“Yeah. After she took off her jacket, I could see she was wearing something around her neck. It stood out because it was white. It was a good sized crucifix.”
“Moonstone?”
“Could be.”
She leaned across the sofa, grabbed my hand, and squeezed it. “Do you know who this woman is?”
“I think I do.”
I asked her a few more quick questions and then jogged toward my car and sped to the freeway.
As I was heading north on the 5, I called downtown for an address. I checked my GPS and made my way to the Santa Monica Freeway. Cutting north on the Hollywood Freeway, I exited near Griffith Park and drove up a winding foothill road in Los Feliz. I parked on a quiet side street, walked about fifty yards, and stopped in front of a redwood bungalow carved onto a hillside.
I could use some backup, but, at this point, I didn’t trust anyone in the LAPD. Wegland and Patowski were dirty. Duffy was a liar. I had no idea who else in the department was compromised. I felt safest handling this alone.
I flicked on my Maglite, edged my way down the driveway, circled the house, and stopped at the back door. Pulling a set of lock picks out of my back pocket, I inserted the tension wrench into the keyhole and turned it slightly. As I continued to apply pressure with the tension wrench, I slipped the pick into the keyhole. I lifted the pins, one by one, unit I heard a
click
—the upper pin falling into place. Rotating the plug and opening the door, I slipped through the darkened house. Every few steps I stopped and listened. All I could hear was the ticking of a clock and the humming of the refrigerator. When I reached a large bedroom, I peered inside. There she was, curled up on her side, one arm clutching a pillow. I needed a confession. If I didn’t get one, I would have to haul her back to the station. And I knew she’d keep her mouth shut until her lawyer arrived. But if I took her by surprise, knocked her off her mooring, I just might be able to extract something useful from her.
When I stopped by Internal Affairs a few weeks ago, all those old-timers were flashing me hostile looks. Virginia Saucedo seemed like the only supportive detective in the room. She was a damn good actress.
Reaching for the Beretta, I slowly removed it from my holster, the
leather creaking. I walked across the room and stood over the bed. “Detective Saucedo. You’re under arrest.”
She twitched, opened her eyes, and reached for the drawer in her end table, where I assumed she kept a pistol. I grabbed her wrist and said, “Let’s go.”
She was wearing a sheer blue V-necked nightgown, and the moonstone cross around her neck glowed in the faint light. She looked younger than the last time I had seen her. Shivering on the edge of the bed, blinking hard, hugging herself, she looked like a scared little girl.
“Where we going?”
“To the living room.”
Grabbing a robe from the foot of the bed, she slipped it on, and as she stood up I noticed she was almost my height. She stumbled off to the living room as I followed her. I motioned toward the couch with the barrel of the Beretta. She sat down, and I pulled a chair across from her.
I glanced around the room. This house was beautiful, too nice for a single cop on a detective’s salary. An enormous hand-carved chest in front of the sofa served as a coffee table, Mexican folk art lined the walls, and a large picture window revealed a spectacular view of the city, a carpet of lights from downtown to the ocean.
I figured the best way to go would be to bluff her.
“Conrad Patowski layed you out.”
She glared at me.
“Patowski is singing to save his ass. He’s angling for a deal. He served you up on a silver platter.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Conrad tried to get the best deal for himself. So he started talking. Said you went along with Wally to Relovich’s. You know the felony murder rule. You’re going down.”
She clasped her hands on her lap. “That’s all bullshit.”
“Tell me what happened. I’ll go to the DA with your statement and see if he can give you a break. Since Patowski’s talking, you better not bullshit me. I’ll compare statements and see who’s lying.”
“I think
you’re
lying.”
I leaned forward and said softly, “Save yourself.”
“Save myself from
what
?”
“You know they execute women in California.”
“If you want to arrest me, arrest me.”
Ignoring her, I pulled a digital voice recorder from my vest pocket, set it on the wooden chest, flicked it on, and read Saucedo her rights. “How’d it begin with Wegland?”
She fixed me with a cold stare and said, “Go fuck yourself.”
Before I could react, I was staring into the long blue steel barrel of a .38 revolver that a slender, jittery Hispanic man with a thin mustache was waving at me. “Set it down on the floor,” he said in a quavering voice.
