Park, near John Quimby.'
My heart sank. This was it. Five bodies and no clearances. I was about to get the hook. 'Okay. Notify patrol that I'm on my way. Should be about twenty to thirty minutes, depending on traffic.' I hung up without even asking if they'd been able to reach Zack. Deep in my heart I was hoping they couldn't find him.
'Another one?' Alexa said, concerned.
I nodded and stood. 'Gotta roll. It's in Canoga Park.'
I kissed Alexa, squeezed Delfina's hand, and was about to hug Chooch, when my son stood up with me. 'Can I walk you out?' he asked.
'Sure.'
We walked through the crowded two-room restaurant without speaking. Outside, I gave the valet the ticket for my car. Since joining Homicide Special, I'd begun following Alexa on family outings so I'd have a car if I got called out. The wind off the water was still cold, and was energetically flapping the red awning over us.
'Listen, Dad, I know you think I was spouting off in there, but I wasn't,' Chooch said.
'It's okay to be frightened,' I said, finally picking the way I wanted to deal with this.
'I'm not frightened. Whatta you talking about, frightened? Who says I'm frightened?'
'In police work, courage is a career commodity. You learn pretty quick that the loudest talkers on the job are usually the last ones through the door. You see a cop with a big bore magnum in some fancy quick-draw holster, you're probably looking at a wuss. I hear a guy going on like you were in there, it just tells me one thing. He doesn't believe a word he's saying and he's scared to death somebody's gonna find out he's a fraud. I was only with Coach Carroll for an hour, but that was long enough for me to know he's a guy who understands what motivates people. You go running off at the mouth like that around him, and he's gonna know you don't think you're very good. I wouldn't let him see that if I were you.'
I could see from the look on his face that I had read him right. He was scared to death, looking down at his feet.
'It's a big step, a Division One school like USC,' he finally said.
'I know it is. But whether you go there, UCLA, or Penn State; or whether you go and sell clothes at The Gap, you gotta be yourself. The way to impress people is through actions, not words. You want Coach to play you, work on your game and be a good teammate. Help the other guy, even if it means he plays and you don't. Somewhere down the road it's going to bring success.'
I could see that Chooch wanted to keep talking, but my car was delivered to the curb and I tipped the valet. It always amazes me how life chooses times when you can't linger to deliver up defining moments.
'We gotta pick this up later, son. I've got somebody important waiting for me.'
I gave Chooch a hug, climbed into the Acura, and pulled out seeing my son in the rearview mirror, looking after me.
As I got on the freeway I tried to get my mind off Chooch and what I needed to tell him. I ran the case again in my head. It had been six days since we found Forrest. However, if you removed him from the Fingertip case, it put the killings back on a two-week clock.
I exited the 101 at Desoto. Old haunts beckoned me-bars and liquor stores where I'd once tried to eliminate the hollow feeling inside myself by drowning the ache with booze.
Being back in this part of the West Valley put me emotionally closer to Zack. I had a weird flashback Zack and I were on the mid-watch and had just heard a SHOTS FIRED OFFICER NEEDS ASSISTANCE call on the scanner. We raced to the scene, breaking red lights, going Code Two. Zack always chased adrenaline rides, always made a tire-smoking run at any Shots Fired situation. I was drunk in the passenger seat and the wild ride made me sick.
We hit the call ahead of the designated unit and Zack took off running into the apartment, leaving me sitting in our unit, still nauseous and dizzy. I remembered hearing gunfire inside the apartment and stumbled out of the patrol car, fumbling for my weapon. I dropped it in the flowing gutter water and fell in face first after it. While I fished for my pistol in the sewer drain, Zack was in a deadly shootout, dropped two assholes, both with long yellow sheets, and saved a wounded officer. He also kept me away from our watch commander, sending me back to the station with another officer before our field supervisor arrived on the scene. At the time, I'd been grateful. But now I was confused. Were these rages I was witnessing now, a new development, or had Zack always had them? Was I the perfect partner for a cop prone to violence-too useless to even be a witness? I didn't know. My memory of that period was an alcoholic haze.
By the time I arrived at the address in Canoga Park, the crime scene was already filling up with news teams and looky-loos. Zack was not on the scene. This time I decided not to wait for him. I had a hunch he would be a no-show. A lot of civilians and neighborhood kids were milling around near the edge of the concrete levee. Fortunately, there were enough cops this time to hold them back.
I located the officer in charge; a forty-year-old sergeant with blond hair, a Wyatt Earp stash, and three service stripes-nine years on the job. His nameplate read: P. RUCKER.
'Come on, we got a trail marked over here,' Rucker said.
I followed him along the lip of the embankment while news crews tracked us from across the street and shot our progress. Rucker led me down through tangled sage, old McDonald's cups and Burger King boxes, into the concrete riverbed. There were three young cops standing near the body. Ray Tsu was already leaning over the guest of honor looking at the wounds, but was waiting to move him until I got there. A ratty old blanket, which probably belonged to the victim, covered the corpse's face.
'Thanks for waiting,' I said.
Ray nodded and lifted the blanket. This vic, like all the others, was mid-fifties to mid-sixties, and had been shot in the temple. The bullet was gone-another through and through. I kneeled down and studied the body. He was bald, sun-weathered, and dressed in rags. His teeth were a tobacco-stained mess. I named him Quimby-a comedy name, but I was getting frustrated.
'John Doe Number Five,' Ray said, looking up at me. 'No wallet. Somebody in those apartments probably called it in. Anonymous call, so we don't have a respondent.'
'Let's clear this crowd of uniforms out,' I said to Rucker, not wanting any of the cops to see the symbol if there was one. Rucker moved the officers away while Ray and I kneeled down on opposite sides of the body and pulled up his ratty shirt.
The now-familiar emblem was carved crudely on his chest.
An hour later we were ready to carry the deceased up to the coroner's wagon. I was up on the street wondering where my partner was, when I heard a voice behind me.
'Detective?'
I turned to see a young patrolman whose nameplate read: OFFICER F. MELLON.
'Yes?'
'I think I might know this guy.'
I pulled him away from the swarming press and walked him fifty yards up to my car, opened the door, and sat him inside. Then I got behind the wheel, turned on my tape recorder, and set it on the dash in front of him.
'Where do you know him from?' I asked.
'Well, not know him, exactly. I mean, I never talked to him or anything, but if it's the same guy, I used to see him all the time, a couple of miles from here, standing by the freeway off-ramp at De Soto holding a sign.' 'Panhandling.'
'Yeah. His sign read: HELP ME. VIETNAM VET. CORPSMAN. Or something like that. I remember thinking I'd never before seen a sign where the vet put down what he did in Nam. Maybe he figured vets who'd been hit and saved by a corpsman would stop and give him money.'
'Officer Mellon, I want you to go back to the station and get some guys together. I'll get a picture of this victim over there in an hour. I want you to start talking to homeless people near that off-ramp. Show 'em the picture. I'll square it with your watch commander. Get me a name to go with this guy. Can you do that?'
'I can try.'
I handed him my card and took his numbers.
After he got out of the car, I put it in gear, and drove Code Two down to the lab on Ramirez Street. On the way, I called the WC in Canoga Park and told him I needed everybody he could spare to go out and show the new vic's picture around.
