“This is just a standard follow-up.”
The sheriff laughed. “Serves me right for thinkin’ I could get a straight answer out of one of you Los Angle- ese boys.”
Five minutes later, the sheriff faxed the autopsy report to the squad room, and I spread it out on my desk. Cause of death: penetrating gunshot wound to medulla oblongata. Mode of death: suicide. Entry: one-eighth inch above center of uvula. Stippling and sooting to back of the larynx and tongue. Direction: front to back. Projectile: copper jacketed lead. 32-caliber bullet, flattened nose. Exit: none; recovered from medulla oblongata; massive hemorrhage. Trajectory: level. Associated injury from fall after gunshot: left external ear contusion; left lateral neck ecchymosis; left parietal scalp contusion, abrasion.
I understood the surgeon’s hypothesis: Mitchell committed suicide by sticking a. 32-caliber pistol in his mouth and pulling the trigger. The bullet rattled around in his skull and lodged in the base of the brainstem. Mitchell fell to the ground, bruising his ear, neck, and head.
The surgeon might know more about anatomy and medicine than me, but he probably had conducted only a handful of suicide and homicide autopsies. I’d viewed hundreds and had read thousands of autopsy reports. I trusted my own conclusion, which was diametrically opposed to the doctor’s.
I didn’t believe Mitchell committed suicide for one elemental reason: the trajectory of the bullet was level. I lifted my thumb and dropped my extended forefinger on the bottom row of my teeth, as if I was placing a gun inside my mouth. The trajectory was upward at about a thirty-degree angle. It was highly unlikely that anyone sticking a gun in his own mouth would drop the barrel so low that it was level and he could blow off the tissue below the epiglottis. And it was highly unlikely, I believed, that the injuries to Mitchell’s ear, neck, and skull resulted from a fall after the gunshot. I simply could not envision Mitchell suffering significant contusions in three different places from a bounce off the floor.
It was clear to me that Mitchell had been struck several times with a blunt object. When he was dazed or unconscious, the killer stuck the barrel in Mitchell’s mouth-to simulate suicide-pulled the trigger, and then rolled the dead man’s fingers on the pistol butt.
CHAPTER 22
What were the odds that Relovich and Mitchell had been killed within months of each other? I’d pursued the obvious leads, now was time to go after the longshots. I knew that whoever broke into the house and killed Relovich and stole his laptop was probably wearing latex gloves, since no prints had been found-other than Relovich’s and a few police officers. It looked like a professional job.
While the chances now of successfully lifting prints were remote, I knew it was not impossible. I had known of cases in which people wore latex gloves long enough so that their hands perspired, and when they touched smooth, solid objects, their fingerprints seeped through the rubber. Technicians using traditional methods had been unable to lift the faint prints, but lab workers using a high-tech process called vacuum metal deposition had been successful.
A few weeks before I had quit, I had investigated a four-year-old murder and was dazzled by the results of the process. My partner at the time had recovered a rusty Coke can from a backyard pond. A technician using VMD applied a thin layer of gold to the surface and dropped it into a vacuum chamber. Microscopic specks of oil from the fingerprint absorbed gold fragments. The technician then spread zinc over the can. The zinc and gold evaporated into vapors when they were heated in the chamber. The zinc coated the entire can, except for a single fingerprint on the side, which became visible as a contrasting image. That did not lead to the killer, but it made an impression on me.
Maybe VMD would yield results in the Relovich murder. I still suspected the shooter had a partner. So if both of them were wearing latex gloves and were in the house long enough to chat with Relovich and then rob him, I figured their hands might have perspired. And if they had ripped off Relovich’s laptop, they probably had rummaged through his desk as well, which meant that to open the drawers one of them had grasped the shiny metal handles- ideal surfaces for VMD.
As I pulled off the Harbor Freeway, I rolled down the window and enjoyed the ocean air, a bracing contrast to the fetid smog of the central city. The morning had been overcast again, but the sun had eventually burned off the fog and the sky was clear. From Relovich’s front porch, I could see boats drifting by in the channel, their white sails vivid against the blue-gray sea. The faint offshore breeze ruffled the flags at the edge of the harbor.
I returned to my car and pulled a toolbox and a bag of latex gloves out of my trunk. After opening the front door, I slipped on two pairs of gloves and, using a Phillips screwdriver, removed the three metal handles from the desk drawers. I dropped them into separate Baggies.
The LAPD crime lab did not have VMD equipment, so the desk handles would have to be sent to an independent lab in Orange County. Because LAPD supervisors always are confronted with budget shortfalls they usually try to discourage detectives from using outside labs unless it is absolutely crucial. And, unfortunately, VMD is an expensive process. But because an outside lab-and not the notoriously slow LAPD facility-does the test, the turnaround time is quick.
When I returned to the squad room, I told Duffy I wanted to VMD the metal handles.
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” Duffy grumbled. “If I authorize it, I’ve got to deal with all that LAPD red tape. I’ve got to go to SID, convince a supervisor that we need the test, that it’s worth spending the dough on. After all that, the supervisor has to authorize it.”
Duffy glumly stared at the phone, as if he hoped it would ring so he could delay making a decision.
“VMD is amazing because-”
“I know all about vacuum metal deposition,” Duffy said. “I’ve heard all the stories. But I’ve never heard of them getting prints through latex gloves.”
“It’s happened.”
“In for a fucking dime, in for a fucking dollar,” Duffy muttered. “Just to get you out of my hair, I’ll authorize it.”
• • •
I headed out to the mid-Wilshire area in the late afternoon to question Mitchell’s daughter. Rather than calling first, I decided to door-knock her, just in case she was reluctant to talk. Since Laura Mitchell was an elementary school teacher, I figured she would be home by now.
I drove west on Beverly, south on Rossmore, pulled down a side street, and parked in front of Mitchell’s drab, blocky apartment building. I watched the breeze rustle a lush jacaranda that shaded the house next door, the blooms drifting down from the branches like a purple snowfall. I climbed the steps to the top unit, but before I could ring the doorbell, Mitchell, who had been peering out the front window, opened the door. I introduced myself.
“My brother told me you’d be coming by,” she said, eyeing me coldly.
Mitchell, who was heavy and fair, wore beige cords and a brown round-neck sweater. Her hair was cut short in a matronly style, stiff with spray.
Standing in the doorway, she asked, “How can I help you?”
“Would you mind if we talked inside?”
“Yes, I’d mind. But I know from my father that you cops can make things unpleasant for people who don’t cooperate.”
The sofa in the living room was a jumble of torn pantyhose, blouses, skirts, nail polish bottles, emery boards, and cotton balls. The coffee table was dusted with corn flakes; in the corner was a half-eaten bowl of cereal that I figured had been there since breakfast. The apartment smelled of cat urine. I pushed aside a pile of blouses and squeezed onto the sofa. Mitchell dragged a chair over from the dining room.
“My brother told me all about his conversation with you,” she said. “I don’t think I have anything else to add. But I will tell you that I didn’t get along with my father, and I don’t particularly like cops.”
She stared sullenly at me, crossing her arms and legs. I knew I wouldn’t get much out of her if I began firing questions about her father. So I decided to chat casually with her and then stun her with news she hadn’t expected, like a boxer throwing a few tentative jabs and then unleashing a short left hook-the knockout punch.
“What grade do you teach?”