I dropped the gun.
“Am I glad to see
you
, baby,” Saucedo said. “Even if you are late.”
“I saw through the window this
pendejo
pointing a piece at you, so I snuck in the back door. Who the hell is he?”
She leaned over and shut off the tape recorder. “Just a stupid fucking cop who doesn’t know when to back away from a cleared case.”
When I reached toward my pocket, she shouted, “Hands to your side!”
The guy gripping the .38 looked like he was nervous enough to pull the trigger. But I hoped he might be reluctant to shoot me if I was talking to Saucedo. “I’ve figured out a few things about you and Wally,” I said. “Before he made commander, he was a captain in Hollywood. You were working patrol there. He probably looked out for you. Helped you make detective. Got you on with I.A. And all this time the two of you were running your games and raking in the cash. Conrad was staying behind as the errand boy while Wally and you were out there ripping off houses. And all this led to the hit on Relovich.” I glanced at the guy with the gun and back at Saucedo. “What the hell happened to you?”
“How do you think I could afford this house?” she said, an angry, defiant expression clouding her features. “Around here, just the lots are selling for a million.”
“I think a jury would call it justifiable homicide because the L.A. real estate market made you do it. But why did Wally do it?”
The man with the .38 called out, “Because he was pussy whipped.” He pointed the pistol at me and said, “This fucking guy’s a tongue jockey. He’ll talk all night if we let him. Let me shut this fool up.”
Crossing the room and opening a closet door, she removed a sweatshirt and a gun from a holster hanging on a hook. She wrapped the sweatshirt around the barrel of the gun, walked over, and knelt beside me. Then she whirled around and shot the man in the chest, the gunshot muffled by the sweatshirt.
He crumpled to the ground, his mouth open, his eyes bulging with astonishment, as the .38 clattered on the hardwood floor.
She walked over to the man and kicked the pistol to the side of the room.
I knew Saucedo was going to shoot me with his gun, making sure to leave no prints. Then she was going to put her gun, which was probably a throw-down, in my hands.
“Why’d you go after Relovich?” I asked.
“You’re the Felony Special hotshot. You figure it out.”
I knew she let me talk because she was pumping me for information. She wanted to figure out how to play it with the LAPD after she disposed of me.
“When Relovich called I.A. a few weeks ago, you managed to take his call,” I said. “That call made you paranoid. You were afraid Relovich would rat you out because you were in on Wally’s scams from the get go. You went with him and his snitch Freitas to rip off Silver. And when Freitas started arguing about the split in the middle of the job,
you
blasted him.”
“If you know so much, why didn’t you come after me sooner?”
“I was still putting my case together. It was apparent early on that Wally took care of Avery Mitchell in Idaho, because he was afraid he’d talk. You might have done it yourself, but you’d be a bit conspicuous out there. Wally was just another middle-aged white guy in Idaho. After that, when he went after me, he had a little experience.”
“Obviously, he didn’t have enough,” she said with contempt. “He couldn’t even do that right.”
“It’s pretty clear that
you
killed Relovich, not Wegland.”
“I see Wally was pretty fucking talkative before he took that swan dive. That was Wally. All he wanted to do was talk, talk, talk. He thought he could persuade Relovich to keep his mouth shut about the shooting at Silver’s and the payoff.”
“But you knew there was only one way to make sure that—”
“No more stupid fucking questions.” She jabbed the gun at me and said, “On your stomach.
Now
!”
I dropped to my knees.
“
Stomach
, I said! Wally should have cancelled you out when he had the chance.”
We both froze when we heard a metallic
click-clack
sound. I turned around and saw the silhouette of a man in the dim kitchen racking a Remington 870 police-issue 12-gauge shotgun.
“Drop the gun, Saucedo!” the man shouted.
Saucedo took a step toward me and raised her pistol.
I heard a deafening blast and saw Saucedo fly across the room, bounce off a wall, and topple to the floor.
Shuffling through the squad room, I poured a cup of coffee, returned to my desk, and fell into my chair. I spotted my phone light blinking. Nicole had left a short message: “Call me.” I was so exhausted I closed my eyes, but jerked them open when Duffy sat on the edge of my desk.
