The Murder Book

CHAPTER 19

"Interesting time line," I said, as we headed for the car under the now-watchful eyes of the kids in the parking lot. "Janie Ingalls is murdered in early June. Two months later, Caroline gets checked into Achievement House and Willie shows up and works there for three weeks. Willie's fired, then he's busted for dope, gets Boris Nemerov to bail him out. When was Nemerov ambushed?"

"December 23," said Milo.

"The day after Caroline leaves Achievement House- voluntarily or otherwise. Maybe Willie took his girlfriend out, then took care of her. Or, Cossack family money found both of them a nice safe place to hide out. And one more thing: Georgie could've gotten nervous when you brought up Burns not because his men finished off his dad's killer but because they didn't. Were paid off not to."

"He accepted money to let his dad's murderer off the hook? Uh-uh, not Georgie."

"He and his mother were in severe financial straits. Maybe it took more than twenty-hour days and clever negotiating to keep the business going."

"No, I can't see it," he said. "Georgie's always been a straight-ahead guy."

"You'd know."

"Yeah, I'm a font of knowledge. C'mon, let's go over to my place, have another look at that damn book."

Rick and Milo lived in a small, well-kept bungalow in West Hollywood, on a quiet, elm-darkened street further shadowed by Design Center's alarming blue bulk. Rick's white Porsche was gone and the blinds were drawn. A few years ago, L.A. suffered through a drought and Rick had the lawn dug up and replaced with pea gravel and gray-leafed desert plants. This year, L.A. had plenty of water but the xeriscape remained in place, bursts of tiny yellow blossoms punctuating the pallid vegetation.

I said, "The cactus are thriving."

Milo said, "Great. Especially when I come home in the dark and snag my pants."

"Nothing like seeing the bright side."

"That's my core philosophy," he said. "The glass is either half-empty or broken."

He unlocked the front door, disarmed the alarm, picked up the mail that had fallen through the slot and tossed it on a table without breaking stride. The kitchen often lures him in his own digs, too, but this time he walked through it into the service porch nook that serves as his office: a cramped, dim space, sandwiched between the washer-dryer and the freezer and smelling of detergent. He'd set it up with a hideous metal desk painted school-bus yellow, a folding chair, and a painted wooden shark-face lamp from Bali. The blue book sat in an oversize Ziploc bag, on the top shelf of a miniature bookcase bolted above the desk.

He gloved up, unbagged the book, flipped to Janie Ingalls's photo, and studied the death shot. "Any sudden insights?"

"Let's see what follows."

Only three more pages after Janie. A trio of crime-scene photos, all of the victims, young men. One black youth, two Hispanics, each sprawled on blood-splotched pavement. White lights on the corpses and dark periphery said nighttime death. A shiny revolver lay near the right hand of the final victim.

The first photo was labeled "Gang drive-by, Brooks St., Venice. One dead, two wounded."

Next: "Gang drive-by, Commonwealth and Fifth, Rampart."

Finally: "Gang drive-by, Central Ave."

"Three of a kind," I said. "That's kind of interesting."

"Why?"

"Until now there was variety."

Milo said, "Gang stuff… business as usual. Maybe Schwinn ran out of interesting pictures- if these took place after Janie, when he was already out of the department, he coulda had trouble getting hold of crime-scene shots. God only knows how he managed to get these." He closed the book. "You see any way drive-bys could be connected to Janie? I sure don't."

"Mind if I take another look?"

"Take as many looks as you want." He produced another pair of gloves from a desk drawer, and I slipped them on. As I turned to the first photo, he stepped around the washer-dryer and into the kitchen. I heard the fridge door creak open.

"Want something to drink?"

"No, thanks."

Heavy footsteps. A cabinet opened. Glass touched tile. "I'm gonna go check the mail."

I took my time with the crime-scene shots. Thinking about Schwinn, addicted to speed and divesting himself of worldly goods even as he held on to his purloined photos. Moving on to a life of serenity but assembling this leather-bound monstrosity in secrecy. As I turned pages- now-familiar pages- and images began to blur, I tore myself away from speculation and tried to focus on each brutal death.

The first go-round, I came up with nothing, but on the second circuit something made me pause.

The two photos that preceded Janie's death shot.

The second page back was a full-color medium-range shot of a thin, rangy black man whose skin had begun to fade to postmortem gray. His long body lay on brown dirt, and one arm curled toward his face, protectively. Gaping mouth, half-open, lifeless eyes, splayed limbs.

No blood. No visible wounds.

Drug OD, possible 187 hotshot.

The next page faced Janie's. I'd avoided it because it was one of the most repellent images in the book.

The camera had focused on a heap of mangled flesh, beyond recognition as human.

Hairless legs and a battered, concave pelvic section suggested a woman. The caption precluded the need for deduction.

