CHAPTER FIVE

“So you’re not doing the FBI thing?” Lacy asked incredulously as she took another sip of wine.

They were sitting on the couch, halfway through a bottle of red and devouring the Chinese food that had just been delivered. It was after 8 p.m. and Jessie was exhausted from the longest day she could remember in months.

“I’m still going to do it, just not now. They gave me a one-time deferment. I can join with another Academy class, as long as I attend at some time in the next six months. Otherwise I have to reapply. Since I was lucky to get in this time, that pretty much guarantees I’ll be going soon.”

“And you’re bailing to do grunt work for the LAPD?” Lacy asked, disbelieving.

“Once again, not bailing,” Jessie pointed out, taking a big glug from her own glass, “just delaying. I was already on the fence with everything going on with the house sale and my physical recovery. This was just the clincher. Besides, it sounds cool!”

“No it doesn’t,” Lacy said. “It sounds totally boring. Even your detective buddy said you’d be doing routine tasks and handling the low-profile cases no one else wanted to take on.”

“At first. But once I’ve got a bit of experience I’m sure they’ll throw me on something more interesting. This is Los Angeles, Lace. They’re not going to be able to keep the crazy away from me.”

*

Two weeks later, as the patrol car dropped Jessie off a block from the crime scene, she thanked the officers and headed for the alley where she saw police tape already up. As she crossed the street, avoiding the drivers who seemed more intent on hitting than avoiding her, it occurred to her that this would be her first murder case.

Looking back on her brief time at Central Station, she realized that she’d been wrong to think they couldn’t keep the crazy away from her. Somehow, at least so far, they had. In fact, most of her time these days was spent in the station, going through open cases to make sure the paperwork Josh Caster had filed before he left was up to date. It was drudgery.

It didn’t help that Central Station felt like a busy bus station. The main bullpen area was massive. People swarmed around her all the time and she was never quite sure if they were staff, civilians, or suspects. She had to repeatedly move desks as profilers without the “interim” tag used their seniority to lay claim to work stations they preferred. No matter where she ended up, Jessie always seemed to be situated right below a flickering fluorescent light.

But not today. Stepping into the alley just off East 4th Street, she saw Detective Hernandez at the far end and hoped this case would be different from the others she’d been assigned so far. For each of those, she’d shadowed detectives but wasn’t asked for her opinion. There wasn’t much need for it anyway.

Of the three field cases she’d shadowed, two were robberies and one was arson. In each instance, the suspect confessed within minutes of arrest, once without even being questioned. The detective had to Mirandize the guy and get him to re-confess.

But today might finally be different. It was the Monday just before Christmas, and Jessie hoped the spirit of the season might make Hernandez more generous than some of his colleagues. She joined him and his partner for that day, a bespectacled forty-something guy named Callum Reid, as they investigated the death of a junkie found at the end of the alley.

He still had a needle sticking out of his left arm and the uniformed officer had only called in the detectives as a formality. As Hernandez and Reid talked to the officer, Jessie ducked under the police tape and approached the body, making sure not to step anywhere sensitive.

She looked down at the young man, who didn’t look any older than her. He was African-American, with a high fade haircut. Even lying down and shoeless, she could tell he was tall. Something about him felt familiar.

“Should I know who this guy is?” she called out to Hernandez. “I feel like I’ve seen him somewhere before.”

 “Probably,” Hernandez shouted back. “You went to USC, right?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“He likely overlapped with you for a year or two. His name was Lionel Little. He played basketball there for a couple of years before going pro.”

“Okay, I think I remember him,” Jessie said.

“He had a gorgeous left-handed finger roll shot,” Detective Reid recalled. “Reminded me a little of George Gervin. He was a highly touted rookie but he ended up washing out after a few years. He couldn’t play defense and he didn’t know how to handle all the money or the NBA lifestyle. He only lasted three seasons before he was out of the league entirely. The drugs pretty much took over at that point. Somewhere along the line, he ended up on the streets.”

