Alan Jacobson: False accusations

December 1

11:26 P.M.

Del Morro Heights

Sacramento, California

THE DARK BLUE car snaked around the curve, its headlights slicing like razors through the dead air. It slithered through the neighborhood, hunting for food, sniffing out its prey. With one punch, the large engine muscled up from thirty-five to sixty in less than three seconds, its hunger for speed ravenous.

The man crossing the street caught a glimpse of the looming vehicle and twisted backward, shoving his companion toward the sidewalk-

But there wasn’t time.

The car’s bone-crushing impact threw the woman onto its hood, then tossed her aside…while the engine yanked the man underneath its front end, swallowing him whole.

The dark vehicle lurched slightly as its tire ran over the fallen prey. It then sped off down the street, hung a sharp left, and slipped into the pitch of night.

11:59 P.M.

The man’s torso was twisted, his head a bloody mess, with bits of brain tissue scattered around his crushed skull. The woman’s body was much more intact, having slid off the side of the car’s hood after being thrown up into the air by the initial impact. Her legs appeared to be broken and were bent into an unnatural position, the way a rag doll sometimes lands when a child tosses it aside after she has finished playing with it.

Most of the available officers in the City of Sacramento that night had been diverted to the minority neighborhood of Del Morro Heights to contain an escalating battle sparked by a broad crackdown on gang-related activities. When the call came in to investigate the discovery of a possible hit-and-run several blocks away, the two officers who responded anticipated more of the same, an offshoot of the hostilities.

But they were wrong.

Officer Larry Sanford slammed his car door and ran over to the woman, who was lying face up in the street; the other victim was obviously deceased. Both were black. Sanford pulled a hand out of his leather glove and felt her neck for a pulse. “Shit,” he said, the vapor that emanated from his mouth tailing off into the cold night air. He looked up and down the street, but saw no one. He glanced over to his partner and shook his head.

“Dispatch, this is Unit Nine,” the other officer said.

“We’ve got a Code Twenty on San Domingo Street. Notify homicide. Securing crime scene.”

“Roger, Unit Nine.”

“She’s still warm,” Sanford said. “Let’s get this area roped off.” Using a roll of yellow tape, he established the boundaries of the crime scene while his partner blocked off the street and its adjoining arteries with traffic cones. Although out of the academy only six months, they both knew the routine: quick response, safeguard and preserve. That is, secure the crime scene to protect all materials in the vicinity because everything was considered evidence until proven otherwise. No one-not even another police officer-was to enter the area until the detectives arrived. One of the most significant threats to a homicide investigation was the disruption of physical evidence: nothing was to be disturbed, moved, stepped on, or contaminated in any manner.

With the thermometer at 33 degrees, Sanford rolled up the fur collar on his standard-issue blue nylon jacket and shoved both hands into his pockets. He sucked a mouthful of damp air into his lungs: rain was on the way. He sent his partner back to the gang-related conflict while he stood watch over the crime scene.

In his boxing days, Detective Bill Jennings had a flat, rock hard gut. Some thirty years later, the musculature was stretched thin by the ravages of abuse, resulting in a bulging beer belly. Nevertheless, he carried his weight well and never hesitated to throw it around, both literally and figuratively…sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse.

By the time Jennings arrived at San Domingo Street, his partner, Angela Moreno, was already there surveying the scene. Moreno, thirty-five with short-clipped brown hair, nodded at Jennings as he approached.

“Long time no see,” he said.

“Yeah, what, three hours?”

“What’ve we got here?” he asked as they walked over to the two bodies.

“Looks like a hit-and-run. Got two of ‘em,” she said, kneeling down in front of one of the victims. “And we’ve got some broken glass. A headlight,” she said, turning over a large fragment and looking through it.

“Don’t touch it,” Jennings said, grasping her arm. “Saperstein should be here in a few minutes.”

“You called Saperstein again?”

“He was the one on call.”

“You haven’t even looked over the scene. It’s just a hit-and-run. We don’t need a criminalist poking his nose all over the damn street to tell us what we already know.”

“The man single-handedly saved my career, Angela.”

Moreno waved a hand. “I read the reports, Bill. It was a clean shoot.”

“Of course it was. But a white cop had just shot and killed a black kid. The media had a juicy story and took it for a ride. And with the election and all, I was a fucking political hot potato…people kicked me to the curb like I had the plague or something.” Jennings shook his head. “I was guilty before the body was cold. Everyone bailed on me except Saperstein.”

“I heard all about it. Don’t you think I checked you out before I took this assignment?”

“You checked me out?”

“I vaguely remembered reading something in the paper about it. Then my Vice partner started getting on my case, telling me I should look into it.” She placed the glass fragment back where she had found it. “The comments you’d made back in eighty-seven with Stockton PD didn’t help any.”

“Yeah, well those were taken out of context-”

“You don’t have to explain,” Moreno said. “I checked into it.”

Jennings stood up, his five-nine frame putting him eye-to-eye with his partner. “When Saperstein took the stand and started explaining that the shoot happened the way I said it did, I felt vindicated. He had all these formulas that showed I was standing where I said I was, and that the perp had turned to fire on me.” He pulled a pair of crumpled leather gloves from his pocket and struggled to insert his pudgy fingers. “Without Saperstein’s analysis of the physical evidence, those accusations would still be hanging over my head. So don’t give me shit about using a criminalist. I’m gonna use one anytime I can. And if you’re smart, you will, too.”

“But this just looks like a simple hit-and-run,” Moreno said.

“I don’t care. What it looks like and what it turns out to be may be two different things. I’m not taking any chances.”

With the assistance of several other officers who had just arrived on scene, they quickly canvassed the surrounding blocks to ascertain if anyone had seen or heard anything relative to the murders.

Thirty minutes had passed when a car drove up to the yellow crime scene tape half a block away. Out stepped a man in his mid-forties, his hair an uncombed mess, his suit coat creased and covering a severely wrinkled shirt.