"Hey Officer St. John," the young black kid said.
"Is this your dad? I was fixin' to bring him to the hospital. He's like confused or something."
Mace immediately recognized the kid. He was a local gang member, a Blood. They'd crossed paths professionally a few times. "Thanks, uh—" He tried to think of the kid's name, it was the least he could do. Give him that recognition. The kid called himself something like Sleepy Dog or maybe it was something Fang, Mace couldn't bring the moniker to mind. He made a note to himself to look it up.
"You were helping him?"
"Hey I got a daddy too," the kid said.
Mace looped a protective hand under his dad's arm. "He'll be all right. You just got lost, right,
Dad?"
Digger stared at him. For an awful moment, it seemed as if he didnt recognize Mace. Then he
spoke. "I can't remember where I parked my car."
"C'mon, Dad, I'll take you home." Mace turned to the kid and shook his hand. "Thanks again."
"He's a good man." Digger nodded towards his rescuer. "Give him a fin."
"I'll take care of him. Watch your head."
As he got in the car, Digger turned to Mace. "By the way" he said, "what's your mother making for dinner?"
Mace's heart dropped, but he forced a smile.
"Let's go find out," he said and put the car in gear.
19
ON MONDAY MORNING, MACE CALLED A COMPANY that made home-monitoring alarm wrist bands. They were used primarily for prisoners under house arrest. They attached to the wrist or ankle and sent out a signal. When the prisoner left his home, he could be tracked. Even at an officers discount, the device cost one hundred dollars a month. He had just hung up from making the arrangements when a call came in. There had been a possible homicide in the Hampton Apartments complex.
He strapped on his revolver and gestured for Cassiletti to join him. On their way out the squadroom, they passed under the infamous board. For the first time in two years, Mace had more unsolved cases than solved. It couldn't happen at a worse time. At roll call it was announced that a lieutenant's position would soon be opening up in the precinct. Ladoor hadn't told anyone else about his illness, just that he was taking an early retirement. The sharks were already circling.
Mace added his name to the list for consideration. Another stripe would make a big difference for him. It would mean a pay hike, for starters. Between taking care of his dad, alimony and his own expenses, his sergeant's pay no longer cracked his nut. An administrative position would also get him off the street. The red chalk on the board stared back at him. What the board didn't say was that the double homicide last week was a drug murder, the most difficult to solve. An execution performed by some anonymous, emotionally uninvolved professional over a few hundred dollars worth of powder. No witnesses, no evidence, no hope unless someone came forward and volunteered information. The solutions of those cases were a waiting game. Eventually someone would talk. A bad guy would get busted and want to cut a deal, or someones girlfriend would get mad and want to get even. But until the cards played out, the red chalk would remain. The Mancini homicide was close to going down. His experience was that the wait would be short, the girl would trip herself. She would surface soon, to score some drugs or pick up some quick money turning a trick. But there was no color for "almost," and he wasn't making excuses.
Now, with this new call, one more name would be added to the crowd of names on the board, bringing him that much further from promotion. He prayed that it would turn out to be a suicide.
"What have we got?" Cassiletti asked as he joined him in the hallway
"Sounds like a domestic. Uniforms responded to a shots fired call. They got a woman down. Paramedics took her to Marina Mercy, but they said it looked bad."
The drive to the Hampton Apartments took twenty minutes in the Monday morning traffic. The uniforms were standing by having cordoned off the crime scene. Mace stepped under the yellow tape and surveyed the carnage. Still-moist blood spatter on the wall indicated a high-velocity impact. The wound inflicted on the victim had been made by a bullet rather than a knife or blunt instrument. He could see the outline on the carpet where the body was found, a clean spot amid the blood. The gun lay nearby The uniforms had left it undisturbed. They told the detectives that it lay exactly where they found it, near the woman's right
hand.
"Suicide?" Cassiletti asked.
