The Patrolman - 33

 

 

33.

 

 

 

Carruthers continued up Weidlake Drive toward the Reservoir.

In the passenger seat, Lacey heard the clock. It came to him in fragments at first. Like something over his shoulder, a bird chirping away in a tree far off. But it wasn't birdsong, it was time ticking away.

He checked his wristwatch. It was now nine o'clock.

Carruthers slowed when they saw the cars parked off to the left of a gravel turnout. Two black-and-whites and the coroner’s green van. The Lincoln pulled in behind them and they got out. A single uniformed patrolman leaned against the fender of a black-and-white. Yellow crime-scene tape stretched from the patrol car’s mirror to a sign across the road. It read, in black-on-white letters: 'RESERVOIR. NO PUBLIC ADMITTANCE.' That hadn't always been the case, but they were at War. The wind carried a damp mineral smell from the water below, sharp like wet pennies and creosote.

The patrolman, a burly guy with sunburned arms, straightened when he saw them.

‘Carruthers, Lacey.’

It came from behind the coroner's van. Biggs trod around it with a look of surprise. 'You made it.'

Carruthers spoke first. 'Sorry,' he said. 'We had to make a little detour. What've you got for us, Biggs? Same guy?'

Biggs led them under the cordon and past no-entry sign. 'I'm not a gambling man,' he said. Pausing when he realized who he was talking to, but he shrugged. 'Though if I were, I'd go all in.'

About fifty feet round to the right, past a left turn for the Mulholland Dam crossing, he came two paths. One going up, the other down. Today this would serve as a crime scene. On the far side, Lacey saw a body strewn out on the floor with her valuables placed around her. Two patrolmen stood over her. Lacey recognized them from Hollywood Station but couldn’t remember their names.

Carruthers dismissed them. He told them about Veronica Welles and ordered them to secure the perimeter. No more journalists.

As Lacey stepped closer to the clearing’s edge, he realized they were above the Reservoir. There was a sheer drop and he felt his legs turn hollow. He feared heights as a kid, but he figured the War had cured it. It hadn’t. A gust of wind whipped his jacket open. It was a long way down. Even the strongest of men would have their doubts, even if they couldn't admit the fact. The rounded shell of the dam dropped away beneath him - over eighteen stories down, easy, but it looked like a mile. Lacey was looking down at five million tonnes of the city's drinking water.

'Whoa,' he said out loud.

The other men heard it and ignored it.

'What've we got?' Carruthers asked.

'One Latina,' Biggs said. 'Garrotted, like before.'

The woman expelled a strong smell of death. Lacey fought the urge to kill the odor with a cigarette. Her skin was grayish-white. A floral blouse peeking out from her pantsuit, with cuffed bottoms, matched the color of her skin. Her feet were bare.

Like the other victims, the dead woman was on her front, face down, with a silk stocking knotted around her neck. The awkward position of the body and the bent knees suggested the killer had garrotted her in the cab.

She must've caught onto what was happening quicker than the other victims. Then he had dumped her here and staged it like the others. So Lacey would be the one to get the call. He crouched beside her. The woman's eyes were wide open and bulging, terrified. Fighting to survive. There were tiny flecks of mascara in the corners of them, like tears.

He leaned closer. Blood caked her hair on the left side. She'd hit her head during the struggle. It was surface level. A minor wound.

'What's the cause of death?'

Biggs glanced over. 'Very perceptive,' he said. 'No, the head wound isn't the cause of death. She broke her neck in the struggle. Our killer used force on this one, more excessive than the others.'

Lacey nodded and looked at her again. Trying to look at her with fresh eyes. If she had put up a fight, had she inflicted any damage to their killer? He thought about the stocking. He had strangled her from behind, before or after she sustained the head injury.

His eyes traveled the length of her body. He stopped at the hands. Yes, there was blood caked under and around her fingernails. She had scratched the man who murdered her.

He pointed this out to Biggs who gave an impressed grunt.

'That's something we can use,' he said.

Carruthers folded his arms and tilted his head. He didn't say anything, but Lacey got the nod. Biggs went to work with a swab, gathering all the DNA evidence he could.

'What about the other results?' Carruthers asked.

'Which ones?'

'From the stockings,' he said. 'Was either victim's blood on the other stockings?'

'Right,' Biggs said. 'No, there wasn't. It was someone else's.'

'Another victim's,' Lacey said.

Either way, it didn't look good. So Figueroa-Villa wasn't his first rodeo. She wasn't the first girl. Biggs told them to check the girl's items. Lacey and Carruthers walked over to the sheet where the items lay.

There were two IDs with different names. Chances were, one belonged to their victim. The first was a driver's license in the name of Eva Trujillo. The second was a Social Security card for one Miranda Vasquez, issued in 1934. Social Security cards came on your sixteenth birthday, which put Vasquez at twenty-four or twenty-five years old.

