Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2) (4 page)

CHAPTER SIX

It was late morning the next day. Rocky was taking part in orientation, while Giorgio and Swan continued to search the databases. Officer McCready, the twenty-nine-year-old, red-headed techie, came into the office with the coroner’s preliminary report and handed it to Giorgio.

“Looks like the bones found in the well belonged to a teenage girl,” he said. “No more than sixteen or seventeen years old.”

Giorgio skimmed the report, reading out loud for Swan’s benefit.

“According to the M.E., she’s been in the hole for some forty to fifty years. Her neck was broken, but probably from the fall. Most of the fingers were broken and a couple of ribs, but he thinks that happened when the demolition guy found her and stepped all over her.” Giorgio stopped and rolled his eyes. “Anyway, he believes the most likely cause of death was the blow to the head. And, so far, the most reasonable culprit is the shovel.” Giorgio sighed and put the report down. “But after all this time, there isn’t enough of a blood trace on the shovel to get a DNA sample. Besides, DNA wasn’t even used to help solve crimes until the early ‘90s.”

“Which means CODIS wouldn’t have anything in the database to match it against anyway,” Swan said.

“Right. I suppose they can still get DNA from the bones, hair or teeth. But we still won’t have anything to match it with,” Giorgio mused. He leaned back in his chair and tapped the report. “But since she had her teeth, why don’t you see if you can track down dentists from that time period?” he said to McCready. “Maybe we can match them to old dental records.”

McCready grimaced. “That should be easy,” he said as he left the office.

“What about the big zipper that was found with her?” Swan asked.

“The M.E. thinks she may have been encased in a canvas bag.”

Swans eyebrows arched.

“So, like a duffle bag?”

“Yeah,” Giorgio replied. “Just like that.”

By that afternoon, McCready had found that only two dentists had practiced in town back then; both had long since died. Several other dentists from the surrounding area were possibilities, but they had retired or moved away, making accessing dental records almost impossible.

Now that they had a more accurate time period, Giorgio and Swan started searching through old missing person’s cases, branching out to surrounding cities. They had a couple of good possibilities, but couldn’t pin down an ID without more information.

So, when a tall man in his early seventies appeared at the office doorway that afternoon and said, “I know who that girl is,” Giorgio felt Providence had smiled on them.

Their visitor had a deeply lined face, pale blue eyes and a scar that ran across his chin. He carried a cardboard box in his hands.

“I’m Detective Salvatori,” Giorgio said, standing up and gesturing to the chair at the side of his desk. “Why don’t you sit down?”

The man came forward and placed the box on the corner of the desk. He shook Giorgio’s hand and then lowered himself into the wooden arm chair. Swan came over and perched on the opposite end of Giorgio’s desk.

“I’m Detective Swan,” he said, offering his hand.

The man twisted around and grabbed it, gave it a good shake and then let it drop.

“My name is Cal Birmingham,” he said. “Detective Cal Birmingham – retired,” he emphasized at the last second.

Giorgio raised an eyebrow and gazed at the box. “I recognize your name. I’ve seen it on some of the old case files. Can we record you?”

“Sure,” the older man said.

Giorgio nodded to Swan, who pulled out a little handheld recorder. Swan spoke briefly into the device, identifying the case number and who was participating in the interview. He placed it on the desk in front of Detective Birmingham.

“Tell us about it,” Giorgio said to the detective.

“I was a young cop back then. Pretty new to the force. I’d only been here for a couple of years. It was May of 1967. Her name was Lisa Farmer, and she lived in a duplex up in the canyon with her mother…you know, Bailey Canyon. Anyway, she was a senior at Pasadena High School and had gone to the prom with her boyfriend, a guy named Ron Martinelli. After he dropped her off at home that night, no one ever saw her again. Until now, that is,” he said, bringing his hands together in his lap.

“How do you know the bones we found are hers?” Giorgio asked, leaning forward.

“I saw that female reporter on TV interview the guy who found her. He mentioned the rose headband and the necklace.”

Birmingham reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his wallet. From an inside sleeve, he withdrew a faded, creased picture and handed it across the desk to Giorgio.

Giorgio took it and gazed down at the head shot of a young, dark-haired beauty with a broad smile. She was wearing a flowered headband and a heart necklace.

“Pretty girl,” Giorgio mused, handing it over to Swan.

“Yes,” the big man agreed. “She was. And from all accounts, she was really nice, too.”

Birmingham leaned forward, removed the top of the cardboard box and pulled out a grainy 3x5 Polaroid picture of a boy wearing a tuxedo and the same girl dressed in a dark green dress. The boy was about to pin a corsage on her shoulder and grinned stupidly at the camera.

“Her mother took that picture just before they left for the prom that night. You can see the headband and the necklace again.”

Giorgio studied the old photo. The colors had faded, but the flower on the headband definitely looked like what they’d found with the skeleton. The girl in the photo was wearing high heels, a dark green prom dress, and encircling her neck was a thick chain necklace with a silver heart pendant. Giorgio felt a faint rush of adrenalin at a possible identification.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, Detective Birmingham?” Giorgio asked.

He shook his head. “No, thanks. I just need to relate what I know and let you do your work. I kept these records in my basement all these years and I thought you might need them. I’m not sure what you’ll find in the department after forty plus years.”

“Please, go ahead,” Swan said, pulling up a chair opposite their guest.

The man took a deep sigh. He crossed one leg over the other, drawing attention to his well-worn jeans. A tuft of gray chest hair poked out of the collar of his blue denim shirt.

