Private: #1 Suspect

CHAPTER 110

Cruz and Del Rio were in the car in front of me, forcing me to keep to a sane speed as we headed north into the Valley.

I dictated case notes into a recorder as I drove.

I described the scene at the Sun and brought the Poole case file up to date.

The facts, as we knew them, were starting to make sense.

Karen Ricci, the woman in the wheelchair who had tipped Cruz off, was an escort service call booker. She’d told Cruz that a limo driver knew who had killed the hotel johns, and that she’d gotten that information from her friend, a former escort and current coat checker, Carmelita Gomez.

Cruz had interviewed Gomez and she’d given him false information.

Now we had a lead from Ricci’s first husband, Tyson Keyes. Keyes had picked Gomez up from her date with Arthur Valentine, the john who had been killed at the Seaview hotel last year.

If Carmelita Gomez was the hotel john killer, it was clear that she had easy access.

Twenty minutes after leaving Keyes, we found Gomez’s name on a mailbox on Stagg Street, in front of one of the tan-colored stucco houses in a cookie-cutter development of middle-class homes.

Gomez’s house was set back from the street, centered on a small mat of a yard. A driveway curved in from Stagg, coursed along the fence on the west side of the lot, and ended at a garage in the backyard.

Cruz and Del Rio pulled the fleet car into the mouth of the driveway, and I parked across the street.

I got out of my car and joined Cruz at Gomez’s front door, while Del Rio headed toward the back. With our guns drawn, Cruz and I flanked the doorway.

Cruz rang the bell, and in a moment the porch light came on.

Cruz said, “Carmelita, it’s Emilio Cruz. From the other night.”

There was no response, so Cruz tried again. “Look through the peephole, Carmelita. You know I’m not a cop. No seas tonto. Don’t make me kick the door in.”

A car started up at the back of the house. I saw headlights. Everything happened very fast after that.