A Hard Place: A Chauncey Means Novel

by Sean Lynch

  On television, complex laboratory testing was done routinely and the results back before the next commercial break. In reality, such tests are very expensive, take a long time, and have to be justified on a cost/benefit basis. Municipal police departments have tight budgets, and police personnel who squander those budgets on goose-chase lab work find themselves working traffic posts instead of homicide cases in short order. I was betting Matt would send in the recovered bullet for analysis and entry into the ATF’s National Integrated Ballistics Information Network via the county crime lab, but a DNA sweep of Marisol’s clothing he would probably pass on. There was nothing in the autopsy report to indicate any results would be forthcoming, and those were expensive tests.

  I finished the autopsy report and took a sip of cold tea. The only other file on the flash drive was a scene diagram, and a series of supplemental reports by patrol officers and detectives who scoured the vicinity of 42nd Avenue and International Boulevard for witnesses. Not surprisingly, the canvass came up empty. Nobody saw nothing.

  I rubbed my eyes and checked my watch. I’d burned a couple of hours without even realizing it. I removed the flash drive from my laptop and shut it down. Then I got up and stretched, dumped the remnants of my stale tea into the sink, and poured myself three fingers of Jim Beam over ice. After Russ’s foray into my bourbon stash for his beef marinade, there wasn’t much more than three fingers left anyway. I walked to the window and stared out through the plummeting rain, ruminating on what I’d learned.

  Marisol Hernandez was murdered while walking the Track, one of Oakland’s most prolific prostitution corridors, on a Friday night. She was dressed like a B-girl, except she wasn’t. Most hookers don’t wear bras or panties; too much hassle to get on and off between tricks. And the unwrinkled condition of her skirt and top told me she hadn’t had them off since she’d put them on.

  There was no semen detected under the fluorescent light when the pathologist scanned Marisol’s body, clothing or hair. Put most hookers under a black light and they’d glow like lightening bugs on the Fourth of July.

  Marisol was wearing her long, too-clean hair down; most hookers don’t do that unless sporting a wig. Long hair can interfere with certain sex acts, catch and absorb bodily excretions, and give a potential aggressor something to grab onto if attacked, whether by a pimp, John, or another B-girl.

  Marisol’s mouth and lips were spotless; without abrasions, sores or any other evidence she’d been performing fellatio; typically, the most inexpensive, quick, and thus most common sex act a street-level B-girl performs. No evidence of blisters from a glass pipe either.

  Marisol’s body exhibited no physical evidence that she’d ever had sexual intercourse, much less with multiple strangers in cars and alleys. Her vaginal canal was immaculate. Her hymen was intact. Also, her knees were undamaged. Most B-girls have mild abrasions or bruising on both knees from regularly kneeling or being on all fours on uneven, dirty surfaces. Though not inconceivable that a rookie B-girl might be a virgin and specialize in sex acts other than vaginal intercourse, a hooker like that would be the equivalent of Bigfoot; I’ve heard people say they exist, but never actually seen one.

  Marisol’s feet were spotless. While any B-girl can have new shoes, you don’t have to walk around the filthy sidewalks of International Boulevard in open-toed heels long before your feet begin to show it. For a streetwalker, Marisol apparently didn’t walk much.

  There was no physical evidence to suggest Marisol Hernandez used drugs or even smoked cigarettes. Every street prostitute I ever met did both.

  Marisol had no bag or purse. To a B-girl, a purse is not an accessory; it’s a necessary tool of the trade, and it’s not usually a small clutch-purse. A B-girl often doesn’t know where she’s going to bed down for the night, so she has to carry everything with her. A hooker’s purse is like any other professional’s tool-kit, except instead of a screwdriver or a hammer it contains such items as a cell phone, smokes, toiletries, mouthwash, condoms, handi-wipes, spare clothes, sex toys, and most importantly, drugs and the tools required to ingest them, whether it’s a pipe or a needle. Marisol’s purse could have been taken from her post-mortem, a hazard in that district of Oakland, but there was no physical sign she’d wore one. B-girls always sling their bags over their body by the strap to prevent snatching. This usually leaves a wrinkle from the strap over one of the shoulders if the hooker isn’t wearing a sleeveless ensemble. Marisol’s body-hugging T-shirt would certainly have left such a mark. Even if the thief cut the purse-strap, the amount of blood on Marisol’s backside would have made removal of the purse without leaving a telltale mark or smear on her shirt improbable.