"No. I'm afraid not. The location of the gun is all wrong." Mace told the officers to get the names of all the neighbors who heard or saw anything. He turned back to his partner and said, "I'm going to call the hospital."
He used the next door neighbors phone while the crime scene technicians lifted prints in the apartment. The nurse on duty in the emergency room at Marina Mercy informed him that the woman was "DOA, ASTW. Dead on arrival and stayed that way. St. John smiled to himself. Was it any wonder that so many cops dated emergency room nurses? They had the same twisted sense of humor. Normal people didn't understand. Normal people, he caught himself. As in people other than me.
"I'm on my way" he said.
"She'll be waiting," the nurse said.
He returned to the death scene at the woman's apartment. "I'm going to the hospital," he informed the policemen who had first responded to the call and whose duty it now was to protect the crime scene.
"Don't let anyone in here."
In the morgue of the hospital, Mace stared down at the mortal remains of Hillary Marks. She had been a woman of no outstanding beauty Her driver's license picture, which he had brought with him, showed a face with a stern, disapproving look. Death had not improved her. Her brown eyes stared blankly her thin unpainted lips were open in an O-shaped expression of surprise, a hole gaped where her nose had been. He removed the paper bags around her hands and looked for gunshot residue. There was a wedding band on her left hand, a plain gold ring. Had she had children? He didn't even know. He turned over the palm of her right hand and noted the spatter. If she had been holding a gun, her palm would have been shielded from the spatter. He envisioned the name of "Marks, Hillary" appearing in red on the board.
"I'm going back to the apartment," he told the nurse. "I'll call the coroner to send a car."
He arrived back at the apartment to the sound of the phone ringing. He nodded for the officer to pick up the extension in the kitchen.
"It's for you, sir," the patrolman said. "He asked to speak to the detective investigating."
Mace took the receiver and said, "This is Sergeant St. John."
"My name is Howard Marks," the caller said. "I killed my wife and I'd like to surrender to you."
"Hold on a minute." St. John cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. "We got a name of the victim's husband?"
Cassiletti consulted his notepad. "Howard Marks."
St. John nodded and returned to the call.
"Where are you?"
"I'm calling from a pay phone. Shall I meet you at the station?"
"That would be great." He hung up. "I'm going back to HQ."
Two hours later, after being read his rights, Howard Marks initialed every page of his detailed confession and assured the detectives that he had done a terrible thing and should be punished for his crime. Another detective in contention for the lieutenants position sat in on the interrogation, such as it was. As Howard Marks was being led off for processing, the other detective stopped him. In a tone of voice approaching awe he asked, "Any more at home like you?"
It was now eleven o'clock. The captain came in and put Hillary Marks's name on the board in green chalk. Mace called the lab and asked to be put through to Ballistics. Carol Zapata got on the line first.
"I'm headed out to the coroner's office," she said. "There's an autopsy scheduled at one o'clock. I think it's something you'll want to see." She paused before she added, "In the aquarium."
The aquarium was the glass-enclosed autopsy room where sensitive examinations were performed. Observers could wa
tch the forensic doctors work from behind thick glass walls. If they wanted to hear what was being said, they had to wait and listen to the recording the doctors made while performing the autopsy If Carol had been invited, that meant it involved a case she had special knowledge of. Mace thanked her.
"Any time," she said and he let the invitation linger. At his request, she transferred him to Ballistics.
When the technician picked up the phone, Mace asked if they had had a chance yet to fire the gun he had recovered on Friday He had requested that they match the casing and bullets to his Mancini evidence. The momentum of his morning was shattered when the technician informed him that the physical evidence had all been appropriated by RHD, who took everything to their own lab.
"How am I supposed to run my investigation if they take my evidence?"
The technician suggested that Mace take that up with his captain; it was out of his hands.
"Great," Mace muttered as he slammed down the phone. "Just fucking great."
