I had never seen anything so carefully arranged to give the impression of tremendous work under impossible conditions resulting in a regrettable but inevitable lack of results in a matter that was possibly better left alone for other reasons, which were in any case more in line with departmental policy on the allocation of man-hours with specific reference to overtime on homicide cases.
It all added up to a long-winded and meaningless but important-sounding conclusion that said, We didn’t really do a whole lot here except make all the right gestures and generate the politically correct amount of paper.
But the subtext could not have been plainer. Somebody had put pressure on the investigating team so they went through all the motions, checked in all the boxes, and covered their asses without actually doing anything.
It didn’t have to be malicious. Any time an investigation approached a sensitive area, a competent cop might back away, unwilling to do what is known as stirring up shit. That just means, stay away from trouble. There’s enough of it looking for you already.
It looked like that’s what had happened here. To anybody but an insider it would seem like an exhaustive investigation. It wouldn’t have fooled Roscoe. It didn’t fool me.
I turned to Roscoe’s file. Since this one was still technically a fresh case, Ed had given me a photocopy of the initial paperwork. Detective W. Mancks was leading his team through the same kind of exhaustive orgy of box-checking. He had filled in the boxes with an X, too. Aha, I thought. A pattern was beginning to develop.
The cover sheet said Ed had been assigned to do a background check. It made a lot of political sense. The paperwork would show that a dedicated black cop, above reproach, had been in on the investigation, but background would keep Ed out of the way of all the important non-work. I didn’t know any of the others on the team. I assumed they were all a little more pliable than Ed.
I thumbed through the file and then pulled out the envelope with the pictures. I knew the way Roscoe had died, so I knew the pictures would be bad. I didn’t expect them to bother me too much.
But the pictures were worse than I thought. Roscoe looked like a tired puppet. Some kid had thrown a snit and pulled the head off, then thrown the puppet into the gutter.
I flipped through the report. All the boxes were filled in. There was no summary yet, but I could see it was already adding up to the same thing: somebody with a very heavy hand wanted this investigation to go through the motions without rocking the boat.
The results were identical, but each team was different, headed by a different cop. That didn’t necessarily add up to conspiracy. It wasn’t hard to find a cop who would walk softly on just one case—especially if you threatened his career, his pension, his place in the fraternit
y. Besides, he would have all the forms filled out right, proving he had done his job.
There were a lot of people with enough clout to twist an arm that hard, from the commissioner on down to the rep from the union. Even a few local politicos, one or two businessmen, and at least one movie star I could think of would be able to swing it.
The only question was, who would do it? Who would deliberately sabotage an investigation into the murder of a brother officer? And why?
I sat with the pictures on my lap and just thought about it for maybe two hours. I started to get a nightmare feeling of wading through something that didn’t make sense and couldn’t be stopped. I finally put the pictures down and turned out the light.
Just before I fell asleep I realized my head didn’t hurt anymore. I was finally getting somewhere.
Chapter Fifteen
The morning came a couple of hours before I was ready for it. It might have been jet lag, or a last reminder of my bang on the head. Or it could have been just some leftover uneasiness about being in L.A.
Whatever it was, I woke up feeling like there was something terribly important I had to do and I couldn’t figure out what, just that it was vital. I lay in the sagging bed with my heart pounding for a good five minutes trying to figure out what it was I was failing to do before I decided it was just a dream.
It was after seven by the time I got to the coffee shop downstairs in the hotel. I ordered coffee, eggs, and toast. In a spurt of real bravery I got a small glass of orange juice. It had a weird aftertaste that made me think I had a mouthful of rotting copper. Somehow that made the bad-dream feeling linger as I went to look for a telephone.
I didn’t want to use the one in my room. Hotels tend to charge exorbitant rates for telephone calls, and anyway my room was all the way upstairs, and I was feeling penned in. I just wanted to get outside. I went out and looked for a booth.
That was a mistake. The air was a thick brown sap that could bring on a headache in a statue. I couldn’t find a phone that wasn’t broken or covered with stuff that smelled like the rest room at Venice Beach. After a few minutes of frustration, my eyes tearing from the smog, I decided I didn’t need a phone anyway. I packed myself into my tiny rental and drove the few blocks over to Hollywood bureau.
Ed was already at his desk when I got there. He looked even more tired and sour. He was wading through a stack of papers and he glanced up as I sat in the chair by his desk.
I put the case file on his desk, rewrapped in the Ralph’s bag. The weight of the papers caused smoke to swirl away from the smoldering Kool in the ashtray and into Ed’s eyes. He blinked. He looked at the bag and then at me. “Good morning, Ed,” I said after he had stared at me for a few moments.
“If you get cheerful at me, I’m gonna have to shoot you,” he said.
“Farthest thing from my mind,” I told him. “What do you know about this?”
I flipped a page from the file at him, marked with a paper clip. He glanced at it.
“Uh-huh,” he said, sounding like he looked, tired and sour. “What about it? You want to file a complaint about police incompetence?” He dropped the sheet on the desk with a weary shrug.
“I’d rather take a look at that unidentified hardware,” I said.
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he gave me one short nod. “Yeah. Maybe somebody ought to.” He swiveled away and picked up the telephone on his desk. I couldn’t hear what he said, but in a minute he turned back to me.