DEWEY GLEASON WANTED to hook up with the new kid, Clark, before day’s end, but that would’ve meant a costume change. He couldn’t do that now because he had to go back to the duplex/office in east Hollywood to meet Creole and Jerzy and buy the new batch of mail that Creole claimed was so excellent. Eunice estimated that only five percent of the mail they bought from runners had any value whatsoever, and less than two percent had identity information that could make significant money for them. Still, she demanded lots of it and bitched if he paid too much to get it. Dewey knew he couldn’t win with her, no matter what.
If it were up to Dewey, he’d just drive around with a laptop and pick up computer signals. He’d talked to lots of identity thieves at the cyber café, tweakers and crackheads mostly, who were doing just that. Then they’d go online and log in on the target’s Internet service provider to access his computer and retrieve information they needed. Since there were so many businesses these days offering free Internet access, they could later log in on one of those ISPs to surf the Web and buy merchandise with stolen card numbers. Most people didn’t bother to change their security codes with their ISPs, so it seemed to Dewey that it only made sense to update the way they were operating.
But would Eunice permit this safer and more sensible approach to their business? Of course not. It was too slow and uncertain for her. And she repeatedly said he wasn’t capable of handling anything technical and could barely use a computer well enough to send e-mail. She preferred that Dewey do things the old-fashioned way, the way Hugo had done it, so she could get her “retirement fund” faster, and never mind the risks he had to take to get it done.
Eunice had lately set a target of $1,000,000 tax-free, after which they would quit the game and go to San Francisco, even though she knew that Dewey hated the city. He recalled an incident back when they were still sleeping in the same room. He was singing in the shower and changed the lyric of an old standard. He’d crooned, “Hate San Francisco, it’s cold and it’s damp, that’s why the lady is a tramp!”
Then he’d dried off, grinned at Eunice, who was lying in bed, smoking, and said to her, “That’s the way Rodgers and Hart shoulda written the song. That’s the way I sang it when I did little theater in Santa Barbara. That was a great gig. Santa Barbara’s really a nice town.”
Eunice had snuffed out her cigarette and said, “You wanna stay in this hot smog belt after we earn the retirement fund? It’s fine with me. Because Momma left her heart in San Francisco and can very easily leave your ass in Hollywood. Let’s hear you sing that one, Tony Bennett.”
It was an erection killer and the beginning of what he was certain would be an attempt by her to squeeze him out of the big payoff when the target was reached. Moreover, Dewey no longer believed he could stay out of jail long enough to accomplish her goal. He felt like the bomber pilots in the old war movies who had to fly during daylight hours over Germany, knowing that survival odds were getting longer with each mission flown. He was now ready to settle for far less than a million bucks, especially if he could ever devise a scheme where it went to him.
In the locker room prior to roll call, Jetsam resisted all attempts from his partner to find out what had transpired at Malibu Beach the morning before with the waitress from IHOP. While Sergeant Murillo was reading the crimes to the watch, Flotsam was relentlessly chattering in his partner’s ear to no effect.
“Come on, dude,” Flotsam whispered. “Something musta happened out there on the foamy for you to go all lock-jawed. Dial me in!”
Sergeant Murillo looked up from the reports at Flotsam and said, “Would you mind discussing surf reports later. We’ve got a roll call to get through here.”
It wasn’t until they’d been out on patrol for thirty minutes that Jetsam relented and said, “Okay, bro, you carried the load when I went home early two nights ago, so I guess I oughtta tell you what went down with the IHOP hottie yesterday.”
“Go, dude!” Flotsam said. “I got my ears on.”
“Okay, bro, but I gotta tell ya, I’m noodled. I been beat down and rag-dolled and launched by kamikaze waves in my time, but it ain’t nothing compared to how that salty sister cranked me. And taking last night off didn’t revive me.”
“Are we talking chocka coolaphonic nectar sex?” Flotsam asked excitedly.
“No, bro, she showed up with a Barney in a sausage sling!” Jetsam said.
“What?” Flotsam cried, almost rear-ending a car in front of him on Highland Avenue.
