Vigilante Read online

  “Sit,” she commanded.

  “Thank you, Captain. I’m Detective Shane Scull—”

  “I know who you are,” she interrupted. “You too, Detective Hitchens. Sit.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said politely, settling into the second guest chair.

  “So you two got the Lita Mendez kill.”

  Not homicide, not murder. Kill.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “I understand you’ve made an arrest already. That’s good.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hitch said. We sounded like terrified Catholic schoolboys who’d just been dragged in front of the Mother Superior.

  “I was expecting you to come by,” she said. “It was no secret that I had my share of problems with Miss Mendez.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That fact has sort of bubbled to the surface,” I said.

  “It’s what?”

  “It has come to our attention,” I corrected.

  “Hm-m-m-m,” she said, and tipped back in her swivel chair, looking at each of us in turn. “I’m curious what you’ve heard.”

  “That you recently filed a criminal case against her for filing a false police report and won a restraining order against her last June.”

  “That woman was eating up my advocates’ budget on frivolous complaints. Almost a third of our Hollenbeck Division hearings last year were because of her. She was wasting an important department resource. IAG has legitimate police improprieties to adjudicate.”

  “I see,” I began. “So it would be fair to say that you had a healthy personal dislike for Miss Mendez?”

  “Grow up, Detective,” she said, then handed me a piece of paper. “I’ve made up a sheet. A log, if you will, attesting to my whereabouts minute to minute for the last forty-eight hours. All of these meetings can be confirmed by the people I’ve listed to the right. I realize that the several loud arguments I’ve had in public with Miss Mendez over the years will certainly make me the subject of some interest in the press. I’m counting on you two detectives to use that sheet to deflect any such nonsense.”

  “Excuse me, Captain, but this isn’t your interview. It’s ours,” I said. I’d run out of patience for this. “I intend to conduct it according to my guidelines.” I saw her flinch. Hitch groaned softly under his breath.

  “I beg your pardon?” She seemed astonished.

  “You are not running this investigation; we are. I intend to treat this the same way I would if you didn’t carry a badge. You are on my suspect sheet. I’ve got questions. I intend to get answers to those questions, in the way and order I want.”

  She sat looking at me, her face a stony visage.

  “I don’t appreciate your tone,” she said coldly. “But go on if you must. Ask.”

  “When was the last time you saw Lolita Mendez?”

  “Day before yesterday, in court. As you just noted, I had a felony case pending against her for making a false police report. We had the preliminary meetings in Judge Amador’s chambers along with attorneys to arrange for trial dates, depositions, and the like.”

  “How’d that go?”

  “Like all my meetings with Lita Mendez. It was contentious. She called me a bull dyke, which I’m obviously not. I called her a liar and a gangster, which she obviously is.”

  I looked over at Hitch. This wasn’t going well at all.

  “These personal insults were witnessed by a judge?” Hitch asked, slightly appalled.

  “Listen, boys. Let’s get something straight right now. I’m an easy target, but I’m the wrong target. You made this stop to talk to me, which I guess was necessary. You’ve done your job, covered this base; now move the hell on. You have my time line in your hands. It clears me. I wasn’t anywhere near Hollenbeck for days before the murder. If you have any further questions, consult that list.”

  “You willing to take a polygraph just so everybody feels all warm and fuzzy?” I asked. She was still riling me up.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, Detective, I don’t believe police officers should be asked to take polygraph tests on less-than-solid legal grounds. If you should ever get enough actual evidence to charge me with anything, then we’ll talk about it. If you want a supporting opinion on the legality of police submitting to polygraphs, talk to your own union reps. The POA has come down very strongly against law enforcement being asked to take these things and I certainly agree. Next.”

  “This sheet attests to your whereabouts,” I said, holding it up. “You got one for Lester?”

  “My husband has nothing to do with this.” She leaned forward and put her muscled forearms on the desk. “You’ve got half a dozen better starting points. All those Hispanic gangs she dissed. There’s over forty criminal sets in Hollenbeck. They’re all at war over street corners. Then, after that, you can check her brother Homer’s old enemies. Some of those murderous vatos might want her dead, and of course there’s Carla and Julio Sanchez, who you’ve already arrested. Concentrate on all that.”

  She held my gaze with hard eyes.

  “Interview’s over, Detectives.” Captain Madrid stood, then walked to the door and opened it. Hitch and I filed out obediently, but she stopped us in the outer office.

  “If you have any further questions, put them in writing and submit them to my adjunct, Joseph, here.” She pointed at the terrified detective. “Good day.”

  We left her office with almost as little info as we had going in. We were quickly back in the hall, overlooking the magnificent atrium.

  “That was fun,” Hitch said. “We should vacation up here.”

  “Who the hell was Fenrir again?” I asked.

  CHAPTER

  15

  When we got back to the PAB, we divided up Captain Madrid’s time line for the prior two days. She had set it up like her appointment schedule, in fifteen-minute increments. Each day started at 7:00 A.M. and ended around ten when she went to bed. Of course, the time line was mostly useless, because our preliminary time of death was around midnight. Once she and her husband were in the sack, Lester was her alibi witness, and I had no hope that he’d contradict her version of events.

