A killing club.
Zena's place a refuge. Their safe house.
I thought of the atmosphere at the party.
Eat, drink, make merry; no paranoia, no suspicion. Most of the Meta people had no idea what the splinter group was doing for fun.
Games… Tenney had removed himself from the action, sitting in a corner alone. Reading. As he'd done at the park where Raymond was abducted.
Your basic loner… going downstairs with Wes Baker.
Impromptu conference of the club within a club.
A tight little murderous cell.
Baker and Tenney in Zena's bedroom, behind a locked door. Zena had been angry but she hadn't protested.
Knowing she was outranked.
Baker, the leader. Because of his charisma and his police experience.
A teacher, a trainer in police technique.
Who better to
Teacher and students…
Baker and Nolan?
Code 7 for hookers? Something worse?
Two cops in a park.
A young girl strangled and left stretched out on the ground.
Sweeping up.
Easy job for two strong men.
Could it be?
I thought of Nolan's suicide, so public, so self-debasing, executing himself in front of the enemy.
Like every suicide, a message.
This one said soul-rotting, strangulating guilt. The ultimate atonement for unredeemable sin.
A law-and-order guy. A smidgen of conscience had remained and the magnitude of his violation came to haunt him.
He'd passed sentence on himself.
But something didn't fit: If Nolan was aiming for expiation, why hadn't he gone public, exposed the others, prevented more bloodshed?
Because Baker and the others had some kind of hold on him… the photos? On-duty liaisons with teenage hookers.
Polaroids left in a family album.
Placed there deliberately for Helena to find. Not by Nolan. By people who didn't want her to probe further.
Break-ins at Nolan's place and Helena's house, days apart. Now, it seemed ridiculously coincidental. Why hadn't it bothered me then?
Because burglaries in L.A. were as commonplace as bad air. Because Helena was my patient and I couldn't talk about what went on in therapy unless lives were at stake. So I'd denied.
It had worked so well- shutting
But, no, it still didn't make sense. If Nolan had been consumed by guilt over murder, dirty pictures wouldn't have stopped him from incriminating the others.
I was still struggling with it when Milo rang the bell.
He was carrying his vinyl attachE and sat right down next to me.
“There's something I need to tell you,” I said.
“I know. Dahl. When you told me about Baker, my mind went on overdrive.”
He unzipped the case, removed a sheet of paper, and gave it to me. “Here's why it took me an hour to get here.”
Photocopy of some kind of chart. Horizontal grid on the upper three-quarters, several columns below a ten-digit numerical code and the heading DAILY FIELD ACTIVITIES REPORT. At the bottom, a series of boxes filled with numbers.
The top columns were labeled SPEC. SURVEY, OBS., ASGD ACT., TIME OF DAY, SURVEY SOURCE AND CODE, LOCATION OF ALL ACTIVITIES, TYPE OF ACTIVITY, SUPERVISOR AT SCENE, BOOKING, CITATION. Baker's name in every SUPERVISOR slot.
“Baker and Nolan's work log,” I said.
“Daily report- the D-FAR,” said Milo. “They're handed in at the end of each shift, stored in the station for a year, then moved downtown. These are Baker and Dahl's for the day Irit was murdered.”
Everything in perfect block letters, the time notated militarily: 0800 W L.A. ROLL CALL TO 1555 SIGN-OFF.
“Neat writing,” I said.
“Baker always printed like a draftsman.”
“Compulsive. The type to sweep up.”
He growled.
I read the report. “First call's a 211 suppression- armed robbery?”
He nodded.
“Wilshire near Bundy,” I went on. “It lasted nearly an hour, then a 415 call- disturbing the peace, right?”
“It could mean anything. This one was near the Country Mart, but see here where it says “no 415 found' under TYPE OF ACTIVITY? And no booking data in column 7? It didn't pan out.”
He stabbed the paper with his index finger. “After that, they did traffic stops, ten of 'em in a row- Baker was always one for giving lots of tickets- then another no-arrest 415 in the Palisades, then lunch.”
“At 1500,” I said. “Three P.M. Late lunch.”
“They list no Code 7s all day. If it's true, they were due for a break.”
My eyes dropped to the final notation before checkout.
“Another no-action 415 at 1530,” I said. “Sunset near Barrington. Are false calls that common?”
“Common enough. And it's not only false calls. Lots of times 415s end up just being an argument between two citizens, the officers calm 'em down and move on, no arrests.”
I scanned the sheet again. “There are no details on any of the calls beyond the street location. Is that kosher?”
“On a no-arrest it is. Even if it wasn't kosher, with Baker being a supervisor, there'd be no one looking over his shoulder unless something iffy happened- brutality complaint, that kind of thing. Basically, D-FARS are stashed and forgotten, Alex.”
“Wouldn't the calls come in through the dispatcher?”
“For the most part, but cruisers also get flagged down by citizens or the blues see things on their own and report to the dispatcher.”
“So there'd be no way to verify most of this.”
“Nope- anything else about it catch your eye?”
I studied the form one more time. “It's not balanced. All the activity's in the morning. You say Baker liked giving tickets but he issued ten before lunch and not a single one afterward… no real documentation for their activities for a solid hour prior to sign-off. More than an hour, if you include the Country Mart call. Even more if Baker bogused the entire afternoon log.”
I looked at him. “During the time Irit was being stalked, abducted, and strangled, Baker and Nolan had the perfect alibi: doing police work. No way to disprove it- no reason to
“God,” he said in a voice that burst out of him like a wound. Looking closer to tears than I'd ever seen him.
