Shadows of Doubt Page 10

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” Frank grinned like the Cheshire Cat.

  Max quirked a brow. “Care to enlighten me, oh faithful sidekick?”

  Now it was Frank that snorted. “I have my scanners set up in my room. While I was pulling up Donovan’s data, an LAPD car called in on an abandoned vehicle in a grocery store parking lot. A couple bags of rotting groceries and a purse were on the front seat. So, I called one of my guys to trot down there and check it out. Turns out one of the cashiers knows the owner of the vehicle and its been there for three days.”

  Max furrowed his brow. “And this helps us how?”

  Frank resumed grinning. “Well, while you were in here doing whatever it is you’ve been doing, Carpesh called with an ID on train-wreck-girl. Seems train-wreck-girl and the owner of the abandoned car are one and the same. And...” he continued before Max could cut him off. “...that makes the primary crime scene the parking lot which is LAPD’s turf which means it’s an LAPD case. Voila! I give it a few hours before they put it together. I’m a bit brighter than most.”

  Max placed his empty glass on the coffee table then sat back in the chair. “She is not going to like that one bit.” He smirked ever so slightly..

  Frank caught it then but played dumb. “Who?”

  “Lou... er... Donovan” Oh to be a fly on that wall when she threw her fit. He bet she was adorable when she was pissed off. “Why does she go by, Lou?” He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

  Bells were definitely starting to go off in Frank’s head but he simply shrugged. “Dunno. But I will in a couple hours. By then I’ll know what brand of cat food she feeds her cat.”

  “She has a cat?” Again, he needed to control the mouth and not just blurt things out.

  Oh yeah, this was going to get good, Frank thought to himself. “I dunno. Don’t all single women over 27 have cats?”

  “Don’t be an ass, Frankie.”

  Frank shrugged and bounced up” from the sofa and headed to his room. “What can I say, I’m a stereotypical pig about women.” He chuckled as he disappeared through the doorway; he had some serious plotting, planning and flat out work to do now. He laughed some more.

  For another hour, Max sat in that chair. This time however, instead of brooding over his idiocy, he went through the preliminary file Frank had pulled together on one Tallulah Luelle Donovan, also known as Detective Lou Donovan, Homicide. Such a frilly name and such a petite frame for such a tough cut of woman. By the time he had committed the contents of the file to memory, he was absolutely certain he needed to know more. It was time to take a little drive, by himself. But given recently gleaned information, he needed to make certain he was invisible. He pondered for a moment then headed into Frank’s room with a knock that was more for show than courtesy.

  “I’m borrowing some clothes.” Was all he said as he started to rifle through Frank’s closet.

  Frank was so startled when Max entered the room that he nearly fumbled swapping screens on the computer so Max couldn’t see what he was really doing. “What? My clothes? You hate my clothes. And my pants are way too short for you, nothing is gonna fit right.”

  “I need to do some recon. Need street clothes.” Max pulled an olive drab commando sweater, a desert combat uniform jacket and tan tactical cargo pants from Frank’s things.

  Frank watched as Max made his careful selections. “Street clothes, huh?”

  “What size boot do you wear?”

  “Same as you.” Frank tried so hard not to grin while Max grabbed his tan tactical boots. Street clothes, his ass.

  “I’ll have these cleaned and back in you’re closet in a few days.”

  Getting up from the workspace, Frank fished a pair of thick tan socks and a tan watch cap from his drawer, then tossed them to Max before he left the room. “Gotta color coordinate, ya know.”

  Max only nodded as he left the room and headed to his own to change.

  Frank knew something was going on for sure but needed to be patient and diligent to figure out what it was. He knew it had something to do with that detective, so that was the place to start. Frank had called a couple of his contacts to get data on her and had been running searches when Max had come in to raid his closet. All of that was going to take some time and again, patience. While looking over the educational data that scrolled across the screen, Frank heard the door to the suite slam. When he got up to see who was there, he discovered no one was, not even Max. Now that was something, wasn’t it? Max rarely, if ever, took off on his own or without a word to Frank on where he was going. A man of Max’s position was a target. It was Frank’s job to have his back and to not know where he was going, or with whom, made it very difficult for him to do his job. This was not good.

  A quick call down to the concierge to find out what vehicle Max had taken only made the plot thicken. Frank was informed that a motorcycle had been delivered a short time ago and Max had just left on it. It took a few minutes, but after some phone calls and some ingenuity, Frank was on the phone with the very helpful gentleman that brokered the sale and was obtaining the GPS data on the MV-Augusta F4CC. So, a guy screaming through L.A. in desert camouflage on a $120k motorcycle was apparently considered covert recon. Max was off his game and that bothered Frank a lot. Max was never off his game, that’s why he was who he was. Max was the master of details, rational planning and patient execution. For him to take off and not follow normal protocol confirmed any suspicion Frank had that something was definitely up.

