Slowly, they began finding 9 mm brass shell casings and meticulously gathering and cataloging potential evidence, photographing footprints and blood spatter.
I walked around the edge of the backyard, looking for my new partner. He was off talking to Tom Rosselli, the crime scene photographer.
I thought, Well, okay. This is good. At least hes working, helping the guy set up his photo log. But as I got closer, I realized they weren't talking about the case at all.
'You gotta pound the sucker with a hammer,' Hitch was saying.
'You always wanta go to town with the hammer,' Rosselli answered. 'Is that like an African-American thing or something?'
What the hell is this? I thought and slipped behind the pool house so I could eavesdrop.
'Don't be starting in with me on how to prepare the meat,' Hitch was saying. 'You gotta hammer it first to make it tender.'
'We're talking about a Sicilian meat roll, asshole. It's supposed to be a little chewy. I'm Sicilian. You're from fucking Sixty-sixth Street in South Central. Whatta you know about Sicilian cooking?'
'I'm the king of Sicilian cooking,' Hitch shot back. 'Check it out. You arrange your meat on your wax paper, you arrange the ham slices on top of the meat '
'Ham goes on the outside, not on top, dipshit.'
'This is so pathetic,' Hitch said. 'You make your living photographing dead people. What am I wasting my time on you for? It's like talking to a garbageman about the ballet.'
Not as bad as I first thought but still pretty awful. Here we were at one of the hottest murder scenes of the year and Sumner Hitchens was distracting the videographer with an argument over Sicilian cooking when Rosselli should have been doing his initial walk-through to memorialize the scene before the swarm of techies moved anything. I stepped around the side of the building and faced him.
'Lets go,' I said. 'Let Rosselli do his job. You're with me.'
I left abruptly and Hitch followed me across the pool deck.
'Try the recipe my way,' Rosselli called after him.
'I gave up vomiting after meals when I found out Lindsay Lohan was doing it,' Hitch called back.
I led him to a place near where Alexa was standing.
'After the bodies are processed I want you to go to the ME's office with Alexa. Witness the autopsies with her.' Thinking it would at least get him out of my sight for a while.
'I'm not gonna be that easy to ditch,' he said. 'I already had this out with Jeb. I'm not the kind of partner you can bullshit. I know I'm junior man, but that's only in hours. When it comes to working this case, I'm your tight. It's you and me, cheek to cheek, brother.'
He pulled out a red notebook. It was covered in expensive leather and had gold-embossed edges. Across the center, engraved in gold script, it said: MY JOURNAL. The thing must have cost him three hundred dollars.
'This isn't going to be a movie,' I informed him. 'So you can put away your little writer's journal.'
'I know you're upset, but I'm gonna grow on you, man. I got this feeling.'
He smiled at me. He was handsome. He was charming. He was hard not to like. But he was also a hopeless bullshitter and opportunist. At least, that was my take back then.
'I'm not going to the morgue. I can't,' he added.
'Why not?'
'I don't get along with dead people. I don't like them; they don't like me.' His smile widened. 'Besides, I already secured some valuable info for us. The morgue is backfill on any investigation. With a red ball like this, time is everything. We need to be moving forward. Somebody else can watch the coroner fingerpaint.'
I stood there, not sure how to play it.
'I called a friend of mine in real estate who sold me my Hollywood house last year.' He grinned again. 'LeAnne has a big case on the Hitchmeister. I'm otherwise involved right now so I haven't gotten around to her yet, but the girl's managed to secure a spot on my farm team. That means she's eager to help me so she ran the title on this house. It's owned by something called the Dorothy White Foundation. It's some kinda trust and the primary beneficiary is listed as…'
He flipped open his leather notebook. 'Brooks David Dunbar, 236 Schuyler Road. Schuyler Road is a primo street in Beverly Hills, by the way. I've also got the zip if you want it, but I hate showing off.'
After the coroner left with the bodies I handed Alexa the keys to the MDX. She was still on the dispatch sheet as one of the primary responding officers so she was going to accompany the ME to the morgue and cover the autopsy. Then she would officially sign off on the case.
Since CSI would have control of this crime scene until almost morning, I agreed to follow up on the Brooks Dunbar lead that Sumner had just supplied.
I told Jeb and Alexa where we were going, then Hitch and I walked down to Mulholland where our cars had been reparked by patrol.
We got into Hitch's Porsche Carrera. As I sat in the soft tan leather passenger seat, he turned on his scanner. Then we pulled out and sped toward Mulholland, top down, both straight pipes snarling like angry jungle cats.
Chapter 7
'What was that all about with Rosselli?' I asked as we raced across the mountain ridge on Mulholland to Coldwater, then made a left turn and headed down the winding canyon road into Beverly Hills.
'Rosselli thinks he can cook,' Hitch answered, using the Porsche's mid-engine cornering dynamic to take the S-turns on Coldwater at nut-puckering speeds. 'Fucking Italians. All those greaseballs ever came up with that was worth anything was pizza and that's just a cheese sandwich with anchovies.'
'And you're some kind of expert?'
'I've trained at the Cordon Bleu. I fly to France and take cooking classes on my vacations.'
'I didn't know bullshit could be prepared in the French style,' I said.
'Bullshit is a French specialty.' He grinned. 'And don't knock my cooking 'til you've tried it. Wait 'til you taste my eggs Portugal.'
'What I meant was, what kinda deal do you have going with Rosselli? You get him movie premiere tickets or actress phone numbers, he sends you your own personal copies of the crime scene photos so you can include them in your movie pitches at UTA?'
'Come on, Shane. Let's not do this, okay? Everybody in this town is in business. Even you. We just have different profit expectations. Don't tell me you never flashed your badge to get out of a speeding ticket.' He smiled. 'Besides, how many L. A. cops have sold cases to the movies before me? LAPD Sgt. Joe Wambaugh single-handedly turned that into a cottage industry. Onion Field, Lines and Shadows, Echoes in the Darkness, just to name a few.
'We got a front-row seat to the greatest show on earth. You want to just write this stuff up in some stupid case file and forget it? I'm asking you to take a minute here and clear your bowels, man.'
'We're working a triple homicide, Sumner. I told Jeb I'd work with you, but if I lose patience and throw you back like all your other partners, then you'll be out of Homicide Special and down to chasing smash-and-grabs in the Valley. We do this my way or you're gonna get your next decent police posting about the same time we colonize Mars.'
He took a moment, grimaced, then said, 'You're being very shortsighted.'
'This case is not going to end up in a theater near you. It's gonna end up in court.'
After a minute where he raced through another S-turn, causing me to grab the door pull, he said, 'You need to relax on this, Scully, because a case like Mosquito doesn't come along very often.
'Granted, when it does, the Hollywood gantseh machers will drop trou and grab for the K-Y 'cause most studio execs have business degrees from Princeton or Yale, but they got no story imagination. What they do know is, they've got a much better chance of getting a picture greenlit if it's been a big national news story first, making it what we in the biz call a presold title.' Right now this Skyline Drive case is just an interesting springboard with no ending.' He turned and focused the Hollywood Hitch persona at me. 'Lemme give you some Screen-writing 101
