too nervous to sit.”
“Those Harbor detectives had their heads up their asses,” Duffy said.
“No. They’ve just been working the same kinds of murders too long. Too many drive-bys. Too many street corner drug shootings. Some of ’em have never worked an indoor crime scene.”
“Any neighbors hear the shot?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did they do a good canvas?”
“The lieutenant said they talked to everybody on both sides of the street.”
I sat on my heels a few feet in front of the sofa and studied a few tiny ovals of dried blood.
“Did the lieutenant say Relovich was found on the sofa or the floor?”
“Floor,” Duffy said.
“But that’s not where he died.” I stood and turned toward Duffy. “Relovich is on the couch,” I said pointing. “The force of the slug propels him backward. So how does he end up on the floor? It’s contrary to the laws of physics.”
“Somebody moved him.”
“Right,” I said. “But why?”
“I don’t know,” Duffy said.
“Neither do I,” I said. “Let’s ninhydrin the wall behind the sofa. Asshole might have touched the wall for balance before he moved the body.”
I spent another hour in the living room, carefully examining the floor, the walls, and each piece of furniture. In the kitchen, I studied the contents of the refrigerator, which contained only a brown banana, a loaf of bread, a jar of mustard, a half gallon of milk, and a bottle of steak sauce. Typical bachelor cop who eats most of his meals out. Like me, I thought.
I checked the drains in the kitchen sink, the bathroom, and the shower for blood. I dumped out the bathroom wastebasket, sifting through an empty soapbox, rusted razor blade, a balled up Kleenex, two cigarette butts, a few wads of toilet paper, and a section of dental floss. I dropped them into different Baggies and zipped them shut.
“Let’s test it all for DNA and fingerprints,” I said. “Remember that case in Venice where I emptied the trash in that enormous garbage can, bagged it up, and sent it all off to the lab?”
“Yeah,” Duffy said. “There was so much crap to test, they had a fit.”
“The prints on an aspirin bottle led me to a hooker.”
“As I recall, she didn’t kill the john.”
“That’s right. Her pimp did.” I handed the Baggies to Duffy and said, “Why don’t you send these out for testing on Monday morning. Lean on someone to expedite it.”
After I scoured the house but didn’t find an answering machine, I tossed Relovich’s bedroom, examining every piece of clothing in the drawers, peering beneath the bed, running my hand under the mattress, sifting through the closet. Then I walked outside, and while Duffy followed, circled the back of the house and the yard, a ragged square of grass bordered by a six-foot pine fence. I edged my way through a thick hedge and studied the back window, which had a jagged hole punched in the center.
I returned to the front porch and pointed to the scarred wooden railings and said, “I’m going to call SID and have them come back tomorrow and dust the railings. This should have been done.”
I pulled out my cell phone. “I’m going to get a bloodhound out here.”
Duffy fixed me with a skeptical look. “We’re in the twenty-first century, Ash.”
I had always been frustrated by the LAPD’s inflexibility and suspicion of unorthodox methods. The canine unit always gave me a hard time when I wanted to use one of their dogs for tracking an urban homicide suspect, but I knew a dog handler who volunteered his services for a few Southern California police departments. He was more cooperative. Fortunately, I still had his number programmed in my phone. I called his cell, chatted with him for a few minutes, and said to Duffy, “He’s out on another scene tonight. He’s meeting me here tomorrow at eight.”
“Won’t the scent be cold by then?”
“Those dogs can pick up a scent weeks, even months, later. I want to get an early start tomorrow. Can you have the local detectives who caught this case meet me tomorrow morning at nine at the Harbor Division station? I want them to brief me, and I want to get the murder book from them.”
“They won’t be happy coming in on Saturday morning. But I’ll talk to their lieutenant and make sure he drags their asses in there.”
“When’s the autopsy?” I asked.
“Sunday at ten. You want anyone with you for a second set of eyes?”
“Not necessary.”
“Listen, Grazzo brought you back on temporary, but there’s some administrative crap you’ve got to take care of on Monday so you’re fulltime again. You’ve got to take a physical from the city doctor, meet briefly with a background investigator, and write a letter to the chief about why you’re coming back. Typical bullshit. Then you got to see a department shrink next week. I’ll make you an appointment.”
“Christ,” I mumbled.
“You know the department. Gotta jump through the hoops if you want to come back.”
We walked back to Duffy’s car and he drove down a narrow, winding street to the bottom of the hill. He was about to pull onto a shabby thoroughfare that led toward the freeway, but before he could turn left I said, “Cut the engine and lights.”
I scanned the pawnshop, grimy taco stand, shuttered liquor store, and then pointed at a Hispanic teenager on the corner, across the street, wearing a black raincoat, standing under a streetlight, his head swiveling from side to side. Grabbing a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, I focused on the corner and noticed the kid had a crude spider-web tattoo on his neck.
“Jailhouse tattoo,” I told Duffy. “Probably one of the gangbangers from the projects.”
A few minutes later, a black man driving a dusty Honda pulled over at the corner. The gangbanger reached in the window, nonchalantly grabbed a few bills, and dropped a Baggie onto the passenger seat. After the driver sped off, a Hispanic couple who looked like street people walked up; the man slipped the seller a bill, and stuffed the Baggie down the front of his pants.
“Probably slanging tar heroin,” I said. “Probably selling rock, too. A full-service operation.”
Across the street, a few blocks away, I spotted another sidewalk entrepreneur pacing on a corner. I handed Duffy the binoculars.
“I didn’t see these clowns when we drove up the hill,” Duffy said.
“Probably came out here a while after we arrived,” I said.
“Around the time Relovich was killed,” Duffy said.
“Right. His street’s a dead end. There’s only one way down the hill and out of the neighborhood.” I rapped my knuckles on the dashboard. “And that’s through here.”
“These characters might have seen the knucklehead,” Duffy said.
“Can you get somebody from Harbor vice down at the station tomorrow morning? Maybe the sergeant of the buy team?”
Duffy nodded.
“I’ll meet with him after I talk to the homicide dicks. I’ll make sure he floods this street during the next few days and busts sellers and buyers. These guys are good repeat customers. You never know who saw what. When they’re looking at some time in the joint, they might suddenly become talkative. And let’s see if we can get the City Council to pony up a reward.”
“I’ll talk to Grazzo. He can get it done.”
Duffy circled around to the freeway and then sped north at well over ninety miles an hour-a perquisite of the badge-and reached downtown in less than fifteen minutes. He exited at 4th Street and drove east, then south, through a derelict neighborhood at the outer edge of a district known as the Historic Core. Commercial buildings in various states of disrepair, most constructed in the early twentieth century, flanked the street. Some were shuttered, their ground-floor windows boarded up with plywood.
I rolled down my window and watched a few seedy hotel lobbies roll by, the faint smell of Lysol wafting out the doors. Crackheads and elderly pensioners shuffled about barefoot or in house slippers. The streetlamps cast a