“You saved my ass,” I said.
“Least I could do.”
“So how’d you figure out where I was?”
“After all the shit that’s gone down, I’ve been worried as hell about you working alone. Didn’t want a dead detective on my watch. I wanted to talk to you, tell you that I was willing to free up Ortiz for the next few months so you could partner up with him. Anyway, a captain I know, a buddy of mine, left a message for me on my cell. Told me he heard you’d been snooping around for the home address of a cop. He knew you’d been involved in a lot of shit lately with dirty cops. So he gave me the name and address of the cop. Thought I should know.
“When I finally got the message, I rushed right over to Saucedo’s house. I got there and saw your car parked down the street. I grabbed the shotgun—just in case—and saw her pointing a gun in your face.”
“Who was that clown at her place?”
“Just some part-time squeeze who keeps a .38 in his trunk.”
“I thought she was Wegland’s girlfriend.”
Duffy grinned. “I guess poor old Wally was getting two-timed.”
“Well, I’m glad you put it together and showed up when you did.”
Duffy reached over and slipped an arm around my shoulders. “Ash, for the past year I’ve been really torn up about everything. I’m still torn up about it—about the way you found out, about what you had to go through, and what I did. I’m a weak bastard—”
“Well,” I said, pausing, not knowing what to say.
“Did I at least partially redeem myself last night?”
“Considering what would have happened if you hadn’t showed up—yes.
Partially
.”
Duffy squeezed my arm and smiled. “Patowski flipped. He didn’t lawyer up, after all. He’s spilling it right now. He thinks we’ve got Saucedo in another interview room and she’s laying it all on him.”
“Maybe Conrad explained something I’m still struggling with,” I said. “Li’l Eight’s a Back Hood Blood. He killed my witness. Flash forward a year. Wegland framed Fuqua for the Relovich hit. Fuqua just happens to be a Back Hood Blood, too. What’s the deal?”
“I picked up some of what Patowski’s been telling the DA,” Duffy said. “When Wegland found out from Grazzo that the department was bringing you back to investigate Relovich, he calls Saucedo. They both panic. They thought the overloaded Harbor Division dicks were going to handle the investigation—and get nowhere with it. If it was an active cop, Felony Special would take over the case, but we don’t handle hits on retired cops. Usually it’s just some domestic beef. Or in the case of Relovich, it appeared to be a low-rent B and E. Yeah, when he was a rookie, he saved his partner’s life. But there’s thousands of brave, retired cops out there, sitting on their asses, hitting the bottle. And Pete was just another one of them. What Wegland and Saucedo didn’t count on was the chief’s friendship with Relovich’s old man a thousand years ago. They didn’t count on him getting involved and sending the case to us. They knew we had the resources to push it hard, and I think they got spooked when they heard you were taking over the investigation.”
Duffy loosened his tie. “Your reputation, my boy, apparently still counts for something. Anyway, Wegland knew about Relovich’s history with Fuqua, how he’d kicked his ass, how he’d sent him to Folsom. And Saucedo had contacts at South Bureau Homicide and knew about the Patton investigation. She heard that a Back Hood had killed Patton. So Saucedo comes up with the idea to frame Fuqua. They worked fast. Saucedo sends Wegland down to break into Fuqua’s place and get something to plant. He gets lucky. Fuqua’s not home, so he bags up a tissue, hits Relovich’s place, and plants it. He’s a commander, and commanders can go wherever they want. They always have a righteous excuse to be at a crime scene.”
“They really pushed that Back Hood angle.”
“Saucedo guessed that when you came back you’d figure out—
sooner rather than later—that a Back Hood Blood killed Latisha Patton. She wanted you to believe that a Back Hood also killed Relovich. By connecting the two murders, Saucedo figured you’d be so turned around chasing Back Hood Blood leads, so enraged when you got a sniff of those guys, and so damn eager to bust Fuqua, that you’d never pick up
her
trail.”
“It took me a while.”
“I guess she overestimated your ability as a detective.” Duffy chuckled. “She thought you’d find out sooner. Saucedo knew the hit on your wit was the best way to yank your chain. So she intertwined the two cases.”