Suspect (5 page)

“I heard the Kenworth rev. Before it came out of the side street, I heard the big diesel rev up.”

“That’s all?”

Scott wondered how much to say, and how to explain.

“It’s a new memory. I only remembered hearing it a couple of weeks ago.”

Orso frowned, so Scott went on.

“A lot happened that night in a short period. I remembered the big things, but a lot of small things got lost. They’re beginning to come back. The doctor says it happens like that.”

“Okay.”

Scott hesitated, then decided to tell him about the sideburns.

“I caught a glimpse of the getaway driver. You won’t find this in the interviews because I just remembered.”

Orso tipped forward.

“You saw him?”

“The side of his face. He raised his mask for a second. He had white sideburns.”

Orso pulled his chair closer.

“Could you pick him out of a six-pack?”

A six-pack was a grouping of six photographs of suspects who looked similar.

“All I saw were the sideburns.”

“Can I put you together with a sketch artist?”

“I didn’t see him well enough.”

Now Orso was looking irritated.

“Race?”

“All I remember is the sideburns. I might remember more, but I don’t know. My doctor says the way it works is, one memory can trigger another. I remembered the Kenworth revving, and now the sideburns, so more things might start coming back to me.”

Orso seemed to consider this, and finally settled back in his chair. Everything about him seemed to soften.

“You went through hell, man. I’m sorry this happened.”

Scott didn’t know what to say. He finally shrugged.

Orso said, “I want you to stay in touch. Anything else you remember, call me. Doesn’t matter if you think it’s important or not. Don’t worry about sounding silly or stupid, okay? I want everything you’ve got.”

Scott nodded. He glanced at the papers spread over the table and the files in the box. It was a larger box and contained more than Scott would have expected, considering the little Melon shared.

Scott studied the box for a moment, then looked back at Orso.

“Could I read through the file?”

Orso followed Scott’s eyes to the box.

“You want to go through the file?”

“One memory triggers another. Maybe I’ll see something that helps me remember other things.”

Orso considered for a moment, then nodded.

“Not now, but sure. If that’s what you want. You’ll have to go through it here, but I’m fine with letting you see it. Call in the next couple of days, and we’ll set up a time.”

Orso stood, and when Scott stood with him, Orso saw his grimace.

“You doing okay?”

“That’s scar tissue loosening up. The docs say it’ll take about a year for the stiffness to pass.”

The same bullshit he told everyone.

Orso said nothing more until they reached the hall and were heading toward the elevator. Then his eyes hardened again.

“One other thing. I’m not Melon. He felt bad for you, but he thought you became a crazy pain in the ass who should’ve been pushed out on a psycho. You probably think he was a lousy detective. You were both wrong. Whatever you think, those guys busted their asses, but sometimes you can bust your ass and nothing turns up. It sucks, but sometimes that happens.”

Scott opened his mouth to say something, but Orso raised a hand, stopping him.

“No one here quits. I’m not going to quit. I’m going to live out this case one way or another. Are we clear?”

Scott nodded.

“My door is open. Call if you want, but if you call sixteen times a day, I’m not going to return sixteen calls. We clear on that, too?”

“I’m not going to call you sixteen times.”

“But if I call
you
sixteen times, you damn well better get back to me asap each and every time, because I will have questions that need answers.”

“I’ll move in and live with you if it means catching these bastards.”

Orso smiled, and looked like the scoutmaster again.

“You won’t have to live with me, but we will catch them.”

They said their good-byes at the elevator. Scott waited until Orso returned to his office, then gimped to the men’s room. His limp was pronounced when no one was watching.

The pain was so bad he thought he would vomit.

He splashed cold water on his face, and rubbed his temples and eyes. He dried himself, then took two Vicodin from a small plastic bag, swallowed them, then rubbed his face with cold water again.

He patted himself dry, then studied himself in the mirror while he let the pills work. He was fifteen pounds thinner than the night he was shot, and half an inch shorter because of the leg. He was lined, and looked older, and wondered what Stephanie would think if she saw him.

He was thinking about Stephanie when a uniformed officer shoved open the door. The officer was young and in a hurry, so he shoved the door hard. Scott lurched sideways, away from the noise, and spun toward the officer. His heart pounded as if trying to beat its way out of his chest, his face tingled as his blood pressure spiked, and his breath caught in his chest. He stood motionless, staring, as his pulse thundered in his ears.

