She looked through the glass, saw blood was leaking all over her clean ER floor and quickly buzzed a male nurse through the door. He grabbed the wheelchair and started to push John into the back. Before he left, I got my watch back.
I waited while they gave John a preliminary exam. I wanted to rush right over to Alameda and Seventh and retrieve Alexa's computer, but I also needed to make sure Bodine was okay. Thirty minutes later a pleasant-looking female doctor came out of the back and found me. She had some of John's blood on her ER smock.
'That's one lucky dude,' she said. 'The blade missed his stomach by a fraction. Missed his large intestine by even less. It went in clean, nicked his bottom rib, and hit nothing but muscle and bone. If I was trying for that same track with a laproscope I doubt I could do it.'
'What are you going to do with him?'
'We'll keep him overnight. He'll need some whole blood transfusions. He's lost a lot. From the smell of him, he doesn't have insurance, so he's gonna be a charity ward case.'
'He's a material witness in a murder. I want him to have good care. If he needs anything beyond just normal M. T., the City of Los Angeles will cover it.' I showed her my badge. 'He should have an admittance form from earlier yesterday when his wrist was broken and you guys set it. Put any charges with that and I'll make sure it gets covered.'
'Sure cusses a lot,' the doctor said.
'He's an African prince. That gives him verbal immunity.'
The doctor raised her eyebrows. 'A prince? Really. Last royalty I got to treat was the Count of Crisco, but he was just a transvestite porn star.'
'Not the same thing,' I told her. Then I wrote my new cell number on a business card and handed it to her. 'I don't want him to leave here until I get back. If he tries, have somebody sit on him.'
As I was walking out of the ER waiting room, Alexa's story was on TV again. This tragedy had not only taken over our lives, but it was now becoming entertainment for the entire country. mystery at the lapd was the graphic scrawled across the TV screen. It displayed a collage of shots, including Alexa's shooting range still. A handsome news anchor with blond-tipped hair came on with a fresh angle.
'A new break on the David Slade LAPD killing,' he announced gravely. 'Police are speculating that there may be yet another explanation for the murder.'
'Finally,' I whispered. Then I watched as my own picture hit the screen.
'In a new scenario floated this afternoon by sources close to law enforcement officials, Lieutenant Scully's husband, Detective Shane Scully, is now being called a person of interest in the execution-style murder of LAPD Sergeant David Slade. Shane Scully, a member of the LAPD's elite Homicide Special unit, has reportedly been picked up by detectives working on the Slade murder and whisked off to Parker Center in handcuffs, where he underwent a prolonged and intense interrogation conducted by acting Police Chief Michael Ramsey.
The shot switched to a gray-haired man whose on-screen graphic identified him as retired LAPD homicide detective Chuck Bowman.
'If reports are true, and Lieutenant Alexa Scully was romantically involved with Sergeant Slade, then her husband should certainly be considered a suspect in both acts of violence,' the retired cop said.
I didn't stick around to hear the rest. I sprinted to my car and pulled out. How could I have missed it? Of course, I was going to be a prime suspect. If I'd been working the case as a homicide dick instead of a grieving husband, I would have put that together in a heartbeat. Rosey's warning had been right. I was caught in the net.
I decided as I drove away from the emergency room that I'd rather have the story be about me than Alexa. If they started focusing on me, maybe they'd stop pounding her. However, if I was a suspect, my movements were soon going to become seriously limited. I had to work fast. I decided to see how much trouble I was really in, so I picked up my cell and called Captain Calloway's direct line at Homicide Special.
'Calloway,' he said, coming right on.
'Cal, it's Shane.'
'Hey.' His voice sounded cool, but friendly. 'Where are you?'
'You hearing what these jerks on TV are saying about me?'
'You need to come in, Shane. We need to talk.'
'Captain, you can't believe I did this any more than Alexa did. Slade and Alexa weren't having an affair. There's some other reason he was in her car.'
'Rafie, Tommy, and I don't buy any of this either, but now that it's come up we gotta deal with it. We'll get it straightened out, but you gotta come in.'
Yeah, right, I thought.
Then he said, 'We need your time line for yesterday, and if you have an alibi for your whereabouts when Slade got killed, we're gonna need that, too.'
'I can't come in yet. I'm trying to get Alexa's computer,' I hedged. 'I made a deal with Great White Mike to get it for him.'
'That can wait,' Cal said. 'Your alibi, if there is one, can't.'
'Don't worry, I have an alibi,' I promised.
'It better be solid.'
I didn't answer. I just hung up. The guy who could vouch for my whereabouts was lying in a hospital bed at County-USC with a knife wound in his gut, and all of his hair chopped off. He looked like he'd just been hit by a thousand volts of electricity. My alibi was raving like a lunatic, crazy as a shithouse rat.
Chapter 27
Jungle Jack's Pawn Shop was in an old wood-sided house, tucked between two large vegetable stands in the produce market near Seventh. The fly-specked front windows displayed canteens, army knives, and other people's dusty clothes hanging on chipped mannequins. When I walked inside, a bell over the door rang, and after a moment, a rail-thin elderly man wearing his glasses up on his forehead came out from the back. He had Einstein hair and skin so white that it appeared almost purple in the overhead fluorescents.
'Don't break the circle, brother,' he said listlessly, as he shuffled around behind the counter. On the street, the circle was your group of tights your buddies. The circle was supposed to protect you. But it was a worthless concept because on the Row, you couldn't count on support from anybody who wasn't pushing free meals, Bibles, or a campaign agenda. The old man stood looking me carefully up and down.
'Cop,' he finally announced.
I pulled out my badge and showed him. He leaned down behind the counter and pulled out several sheets of paper.
'I'm running a business here, least I'm trying to, but you guys in property crime never get tired a putting me through these inventory checks do ya. I gotta bring in part-time labor to compile all this stuff. Here's the list you bozos had me do yesterday. Ain't my fault an occasional serial number gets filed. If you take my paid-for inventory and store it over at the PAB, how'm I supposed to stay in business?' The PAB was the Police Administration Building Parker Center.
'I'm not with property crimes.' I fished John's pawn ticket out of my pocket and handed it to him.
He pulled his glasses down off his forehead and looked at it. 'Says here, Samik Mampuna.' Then he looked up at me. 'You don't look like no Samik Mampuna.'
'Sure I do. Use your imagination.' I reached into my pocket and handed him a fifty. 'Why don't we stop screwing around and you go get that computer out of the back?'
'Gotta stay here twenty days. State law. Only guy who can pick it up 'fore then is the guy who pawned it. After twenty days it goes up for general sale. That's the rule. This ticket was bought yesterday, so you got yourself a few weeks to wait.'
He smiled, happy to finally be getting some payback on the LAPD.
'But you're gonna make an exception in this case, Jack, or I'm gonna get a desk and set it up on the sidewalk right in front of your place and check the serial numbers on every toaster and TV that walks in here.'
