Bradley flipped the wrench again and caught it.
“That’s right,” said Preston. “I never let him out of my sight.”
Bradley dropped his wrench to the floor and it landed with a clang. Clayton dropped his, too. Stone dropped the book to the floor with a flat crack and Erin dropped her notebook and Preston took off his glasses and aimed his dead white eyes at Hood and they broke out laughing.
He smiled and waited for the laughter to trail off. “Well, that’s two felons, a blind man, and a woman who loves you.”
They all booed him. Erin strummed her guitar loudly, no chords, just dissonance. Hood wasn’t sure if she was trying to drown them out or join them.
Then Bradley wiped his hands on a once white T-shirt. “We’re just funnin’ ya, Hood. Come on, we’ll talk.”
They walked out and Bradley led the way up a trail from the house to an outcropping of rocks. The day was warming. Hood saw a small patch of California poppies blooming eagerly after the rain, the first he’d seen all year.
“Did you go to the grave yesterday?” Hood asked.
“I drove in from above, up by the mausoleum. I almost came down when I saw your Camaro but I didn’t feel like seeing you on my mom’s birthday. No offense.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to share my mom with you, either.”
“I didn’t kill him. I wouldn’t have waited six months. My decision on that was made a long time ago. He’s a Southside Crip with enemies all over the place. It wasn’t me. All of those people back there will tell you I was here.”
“I can see that. But the description fits you and the timing is right.”
“Where?”
“Skid Row.”
Bradley shook his head, as if killing anyone on Skid Row would be beneath him.
“How?”
“Shotgun. Black cowboy hat, dark bandana over his face-outlaw style. Jeans and boots. He was tall, white or light Hispanic. Drove a black Silverado.”
“Well, you won’t find a black Silverado anywhere on this property.”
“That’s for sure.”
“But I do have jeans. And boots. I even got a combat Mossberg in my room, and a finger to pull the trigger with.”
“If I have to ask Erin where you were, Bradley, I’ll see it if she’s lying.”
“Go ahead. I want you to ask her. You’ll see that she’s telling the truth, just like the others. Did she give you directions here?”
“I found you through Cal State L.A.”
“I didn’t attend one class.”
“You applied and used this address. It’s on the campus police cop-only Web site.”
He studied Hood, then chuckled softly. “I’m thinking of applying to the Sheriff’s. Or maybe LAPD. You still willing to get me in?”
Hood knew where Bradley got his flair for the dramatic, his confidence in the bluff, his belief in the making of luck.
“Talk to me when you’re serious, Bradley.”
“You going to rat me out to LAPD for what I said about Kick? That was all in the past, man.”
“They’ll make the connection without me.”
“I didn’t kill him, Charlie. That’s the last time I’m going to say it to you.”
His eyes on Hood were hard and unwavering. His chin was strong. Conviction? Challenge? Wounded pride? Truth glides through appearances, thought Hood.
“Bradley, you can kill a man and hide behind your friends and get away with it. But you can’t get away with it for very long. Friends don’t stay friends forever.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Sheriff, by golly.”
“Learn from your mother.”
“You don’t know what I’ve learned from her.”
“She let herself get killed for nothing. You have to understand the connection between what you do and what it leads to. She understood that, but she couldn’t control herself. Almost, but not quite. You’re going to have to. Bradley, you can do anything in the world you want.”
“I’m doing exactly what I want.”
“Living with creeps? Dragging Erin through your messes? You don’t know what you have because it’s all been given to you, and you think you deserve it. You’re a spoiled child in the body of a man. Suzanne coddled you. You should have had your ass kicked a long time ago.”
“You can try.”
“By your age you have to kick your own ass.”
“You old guys all say the same thing.”
“So will you if you live that long.”
“Having fucked my mother gives you no rights with me. None.”
“She’d be ashamed of you right now. Her heart was big. She tried to take care of the people who loved her.”
Hood turned and walked alone back down the path to the barn. He saw the men and the dogs. Clayton offered him a beer. The Jack Russell followed him. Erin was out on the front deck in the shade, guitar over her knee, red hair hiding her face. The notebook was at her feet and the pen was on it and there was writing on the page in red ink.
She shook back her hair and looked up at Hood. Her beauty came at him sideways and just under what was visible, a body blow.
“Was he here all morning like he says?”
“Every minute of it,” she said, and Hood saw that she was lying.
“Did he threaten you?”
“Come on, Charlie. He wouldn’t do that.”
“Talk to me.”
“There’s nothing to say. Just isn’t.”
“Write a song about a guy who’s willing to sell out his girl so he can get away with murder.”
“Sell me out?”
“Obstruction of justice? Perjury? It’s jail time, Erin.”
She looked up, briefly, wiped a tear on a knuckle, the guitar pick still in her hand. “Hood? Don’t. Please get outta here before he walks up. If he sees me crying he’ll figure all the wrong things.”
“You’ve got my numbers if you need me.”