“She tells me he’s her cousin, out here on summer break from college in Kansas or Missouri or some fucking place where there ain’t no ocean. And she apologizes and says she had no choice but to bring him, and would I, like, teach him some basic surfing maneuvers.”
It was almost too grotesque for Flotsam to contemplate. “A shoobie in a Speedo? And she expected a real Kahuna to be seen on the same beach with him?”
“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “A DayGlo green Speedo.”
“Dude,” Flotsam said with genuine sympathy. “I feel ya.”
“First thing I did was I took that Benny aside and I go, ‘Bro, you try to go out there amongst a horde of surf rats wearing that DayGlo banana hammock, and they just might banzai you with their boards and send you home to Iowa or wherever you come from in wires and plaster casts.’ I ask him if he didn’t bring some board trunks to wear on the beach and he tells me everybody wears Speedos where he comes from. And I go, ‘Peachy, bro, but this ain’t the Piney Woods YMCA swimming pool, or summer fun at Lake Suck-a-hot-one. This is Malibu-fucking-California!’ ”
“I can’t adjust the focus here,” Flotsam said. “That slammin’ server from IHOP told us she surfs twice a month. She oughtta know the minimum fucking dress code for admittance.”
“Maybe you just shouldn’t trust someone who wears rings on her index fingers,” Jetsam said. “And this dorky cousin of hers, he don’t understand basic English. He blanks about half the time I’m talking to him. So I take our breakfast bunny aside and I go, ‘Okay, I’ll put your cousin out on a board and slip him into a nice gentle chubbie that don’t have much of a break, but if them surf Nazis out there start looking at him with a kill-the-hodad death ray, I’m towing him back to sandy safety.”
“So did you?” Flotsam asked.
“Yeah, I put him on the old log I keep in my truck and I rolled him around in the foamy. He tried standing up a few times, and he’s all splashing and squealing and I’m thinking to myself, Why me? I drive to Oxnard twice a month to visit my mother and to Pacoima to visit the old man. And I send checks to both my ex-wives, mostly on time, even though the kid I thought was mine turned out to have the DNA of my ex-wife’s dentist, who drilled into a lot more than her root canals. And I still stop and play Frisbee with my former girlfriend’s dog, even though I can’t say hello to my former girlfriend without getting spit at. So I, like, try to live a decent life, bro. What I wanna know is, why does God treat me like a butt crumb?”
“Dude,” Flotsam said, “sometimes it just seems like God takes a day off to go to the track or something.”
“Anyways, when I think it can’t get no bleaker, the squid manages to stand halfway up on a mini-bump and he starts screaming, ‘Cowabunga! Cowabunga!’ ”
“I’m speechless, dude!” Flotsam said. “Were you soooooo tempted to throw a choke hold on him?”
“Bro, I was, like, half a heartbeat from C-clamping his scrawny neck and letting him drift on down to San Pedro. But I see this pair of water monkeys paddling their boards right at us and I’m all, like, ‘Okay, crusher, you and me’re about to get spiked by a pair of seriously ugly sado creeps, so let’s push the off button.’ ”
“You are truly lucky to be alive, dude,” Flotsam said. “Bobbing on the briny unarmed with some spazzed-out hodad yelling, ‘Cowabunga.’ Next time get a Navy SEALs killing knife and Velcro it to your ankle.”
“There ain’t gonna be no next time,” Jetsam said, “After we cruised on back to the IHOP honey, we find her all stretched out on these humongous beach towels under a big umbrella. But now she’s all stripped down from her shorts and jersey into a sort of, like, old-school bikini.”
“What, no thong?” Flotsam said. “That ain’t right, dude.”
“The retro bikini ain’t the half of it,” Jetsam said. “So we, like, sit there, and the cousin’s all fired because he thinks he’s ready now to star in The Endless Summer, Part Four, and then I catch a break, or so I think. The cousin says he’s gotta be bumping on home, and I almost stand up and cheer. Turns out they came in two cars, and after, like, another eternity of surf questions, he bounces. The last thing he yells at me is, ‘Farewell, O great wave rider! Farewell!’ And at last I’m alone with my bodacious babelini.”
