The Deepest Cut (20 page)

“Didn’t take the sheriff’s helicopter long to find her. One sweep down the beach did it. The tide was coming in and had nearly lifted her into the surf. If we’d waited any longer, we might not have found her body. There were footprints and hoofprints in soft sand, but nothing distinct enough to recover. Never found her Stetson. I think about that hat sometimes. Wonder if someone in Australia picked it up out of the ocean.”

Denver slowly pulled one foot then the other off the crate, rocking the chair upright. “We didn’t have any experience investigating that sort of crime, so the sheriff’s took over. They’ve got the files on it. I kept close to it, though. They did a hell of a job, but didn’t turn up a thing. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. Just like that. Marilu was gone. Twenty-seven years old.”

He gulped his coffee and stretched to set the mug on top of the mantel, beyond his easy grasp, as if he was finished with it.

Kissick downed the last of his. It had gone cold. “What was Mar-ilu’s background? How long had she been a ranger and what had she done before?”

“Marilu was born and raised in Santa Maria, about forty-five miles south of here. She told me she always loved the outdoors, ever since she was a little girl. She was a tomboy. Her father would take Marilu and her brother hunting and fishing. They’d go camping right here in this park. One summer vacation when she was in college, she went to the Yosemite Rock Climbing School. That’s when she decided she wanted to be a park ranger. She followed her dream.”

“How long have you been here, Zeke?”

“Feels like I’ve always been here. Twenty-nine years. I could retire, but my wife won’t let me. Doesn’t want me underfoot at home.” The ranger chuckled, and then fixed Kissick with a steady gaze. “What sort of lead are you following that brought you here, if I may ask?”

Kissick felt the lawman’s heart that beat beneath Denver’s grandfa-therly surface. He rose to set the empty mug on the counter, and then returned to open the file folder. He pulled out the photocopies of Nitro’s four violent drawings, and handed them to Denver.

Finding the one of Feathers, Denver said, “Lord have mercy. That’s Morro Rock and that’s Marilu. Looks just like her.” He looked at the others. “Who drew these?”

Kissick took out a snapshot of Nitro. “They were found in the possession of this man. We believe he drew them. Do you recognize him?”

Denver drew his fingers down his silver mustache as he scrutinized the photo. “Can’t say that I do.”

“How about this guy?” Kissick took out the composite drawing done based upon Vining’s description of her attacker.

Denver shook his head. “You think one or both of them had something to do with Marilu’s murder?”

“Possibly. Was Marilu ever involved in an incident on duty that was in the news?”

Kissick elaborated while Denver thought it over. “Something that would have put her in the public eye, like a shooting on duty, arresting a celebrity, or—”

“There was something like that.” Denver stood and went behind the
counter where he began looking through a low bookcase beneath a window. “I know it’s here somewhere.” His boots scuffed against the wooden floor as he shuffled to maneuver his large frame around the small area. He grunted as he pulled something from a bottom shelf. He rose with an old scrapbook and blew the dust from it as he carried it to the fireplace. He dragged the rocker closer to Kissick and sat with the book on his lap.

He smiled as he turned the pages. He pointed at a photo of a group of rangers in uniform in front of the ranch house. “That’s Marilu when she first came here.” The pages were of cardboard covered with semi-adhesive cellophane that held the items in place. The cellophane had grown cloudy with age.

Kissick tried to nudge him along. “You said that Marilu was involved in a newsworthy incident.”

Denver sped up, moving to the back of the book. “Here we go.” He read the headline from an old newspaper clipping. “‘Park Ranger Kills Child Molester. Montaña de Oro Ranger Hailed as Hero.’ Nine years ago last July. How time flies.”

He carefully peeled away the cellophane, removed and unfolded the brittle newspaper clipping, and handed it to Kissick.

As Kissick skimmed it, Denver recounted the events. “Bud Lilly was a local creep. His mother lived in Los Osos and he stayed with her off and on. He was always showing up in the park, hanging around the beach or the campgrounds. There were stories about Bud exposing himself to little girls. All the kids in town knew to stay away from him. Whenever I found him in my park, I chased him out.”

Kissick looked at Lilly’s mug shot in the clipping. He was Caucasian with a shock of mussed hair. Nondescript, except for dark pop-eyes on a diamond-shaped face that made him look like a bug. Something about him shouted, “Scumbag.” The article said he was thirty-two years old.

