Shadows of Doubt Read online

  “So why is this ours and not LAPD?” She asked her partner.

  DeLuca simply looked at her with mild annoyance then to the bright and shiny rookie. “Ask him.”

  Making note of the name on his tag she snapped the gloves on. “Brooks, what’s the deal?”

  Deputy Brooks averted his eyes from the victim and turned sheepishly to face Lou. “Ma’am, my partner and I were on our way to serve subpoenas just up the street when the owner of the bookshop, a Miss Sue Shuster, came bolting out of the alley, into the street right in front of our cruiser. It was approximately 6:13 a.m. at that time. When we got out of the car to investigate, she informed us of the body which she discovered just moments prior. Ms. Shuster stated she arrived early to do inventory and when she approached the back door of her shop, well, there it was.” He gestured with his thumb to the corpse. “She said she immediately started yelling for help and ran out into the street to try and flag someone down and we happened to be right there. When we confirmed there was in fact a body, we called in to dispatch at approximately 6:20 a.m. for Homicide detectives and backup to assist with securing the alley. Rather than have the witness sit out here, my partner escorted her to the front entrance and is presently waiting with her inside.” He looked now at the body and swallowed hard.

  “You are aware that this should have been called in to LAPD since this is on their side of the line?” She asked.

  The Deputy blew out a breath and looked at her partner. “I am painfully aware of that now, ma’am.”

  “I checked with the brass. Captain said we deal with it for now, contact LAPD later and pass it off if they want.” Vinny’s tone of voice matched the annoyed expression he wore.

  “Alright, fine. Anything else Brooks?” She asked, trying to mimic her partner’s tone.

  “Ma’am, Shuster did indicate to me the owners of the Asian market were here before her. She says they get here at dawn and are always here before her. However, Ma’am, the dumpster appears to block the view from their side, they probably never saw the body when they got here.”

  “Probably, but we’ll need to confirm one way or the other.” She squatted down closer to the corpse. “Alright then, lets get this party started, shall we? ETA on the crew?” She glanced at her watch and noted the time being 6:48 a.m.

  “Should be here in a few.” Vinny replied as he donned his own gloves. “They got the buzz when I did. This girlie got one serious working over, and it wasn’t done here, that’s for sure. I’m not seeing one speck of blood anywhere besides whats on her and even that ain’t much.” As two more deputies arrived on scene Vinny immediately proceeded to bark various orders at them and then instructed Deputy Brooks to get statements from the Asian market proprietors. It was highly unlikely the market people saw or noticed anything. No one had even bothered to peek out their back door to notice it was a crime scene. Lou had learned very early on as a rookie that there were two kinds of people in this world, those who would go out of their way to do anything they could to help, and those that couldn’t be bothered to pee on you if you were on fire, dancing a jig smack in front of them. In this neighborhood she expected you were going to find more of the latter then the former.

  While her partner walked methodically over the area, Lou leaned over the body and looked closely. Head to toe the girl was covered with dozens upon dozens of lacerations ranging from less than one to ten inches long. Some of the slices were clean, almost surgical while others were jagged and rough. The wound that stood out the most, however, was the gouge across the throat. It appeared as though someone had literally tried to rip her throat out. While scanning the injuries to the arms she could clearly make out track marks between and beneath the slices. “She’s a junkie.” Lou noted aloud so her partner was apprised. “Long time user by the tracks.”

  “I got a bag over here.” He announced and she looked over her shoulder to see her partner’s find. The bag was between the size of a duffel and a purse, large and well used. What little of it that wasn’t filthy showed a faded floral print that Lou thought at one time might have been considered festive and cheery. Vinny carefully shuffled through the bag and recited the contents. “We got a pair of heels, a shirt... No, wait... it’s one of those spandex dress thingies, I think. Got antibacterial wipes, a wide variety of condoms, some deodorant, mints...”

  “Sounds like a working girl’s bag to me.” She stood up and walked toward him as he continued.

  “Yeah, would be my take too. Okay, here we go, we got a wallet. Last year school ID, Santa Monica High, says she’s Angela Talbott... ahh hell...” He paused to take a breath. “Kid’s sixteen years old for Christ’s sake! Still in high school!”

  “Obviously not or she wouldn’t be here.” Lou turned back to the body.

  Vinny looked at the dead girl and shook his head in disgust. “Where the hell are these kids’ parents.” It was a statement, not a question. One Lou had heard him make on an almost daily basis. “I know I’ve said it before but it bears repeating, you need a license to drive a car, but any mental defect can pop out a kid.”

  “Yeah, ain’t that the truth.” As her partner bagged and tagged the contents of the purse as evidence, Lou looked the victim over again while she waited for the Coroner and Forensics team to arrive. Even under all the wounds it was hard to believe the girl that laid in front of her was sixteen years old. She was young, Lou agreed with that, but this girl was worn, haggard and used. At best, for a junkie prostitute, Lou would have put her at a rough twenty-five, if she had to guess. To know that in a perfect world this girl should have been getting ready for school at this hour, with her worst worry being who was going to ask her to the winter formal, that just sucked.