***
At 12:45, he arrived at the Los Angeles city morgue. Carol Zapata pulled in beside him. When she saw Mace, she checked her face in the mirror and swept her hand over her hair. Her eyes were bright when she caught up to him. "I think the butcher left us a whole corpse this time."
"C'mon." He grabbed Carol's arm. "I want to get a good seat."
They identified themselves in the anteroom and signed in. Before crossing through the locked doors, they pulled on warmer clothes. Mace had a woollined windbreaker and Carol a heavy turtleneck that she put on under her lab coat. They passed through the larger autopsy room first. Bodies on steel carts lined the walls, awaiting dissection. Carol had to shout to be heard over the sound of the power saws and drills. Her breath fogged as she spoke.
"The rotation shift called me. The decedent was discovered early this morning by some fisherman. They called me because she's got similar ligature marks to the Glassen corpse."
"Does Ernie know about this?"
"Speak of the devil." Carol gestured over Mace's shoulder. He didn't have to turn around to know who had just arrived.
"I can't seem to shake the guy"
"It must be your magnetic personality" she said.
"I didn't call him."
"Have they IDed the stiff yet?"
"They ran her prints. She was a hooker in Venice. I'll get a copy of her sheet for you."
They pushed through the crowded autopsy arena. Microphones hung over eight gurneys filled with corpses in various stages of evisceration. He passed what had been a middle-aged woman with her scalp slit across the top and the skin pulled over her face like the peelings of some macabre fruit. There was a smell of fresh death in the air. As always, Mace was reminded of the summer spent on his uncle's farm, where he had helped his uncle gut a hog. It had been warm; the smell of raw bloody meat and intestines still loaded with undigested food had clung to his clothes for the entire day His aunt had been disappointed when he only pushed his chops around his plate.
"You'll never be a farmer, boy" she had said. His uncle told her to leave him alone. It was his first time, he'd get used to it. He never had. That smell returned to him now as he passed the body of a black male, his torso laid open with an inverted Y cut.
Carol left him to join the doctors inside the aquarium. From his vantage point, he studied the corpse. It was a young Caucasian woman, now gray with death. She lay naked on the examining table. The professionals gathered about her ignored the horror of her remains and turned to their work with a clinical eye. Carol pointed to the young woman's wrists and ankles and pointedly caught his eye. He nodded; the bruises there appeared to have been caused by chains. He watched Carol take exact measurements with her calipers. Another doctor swabbed the woman's vagina and anus. Both orifices showed signs of recent violent penetration. The flesh was torn. The entire abdominal cavity had also been shredded. The torso was stabbed so repeatedly that additional incisions were not needed to remove her organs, which Mace knew would be weighed and evaluated.
For Mace's benefit, Carol pointed to dried blood on the woman's inner thigh. His minds eye snapped a mental photograph. The blood was spread there in a deliberate fashion. A wavy pattern, three inches wide, extended from crotch to knee.
The door opened behind him and a familiar voice echoed off the walls. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" Ernie Potts asked.
"I'm investigating a murder," Mace said without looking up. "But now I'm thinking it was probably a suicide."
Potts watched the autopsy for a few seconds; a slow smile spread over his face. "I love it when the assholes kill each other," he said.
Mace twitched. They looked at each other in the reflection of the thick glass.
"You know what the trouble with you is, St. John?"
"What's that, Ernie?"
"You think this hamburger," he nodded down below, "matters."
"Go to hell."
"You don't belong here. This is my investigation," Ernie barked. The veins pulsed on the top of his bald head. His bow tie was askew. Mace consulted a paper in his hand. "Wait a minute, wrong corpse. I'm looking for a Hillary Marks."
Potts studied him with wary hooded eyes.
"My mistake," Mace said. He allowed his shoulder to make solid contact with Ernie's chest as he pushed past and was gratified when he heard Ernie's breath escape in a grunt.