  Marisol was shot three times at point blank range; the last shot at contact distance with her forehead. All shots appear to have struck her as she was standing. All shots were on the left side of her body. The headshot struck at an angle indicating she had her head down and forward when the bullet impacted her skull.

  Marisol’s right shoulder had been pulled violently just before her death, hard enough to tear muscle. She didn’t even weigh one-hundred pounds, so it wouldn’t require Hercules to do that kind of damage. Nonetheless, her murderer must have had a significant degree of physical strength.

  It was extremely unlikely the injury to Marisol’s right shoulder didn’t correlate with the injury her right hand sustained. The deep crescent cut on the outside of her bent and broken right forefinger, the abrasion on the web of her hand, and the damage to the interior of her thumb were all injuries of a very specific type I’d seen before.

  I’d spent some of my police career as a Defensive Tactics Instructor. That’s the modern, politically correct, term for what used to be called self-defense. And before it was called self-defense, it was called unarmed combat. It seems lawyers never tire of finding new ways to call a rose by another name to advance the cause of political correctness.

  One of the courses of instruction I taught as a DT instructor was the unarmed gun take-away. The California Peace Officer Standards of Training requires all academy recruits to learn how to disarm a bad guy if he has a gun. Trying to take a gun away from a suspect while unarmed isn’t always the safest course of action, but it beats the hell out of getting executed while standing idle.

  A commonly taught technique for taking away a handgun involves grabbing the assailant’s gun hand in both of yours and violently bending the muzzle of the weapon back towards them, in the direction of the outside of their body, to avoid passing the muzzle across your own. If this is done rapidly and with enough force, the trigger finger of the suspect can be trapped in the trigger guard of the weapon and bent backwards against the joint. Often that trigger-finger is broken during the take-away. The inside of the thumb and web-of-the-hand making contact with the pistol can also be cut or abraded, since pistols are comprised of hard metal and hands are made of soft flesh. Especially fifteen-year-old female hands.

  If the gun is held in the right hand, as the vast majority of people do, this technique will sometimes force the gunman to move right, exposing their left side. All of the shots striking Marisol hit her on the left portion of her body in a vertical line.

  Growing up, I was universally heralded by my parents, teachers, and coaches as the kid who had to touch the stove twice to figure out it was hot. I’m not a particularly smart guy; I don’t know a lot. But what I do know, I’m pretty sure of.

  I’m pretty sure Marisol Hernandez, despite being out on the stroll and dressed like a B-girl, wasn’t a whore. Why she would dress like one, and go to a place like the Track, I didn’t know.

  I’m pretty sure Marisol Hernandez was holding a gun in her right hand. And I’m pretty sure someone took it away from her. Somebody who knew how. Why that occurred, I also didn’t know.

  There was apparently a lot I didn’t know.

  I downed the remains of my bourbon as Enya inquired if I believe the sky above is Caribbean Blue?

  “Not tonight it ain’t,” I said aloud,
watching the rain fall.

  Chapter 12

  I spotted Belicia Hernandez walking out of San Leandro High School during what I assumed was the noontime lunch break. She didn’t come out of the main doors facing Bancroft Avenue, but instead emerged from the side of the building. She glanced furtively around while sending what looked like a text message on her cellular device.

  I recognized her right away. Belicia looked similar enough to Marisol to be her sister, but was slightly shorter and a few pounds heavier than her older sibling, based on what I’d seen in the crime scene photographs. Her hair was much shorter than Marisol’s and had been dyed a light brown color with blond streaks throughout. Belicia was wearing skin-tight jeans over calf-high suede boots and a scoop-necked, also skin-tight, shirt which revealed enough of her fourteen-year-old cleavage to have gotten her sent home by the principal when I was a kid her age. An overstuffed backpack was slung over one shoulder.

