Both Shane and the tall African American woman moved to the foot of the table to see what he had found. There, on Commander Mark Shephard's left ankle, on the inside just above his medial mallealous bone, was a small, two-inch, hand-drawn tattoo of a Viking head in profile. A horned helmet dominated the artwork.
Shane looked at the tattoo, then took a small camera out of his pocket that he always brought to autopsies to photograph anything of note for his case folder. He carefully shot the tattoo from different angles.
Two things about the tattoo bothered Shane: First, most police officers would rather cut off one of their fingers than get a tattoo anywhere on their body. They viewed tattoos as a mark of the criminal underclass. Cops who already had one prior to joining the force usually invested in laser surgery to remove it.
Common folklore on the streets was that if you were a criminal, always look to see if your cohorts in crime were tattooed-or 'sleeved,' as the cons called it-because any guy without a tattoo was immediately suspected of being the Law.
The 'no tattoo' rule among cops was relatively inviolate, so it bothered Shane that Mark Shephard had this Viking on the inside of his right ankle. But there was something else about the tattoo that bothered Shane even more.
About three years before, the L. A. County Sheriff's Department had discovered a band of rogue officers. This group called themselves 'the Vikings,' and they all had Viking tattoos on their ankles. They were suspected of forcing confessions, usually by administering a little chin music in some dark place. The Vikings were eventually broken up, but this tattoo looked exactly like the ones worn by that bunch of officers. It was in the same place on the body, low on the right ankle, where it could be covered by a sock.
When this rogue group of deputies was first discovered, Sheriff Sherman Block tried to stage an inspection. He wanted to examine every sheriff's deputy's right ankle in search of Viking tattoos. But the Sheriffs Department Law Enforcement Union filed a lawsuit, claiming that such an inspection without probable cause violated the officers' civil rights. It became a big deal, and eventually the sheriffs union prevailed. The physical search never took place, but ten deputies were eventually terminated from the original core group.
Mark Shephard had the same tattoo, or at least one a lot like it. Shane wondered if the culture of the Vikings had somehow migrated from the Sheriffs Department to the LAPD. He made a mental note to try to get someone to pull Shephard's file to see if he had ever been loaned out to the sheriffs or had ever been part of one of the cross- pollination task forces. There had been several over the years, and a few were still operating: The Cobra Unit in the Valley was one; L. A. Impact was another. Even some of the big serial-killer task forces qualified. On the Hillside Strangler Unit, the Sheriff's Department and LAPD worked closely together because the murders occurred in both the city and county.
One other strange thing turned up as a result of the autopsy, and also caught Shane by surprise. But it didn't happen while Doc Miller was sawing up Commander Shephard and singing selections from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It arrived an hour later, when the preliminary blood work came back from the lab. Shane was stunned to learn that the Good Shepherd had been stoned when he parked the Remington Light in the central lobe of his cranial cavity. He had high traces of marijuana in his bloodstream.
'Shit,' Shane said as he stood outside the ME's office in the hazy mid-morning sunshine, trying to decide what to do with this new piece of information. How would he tell Alexa, or should he even tell her at all? Since it would eventually find its way into the press, maybe it would be better to let the Los Angeles Times deliver the bombshell. Shane didn't need to be the one to further distress Alexa with negative facts about her old boyfriend.
He decided to take some time and think about it. He went across the street and had a Heineken in a tavern called the Canoe Factory. The place was a hangout for medical examiners and their staff after long days of opening corpses and turning them into what they referred to as 'body canoes.'
As he sipped his late-morning brew, he realized he had no choice but to tell Alexa, even if telling her would drive them further apart. She was acting head of DSG, and it was her responsibility. She had to know about the tattoo, about Shane's suspicions. Furthermore, he was determined to find out if his old best friend, Jody Dean, was out there committing multiple homicides on his former commanding officers.
At eleven Shane left the bar and just barely made his rescheduled psychiatric appointment, only five blocks away.
He sat in the reclining chair while the psychiatrist asked him how his last four days had gone.
'Very well,' Shane lied. 'Exceedingly well, in fact.'
'Uh-huh… I see. Go on,' the fat doctor said.
Chapter 13
ALEXA GOT OUT of her department-issue Crown Victoria in front of Mark Shephard's house, where Shane was waiting. 'I really don't have time for this,' she said. 'I'm trying to get the budget stuff finished and take over down there.' She was dressed in a tan skirt and green blouse. Her lustrous black hair was pulled back, clipped with a barrette glinting in the late-afternoon sunshine.
He was standing by his Acura, which was parked nearby. In the backseat, jumping around with boundless enthusiasm, was Officer Krupkee, a one-year-old German shepherd he'd just borrowed from the West Valley Drug Enforcement Team. He let the dog out of the back of the car, took his leash, and led him toward the driveway.
'We need to go through the house. You need to be here,' he said, ducking under the yellow crime-scene tape, which was still strung up, moving around to the back door so the neighbors couldn't watch him break in. He was walking ahead of Alexa so she couldn't stop him.
He was already on the porch, lock pick out, when she finally caught up to him. Officer Krupkee was jumping around, barking and sniffing wildly.
'What's this about? Is that a drug-enforcement dog?' Alexa's questions were apprehensive.
'Meet Officer Krupkee, West Valley Canine Hall of Fame. He's discovered more drugs than Dow Chemical.'
'Shane,' she said ominously, 'why are we bringing a drug dog into Mark's house?'
'You remember the Vikings, that old Sheriffs Department club, or whatever it was?'
'Yeah, sure. Guys who had tattoos on their ankles and held court in the street.'
'I went to Commander Shephard's autopsy. He has one of those on his ankle.'
'Not when I was dating him.'
'Then it's more recent than that,' Shane answered stiffly.
He pulled the photo he took at the autopsy out of his jacket and gave it to her. He'd had it developed at a Photo-Mat an hour earlier.
She gave it a quick glance, then handed it back without comment.
He stuffed it away and began feeding his picks into the back-door lock. He finally got them in, but his hands were sweating. When he tried to turn the lock, his fingers slipped, or maybe it was Officer Krupkee tugging and jumping in circles at the end of his leash; whatever the reason, the picks fell out of the lock onto the wooden porch. Shane bent down to retrieve them and started over again.
'What's the second thing?' she asked as he went back to work on the dead bolt.
'He had marijuana in his bloodstream,' Shane said, avoiding eye contact while working on the door.
'Mark didn't do drugs.'
'Go tell the ME.'
She was silent, considering this. Then: 'So, now we're over here with a DED to do what?'
'Alexa, I know this isn't going to go down well between us, and I really do regret it, but I think it's possible Mark Shephard knew Jody wasn't in that urn on Lauren's mantel, and that's why Shephard is dead. I think Jody's undercover unit may be going bad, and I think it's possible Mark knew what Jody was doing-maybe tried to stop it.'
'Think, think, think… Isn't Shane a thinking policeman? Of course, a little evidence would sure be nice.'
'And you can stow the sarcasm, okay? I'm not trying to run down the memory of your friend.'
She was pissed; he could see it even in her sharp movements.
