Reed’s car fishtailed as he took a fast right and headed to the house. He glanced at Ann and then back at the road. “We should have gone in without the warrant.”
Ann gulped and swallowed. He knew. They all must know, she decided. “I made a mistake, didn’t I? I should have gone along with the program and not insisted on the warrant.”
“You have to do what you feel is right, Ann,” Reed said, stomping on the gas and pulling ahead of the other cars.
When they reached Henderson, the cars parked at the end of the block, and officers piled out. The lieutenant stepped to the front of the group. “Hilgard, Evans and Baumgarten, take the front of the house,” he said to the uniformed officers. “Harper, Abrams, and Reed, head toward the back. The car’s still here. He could be inside. The captain and I will take a position near the neighbors’ fences where we can see on both sides. If he tries to split in our direction, we’ll handle him.”
Ann was left standing, her arms dangling by her sides. She didn’t have a weapon. Suddenly she felt like an outsider, and her shoulders slumped.
In another minute. Reed keyed the portable radio and asked if the officers were in position.
“Affirmative,” they replied. “Ready and waiting.”
While the men in front rang the doorbell and announced themselves. Reed leaped over the fence and scrambled toward the back of the house, where a U-Haul truck was pulled up to the curb, its rear doors closed.
Ann, still standing in front, heard noises in the house and the sounds of a scuffle. Then one of the uniformed officers stuck his head out the back door and yelled to Reed, “We’ve got Sawyer here. He’s alone.”
Reed and the other detectives entered from the rear. The officers who had been waiting outside now rushed through the front door. In no time most of them were jostling elbows inside the small living room.
She could move in now, Ann thought. Just as she started up the front steps, Glen pulled to the curb and leaped out, the original warrant in his hands. Right behind him was Ray Hernandez, a man Ann recognized as an investigator from the D.A.‘s office.
Glen glanced at her. “What’s happening?”
“They have Sawyer inside.”
The three of them stepped through the door and into the crowded living room. Out of the comer of her eye, she saw Harper leading a handcuffed Jimmy Sawyer out the back door. Glen quickly followed after them.
Over the sea of men Tommy yelled at her, “Where’s the fucking fingers?” His face was red and he was perspiring. It was like an oven inside even without all the policemen. Realizing this, he started shoving people aside. “You,” he said, pointing at one of the men, “and you…and you, get out of here and give us some breathing room.” Finally he made his way to the front door. “Where did you say these fingers were?”
“The kitchen,” Ann said. “I left them on the floor in the kitchen.”
“There’s no fingers on the floor, Ann,” Reed said, a look of annoyance on his face.
The teeming mass of humanity now shifted in the direction of the kitchen. “Over there,” Ann said, standing on her tiptoes to see over the men’s heads. “I got the jar out of the refrigerator and then dropped it. When I left, the fingers were all over the floor. There were five of them.”
Pushing and shoving the men aside. Reed and Ann made their way to the refrigerator. Reed started removing the beer cans and slamming them down on the kitchen cabinet. Then he saw a pickle jar and stopped. “This it?” he said.
“One of them.” It wasn’t the same jar she had dropped, of course, but the contents looked the same. If there were five fingers in one jar, perhaps the remaining five might be in this one. “Yeah, yeah,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the jar. “It was Vlasic…you know, the brand. It was a Vlasic pickle jar. There were two of them. This has to be the other one.”
“Get some evidence guys in here,” Reed yelled. He pulled on a pair of white latex gloves and carefully lifted the jar out of the refrigerator, holding it up to the light.
“Let me see. Tommy,” Ann exclaimed, although the contents looked different from what she had seen earlier. “The juice is cloudy.” She moved right next to him and got up close to the jar. “Open it. I thought they were pickles too at first. I even thought they were stalks of white asparagus or something.”