  “What’d you make of that crack about Lita using up a third of her advocates’ budget on frivolous complaints?” Hitch asked.

  “Captain Madrid seems like she lives for her job. Maybe that rises to the level of a motive.”

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t end up on V-TV. She comes off like Marge Schott.”

  We sat at our desks in Homicide Special and I started making notes on our interview with Captain Madrid.

  “You wanta go talk to Judge Amador?” I asked Hitch.

  “Sure. I’ll see if I can track him down. What are you gonna do?”

  “I’m going to keep working on the murder book.” I pointed at my computer. “According to this e-mail from Detective Becker, the neighborhood canvas turned up nothing. Not surprising considering it’s a gang block, but I’m also gonna go through all the patrol officer’s notes and see if I can spot anything she missed. Then, once it’s dark, I’m gonna go back to Lita’s house and do my Jigsaw walk.”

  Hitch nodded. He was already familiar with this piece of my crime scene methodology. A Jigsaw walk was something I’d learned from one of the most fabled detectives to ever work a crime beat in Los Angeles. In his over twenty years as a homicide investigator, Jigsaw John St. John had cleared a surprising two-thirds of his murder cases. Now we’re lucky if we clear 25 percent. Admittedly, that was before all these senseless drive-bys where the shooters don’t even know their victims, but even so, Jigsaw was an LAPD legend.

  John had retired and was living in Washington near Seattle. When I first got into Homicide I’d actually made a trip up there to spend some time with him, pick his brain, and learn his tricks.

  One of the things he’d told me was he used to wait until everybody had cleared the crime scene and then he would return alone, usually at night when it was quiet. He’d stand in the hou
se, clear his mind, and try to think like the victim. He’d walk around the crime scene using the same hallways as the vic, sitting in the same chairs. He’d play CDs from the victim’s music collection and do whatever he thought the vic might have done just prior to death. Basically, Jigsaw would try to become the person whose murder he was trying to solve.

  Then, after he’d done that, he would go outside and try to become the killer. Jigsaw used whatever insight he’d gained from the evidence gathering and witness interviews to try to re-create what he thought the unknown subject’s mind-set might be.

  Jigsaw told me that nine times out of ten it was a worthless exercise, but then the tenth time he’d hit on something he’d completely missed before and that one hit made the nine misses worth the effort.

  I’d been following his routine for almost ten years, and in the cases I’d had in the interim, John’s methodology had actually contributed in a significant way on at least fifteen.

  The day went slowly because I was calling potential wits, suspects, or uncooperative neighbors, trying to set up interviews.

  At around three, Hitch went to the superior court to interview Lita’s trial judge. Thomas Amador was a crusty old coot. Cops loved this judge because he threw the book at felons. The Public Defender’s office called him Judge Slamador, which might give you an idea of how tough he was.

  At five, I took the key to Lita’s duplex from the evidence folder and drove over to Boyle Heights.

  I parked up the street from the crime scene, which was still festooned with yellow tape. Then I watched the house for almost twenty minutes trying to feel the vibe of the neighborhood. It was too early for much gang activity, but because the sun sets around five thirty, the streetlights were just coming on.

  A few of the living rooms up and down the street were lighting up as residents arrived home. As with most violent hoods, I saw a number of dogs with no tags running around off-leash, scavenging.

  After a while, I got out of the Acura and walked toward the house, then stood there looking at it and thinking about Lita Mendez, trying to do as Jigsaw had suggested and capture her mind-set.

  How did I feel about the neighborhood where I lived? Was it too dangerous and violent? Did that bother me? Did I like it here? Did I feel safe? Was I angry? Was I sad? What was driving me? What was I looking forward to? What frightened me?

  The house was in a complete state of disrepair. A house is an outer covering, just like our clothes. When we dress in colorful clothes, it can signify a bright mood. Dark clothes often signal darker moods. I first noticed this phenomenon when I went to Germany to pick up a murder suspect just after the Berlin Wall fell. It was cold and snowy, and the new Western-style economy hadn’t begun kicking in yet. It was a bleak place. I noticed everybody in the street was wearing gray or dark brown.

  John had taken that observation a step further. He had told me that besides clothes, the general condition of a house can sometimes hint at general personality traits of the person who owned it. This lawn was not cut. Was this because Lita had just moved in?

  I walked up the drive and around to the backyard, where the grass was brown and dry. More of the same. The garage was padlocked shut, but I looked through a grimy window. Lita’s red Chevy Caprice had already been towed to Impound, where it was being processed by forensic scientists to see if she had possibly been kidnapped somewhere else and brought back here by the killer, who, if he used the Caprice to transport her body, had perhaps left some trace or a latent print behind.

  I took the back steps up to the porch, unlocked the door, and entered. Lita had been a troublesome, thoroughly organized adversary, but she was a disorganized housekeeper. The inside of the duplex looked like a fraternity house den. Our CSIs had made it worse, spreading graphite powder everywhere in their search for prints.

  I stood in the kitchen where she died and looked down at the square of missing floor that we’d removed to preserve the two 9mm slugs.

