Vigilante

methodology had actually contributed in a significant way on at least fifteen.

The day went slowly because I was calling potential wits, suspects, or uncooperative neighbors, trying to set up interviews.

At around three, Hitch went to the superior court to interview Lita’s trial judge. Thomas Amador was a crusty old coot. Cops loved this judge because he threw the book at felons. The Public Defender’s office called him Judge Slamador, which might give you an idea of how tough he was.

At five, I took the key to Lita’s duplex from the evidence folder and drove over to Boyle Heights.

I parked up the street from the crime scene, which was still festooned with yellow tape. Then I watched the house for almost twenty minutes trying to feel the vibe of the neighborhood. It was too early for much gang activity, but because the sun sets around five thirty, the streetlights were just coming on.

A few of the living rooms up and down the street were lighting up as residents arrived home. As with most violent hoods, I saw a number of dogs with no tags running around off-leash, scavenging.

After a while, I got out of the Acura and walked toward the house, then stood there looking at it and thinking about Lita Mendez, trying to do as Jigsaw had suggested and capture her mind-set.

How did I feel about the neighborhood where I lived? Was it too dangerous and violent? Did that bother me? Did I like it here? Did I feel safe? Was I angry? Was I sad? What was driving me? What was I looking forward to? What frightened me?

The house was in a complete state of disrepair. A house is an outer covering, just like our clothes. When we dress in colorful clothes, it can signify a bright mood. Dark clothes often signal darker moods. I first noticed this phenomenon when I went to Germany to pick up a murder suspect just after the Berlin Wall fell. It was cold and snowy, and the new Western-style economy hadn’t begun kicking in yet. It was a bleak place. I noticed everybody in the street was wearing gray or dark brown.

John had taken that observation a step further. He had told me that besides clothes, the general condition of a house can sometimes hint at general personality traits of the person who owned it. This lawn was not cut. Was this because Lita had just moved in?

I walked up the drive and around to the backyard, where the grass was brown and dry. More of the same. The garage was padlocked shut, but I looked through a grimy window. Lita’s red Chevy Caprice had already been towed to Impound, where it was being processed by forensic scientists to see if she had possibly been kidnapped somewhere else and brought back here by the killer, who, if he used the Caprice to transport her body, had perhaps left some trace or a latent print behind.

I took the back steps up to the porch, unlocked the door, and entered. Lita had been a troublesome, thoroughly organized adversary, but she was a disorganized housekeeper. The inside of the duplex looked like a fraternity house den. Our CSIs had made it worse, spreading graphite powder everywhere in their search for prints.

I stood in the kitchen where she died and looked down at the square of missing floor that we’d removed to preserve the two 9mm slugs.

I again remembered the garlic smell I’d noticed when I first hit the crime scene at 9:15 A.M. What had Lita cooked but not eaten the night of the murder that contained garlic? The thought kept pestering me, but I put it aside.

Lita had been fatally beaten, had fallen backward with her arms outstretched. Maybe she’d still been partially conscious as she fell, but probably not. The cerebral hemorrhage and the ME’s report told me Lita was most likely dead when she landed. Then the unknown subject, the killer, had stepped forward and put two head shots into her already-lifeless body. Brutal, cold-blooded, and unnecessary.

The body had been beaten badly and she was already dead when she hit the floor. So why had the unsub put the two postmortem shots into her brain? Was this classic overkill signaling rage by somebody who was emotionally involved with the victim, like a jealous lover or someone Lita had had important emotional conflicts with? Had the unsub hated Lita so much that it wasn’t enough to just beat her to death? Did the killer also need to disfigure the body, blowing holes in Lita’s face?

Or was it just the opposite? Were the two shots attempting to send a false message? Were they simply staging to make it look like uncontrollable rage while, in reality, the unsub was coldly uninvolved? I didn’t know which theory was true yet. Generally staging is the less likely of the two because it suggests an organized, more sophisticated mind and most violent killers are disorganized, unstructured, and out of control.

I moved through the house. Everything was a mess. It was logical to assume the house was clean when Lita moved in a week earlier, but the closets were already in disarray. Clothes were strewn on the floor instead of on hangers. Even her expensive court clothes were thrown in a heap below the bar. Had she done this? Had the unsub?

I walked slowly through the house, sitting on Lita’s furniture, sampling her extensive music CD collection, trying to find answers, making notes about my feelings and observations in a spiral notebook.

Finally, I sat on the bed and looked around Lita’s darkened bedroom. She had also tacked up sheets across the windows in here. Was this because she was depressed and liked it dark or liked being in rooms without sunshine? Or were the sheets to protect her from a possible sniper’s shot? When Lita died, did she already know that somebody wanted to kill her? I wondered if her life had recently been threatened and that’s why she’d tacked up the sheets. I wondered if she’d confided this fear to anyone. I made a note to find out.

I stayed in the house for almost an hour. On my way out, I paused in the kitchen to stand once more where Lita had died. I could see her everyday dishes in an open cupboard. I crossed and took a cereal bowl down from the shelf. It hadn’t been washed completely and still had a tiny speck of old food on the side. The glasses in the cupboard were rinsed but were a little grimy. They obviously hadn’t gone through the dishwasher.

I took a few down.

I could see Lita’s lipstick still on the rim of one. Water streaks marked the sides. I smelled a glass. It had a slightly foul odor as if some of the residue of the drink it once held was still there. I checked a few more dishes and found more of the same.

I opened the dishwasher. The array of pots and pans Hitch had found were still in the racks. I picked up a saucepan, studied it. I smelled dishwashing soap. Unlike the crockery and glasses in the cupboard, the pots and pans had been run through the entire cycle.

Why were all these cooking pans run through the washer while Lita only rinsed out her regular dishware in the sink?

When you work homicides you quickly learn that people are creatures of habit. The entire house was a testimony to deferred maintenance. Lita was a sloppy housekeeper. She didn’t hang up her clothes or pick up her things. She left old pizza boxes around. When she did the dishes, she only rinsed and stacked. She would have probably done the same with the pots and pans. That was her habit, the way she lived.

So why on the night she was murdered did she change this pattern and wash those pots and pans in the dishwasher? The answer to that was pretty simple. She hadn’t. The night she died, somebody else had been here. Somebody else had run the pans through the washer.

Did the unsub wash the pans? If so, why?

As I was mulling this, I saw a flash of movement through the back window. I crouched low and looked into the backyard.

A man was in the shadows of the house, sneaking toward the locked garage.

CHAPTER 16

I’d put the lights on in Lita’s house when I first arrived and had been walking around as if I owned the place, so whoever was in the backyard had to know I was here. He probably also knew I was in here alone. However, Lita had tacked those sheets up on quite a few of her windows, so I had some cover.

I found a protected spot, knelt down, and pulled my 9mm Springfield automatic out of its custom leather holster. I tromboned the slide, kicking a fresh round into the chamber, but left the safety on. Then I kept low and moved out of the kitchen and into the bedroom.