The room fell silent, and Ann felt dizzy, almost thinking she was going to be sick to her stomach. She waited as Tommy opened the lid and stuck a gloved finger inside the pickle jar. Then she held her breath and stared. Tommy held something in his hand and sniffed it. Leaning back against the counter, he glared at Ann, shoved the object into his mouth, and took a big bite. There was a unanimous intake of breath as everyone gasped.
“Pickles,” Reed said, spitting the piece back out into his hand. “That’s it,” he said. “Everyone except crime scene people clear out. All we got here is some sour pickles. Looks like a false alarm.”
Ann looked down at the floor, too embarrassed to face the men. As she did, she realized it was clean, not filthy as it had been. “There were human fingers, Tommy,” she said without looking up. “I know the difference between a pickle and a finger, for chrissakes. He obviously returned and disposed of them.”
Although Reed didn’t say so, he bad his reservations. Ann had been thoroughly spooked by the shooting and could have simply jumped to an erroneous conclusion. She had been in this house alone, with the advance knowledge that Sawyer was considered a suspect in her shooting. Seeing something that didn’t look right in the pickle jar, she had simply panicked. Reed knew the mind was a strange thing, particularly when it was under stress. He’d seen seasoned officers make serious errors in the heat of a crisis, even made a few himself.
“Listen to me, Tommy,” Ann said, talking fast. “The floor was filthy when I saw the fingers. Look at it now—it’s clean. See, he came back, saw the fingers, disposed of them, and then mopped the floor. Aren’t they even going to search for more evidence? And you know, they should swab the floor. Maybe there are trace elements of blood or something they can identify in the fluid that spilled out with the fingers. Also glass fragments…there could be broken glass fragments that would support my story.”
Reed considered what Ann was saying. The floor was clean, and everything else in the place was a mess. “We’ll comb the place,” he said. “Send a lot of stuff to the lab.” His face softened. “Maybe we’ll find something. Never know. Our guess is Sawyer and his roommates were dealing narcotics, possibly were even cookers.” He paused and gave Ann a sour look. Cookers were individuals who manufactured drugs like acid and amphetamines in homemade labs. Lately these home labs had been springing up everywhere. “When Sawyer was originally arrested, he had a whole sheet of high-grade LSD and an envelope full of Ecstasy. According to narcotics, the streets have been flooded with this stuff lately, and the high school kids are gobbling it up like candy. My guess is this is where it was coming from—this house.”
“A lab?” Ann said, noticing that Glen had reentered the house and was coming toward them.
“As soon as he mentioned Sawyer as a suspect,” Reed said, shifting his eyes to Glen, “we started checking him out. From what we can tell, everything points to a lab.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Ann looked at Tommy and then at Glen, getting angrier by the second. “He was my probationer. And that still doesn’t explain why he shot me.”
“Yes, it does, Ann,” Reed said flatly. “Sawyer must have shot you to keep you from doing exactly what you did today—show up at his doorstep and fall right into his narcotics operation.” The detective stopped and sighed, letting his shoulders fall in disappointment. “Way it looks, they moved the lab. See that U-Haul parked in the back? Sawyer must have come back for the last few boxes, maybe the refrigerator. Bet there’s nothing we want in those boxes either.”
Ann was incredulous. They were talking about drug labs, and she was talking about human life. “What about the fingers? I saw those fingers, Reed. I�
�m not some moron off the street, you know. I do know what a human finger looks like. I was a cop once myself.” She peered up at Reed defiantly, daring him to challenge her.
“You can’t search the moving van,” Glen said quickly. “Not without another warrant. The present warrant specifies only the house.”
“Look, Hopkins,” Reed said, one lip curling up in distaste, “I know you have your concerns, but what if this person without fingers is alive and bleeding to death in that van? What if Ann did see something?”
Hopkins grabbed the detective’s arm. Reed jerked it away angrily. “Don’t go near that van without a warrant,” the district attorney barked. “Do you hear me? If you do, no matter what you find, you won’t be able to use it. Wait until we do it the right way and get another warrant. Need I say more?”
“Hey,” Reed spat, “you’re the D.A.”
