JO03 - Detour to Murder (15 page)

C H A P T E R 
23

Sergeant Clay Farrell drove me
to Parker Center in his police-issued Ford Crown Victoria. The headquarters of the LAPD was a massive stone and glass structure located on Los Angeles St., a couple blocks south of City Hall. We parked in the subterranean garage, rode the elevator to the third floor, and entered RHD—the Robbery-Homicide Division. The building—seen on television in a zillion episodes of
Dragnet
—was originally called the Police Administration Building. But soon after the former Chief of Police William H. Parker died of a heart attack in 1966, the city council renamed the headquarters in his honor.

The RHD brass hats must’ve figured Mrs. Hathaway’s murder was a high-profile case, or maybe a politically sensitive one. Otherwise, homicide detectives from the Hollywood Division would head up the investigation, which would be the normal routine for murders committed in the Los Feliz area. Only top-flight detectives with a high level of expertise worked out of the prestigious third floor at Parker Center. Over the years the big dicks of RHD investigated some of the most notorious Los Angeles homicides: the Black Dahlia, the Robert Kennedy assassination, and most recently the Manson Family murders. I couldn’t understand why an ordinary, everyday murder of an anonymous old lady rated such firepower.

Sergeant Farrell, his partner Officer Tim Ryan, a lieutenant named Donald Brodie and I sat in one of the unadorned RHD interrogation rooms. Brodie lit up a Marlboro and slid the distinctive red and white pack across the table. “Go ahead and smoke, O’Brien. We might be here a while.”

“Thanks, but I quit after I left the job.”

“Yeah, we know. You used to be a cop. Looked up your record: unimpressive.”

“Are we here to talk about me? If so, that’s fine, because I can’t discuss anything about Roberts—client privilege. You know that, Lieutenant.”

“Doesn’t hold up, Counselor. Privilege only extends to the crimes he committed before he retained you, not for crimes he may have committed after that. Am I right?”

“Yeah, you’re right as far as that goes. Just don’t ask about conversations I may have had with him regarding our past relationship.”

“If he talked about any crime he planned to commit in the future, you’re required to report what he said to the authorities. I’m right about that, too. Aren’t I?”

“He didn’t tell me anything about any future crimes, because he wasn’t planning to commit any. He planned to go to New York and start a new life.”

“Just for the record, you’re not representing Alexander Roberts in this matter, are you?”

“If he needs me, I’ll be there. C’mon, Lieutenant, let’s get on with this. I’ve got other stuff to take care of today.”

“Yeah, sure. Let’s talk about the old lady. Are you okay with that?”

“For chrissakes, get to the point.”

“All right, Mr. O’Brien. I just want it understood that I’m not asking you to violate any attorney/client privilege you may have had with the suspect. And I want it on the record that I have the right to question you regarding this crime as it relates to Alexander Roberts.”

“Is this room bugged?”

“It’s routine to tape theses interviews, you know that. And it’s legal under California Penal Code, title—”

“I know the law, Lieutenant.”

“Okay, we’ll get to Roberts later, but first I want to talk about Mrs. Hathaway. She died sometime late last night from a gunshot to the head.” He paused for a couple of beats and leaned into me. “And we have reason to believe that you knew, or had some sort of relationship with the deceased. We know this because your business card was found at the scene.”

“Yeah, I met her once. Went to see her at the motel about the Roberts case. I wanted to ask her a few questions about the girl he had supposedly killed in one of her bungalows back in ’45. Also, I figured it might be helpful to see the room where the murder took place, might shed some light.”

“Did it?”

“Did it what?”

“Shed some light.”

“Not really.

“Ironic, isn’t it? Almost thirty years later Roberts returns and drops the hammer on the woman who’d rented him the room.” The lieutenant shook his head. “He held that anger in his gut all those years. First day out, he pops her.”

“He had no motive.”

“Could’ve been revenge.”

“Revenge for what?”

“We’re working on it.”

We continued to play interrogatory dodgeball, and I was it. The cops hovered over me, lobbing questions about Hathaway and Roberts, which for the most part I answered, but some I adroitly deflected if I felt my answer would touch on the murder back in ’45. I even managed to toss a few questions their way.