According to the driver's license, the user was twenty-one years old. Lacey turned and looked back at the young woman. She looked tough, hard even. Someone born in an unkind and unforgiving world. Despite her toughness, he had noted the freckles under her eyes. No, the dead woman wasn't Miranda Vasquez. She was Eva Trujillo. So, who was Vasquez? Another victim they hadn't yet found, or the woman the killer had decided to murder tonight?

Lacey watched Carruthers go through the rest of the girl's personal effects. He found a hair comb hiding a switchblade, a neat design, but nothing else to support his theory. No solid leads. He took Carruthers by the elbow and pulled him to one side, out of Biggs' earshot.

He walked Carruthers through everything. What the guy said to him on the phone. The girl's approximate age. The likeliness that she was Eva Trujillo. They had less than five hours to be back at Hollywood Station. Five hours to make the case.

'You're not gonna like this,' he said. 'But we need someone else on the squad to handle Eva Trujillo.'

'Who?'

'Goosen and Hubja. I read through the daily reports. They only had the robbery at the liquor store, they could handle this. We need to work the Miranda Vasquez angle,' he said.

'We've got nothing to go on,' Carruthers said. 'Where do we even start? Get KGPL to shag the name and address and then what?'

'If we're wrong,' Lacey said. 'And nothing comes out of it. We may have saved his next victim. It's a risk worth taking.'

'And adding a case to Goosen and Hubja's clearance rate?'

'It's a risk,' he said. 'But we've only got five hours left. It's your call.' Everyone in the Department was a gambler. He decided to use it to his advantage. 'Stick or twist.'

Carruthers pushed back his hat and wiped his brow. It was starting to get hot. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the ground for a minute. Weighing up the pros and cons. The stick-or-twist analogy had been his Achilles heel. He couldn't walk away from a gamble. Not at these odds, not at this short in the dark. He ran through the options, before raising his eyes to meet Lacey's. 'Fine,' he said.

With a renewed sense of urgency, he headed over to Biggs and told him what they were doing. He said they might have to wait around an hour, but Goosen and Hubja would take over this case. They were going to play the wild shot. He told Biggs to keep it under his hat, Captain Flowers was already looking for an excuse to bust his balls. He couldn't have it interfere, not if it meant catching the “Zoot Suit Strangler”.

He swore Biggs to silence and got KGPL on the radio. Goosen and Hubja were on rotation - they could respond to the 187 at Hollywood Reservoir. Then he got the operator to put him through to R&I.

The Records and Identification Division was the go-to for detectives to get names, rap sheets, and registrations. If someone had a file, it lived in a drawer there.

Carruthers gave her the name and the social security number in case. She told them she'd only be a moment. The transmitter idled. Carruthers left it on receive and the two detectives lit cigarettes.

'Tell me everything the guy said to you.'

Lacey recounted everything. From the first occasion, they spoke through to this morning. Carruthers didn't interrupt, staring out over the bowl of Hollywood and Los Angeles.

'Maybe the question's tied to Vasquez,' he said. 'His vanity would support that. I can't be sure, but I think you've made the right move. Not bad, kid.'

Carruthers leaned over the car and listened to the radio. Nothing. The operator was still looking into it.

Lacey lit another cigarette and Carruthers used the end to light one of his. 'What are you planning to do with Hartsfield?' he asked.

Carruthers shrugged. 'I don't know yet. I got a pal in the District Attorney's office. If it's the cops wanting to kill her. We need someone on the outside,' he said. 'Bernie Webb might be the guy for this. We go way back. The guy drinks at Mike Lyman's. If you ever came for happy hour, you'd have met him.'

'I don't drink,' Lacey said.

'Why? You're a cop.'

'On account of my old man,' he said.

'He a drunk?'

'Was,' Lacey said. 'He died when I was eleven. Evie took over from there. We've been together ever since.'

'No Mom?'

Lacey looked at the glowing ember of his cigarette. It was harsh and dry on his throat. He needed some water. He flicked the ash off the end, dropped the butt in the dirt, and ground it out. 'Another time,' he said. 'I don't like talking about it.'

Carruthers looked like he was going to say something, his mouth was open and the words were on the tip of his tongue. But the receiver shrieked to life.

'Car Nine King? Car Nine King?'

Carruthers grabbed the handset. 'Car Nine King receiving.'

'Apologies for the delay, Detective. We had four Miranda Vasquez's on file. Only one fits the profile, born in 1918.'

'Hit me with it,' he said.

Miranda Vasquez was born in 1918. Bandini district, unincorporated Los Angeles County. Reported missing August 4, 1942.’

Carruthers shot him a look. They might've struck gold. 'Yeah?' he asked. 'You got an address?'

'Williams’ Ranch, out near Bell. County land — that’s all I’ve got.'

'Okay, we'll take it,' he said. He asked her to give him directions. The operator helped as best she could. It took a few minutes more. They went back and forth, she had to cross her office to the city map right at the back. By the end of the call, the operator gave her name as Melanie and she and Carruthers were firm friends.

'Ready for a road trip?' he asked.

Jake Lacey nodded, walked around the car, and climbed in.

They hit the gas.

Time was running out.