A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (7 page)

The heat had been building in my ground-floor duplex apartment all day, and even though the sun had gone down hours earlier, it still felt like a blast furnace when I stepped inside. I had intentionally kept the ceiling fan on when I left, but it hadn’t made any noticeable difference in the temperature. All it did was move the hot air around like a convection oven. On the way back to the bedroom, I opened every window I passed, even though I suspected the air outside was too still to provide enough cross ventilation to cool the place down.

I went into the kitchen to get myself something to drink. Years ago, the previous tenant, a graphic designer, had painted the room in a bright, Caribbean-flavored color scheme—all primary colors, yellow and red and blue—and I still liked it. It’s not the kind of thing I’d ever come up with myself. If I had to choose the colors to paint a room, I’m sure my choices would range from ecru all the way to Navajo white.

The message light on my landline was flashing. It was my landlord, saying that in the next week or so, someone would be stopping by to work on the plumbing and to install new low-flow fixtures. I didn’t like the sounds of that. One of my favorite things about the duplex was the fact that it still had all the original hardware. I thought of every hotel shower I’d taken in the last few years and made a mental note to ask him if he’d skip my place.

Even though there hadn’t been a Grey Goose bottle in there for two months, habit still made me reach for the freezer door first. I didn’t even have it all the way open before I pushed it closed and opened the refrigerator for a Diet 7Up.

After a year of juggling Vicodin and vodka to deal with my pain, I finally succumbed to the horrible notion that had been nagging at the back of my head like a fly in a dark room, and I combined the two.

The result was terrifying.

The combination of the alcohol and painkillers was so effective in treating the burning ache that twisted from my wrist up through my arm and into my neck and shoulder, the corrosive hurt that tormented me, that it felt like an amazing deliverance. The first time I did it, I told myself it would only be once. Only once. The second time I did it, I told myself it would only be twice. Each time, I’d add a little more vodka and the relief would be a little bit deeper, the sleep a little bit more sound.

But every silver lining has a cloud.

I give myself credit for cutting myself off after night number six. Even then I knew that if I didn’t stop soon, it would be harder.

Some nights, when the pain and the insomnia are particularly rough, I think about the relative ease with which I stopped, and I think that maybe just one more time wouldn’t hurt. And I know that’s probably true. I also know bargaining when I see it.

The first full night at home after taking on a major case is always an ordeal. Insomnia has been a problem for me for years, for far longer than the chronic pain, and especially so when my mind is racing with the details of a new murder investigation. The inability to disengage, though, is a double-edged sword. I discovered that fact a year earlier on a triple murder case, the first upon my return to active duty after the long medical leave for my injury. The excitement of a new case was a balm for my pain—it occupied my mind and being in a way that nothing else could, and that forced my attention away from the chronic affliction of my injury. When I became immersed in work, I forgot to hurt, and even now it’s the only real relief I can count on.

But in the brightness of one of my many insomniac midnight-to-dawn struggles, the magic fades and the pain mixes with the befuddlement of the sleeplessness and makes those few brutal hours stretch out in front of me like an unending march toward a forever-receding horizon.

It’s kind of like watching a Terrence Malick movie.

The way I deal with it is by working the case. It’s actually a good chance to get squared away and organize the mass of information compiled in the first hours of an investigation. This case, though, was different. Sure, it was high profile, but we had suspects in custody, and it was as close to an airtight case as I’d seen in all my years of working Homicide. Once, several years earlier, I’d worked a killing that was recorded on the surveillance camera of a Circle K mini-mart, but the images had been relatively low-resolution and the tape wasn’t the definitive evidence in the trial. With this case, though, the recording would be crucial. Not only were there shots in which the suspects were unmistakably identifiable, there were also multiple incidents of them using each other’s names, and footage of the preparation and lead-up to the murder as well as the act itself. There was also a considerable amount of forensic evidence tying them to the crime and the crime scene, and multiple LBPD officers could testify to their presence in the immediate aftermath of the incident. They were going down for this.

Aside from motive, there was only one question that seemed urgent: who was the victim?

I couldn’t answer that question with the information I had at hand, but, as with most cases, I knew that the better I knew the evidence, the more likely I’d be to make connections down the road. So I went back to the murder book.

