The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 37.

Dahlia Wilkes pulled up in a new red Lexus and parked down by the gate. It was five in the morning. The nights are long in December so it was still dark. As always, she was immaculately dressed. She set a fat designer briefcase on the fender of her car and regarded the four of us skeptically. Her hair ruffled in the brisk Santa Ana wind.

"So what s going on?"

"Something came up," Alexa said.

"It better not screw up my Sladky prosecution."

"It certainly touches on it," Alexa said. "It might affect it."

Dahlia turned on Hitch and me. "What have you two been doing?"

When neither of us answered, she started to walk up the drive to see for herself. Jeb blocked her way.

"This is a crime scene. Its restricted."

"Not from me. I'm the prosecutor on Sladky, or did you numbskulls forget that already?"

"Except it's not Sladky" he said. "Its Vulcuna."

She stopped, then pinned us with a withering courtroom stare. "What do you mean, its not Sladky? Why else would you call me? And who or what is a Vulcuna?"

"It's a cold case that just went active and it touches Sladky," Alexa said. "But unless you promise to give us seventy-two hours of confidentiality to work this situation, we can't let you on the crime scene."

"You're outta your mind."

"It's an unusual circumstance," Jeb said.

"By confidentiality, what exactly are we talking about?"

"Only you get to know what we've found here. We're extending this courtesy because you might have suggestions to protect your Sladky prosecution."

Dahlia's irritation had now turned to puzzled interest. "Of course, I have to tell Chase no matter what."

"Chase Beal doesn't need to know about this just yet," Alexa said.

"The District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles is to be kept in the dark? What are you smokin', girl?"

"This case has some political overtones. The DA is a politician. Without going any further, let's just leave it at that," my wife said.

Dahlia was definitely hooked. She wanted to know what we'd found, but she wanted to do it without putting her own ass on the line.

"What's to keep me from calling him right now, telling him what you people are suggesting? Our office will hit this property like a Panzer Division. Then we'll all know."

"If you intend to get the same excellent service from the LAPD on your cases in the future, I would advise against that strategy," Alexa warned.

"If I do this, I might as well tender my resignation to the section supervisor."

"I don't completely understand how things work in your office," Alexa challenged, "but we have solid reasoning behind this tactic. After Chase thinks it over, even he will acknowledge the wisdom of doing it this way."

"And I cant get filled in until I agree to this dumb-ass deal, in the blind."

"That's more or less it," Alexa said.

"Well, I've got to hand you guys one thing. You've definitely got my interest up."

She opened her calendar and looked at it. "Seventy-two hours is five A. M., Friday."

"That's right," Alexa agreed.

"Okay. I'll do you one better. Chase is in Sacramento this week meeting with some PACs to raise money for his mayoral campaign. He won't be back in town until Friday. As soon as he's back, I brief him. I should be able to get away with that."

"Deal," Alexa said.

"However, if he changes his plans and comes home early, he gets briefed then."

"That hardly works," Jeb objected.

"So nobody's completely happy," she said. "That's the way it should be in county government."

Alexa realized it was the best deal she could strike, so she agreed, and said, "Come on. We'll show you."

We all walked up the drive and headed toward the well house.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Dahlia said when she saw it.

We told her and then accompanied her inside. She looked at the truck and the two skeletons in the front seat. Five minutes later we were all outside again, standing in the predawn darkness, listening to the Santa Ana winds rattle through the forty-foot cypress trees.

"Where'd that Brinks truck come from?" Dahlia wanted to know.

Jeb had called in the plates and now confirmed that it was the armored car that went missing from Wilshire Boulevard in 1983 with fifteen million in gold bullion. He filled Dahlia in on the cold case.

"The third guard is probably in back," he concluded.

Dahlia sighed after he finished. She could see the trap we were in if this got out. 'Til keep it quiet until Chase gets back," she said, but wasn't happy about it.

We called two crime-scene photographers to the scene and six CSIs. Alexa and Jeb handpicked everyone. We worked fast. There wasn't any useful trace evidence inside the well house because over the years heavy rainwater had seeped in and anything that might have been there was long gone.

A police flatbed truck arrived at six and backed up the narrow drive.

The assistant coroner, Ray Tsu, pulled in at six thirty. The quiet Asian ME was called Fey Ray by almost everyone because he was rail thin and never spoke above a whisper. He'd worked half a dozen of my cases in the past.

He looked through the window at the two skeletons in the front seat. Because it was impossible to get inside the truck without torches, he made the decision to leave them in the armored car for transport back to the ambulance bay in the empty hospital in North Hollywood and remove the remains there.

As the sun came up, the tow drivers inflated the tires and winched the armored car out of the well house onto the flatbed. They tied a new tarp over the top to hide it from the neighbors, then drove the flatbed down the drive onto the street below.

Twenty-five minutes later we were pulling into the covered ambulance bay in the back of the old North Hollywood Medical Center.

The building was a big stucco four-story fifties-style rectangle with mismatching additions that architecturally resembled a bunch of shoeboxes. White with peeling green trim, it looked pretty run-down.

By ten A. M., our handpicked CSI team along with two forensic tech welders were hard at work in the ambulance bay opening the truck. The armored car was made of bulletproof steel so the techs had to use oxyfuel torches to cut through it. The door lock was finally freed.

Jeb had already assigned the armored car heist and its resulting murders to Hitch and me. As the new primaries on this three-decade-old cold case, we stepped up onto the truck s back bumper to open the rear door.

Because I now suspected that my new partner was afraid of ghosts, and because we were expecting to uncover a third skeleton inside, I did the honors.

I gloved up and pulled the door wide.