“I’d see him around from time to time,” Hernandez added. “He was a sweet kid—never cited him for more than loitering or public urination.”

Jessie leaned over and looked more closely at Lionel. She tried to imagine herself in his position, a lost kid, addicted but not much trouble, wandering the back alleys of downtown L.A. for the last few years. Somehow he’d managed to maintain his habit without overdosing or ending up in jail. And yet here he was, lying in an alley, needle in his arm, shoeless. Something didn’t feel right.

She knelt down to get a closer look at where the needle jutted out from his skin. It was jammed in deep on his otherwise smooth skin.

His smooth skin…

“Detective Reid, you said Lionel had a nice left-handed finger roll, right?”

“Thing of beauty,” he replied appreciatively.

“So can I assume he was left-handed?”

“Oh yeah, he was totally left-hand dominant. He had real trouble going to his right. Defenders would overplay him to that side and completely shut him down. It was another reason he never made it in the pros.”

“That’s weird,” she muttered.

“What is it?” Hernandez asked.

“It’s just…can you guys come over here? There’s something that doesn’t make sense about this crime scene to me.”

The detectives walked over and stopped right behind where she was kneeling. She pointed at Lionel’s left arm.

“That needle looks like it’s halfway through his arm and it’s not anywhere near a vein.”

“Maybe he had bad aim?” Reid suggested.

“Maybe,” Jessie conceded. “But look at his right arm. There’s a precise line of tracks that all follow along his veins. It’s pretty meticulous for a drug addict. And it makes sense, because he was a lefty. Of course he’d inject his right arm with his dominant hand.”

“That does make sense,” Hernandez agreed.

“So then I thought maybe he was just sloppier when he used his right,” Jessie continued. “Like you said, Detective Reid, maybe he just had bad aim.”

“Exactly,” Reid said.

“But look,” Jessie said pointing at the arm. “Other than the spot with the needle in it right now, his left arm is smooth—no track marks at all.”

“What does that tell you?” Hernandez asked, starting to see where she was going.

“It tells me that he didn’t shoot up in his left arm, pretty much ever. From what I can tell, this isn’t the kind of guy who would let someone else shoot him up in that arm either. He had a system. He was very methodical. Look at the back of his right hand. He’s got marks there too. He’d rather shoot up his hand than trust someone else. I bet if we took off his socks, we’d find track marks between the toes on his right foot too.”

“So you’re suggesting he didn’t overdose?” Reid asked skeptically.

“I’m suggesting that someone wants to make it look like he OD’d but did a sloppy job and just jammed the needle somewhere in his left arm, the one right-handed people would typically use.”

“Why?” Reid asked.

“Well,” Jessie said cautiously, “I started thinking about the fact that his shoes are missing. None of his other clothes are. I’m wondering if, him having been a former pro player, his shoes were expensive. Don’t some of them go for hundreds of dollars?”

“They do,” Hernandez answered, sounding excited. “Actually, when he first joined the league and everyone thought he was going to be a big deal, he signed a shoe contract with an upstart company called Hardwood. Most guys signed with one of the big sneaker companies—Nike, Adidas, Reebok. But Lionel went with these guys. They were viewed as edgy. Maybe too edgy because they went out of business a few years ago.”

“So then the sneakers wouldn’t be that valuable,” Reid said.

“Actually the opposite is true,” Hernandez corrected. “Because they went bankrupt, the shoes became a hot commodity. There are only so many in circulation, so each one is quite valuable with collectors. As a spokesman for the company, Lionel probably got a truckload of them when he first signed on. And I’d be willing to bet that’s what he had on tonight.”

“So,” Jessie picked up, “someone saw him wearing the shoes. Maybe they were desperate for cash. Lionel’s not viewed as a tough guy. He’s an easy mark. So this person takes Lionel down, steals the shoes, and shoves a needle in his arm, hoping we’d just mark it down as another overdose.”