  I again remembered the garlic smell I’d noticed when I first hit the crime scene at 9:15 A.M. What had Lita cooked but not eaten the night of the murder that contained garlic? The thought kept pestering me, but I put it aside.

  Lita had been fatally beaten, had fallen backward with her arms outstretched. Maybe she’d still been partially conscious as she fell, but probably not. The cerebral hemorrhage and the ME’s report told me Lita was most likely dead when she landed. Then the unknown subject, the killer, had stepped forward and put two head shots into her already-lifeless body. Brutal, cold-blooded, and unnecessary.

  The body had been beaten badly and she was already dead when she hit the floor. So why had the unsub put the two postmortem shots into her brain? Was this classic overkill signaling rage by somebody who was emotionally involved with the victim, like a jealous lover or someone Lita had had important emotional conflicts with? Had the unsub hated Lita so much that it wasn’t enough to just beat her to death? Did the killer also need to disfigure the body, blowing holes in Lita’s face?

  Or was it just the opposite? Were the two shots attempting to send a false message? Were they simply staging to make it look like uncontrollable rage while, in reality, the unsub was coldly uninvolved? I didn’t know which theory was true yet. Generally staging is the less likely of the two because it suggests an organized, more sophisticated mind and most violent killers are disorganized, unstructured, and out of control.

  I moved through the house. Everything was a mess. It was logical to assume the house was clean when Lita moved in a week earlier, but the closets were already in disarray. Clothes were strewn on the floor instead of on hangers. Even her expensive court clothes were thrown in a heap below the bar. Had she done this? Had the unsub?

  I walked slowly through the house, sitting on Lita’s furniture, sampling her extensive music CD collection, trying to find answers, making notes about my feelings and observations in a spiral notebook.

  Finally, I sat on the bed and looked around Lita’s darkened bedroom. She had also tacked up sheets across the windows in here. Was this because she was depressed and liked it dark or liked being in rooms without sunshine? Or were the sheets to protect her from a possible sniper’s shot? When Lita died, did she already know that somebody wanted to kill her? I wondered if her life had recently been threatened and that’s why she’d tacked up the sheets. I wondered if she’d confided this fear to anyone. I made a note to find out.

  I stayed in the house for almost an hour. On my way out, I paused in the kitchen to stand once more where Lita had died. I could see her everyday dishes in an open cupboard. I crossed and took a cereal bowl down from the shelf. It hadn’t been washed completely and still had a tiny speck of old food on the side. The glasses in the cupboard were rinsed but were a little grimy. They obviously hadn’t gone through the dishwasher.

  I took a few down.

  I could see Lita’s lipstick still on the rim of one. Water streaks marked the sides. I smelled a glass. It had a slightly foul odor as if some of the residue of the drink it once held was still there. I checked a few more dishes and found more of the same.

  I opened the dishwasher. The array of pots and pans Hitch had found were still in the racks. I picked up a saucepan, studied it. I smelled dishwashing soap. Unlike the crockery and glasses in the cupboard, the pots and pans had been run through the entire cycle.

  Why were all these cooking pans run through the washer while Lita only rinsed out her regular dishware in the sink?

  When you work homicides you quickly learn that people are creatures of habit. The entire house was a testimony to deferred maintenance. Lita was a sloppy housekeeper. She didn’t hang up her clothes or pick up her things. She left old pizza boxes around. When she did the dishes, she only rinsed and stacked. She would have probably done the same with the pots and pans. That was her habit, the way she lived.

  So why on the night she was murdered did she change this pattern and wash those pots and pans in the dishwasher? The answer to that was pretty simple. She ha
dn’t. The night she died, somebody else had been here. Somebody else had run the pans through the washer.

  Did the unsub wash the pans? If so, why?

  As I was mulling this, I saw a flash of movement through the back window. I crouched low and looked into the backyard.

  A man was in the shadows of the house, sneaking toward the locked garage.

  CHAPTER

  16

  I’d put the lights on in Lita’s house when I first arrived and had been walking around as if I owned the place, so whoever was in the backyard had to know I was here. He probably also knew I was in here alone. However, Lita had tacked those sheets up on quite a few of her windows, so I had some cover.

  I found a protected spot, knelt down, and pulled my 9mm Springfield automatic out of its custom leather holster. I tromboned the slide, kicking a fresh round into the chamber, but left the safety on. Then I kept low and moved out of the kitchen and into the bedroom.

  I’d already turned the lights off in there, so I was hidden by the dark room as I carefully removed the sheet Lita had tacked up over the side window. I slid open the glass and wriggled out through the opening, falling face first onto the dirt outside, cradling my gun in one hand.

  I landed in a four-foot-wide path with a rusting chain-link fence that separated Lita’s house from the house next door. I gathered my feet beneath me and stood carefully, holding my gun at the ready.

  I heard something clunk softly in the backyard. A muffled thump. I carefully thumbed the safety off the Springfield, then moved toward the sound. A few seconds later I approached the rear corner of the house.

  Before I got there, I lay down silently on my stomach, gun out in front of me, and inched out so I could see into the backyard. I waited for my vision to adjust.