“I need you to go.”
Hood kicked the railing upright, hard. Erin flinched and the terrier launched into a fit of barking. Hood stomped down the steps to his car. He was furious and ashamed of it.
He aimed the IROC down the drive and goosed the throttle and looked in the rearview mirror. The little dog receded and blurred in a cloud of dust and Erin watched him drive away.
He used that afternoon to meet with the local cable TV reporter who’d done a segment on the Lancaster LASD substation Toys for Tots campaign of last year. She gave him a DVD copy of the show.
Back in the Hole he played it on the computer and got exactly what he’d hoped for: the voice of Terry Laws.
“Well, it’s the least we can do for kids who don’t have a leg up in life. It makes us all at LASD really happy to bring a little joy this time of year.”
He listened to Laws say those two sentences a dozen times. Then he played the copy of the 911 tape that Warren had procured. But the anonymous call was so distorted, Hood couldn’t say with any certainty that it was made by Terry Laws.
So he tried Draper’s voice.
“Good. Because I don’t want anyone talking trash about my partner.”
Again, there was no way to hear much of a similarity. The more he listened the less it sounded like either of them.
He called a spectrograph examiner and made arrangements to get the recordings to him.
25
Tuesday morning, in Superior Courtroom 8, Ariel Reed led Hood through the events last year that had brought IA to a crooked deputy’s criminal emporium in Long Beach.
She asked him how he had met the informant, Allison Murrieta, and what made him think she could be trusted.
Hood told the truth. His ears rang mildly and he hoped his face wasn’t flushing. The fallen deputy glumly regarded him, and regularly whispered into his lawyer’s ear. There were a few LASD deputies in the room-the accused’s loyal supporters-who occasionally smiled at something Hood said. Judge Mabry eyed him with hard curiosity and the jury was a blur to him, thirteen faces
that he tried to avoid.
On the cross, the defense did his best to make Hood look like an oversexed bumbler.
And by then you were involved intimately with Ms. Jones, correct?
Yes.
So you never questioned her motive for alleging that the defendant was selling stolen property?
I knew she wanted to hurt him.
Did it ever occur to you that she was using the lieutenant to deflect your attention from her own criminal activities?
No. She had admitted her own criminal activities.
But Mabry sustained Ariel’s several objections, and reminded the defense who was on trial here.
Hood was finished by the noon recess. They ate lunch in the cafeteria.
“You were good,” she said.
“I hope we win.”
“I’ll win. They weren’t able to make it a bad arrest and that’s their best chance.”
They talked small for a while after the meal was done. Two of the defendant’s partisan deputies took a table not far away, after giving them bemused stares. One spoke and the other laughed.
Ariel turned to them. “Can I help you?”
They looked away. Ariel took a call, stood, walked to a window and looked out. Hood saw her nodding but not saying much. When she came back her expression was skeptical.
“Let’s get some air,” she said.
They stood outside the Criminal Courts entrance in the meek downtown sunlight. The cars moved slowly and the pedestrians moved quickly.
“I used to smoke,” she said. “I did a lot of it right here.”
“I still do, once in a while.”
“I can’t do things once in a while. It’s another character flaw, like the way I split atoms.”
“There are plenty of things worse than that.”
“Charlie, look at me. Eichrodt passed the evaluation with flying colors. Both memory and speech, dramatically improved. Dr. Rosen is going to recommend that he be sent back here to stand trial for the murders of Lopes and Vasquez. My boss wants me to be a part of that team. I said yes.”
“I don’t think he killed them.”
“He’ll have his day.”
“Possibly rigged by two sheriff’s deputies.”
Ariel shook her head and looked out at the street. “Life is all curves, Charlie. It’s not straight, like a drag race. Wish somebody would have told me.”
She offered a small smile and her hazel eyes pried at him.
“Let’s walk down the street and get lunch,” he said.
“We just had lunch.”
“Let’s get another one.”
“Perfect.”
It was. Hood hadn’t spent a more pleasant hour in the last six months. He actually ate the second lunch, probably due to nerves. She talked on without a comma. Unlike the lawyer he had just seen in court, Ariel the person was self-deprecating, somewhat goofy and quick to smile. She described her line of the Reeds, especially the women, as “a motley crew obsessed with speed” and the men as “pointlessly energetic.”
He walked her back to the courthouse and felt the late winter chill settling over the city.
In the parking structure his phone rang. It was a sweet-voiced girl saying she wanted to talk to him about Londell Dwayne.
26
Patrice Kings was a mocha-skinned girl with olive eyes and a steady stare. Her hair was light brown and long. She had on black jeans and red canvas tennies and a suede jacket with a faux-fox collar and cuffs. Her bag was big and floppy and studded with rhinestones. She was waiting near the ticket windows in the municipal stadium parking lot, standing beneath the suspended fighter jet, just where she said she’d be.
The light was fading fast and there was an orange band in the western sky. The desert cold settled down from above.
