Hunter gave Stokes a confident nod. ‘From cop to cop.’
‘Well, we roughed him up a little when we caught him.’
‘Roughed him up?’
‘You know how it is, man. When everything went down, adrenalin was pumping like bad blood. Andy got to him first. Escobedo had dragged this 18-year-old girl into a disused Salvation Army building in Lynwood. Andy always had a temper on him, and his fuse . . .’ Stokes twisted his mouth to one side and followed the movement with his head. ‘Simply non-existent. He used to get shit from our captain all the time for losing his head. He wasn’t exactly a loose cannon, but he was pretty borderline, you know what I’m saying? When he got to the building, Escobedo had already ripped the girl’s blouse off and beat her up pretty good. That was the cue for Andy to transform himself into the Incredible Punching Man, fuck being a cop, you know what I mean?’
Hunter didn’t reply, and silence took over for several seconds.
‘The truth is . . .’ Stokes finally carried on, ‘. . . the bastard deserved every punch he got. Andy made a mess of his face.’
Hunter sipped his coffee calmly. ‘So where’s he now? Where’s Escobedo?’
‘I have no idea. This all happened twelve years ago. Escobedo got ten inside and served every second of it. The last I heard, he was released two years ago.’
Something like an electric charge ran up Hunter’s spine.
‘And I’ll tell you right now,’ Stokes moved on, ‘if that sack of shit is the one who took Andy down then . . .’
‘Where did he go?’ Hunter interrupted Stokes, scooting up to the edge of his seat.
‘What?’ Stokes squinted and pushed back a strand of floppy hair off his forehead.
‘Escobedo, which prison did he go to?’
‘The state prison in Los Angeles County.’
‘In Lancaster?’
‘That’s right.’
Same prison as Ken Sands, Hunter thought.
‘Seriously, if Escobedo did this, I . . .’
‘You’re not going to do anything,’ Hunter cut him off again. The last thing he wanted was for Stokes to leave that café thinking that he had a tip on LA’s newest cop killer. That bogus information would leak like water through a sieve, and by lunchtime Hunter would have half of the cops in the city out on a vendetta hunt. He needed to dissuade Stokes. ‘Look, Seb, if Escobedo is the only guy you can think of, then we’ll look into him, but at the moment he isn’t even a suspect. He’s just a name on a list. We have nothing to link him to the crime scene – no fingerprints, no DNA, no fibers found, no witnesses. We don’t even know where he was the day Nashorn was murdered, or if he possesses the skills to do what was done.’ Hunter allowed a couple of seconds for his words to sink in. ‘You’re a good detective. I read your file. You know exactly how investigations work. If a rumor starts circulating now, this whole investigation will be jeopardized. And when that happens, it gives guilty people a chance to walk. You know that.’
‘This motherfucker ain’t walking.’
‘You’re right, no he isn’t. And if Escobedo is our guy, I’ll get him.’
The conviction in Hunter’s voice softened the hard look in Stokes’s eyes.
Hunter placed a card on the table and pushed it over towards Stokes. ‘If you think of anyone else other than Escobedo, give me a call.’ He stopped as he stood up. ‘And listen, humor me and stay alert, OK? This guy is smarter than your average perp.’
Stokes smiled. ‘And as I said . . .’ he patted the bulge under his suit jacket, ‘. . . let him come.’
Fifty-Four
Garcia had just finished reading the files Alice had given him when Hunter pushed the office door open. The drive back from the Grub café to the PAB took him longer than he expected.
‘You’ve gotta read this,’ Garcia said, even before Hunter got to his desk.
‘What is it?’
‘Alfredo Ortega and Ken Sands’s prison files and visitation records.’
Hunter frowned and looked at Alice, who was pouring herself a cup of coffee.
‘The captain said get a move on; I got a move on,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘You hacked into the California prison-system database?’
Alice gave him an almost imperceptible shrug.
‘What?’ Garcia chuckled at the question. ‘You said that these reports were one of the perks of having the DA, the Mayor of Los Angeles, and the Chief of Police on our side.’
Alice gave him a sideways look followed by a smile. ‘I lied. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how you would react to the fact that I broke protocol. Some cops are very strict in their ways.’
Garcia smiled back. ‘Not in this office.’
‘OK then, what have we got?’ Hunter asked Garcia.
Garcia flipped back a few pages on the first file. Alfredo Ortega went to prison eleven years before Ken Sands, who, as Alice told us yesterday, was named by Ortega as his next of kin. During those eleven years between Ortega going to prison and Sands getting arrested, Ken Sands visited Alfredo Ortega no less than thirty-three times.’
Hunter leaned back against the front edge of his desk. ‘Three times a year.’
‘Three times a year,’ Garcia repeated, nodding. ‘Because of the heinous nature of Ortega’s crime, he was what is called a “Condemned Grade B” prisoner, and that means that they may only receive non-contact visits.’
‘All “Condemned” visits take place in a secured booth and involve the prisoner being escorted in handcuffs,’ Alice explained.
‘Visits to death-row inmates are restricted to availability; usually one visit every three to five months,’ Garcia carried on. ‘They can last from one to two hours. We have Ortega’s entire visitation history here. Every time Sands visited him, he stayed for the maximum duration.’
‘OK, anyone else visited Ortega?’ Hunter asked.
‘When it got closer to Ortega’s execution date, then he got the usual visitors – reporters, members of capital-punishment abolishment groups, someone wanting to write a book about him, the prison priest . . . you know how it goes.’ Garcia flipped another page on the report. ‘But during his first eleven years of incarceration, Sands was his only visitor. Not a single other soul.’ Garcia closed the file and handed it to Hunter.
‘We could’ve guessed Sands would have visited Ortega,’ Hunter said, leafing through the pages. ‘From Alice’s research we knew they were like brothers, so that was expected. Is that all we got?’
‘Ortega’s visitation files simply serve to confirm that Sands kept in contact with him for all those years,’ Alice said from the corner of the room, sipping her coffee. ‘Visitations are supervised, but the conversations are private. They could’ve talked about anything. And no, that’s not all we got.’ She moved her gaze from Hunter to Garcia as if to say ‘show him’.
Garcia reached for the second file and flipped it open.
‘This is Ken Sands’s prison file,’ he explained. ‘And here is where it gets a lot more interesting.’
Fifty-Five
Garcia pulled a new A4 report sheet out of the second folder and handed it to Hunter.
‘Sands’s prison-visitation file is pretty unimpressive. He received four visits a year during the first six years of his jail sentence, all by the same person.’
Hunter checked the report. ‘His mother.’
‘That’s right. His father never visited him, but that isn’t surprising given what their relationship was like. During the remaining three and a half years of his prison term, Sands had no visitors whatsoever.’