“Oh, man!” Flotsam said. “This is the good part!”
“Just wait,” Jetsam said. “She like, knew she owed me big time for what she put me through with cousin Horace, or whatever the fuck his name is, and she could see I’m all stoked from looking at her voluptuaries. And my inner slut is now totally in charge. And pretty soon I’m all sprawled there on the towel under the umbrella kissing her shoulder like somebody on the Lifetime channel.”
“Wooka, dude!” Flotsam said. “Now you’re rockin’!”
“So by and by I’m sort of eager for, like, harmless foreplay, given that our GPS location is not totally secluded. And then I find out why no thong bikini.”
“Why is that?”
“She just had butt implants, and the incisions ain’t healed up enough.”
Flabbergasted, Flotsam said, “You mean that booty ain’t the babe’s?”
“No, it belongs to Dr. Strangelove or whoever the fuck gave it to her,” Jetsam said.
“Then what?” Flotsam said, fearing the worst.
“I’m all heading upstairs on those magnificent mammaries, and she goes, ‘Cease and desist, surfer boy!’ ”
“Don’t tell me the bimbo decided to play Our Lady of Malibu?”
“No, the problem was, her saline or silicone or whatever they used to construct her implants was all leaking. And she’s suing the plastic surgeon and can’t stand to have them touched, let alone fondled.”
“I gotta feeling this is gonna get worse,” Flotsam said, getting sympathy pangs and gingerly feeling his own breasts.
“Roger that,” Jetsam said. “Because by now I’m scared to touch any more of her below her chin for fear of what I might find that ain’t really hers. Or like, maybe some part of her will fall off in my hand! And now she’s all laying there with her eyes shut, and I’m, like, confused, sort of. So I say to myself, Go for it. And I pounce like a panther, and she is the recipient of one of those mega-long, steamy-hot, summertime movie kisses that the women in the chick flicks all swoon over.”
“I never could see that part of the game,” Flotsam said with a shrug.
“Me neither,” Jetsam said, “but I locked on because her lips are, like, Scarlett Johansson-huge. Think of two all-meat tire tubes pressed together. And bro, I kissed and I nibbled and I licked with the darting tongue of a cobra! And then I started some sinister sucking on her lower lip with mucho enthusiasmo. But when I got no applause, no response, no nothing, I go, ‘Don’t you like this?’ And she goes, ‘Like what?’ And I go, ‘That ain’t no casual kiddie kiss you just got, wahini. That was cooleoleol kissing designed to propel a lucky chickie to an advanced state of beach blanket bliss.’ ”
“And what did she say to that, dude?” Flotsam asked. “Though I’m almost scared to hear the answer.”
Jetsam shook his head slowly and said, “She tells me that her lips are so plumped with implants gone bad, she didn’t feel a thing. And that when she gets through with her lawsuit, her plastic surgeon’s gonna be dressing as Alvin the Chipmunk and posing for tourists in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.” Jetsam sighed then and added, “Bro, I ain’t got my mind in the game tonight. I am like, way, way woefully noodled.”
They rode for a while in silence, and finally it was Flotsam who said somberly, “Dude, we all know that Mother Nature is a pitiless cunt.”
“A heartless bitch, bro,” Jetsam concurred.
Waxing philosophical, Flotsam added, “But when a person chooses a surgical body shop to rebuild their own chassis, it’s, like, bound to wreak collateral damage on innocent bystanders like you. Only one thing we can say about Spare-parts Suzie and your tale of terrible despair.”
Flotsam paused and looked toward Jetsam, who took the cue. And they uttered the station mantra in unison: “This… is… fucking… Hollywood!”
Dewey got to the duplex/office just after 6 P.M. He hadn’t had any jobs for the Mexicans in the last few days, so the place was unoccupied. He unlocked the door and had to sit there and wait twenty minutes before Creole and Jerzy showed up with a disappointingly small bag of mail.
“That’s all you have?” he said in his German accent when they entered, looking almost as tired as he was.