  Deputy Brooks returned from questioning the proprietors at the Asian market faster then they expected. Still trying to avoid staring at the corpse, he glanced at his notes and began to relay his findings. “Owner of the market is John Xian. He arrived with his son, John Jr. at approximately 4:25 a.m. The father stated that it was no later or earlier than that because they barely made it into the store and got the lights on before the delivery guy started banging on the front door.”

  “The front door?” Lou wondered why a delivery would be coming in the front.

  “Yeah.” He continued, understanding her question. “Seems the alley back here is too narrow for most delivery trucks to fit so they come through the front. Mr. Xian said it was pitch black when they parked their Prius over there. The only light was from the streetlamp out over on the side street. They were in a rush because his kid overslept so he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” He paused a moment to notice the gray SUV pulling up within the perimeter.

  “Here comes the Coroner and Forensics crew.” Vinny announced. “Is that it, Brooks?”

  “Well, sir...” Clearing his throat he continued. “... as far as any of the other shops or possible witnesses, it appears none of the other shops on these two blocks open before 10 a.m. Between the fencing and tree line, no one in those apartments would have a line of sight to see anything down here. Not much left to canvass...”

  Lou stood up abruptly from the body and looked hard at the deputy. “I know that doing a boring canvass on a homicide pales in comparison to the exciting work of serving subpoenas, Deputy. However, there is the annoying little matter of procedure!” Lou was up on her toes, in his face now and the baby-faced deputy didn’t dare make eye contact with her. “I shall not even get into the fact that you saw fit to skirt protocol and failed to notify LAPD since this is their jurisdiction! So, since we are now all bright eyed and bu
shy tailed here, lets do the damn job and do it correctly!” She noted the light bulb, however dim, go off over his head. Deciding her point was made she took a step back. “Local bums hit the dumpsters regularly in this area. Its also not entirely out of the realm of possibilities that someone’s pit-bull or chihuahua needed to take a leak during the night so I want you to grab a study-buddy and canvass the buildings within a three block radius.” She caught the stifled grin on her partner’s face out of the corner of her eye. “If you see anyone dirty pushing a shopping cart filled with everything but groceries, talk to them! If we have to pass this to LAPD we are sure as hell not passing them a half-assed investigation.” She turned her back on the deputy and for some inexplicable reason he saluted her then scurried off.

  “What?” She feigned a scowl at her partner as he looked at her with a smirk.

  “Study-buddy? That’s priceless. Where the hell did that come from?” Vinny was clearly amused.

  “I don’t know, maybe because he looks like he’s twelve years old.” Her scowl gave way to a grin as she looked up at the new arrivals. “And the cavalry has arrived. Good morning kiddies!” Following with the grade school theme she greeted the Coroner and Forensic teams that miraculously arrived at the same time. Various grunts and nods were tossed back at her as they all got right down to business.

  Deputy Coroner Caroline Devereux sauntered up next to Lou and draped an arm over her shoulder while looking down at her latest charge. “Well, someone is not having a good morning.” Caroline had been with the Los Angeles County Department of Coroner as long as Lou had been with Homicide. The two had shared their first crime scene together and been fast friends ever since. Caroline’s parents, particularly her mother, had far different plans for their only child than her communing with the dead for a living. Hailing from Savannah, Georgia, and looking every bit the part of the Southern belle, Caroline had been born and bred from the elite of blue-blood stock and very very old money. Much to her parent’s chagrin, the five-foot, ten-inch, platinum blond, violet eyed beauty seriously upset family tradition by becoming a doctor, rather than marrying one. To escape the constant disapproval of her mother, she left Georgia for Los Angeles and tried very hard to not look back. Now, sighing, she started to glove up in preparation for her duties. “And someone clearly was unhappy with services rendered.” She knelt, opened up her case and began.

  “Who’d you piss off to get sent out here?” Vinny asked as he jotted notes in his little black book. “Thought we would get that new guy, whats his name? Crap-ass?”

  Caroline snorted. “His name is Carpesh, geez Vinny!” She tried to stifle her laughter, knowing it was utterly inappropriate. “He seems like a good sort so be nice! Anyway, I didn’t piss anyone off. I was free when the call came in, so thought I would get some fresh air and slum it with you guys for a bit.”

  “What’s a kid from Santa Monica doing around here?” Lou considered as she backed up to give Caroline room to deal with the victim.

  “Some low-life John brings her out to party; halfway through she becomes the party favor.” Her partner tossed out a theory. “Things get out of hand, tweakers go too far with one cut too many and she bleeds out, whoops. Its not like she’s gonna be pissed about not getting a ride home. Speaking of rides, since you have you’re own, I’ll head over to the local and see what I can pull up on her. See you when ya get there. Take care Doc, nice seein’ ya.”

  “Nice to see you too Vinny.” She tossed him one of her sunny, Georgia peach smiles. “Give my love to Vera.”