The young officer said, “Dude, hey, I’m sorry I scared you. I have to pee.”

He hurried to the urinal.

Scott stared at his back, then clenched his eyes shut. He clenched his eyes hard, but he could not shut out what he was seeing. He saw the masked man with a large belly coming toward him with the AK-47. He saw the man in his dreams, and when he was awake. He saw the man shoot Stephanie first, then turn his gun toward Scott.

“Sir, are you okay?”

Scott opened his eyes, and found the young officer staring.

Scott pushed past him out of the bathroom. He did not limp when he crossed the lobby, or when he reached the training field to claim his first dog.

4.

The K-9 Platoon’s primary training facility was a multi-use site located on the east side of the L.A. River only a few minutes northeast of the Boat, in an area where anonymous industrial buildings gave way to small businesses, cheap restaurants, and parks.

Scott turned through a gate, and parked in a narrow parking lot beside a beige cinder-block building, set at the edge of a large green field big enough for softball games or Knights of Columbus barbeques or training police dogs. An obstacle course for the dogs was set up beside the building. The field was circled by a tall chain-link fence, and hidden from public view by thick green hedges.

Scott parked by the building, and saw several officers working their dogs as he got out of his car. A K-9 Sergeant named Mace Styrik was trotting a German shepherd with odd marks on her hindquarters around the field. Scott did not recognize the dog, and wondered if she was Styrik’s pet. On the near end of the field, a handler named Cam Francis and his dog, Tony, were approaching a man who wore a thick padded sleeve covering his right arm and hand. The man was a handler named Al Timmons, who was pretending to be a suspect. Tony was a fifty-five-pound Belgian Malinois, a breed that looked like a smaller, slimmer German shepherd. Timmons suddenly turned and ran. Francis waited until Timmons was forty yards away, then released his dog, who sprinted after Timmons like a cheetah running down an antelope. Timmons turned to meet the dog’s charge, waving his padded arm. Tony was still six or eight yards away when he launched himself at Timmons, and clamped onto the padded arm. An unsuspecting man would have gone down with the impact, but Timmons had done this hundreds of times, and knew what to expect. He turned with the impact, and kept spinning, swinging Tony around and around in the air. Tony did not let go, and, Scott knew, was enjoying the ride. The Malinois breed bit so hard and well, and showed such bite commitment, they were jokingly called Maligators. Timmons was still spinning the dog when Scott saw Leland standing against the building, watching the officers work their dogs. Leland was standing with his arms crossed, and a coiled leash clipped to his belt. Scott had never seen the man without the leash at his side.

Dominick Leland was a tall, bony African-American with thirty-two years on the job as a K-9 handler, first in the United States Army, then the L.A. County Sheriffs, and finally the LAPD. He was a living legend in the LAPD K-9 corps.

Bald on top, his head was rimmed with short gray hair, and two fingers were missing from his left hand. The fingers were bitten off by a monstrous Rottweiler-mastiff fighting dog on the day Leland earned the first of the seven Medals of Valor he would earn throughout his career. Leland and his first dog, a German shepherd named Maisie Dobkin, had been deployed to search for an Eight-Deuce Crip murder suspect and known drug dealer named Howard Oskari Walcott. Earlier that day, Walcott fired nine shots into a crowd of high school students waiting at a bus stop, wounding three and killing a fourteen-year-old girl named Tashira Johnson. When LAPD ground and air support units trapped Walcott in a nearby neighborhood, Leland and Maisie Dobkin were called out to locate the suspect, who was believed to be armed, dangerous, and hiding somewhere within a group of four neighboring properties. Leland and Maisie cleared the first property easily enough, then moved into the adjoining backyard of a house then occupied by another Crip gangbanger, Eustis Simpson. Unknown to officers at the time, Simpson kept two enormous male Rottweiler-mastiff mixed-breeds on his property, both of which were scarred and vicious veterans of Simpson’s illegal dogfighting business.

