Stephen Cannell - Vigilante

“Can you prove any of this?” I asked.

“Julio is my witness. He was there.”

“Besides Julio.”

She glared at me. She was beginning to sweat despite the fact that it was February and, with the storm coming, the apartment was cold.

“Would you be willing to take a lie detector test?”

“She ain’t takin’ no poly,” Julio said. “That shit gets rigged.”

“Polygraphs are used to eliminate suspects, not include them,” I explained. “You’re already a suspect, so failing the test changes nothing. If you pass the poly, we start looking for Lita’s killer somewhere else. Besides that, we can’t use the results in court-good or bad. That’s why a polygraph favors an innocent suspect.”

“She ain’t takin’ no polygraph,” Julio repeated.

Carla was still sweating and now unbuttoned her sweater and removed it. It was then that I saw multiple scratches on both of her heavily tattooed arms.

“How’d you get those scratches on your arms?” I asked her.

“We have a cat.”

“You sure you didn’t get them in your fight with Lita?”

“The bitch kneed me in the groin, then slammed the door. She didn’t scratch me. I got this from our cat.”

“Where is the cat?”

“I don’t know. He’s a tom. He roams a lot. All the people in the building feed him. He’s like everybody’s cat.”

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know his fucking name.”

She was starting to fidget. I looked over at Hitch, who was shaking his head. She was obviously lying.

“Miss Kitty,” Julio contributed from his post by the door.

“That’s a pretty crappy name for a tomcat,” Hitch said in amusement. Then he motioned me over. I stood and walked to where he was standing.

He leaned in and whispered, “Back bedroom. Two bags fully packed. I think these two will be in Mexico if we don’t delay their trip.”

“We’re gonna ask you to leave now,” Julio said from the door. “The interview is over.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” I said, and stepped away from Hitch to give him a better field of fire in case this got iffy.

Then my partner pulled his Glock 9 as I took my handcuffs off my belt.

“I knew this was coming,” Julio sneered.

“You’re under arrest. Let’s all stay cool,” I said.

“ Pendejos, ” Julio muttered.

“We’re only arresting you as material witnesses,” I explained. “Be nice and maybe you’re home by lunch. Turn and face the wall, Mr. Sanchez. Lace your fingers behind your head.”

He turned and assumed the position while I shook him down and cuffed him. Hitch covered both of them from across the room. Then Hitch and I helped Carla to her feet and attempted to cuff her, but Hitch’s cuffs wouldn’t fit around her gargantuan wrists. I’d seen cuffs not fit a man before but never had that happen on a woman.

“You want to give A-Fifty-Six a piece of this?” I said to my partner.

Hitch reached into his hip pocket and squawked his radio two times.

A few minutes later the officers from A-56 were standing in the doorway. They turned out to be a Hollenbeck dog and cat patrol team. The man, Gately, was a redhead with a buzz cut. One of those standard wide-armed weight-lifting types, tough as hickory. His partner, George, was a medium-sized, compact woman with blond hair pulled back in a bun.

We led Carla and Julio out of the apartment and locked the door for them. The four guys Julio had called as backup were standing in the hall.

“Beat it,” the giant red-haired patrol officer snapped.

“You got six seconds; then you’re all under arrest,” his partner threatened.

After a moment, they reluctantly dispersed. We led the Sanchezes down the hall. As we passed the other apartments I could hear doors opening behind us and turned once to see half a dozen Chicanos staring daggers at our backs.

We got Carla and Julio downstairs and into the patrol car, where we Mirandized them without incident.

“Transport them to Hollenbeck Station for booking as material wits,” I told the uniforms.

As the patrol car pulled away, Hitch said, “I hope that’s your good side.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“We’re being photographed.” He pointed up the block at the white Econoline van with the V-TV emblem on the side, parked at the curb. Nix Nash stood near the back of the van, mike in hand, cameras rolling. He had us framed over his shoulder as he did a stand-up right in the middle of Lorena Street.

A few years ago, the Hollenbeck Station was the worst rat hole in the department. Times had changed. The new station house was now located two blocks from the old one at 2111 East First Street. Our local politicians called the Hollenbeck Station, along with our new Police Administration Building downtown, shining testaments to the cutting-edge police work being practiced in Los Angeles. Hollenbeck Station was smaller than the new PAB but no less impressive. It was a steel-sculptured monument with curved mirrored sides and private balconies.

The building housed 282 police officers in four thousand state-of-the-art feet of fast track, movable walls; terrazzo floors; and vinyl-upholstered offices.

Hitch and I pulled into the high-fenced guarded parking lot and got out of the Acura. We walked inside and told the booking sergeant that we wanted the Sanchezes placed in separate holding cells in the isolation section of the jail so they couldn’t pass messages to other White Fence bangers incarcerated there.

I got on the phone and talked to Ray Tsu at the coroner’s office. Fey Ray was our assistant coroner, who had earned his moniker because he was a wispy character who rarely spoke above a whisper. He told me Lita Mendez’s body was just coming in and that her death was big news inside the department, so she was already in the pipeline.

“Get me a stomach content analysis and as accurate a time of death as you can. Hitch will send you the room temp for larva gestation,” I said. “We’ve got a suspect with a partial alibi, and if we come up with a solid TOD it could put this beef on her. Also, see if you can retrieve any foreign DNA off the body. Type and match the vic and check under her nails for skin traces. My suspect has scratches on her arms.”

“Okay,” Ray replied. Then he added, “Since it’s Lita, don’t bother to ask. She’s already at the head of the line.”

Next I checked in with Rick Laguna, who’d just arrived back from the crime scene. He said they’d collected a lot of trace evidence and sent it to the forensics lab. In the interest of time, I asked if he could help us get body warrants, so the jail technicians could take DNA samples from both Julio and Carla Sanchez. I wanted to check that against any possible DNA we retrieved from the coffee cup in the driveway or from Lita’s body. Laguna said he’d run that request over to a judge he knew in the downtown courthouse and get it signed for us.

“Listen, Ricky, when you called the PAB to give this case over to Homicide Special, did you use your car radio?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You didn’t happen to put Lita Mendez’s name out on the air, did you?”

“I’m not a fuckin’ ditz,” he said, sounding insulted. “I also checked that out with the primary responders in Patrol the minute Nix Nash showed up. They didn’t use her name either. Everybody knew her death was a giant red ball. I don’t know how that dirtbag Nash found out.”

I didn’t pursue it, but patrol officers had cell phones as well as chalk. News of Lita’s death had spread quickly through the department. Either somebody on the scene had leaked it or Nix Nash had a mole inside our system.