The list of contents from the shopping cart was the one item that kept drawing my attention. It was the only thing we had that allowed for any speculation or interpretation. I didn’t know it then, but I would spend so much time with that list that I would virtually commit it to memory. That night, though, it was still fresh and new, and it seemed to me that if I studied it and looked deeply enough into it, that it just might hold the key to unlocking the universe of our victim. I looked at it as if it were a puzzle, and if only I could figure out how to properly assemble the pieces, I’d be able to unlock some meaningful truth about our victim. Bishop? I couldn’t help but wonder if that name was actually useful information or just the rambling of a man who wasn’t able to make any more sense of my questions than I was myself.

I read through the inventory again. It seemed only a random collection of items, the debris and the dregs of a life that was slowly waning away into insignificance. But I couldn’t let myself believe that. If I did, I’d be no better than the community and culture that had ignored and neglected him long enough for him to meet the fate he had met.

No.

I wouldn’t let that happen. I needed more. I needed to know who he was and where he came from.

In my experience, it’s actually a very rare thing for homicide detectives to feel as if they affected any real closure or resolved anything of great significance for those left behind by the victims of murder. The truth of the matter is that when someone dies of anything other than extreme old age and natural causes, and often even then, the death leaves a great void in the lives of the survivors, an emptiness like an abandoned mine that can never be filled. A deep chasm. If you’re lucky, you might be able to cover it with plywood and rebar, to surround it with chain link and “Danger” signs, but at best, these are only ever temporary remedies, patches that might briefly hold up to the storms that will come and come again until the ground around the chasm grows so weakened and diminished that to approach the emptiness becomes ever more dangerous. And that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not, then the loss leaves a void as dark and desolate as a black hole, with a gravity so great that no light can escape.

I’m not sure why it struck me as so vital and important to the success of the case that our victim had someone to mourn deeply for him. What was wrong with me? Any other detective I knew would be glad to be in this situation—no next of kin to notify, no bereaved wife to console, no children whose lives would be forever changed because of a stranger in a coat and tie knocking on the front door. With a victim like this, there was no one left to hurt. The damage had been done. Why couldn’t I just be satisfied with that?

6

L
EVI
’
S JEANS
,
MEN
’
S
,
TWO PAIRS
:
ONE SIZE
34/32,
FADED
,
HOLE IN RIGHT KNEE
;
ONE SIZE
36/30,
DARK BLUE
,
GOOD CONDITION
.

When I got to my desk in the squad room, I had a message waiting from Kyle.

“Good news,” he said, answering my return call. “We got prints off of the chess set. Two sets of prints. No hits on one, but we got an ID on the other.”

“Could the good set be our vic?”

“Doubt it. The guy was army. Only twenty-nine.”

“Please tell me we can find him.”

“We do have a current address. Less than two months old, so it’s probably still good.”

Jen came in while I was still on the phone. I told Kyle thanks and to let me know if anything else came up.

“Good news,” I said to Jen.

“Yeah?”

“There was a chess set in the shopping cart. Two sets of prints, one with a solid ID and an address.”

“And the other?”

“Hopefully,” I said, “our victim.”

The Century Villages at Cabrillo was a transitional and low-income housing development just north of Pacific Coast Highway and nestled up against the Terminal Island Freeway, State Route 103. We were on our way there to interview the man whose fingerprints were on the chess set. Jen was behind the wheel.

“You know they filmed
Terminator 2
on the 103, right?” I asked.

“Yeah. You tell me that every time we get anywhere close to it.”

“
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
, too,” I said. “I never mention that one because I know how you feel about Angelina Jolie.”

“Well, thank you for that.”

“You think it might be the shortest freeway in the state?”

“Why are you trying to annoy me?”

“I’m not. I’m trying to be witty and charming.”

“Oh. I couldn’t tell.”

“I have a good feeling about this. We’re going to get an ID for our vic.”

She bit her lip and kept quiet.

“What?”

We were nearly at the entry gate for the Villages. “That worries me. You faking optimism is never a good sign.”

Jen badged the guard at the gate, and he asked if we knew where we were headed. We lied and drove on through. Neither of us had been there before, and we were both surprised. From the look of things, it was difficult to differentiate the place from any of the other gated communities that had sprouted like weeds in cracked concrete all across Southern California until the big housing collapse. The Villages were different, though. They’d been one of Long Beach’s most successful charitable enterprises of the last decade. The organization behind the development had raised tens of millions of dollars and invested it all in the complex that provided transitional housing for the homeless and destitute. There was a lot of support from Veterans Affairs and other government agencies as well, and things really got rolling when the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan started needing help and began to take advantage of the opportunity.

