the Prostitutes' Ball (2010) (22 page)

Jeb asked, "So what are you trying to tell us?"

"Thomas Vulcuna didn't kill his wife and daughter, then commit suicide," I answered. "We got that wrong in eighty-one. He was killed back here in that trash shed with the 7.65 bullet we found. The perp killed Vulcunas wife and daughter in the living room, then shot Tom out here, reloaded the Luger, carried his body upstairs, placed him on the bed, and fired a second shot into the headboard to make it look right. That's why the headboard and wall wouldn't fluoresce. But this garbage shed did."

Hitch picked up the narrative. "The passage from The Divine Comedy was marked and left open on the bedside table as a suicide note," he said. "The Luger jammed on that second shot, but there was only one missing from the clip because the gun was reloaded by the killer then shot into the headboard."

Jeb and Alexa stood looking at each other, not sure how to proceed.

"Whoever put that Brinks truck in there probably also killed Vulcuna and his family," I said. "If this hits the papers and TV tomorrow, and the shooter is still around, he'll be gone before we can put a case together. The doer or doers will be in Mexico or France, where we can't extradite on a death penalty case, which this certainly is, because there are five murders so far, maybe six if the third Brinks guard is in the back of this truck."

"It's even bigger than that," Hitch said. "Brooks and the three Sladky killings are also somehow part of Vulcunas triple and this Brinks heist. The two cases are tied together."

In my opinion he was overwriting the story there, but as I'd already learned, sometimes imagination is more important than knowledge.

"Brooks wasn't even alive when this Brinks truck was hijacked," Alexa reminded him.

"Not Brooks himself," Hitch continued. "His father, Thayer; or the guy who set up the foundation, that Century City lawyer, Stender Sheedy Sr. The reason they didn't sell this house for a quarter century is now pretty damn obvious. They didn't want a new owner re-landscaping and finding this well house and that armored truck inside with the dead guards."

"I still don't see how we keep this quiet," Jeb said.

"Hitch and I have been giving that some careful thought."

Jeb and Alexa seemed open to a better strategy, but didn't have one. At least they were listening. Our moment was at hand, so I jumped in.

"Okay, we know we can't keep this quiet indefinitely, but we may not need all that long. Let's say we can keep it under wraps for like seventy-two hours."

"There are at least fifty evidence tech workers at our new CSI science pod at Cal State," Jeb said. "There are a dozen more at the vehicle center. How's this stay quiet? Its bound to leak to the press. It always does."

"We limit the number of forensic techs to about six. We handpick people we know we can trust to stay quiet," I answered. "Then, instead of taking this truck to the new automotive garage at Cal State, we tow it to the old North Hollywood Medical Center on Riverside. That hospital is deserted and is being rented out for film and television shoots. Hitch woke up the location manager from Mosquito and that guy can rent it for us. The location fee is only fifteen hundred a day. Its got everything we need."

Hitch picked up the narrative. "We get one or two people from the ME staff who we can trust to keep a secret and get them to do their investigation of the remains in one of the old operating theaters there. Since it's just skeletons, they'll only be looking at bone and bullet issues. They'll need to do dental matches, but it's not anywhere near as complicated as a full soft tissue autopsy. It should work. Then we post a couple of patrolmen on this crime scene to protect the well house. Nobody gets in, especially the Dunbar family or their lawyers."

"And you think we can pull that off and keep this quiet?" Jeb said.

"I think it's a good idea," Alexa cut in. She was doing what I knew she would, thinking like a cop and not an administrator.

"What about ADA Wilkes?" Jeb asked.

"I think we need to keep her screened off," Hitch advised. "This old Brinks robbery touches her case and some of the same people may be involved. She won't see past the prosecutorial problems it causes. Murder defense is mostly about confusing the jury. She's gonna freak and start causing us major trouble when she finds out what we're up to."

"Doesn't matter," Alexa said. "We have to tell her anyway." Jeb nodded his head in agreement. "I'll stay here and help you with her, but if we fail to notify the DA's office on something this big, we're gonna be eating the fallout for years."

So Alexa made the call. She woke Dahlia up and told her to get to Skyline Drive immediately. She'd find out why once she got here. While we waited for her to arrive, Alexa looked at the search warrant Brooks had signed.

"You're learning," she said.

"Learn or burn," I replied.

A few minutes later, Sumner took me aside.

"That seventy-two-hour thing was brilliant, dawg."

"Thanks."

"It puts a tight clock on Act Three, and not for nothing, but we definitely needed a clock in this movie. You're showing some real producing promise. I'm telling you, when it's great, it's great. You just can't make shit like this up. This puppy is writing itself."

The problem was, he was completely serious.

Chapter
37.

Dahlia Wilkes pulled up in a new red Lexus and parked down by the gate. It was five in the morning. The nights are long in December so it was still dark. As always, she was immaculately dressed. She set a fat designer briefcase on the fender of her car and regarded the four of us skeptically. Her hair ruffled in the brisk Santa Ana wind.

"So what s going on?"

"Something came up ," Alexa said.

"It better not screw up my Sladky prosecution."

"It certainly touches on it," Alexa said. "It might affect it."

Dahlia turned on Hitch and me. "What have you two been doing?"

When neither of us answered, she started to walk up the drive to see for herself. Jeb blocked her way.

"This is a crime scene. Its restricted."

"Not from me. I'm the prosecutor on Sladky, or did you numbskulls forget that already?"

"Except it's not Sladky" he said. "Its Vulcuna."