“Yeah, but it’s good stuff, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said, even though he didn’t know what the hell they’d grabbed from the curbside mailboxes that afternoon.
“It isn’t even sorted,” their boss said.
“We been busy lately,” Tristan said. “All we had time to do was toss the junk mail. I took a quick look and I know you’ll be happy with some of the stuff we got for you.”
Since Jakob Kessler never used obscenities, Dewey didn’t tell them what he was thinking when he withdrew $100 from his wallet and grudgingly handed it over. “And now I would like to go home,” he said.
“So would we, Mr. Kessler,” Tristan said as he quickly left the apartment, with his partner shuffling along behind him.
They were in Tristan’s old Chevy Caprice half a block away and spotted their employer exit the apartment, set the dead bolt, and walk to his car as though his feet were killing him, as indeed they were with those three-inch lifts in his shoes.
There was still plenty of daylight left by the time they were three cars behind him on Sunset Boulevard, and Jerzy said to Tristan, “I don’t know what the fuck this superspy shit is gonna do for us.”
“I don’t either,” Tristan said. “But I got real good instincts, wood.”
They almost lost his car when, after turning north on Cahuenga, their target turned quickly west on Franklin Avenue. Tristan caught the red light and slammed on his brakes too late. They were in the middle of the intersection, initially blocked from a left turn by swift moving southbound traffic. Tristan made it all stop for him by making a reckless left turn that got brakes screeching and horns honking.
“Fuck!” Tristan said. “We lost him.”
After barely escaping a head-on, Tristan was driving westbound on Franklin, when he encountered a stalled car half a block ahead. A dozen other cars were trapped behind it in traffic, their employer’s car among them.
“We got him!” Tristan said, getting into the queue of cars that were waiting for the stalled car to move. Three Latinos who looked like gardeners got out of the car and pushed it to the curb.
Tristan drove past the traffic snarl just in time to see Jakob Kessler’s car pull into a wide driveway, and when the gate opened, it continued under the upscale apartment building into the parking garage.
And that was when he heard a horn tooting behind him and looked up to see a light bar flashing.
“Shit!” he said and pulled over.
A moment later he was looking into the face of Dana Vaughn, while Hollywood Nate walked up on the passenger side of the car.
“License and registration, please,” Dana said to Tristan.
“Did I do something wrong, Officer?” Tristan asked, deciding whether to show his real license or the bogus license he’d used to rent the van.
“Nothing except blow a red light and make a left turn against oncoming traffic that almost caused a head-on collision as well as a couple rear-enders. You were very lucky.”
Tristan decided not to fuck with this bitch, so he gave her his legitimate driver’s license and reached into the glove box for his registration. That’s when Hollywood Nate made his presence known by coming right up to Jerzy and peering over his shoulder into the glove compartment as Tristan removed the registration and handed it to Dana.
“It’ll be a few minutes, Mr. Hawkins,” Dana said. Returning to the car, she checked on Tristan for wants and warrants, ready to write the citation for the red light and the left turn.
Hollywood Nate was looking at the tatted-out, surly-looking fat guy in the passenger seat, trying to decide whether to bother getting these two out of the car for a little more intensive investigation.
Then he saw the driver with the dreads turn to him with a pained expression and say, “Officer, I’m real sorry about what I done back there. I’m sure your partner is checking to see if I got any traffic warrants, but I don’t. I’m really a safe driver, but my father died yesterday and I was thinkin’ about Daddy and… well, it’s not an excuse, but that’s what happened. I wonder if you could gimme a break and only write me for just one thing instead of two?”
Nate leaned down and looked at Tristan’s Mr. Sincerity expression and said, “Tell you what, have your friend drive.”
“Good idea,” Tristan said, nudging Jerzy.
“Okay by me,” Jerzy said.
Nate said, “I’ll tell my partner about it.” Then to Jerzy, “And as long as you’re gonna do the driving, let’s just make sure your license is up to date.”
Jerzy shook his head in disgust as he pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and gave Hollywood Nate his legitimate driver’s license.
“You wouldn’t have any tickets out there that you haven’t paid, would you?” Nate said, looking at the unpronounceable name and the photo on the license.