After he left the basement, he took the elevator upstairs to the Records department, where his A friend Mando worked. He found pandemonium. Stacks of handwritten reports, bulging manila file folders, and bundles of field identification cards held together with rubber bands spilled out of metal carts. Men sat on the floors with their ties loosened and shirtsleeves rolled up. The windowless room was thick with cigarette smoke and stale sweat. Mace reached towards the electric fan on a nearby desk and twelve officers raised their heads in horror and shouted "No!" in unison.
Mace pulled his hand away slowly, palm up.
"Don't shoot," he said.
"Man, don't scare us like that," the man sitting closest to the door said. "You almost set us back ten years."
The city had opened their coffers with the election of the new mayor. The new administration promised to be police-friendly and the first gesture was the purchase of new electronic equipment to replace the city's outdated filing system. A lot of overtime was being clocked in the laborious processes of switching to automation. At poker on Friday night, Mando had groaned about the enormous task that they had ahead of them. All the data of the last fifty years had to be entered manually before the speed of automation could be enjoyed. Mace noticed a new banner on the wall over the water cooler. It was printed on computer paper in big block dot—matrix letters. He stopped and read the words. "WHEN I DIE, I WANT TO GO LIKE MY GRANDFATHER, QUIETLY IN HIS SLEEP. The line below said, "NO'I'SCREAMING IN TERROR LIKE THE PASSENGER BESIDE HIM.
He chuckled and sought out his buddy's cubicle.
"Oh man, they're killing me here," Mando said from behind a box of Hles. "I haven't seen my old lady in a week with all this overtime."
"WeIl, at least someones benefiting from all this." He picked up a framed picture sitting on the desk and admired the domestic bliss depicted there. Mando's wife, new baby and golden retriever all grinned back at him. They all looked happy enough, still, you never knew who was just hanging on by their fingernails. "I need a favor. Can you pull the record of Caroline Rhinehart for me?"
"Spell that last name. What's she done?"
"It would be a juvenile record. Probably about ten years old."
Mando switched on the screen at his desk. (Then it should be in the system." He was talking
about CLETS, the California Law Enforcement Teletype System.
"It would help if you knew the city where the arrests occurred."
"Santa Monica."
"Now I know why that name is familiar. Doesn't she work in Probation?"
"It's personal."
He waited while Mando typed her name
into the CLETS and pushed search.
"These new computers are supposed to make this job faster, but I don't trust them. Takes just as long to look up how to type in a request as it would to manually pull the hard copies. Wait a minute. Well, I'll be damned."
"What you got?" Mace asked.
"I don't believe it," Mando said.
"What? Is she an ax murderer or something?"
Mace came around the desk so he could see the screen for himself.
"No, I don't believe it worked. I just put the name in and I got an answer."
"Well?"
"She's got a CII number." He was talking about the Criminal Information Index number assigned to anyone ever arrested. The computer beeped. A new line of information printed across the screen.
"Wait a minute, I'm getting something else." He studied the coded information and pulled out his manual. After a moment, he looked up triumphantly his finger marking a table of numbers and letters. "It couldn't have been anything too bad, according to the code. If she had a felony she'd have a four series number. Sex offenders are three series. Ax murderers, that would be your five series. Relax, bro, she's strictly minor-league. Her number is a one series."
"And?"
"Her record is sealed."
"Christ, Mando. I could have told you that much." He came around the desk and looked at the computer screen. "Can't you find out anything more?"
"You need a court order for that. Unless. . ."
Mando scooted his chair over to a clear section of his desk.
"Unless?"
"If you know when the arrest occurred, the department would have a record of the original investigation in hard copy. You'd still need a court order to see the final judicature, but not for the police reports."
"That would work."
"Santa Monica maintains its own records. I've got a buddy over there." Mando scribbled a name on a piece of paper and handed it to Mace. "I don't know his extension. Go see him, he'll help you out."
"Thanks, man, I owe you."
"You must like this girl. Last woman you ran through on a personal was your wife."
No Human Involved - Barbara Seranella Page 15