  After a few minutes more, Frank had the map up on his cellphone showing the blip that was Max heading northbound on Laurel Canyon. At least he was taking back streets. It took another six minutes but Frank had called down for his SUV to be brought around. He grabbed some gear and was on the road and hot on Max’s trail. Well, not too hot. If Max caught wind of Frank following him there would be hell to pay. As Frank finally exited the highway, turned and headed north up Topanga Canyon he found himself whistling the theme to Mission Impossible. He had a gut feeling he knew where Max was headed now and things were going to get tricky.

  Caroline and Carpesh had taken what was left of one Janine Winslow, stage name ‘Jade’, back to Mission Road nearly an hour ago. Her prints had been in the system for a DUI she got popped for a while back which made the identification relatively quick. The young woman hadn’t been a prostitute or a junkie. She had been an art history student at California State University Northridge and was taking a full load of classes during the day. At night, she danced at a fairly decent strip club in West Hollywood that had been made trendy a few years back when it was featured in some movie. There was nothing trendy about where Janine was going now.

  Despite having been run over by a train and having her legs chopped off, Winslow’s wounds were superficial and minimal, save for a gouge in her upper right thigh that had clearly severed the femoral artery. Several slices on each side of her face were arranged methodically and asymmetrically. They looked to Lou much like Native American Indians would wear war paint, only sliced into the woman’s face with some kind of straight edge. The cuts were made with care, patience and no hesitation. Other then the wounds to the face, there were no other marked injuries. Only mild abrasions from being dragged. Across gravel most likely.

  Lou had stopped being able to feel her toes about an hour ago. They were waiting for the deputies that they sent out to call in with the measurements from two trains. Determining which one sheared off the girl’s legs was key for their time-line.

  “Hey do you know if coyotes will eat something that’s been dead a while?” Jack asked them while he walked
the perimeter, double checking for evidence.

  “How the hell would I know? Google it!” Vinny grunted and continued writing in his notepad.

  “That would be carrion, and yes they do.” Lou chimed in. “And they are prolific in this area so if Caroline doesn’t find any evidence of wildlife feeding on our victim, our dump window just got a lot smaller.”

  “Clever girl.” Max whispered to himself regarding Lou’s remarks. He had hidden the motorcycle in a dilapidated barn about about 300 yards to the west and traversed the hillside to get close to the scene with relative ease. Perched between two boulders, he managed to disappear into the landscape because of what he was wearing. Even his Leupold tactical binoculars faded into the stone. He was close enough that he could hear them clearly so if he restricted his movements, he should be perfectly safe from detection. Max took note of any data he gained from the conversations, perhaps to justify his being there as a covert op. He tried not to think about it too much because the truth of it was far less noble and more to the asinine. He wanted to see her. He wanted to observe her movements, how she worked, who she was. This was a start.

  “So we are going with the theory that she was laid very carefully like this...” Lou laid down crosswise on the tracks with her legs slung over the east rail about mid-thigh. “... Metro trains do an average speed of fifty-five miles per hour so let’s say thirty five to forty since it was approaching the tunnel and that evil curve is on the other side.”

  Vinny walked over and looked down at her positioning. “That seems about right. I can check with the conductor and get the logged speed for the train once we know which is our clipper.”

  “Yeah, okay. So she had debris pushed up against the right side of her torso, which is consistent with the directionality of the train.”

  Vinny’s face looked pained. “I am sensing a ‘but’ here.”

  Lou hopped up off the ground. “The femoral wound.” She said while dusting herself off. “Not even touching the fact that there is zero spray or spatter, directionality of that slice is inconsistent with the path of the train. If something from the undercarriage of the train snagged her, it would have been from her right to left. The actual wound shows a left to right rippage.”

  “That is not a word.” Vinny scoffed.

  “It is now!” She stuck her tongue out at him then maneuvered around to the location where the first leg was found. “I’ll bet you one of Wicked Jack’s chocolate rum cakes that the femoral wound was sustained before she hit the tracks and a pot of Kopi Luwak that cause of death is a bleed out from the same.”

  Vinny snickered. “You’re on, Sherlock.”

  The deputy hurried up to them with a look of panic on his face. “What the hell! Rum cake? I don’t bake!”

  Both Lou and Vinny burst into laughter which only made him blanch more.

  “Wicked Jack’s rum cake ya dork! Its a brand name, we didn’t mean you, Jack!” Vinny shook his head and resumed laughing.

  “Oh.” The color returned to Jack’s cheeks. “Is it good?”

  “As the name would imply, it’s wicked good. The original is a must but the chocolate is to die for.” Lou thoughtfully explained as her partner merely moaned.

  Jack nearly moaned himself. “Man that sounds good. So whats that poopieloo-whatever?”

  The two laughed again as Lou’s cell started to ring. “It’s Caroline.”