“I’m sure you’re gonna check to see,” Jerzy said in resignation.
After Nate had walked back to the black-and-white to have Dana run the passenger for wants and warrants along with the driver, Jerzy said to Tristan, “Well, a lotta fuckin’ good that done you.”
“You ain’t got no traffic warrants out there, do you?” Tristan said.
Jerzy said, “I did have, but I cleared it up last month. Cost me over four hundred bucks. Otherwise my ass’d be in the Hollywood jail tonight thanks to you and this dumb fuckin’ Mission Impossible shit you got me into.”
When Dana and Hollywood Nate were back on either side of the car, Dana said, “My partner told me about your recent tragedy, so I only cited you for failing to stop for the red light. And you’d better get your right taillight fixed. Sign here.”
After Tristan scrawled his name on the citation, Dana tore off his copy, handed it to him, and said, “Now you can switch seats.”
Both cops took a good look at Tristan and Jerzy when they got out of the car, walked around the front of it, and traded places. Jerzy was inked, but not sleeved-out with jailhouse tatts. Their movements and gaits did not indicate recent booze or drug use, so Nate gave Dana a your-call gesture.
“Our sympathies to your family,” Dana said to Tristan and then winked at Nate before walking back to their shop.
While Jerzy was driving away, Tristan said, “We got the crib scoped out, even if it did cost me a traffic ticket.”
“Do the rest of your spy chase on your own time,” Jerzy said. “And by the way, neither of those cops believed for one minute about old Daddy. They used that to get my license and check me out for warrants, thanks to your big mouth.”
“A little more inconvenience for you got me only one violation to pay for instead of two,” Tristan said. “It was worth it, wood.”
“Where is your old man, by the way?” Jerzy asked. “Alive or dead?”
“I never met him,” Tristan said.
“Does your momma know which one he was?” Jerzy asked.
“Don’t woof on my momma,” Tristan warned.
That evening, shortly after most of the midwatch teams were getting ready for code 7, an eighteen-year-old Marine from Camp Pendleton was having a conversation with a street prostitute on the Santa Monica Boulevard track. That was a street normally used for unusual sexual encounters. There were always older gay men cruising in cars, looking for younger men walking. And the women, or those who appeared to be women, were usually transsexuals, either pre-op or post-op, or drag queens-some of who were obviously men-and a few others who could pass.
Whenever potential tricks would ask gender questions before closing the deal, the trannies and dragons would almost always say, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” to reassure the tricks that it wasn’t really the same as a gay experience. A few of the dragons looked quite plausible, and even quite attractive, as women.
The Marine, whose name was Timothy Ronald Thatcher, had managed to hook up with one of the latter. The dragon was a slender, green-eyed, caramel blonde whose street name was Melissa Price. But in a prior life in a suburb of Denver, he was Samuel Allen Danforth, nicknamed “Sad” because of his initials and because of his loneliness as a bullied gay boy. In his high school yearbook, he’d said he was “going to Hollywood for a new and happy life where he would never be Sad again.”
It was later learned by police that Melissa Price was lively and chatty and well liked by the other hookers who worked the Santa Monica track. Melissa had a tiny two-room apartment in Thai Town, where all tricks were taken. Friendly competitors of Melissa Price later told homicide investigators that after striking an acceptable deal with a john, Melissa would say, “Okay, darling, your Price is right, and she’s all yours.” Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, had been selling sex for a little over two months before meeting Timothy Ronald Thatcher, who was seven months younger.
Timothy Thatcher had come to Hollywood early in the evening with two other Marines, who were old enough to drink in the nightclubs on Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. Young Timothy had asked to borrow the ten-year-old Dodge sedan belonging to one of the older Marines, saying he was “going out onto the boulevard to get me a hot woman.”
The owner of the Dodge later told police that “as a joke on him” they suggested that Timothy Thatcher try cruising Santa Monica Boulevard, thinking he would notice that the hookers on the street had shaving bumps. One of the two older Marines later told police that he believed that Timothy Thatcher was probably a virgin and was trying to prove something to his senior companions.