Female Mental Case, fell or thrown in front of double tractor trailer.

I flipped back to the skinny black man.

Returned to the beginning of the murder book and double-checked.

Then I went to get Milo.

He was in the living room, studying his gas bill, a shot glass of something amber in his paw. "Finished?"

I said, "Come look at this."

He tossed back the rest of his drink, held on to the glass, and followed me.

I showed him the pictures preceding Janie. He said, "What's your point?"

"Two points," I said. "First of all, content: Right before Janie are a black drug-using male and a white woman with mental problems. Sound familiar? Second, context: These two deviate stylistically from every other photo in the book. Forty-one photos, including Janie's, list the location and the police division where the murder took place. These are the only two that don't. If Schwinn lifted the photos from police files, he had access to the data. Yet he left the locales out. Are you willing to consider a bit of psychological interpretation?"

"Schwinn being symbolic?" he said. "These two represent Willie Burns and Caroline Cossack?"

"They're missing information because they represent the missing Willie Burns and the missing Caroline Cossack. Schwinn designated no locations because Burns's and Cossack's whereabouts remain unknown. Then he followed up with Janie's picture and wrote NS for No Solve. Right after Janie, he placed three drive-bys, grouped together. I don't think that's a coincidence, either. He knew how you'd see them: business as usual, just like you said. He's outlining a process here: A missing black man and mentally ill white woman are connected to Janie, whose murder is never solved. On the contrary: She's abandoned, and then it's business as usual. He's describing the cover-up."

He pulled at his lower lip. "Games… pretty subtle."

"You said Schwinn was a devious sort," I said. "Suspicious, verging on paranoid. LAPD dumped him, but he continued to think like a rogue cop, played games to the end, in order to cover his rear. He decided to communicate with you, but set it up so that only you would get it. That way, if the book went astray, or was ever traced back to him, he could disclaim ownership. He took pains to make sure it wasn't traced to him- no fingerprints. Only you were likely to recall his photography hobby and make the connection. He might have planned to send you the book himself, but changed his mind and chose someone else as a go-between, as another layer of security."

He studied the dead black man. Paged to the truck-crash nightmare, then Janie. Repeated the process.

"Willie and Caroline's surrogates… too weird."

I pointed to the black man's corpse. "How old does he look to you?"

He squinted at the ashen face. "Forties."

"If Willie Burns were alive today, he'd be forty-three. That means Schwinn saw the dead man as a surrogate for Willie in the here and now. Both the pictures are faded, probably decades old. But Schwinn oriented them toward the present. Meaning he finished the book fairly recently, wanted to focus you on the present."

He rolled the empty shot glass between his palms. "Bastard was a good detective. If the department got rid of him because someone was worried about what he knew about Janie, that means they didn't worry about me."

"You were a rookie-"

"I was the dumb shit they figured would just follow orders. And guess what?" He laughed.

"It's likely when Schwinn learned he'd been forced out and you hadn't, it confirmed his suspicions of you. Maybe he figured you'd played a role in his dismissal. That's why he didn't tell you what he'd learned about Janie for years."

"And then he changed his mind."

"He came to admire you. Told Marge."

"Mr. Serenity," he said. "So he enlists his girlfriend or some old cop washout to serve as go-between. Why'd whoever it was wait until seven months after Schwinn died?"

I had no answer for that. Milo tried to pace, but the confined quarters of the laundry area made it a two-step exercise.

He said, "Then the guy falls off a horse."

"A horse so gentle Marge felt comfortable with Schwinn riding up into the hills alone. But Akhbar got spooked, anyway. Marge said, by 'something.' Maybe it was someone."

He stared past me, reentered the kitchen, washed out the shot glass, returned, and glared at the book. "Nothing says Schwinn's death wasn't an accident."

"Nothing at all."

He pressed his hands flat against the wall as if straining to push it down.

"Bastards," he said.

"Who?"

"Everyone."

We sat down in his living room, each of us thinking in silence, neither of us coming up with anything. If he felt as weary as I did, he needed a break.

The phone rang. He snatched up the receiver. "This is him… what? Who- yes… one week. Yeah… I did… that's right. What's that? Yeah, I just told you that, anything else? Okay, then. Hey, listen, why don't you give me your name and number and I'll-"

The other party cut him off. He held the phone at arm's length, began gnawing his upper lip.

"Who was that?" I said.

"Some guy claiming to be from Department Personnel downtown, wanting to verify that I was indeed taking vacation time and how long did I plan to be away. I told him I'd filled out the forms."

"Claiming to be from Personnel?"

"I've never known the department to make calls like that, and he hung up when I asked his name. Also, he didn't sound like a department clerk."

"How so?"

"He sounded like he gave a damn."