Denver continued. “The police finally arrested Bud for fondling a twelve-year-old girl in a bathroom in Vegas. He got a wrist slap and was out of jail in no time. He had no place to go, so he came back to his mom’s. Of course, he started showing up here again, where all the families and kids are during summer. To make matters worse, he’d bought himself a van.

“One July day, Bud drove his van to a campground and tried to
drag a ten-year-old girl into it. The girl started screaming, attracting the attention of some of the adults around. The girl got away, and her parents hopped into their car and started chasing Bud in his van. At a bend up by Hazard Canyon Reef, Bud lost control and crashed his car into a tree. The girl’s father pursued him on foot, but Bud was faster and disappeared. Marilu was patrolling on horseback and joined in the chase. Bud headed down the bluff, probably thinking he’d hide in one of the caves there. Marilu cornered him. He pulled a gun on her and she shot him.

“No one around here shed a tear for Bud Lilly, but that shooting was investigated every which way. Marilu was vindicated. The incident was considered ‘suicide by cop.’ The TV stations and newspapers were all over Marilu. She hated the attention, of course, and was glad when it finally died down.”

Kissick reflected on the similarities between the on-duty shooting that had catapulted Marilu Feathers into the public eye and the incidents involving Vining and Johnna Alwin. Still, he resisted the notion of a criminal mastermind.

“Zeke, may I have a photocopy of this article please?”

“Most certainly. There’s a machine in the back.”

“One last thing …” Kissick took Vining’s pearl necklace with the pearl pendant from his pocket and handed it to the ranger.

“Do you know if Marilu ever received a pearl necklace similar to this one as a gift? It would have been given to her after the Bud Lilly incident had landed her in the news. It might have had a card with it that looked something like this.”

He handed Denver the panel card with the handwritten note: “Congratulations, Officer Vining.”

Denver scrutinized the necklace and shook his head. “People sent Marilu all sorts of stuff. Invited her to their homes to dinner. I don’t remember her mentioning having received a gift like this. You might ask her mother.”

“Zeke, thank you for your time. You said that Marilu’s mother lives in Cambria.”

“Be happy to call her for you.”

TWENTY

I
N THE OBSERVATION ROOM OUTSIDE THE DETECTIVES SECTION INTERVIEW
room, Vining held one earphone from a pair to her ear as she watched through the two-way glass. Detectives Louis Jones and Doug Sproul were interviewing yet another in a series of street gang members they’d pulled in. They were working their way through the players in the Crooked Lane Crips, Pepper Street Bloods, and the Gangster Kings— African American gangs— and the Villa Boys Pasadena, North-side 18th Street, Latin Boyz, and Vario Pasadena Rifa— Latino gangs. Another team of detectives were grilling a gangbanger in an adjacent room.

Many more bangers were in the basement-level jail, hauled in during an early-morning sweep. Members of rival gangs were segregated into different cell pods. Some had been arrested for drug possession, carrying concealed weapons, or parole violations. Most were still on the street, lucky enough not to have been breaking the law when the cops rained down. They were disinclined to come voluntarily to the PPD to be interviewed. The patrol cops let them know that they were watching and if they so much as jaywalked or threw a gum wrapper in the street, they’d be pulled in.

Vining and Caspers had interviewed three of Marvin Li’s six employees: Daniel “Dan B” Boone Shin, age twenty-four, Victor “Kicker”
Chang, age eighteen, and Ernesto “Chuckles” Ronquillo, age twenty-eight.

They were nicely dressed and polite and had shown up on time. Shin and Ronquillo had long arrest records and were on parole. Their parole officers sang Marvin Li’s praises for the skill with which he wielded an iron fist in a velvet glove to keep former career criminals off the street and on the straight and narrow.

Victor Chang’s sheet was clean, but he had been seen with members of a local set of a long-established Chinese gang, Wah Ching. The local set’s name was Hell Side Wah Ching. Marvin Li was a family friend and had taken Chang under his wing ostensibly to steer him from gang influences.

All three knew Scrappy Espinoza through working with him at Aaron’s Aarrows, but none had socialized with him. Victor Chang said he thought that Scrappy was back on drugs, which was news to Scrappy’s parole officer.

