'Wassup, Mr. Scully?' the tall; quick wide receiver answered.
'Hi, Billy, I'm looking for Chooch.'
'Uh, I left him at the library around five o'clock.' 'I thought he was spending the night over there.' 'He was, but he said something came up. Didn't say what.'
'Okay, thanks,' Shane said. 'If you hear from him, tell him to call home.'
'Yes, sir.'
Shane hung up and his imagination immediately started to run away with him. What if Chooch went to see Amac?
Of course, that was about the stupidest thing Chooch could do with the Emes in a citywide war. But the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that was exactly what his son had done.
He dialed Chooch's cell phone, and it started ringing down the hall in his bedroom. His son hadn't taken it with him.
He called Amac's cell number and got an 'out of the area' recording. He called Alexa again and this time, by claiming a personal emergency, was put directly into Chief Filosiani's office.
'I'm sure he's okay,' she said after listening to his concern. 'He's probably studying with somebody, or maybe he's at the library. Did you try to call him?'
'He left his cell here. I think he's with Amac,' Shane said. Then he heard the back door slam. 'Hold it. I think he just came in. Talk to you later.'
Shane hung up the phone and met his son in the kitchen. 'Where've you been, bud?' Shane asked with a little too much force, and got the teenage mantra.
'Out,' Chooch stonewalled.
'Right, but out where? I called Billy. He said he left you at five. It's after nine.'
'Don't you trust me, Dad?'
Shane had one of those parental moments. Did he want to make this a battleground where Chooch's word was at stake? 'You know I trust you.'
Chooch nodded, retrieved a soda from the fridge, then walked past him without saying anything else.
Shane wanted to be fresh for tomorrow's meeting with Chief Filosiani, so he went to bed at ten and was sound asleep by 10:02.
He had an unsettling dream.
Chooch was dragging a big mahogany coffin up the hill at the New Calvary Cemetery, tugging it up to the edge of an open grave. When he got it there, he looked at Shane and smiled.
'It's called a Heaven Rider,' his son said proudly in the dream. 'My eses will all come. Vatos will talk about my bravery. They will celebrate my life.' Suddenly, the chapel bell started ringing, and then it sounded more and more like a telephone.
Shane opened his eyes and looked at the bedside clock. It was almost eleven. The phone kept ringing. He sat up in bed and fumbled the receiver out of the cradle, noticing that Alexa still wasn't there.
'Hello,' he said.
'Is this Sergeant Shane Scully?' a woman's voice asked. 'Yes. Who is this?'
'Detective Carla DePass, Homicide.'
Uh-oh, Shane thought, but said, 'What can I do for you, Detective?'
'My partner, Detective Lou Ruta, and I are working a homicide at West Eleventh Street, just east of Hoover. We'd appreciate it if you could roll on this, right now.'
'I'm not assigned to Homicide. In fact, I don't even go back on active duty till tomorrow.'
'We don't need help investigating the murder. We need some help identifying the vic. We're at 2635 West Eleventh, Los Angeles. How soon can you make it here?'
'That's gonna take me half an hour.'
'Don't let it take any longer,' she said, and was gone. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. That address was somewhere down in the Rampart Division.
Then he had a dark premonition as to who'd died.
Chapter 12
'Detective Ruta's in the back by the garage,' a young uniformed policeman told Shane after he had identified himself. Shane hung his creds in the handkerchief pocket of his blazer and started up the narrow concrete driveway. The house was a ramshackle California Craftsman, an architectural style popular in Southern California in the thirties and forties. This one had seen better days. The low wood dormers flaked paint, and sagging drainpipes and window shutters made the once fashionable structure look forlorn. This part of Rampart was ethnically mixed; the house on West 1 1 th was located on a street that, a few years back, had been all Hispanic, but Vietnamese and Koreans were beginning to buy up the neighborhood. Asian and Mexican families were standing in their doorways up and down the street, looking at the police circus parked in the center of the block.
Shane got to the head of the drive where Detective DePass, a middle-aged blonde in plainclothes with a weight lifter's build and close-cropped white hair, stopped him. 'You said half an hour. It's twice that. Ruta is chewing my ass.'
'Well, let's go calm him down then,' Shane said. 'Which one is he?'
She pointed out Detective Ruta.
Ruta was one of those police nightmares that every cop looks at and thinks Please, dear God, don't let me end up like that. He was at least seventy pounds overweight with a drinker's beet-red complexion and a nose like a small Idaho potato. His unkempt mustache was growing down both sides of his mouth in a modified Fu Manchu, or was it a Pancho Villa? He looked like he was just waiting for somebody to say something that would give him an excuse to kick the shit out of them.
A second Blue stopped Shane before he reached Ruta. 'You have to sign the Crime Scene Attendance sheet, Sarge,' the rookie said, so Shane took the man's clipboard and signed himself in at 12:07 A. M.
'Scully, you're with me,' Ruta called, waving a meaty hand at him and walking toward the back porch. He had never met Ruta, but Shane had gotten so much press coverage in the last two years that most cops knew him on sight.
Shane ignored the fat sergeant and veered toward the garage. He could see crime techs working inside through the half-open door. There was a police evidence table out front and he could see the contents of a beaded purse set out on its surface: no wallet, but a few bills and several pictures of a marmalade cat. Shane headed past the table. He wanted to see the body, but Ruta moved quickly and grabbed Shane's arm, pulling him toward the back porch.
'Hey, Detective, you wanna take your hands off me?' Shane complained. Ruta looked at him for a long hard moment before finally releasing him.
'I'm working this hit and I don't need you climbing all over my crime scene, fucking up my forensics, okay?'
'If you didn't want me here, why did you call me?' Shane asked. Now he thought he could also smell booze on Ruta's breath.
'Don't be a smart aleck. I'm gonna ask ya just this once to try real hard not to go up my ass. Zat gonna be too much trouble?'
'Why am I here?'
'I need you to put the hat on this vic for me. No wallet, no I. D. It's a whodunit.' In homicide, whodunits were mystees without suspects. Until a homicide dick knew the identity of the victim, it was impossible to make up a suspect list. Every investigator called out on a murder investigation prayed he would find an enraged spouse or burglar standing over the body waving the murder weapon. This one was going to cause Ruta to burn some shoe leather, and he was already pissed about it.
'How'm I gonna I. D. the vic without a visit to the crime scene?' Shane asked.