“Lt. Brodie, listen to me. Roberts had been in prison for twenty-nine years, had limited contact with the outside, and when he was released I took him directly to the terminal. Okay, maybe he missed the bus, maybe he didn’t, but you’re trying to tell me that within twelve hours from the time he walked through those prison gates Roberts was somehow able to make a connection with someone who gave him a gun and then get a ride to the other side of town and shoot Mrs. Hathaway. All this for no apparent reason? Doesn’t make sense.”

“We don’t see it that way. He’s probably been planning this hit for years, had it all laid out before he was released. Somebody hid a gun where he could find it, and—”

“You gotta be kidding me. He didn’t know he was getting out. Roberts figured he’d be locked up forever. He wasn’t planning a murder, for crying out loud!”

“The physical evidence speaks for itself.”

“What evidence?”

He pulled a clear plastic bag from his jacket pocket. The bag was sealed and marked, EVIDENCE. It also had a case number and the date written on it. Visible inside the bag was a small paper tag, like the price tag you’d find on a new article of clothing. Though the plastic I could see Roberts’s prison number printed on the tag in black ink—CDC # V-34560.

“The tag came from Roberts’s dress-out clothes,” the lieutenant said. “We found it at the scene. He probably didn’t even know they tag the clothes before they ship them to the prison. Record keeping.” He nodded and a hint of a smile appeared on his face. “I’ll bet when we run the prints found at the motel, Roberts’s will be among them.”

“Look, Lieutenant, Roberts didn’t do this. He couldn’t have. I know the guy. He’s no killer. I don’t know how his clothing tag ended up at the scene, but there has to be an explanation, and Greyhound screwed up when they said he never boarded the bus. Big companies make mistakes all the time. Hell, I’ll bet he’s halfway to New York by now.”

My eyes shifted, focusing on each detective one at a time. All three of them looked back at me as if I had a few loose wires dangling in my head. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was crazy, but somehow I knew Roberts didn’t kill that old woman.

After about twenty minutes the interview started to become repetitive.

I needed to get out of the smoke-filled room, get some fresh air and mull over what I’d learned from the cops. Plus I was dying inside, concerned about the firm’s finances. I had to call Mabel. I had to see if there was any fallout from Balford over being pulled off the Hicks case. I knew I wasn’t in trouble with the LAPD. But if the judge figured I was somehow involved with Hathaway’s murder, even by association, she’d eliminate my name from the list. With even a hint of complicity there would be no way I could talk her out of getting rid of me for good.

“Sorry, guys,” I said. “Hate to break up our little chit-chat, but I’ve got to check with my office. Is there a phone around here?”

“I have one more question before you leave,” Brodie said. “Tell me straight. Did you really take Roberts to the bus terminal, or maybe you dropped him somewhere else?”

“I’ll say it once more. I picked him up at the prison and took him directly to the Greyhound terminal downtown. I got him there in plenty of time to catch the bus.”

“Okay, I believe you. But I had to ask, and just for the record, is there anything else you can tell us about your meeting with Hathaway?”

“That’s two questions.”

I stood and walked to the interrogation room door, but stopped and thought for moment. The interview was being taped. I didn’t want to appear to be uncooperative. Why make it worse with Balford? I turned back to the lieutenant.

“There was something else, I said. “Has nothing to do with this, though.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“Mrs. Hathaway had a big soapbox that she stored in a tool shed behind one of the bungalows. The box held papers and files dating back to the ’40s, insurance policies, phone numbers, that sort of thing. At first I thought the phone numbers might have some significant value, but when Roberts’s sentence was commuted I more or less dropped it.”

Brodie jumped out of his chair. “Make your phone call right now. Because when you’re finished, you and I are going to take a ride out to Los Feliz. I want to show you the crime scene and maybe you can verify a hunch.”

The lieutenant escorted me to a pay phone in the lobby and stood at a discrete distance, smoking a cigarette while I called the office.

“Mabel, I won’t be back this afternoon. Did anyone from Balford’s court call today?”

“No, no one called. But listen, we’ve got a serious problem here. You’ve got to take care of it right away.”

Christ, what now? “What’s the matter, Mabel?”