  Vinny took the opportunity to explain the pricey coffee and its origins to Jack while Lou took the call, pacing while her friend relayed the preliminary findings. Lou mostly listened until Caroline got to the part where she said she thought they had their mystery saliva again. That’s when Lou yelled, very loud.

  “Are you shitting me?!” Vinny and Jack turned to look at Lou when they heard her shout but quickly turned their attention to the four arriving vehicles, two of which were LAPD cruisers.

  Max wondered who it was Lou was talking to on the phone and what it was that would make her shout. He thought perhaps she was being notified about the jurisdiction issue that Frank had the inside scoop on, but the cars that had pulled up after her exclamation made him think again. “Well, let’s see how well you do under pressure my dear.” He whispered to himself and settled in to watch the show.

  Lou clicked off her call, stuffed her phone back in her pocket and watched as the four uniformed LAPD officers exited their respective cruisers. Behind them came two men who looked like department brass to Lou, exiting a cliché blue Crown Victoria. Then to her surprise came her captain, who got out of his departmental issue brown Accord looking less than pleased. This could not be good, she thought to herself. As if in a gesture of solidarity, Vinny and Jack flanked Lou’s sides and waited for the posse to land.

  It was their captain that walked up to them first. He had apparently asked the others to hang back so he could speak with his team privately.

  “Alright, we have a development with this case.” He ushered them off to the side and instinctively they all huddled together.

  “Whats going on, Captain?” Vinny was the one who asked, but they all wanted to know.

  “Lou, since you’re tight with Devereux, I’m sure she has notified you by now that the victim was not killed here. Preliminary findings state she bled out through the severed femoral artery, the wound to the thigh.

  Lou smiled wide at her partner. “Coffee and cake at my house tonight!”

  The Captain rolled his eyes and continued. “Time of death is placed between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. last night. She was only dumped here. And here’s where it sucks hard...” he blew out a breath and scrubbed his face with his hands. “victim’s car was found at a market not too far from here. Purse and groceries purchased three days ago were on the front passenger seat.”

  “Do not even tell me we are tossing this to LAPD.” Lou’s back was up instantly. She knew where this was going and she was pissed.

  “I know this bites harder because of the Talbott case, Lou. But it is what it is and it’s LAPD’s case. So wrap it up, give them what you’ve got and go home, get some rest.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Vinny got a pointed glare from the Captain but did not back down. “Listen Cap, we have spent all day, freezing our asses off, the first half waiting for a ruling that hit to us and now because the side of the parking lot she was snatched from is LAPD’s half?”

  “That’s the way it is, Sergeant. Now I won’t say it again. You’re hereby ordered to wrap it up, pass what you have to those detectives, then I am giving you the rest of the day to be pissed wherever you wanna be pissed. But not here.” He turned and walked to the LAPD detectives and spoke with them a moment while Lou, Vinny and Jack just stared the death stare in their general direction. Lou turned her head so none of them could see her lips when she spoke.

  “We have all our crime scene photos packed up already, yeah?” She took the grunts as a yes. “All our sketches and everything are in your car, Jack, we put them there when it started to rain earlier. Forget they are there.”

  Jack turned his head to look at her with wide eyes.

  “I’ll get them from you later and turn ‘em over like the captain ordered, but I want to look into a couple things first.”

  It was Vinny that looked at her now. “What you got going on in that messy head of yours?”

  She gave him a solid stare before she spoke. “Follow my lead on this will you?”

  “Sure but...”

  “There are things I didn’t fill yo
u in on last night that will make all this clear. Just take off. Get my coffee and cake and meet up at my place in an hour.”

  The LAPD detectives approached them and civilized introductions were made. They made halfhearted apologies but got to the meat and potatoes real fast and demanded all data handed over. Max knew this was where Lou would show her true character. How she reacted to being booted out of her own case. He looked through the binoculars so as not to miss every expression that would pass over her face if she did what he was hoping she would.

  “Hate to take all your grunt work and run, but, protocol dictates.” The one named Pearson said in a not so subtly smug tone.

  “How many times you think he practiced that on the ride over, Lou?” Vinny’s smug tone wasn’t meant to be subtle.

  “Four, maybe five? What do you think Jack?”

  Jack yawned and shrugged. “Don’t really give a shit.”

  Lou snorted, then, with a good bit of dramatic flourish, fell into a professional persona. “Well, would love to help you boys out but we basically haven’t done shit. We don’t get to work until after the donuts arrive and...” She looked at the watch she wasn’t wearing. “Deputy Fife hasn’t come back with them yet.”

  “Oh! He called!” It was hard for Vinny to keep a straight face.

  “He did?!” Lou went overboard with the look of surprise.

  “Yeah, he called and said Aunt Bee burned the first batch so it was gonna be a while longer.” Vinny spit to his left, then walked straight through the men, patting one on the back as he slipped through. “Good luck y’all!”

  Both Lou and Jack followed Vinny to Jack’s cruiser and ignored the shouts and threats that the LAPD boys were tossing at them.