a separate dialogue with dead women. It was his own take on the
Homicide detectives loved the movie
Most homicide cops were romantics. They blasted through lives devastated by murder and dispensed comfort and counsel. They nursed entire families. They met the sisters and female friends of their victims and succumbed to sexual tension hotwired to bereavement. They blew their marriages off behind situational drama.
He wasn’t that crazy or hooked on theatrics. The flip side of
Dead women fired up his imagination. He honored them with tender thoughts. He didn’t let them run his life.
He was set to retire soon. Things were running through his head fast and bright.
He had to drive out to the Bureau. A man was meeting him at 9:00. His mother was murdered 30-some years back. The man wanted to see her file.
The January earthquake wrecked the Hall of Justice. Sheriff’s Homicide moved to the City of Commerce. It was an hour’s shot north of Orange County.
He took the 405 to the 710. Freeway runs were half of any given homicide job. Freeway runs exhausted him.
L.A. County was large, topographically diverse and traversable only by freeway. Freeways streamlined body- disposal problems. Killers could zip to remote canyons and dump their victims fast. Freeways and freeway embankments were four-star drop zones. He rated freeways by their body-dump past and body-dump potential. Every stretch of L.A. freeway marked a dump site or the route to a crime scene. Every on- and off-ramp led him to some murder.
Bodies tended to stack up in the worst parts of the county. He knew every mile of freeway to and from every skunk town with a Sheriff’s Homicide contract. The mileage accrued and weighed his weary ass down. He wanted to get off the Drop Zone Expressway forever.
Orange County to downtown L.A. was a hundred miles round-trip. He lived in Orange County because it wasn’t L.A. County and one big map of past and present murder. Most of Orange County was white and monolithically square. He fit in superficially. Cops were hellions masquerading as squares. He liked the Orange County vibe. People got outraged over shit he saw every day. Orange County made him feel slightly disingenuous. Cops flocked to places like Orange County to live the illusion of better times past and pretend they were somebody else. A lot of them carried reactionary baggage. He dumped his a long time ago.
He lived where he did to keep his two worlds separate. The freeway was just a symbol and a symptom. He’d always be running back and forth—one way or another.
Sheriff’s Homicide was working out of a courtyard industrial complex. They were squeezed in between toolmaking and computer-chip firms. The setup was temporary. They were supposed to move to permanent digs soon.
The Hall of Justice oozed style. This place didn’t look remotely coplike. The exterior was plain white stucco. The interior was plain white drywall. The main room featured a hundred desks pushed together. The place looked like a phone sales front.
The Unsolved Unit was walled off separately. A storeroom lined with shelves adjoined it. The shelves were stuffed with unsolved homicide files.
Each file was marked with the letter Z and a six-digit number. Stoner found Z-483-362 and carried it back to his desk.
He spent seven years at Unsolved. The unit had a simple mandate: Check Z-files for workable leads and assess new information coming in on unsolved murders. The job was public relations and anthropological study.
Unsolved cops rarely solved murders. They fielded phone tips, perused files and got hooked on old killings. They ran checks on old suspects and talked to old detectives. Unsolved entailed a lot of desk work. Older men rotated in before they retired.
Stoner was ordered in young. Captain Grimm had a special job for him. Grimm thought the
The job took four years. It was a high-profile, career-defining glory case.
It kicked his ass. It put a lot of freeway miles on him.
Stoner looked through the Z-file he pulled. The autopsy photo was gruesome. The Arroyo High shots were almost as ugly. He’d prepare the man first.
Cops cruised by his desk and ragged him about his retirement. His partner, Bill McComas, just had a quadruple bypass. The guys wanted a progress report.
Mac was tenuously okay. He was set to retire next month— less than intact.
Stoner kicked his chair back and daydreamed. He was still seeing things fast and bright.
He was a California boy. His people split Fresno and bopped to L.A. County during the war. His parents fought like cougars. It pissed him off and scared his sisters.
He grew up in South Gate. It was flat, hot and postwar stucco. Transplanted Okies reigned. They liked hot rods and barn music. They worked industrial jobs and snagged boom-economy paychecks. The old South Gate spawned blue-collar squares. The new South Gate spawned dope fiends.
He grew up hooked on girls and sports and nursed a vague sense of adventure. His father was a foreman at the Proto-Tool plant. It was lots of work for marginal pay and zero adventure. He tried Proto-Tool himself. It was boring and hard on the body. He tried junior college and pondered a teaching career. The notion didn’t really send him.
His sisters married cops. He had one brother-in-law on the South Gate PD and one on the Highway Patrol. They told him enticing stories. The yarns dovetailed with some other notions he’d been kicking around.
He wanted adventure. He wanted to help people. He took the entrance test for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department the day after his twenty-first birthday.
He passed it. He passed the physical and the background check. He was assigned to the Sheriff’s Academy
