Bleeding Out

Frank looked toward the body. 'What do you know about her?'

'See that lady over there? The one in the brown dress?' Heisdaeck squinted dramatically and pointed to a bent, gray-haired woman who was talking to a female officer. 'She found it.'

'It?' Noah frowned, shooting the officer daggers.

'She was walking down to Price's Market,' Heisdaeck continued, tossing his head in the direction of the grocery store on Crenshaw—

Noah interrupted, 'They don't open until seven.'

Heisdaeck pasted Noah with an exasperated glare, as if he hadn't been working the nine-three since this putz was still a wad stuck up his daddy's Johnson. He sighed with infinite condescension and said, 'You watch her walk, kid. If we let her go right now she might make it there by eight o'clock.'

Noah rolled his eyes and went to talk to the old lady himself.

'Punk's got no idea what it's like to get old,' he complained to Johnnie. Briggs was only a few years older than Noah, but he nodded sympathetically.

'So the old lady found her, then what?' Frank prompted.

'Then she goes across the street—she's been livin' here all her life, knows everyone in the 'hood—and knocks on the green house over there.'

He indicated a fading bungalow across the street, framed in orange and red bougainvillea. It needed some paint, but like the little houses next to it, the bungalow was tidy and squarely framed by a trim green lawn.

'Her friend lives there.' Heisdaeck was pointing to the crowd again. 'The lady in the pink bathrobe. The old lady tells her there's a white girl laying out there and her friend invites her in for a cup of tea and calls the cops. I'll betcha the tea came first,' Heisdaeck grumbled.

Frank ducked under the tape, leaving the two men bullshitting, or 'networking' as Johnnie likened his endless hours of griping and bragging.

'What do you have?' she said, strolling up to the pale rookie who was struggling to keep his breakfast in his belly. Frank didn't expect to learn anything from her question. She'd asked it to get the rookie focused, moving around, looking for clues. Though she doubted she'd get any of those from him either. This already looked like a dump job.

'Ma'am?'

'I want you to go to that unmarked over there. Find the bag in the back seat and take it to that detective talking to Heisdaeck.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

Frank sipped from her styrofoam cup, kneeling before the body. Dump jobs were the worst. The killing was done one place, the body dumped in another. Then she saw the KTLA news van rolling down the street. She watched Johnnie offering the rookie a donut from the bag he held open under the kid's nose. The kid groaned and finally set his breakfast free. Johnnie neatly stepped aside, shooting Frank a thumbs-up. Frank nodded, pointing to the woman exiting the news van. Johnnie returned the nod and went to intercept her.

Frank cringed as she turned back to the Jane Doe and heard Johnnie holler, 'Hey, good-lookin'! Out slumming this morning?'

Momentarily free of distractions, Frank scanned the body. The victim appeared to be in her midteens, probably Caucasian. Livid bruises covered almost her entire body. There was no obvious cause of death, but blood crusted around her rectal area suggested a possible internal trauma.

Two facts immediately bothered Frank: the lack of clothing and the dump site. That the girl was completely naked indicated somebody had taken the time to undress her, either before or after she was killed. Second, there were plenty of better spots to leave the body. Even in a panic their perp probably wasn't dumb enough to just open his car door as he was driving by the high school and push her out. That he chose to dump her in an area where she'd be quickly found, and where he could easily have been detected, indicated further deliberation on his part.

Within half an hour two more detectives from Frank's 93rd squad showed up, Ike Zabbo and Lou Diego. Wide and blocky, Ike looked like a gangster in his flashy three-piece suit, diamond pinkie rings glinting in the new sun. His partner was a thin, wiry Hispanic man everyone called Taquito. Frank briefed them on what Briggs and Noah had culled so far, which took all of five minutes.

The coroner's tech pulled up soon after. He was still in the area from the Mackay pickup, so the detectives were ready to bag the body in a few hours. That was the only good thing about this case so far. Instead of decreasing as the scene processing dragged on, the number of news vans ominously increased. Frank had called in the crime scene unit. Although they'd bitched her out, telling her it was obvious to a five-year old with a blindfold on that there wasn't any evidence at the scene, sixteen years with the LAPD had taught Frank to always plan ahead. She could already see brass written all over this case, and Frank was carefully covering her ass.

'Ready for the shit storm?'

Noah grinned at her, rubbing his hands together with glee.

Frank surveyed the fleet of news crews behind a second line of police tape, then scouted the crowd for any brass that might have shown up. Nine times out of ten they barged onto the scene fresh from a good night's sleep and power breakfasts, only to contradict everything she'd said.

'No Fubar yet,' Noah said, almost reading her mind, also looking around for Captain Foubarelle. The SID techs had left already, disgusted with Frank, and as she headed toward the hungry cameras she told Noah to take the tape down after the news vans left.

Paul Massey from the Times was the first reporter in her face. He was tall, balding, openly queer. Over the last year she'd watched him thin and lose color. Makeup didn't conceal the bruises and blotches that erupted on his skin. Pain in the ass that he was, there was no pleasure in watching the man slowly die from AIDS.

'Do you know who the girl is?' he asked. 'How old is she?'

'We don't know who the victim is. She appears to be in her midteens, but we won't know until we have a positive ID.'

'What was the cause of death?'

That was Sally Eisley, from KTLA. Loud, obnoxious, in your face, absolutely without scruples. Absolutely knockdown gorgeous.

'We don't know yet. The—'

'Oh come on, Lieutenant! You must have some idea.'

Lieutenant Franco twitched her lips in a semblance of a smile but her eyes remained cool, locked onto Sally's.

'I have plenty of ideas,' she admitted, 'but no facts. When I know the facts—'

'You'll know the facts,' Sally finished in a frustrated singsong.

An Asian woman Frank didn't recognize said, 'Lieutenant, you've been here for over three hours. Do you have any indication who might have done this?'

'We do not.'

'She looked pretty battered. Do you think it was a hate crime? Racially motivated?' asked Tom Blake from the LA. Weekly.

Frank slid around the battery comment. 'At this time we have no motive.'

'Doesn't it seem obvious that a white girl killed in a black neighborhood might involve a racial motivation?'

'That is not at all obvious.' Frank didn't add that the girl was dumped there but not necessarily killed in the neighborhood.

'But it could be,' Blake persisted.

Frank reiterated, 'We have no reason to suspect that at this point.'

They both knew it could be a race crime, but admission would come across as confirmation that it was a race crime. Frank wouldn't take the weak bait, and Blake shared Sally Eisley's frustration.

Above the din of questions Frank could hear a siren wailing toward them. That could only mean Foubarelle or some other brass-hat was on the way.