“I didn’t expect it to look so nice,” Jen said.

“I know,” I said. “I thought it would be more projecty. I almost don’t want to make fun of the name anymore.” Looking around at how very normal the place looked, it occurred to me that the clichéd name of the development had been chosen precisely because it was indistinguishable from a million other communities. The people this place served would welcome that kind of uninspired normalcy. The realization left me with more respect for whoever was in charge here than I expected to have.

The set of fingerprints we’d matched belonged to a man named Henry Nichols. He’d done two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Twice in the last fifteen months he’d been questioned by the LBPD on vagrancy-related misdemeanors, but he’d been released each time. I’d talked to one of the uniforms who’d picked him up. Nichols had apparently suffered a head wound before his medical discharge that had left him with some lingering effects.

We found the street we were looking for, and Jen parked in a small visitors’ lot close to his building. It was a nice-looking place, all two-story earth-toned stucco with tile roofs. The style had a southwest Orange County vibe.

“That’s his car,” she said, pointing to a white late-nineties Jetta. “According to the DMV, he’s had it less than a month.”

“That means he got it about three weeks after he filed the change of address to this place.”

“Think he came into some money?” she said.

“He came into something. This looks like a decent place to get back on your feet.”

Inside, the building had a shared living room, kitchen, and restrooms, while each tenant had an individual bedroom. Kind of like an old-school boarding-house arrangement. We found Nichols’s door and knocked. Nothing happened, so we knocked again, harder. Jen leaned in close to the door and said, “Mr. Nichols? Long Beach Police Department. We need to speak with you.”

A few seconds later, we heard a muffled voice from inside the room. “Hang on. I’ll be right there.”

The door opened. Nichols was wearing sweat shorts and a gray T-shirt, and his hair was disheveled. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was sleeping. Been working nights.” He ran his hands over his head in a fruitless attempt to make his hair more presentable. “How can I help you?” There was concern and a vague distrust in his expression, but he didn’t respond with the kind of wariness or fear I’d thought likely.

“A man was killed last night,” Jen said. “We’re trying to identify him. We think it’s likely that he was homeless.”

“Can we come in?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s not much space.” He was right. The room was maybe ten by ten, with a twin bed, a small dresser, a writing table, and a cheap-looking wardrobe tucked into the corner in lieu of a real closet.

“I only have the one chair,” he said. He pulled it out and turned it toward the bed. Jen sat down and motioned for him to take the spot across from her on the bed. I backed into the corner and leaned against the wall and tried not to seem intimidating.

“Thank you,” Jen said. “The man who was killed, we don’t know who he was.”

“And you think I can help?”

Nichols was backlit by the sun coming in through the window. From my position, I noticed something odd about the shape of his head. When he would move and the light hit his dark hair from a different angle, it appeared as if there was a significant dent in the right side of his skull.

“We hope so.” Jen smiled warmly at him, and he seemed to relax. “You’re a veteran?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Army, six years.” His voice was flat, and I couldn’t get a solid read of how he felt about it.

“And you got a medical discharge?”

He nodded. “IED. Traumatic brain injury. Still kind of messed up with it.”

“You were on the street for a while.”

It was clear that he was embarrassed by the fact.

“I was. Took a long time for my VA benefits to come through. Had to stay in my car for a while.”

“That must have been tough,” Jen said.

“Wasn’t great,” he said. “I saw a lot worse, though. Had a minivan, you know, so it wasn’t as bad as it might have been.”

“How do you like it here?”

“It’s good. There’s a clinic and people to help you with the VA stuff. They helped me get a job, too.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jen said. “Where are you working?”

“At the Home Depot in Signal Hill. Doing overnights right now. Unloading and restocking, cleaning.”

“How do you like it?” Jen asked. The warmth in her voice was genuine, and he was responding to it. He was starting to get comfortable.

“It’s okay. I never thought I’d have to work retail after I got out, you know? But it’s a good opportunity. I think I can make it work.”

“Sure you can,” I said.

“I want to go full time, you know? I can’t right now because I’m on partial disability. But I want to get off of that and go full time.”

“Of course you do. Who wouldn’t?”