“As I said, I was pretty new to the force, but I was the only one here with a college degree – other than our captain. Back then, we didn’t have any detectives. We were too small. When the girl went missing, it became a big deal. Her boyfriend was the son of our most prominent citizen – Royce Martinelli. He owned a lot of property around here. Actually, all over the basin. Office buildings. Apartment complexes. You name it. The captain wanted to treat this case with all the seriousness it deserved, so he assigned me to investigate. Even gave me a new title – Detective,” he said with a smile. “Anyway, Martinelli’s son, Ron, was a star athlete at Pasadena High.”

He paused and shook his head slightly at an undisclosed memory.

“And let me guess, Lisa came from the other side of the tracks,” Giorgio said.

“Right,” he said, looking up solemnly. “As I said, she lived in a small duplex with her single mom. Not such a common thing back then. Divorce was pretty rare, and those who got divorced were often looked down on. But from what the mother said, Lisa had been sexually abused by her step-father when she was in her early teens, and when her mom discovered it, she kicked the bastard out.”

“So the mother had been married before?” Giorgio asked.

“Yes. The first husband committed suicide. So the poor woman carried a double stigma.”

“And the step-dad never went to jail for the abuse?” Swan asked.

Detective Birmingham glanced over at him. “Back then, those kinds of things were swept under the rug. No one wanted to talk about them. And it would have been the girl’s word against his, anyway. But the mother suffered a lot of guilt about it, I guess. I think that’s why she drank.”

“So, Lisa didn’t have much supervision?” Swan speculated.

“No. But I guess she was a good kid. She slept around a bit, but once she started dating Ron, I think that stopped. They were pretty serious — he told us he wanted to marry her.”

“Did his father know that?” Giorgio asked the obvious question.

“Not about how serious they were. He allowed his son to date her, I think, because he thought the kid was just getting his rocks off, you know? So it didn’t matter. The father told me at the time that if he’d known how serious the relationship was, he would have stopped it.”

“Any chance he might have stopped it by making her disappear?” Swan interjected.

The old man leaned back, thinking. “I’ve wondered about that for over forty years. I just don’t know. Back then, we didn’t have a body. No one knew what happened to her. She just up and disappeared. Then, a few days after she went missing, there was a phone call; it was an anonymous tip to search all the student lockers at the high school.”

He paused again and Giorgio glanced up at Swan.

“And?” Giorgio encouraged him to continue.

“We found her underwear and one of the shoes she’d worn to the prom in little Jimmy Finn’s locker. Her left shoe. Jimmy was a year behind her in school and kind of slow. He lived next door to Lisa and was known to have a crush on her.”

“What happened?” Giorgio asked.

“He was arrested. His family didn’t have any money so they assigned a public defender. Some kid right out of law school.” He paused, as if what he was about to say was difficult. “And, also, Jimmy was black. Even though things were changing between blacks and whites back then, the Civil Rights Act had just been passed a few years earlier. People hadn’t learned tolerance, yet. And the fact that he was known to have had a crush on a white girl…well, people rushed to judgment. He was also retarded. Maybe not exactly retarded,” he said with a shrug, “but certainly slow. And he couldn’t explain how those things got in his locker.”

“So, he went to prison?” Giorgio prodded him

“Yeah. Died there, too, from what I heard. Hung himself. Like I said… the kid didn’t have a chance.”

“So what happened to the boy…Ron?” Giorgio wanted to know

“The family moved to Pasadena less than a year after the girl disappeared. Too much publicity, they said. But if his dad was a bigwig here, he became an even
bigger
wig in Pasadena. I kept track of them for a while. They lived in a fancy home just off Colorado Boulevard. The father became President of the Tournament of Roses organization and sat on the board of PCC – Pasadena City College,” he clarified. “I think he was even on the board of the museum. Anyway, the old man is gone now. He died of a heart attack several years back. The kid runs the company today with his cousin. I believe the mother is still alive, though. Boy, was she a piece of work.” He shook his head at the memory. “Talk about the Ice Queen…it was all about appearances for her. That’s all she cared about. The old man, too. They didn’t care a whit about the missing girl. They only cared about how the investigation would make their family look.” He glanced up at Giorgio with a sigh and stood up. “Well, that’s the story. You’ll find all my notes in the box. Plus, I’m sure the department has a file somewhere, if you can find it.”

“Thanks for coming in,” Giorgio said, standing as well. “But if you don’t mind me asking, why did you carry her picture in your wallet all these years?”

The older man put a hand to his pocket where the picture had resided, as if touching the photo one last time.

“Because I wasn’t much older than her, I guess. I was only twenty-six at the time she went missing, and I felt like I got to know her during the investigation. I interviewed her mother, the boyfriend, and lots of her friends. It became personal to me. But to the department and the city, it seemed more important to protect the Martinelli family than to figure out what happened to this beautiful girl. And in all the years I worked here, that was the only murder we didn’t solve.” He dropped his chin and gave a short, derisive laugh. “Well, let’s face it…there weren’t too many murders in this town. We had several runaways, but not many murders,” he said, looking up again. “Of course, we didn’t know for sure that this
was
murder, but we all suspected it. I held out hope that someday I’d see her walking down the street and that she’d had a chance to actually grow up and have a life. I guess that’s why I kept the picture. Just in case.”

He gave Giorgio a haunted look. This man had bonded with this girl, Giorgio thought, even though he’d never met her.

“Anyway, I put a slip of paper in there with my contact information in case you need anything else,” he said, gesturing to the box.

Giorgio reached out and shook his hand. “Thanks.”

The old detective started for the door, but Giorgio stopped him.

“Detective Birmingham, even though a jury convicted Jimmy Finn… I get the sense that you brought these records to us for another reason.”

The old man stopped and stared into space for a moment. Then he glanced at Giorgio.