When Leland and Maisie Dobkin entered Simpson’s backyard that day, both dogs charged from beneath the house and attacked Maisie Dobkin. The first dog, which weighed one hundred forty pounds, hit Maisie so hard she rolled upside down. He buried his teeth into Maisie’s neck, pinning her down, as the second dog, which weighed almost as much, grabbed her right hind leg and shook it like a terrier shakes a rat. Maisie screamed. Dominick Leland could have done something silly like run for a garden hose or waste time with pepper spray, but Maisie would be dead in seconds, so Leland waded into the fight. He kneed the dog biting her leg to clear a line of fire, pushed his Beretta into the attacker’s back, and pulled the trigger. He then grabbed the other dog’s face with his free hand to make the dog release Maisie’s neck. The overgrown monster bit Leland’s hand, and Leland shot the sonofabitch twice, but not before the big dog took his pinky and ring finger. Leland later said he never felt the bite, and never knew the fingers were missing, until he put Maisie into the ambulance and demanded the paramedics rush her to the closest veterinarian. Both Leland and Maisie Dobkin recovered, and worked together for another six years until Maisie Dobkin retired. Leland still kept the official LAPD picture of himself and Maisie Dobkin on the wall of his office. He kept pictures of himself with all the dogs who had been his partners.

Leland scowled when he saw Scott, but Scott didn’t take it personally. Leland scowled at everyone and everything except his dogs.

Leland uncrossed his arms, and entered the building.

“C’mon, now, let’s see what we have.”

The building was divided into two small offices, a general meeting room, and a kennel. The K-9 Platoon used the facility only for training and evaluations, and did not staff the building on a full-time basis.

Scott followed Leland past the offices and into the kennel, Leland talking as they walked. Eight chain-link dog runs with chain-link gates lined the left side of the kennel, with a walkway leading past them to a door at the end of the building. The runs were four feet wide and eight feet deep, with floor-to-ceiling sides. The floor was a concrete slab with built-in drains, so the room could be washed and rinsed with hoses. When the training dogs lived here, Scott and his two classmates, Amy Barber and Seymore Perkins, had begun every morning by scooping up dog shit and washing the floor with disinfectant. This gave the kennel a medicinal smell.

Leland said, “Perkins is getting Jimmy Riggs’ dog, Spider. I think they will be a good match. That Spider, I’ll tell you something, he has a mind of his own, but he and Seymore will come to terms.”

Seymore Perkins was Leland’s favorite of the three new handlers. Perkins had grown up with hunting dogs, and possessed a calm confidence with the dogs, who instantly trusted him. Amy Barber had shown an intuitive feel for bonding with the dogs, and a command authority that far surpassed her slight build and higher voice.

Leland stopped between the second and third runs, where the two new dogs were waiting. Both dogs stood when Leland entered, and the near dog barked twice. They were skinny male Belgian Malinois.

Leland beamed as if they were his children.

“Aren’t these boys gorgeous? Look at these boys. They are handsome young men.”

The barker barked again, and both furiously wagged their tails.

Scott knew both dogs had arrived fully trained by the breeder, in accordance with written guidelines supplied by the K-9 Platoon. This meant Leland, who traveled to breeders all over the world in search of the best available dogs. Leland had spent the past three days personally running the dogs through their paces, evaluating their fitness, and learning each dog’s personality and peculiarities. Not every dog sent to the K-9 Platoon measured up to Leland’s standards. He downchecked those who did not, and returned them to their breeder.

Leland glanced at the dog in the second run.

“This here is Gutman. Why on earth those fools named him Gutman, I do not know, but that’s his name.”

Purchased dogs were usually around two years old when they arrived, so they had already been named. Donated dogs were often a year older.

“And this here is Quarlo.”

Gutman barked again, and went up on his hind legs, trying to lick Leland through the gate.

Leland said, “Gutman here is kinda high-strung, so I’m gonna put him with Amy. Quarlo here is smart as a whip. He’s got a good head on his shoulders, and he’s easy to work with, so I think you and Mr. Quarlo here are going to make a fine match.”

Scott interpreted “easy to work with” and “smart as a whip” as Leland’s way of saying the other dog was too much for Scott to handle. Perkins and Barber were the better handlers, so they were getting the more difficult dogs. Scott was the moron.

Scott heard the door open at the far end of the kennel and saw Mace come in with the German shepherd. He put the shepherd into a run, dragged out a large canine crate, and closed the shepherd’s gate.

Scott studied Quarlo. He was a beautiful dog with a dark fawn body, black face, and upright black ears. His eyes were warm and intelligent. His steady demeanor was obvious. Where Gutman frittered and fidgeted, Quarlo stood utterly calm. Leland was probably right. This would be the easiest dog for Scott.

Scott glanced at Leland, but Leland wasn’t looking at him. Leland was smiling at the dog.

Scott said, “I’ll work harder. I’ll work as hard as it takes.”