  “I’ll bring coffee on my way in.” Lou nodded to her partner as he took off. She knew there was little they were going to get from the body until Caroline had processed it fully. Lack of blood evidence, no video surveillance, no cursory signs of anything other then the bag that was tossed in the dumpster. Little was going to get put together sitting in the alley all morning. Lou would wait for a preliminary time of death then meet up with her partner.

  Unfortunately the mutilation and death of a teenage junkie/prostitute in Los Angeles was not an unfamiliar sight. The length and breadth of the depravity in this city knew no bounds. Wanna-be stars, runaways, the used, abused and neglected child all too often wound up on a slab in the City of Angels. It had been the children that made Lou decide to leave narcotics nearly five years ago. Babies crawling around on filthy floors in diapers that hadn’t been changed in days, while the parents cooked up batches of meth in the kitchen. The screams of a child as his or her parents were hauled off to jail and they themselves were hauled off by Social Services. The last straw was when a mother offered Lou her two year old baby boy if she would just let her get high one more time before they took her in for her third strike. Lou could handle the grown ups, it was the innocent kids that got under her skin. As she stood now, looking over Caroline’s shoulder while the body temperature was taken to calculate time of death, Lou knew that this victim hadn’t been dead or innocent for a long time.

  “I can give you a preliminary T.O.D. of between twelve and two this morning.” Caroline snapped off her gloves. “She’s too much of a mess for me to give you anything more than that here. I’ll need to do my business back at the shop before I can give you anything definitive.”

  “I figured as much.” Lou removed her own gloves then stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and let out a sigh. “We’ll do the run through on her but I am not expecting a whole hell of a lot to pop. She’s close enough to crackville that it could have been a dump from there but her I.D. puts her out of Santa Monica. I’m gonna head over to Lost Hills and see what Vinny has on her. Let me know when you get something will you?”

  “Don’t I always?” Caroline gave her that signature smile then turned back to resume her business of the dead as Lou headed out to deal with her own.

  Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau Detectives were a bit like temps. Though the bureau itself was based out of Commerce, the detectives went where the work was, or rather, where the bodies were. In this case the crime scene was closest to the Malibu/ Lost Hills station. Lou liked working out of Lost Hills because it was close to home and she knew just about everyone. It was also a big bonus that getting to and from Lost Hills was almost always opposite the throng of traffic. When she arrived, her partner was on the phone so she set his coffee in front of him, made a call to check in with her Captain and set up her laptop on the communal desk opposite Vinny. She was just settling in when he finally clicked off the phone, removed the lid from the paper mug she had brought him and drank deeply.

  “Ahh, nothing like a caramel macchiato to smooth out the edges.” He smiled with satisfaction. “Thanks, kiddo.”

  Logging into her computer, she glanced up and grinned at the whipped cream mustache on Vinny’s lip that he was completely oblivious to. “My pleasure.” She grinned and resisted the urge to hand him a napkin. “Got anything on our victim?”

  “We gotta confirm with Caroline since her face was pretty much ground beef, but with the ID from the bag, I’m pretty sure I got our victim here.” Leaning back in his chair and after one more long draw from the paper mug, he began. “One Angela Talbott born May 3, 1993, aka Amethyst Sky. Lists a Francine Lobler, aka “ChiChi”, as mother and nada as father. Over a dozen juvenile offenses involving drugs and alcohol by the time she was fifteen. Her mother is doing twenty to life up north in Central. The name sounded familiar so I looked it up and remembered it was a big meth lab bust up in Palmdale that got ugly about seven years ago. Lobler was the old lady of the main ass-hat running the production. She decided to stand by her man, literally, and the tweaking sons of a bitches unloaded
their MP5’s at our boys and girls rather than come along quietly.” He blew out a breath in disgust and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “So...” She chimed in to give him a moment. “Angela got kicked into the system at ten. You pull anything up on that yet?” She asked, looking up from her own findings on her laptop, and noticed he looked tired. Even with the whipped cream mustache he was a formidable looking man. His thick, shoe-black hair was mercilessly slicked back as usual, but the silver at his temples seemed more prominent today. His aquiline features screamed of his Roman heritage. In fact, Lou had once asked her step-father why he had a marble bust of Vinny in his study, only to be told it was a bust of Augustus Caesar. Today, however, he looked like a tired Caesar.

  “No, was just about to.” He scrubbed a hand over his face then looked at the whipped cream in his palm and scowled.

  “I got it up already.” Trying to hide her amusement, Lou began to give him the rundown. Angela Talbott had been removed from her mother’s custody by Social Services at age ten and put into foster care where she had been bounced around like a pinball ever since. She had thirteen months to go before she was legally on her own and no longer the State’s problem, as if the State was doing a bang up job taking care of her. Social Services had noted numerous complaints from the fosters about drugs and suspected prostitution but Angela would run away before anything could be followed up on. Inevitably she would wind up in juvenile detention, then placed with a different foster family before any sort of intervention could be done. It was an all too familiar story with a new face.

  “Looks like her last two arrests were by the same uniform out of the Venice sub-station. Maybe they have a story on our girl that we don’t already know.” He picked up the phone and started dialing.