Cold Hit

Chapter 10

You have the transcripts from the cassettes we made at the first three murder scenes?" I asked Zack. "They aren't in the murder book."

He was wearing yesterday's clothes and was slumped in his wooden swivel chair across from me in our cubicle, scowling down at the reorganized murder book, thumbing through the pages. He must have gone to a doctor because his nose was now encased in a metal splint and heavily bandaged. He seemed sober, but then it was only 10 A. M.

"I put them in there. In the flap leaf," he said, pointing at the binder. "Somebody musta removed 'em." Since I was the only other person with access to the book, the implication was that I had done it, forgetting for the moment, that he'd left the damn thing unattended in the Xerox room. But so what? I stand accused. Our troubled partnership wallowed on.

Then a look of momentary clarity spread across his discolored face and he snapped his fingers, tilted forward, and started rummaging around in his bottom desk drawer. After a minute, he sat up with an apologetic grin and handed me some Xeroxed pages.

Accused and exonerated. Swift justice.

"I threw 'em in there," he explained. "Was gonna put 'em in the book later. . forgot." He shrugged as if to say, hey, I'm only human.

I took the blue LAPD murder book out of his hand and started to tape the Xeroxed transcripts for Woody, Van, and Cole onto a fresh page in each of their sections.

"You really wants take this dumb-ass, new theory of yours to Calloway?" Zack said, leaning back and looking down his nose, studying me across a pound of medical adhesive.

Since Cal had demanded a theory that tied all the unaligned facts together on Forrest's murder, I'd been trying to find one. I'd come up with a promising idea this morning. The more I'd thought about it, the more I liked it. I bounced my copycat theory off Zack as soon as I got in to see how it played. It had been met with stony silence. Now I ran down my new idea. After I finished, Zack glowered at me.

"The skipper's gonna say two things," he complained. "He's gonna call this a hunch and tell us that Homicide Special dicks operate on evidence, not hunches. Then he's gonna say, you ain't got nothin' but bullshit here. Which of course, is exactly what it is."

"He'll listen to reason."

"If you're five and a half feet tall and shave your head every morning, you don't need reason." He leaned forward in the wood swivel. It squeaked loudly. "So, after he hears your dumb-ass idea, he's gonna call us morons and broom us both off the fucking case. No way he's gonna let us separate out John Doe-Four 'cause it's not a copycat, and that's the only murder in this chain a hits that we got a halfway decent shot at. Besides, he's also getting his nuts roasted over a slow fire every other Tuesday morning in the COMSTAT meeting." He was referring to the chief's bi-monthly meeting with all the division commanders to review computer crime statistics.

"We gotta tell him anyway," I persisted. "Because regardless of what you think, I believe I'm right."

Then, as if he had been waiting outside, listening for his cue, Captain Calloway stuck his shaved head inside our cubicle.

"You guys asked for a meeting?"

"Yeah."

"Let's do it."

He turned and walked across the squad room toward his office.

"You tell him," Zack said as I stood. "I ain't up to being screamed at by Mighty Mouse this morning." "Fine," I said. "Just hold my back."

"Only reason I still come in is so I can hold your back and watch you work." Sarcasm.

On our way out, we collided in the doorway. I caught a gamey whiff of him.

"Since you've given up showering, how 'bout investing in some cologne?" I muttered.

"This is cologne. Eau de Werewolf. I send to Transylvania for this shit."

"Go ahead and joke it off. You got half the Glass House circling you. Maybe if you didn't come in smelling like Big Foot, it would help."

"Lemme get back to you on that," he snarled. We walked into Cal's office.

"What's up?" Cal said. He removed his jacket, exposing huge arms in a short-sleeved shirt. His bi's and tri's bulged the white cotton.

"Cap, did you read the update I e-mailed you this morning?"

"On the hard gas lens? Looks promising."

"I think when we find out where it was made, it's gonna come back as being from a lab in one of the old Soviet Union countries."

"Are we having hunches again?" Cal said, half-smiling.

Zack shot me a dangerous look.

"Hunches based on shrewd observations," I corrected.

"Such as?"

"The tattoos in the vic's eyelids turn out to be Russian Cyrillic symbols. They translate: 'Don't wake up.' "

"How do you get tattoos done on your eyelids?" Cal asked. "Don't they have to press the needle down too hard?"

"I called a tattoo artist, Big Payaso, at the Electric Dragon in Venice. He told me this kind of eyelid art is mostly done in prison. They slide a spoon under the lid to make a work table." Both Cal and Zack winced. "Also, the bullet came from a Russian automatic so I think the vic is maybe a Russian immigrant and the lens is gonna trace back to somewhere in the Soviet Union."

"Okay, so John Doe-Four is a homeless Russian who did time. That's why you wanted to see me?"

"As I told you yesterday, I think this last hit is a copycat. I think I may also have the thread that ties it together."

Cal got up and closed the door. Then he turned back and motioned for me to continue.

"I think this last guy might have done time in a Russian prison and John Doe Number Four might be an ROC hit."

"Russian Organized Crime?" Cal said, raising an eyebrow. His expression told me I better make this good.

"The Odessa mob is aggressive and proactive. They've been trying to infiltrate the department for at least fifteen years, ever since Little Japanese came over here from the Ukraine in the late eighties."