“Oh, there’s guys who don’t want to. Or can’t. Some of us are luckier than others, you know?”

“That’s the truth,” I said.

His eyes lost their focus and he blinked twice. “Could you tell me why you’re here again?”

“Sure. We’re hoping you can help us.”

“Oh, yeah. Somebody died, right?”

“Yes. Did you know a man named Bishop?”

A look of concerned sorrow flashed across his face but disappeared almost as quickly. He was used to losing people. “Bishop died? Oh, man. What happened?”

“He was murdered.”

“Really?” He shook his head and clenched his hands into fists. “Fuck,” he said as he pressed the bottoms of his fists into his thighs. “Shit. Do you know who did it?”

“Yes. They’re in custody.”

“Who? Who did it?”

“We can’t say yet, but we believe it was gang related.”

“Fuck, man. Shit.”

“I’m sorry. Did you know him well?”

“Yeah.” He thought about it. “Well, yes and no.”

“Tell us about him.”

“We used to play chess sometimes. He was nice to me. Used to let me win when I was having a really bad day.”

“How did you meet him?”

“We both used to like it down at the harbor. All that industrial stuff. There’s a lot of places you can stay and not get hassled. Be by yourself, you know? We both liked that. Didn’t like being around other people too much.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“I was down at Palm Beach Park one day back at the beginning of summer. I had the minivan, but sometimes I just liked to be by the water, you know? He was there, too. We were both there awhile, probably an hour or two. I was sitting in the shade under one of the trees, kind of forgot anybody else was around, and he comes over and says, ‘I don’t want to bug you, but you play chess?’ I told him I wasn’t very good at it. He said, ‘Long as you know how the pieces move, that’s good enough.’ So we played. When it was over—he didn’t let me win that first time—he said, ‘Thank you for the game. ’Preciate it.’ And that was it. Figured I wouldn’t see him again.”

“But you did?”

“Yeah. I liked that park. It’s pretty quiet during the week. So I’d hang out there sometimes.”

“How long until you saw him again?”

“Four or five days maybe? I don’t know. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track, you know?”

“What happened then?”

“He just came up to me and asked, ‘Feel like another game?’ So we played. Then I’d see him every couple of days or so, and we’d play.”

“What can you tell us about him?” Jen asked.

“He was kind of quiet. Never talked about the past. Not his past, anyway. Always wanted to talk to me about my time in the desert. Asking if I was okay, shit like that. The funny thing was I never thought I wanted to talk about it. But he pulled it out of me somehow, and most times it even made me feel a little better, you know?”

“Did he tell you anything about himself?” Jen’s voice got softer with each question.

“No, not really. He’d talk about his day sometimes, but never anything from his past. I asked a few times.”

“What did he say?”

“He’d always either change the subject or just ignore the question.”

As they talked, I let my focus drift down toward the carpet so he wouldn’t feel compelled to meet my gaze and could focus only on Jen.

“Do you know his first name?”

“No, just Bishop. I don’t think that was his real name, though. That first day we played chess, I introduced myself. He said, ‘Everybody just calls me Bishop.’ Like it was a nickname or something.”

“Any idea why they’d call him that?”

“No, not really. I just figured it was because of the chess set or something.”

“Do you know why anyone might have wanted to hurt him?”

“I can’t think of a reason. He was really low-key. Kept to himself, mostly. He was streetwise, too. Used to give tips on places to park overnight where I wouldn’t get hassled. He was right, too. Those were good tips.”

He looked down at his hands. They were folded in his lap. There was a subtle tension in his posture. I wasn’t sure if it was from emotion he was feeling or if he was just uncomfortable talking to us. The army had done a good job of teaching him to keep a lid on his emotions. They’d probably also done a good job of teaching him how to deal with news of a death. He seemed fond of Bishop, but I couldn’t tell what else he was thinking.

“Do you know anyone else who might be able to tell us about him?” Jen asked. “Did he have any other friends you know of?”

“Not really. I only ever saw him away from the park a couple of times. Usually just around the street or something. Once I saw him at Saint Luke’s Homeless Shower Program. We both just showed up at the same time.”

Jen said, “Only once?”

“Yeah. Neither one of us really liked the Jesus stuff, you know? So we both tried not to go unless we really needed to and couldn’t get cleaned up anyplace else.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I moved in here the first of August, so maybe a week before that?”

“Did he seem any different?”