White Sister (16 page)

"If OJB is gonna stand for anything, we gotta be who we say we are or none of it matters," Rosey argued. "All these black activists want is more strife 'cause it gets them airtime, money, and votes. They want us to all be victims because if we aren't, what the hell do we need them for?"

Dario leaned forward. His gun leather creaked as he put his muscled forearms on the table. "Who stole Alexa's computer? Tell us what happened." I could hear the skepticism in his voice.

I told them about Jonathan Bodine. How I hit him with my car and ended up taking him home with me. After I was finished, they both just sat there, staring.

"We're supposed to risk lookin' like assholes 'cause a this homeless guy and a computer, which may have nothing on it?" Chikaleckio said.

"Last night, right after they found Slade in her car, I dropped by Alexa's office. I went into her computer. All of her e-mails had been purged. But in her Special Ops files, one had been transferred. It was labeled 'Operation Dark Angel.' "

Rosey perked up. "Dark Angel . . . that was David Slade's nickname in the Academy."

I nodded.

"That doesn't mean that file's on her computer," Dario said.

"Her office computer said: File transferred to AHC. There's no AHC acronym in the department directory, but I've been thinking about it, and I believe it stands for Alexa's Home Computer."

We all sat in silence.

"One crazy homeless guy in a city of ten million?" Rosey finally said.

"I was hoping you could make it an off-duty project. Get some of the guys at OJB to help. I need to sweep the cardboard condos on the Nickel, from Alameda to Main. Check the parks and SRO hotels. This guy doesn't leave a forwarding address. His street handle is Long Gone John 'cause he's a thief and moves around a lot. I'd do it myself, but I'm just one person and I also need to stay close to Alexa right now."

I told them what he looked like, and described Chooch's Harvard-Westlake sweatshirt. After I'd finished, Rosey looked at the muscle-bound sergeant sitting next to him.

"We gotta do this, Dario," he said.

It took a while, but after several minutes, Chikaleckio finally agreed.

Chapter
23.

I RELIEVED CHOOCH at ten o'clock. Nothing new on Alexa, but I made arrangements with him to return the following morning. He told me that Luther had called the ER and planned to move Alexa to UCLA tomorrow if she remained stable. Then he hugged me and headed back to the USC football dorm.

I stretched out on the sofa in the trauma ward and watched the story of Slade's murder evolve on TV. My wife had graduated from a victim to a person of interest. As Rosey and Dario feared, the ballistics match from her gun had all but sealed a guilty verdict in the media.

"Questions keep coming back to one fact," a concerned CNN news anchor said. "Why would the head of the Detective Bureau's gun and handcuffs be used as instruments in the death of her own detective?" This was followed by a shot of David Slade at fifteen, looking angry, all decked out in gang colors, scowling under a blue head wrap.

i 20

"David Slade grew up on the mean streets of Compton, California," the anchor continued. "Despite poverty and numerous brushes with the law, he had aspirations for a better life. Early gang affiliations threatened his future, but he tore himself out of that downward spiral and at age twenty-one, joined the LAPD."

Now Slade's handsome, clean-cut Academy shot replaced the scowling, angry one to demonstrate his magnificent transformation.

"Slade became a force for good, maintaining a residence in Compton where he gave back to the community and served as a role model for other gang-influenced children. All of this was tragically snatched away yesterday in one dreadful moment of violence."

Shots now appeared of Slade slumped forward in Alexa's car on Mulholland.

"... dead in the front seat of his commanding officer's personal car. Shot with her gun, restrained with her handcuffs."

Now a shot of Alexa appeared. They'd chosen one of those macho firing range photos the department takes. In the picture Alexa was wearing a black flack vest and plastic shooting goggles; her hair was pulled back under an LAPD ball cap. She was crouched low in a Weaver shooting stance, her 9mm clutched in both hands, looking mean and determined.

"On the other side of this senseless tragedy is Lieutenant Alexa Scully," the anchor said. "Privileged, beautiful, and the youngest bureau commander in LAPD history. She was only a thirty-five
-
year-old lieutenant when promoted to acting head of the Detective Bureau by the LAPD's then incoming Chief of Police Tony Filosiani. Lieutenant Scully's career was highlighted by postings in Internal Affairs, followed by a transfer to L
. A
.'s hottest division, the old South Central Bureau, where she also saw action on the same mean streets where David Slade once flirted with crime as a child. What angry forces led these two officers to that place where one now lies dead and the other dying? For more on this, CNN Special Correspondent Ann Richardson Brown has a story of passion and civil unrest."

An African-American correspondent took over. She was standing outside the gates of the police academy at Elysian Park.

"Against a backdrop of racial strife in L
. A
., it appears that much more was going on between these two police officers than just a command relationship."

Still shots of Alexa and Slade at the Academy appeared on screen, followed by candid photos of a police graduation party, where Alexa and Slade, both in their early twenties, were pictured together.

I couldn't take any more. I could see they were leading up to a relationship gone bad story followed by a murder-suicide.

The trauma unit was beginning to fill with the first-round losers in Friday Night's Gunshot Lottery. As the first victim was rushed in on a gurney, I got up and went to the elevator.

A few minutes later I had found my way to the coronary care unit on the ninth floor. I asked a nurse what room Chief Filosiani was in. She gave me the number but told me I shouldn't stay long, adding that he'd just been cleared for visitors that afternoon and was still very weak. When I found his room and looked in on him, he was sleeping, so I turned to leave.

"What took you so long?" His voice sounded like sandpaper from two days with tubes down his throat. He was pale and tired.

"How're you feeling?" I said, turning back.

"Like I got a pasta machine grinding in my chest." He beckoned me into the room. "Siddown."

I walked in and sat beside his bed. "Alexa's been shot. . . . She's ..."