She stopped, then pinned us with a withering courtroom stare. "What do you mean, its not Sladky? Why else would you call me? And who or what is a Vulcuna?"

"It's a cold case that just went active and it touches Sladky," Alexa said. "But unless you promise to give us seventy-two hours of confidentiality to work this situation, we can't let you on the crime scene."

"You're outta your mind."

"It's an unusual circumstance," Jeb said.

"By confidentiality, what exactly are we talking about?"

"Only you get to know what we've found here. We're extending this courtesy because you might have suggestions to protect your Sladky prosecution."

Dahlia's irritation had now turned to puzzled interest. "Of course, I have to tell Chase no matter what."

"Chase Beal doesn't need to know about this just yet," Alexa said.

"The District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles is to be kept in the dark? What are you smokin', girl?"

"This case has some political overtones. The DA is a politician. Without going any further, let's just leave it at that," my wife said.

Dahlia was definitely hooked. She wanted to know what we'd found, but she wanted to do it without putting her own ass on the line.

"What's to keep me from calling him right now, telling him what you people are suggesting? Our office will hit this property like a Panzer Division. Then we'll all know."

"If you intend to get the same excellent service from the LAPD on your cases in the future, I would advise against that strategy," Alexa warned.

"If I do this, I might as well tender my resignation to the section supervisor."

"I don't completely understand how things work in your office," Alexa challenged, "but we have solid reasoning behind this tactic. After Chase thinks it over, even he will acknowledge the wisdom of doing it this way."

"And I cant get filled in until I agree to this dumb-ass deal, in the blind."

"That's more or less it," Alexa said.

"Well, I've got to hand you guys one thing. You've definitely got my interest up."

She opened her calendar and looked at it. "Seventy-two hours is five A
. M
., Friday."

"That's right," Alexa agreed.

"Okay. I'll do you one better. Chase is in Sacramento this week meeting with some PACs to raise money for his mayoral campaign. He won't be back in town until Friday. As soon as he's back, I brief him. I should be able to get away with that."

"Deal," Alexa said.

"However, if he changes his plans and comes home early, he gets briefed then."

"That hardly works," Jeb objected.

"So nobody's completely happy," she said. "That's the way it should be in county government."

Alexa realized it was the best deal she could strike, so she agreed, and said, "Come on. We'll show you."

We all walked up the drive and headed toward the well house.

"Where the hell did that come from?" Dahlia said when she saw it.

We told her and then accompanied her inside. She looked at the truck and the two skeletons in the front seat. Five minutes later w
e w
ere all outside again, standing in the predawn darkness, listening to the Santa Ana winds rattle through the forty-foot cypress trees.

"Where'd that Brinks truck come from?" Dahlia wanted to know.

Jeb had called in the plates and now confirmed that it was the armored car that went missing from Wilshire Boulevard in 1983 with fifteen million in gold bullion. He filled Dahlia in on the cold case.

"The third guard is probably in back," he concluded.

Dahlia sighed after he finished. She could see the trap we were in if this got out. 'Til keep it quiet until Chase gets back," she said, but wasn't happy about it.

We called two crime-scene photographers to the scene and six CSIs. Alexa and Jeb handpicked everyone. We worked fast. There wasn't any useful trace evidence inside the well house because over the years heavy rainwater had seeped in and anything that might have been there was long gone.

A police flatbed truck arrived at six and backed up the narrow drive.

The assistant coroner, Ray Tsu, pulled in at six thirty. The quiet Asian ME was called Fey Ray by almost everyone because he was rail thin and never spoke above a whisper. He'd worked half a dozen of my cases in the past.

He looked through the window at the two skeletons in the front seat. Because it was impossible to get inside the truck without torches, he made the decision to leave them in the armored car for transport back to the ambulance bay in the empty hospital in North Hollywood and remove the remains there.

As the sun came up, the tow drivers inflated the tires and winched the armored car out of the well house onto the flatbed. They tied a new tarp over the top to hide it from the neighbors, then drove the flatbed down the drive onto the street below.

Twenty-five minutes later we were pulling into the covered ambulance bay in the back of the old North Hollywood Medical Center.

The building was a big stucco four-story fifties-style rectangle with mismatching additions that architecturally resembled a bunch of shoeboxes. White with peeling green trim, it looked pretty run-down.

By ten A
. M
., our handpicked CSI team along with two forensic tech welders were hard at work in the ambulance bay opening the truck. The armored car was made of bulletproof steel so the techs had to use oxyfuel torches to cut through it. The door lock was finally freed.

Jeb had already assigned the armored car heist and its resulting murders to Hitch and me. As the new primaries on this three-decade
-
old cold case, we stepped up onto the truck s back bumper to open the rear door.

Because I now suspected that my new partner was afraid of ghosts, and because we were expecting to uncover a third skeleton inside, I did the honors.

I gloved up and pulled the door wide.

Chapter
38.

The truck was empty.

No third guard in the back, an interesting development.

"So the third guard probably did the deed," Hitch reasoned. "He jumped his buddies and made off with the fifteen mil in gold bullion."

He was visibly relieved a third skeleton wasn't lying around in the truck like some gruesome special effect from Pirates of the Caribbean.

"We need to get the identities of all three Brinks guards from the old case file and compare dental charts so we can identify the missing one," Jeb said. "That should tell us which one of these guys was the potential doer."

He turned to Ray Tsu. "You can remove the two guys from the front compartment now."

We were just getting set to let the CSIs eome in to do a trace evidence sweep when I noticed four closed strongboxes pushed up next to the bench at the front of the compartment.