Michael Connelly - The Scarecrow

It was estimated that during the previous evening the victim made in excess of $300 in tips while dancing at the Snake Pit. No cash was found in her purse, which had been dumped out in her car.

Crime scene investigators found that the person who abandoned the victim’s car with the body in the trunk had unsuccessfully attempted to remove evidence from the car by wiping down all surfaces that potentially held fingerprints. The door handles, steering wheel and shift lever were all wiped clean inside. On the outside, the trunk lid and outside door handles were also wiped clean. However, the investigators found a clear thumbprint on the interior rearview mirror, presumably left when someone driving the car adjusted it.

The thumbprint was matched by computer as well as physical comparison by a latent prints specialist to Alonzo Winslow, 16, who carried a juvenile arrest record for sale of narcotics in the same projects where Denise Babbit had bought heroin and been arrested the year before.

An investigative theory emerged: After leaving her job in the early morning hours of April 24 the victim drove to the Rodia Gardens projects in order to buy heroin or other drugs. Despite her being white and Rodia Gardens ’ being 98 percent black in population, Denise Babbit was familiar and comfortable going to the projects to make her purchase because she had purchased drugs there many times before. She may have even personally known dealers in Rodia Gardens, including Alonzo Winslow. She may have also had a past history of trading sex for drugs.

However, this time she was forcefully abducted by Alonzo Winslow and possibly other unknown individuals. She was held in an unknown location and sexually tortured for six to eighteen hours. Because of the high levels of petechial hemorrhaging around the eyes, she also appeared to have been repeatedly choked into unconsciousness and then revived before final asphyxiation occurred. Her body was then stuffed in the trunk of her car and driven almost twenty miles to Santa Monica, where the car was abandoned in the ocean-side parking lot.

With the fingerprint as a solid piece of evidence supporting the theory and linking Babbit to a known drug dealer in Rodia Gardens, detectives Walker and Grady obtained an arrest warrant for Alonzo Winslow. The detectives contacted the LAPD in order to elicit cooperation in locating and arresting the suspect. He was taken into custody without incident on Sunday morning, April 26, and after a lengthy interrogation confessed to the murder. The following morning police announced the arrest.

I closed out the summary file and thought about how quickly the investigation had led to Winslow, all because he had missed one finger-print. He had probably thought that the twenty miles between Watts and Santa Monica was a distance no murder charge could leap. Now he sat in a juvy cell up in Sylmar, wishing he had never turned that rear-view mirror to make sure he wasn’t being followed by the police.

My desk phone rang and I looked over to see Angela Cook’s name on the caller ID screen. I was tempted to let it go, to maintain focus on my story, but I knew it would ring through to the switchboard and whoever answered would tell Angela that I was at my desk but apparently too busy to take her call.

I didn’t want that, so I picked up.

“Angela, what’s happening?”

“I’m over here at Parker and I think something is going on but nobody’s telling me shit.”

“Why do you think something’s going on?”

“Because there’s all kinds of reporters and cameras coming in.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the lobby. I was leaving when I saw a bunch of these guys coming in.”

“And you checked with the press office?”

“Of course I did. But nobody’s answering.”

“Sorry, that was a stupid question. Um, I can make some calls. Stay there in case you need to go back up. I’ll call you right back. Were they only TV guys?”

“Looked like it.”

“You know what Patrick Denison looks like?”

Denison was the main cops and crime reporter for the Daily News , the only real print competition the Times faced on a local level. He was good and every now and then broke an exclusive I would have to chase. It was a reporter’s worst embarrassment to have to follow a competitor’s scoop. But I wasn’t worried about getting scooped here, not if the TV media was already in the building. When you saw TV reporters on a story, that usually meant that they were following yesterday’s news or were headed to a press conference. The TV news in this town hadn’t had a legitimate scoop since Channel 5 came up with the Rodney King beating tape back in 1991.

After hanging up with Angela I called a lieutenant in Major Crimes to see what was shaking. If he didn’t know, then I would try Robbery-Homicide Division and then Narcs. I was confident I would soon know why the media was storming Parker Center, and the L.A. Times was the last to know about it.

I talked my way through the city secretary who answers phones in Major Crimes and got to Lieutenant Hardy without much of a wait. Hardy was less than a year in the job and I was still doing the dance with him, slowly procuring him as a trusted source. After I identified myself, I asked what the Hardy Boys were up to. I had taken to calling the detectives in his command the Hardy Boys because I knew giving the lieutenant ownership of the squad played to his ego. The truth was, he was simply a manager of people, and the investigators in his command worked pretty autonomously. But it was part of the dance and so far it had worked.

“We’re laying low today, Jack,” Hardy said. “Nothing to report.”

“You sure? I heard from somebody else in the building that the place is crawling with TV people.”

“Yeah, that’s for that other thing. We’ve got nothing to do with that.”

At least we weren’t behind the curve on a Major Crimes story. That was good.

“What other thing?” I asked.

“You need to talk to either Grossman or the chief’s office. They’re having the press conference.”

I started to get concerned. The chief of police didn’t usually hold press conferences to discuss things already in the newspaper. He usually broke things out himself-so he could control information and get credit if credit was due him.

The other reference Hardy had made was to Captain Art Grossman, who was in charge of major narcotics investigations. Somehow we had missed an invitation to a press conference.

I quickly thanked Hardy for the help and told him I would check with him later. I called Angela back and she answered right away.

“Go back in and head up to the sixth floor. There is some sort of narcotics press conference with the chief and Art Grossman, who is the head narc.”

“Okay, what time?”

“I don’t know yet. Just get up there in case it’s happening right now. You didn’t hear about this?”

“No!” she said defensively.

“How long have you been over there?”

“All morning. I’ve been trying to meet people.”

“Okay, get up there and I’ll call you back.”

After hanging up I started multitasking. While putting in a call to Grossman’s office I went online and checked the CNS wire. The City News Service operated a digital newswire that was updated by the minute with breaking news from the city of angels. It was heavy with crime and police news and was primarily a tip service that provided press conference schedules and limited details of crime reports and investigations. As a police reporter I checked it continuously through the day like a stock market analyst keeps his eye on the Dow crawl at the bottom of the screen on the Bloomberg channel.

I could have stayed further connected to CNS by signing up for e-mail and cell phone text alerts, but that wasn’t the way I operated. I wasn’t a mojo. I was an oldjo and didn’t want the constant bells and whistles of connectivity.