Under subsequent intense questioning by military investigators, both older Marines stuck to their story and swore that they didn’t know there was an M9 USMC-issue, semi automatic pistol in the car. They claimed that PFC Timothy Thatcher must have put it there as protection for his first trip to Los Angeles. LAPD investigators believed that one of the older Marines, who had easy access to the sidearm, probably brought the pistol along, but their suspicions could never be proven.
The last witness to have seen Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, alive was a tranny with an eggplant-colored shag who’d been working the same block when Melissa got into the Dodge sedan. In fact, Melissa Price waved at the tranny with an OK sign that Melissa always gave after catching a trick who was cute or rich. In this case the trick certainly was not rich.
It was later debated whether Timothy Thatcher was overcome by remorse after his tryst with Melissa Danforth, or whether he truly did not know until it was too late that Melissa Price was not a female, but in the end it didn’t matter much. Just before 8 P.M., the landlady of the small apartment building in Thai Town heard terrible screams and glass breaking and heavy objects striking walls in the little two-room apartment. And then a gunshot, followed by another, terrified every tenant in the building, and several calls were made to the police.
Timothy Thatcher did something extraordinary. He dialed his mother in Billings, Montana, on his cell, and when she answered, he said to her through tears, “Mom, I shot somebody! I didn’t mean to do it, but when I found out this person was not a girl, I lost it!”
The Marine talked to his shocked and terrified mother for one minute and fifty seconds, telling her that he was “somewhere in Hollywood,” and ended with, “Tell Dad and Billy and Mary Lou that I love them all.” After that, he ran down the stairs and out to the street.
Six-X-Sixty-six was on the way to code 7 at Sheila and Aaron’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant for tofu bun vegetarian salad and 360 Degree Beef. They were only a few blocks from Thai Town when the code 3 “shots fired” call was given to a unit from Watch 3.
“Let’s jump this one,” Sheila said, and she switched on the light bar long enough to get around boulevard traffic, then stomped on the accelerator. They arrived at the scene before the designated unit, just in time to be almost T-boned by the Dodge sedan driven by the escaping Marine.
“Hang on!” Sheila said to Aaron. “Gotta burn a U-ee!”
The black-and-white Crown Vic made a smoking, tire-scorching U-turn, and the pursuit was on.
An electronic tone sounded, followed by the announcement from a female RTO to all units that always set hearts racing: “Six-X-ray-Sixty-six is in pursuit!”
Timothy Thatcher, who did not know the area, drove in utter panic west on Hollywood Boulevard and then south on Western Avenue where he lightly sideswiped a Ford Explorer in the intersection, breaking his own right headlight, then headed west again on Sunset Boulevard where he encountered lanes clogged by nighttime Hollywood traffic. He made a squealing turn south on Van Ness that nearly lifted two wheels, skidded sideways, righted the car, and sped to Melrose Avenue where he turned west once again, brakes screaming. Unit 6-X-66 was sometimes as close as five car lengths behind, and Aaron broadcast the street names they were passing as well as the license number of the vehicle driven by a “white male.” And as in all LAPD pursuits in the most car-strangled city in North America, there were moments when it was maddeningly slow.
Then they heard someone on the tactical frequency say, “Airship up!”
The Marine blew past Paramount Studios and made a tire-ripping right turn onto Gower Street, where he saw two black-and-whites coming at him from the north. The lead car belonged to the surfer cops, who’d switched on the light bar upon seeing him. That made a northbound Lincoln Navigator in front of Timothy Thatcher slam on the brakes, causing the Marine to crash into the SUV, giving the lone male driver of the Navigator a slight whiplash and all but demolishing the Dodge.
The Marine limped out of the car and ran north on the sidewalk away from Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane but right at Flotsam and Jetsam and the Watch 3 team, who’d double-parked beside them.
Timothy Thatcher speed-dialed his mother once again, and when the panic-stricken woman answered, he said, “I love you, Mom. I love you!”
The mother of Timothy Thatcher later said that she got hysterical when she heard police officers shouting, “Get down! Down on the street!” And then the cell phone clicked off.
