The Patrolman - 22

22.

Lacey entered Hollywood Police Station through the parking lot. As he passed through reception, he saw a woman with a black eye and busted lip sobbing on a bench. The watch commander looked up from his telephone at him and said nothing.

Carruthers came in and they went upstairs to the squad room.

Empty, like being in his own house. Passing ships. It was a perfect square made up of ten desks. A banker's lamp and a telephone for every man. The carpet was electric blue. Someone thought that made it look official. It didn't.

They threaded through untucked chairs to their usual spot by the file cabinets. Lacey hung his jacket over the chair and glanced toward the lieutenant’s office. He'd finished for the day.

'Coffee?'

'Black. Sugar.'

Lacey went down the hall to the break room and started a pot. He replayed the weekend. Three bodies in two days and that wasn't the end of it.

The station secretary stared at him over her partition.

Lacey gave her a nod.

She made a face and looked back down at her work.

Christ, was there anyone in the Department who didn't know about him?

Back at his desk, Carruthers had the Tribune open. 'They're calling him the Zoot Suit Strangler. Your ex linked the cases.'

Lacey dragged his chair over to a typewriter. 'Welles ain't my ex, but I figured she would. She's smart.' He rolled a blank crime scene report into it and closed his eyes.

Evelyn taught him to touch type. He wrote it all down - the Farmer's Market, the tip, Barclay's house, everything. Under the captain's orders, he omitted any mention of the call with the killer. Orders were orders.

While he worked, he thought about the last stop they made. Carmelita Sabella's apartment. They'd been too late. There was no sign of Nora Valdez. No sign of the uniforms they sent to guard it. Someone had ransacked the place. The uniforms showed up later and told them they got hoodwinked. They tried to blame Lacey and that was the first time he saw Carruthers blow his lid. He punched the cop square on the nose. It was a total F.U.B.A.R. situation. That's what they called it in the Army.

He apologized, but the damage was already done. The burglar had got the better of them. There was no way to know what he'd taken - or if it would've led them to the girl.

After an hour of typing, smoking, and drinking tar-like coffee, Lacey opened his eyes. He'd finished the report. He fastened the pages together and copied them. One for the murder book and one for the lieutenant. He worked fast. The copy took him a quarter-hour. He slipped it under the lieutenant's door.

Carruthers tossed yesterday’s paper in the trash. He fished it out and read the piece on Juanita Figueroa-Villa. Then he pulled her murder book and reread it from start to finish. Nothing new on Sabella, but he went over that, too. Carruthers might give it a day before committing the burglary to the official record. Those two cops might lose their job over it.

Lacey opened his notebook and drew a line down the middle. On one side, he listed similarities. The other, differences. What was he looking at? What picture was the killer painting for him? He closed his eyes and compartmentalized the two sets of information. In a word, the whole thing was about absence. Two Latinas get picked up from separate parties drunk. They get driven somewhere else, killed, and their bodies put out on display. Sabella went the furthest. Around four miles. Figueroa-Villa a little less. 

He took the city map off the wall and laid it on the floor. Taking some tracing paper, he marked the body sites with a small 'X'. Using each as the outer limit, he drew a circle around Hollywood. It covered a five or six-mile radius. From West to East Hollywood. From north to south, Hollywoodland to Central. If the killer was as disciplined as he made out to be, the next body would show up somewhere inside that boundary. He liked Hollywood. He knew the area well. Well enough to dump the bodies without getting caught.

It clicked.

The killer lived in Hollywood.

Carruthers leaned over his shoulder, and they both felt it. A certainty. Another girl would die tonight. 'Not bad,' he said. 'But ain't much to go on with Sabella.'

'I know. What if we retrace Figueroa-Villa's steps?'

'Better than sitting here.'

Lacey grabbed his jacket.

'And your wallet,' Carruthers said. 'If we're right, this is gonna be a long night. We need to eat.'

© J. A. Stapleton 2025 - Image Source: Wikimedia Commons