“Can we walk?” she asked. She looked at Hood like she was memorizing him.
“Let’s walk.”
They were rounding the broad bend of the outfield before she spoke again.
“Londell was with me that night the policeman died.”
“I’ve heard that story before.”
“The motel man over in Palmdale can prove it. He would remember us. And another clerk, too, a woman.”
Hood buttoned his blazer against the cold, turned up its small collar and jammed his hands into his pants pockets. He had dressed for court. She watched him closely.
“Which motel and what people?”
“The Super Eight. Kevin. Big white fella, young. The woman was Dolores.”
“Anybody else?”
“Nobody.”
“Just you and Londell?”
“Just me and Londell.”
“Tell me about it.”
Up ahead he could see the ticket windows and the fighter jet. There were a few cars in the parking lot. The marquee said the next event was a classic car show this weekend, hundreds of cars.
“There isn’t much to tell. He’s got a girlfriend. He didn’t want anyone knowing about me. Yet.”
Again she gave Hood the assessing stare. He had seen in some people experience beyond their years, but never in a ratio so wide as in Patrice Kings.
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be sixteen.”
“When?”
“When I get done being fourteen and fifteen.”
“You’re fourteen.”
“Until September.”
“You’re fourteen and a half years old.”
“I know how old I am.”
“Did Londell send you here?”
“Yeah, he did. He’s scared. He’s got Crips on him for stuff, and Eighteenth, too. And the police on him for the murder of that guy that lost Londell’s dog. And you know what that means, means they shoot first and ask questions later.”
“He’s got to turn himself in, Patrice. We can’t prove his alibi without him. You talking to me here just isn’t good enough.”
“I knew that’s what you’d say.”
“Londell knows it too. You tell him to call me and I’ll pick him up and take him to jail. He won’t get shot and he won’t get hassled. Inside they have it segregated so the Crips and Eighteenth won’t jump him.”
“He don’t trust cops.”
“He’s trusting me with you. Why did Londell pick me to hear this?”
She looked at Hood hard. “He said you were fly for a white guy and had some humor. And something ’bout your ears.”
He almost said that he was the one whose partner Londell was suspected of killing, that he was the witness who could help Londell to a lethal injection. But he guessed if he did, this might be the last communication he’d ever have with Londell Dwayne.
“He didn’t kill anybody,” said Patrice.
They were back to the ticket windows, so they started a second lap.
“Where is he?”
She was studying him again.
“It’s the only way to help him,” said Hood.
“I know what you think. But he treats me good. With me, he’s easy and funny and we don’t do drugs. And he doesn’t bring any weapons around. Lonnie doesn’t like weapons. You know he’s always in some kind of trouble but he’s gettin’ tired of it. He’s actually thinking about joining the union down in L.A. They got an ironworkers local taking ex-gangsters, and a bricklayers too. He sounds good in his voice when he talks about it. I can tell he means it. He’s not lazy.”
They continued around the stadium. When Hood looked over, there were tears in her eyes.
“See, Hood, I know him, and Londell can be something. He just needs to believe. Like, he’s got all kinds of Detroit Tigers stuff, but he never even seen Detroit. He just likes the way that D looks. He’s looking for his own respect, you know? World’s been calling him a piece of shit so long he’s afraid he’ll start believing it. D, man. D. To him it’s not Detroit, it’s Dwayne. ”
“And you were with him that night?”
“All of it. I’ll swear it if you let me, sign a paper.”
&
nbsp; Hood believed that she was telling the truth about Londell, just like he believed that Erin was lying for Bradley. It’s all in what you see, he thought.
“He has to turn himself in.”
“Can you help him if he does?”
“He’ll get treated like anyone else, Patrice. I can’t do favors for him.”
He saw her gaze move to the listing old Mercury in the parking lot. She waved. The car started up and reversed out of the space and came toward them. The driver was a young woman wrapped in a Raiders jacket.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah.”
“She knows about you and Londell?”
“She’s the only one.”
Patrice reached into her bag and pulled out a plastic shopping sack that had some weight to it, and handed it to Hood.
“In there I got it written down-the names of the motel guy, Kevin, and the lady, Dolores, and what time we checked in and what names we used. But the best thing is we were messin’ with the digital, you know, and we got some shots with the date and time on ’em. You can change that stuff if you’re good with electronics, but we aren’t, but we also got shots of the TV in the background because we were making faces like the people in the show, and you can check those shows and the times and you’ll see we’re telling the truth about where we were. Show those pictures to the motel people. Ask them if we were there. Londell wasn’t anywhere near that guy who got dead. The proof’s in there. Our future’s in there. And we want the camera back.”
“None of it means anything without Londell,” Hood said.
He held the bag out to her but she turned quickly and ran to the idling car. She got in and slammed the door. As the Merc pulled away Patrice was pointing at him.
He turned to see Londell leaning against one of the counters at the ticket window.
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