The Pallbearers

Chapter 13

Homicide detective Cassie Kovacevich was a pretty, thirty-year-old blonde who looked like she should be employed as a party planner, not a cop. Her partner, Burt Cole, was your standard old-school LAPD burnout-a hammered-down skeptic from his bad crew cut and exploded face capillaries to his orthopedic shoes. He looked twenty years older than his partner and about half as smart, which turned out to be an elaborate disguise.

"There was nothing to investigate," Detective Cole said, after Yd asked them about Walts death.

We were standing in the lobby of the brand-new, forty-million-dollar Harbor Community Police Station. I'd waited for almost half an hour for them to appear. The clean cop-shop lobby was a sharp contrast to the victimized people who came and went, dragging improbable tales of violence, their faces etched in misery.

"Nothing to investigate?" I asked, sounding concerned and judgmental. I was trying to get them to defend their conclusion so I could draw out more facts.

"Shotgun blast, so there were no ballistics," Detective Kovacevich said, taking the bait. "Suicide note left on his computer, no forced entry, no sign of a struggle. Just a wooden chair tipped over on the back porch with him still in it. A small lawn painted red with blood, brain splatter, and cerebrospinal fluid.

"We get ten rollouts a week and we re short handed. We gotta put the easy ones down fast or we'll choke on the caseloads." She sounded defensive and a little angry. My party-planner take quickly shifted. Kovacevich was as hard and cynical as her slumping, ready-to-retire partner. Just better hair, legs, and posture.

"You got the suicide note?" I asked. "I'd like to see it."

Cole looked at Kovacevich and the two of them had a silent conversation. They had a good rhythm like most seasoned police teams and had learned to communicate without talking. You struggled to get to that place with a partner. I'd just recently reached the plateau with Sally Quinn.

"Okay, why?" Cole asked. "What's going on here?"

Kovacevich stood with her arms crossed, waiting for my answer.

"Look, you guys. I do this same job. I'm not trying to embarrass anyone. This guy was my friend." Then I went through the same "some of us at the group home need closure" story and waited while they processed it.

"We must look like a couple of slow, fat Guernseys to you," Kovacevich said. "You're not down here looking for closure. You're looking for clues. You want to reverse this finding, 'cause you don't think your dearly departed friend could have possibly capped himself."

"She's right," Cole agreed. "If we give you our case file and you find a way to reopen this, we look like a couple of enema bags."

Tm not gonna do anything but try and convince my friends there's nothing wrong here. I know you got it right," I lied. "It's just so they can get over this, mourn his passing, and move on."

They exchanged another look. More telepathic information passed between them.

"Okay," Cole answered. "Out of professional courtesy, we'll show it to you because we're dead certain we got it right and Dix was a suicide just like we wrote it up. But on the off chance you kick up something we missed, you gotta promise to bring it back here first and don't put me and Cassie in the blender."

"Fair enough. But I won't find anything. I agree with you. I just have these other people who…"

"Save it for The Today Show" Kovacevich interrupted.

We went to their homicide cubicle. It was a lot like mine. The desk was newer, the chairs softer. "Wanted" flyers covered every available surface. "Asshole wallpaper" we called it. Cole found the folder in his desk's bottom file drawer, pulled it out, and handed it over to me.

"We dusted the victim's personal computer," he said. "Only his prints on the keyboard, so he typed the suicide note himself."

The case file was thin. They'd worked it fast, closed it in twelve hours, just like they'd said. There was nothing in the folder I didn't already know. Just ten short entries along with some crime-scene photos that showed Pop sprawled on the lawn in a tipped-over chair with that brutal head wound, the shotgun on the grass behind and just to the right. I forced myself to study them. There was a copy of the ME's report, which I already had, and Walt's suicide note, which I didn't. I pulled it out. Walt's last earthly communication was only seven lines. Short and sweet.

To Whom it may Concern, I caught a bad wave. Got pulled down by leash drag.

I wasn't trying to hurt anyone.

Sorry about the yard sale, but it was the only way off the ride.

Don't hate me for what I did.

If you need the reason, tap the source, Walt.

I looked up from the note, into the stone-cold eyes of the two detectives.

"We had to get somebody who surfs to translate," Kovacevich said. "Leash drag is like getting held under by the ankle leash. A yard sale is a brutal wipeout. 'Tap the source' was painted on his board and his surf stuff. Apparently, it's the place where good waves come from."

"Yeah, I know what it all means," I said. "That's the way Walt talked."

"Don't fuck us up," Cole said, telling me with that sentence that he'd grown tired of me.

"There's nothing here," I assured them. "You guys got this exactly right. Suicide, pure and simple."

They watched me with suspicious eyes.

"Can I have a copy of this?" I asked, holding up the note.

"You can have that one. We still have the computer with the original. We had a guy in the electronics division do a computer dump. Nothing useful." Cole dropped into his chair and kicked his file drawer closed. Meeting over.

I drove out of the parking lot and headed east. I had almost two hours before the six o'clock pallbearers' meeting in Boyle Heights. I decided to use the time to stop by Huntington House. I had a few more questions, which I hoped Diamond Peterson could answer.

The suicide note was open on the seat beside me as I drove. At traffic lights, I kept looking down at it, rereading the seven lines. It certainly sounded like Pop, but somehow it felt bogus. I don't know what about it made me suspicious. Maybe it was because it had been written on a computer. I would have trusted it more if it was handwritten. But Kovacevich and Cole said only Pops fingerprints were on the keyboard, and we get a lot of electronic suicide notes these days, so that in itself wasn't enough.

Maybe it was all the surfer babble. Would Walt choose surf lingo for his last communication? Could it be that someone else had written it and was trying to make it sound like Pop, or was I just grasping at straws again, trying to find something where nothing existed?

I had agreed to go to a meeting with five people who didn't know what the fuck they were doing and were expecting me to solve this for them. I was the police expert. The professional. Yet I kept hoping they'd be able to explain it to me because I didn't have a take.

I was as confused as I was all those years ago when Pop first rescued me.