“Come on, Ann,” Glen said, “I’ll give you a ride back to the courthouse.”
“Not now,” Ann said, her eyes still on the detective. “Do you think I imagined this. Tommy? Tell me. Come on, I want to hear it from your own lips.”
Again, Reed just shrugged his shoulders. “Where’s Sawyer?” he yelled out to another detective.
A disembodied voice yelled back, “With Harper out back.”
“I saw those fingers. Tommy.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you, kid,” Reed said, his voice lower. “But there are no fingers here now.”
“He must have disposed of them before we got here,” Ann said, her face flushed with anger. “Didn’t I tell you he’d come back and get rid of the fingers?”
Reed, though, was eager to get outside and see what Sawyer had to say. In any case, it was time to clear out so the crime scene men could get cracking. He’d been in police work too long to sit around and ruminate over what they should or should not have done. “Look, we’re going to transport Sawyer as soon as we get things going here. I’ll let you sit in on the interview.”
“Fine,” Ann said, watching as he walked away. Go on, she thought, make a fool of me in front of everyone and then toss me a bone like a damn dog. So, it was her fault for insisting on the warrant. Was that what had put a burr up Reed’s ass? Was the detective blaming her for not going along with Glen’s suggestion and altering the truth to suit their needs? Or did he just think she was a hysterical female who didn’t know what she had seen?
Either way, Ann was boiling.
After instructing the officers to canvass the neighborhood and see what they could learn about the occupants of 875 Henderson, Tommy Reed drove his vehicle back alone.
He pulled into the back of the station and parked. Then he sat there staring out the windshield. The sun was setting like a huge orange persimmon, and the sky was blazing with color.
His gaze fell and he began mentally sorting through the details of the case. They’d have to get warrants issued and pick up the other two boys. The only problem was what grounds they could use for the warrants. If the crime scene unit found no signs of drug paraphernalia in the boxes or anywhere else in the house, it would be next to impossible to substantiate warrants for these other subjects. “Oh, hell,” he said, getting out of the car.
When he entered the detective bay, Ann sprang to her feet. She’d been waiting in the chair by his desk. “Where’s Sawyer?” she asked.
“One of the patrol units is bringing him in.”
“Listen, those fingers have to belong to a female, Tommy. I saw streaks of nail polish on them. We need to check missing persons and see if there’s a report out.”
Reed removed his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. “Even if we find a missing person report on a female, Ann, what’s that going to tell us? The only thing that will substantiate your story is a stiff without fingers.”
Ann was still pissed, and Reed knew it. Her body language said it all: arms folded over her chest, chin up, a determined glare in her eyes. In response, he donned his stoic “just the facts” look, wanting her to know that he was the homicide detective, while she was only the probation officer.
“Then check all the morgues,” Ann said. “Then check the missing person reports on females both locally and in Los Angeles.”
Reed bent over his desk, jotting some notes down on his yellow pad as he talked. “In L.A. there have to be twenty-five people or more reported missing every day. Most of the missing person reports they just kiss off. They don’t even write them. All they do is note it in the log book.” He continued writing, ignoring Ann completely now. A few moments later, a uniformed officer appeared with Jimmy Sawyer in tow.
“Where do you want him?” the young officer said.
Reed told the officer to take Sawyer to an interview room and then saw the captain waving to him through the glass window. Forced to wait outside, Ann looked in and saw Glen pacing back and forth, waving his hands around. Several times she saw Reed glance at her, a scowl on his face. She was dying to know what they were talking about, if they were talking about her.
When Reed came out, he was tense. “Captain says Noah should conduct the interview.”
“Why Noah?” Ann cried. “You’re the sergeant. This is a serious case.
“Because he’s investigating your shooting, and Sawyer is now a valid suspect…his suspect.” He stopped and ran his fingers through his hair. “And look, I never said I didn’t believe you about the fingers. I don’t know why you’re so bent out of shape. They weren’t there, that’s all.”