“It’s not a crazy theory,” Hernandez said. “Let’s see if we can get a search going for someone in the area wearing a pair of Hardwoods.”

“If Lionel didn’t overdose, then how did the perp kill him?” Reid mused. “I don’t see any blood.”

“I think that’s a great question…for the medical examiner,” Hernandez said, grinning as he stepped back to the other side of the police tape. “Why don’t we call one in and get some lunch?”

“I’ve got to run to the bank,” Reid said. “Maybe I’ll just meet you back at the station.”

“Okay. It looks like it’s just you and me, Jessie,” Hernandez said. “How do you feel about a street vendor hot dog? I saw a guy across the street earlier.”

“I feel like I’m going to regret it but I’ll do it anyway because I don’t want to look like a wuss.”

“You know,” he pointed out, “if you say you’re doing it so you won’t look like a wuss, everyone knows you’re just eating it for the credit. That’s kind of wussy. Just a pro tip.”

“Thanks, Hernandez,” Jessie replied. “I’m learning all kinds of new stuff today.”

“It’s called on-the-job training,” he said, continuing to rib her as they walked down the alley to the street. “Now if you put both onions and peppers on the dog, you might earn some street cred.”

“Wow,” Jessie said, grimacing. “How does your wife like lying next to you at night when you stink of that stuff?”

“Not much of a problem,” Hernandez said, then turned to the vendor to place his order.

Something in Hernandez’s response struck her as odd. Maybe his wife was simply unfazed by the smell of onions and peppers in bed. But his tone suggested that perhaps it wasn’t much of a problem because he and his wife weren’t sharing a bed these days.

Despite her curiosity, Jessie let it lie. She barely knew this man. She wasn’t about to interrogate him about the state of his marriage. But she did wish she could somehow find out if her gut was way off or if her suspicions were correct.

Speaking of guts, the vendor was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her to place her order. She looked at Hernandez’s dog, overflowing with onions, peppers, and what looked to be salsa. The detective was eyeing her, clearly ready to mock her.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” she said. “Exactly what he’s having.”

*

Back at the station a few hours later, she was emerging from the ladies’ room for the third time when Hernandez approached her with a broad smile on his face. She forced herself to seem casual and ignored the uncomfortable gurgling in her lower abdomen.

“Good news,” he said, thankfully oblivious to her discomfort. “We got word that someone was picked up a few minutes ago wearing Hardwoods that match Lionel’s foot size, which was a sixteen. The person wearing the sneakers has size nine feet. So that’s—you know—a little suspicious. Good job.”

“Thanks,” Jessie said, trying to play it off as no big deal. “Any word from the M.E. on possible cause of death?”

“Nothing official yet. But when they turned Lionel over, they found a massive welt on the back side of his head. So a subdural hematoma isn’t a crazy hypothesis. That would explain the lack of blood.”

“Great,” Jessie said, happy that her theory seemed to have panned out.

“Yeah, except not so great for his family. His mother was down there to identify the body and apparently she’s a total mess. She’s a single mom. I remember reading in some article about him that she worked three jobs when Lionel was a kid. She had to think she’d be able to scale it back once he hit it big. But I guess not.”

Jessie didn’t know what to say in response so she simply nodded and stayed silent.

“I’m cutting out for the day,” Hernandez said abruptly. “Some of us are going out for a drink, if you want to join us. You’ve definitely earned one on me.”

“I would but I’m supposed to go to a club tonight with my roommate. She thinks it’s time I get back in the dating scene.”

“Do you think it’s time?” Hernandez asked, his eyebrows raised.

“I think that she is relentless and won’t let this drop unless I go out at least once, even if it’s on a Monday night. That should give me a few weeks’ grace before she starts in again.”

“Well, have a good time,” he said, trying to sound optimistic.

“Thanks. I’m positive I won’t.”