  I’d risen early, done my roadwork and weight training, and put my butt to work looking for Belicia Hernandez. I wasn’t going to wait for Reyna to set up a meeting; I wanted to check out Belicia in her natural habitat.

  After my shower and breakfast, I’d phoned Dave Boyer, the SRO of San Leandro High School, and he informed me where and when to look for Belicia. I also wanted him to know I was going to be lurking around the school, so I wouldn’t be confused with any of the other thirty-something-year-old men cruising around the high school trolling for teenaged girls.

  Just as Dave had indicated, Belicia skipped out during lunch. And true to his word, she headed directly across Bancroft Avenue and into the parking lot of a gray, four-story, apartment complex and got into a car. The car was described to me by Boyer; a gold-colored Honda Accord with flashy custom wheels and a rear spoiler over the trunk. I couldn’t see who was driving because the windows were tinted.

  I put my Toyota into gear and drove to the entrance of the parking lot. I stopped my truck in the driveway, completely blocking it, and turned off the engine. By the time I got out the Honda was pulling up. The driver honked his horn twice. I approached his car on the driver’s side. The driver rolled down the window.

  “Dude, you’re blocking me in,” the driver said. He was a Hispanic kid about twenty who was desperately trying to be an African-American kid about twenty. On his head he wore a flat-billed Oakland Raiders baseball cap over a red handkerchief. He had cubic zirconium in both ears, and sported a pubic goatee underneath a set of gold teeth. He topped off the ensemble with a pair of blinged-out sunglasses, and the obligatory Oakland Raiders puffy jacket.

  “I want to speak with Belicia Hernandez,” I said.

  “I don’t know who you talkin’ about,” he said.

  “The fourteen-year-old girl sitting next to you smoking a cigarette is who I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t know him,” Belicia said to the driver.

  “You a cop?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Then you need to move your car, asshole.”

  “I’ll say it only one more time,” I said. “I want to talk with Belicia. Tell her to get out of the car.”

  “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he asked, starting to work up his bravado.

  “Trouble you don’t want.”

  “You can kiss my ass, motherfucker,” the driver said. “Move your fucking car before I kick your ass and move it for you.”

  I reached through the open window and grabbed him around the throat with my right hand. I seized the left side of his face with my left. I made sure I swept off the sunglasses and got my thumb into his eye. He screamed and tried to grab my wrists. I leaned back and pulled all one-hundred and twenty pounds of him out of the car through the window. As his hi-tops cleared the Honda I twisted my body the way a Scotsman does when throwing the hammer and launched him through the air and into the street, where he landed face-first with an ungraceful ‘thud.’

  I reached into the car and removed the keys from the ignition. When I did, Belicia’s eyes met mine. They weren’t scared. She blew cigarette smoke at me.

  By the time I turned back to face the driver he was struggling to his feet. His face was twisted in rage, and he was fumbling in his coat for something I could only assume wasn’t going to make my day any better.

  In two steps I was on him, and trapped his right hand against his body with my left. I threw a straight right fist directly into the center of his face. I pulled my fist back to strike again but didn’t need to; he collapsed on the concrete of Bancroft Avenue. I could tell by the way he broke his fall with his chin that he was out before he hit the asphalt.

  When I turned him over and opened his coat, I found a stainless steel, Taurus, double-action, pistol peeking out of his waistband. He might have been able to draw it if his baggy, gangster-style, trousers weren’t hitched below his butt crack. I was removing the pistol from his belt when Dave Boyer rolled up in his black-and-white.

  “I watched from across the street,” he said. “You’re a subtle bastard, I’ll give you that.”

  “All those years at charm school apparently paid off,” I said, handing him the pistol and Honda keys.

