CHAPTER 15
I hung up the phone, clenched my fist, and said to myself, “ Yes!”
Duffy walked by and I called out, “We got a cold hit!”
“On Relovich?”
“Yeah.”
Duffy clapped his hands once. Then he walked over to my desk and said, “You’re a marvel, Ash my lad. I never had a doubt you’d put this one together. I just didn’t think you’d do it so quickly.” He pulled up a chair in front me. “What’d you get the hit on?”
“The Kleenex.”
“Amazing.”
“Not really. Next to blood, mucus has about the highest concentration of DNA.”
Ortiz, who overheard the exchange, called out, “The Case of the Golden Booger.”
“Who’s your guy?” Duffy asked.
“Terrell Fuqua.”
“Sounds like an interior decorator from West Hollywood,” Ortiz said.
Duffy waved him off. “What do we know about Fuqua?”
“At this point, nothing,” I said.
“Let’s jack his ass up by the end of the day and we can make the five o’clock news.”
“I’ve got to track him down first.”
I slid my chair over to a computer and called up the system we called Cheers because of its acronym-CCHRS (Consolidated Criminal History Reporting System). I printed out Fuqua’s rap sheet-listing all his arrests in Los Angeles County-which was an impressive nine pages. Next, I clicked onto the CII-the Criminal Index Information- which detailed Fuqua’s convictions and prison sentences. Then I checked CAL/GANG, a state-wide computerized gang file for law enforcement agencies to determine Fuqua’s street name-C-Dawg-and the set he ran with-the Back Hood Bloods.
After about twenty minutes, I had compiled a fairly comprehensive criminal biography for my suspect. Terrell Fuqua was a thirty-four-year-old ex-con who was one of the founding members of his South Central gang. He had been arrested numerous times by Southeast Division cops for narcotic sales, car theft, burglary, rape, selling stolen property, but he beat most of the charges because it appeared that witnesses had been intimidated into backing down, or his gang associates were willing to take the rap for him. He had been convicted of only two felonies: once for attempted burglary and once for robbery when he stuck up a liquor store and made off with $900.
During the attempted burglary, patrol officers had caught him trying to climb inside a window after a neighbor called 911. He spent a year in county jail.
And there was no way for him to wriggle out of the robbery because a detective recovered from Fuqua’s house a bottle of Tequila and a carton of cigarettes stolen from the liquor store, as well as a ski mask used during the heist. He spent five years at Folsom.
I called R amp; I-the Records and Identification Unit-and asked for all of Fuqua’s arrest reports. After I took the elevator down to the first floor and picked up the files, I started reading the copies while walking back to the elevator, bumping into a commander, who flashed me a withering look. For the next hour I perused the files and gleaned several facts that quickened my pulse: Fuqua had once been arrested on a South Central street corner carrying a. 40-caliber semiautomatic pistol-the same type of gun that killed Relovich. And Fuqua’s robbery arrest five years ago was even more interesting. The liquor store was in San Pedro, which established his familiarity with Relovich’s neighborhood. And the detective on the Harbor Division robbery table who put together the case against Fuqua was-Pete Relovich.
This confirmed what I had believed all along: Relovich knew his killer. Although it seemed unlikely that Relovich would let a dirtbag like Fuqua into his house, maybe there was an explanation. I just couldn’t fathom what it was.
Fuqua had an obvious motive-revenge-because although he had an extensive criminal history, Relovich had been the only detective to put together a good enough case to send him to state prison. But I knew that sometimes an obvious motive was a red herring.
I called a state parole office in Sacramento and picked up the name and phone number of Fuqua’s parole officer. He provided me with his charge’s South Central address. I then contacted the Southeast Division captain and arranged for two uniforms to back me up when I jammed Fuqua. I headed down the Harbor Freeway, with Duffy in the front seat and Ortiz-whose partner just left for vacation-in back. We pulled off at Florence and met the two patrol officers in the station’s roll call room. I showed them a booking photo of Fuqua. Duffy worked out the logistics, telling the uniforms to storm the front door, while Ortiz and I guarded the back. Duffy said he would monitor the bust from the sidewalk.
We drove out of the station lot and parked a half block from Fuqua’s house. Ortiz and I slipped on our Kevlar vests and blue LAPD wind-breakers and followed the officers. The street was barren, without a single tree or bush, lined with slum apartments and ramshackle bungalows with splintered porches. Sandwiched between a front house, which was encircled by a dry patchy lawn, and an alley, Fuqua lived in small gray guest cottage with two stained mattresses stacked against the side.
While the uniformed officers pounded on the door, I kept my hand over my. 45. In the distance, I could hear an out of sync rooster crowing. The officers continued to knock, but no one came to the door. I peeked in a back window. The apartment was vacant. Ortiz and I circled around to the sidewalk. I thanked the officers, who had missed lunch and were glad to leave, and motioned to Duffy. We walked to the house in front and rang the doorbell.
An elderly black man wearing faded denim overalls opened the door. He looked us up and down and glared with an expression of contempt. “Yeah?”
“We’re LAPD detectives and we’re looking for a former tenant of yours, Terrell Fuqua,” I said.
“Do you have a warrant for this house?”
“No.”
“Am I under arrest?”
I shook my head.
“Then I ain’t talking to no damn detective.” He slammed the door.
I rang the doorbell again.
The man angrily swung open the door. “What part of no don’t you understand, Mr. LAPD,” he said, spitting out the letters.
“I assume you rent that back house out,” I said.
The man stared at me without expression.
“My guess is that it’s not up to code. I’m sure if I notified city building and safety, an inspector could find a dozen violations and shut that rental down. It may be years before you could get a tenant in there again.”
The man slumped his shoulders and wearily opened the door. While Ortiz, Duffy, and I squeezed onto a sofa, the man carried a wooden chair from the kitchen and sat down across from us. “What you want to know?”
I showed him Fuqua’s booking photo. “Do you know this man?”
“Yeah. That Terrell. He lived out back.”
“When did he move in?”
“When he got outta the penitentiary. ‘Bout six months ago.”
“Weren’t you reluctant to rent to a guy who just got out of prison?” I asked.
“Naw. I tell him, ‘Don’t you bring that trouble around here.’ He didn’t. And he pay his rent on time.”
“When did he move?”
“Few weeks ago. I got a new tenant moving in on Monday.”
“Where’d he move to?”
“Don’t know. One day he say he got a new lady, and next day he out.”
“Where are they forwarding his mail?”
“He ain’t never got no mail.”
“Anybody around here might know where he moved?”