“Remember Rita’s client, the kid growing marijuana?”

“Of course.”

“Well, simply put, the five-hundred retainer check is no good.”

“What do you mean no good? Jesus.”

“I deposited the check in the bank, then mailed out a bunch of our bills, four-hundred and ninety seven dollars’ worth. And now all the checks I mailed, every frigging one of them, are going to bounce. I’m not going to jail for writing bad checks, no sir, not me. Goddamn it!”

“Calm down, Mabel. You’re not going to jail,” I said. “Let me figure this out. How could the retainer check come back so fast? It normally takes a few days for a check to be returned.”

“It didn’t bounce. The asshole put a ‘stop payment’ on it. He sent a message by courier, canceling our services.”

“Why?”

“He said he found out that you had some sort of trouble with a judge, your reputation is not stellar, blah, blah, blah. Then he said the five-hundred-dollar check had been stopped. Rita doesn’t even know yet. But I don’t give a damn about that. You’ve got to cover all those checks I wrote.”

“Look, Mabel, everything is going to be fine. Now do as I say. Call the bank and tell Mac what happened. Tell him I’ll be in tomorrow to straighten it all out somehow. None of our checks are going to bounce.”

“We’ll still need fresh money coming in.”

“I’m working on that, too.”

“How’s the new client, the one we got from Balford, working out?”

“He’s in good hands.”

“I hope she’ll give us a lot more cases.”

“I do too. Anything else going on?”

“No… Wait, there is something. It’s kind of funny.”

I could’ve used a laugh right then with all the crap that kept raining down on me.

“A telephone guy showed up this morning. Had thirty new phones. Wanted to hook them up. I said, “Do we look like a bookie joint?” I told him to take a hike. We didn’t order any goddamn phones. Big company like that botches their orders… I guess we’re not the only ones who goof up occasionally, huh?”

“Yeah, everybody screws up once in a while.”

Including Roberts, I said to myself.

“Wait, before you hang up, Sol called wants you to call him, said a guy named Bugliosi called—”

Lt. Brodie ground out his cigarette on the floor and started moving toward me. “Mabel, I gotta go. I’ll call Sol later.”

I felt a little relieved, certainly not about the retainer going bad. Those things happened. Fortunately, I had just enough left in the emergency reserve fund to cover the checks Mabel had sent out. So that wouldn’t be a problem. But more importantly, Balford hadn’t called and left a message saying I was toast. Balford was the firm’s primary source of income and it would be a disaster if she removed my name from the list again. The judge didn’t issue idle threats. She meant it when she said if she dropped me once more it would be permanent.

I hung up the phone and walked with Lt. Brodie to his car. I’d worry about Mabel’s checks, the bank, and Balford tomorrow. It would be too late by the time I returned from the motel to do anything about them today. I didn’t think Bugliosi’s information would help at that point, but I’d call Sol as soon as I had time.

We were driving north on the Hollywood Freeway, heading for the Hathaway motel when it dawned on me that I had missed my lunch date with Millie. I felt a tinge of guilt, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Obviously, I had a good excuse for standing her up, but I should’ve called her. I figured it’d be just one more problem I’d have to take care of tomorrow. I’d call her and explain the situation, right after I cleared up the mess at the bank. I was sure Millie would understand.

Twenty minutes after we left downtown, we pulled up in front of Dink’s Hollywood Oasis on Los Feliz Blvd. A single police unit was parked haphazardly in front of the motel. We got out of the car and ducked under the yellow police tape that marked the property as a crime scene.

No cars belonging to customers were parked in the lot. Except for the lone cop on guard, the place was deserted. The crime scene investigation team must’ve already completed their tasks and left. The coroner would’ve removed the body by now.

Lt. Brodie spoke to the uniformed officer on duty. “We’ll only be here for a few minutes, Ernie. Continue with what you were doing.” The uniform moved back to his position by the motel office.

Our feet crunched on the pea gravel covering the lot as Brodie and I made our way down the line of small bungalows. We darted into the weed-infested space between the bungalows numbered 5 and 6.

In back of number 6, I saw the corrugated tin tool shed. The door was smashed open, the cardboard cartons inside scattered about, all of them torn open with the contents spilling out on the floor.