  “So I see,” he grinned, stepping out of his cruiser. He stuffed the pistol and keys in his Sam Browne belt, then leaned over and handcuffed the prone driver. The kid’s nose was broken, and blood ran freely down his face where it mixed with the blood from his abraded chin. Boyer spoke into his portable transceiver and asked for another police unit to assist him.

  I helped Boyer stand the groggy youth up. Together we searched his pockets before stuffing him in the cage in the back of Boyer’s car. We found a cell phone, a thick wad of cash, some condoms, a butterfly knife, a bag of marijuana, two plastic, coin-sized, baggies containing what looked like crystal methamphetamine, a brass marijuana pipe, a glass meth pipe, a butane lighter, and a spare magazine containing hardball 9mm ammunition for the Taurus. What we didn’t find was any identification. He was beginning to come around.

  “What’s your name?” Boyer asked him.

  “Suck my dick,” was the reply.

  Boyer grinned. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Suck My Dick,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

  “What the fuck am I under arrest for? Arrest that motherfucker,” he said, pointing at me with his chin. “He assaulted me.”

  “I didn’t see that,” said Boyer. “But I did see you try to shoot him with a concealed and loaded handgun. I also see that in addition to being in possession of an unlawful weapon on your person and in your vehicle, you’re in possession of methamphetamine, marijuana, drug paraphernalia, an illegal gravity knife, and were operating a motor vehicle without a valid California driver’s license. By the looks of you, I’m guessing you’re under the influence of a stimulant; which means you’re D.U.I. drugs. Since you have a fourteen-year-old girl in the car, you’re also contributing to the delinquency of a minor. And for being stupid enough to commit all these felonies and misdemeanors within one-hundred feet of a school that’s currently in session, you get enhancements on all charges. How do you like that, Mr. Suck My Dick?”

  The driver got quiet. “Whatever,” he said. “I want my lawyer.”

  “I’ll get right on that,” Boyer told him, “after I tow your car. And after you’re booked.” He smiled again. “Since you haven’t got any I.D., booking may take a while.”

  The driver said something inaudible under his breath.

  “What about her?” I asked Boyer, pointing to Belicia.

  “Once my cover officer gets here and takes this idiot off my hands, I’ll have to take her home and notify her parents.”

  “She lives with her grandmother. She’s Belicia’s legal guardian.”

  “That’s right,” Boyer said. “I remember now.”

  “Any chance I could speak with her before you take her? It’s why I came here today.”

  “I thought the reason you came here was to create a lot of paperwork for me,” he said, not harshly. “Sure,” he finall
y said. “You can talk with her until my partner or the tow truck gets here, whichever comes first. But take her out of the car, will you? I’ve got to do an inventory search and fill out the vehicle impound report.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I walked over to the passenger side of the soon-to-be impounded Honda and opened the door. Belicia looked up at me.

  “Step out of the car,” I told her. “We’re going to talk.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. She threw her cigarette butt at my feet.

  “Come out of the car or I’ll pull you out by the hair.” She shot me an evil glare, but complied.

  “I ain’t got nuthin’ to say to you,” she said, folding her arms.

  “Aren’t you curious to know what I want to talk about?” I said.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Do you care about your sister?” I asked. Her eyes lit up, then dulled.

  “My sister’s dead,” she said flatly.

  “I know. My name is Chauncey Means. I’m a private investigator. I’m investigating Marisol’s death.” I handed her one of my business cards.

  Belicia didn’t answer for a long minute. She spent the time looking at my card, and looking me up and down. “I thought you were an undercover cop,” she finally said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Chance, come over here a minute, will you?” Officer Boyer called to me. He was at the rear of the Honda, peering into the open trunk.

  “Don’t go anywhere,” I told Belicia. I joined Dave at the back of the sedan. “Check this out,” he said.

  In the Honda’s trunk was a large pile of women’s clothing. Most of it was lingerie. There were at least a dozen pairs of women’s shoes as well. In addition, there was a warehouse store sized box of condoms; forty-eight rubbers per box, with most of the carton empty.

  “Looks like Mr. Suck My Dick fancies himself a pimp-daddy,” Dave said. He held up a condom from the box. “Your brand?”