“You thought it, though,” Ann said, softening. “And the other men did too.”
“Hey,” he said, smiling, “you can’t blame me for what other people think.”
Ann returned his smile. She had more than enough enemies lately; she didn’t need to alienate her friends. “I still get to sit in on the interview, right? You said I could.”
Reed frowned. “Why don’t you go home and get some rest? We have Sawyer in custody now. Noah could trip him up in the interview. I’ll also get in touch with Melanie Chase at the lab and see if she can expedite processing whatever evidence they collected from the house.” Reed was avoiding her question, and he saw that she knew it. Frowning, he cleared his throat before continuing. “Ann, the captain pointed out that you’re basically a victim in this case, and department policy is that we don’t allow victims to take part in the actual investigation.” He threw up a hand to still her protests. “You know, there’s a lot of inherent liability here. Sometimes people go out and take their own revenge, and their relatives sue the department. He’d rather you not hang around the station right now. He even chewed me out for bringing you with us when we executed the search warrant.”
Ann felt as if someone had slammed a door in her face. She was the one who had been shot, had almost bled to death on the sidewalk. All the same, she could see it was out of her hands. She could buck Reed, but she couldn’t buck department policy.
“Okay,” she said, resigned. “I guess I’ll go home.”
As Ann made her way out of the police station, she purposely passed the door to the room she knew had one-way glass, and impulsively turned the knob. When she found it locked, she confirmed her suspicions that it was the room where they were holding Sawyer. Was Abrams inside now interrogating him? Placing her ear against the door, she tried to eavesdrop and then chastised herself, knowing she would look foolish if anyone walked by. It was just so difficult to walk away, knowing that the very person who had shot her was right here, right behind that door. She wanted to interrogate him herself, confront him, get to the bottom of this right this second. And she should have that right, she told herself, no matter what Reed and the others said. She might be the victim, but Sawyer was still her probationer.
Then the horrid fingers flashed in her mind, and she was relieved that she wouldn’t be the one locked inside that room with Jimmy Sawyer. If he had sliced off some poor woman’s fingers and saved them in a pickle jar, he was evil personified. They could never predict what he would do next, how far
he would go, just as they had no idea how many other heinous crimes he may have committed. Exiting the building and getting in her car, another terrifying thought passed through her mind. If Sawyer hadn’t used a gun and shot her, would he have used a butcher knife instead?
She didn’t want to know.
Chapter 7
Noah Abrams stopped by his desk to pick up his tape recorder. “Let’s hope he’s a braggart,” he said to Reed as they walked down the hall. “Are you going to monitor the interview from the observation room?”
“No,” Reed said, “but Glen Hopkins is. Sawyer’s all yours, Noah. Do your stuff. I’m trying to put some other things together, get the records bureau making calls to morgues. If those really were fingers Ann saw, there’s got to be a body floating around somewhere.”
When Abrams stepped inside the interview room, Jimmy Sawyer was sitting quietly with his hands folded in his lap and an innocent, expectant expression on his face, unaware that he was being watched through one-way glass. “Jimmy Sawyer,” the detective said, loosening his tie and sliding his jacket off his shoulders. “We meet again, huh? Not exactly the same kind of circumstances as the night Ms. Carlisle was shot.”
Jimmy Sawyer smiled inappropriately and flipped his long hair behind his shoulders. His teeth were white and even, the product of years of expensive orthodontics. Then he saw the tape recorder, and the smile slid right off his face.
Taking a seat at the long table, Abrams sized up his opponent. The detective was an excellent interviewer, able to win a subject’s confidence and put him at ease. Once they were nice and relaxed, he pounced.
“Last time we had a little talk, it was about your probation officer, Jim. Seems she’s causing you a lot of trouble lately. Oh, is it Jim or Jimmy?”
“Whatever,” the cocky young man said. “People call me both.”
“Well, you can call me Noah if you want,” the detective said, congenial and soft-spoken. “Why don’t we dispense with the formalities?”
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