Leland glanced up, and studied Scott for a moment. The only time Scott recalled Leland not scowling was when he looked at the dogs, but now he seemed thoughtful. He touched the leash clipped to his belt with his three-fingered hand.

“This isn’t steel and nylon. It’s a nerve. You clip one end to you, you clip the other to this animal, it ain’t for dragging him down the street. You
feel
him through this nerve, and he feels you, and what flows through here flows both ways—anxiety, fear, discipline, approval—right through this nerve without you and your dog ever even having to look at each other, without you ever having to say a word. He can feel it, and you can feel it, too.”

Leland let go of his leash, and glanced back at Quarlo.

“You’re gonna work, all right, I know you’re a worker, but there’s things work can’t build. I watched you for eight weeks, and you did everything I asked you to do, but I never saw anything flow through your leash. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I’ll work harder.”

Scott was trying to figure out what else to say when Cam Francis opened the door behind them, and asked Leland to check Tony’s foot. Cam looked worried. Leland told Scott he would be right back, and hurried away, scowling. Scott stared at Quarlo for several seconds, then walked to the other end of the kennel where Mace was now hosing out the crate.

Scott said, “Hey.”

Mace said, “Watch you don’t get splashed.”

The shepherd was lying with her head between her paws on a padded mat at the back of the run. She was a classic black-and-tan German shepherd with a black muzzle giving way to light brown cheeks and mask, a black blaze on the top of her head, and enormous black ears. Her eyebrows bunched as she looked from Scott to Mace, and back again. No other part of her moved. A hard rubber toy lay untouched on the newspaper, as did a leather chew and a fresh bowl of water. A name was written on the side of the crate. Scott cocked his head sideways to read it. Maggie.

Scott guessed she had to go eighty or eighty-five pounds. A lot bigger than the Maligators. She was big through the chest and hips the way shepherds were, but it was the hairless gray lines on her hindquarters that drew him. He squeezed past the crate for a better view, and watched her eyes follow him.

“This Maggie?”

“Yeah.”

“She ours?”

“Nah. Donation dog. Family down Oceanside thought we could use her, but Leland’s sending her back.”

Scott studied the pale lines and decided they were scars.

“What happened to her?”

Mace put aside the hose, and joined Scott at the gate.

“She was wounded in Afghanistan. The scars there are from the surgeries.”

“No shit. A military working dog?”

“U.S. Marine, this girl. She healed up okay, but Leland says she’s unfit.”

“What kind of work did she do?”

“Dual-purpose dog. Patrol and explosives detection.”

Scott knew almost nothing about military working dogs, except that the training they received was specialized and excellent.

“Bomb get her?”

“Nope. Her handler was blown up by one of those suicide nuts. The dog here stayed with him, and some asshole sniper tried to kill her.”

“No shit.”

“For real. Shot her twice, Leland says. Parked herself on her boy, and wouldn’t leave. Trying to protect him, I guess. Wouldn’t even let other Marines get near him.”

Scott stared at the German shepherd, but Mace and the kennel faded, and he heard the gunfire that night—the automatic rifle churning its thunder, the chorus of pistols snapping like whips. Then her brown eyes met his, and he was back in the kennel again.

Scott bit the inside of his mouth, and cleared his throat before speaking.

“She didn’t leave.”

“That’s the story.”

Scott noted how she watched them. Her nose worked constantly, sucking in their smells. Even though she had not moved from her prone position, Scott knew she was focused on them.

“If she healed up okay, what’s Leland’s problem?”

“She’s bad with noise, for one. See how she lays back there, all kinda timid? Leland thinks she’s got a stress disorder. Dogs get PTSD just like people.”

Scott felt himself flush, and opened the gate to hide his irritation. He wondered if Mace and the other handlers spoke about him like this behind his back.

Scott said, “Hey, Maggie, how’s it going?”

Maggie stayed on her belly with her ears folded back, which was a sign of submission, but she stared into his eyes, which possibly indicated aggression. Scott slowly approached her. She watched as he came, but her ears stayed down and she issued no warning growl. He held the back of his hand toward her.

“You a good girl, Maggie? My name is Scott. I’m a police officer, so don’t give me any trouble, okay?”

Scott squatted a couple of feet from her, and watched her nose work.

“Can I pet you, Maggie? How ’bout I pet you?”

He moved his hand slowly closer, and was six inches from her head when she bit him. She moved insanely fast, snarling and snapping, and caught the top of his hand as he jerked to his feet.