'A lot of people don't believe this, but I really love this job,' he said. 'I don't want to end my career on the LAPD with a blindfold and a cigarette.'
'We'll get through it. Stick with me, here. I've been in tighter spots.'
I took out my cell and dialed Alexa. It was after three A. M. but she was still in her office at the PAB.
'Why aren't you in bed?' she asked.
'I'm up at the house 011 Skyline Drive with Hitch. You need to collect Jeb and get up here now.'
'What's up?'
'Plenty. Just get up here. I'd rather show you than tell you.'
We spent a tough hour waiting for Alexa and Jeb, while we worked out our plan of attack and a few of our arguments. Captain Calloway arrived first.
'This better be either great or really, really good,' Jeb said as he pulled in. He'd thrown on an old LAPD sweatshirt, jeans, and flip-flops.
'I'll let you assign the degree of greatness,' I told him.
Alexa drove up a couple of minutes later and Hitch and I led them up the hill to the concrete well house. We had left the door ajar.
'Get ready for a shock,' I advised as we accompanied them inside. Hitch and I turned on our flashlights, illuminating the Brinks truck for them.
'Drivers are still inside. Dead,' I said. 'Take a deep breath, cause it ain't pretty.'
Both of them looked through the truck's windows at the skeletons. Alexa said nothing, but as Jeb looked, I could see he was breathing through his mouth and swallowing air. I cut him some slack though because he was born in Haiti where they still practice voodoo. When they finished, everyone backed out and we all stood outside.
'That truck is old,' I said. 'Late seventies or early eighties.'
'I'll bet it's the armored car that disappeared off Wilshire Boulevard in eighty-three,' Jeb said. 'It was carrying something like fifteen or sixteen million in gold bullion from the Jewelry Mart. Case is still open, but very cold.'
'It's still open?' I said for no other reason than to slow this down a little. I was getting overrun by events.
'Everybody thought the guards pulled the heist and escaped to Tahiti or someplace, to live the good life,' Jeb explained. 'Apparently not. I'll run the plate to confirm it, but I'm sure this is it.'
'How did you find that garage?' Alexa asked. 'I didn't see it before.'
'You want to tell em?' I asked my partner.
'You can do it,' Hitch replied.
'We found this because we were working an old double murder/ suicide from 1981. The Vulcuna family used to own this house in the eighties. The father was supposed to have killed his wife and daughter, then shot himself,' I began. 'Instead of working on closing loose ends for ADA Wilkes on Sladky, we were working that old double murder/suicide instead. We don't think Thomas Vulcuna was the doer. We think he was murdered too, shot back here. That's where the 7.65 slug came from. I'm really sorry about this, but cutting to the chase, I guess we were disobeying Jeb's direct orders.'
'That may be an overly harsh assessment,' Hitch jumped in, trying to massage it. Then the bullshit started flowing. 'Put in a friendlier light, we were operating as good police officers, following the lead of our commander, Captain Calloway, who said that the 7.65 bullet we found over here should definitely stay in the Sladky case. But it needed to be explained and in an attempt to do that, we discovered it wasn't part of Sladky at all. So, in a dedicated and extremely professional way, we '
'Please shut up,' Jeb said softly.
Hitch fell silent. We all stood quietly trying to assess the situation.
'There's no way we can keep this from Dahlia,' Alexa finally said. 'This is going to affect her prosecution.'
'We're fucked,' Hitch whispered in my ear.
Chapter 36
Jeb said he would make arrangements for a police tow truck to take the armored car back to the new Forensic Science Center on the Cal State campus while Alexa was trying to scare up a home number for Dahlia Wilkes. Before either could dial, Hitch and I moved in on them with an alternate idea.
'We need to talk to you guys for a minute,' I started.
'You can't take this truck to the police garage at Cal State,' Hitch said.
'Why not?' Jeb wondered.
'Once its there a whole lot of people will know about it and this thing is gonna leak, Skipper.'
'So then it leaks,' Jeb said. 'We re not the KGB, we don't conduct investigations in secret.'
'Well, maybe this one time we should consider it,' I suggested.
'And just how do we keep this quiet?' Alexa was tapping her foot as she asked this. I could tell from having known and loved her for years, it was not positive body language.
'Listen to all of it first,' I said. 'There's a lot you still don't know. Once you have the whole deal, then decide.'
'There's more?' Alexa asked.
'Yeah,' I answered. 'A lot.'
Hitch and I filled them in on the rest of the '81 Vulcuna case, taking them through everything we'd learned. Alexa had not been in L. A. back in '81 but Jeb remembered some of the Vulcunas' tragic story. We ran it down for them and told them about getting Brooks to sign off on a warrant so we could do the Luminol test in the master bedroom. They were both surprised to hear that it had been negative. We told them about the pressure from city government to close the case down, and how McKnight and Norris had only worked the Vulcuna massacre for nine hours before being pulled off and reassigned.
Jeb asked, 'So what are you trying to tell us?'
'Thomas Vulcuna didn't kill his wife and daughter, then commit suicide,' I answered. 'We got that wrong in eighty-one. He was killed back here in that trash shed with the 7.65 bullet we found. The perp killed Vulcunas wife and daughter in the living room, then shot Tom out here, reloaded the Luger, carried his body upstairs, placed him on the bed, and fired a second shot into the headboard to make it look right. That's why the headboard and wall wouldn't fluoresce. But this garbage shed did.'
Hitch picked up the narrative. 'The passage from The Divine Comedy was marked and left open on the bedside table as a suicide note,' he said. 'The Luger jammed on that second shot, but there was only one missing from the clip because the gun was reloaded by the killer then shot into the headboard.'
Jeb and Alexa stood looking at each other, not sure how to proceed.
'Whoever put that Brinks truck in there probably also killed Vulcuna and his family,' I said. 'If this hits the papers and TV tomorrow, and the shooter is still around, he'll be gone before we can put a case together. The doer or doers will be in Mexico or France, where we can't extradite on a death penalty case, which this certainly is, because there are five murders so far, maybe six if the third Brinks guard is in the back of this truck.'
'It's even bigger than that,' Hitch said. 'Brooks and the three Sladky killings are also somehow part of Vulcunas triple and this Brinks heist. The two cases are tied together.'
In my opinion he was overwriting the story there, but as I'd already learned, sometimes imagination is more important than knowledge.
'Brooks wasn't even alive when this Brinks truck was hijacked,' Alexa reminded him.
'Not Brooks himself,' Hitch continued. 'His father, Thayer; or the guy who set up the foundation, that Century City lawyer, Stender Sheedy Sr. The reason they didn't sell this house for a quarter century is now pretty damn obvious. They didn't want a new owner re-landscaping and finding this well house and that armored truck inside with the dead guards.'
'I still don't see how we keep this quiet,' Jeb said.
'Hitch and I have been giving that some careful thought.'