Daniel Boone Shin said that Scrappy had cryptically told him that he “wasn’t going to be working that piece of shit job much longer” as he had “something big” coming down.

Vining had checked out Li’s Guns Gone public-service organization. The commendations on the Guns Gone website from the mayors of Los Angeles and other Southland cities praising Li’s work in helping to stem gang violence were legitimate.

On the PPD’s third floor, the brass was handling the outraged public and their representatives. Owners of businesses in Old Pasadena, where Scrappy had been shot, were gathered in the lobby, waiting for a meeting with the chief. Neighborhood groups clamored for a stop to the gang violence. That night, a community meeting of citizens, clergy, elected officials, representatives from the local NAACP chapter, El Centro de Acción Social, and the PPD police chief would take place at All Saints Episcopal Church.

Scrappy’s murder had been the tipping point. The violence had seeped into Old Pasadena. The public outcry had not only widened, but had deeper pockets. Merchants feared that what had happened in Westwood Village in the eighties would happen to Old Pasadena. Westwood had been a thriving weekend destination of shops, restaurants,
and grand old movie palaces until two gang shootings, one claiming the life of a bystander standing in line for a movie, turned the village into a ghost town. It took decades for it to recover and still wasn’t what it had once been.

Vining watched and listened as Jones and Sproul pressed an African American male whom she did not recognize. He appeared to be in his early thirties which, if he was a gangbanger, would make him an elder statesman.

From his clothing, Vining determined that he was a member of the Bloods. The Bloods always wore red and their archrivals, the Crips, always wore blue. In years past, these two gangs used to be bolder in flying their colors. With the police cracking down hard on street gangs, they’d found cagier ways to proclaim their gang affiliation. This guy’s red shoelaces and red belt gave him away.

The lights reflected off his shaved head. The hems of his ultra-baggy jeans flopped over bright white athletic shoes with the red shoelaces. When he was standing, the crotch of the jeans would reach his knees. The waistband was around his hips, revealing several inches of his print boxer shorts. Woven through the jeans’ belt loops was the bright red webbed belt. Tucked into the boxers was a white sleeveless Tee showing off his well-developed upper body and tattoos. Large diamond stud earrings were in both earlobes. A heavy, twisted gold chain was around his neck.

Corporal Cameron Lam entered the observation room. He’d met with the head of the Sheriff’s San Gabriel Valley Asian Gang Task Force and was going to present what he’d learned at the briefing.

“Hey, Cam. Who’s that fine citizen?”

“That’s Andre Spranger, aka Chinaman. He’s new in town. Was recently released from Folsom after serving a sentence for assault, battery, and mayhem.”

“Mayhem,” Vining repeated.

“Bit off a guy’s ear and most of his nose in a fight.”

“Nice. His moniker’s Chinaman?”

“His homeys think he looks Chinese,” Lam said. “Maybe Scrappy meant to threaten Chinaman and wrote China Dog.”

“Scrappy wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer,” Vining said.

“Spranger lives with his grandmother in a house around the corner from the apartment where Scrappy lived with his mom.

“Jones and Sproul have been hammering him for over an hour. He’s sticking to his story that he was home with his grandma the night of Scrappy’s murder, watching
American Idol.
I checked and
Idol
was on then.”

Lam looked at Vining. “Maybe Chinaman came upon Scrappy painting the China Dog one-eight-seven tag and he thought Scrappy was threatening
him.”

Vining gave Lam a deadpan look.

Lam read her thoughts. “I’ve known these guys to do dumber things.”

“Thing is, Scrappy was tagging in such an isolated area. It was off the main action in Old Town, inside a dark construction site. Who knew that Scrappy was even there? And why was he there?”

“It’s a mystery,” Lam agreed.

“Has your team spotted any other China Dog tags around town?”

“No and we’ve looked. I’ve checked with sheriffs in Altadena and Temple City and the Alhambra P.D. and San Gabriel P.D. However, we did find two one-eight-seven tags with my name and one with yours.”

“With my name? Where?”

“On the back wall of a tire store on Orange Grove east of Newcastle.”

“Is it recent?”

“One of my guys took a picture of the tags in that alley a week ago and it wasn’t there.”

“Huh.”