovich murder book and drummed a forefinger on my leather shoulder holster. Where to begin? It was always easier to launch a new investigation than to revisit a cleared case. The difficulty was reviewing the material with a fresh perspective, envisioning a new path to follow that deviated from previous avenues of investigation.
Bud Carducci always told me to view the disparate elements of an investigation like the links in a chain. A smart defense attorney, Carducci explained, will always hone in on the weakest link and split it open. The jury won’t care how strong the other links in the chain are. When it is time to deliberate, they’ll focus on the broken one.