“You’ve got my numbers if you need me.”
“I need you to go.”
Hood kicked the railing upright, hard. Erin flinched and the terrier launched into a fit of barking. Hood stomped down the steps to his car. He was furious and ashamed of it.
He aimed the IROC down the drive and goosed the throttle and looked in the rearview mirror. The little dog receded and blurred in a cloud of dust and Erin watched him drive away.
He used that afternoon to meet with the local cable TV reporter who’d done a segment on the Lancaster LASD substation Toys for Tots campaign of last year. She gave him a DVD copy of the show.
Back in the Hole he played it on the computer and got exactly what he’d hoped for: the voice of Terry Laws.
“Well, it’s the least we can do for kids who don’t have a leg up in life. It makes us all at LASD really happy to bring a little joy this time of year.”
He listened to Laws say those two sentences a dozen times. Then he played the copy of the 911 tape that Warren had procured. But the anonymous call was so distorted, Hood couldn’t say with any certainty that it was made by Terry Laws.
So he tried Draper’s voice.
“Good. Because I don’t want anyone talking trash about my partner.”
Again, there was no way to hear much of a similarity. The more he listened the less it sounded like either of them.
He called a spectrograph examiner and made arrangements to get the recordings to him.
25
Tuesday morning, in Superior Courtroom 8, Ariel Reed led Hood through the events last year that had brought IA to a crooked deputy’s criminal emporium in Long Beach.
She asked him how he had met the informant, Allison Murrieta, and what made him think she could be trusted.
Hood told the truth. His ears rang mildly and he hoped his face wasn’t flushing. The fallen deputy glumly regarded him, and regularly whispered into his lawyer’s ear. There were a few LASD deputies in the room-the accused’s loyal supporters-who occasionally smiled at something Hood said. Judge Mabry eyed him with hard curiosity and the jury was a blur to him, thirteen faces that he tried to avoid.
On the cross, the defense did his best to make Hood look like an oversexed bumbler.
And by then you were involved intimately with Ms. Jones, correct?
Yes.
So you never questioned her motive for alleging that the defendant was selling stolen property?
I knew she wanted to hurt him.
Did it ever occur to you that she was using the lieutenant to deflect your attention from her own criminal activities?
No. She had admitted her own criminal activities.
But Mabry sustained Ariel’s several objections, and reminded the defense who was on trial here.
Hood was finished by the noon recess. They ate lunch in the cafeteria.
“You were good,” she said.
“I hope we win.”
“I’ll win. They weren’t able to make it a bad arrest and that’s their best chance.”
They talked small for a while after the meal was done. Two of the defendant’s partisan deputies took a table not far away, after giving them bemused stares. One spoke and the other laughed.
Ariel turned to them. “Can I help you?”
They looked away. Ariel took a call, stood, walked to a window and looked out. Hood saw her nodding but not saying much. When she came back her expression was skeptical.
“Let’s get some air,” she said.
They stood outside the Criminal Courts entrance in the meek downtown sunlight. The cars moved slowly and the pedestrians moved quickly.
“I used to smoke,” she said. “I did a lot of it right here.”
“I still do, once in a while.”
“I can’t do things once in a while. It’s another character flaw, like the way I split atoms.”
“There are plenty of things worse than that.”
“Charlie, look at me. Eichrodt passed the evaluation with flying colors. Both memory and speech, dramatically improved. Dr. Rosen is going to recommend that he be sent back here to stand trial for the murders of Lopes and Vasquez. My boss wants me to be a part of that team. I said yes.”
“I don’t think he killed them.”
“He’ll have his day.”
“Possibly rigged by two sheriff’s deputies.”
Ariel shook her head and looked out at the street. “Life is all curves, Charlie. It’s not straight, like a drag race. Wish somebody would have told me.”
She offered a small smile and her hazel eyes pried at him.
“Let’s walk down the street and get lunch,” he said.
“We just had lunch.”
“Let’s get another one.”
“Perfect.”
It was. Hood hadn’t spent a more pleasant hour in the last six months. He actually ate the second lunch, probably due to nerves. She talked on without a comma. Unlike the lawyer he had just seen in court, Ariel the person was self-deprecating, somewhat goofy and quick to smile. She described her line of the Reeds, especially the women, as “a motley crew obsessed with speed” and the men as “pointlessly energetic.”
He walked her back to the courthouse and felt the late winter chill settling over the city.
In the parking structure his phone rang. It was a sweet-voiced girl saying she wanted to talk to him about Londell Dwayne.
26
Patrice Kings was a mocha-skinned girl with olive eyes and a steady stare. Her hair was light brown and long. She had on black jeans and red canvas tennies and a suede jacket with a faux-fox collar and cuffs. Her bag was big and floppy and studded with rhinestones. She was waiting near the ticket windows in the municipal stadium parking lot, standing beneath the suspended fighter jet, just where she said she’d be.
The light was fading fast and there was an orange band in the western sky. The desert cold settled down from above.
“Can we walk?” she asked. She looked at Hood like she was memorizing him.
“Let’s walk.”
They were rounding the broad bend of the outfield before she spoke again.
“Londell was with me that night the policeman died.”
“I’ve heard that story before.”
“The motel man over in Palmdale can prove it. He would remember us. And another clerk, too, a woman.”
Hood buttoned his blazer against the cold, turned up its small collar and jammed his hands into his pants pockets. He had dressed for court. She watched him closely.
“Which motel and what people?”
“The Super Eight. Kevin. Big white fella, young. The woman was Dolores.”
“Anybody else?”
“Nobody.”
“Just you and Londell?”
“Just me and Londell.”
“Tell me about it.”
Up ahead he could see the ticket windows and the fighter jet. There were a few cars in the parking lot. The marquee said the next event was a classic car show this weekend, hundreds of cars.
“There isn’t much to tell. He’s got a girlfriend. He didn’t want anyone knowing about me. Yet.”
Again she gave Hood the assessing stare. He had seen in some people experience beyond their years, but never in a ratio so wide as in Patrice Kings.
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be sixteen.”
“When?”
“When I get done being fourteen and fifteen.”
“You’re fourteen.”
“Until September.”
“You’re fourteen and a half years old.”
“I know how old I am.”
“Did Londell send you here?”
“Yeah, he did. He’s scared. He’s got Crips on him for stuff, and Eighteenth, too. And the police on him for the murder of that guy that lost Londell’s dog. And you know what that means, means they shoot first and ask questions later.”
“He’s got to turn himself in, Patrice. We can’t prove his alibi without him. You talking to me here just isn’t good enough.”
“I knew that’s what you’d say.”
“Londell knows it too. You tell him to call me and I’ll pick him up and take him to jail. He won’t get shot and he won’t get hassled. Inside they have it segregated so the Crips and Eighteenth won’t jump him.”