Johnny Lanier and his partner, Harris Triplett, had leaped from their car faster than the surfer cops, and the chunky black cop had a Remington shotgun at port arms as he raced forward. When he got behind Flotsam and Jetsam’s car, Johnny Lanier aimed the shotgun over the roof, while a spotlight from one of the later responders lit the Marine.
Flotsam yelled to Jetsam, “Johnny’s benching up with a tube! Get the fuck outta the kill zone!”
Then Jetsam shouted again to Timothy Thatcher, “Get down on your belly, goddamnit! Get down!”
And only then did all cops present see the M9 pistol that had been tucked inside the Marine’s belt in the small of his back. PFC Timothy Ronald Thatcher swiftly drew that pistol and pointed it in the general direction of Johnny Lanier and his shotgun, only ten feet from the Marine. It was over in an instant: a roar, a flame, a fireball in the darkness, and a massive round of double-aught buckshot crashed into the Marine’s throat and lower face, blasting chunks of bone and flesh all over the sidewalk beside the Hollywood Cemetery.
The senior sergeant Miriam Hermann was the first supervisor to arrive. By then, several other units were on the scene, trying to get traffic moving on the street. Johnny Lanier had returned the shotgun to their shop and was standing quietly with the surfer cops when the sergeant got there.
She had a few words with Sheila Montez and Aaron Sloane and walked over to Johnny Lanier’s young partner to say, “Triplett, you and Lanier go to the station and I’ll be there as soon as I can. You’ve got a long night of report writing ahead of you and lotsa face time with FID. The DA’s rollout guys will be there as well.”
“There was nothing we coulda done, Sergeant!” the rookie said, his voice quivering. “He didn’t give us a choice!”
“I know, son,” Miriam said, patting the young man on the shoulder. “Just get yourselves to the station now.”
The magazine from the pistol was found on the floor of the Dodge, along with a live round that the Marine had ejected from the chamber. Timothy Thatcher apparently had wanted to make sure that no one else would die with him and Melissa Price that night.
It took thirty minutes for the mother of Timothy Thatcher to get through to the watch commander’s office at Hollywood Station.
Sergeant Lee Murillo later said he would never forget that phone call, not as long as he lived.
The woman, becalmed by grief and from fearing the very worst, simply said to him, “Sergeant, I am the mother of Timothy Thatcher, who phoned me to say he’d shot someone tonight. I know that your officers caught up with him.”
Sergeant Murillo was speechless for a moment, then stammered, “Ma’am, I, uh, I really don’t have any details about the… the event. May I please have your number? Someone will call you as soon as we know something. Right now I just don’t… I don’t have -”
Her voice was controlled and implacable when she interrupted him to say, “Please, Sergeant, I must know one thing, and I won’t trouble you further. Did your officers kill my son?”
After notifying the on-call homicide team to get on this suicide-by-cop ASAP, Detective Charlie Gilford grabbed his coat and car keys. If one thing could get the night-watch D2 out of the squad room, it was anything macabre or gory. Charlie Gilford sped directly to the scene of the officer-involved shooting to take a quick cell-phone photo of what was left of PFC Timothy Thatcher, whose face he described as looking like “a beef enchilada with way too much cheese and salsa.”
Then he proceeded to the little apartment in Thai Town, where uniformed officers were protecting the scene until the detectives, criminalists, and body snatchers arrived. He stepped inside to take a peek at Melissa Price, aka Samuel Allen Danforth, lying on the floor, shot once in the chest and once in the face. The latter round caused grotesque damage to the left orbit but nothing like the trauma inflicted on Timothy Thatcher by the Remington shotgun at close range. The detective snapped another camera-phone photo and returned to the office, satisfied that he’d seen everything worth looking at.
By the time the first homicide detectives had arrived back at Hollywood Station from both scenes, they found that Compassionate Charlie Gilford had downloaded the grisly photos of both young men and had printed out and taped the images to the homicide team’s computer. Below he had typed, “Sometimes it just don’t turn out like that pup tent romp on Brokeback Mountain.”