Tony held up his hand and stopped me. "I'm getting hourly reports."

"They won't tell me much," I said bitterly.

"She's stable but not yet responding. They put her in an induced coma with barbiturates. Pheno-something or other. Some guy from UCLA is making arrangements to Medivac her out of here and over there."

All stuff I already knew, but I was glad he'd been checking on her.

"You stay pretty close to things for a guy just out of a quadruple bypass."

"She's one of mine," he said softly. "She's getting a raw deal." His face was now shiny with sweat. He needed a shave.

"David Slade was dirt, and they're acting like he was some reclaimed ghetto hero," I said. "He pulled guns on civilians over bad lane changes."

"Yeah, I read his PSB file," he said. "But the mayor doesn't want us to hit this guy. Slade's already dead. Kicking dirt on him will only make it worse."

"But it's okay to kick dirt on Alexa?"

"It's all gonna come out eventually. It'll get straightened out. This is too big to push down."

"And what am I supposed to do, Tony? You're over here. Mike Ramsey won't deal with it. The press is dying to hang this all on Alexa. She's in a coma and can't defend herself. How do I stop this?"

"She's your wife, son. Go find the piece that's missing."

"Lou Maluga is involved," I said. "I think he may have even pulled the trigger because Slade was having an affair with his wife, Stacy. But I've been so busy with Alexa, I haven't been able to do much to prove it yet."

He reached out and took my hand, "I want you to remember two things." He paused and looked right at me. "There are times when you must risk everything to achieve your goal. And life's defining moments are usually played under the shadow of doubt."

Chapter
24.

IT WAS AFTER eleven p
. M
. and the trauma ward was still filling up.

The sobbing mothers of gang-bangers held the hands of slack
-
faced relatives as their half-dead teenage sons were wheeled past.

My head was throbbing. I left my mobile number with the trauma nurses telling them I was going to sleep on a sofa in the hall.

The rest of the night was fitful. Nobody called me, but I kept dreaming that my cell phone was ringing. In the dream someone was trying to give me critical information about Alexa's condition over a bad line. I strained to hear a transmission that was always garbled and unclear.

The next morning at seven a
. M
. after checking on Alexa and getting the usual guarded description of her condition, I treated myself to a sponge bath in the hospital men's room. While I was in the middle of this, my cell phone actually did ring. Luther Lexington was on the line.

"We're moving her at ten a
. M
. I'm going to use a helicopter because it will cut the transport time and limit her exposure to onl
y f
ifteen minutes or so. I'll ride over with her in the chopper. I want you at UCLA Neurosurgery on the fourth floor when we arrive around ten-thirty."

"How is she? They still aren't telling me much, Lex."

"There's really nothing to tell. That's the way these things often go, Shane. She's stable and in an induced coma. Until we try and wake her up, we won't know much. I've been studying her brain CTs. There's quite a bit of foreign matter still in there. Some of the bullet fragments look like they might be restricting blood flow to her temporal and occipital lobes. If those areas don't get sufficient blood supply, then brain cells will die. We may need to consider another surgery soon. I'll make that evaluation along with my vascular guy later today. But you need to know, I wouldn't move her if I didn't think I could pull it off."

Next, I called Chooch and gave him the news. After I finished, he said, "I'm coming over there now."

"I'm gonna need you over at UCLA to stay with her, so go there. I've got to get working on who really killed Slade. I need to disprove all this nonsense they're spreading about her on TV."

The problem was, I was unsure of exactly how to do that. The Academy photos proved Alexa and Slade had certainly been friends. But that didn't mean their relationship was more complicated. I believed in Alexa. She had saved me more than once. Now it was my turn to save her.

The Medivac flight went off as scheduled. I caught a glimpse of Alexa as her stretcher was wheeled into the elevator for the quick trip up to the helipad. She was covered with green hospital sheets, her head wrapped in gauze. A drip trolley rode a bed rail above her, feeding fluids. She looked vulnerable and small. Moments later, I heard the blades of the chopper rev up, whining loudly on the roof above. I watched through the window as it headed west, flying low across the skyline carrying Alexa's unconscious body away from me.

I made it to UCLA in less than forty minutes. I parked in a red zone, leaving my handcuffs on the dash, and ran inside, taking the elevator up to neurosurgery.

Luther met me thirty minutes later and reported that Alexa was stable. Everything had gone as he had hoped. He asked me to be back here at seven that evening to meet the team of doctors he'd picked to be on her surgical and treatment teams.

It was a long morning until Chooch arrived. I told him he would need to stay all day, and about the meeting at seven. Then I gave him a hug.

"Dad, I don't know what to tell some of these guys at practice. With everything on TV, they're starting to look at me funny."

"Tell them Alexa's your mom and that you love and believe in her."

As I said this, my mind flipped back to the plastic container buried in my barbeque, with Alexa's taped confession inside. I didn't know why I was so sure it was false. I just was. I left Chooch and headed back to the main entrance.

As I was coming out of the hospital, I ran into a cluster of news camera crews and field correspondents who had been alerted that Alexa had been moved to UCLA.

"Detective Scully, CNN. Can we have a word with you?" one of them shouted.

"No."

"Detective Scully? Channel Four. Would you talk to us, please?"

"No."

I pushed past them as they turned on their cameras and chased after me. I knew I looked like one of those creeps they ambush on 60 Minutes. I ran past the cameras to my car, trailing a flurry of No Comments. Husband of Lieutenant Scully flees reporters' questions.

My next stop was the Glass House. I needed to pick up Stacy Maluga's pager, which I hoped was back from ESD and on Sally Quinn's new desk. As I drove into the underground garage I noticed at least ten news vans parked out in front of the police administration building. I took the elevator to five.