Outside the Wire Page 2

  A cursory search of the car’s interior revealed no obvious evidence. Davie swept her hand under the seats but found nothing. Travelers used this garage because it was across the street from the international terminal. Either the man—Zeke Woodrow, presumably—had come to the airport to meet somebody or he was taking a flight himself. If the latter was true, he must have a passport in his pocket or in a suitcase.

  During her police academy training, instructors had taught her to write only what she saw and heard at a crime scene, not her hunches or conclusions. But she was a Homicide detective now so theorizing was part of her job. She flipped open the trunk using the release lever inside the car but saw no luggage there, boosting the theory that Woodrow had come to pick up a returning passenger. On the other hand, Davie already suspected the shooter removed the dog tag; maybe he’d taken the victim’s luggage, as well.

  She heard footsteps and turned to see Vaughn walking toward her. “Did you learn anything from the schoolteacher?”

  He pulled her aside so the sergeant couldn’t hear the conversation. “She heard tires squealing when she stepped out of the elevator and then a car barreled around the corner. The windows were tinted, so she couldn’t see the driver, but she believes the car was a BMW, one of the bigger models. She doesn’t think the driver saw her but she’s scared. I checked the area for tire marks. The garage is full of them. I’ll have the techs take some photos, but I doubt they’ll lead anywhere.”

  “We need a copy of the garage security tapes.”

  Vaughn gestured toward the sergeant. “We aren’t going to get any love from Darth Vader over there. I’ll call the substation and ask one of the detectives to get them.”

  “Maybe Luna can help. He seems like a decent guy.”

  He nodded. “The photographer and the crime scene peeps are on the way. I’ll corner Luna.”

  A short time later, the criminalists, latent print techs, and the police photographer from the Scientific Investigation Division arrived. Vaughn had also contacted Pacific’s official towing service. The truck driver would take the Audi to a sterile location, where techs would search for trace evidence.

  Davie made the second call to the coroner’s office. While she waited for the investigator to arrive, she asked the SID photographer to take two sets of photographs of the body—one in color for her and one in black-and-white to spare future jurors from looking at death in full color.

  She turned when she heard the coroner’s investigator call her name.

  3

  Davie watched as the coroner’s investigator searched the body. He found no passport, cell phone, or wallet in the victim’s pockets. Davie told him what time the body had been found and when she and Vaughn had arrived at the garage. With that information, he checked the victim’s liver temperature and estimated the death had occurred somewhere between 5:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. A search on her cell revealed that sunrise had been at 6:35 that morning, so the attack had likely not happened in full daylight.

  Two hours into the investigation, the most concrete information Davie had about Zeke Woodrow was the social security number stamped on his military dog tag. From past investigations, she knew the first three numbers were associated with the state where a person was born. A search on her cell revealed Woodrow was likely born in Iowa. She wasn’t sure how that information could help her investigation, but she made a note of it anyway.

  Davie hunched over the coroner’s investigator, watching him work. “How soon can you schedule the post?”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re joking, right? We have at least a hundred fifty bodies stacked up waiting for autopsies. Even if we give you priority, you’re still behind other homicide cases that came in before yours.”

  “So … tomorrow?”

  He chuckled. “Ain’t gonna happen, Richards. Not even for you.”

  It was after ten o’clock when the coroner removed the body and the Audi was towed from the garage. Davie and her partner closed the crime scene and headed to the car.

  Vaughn removed his jacket and placed it neatly folded on the backseat.

  “New suit?” she said.

  Vaughn beamed. “A beauty, isn’t it? Half price sale at Barney’s.”

  Her partner had a tall, slim build that was perfect for designer suits and silk pocket squares. His fashion gene had been passed down from a Northern Italian mother who was also responsible for his sandy hair and soft-brown eyes. Davie called him George Clooney’s better-looking cousin, a tease he didn’t seem to mind.

  She started the car and made a U-turn. “If you were any more of a clotheshorse, Jason, you’d have to list your height in hands.”

  He settled into the passenger seat. “Funny. At least it beats your lame Yogi-phobia jokes.”

  The tires squealed as she negotiated the city ride down the ramp. “You shouldn’t have told me bears were your Kryptonite.”

  “Trust me, that won’t happen again.”

  Her partner’s bear phobia was a running joke dating back to their police academy days. One night over drinks he told her about a camping trip with a group of friends and a baby black bear that had wandered into their campsite looking for food. He’d overdramatized the incident to make her laugh, probably not expecting she’d still be kidding him about it all these years later.

  Davie drove on surface streets toward the station where she and Vaughn were assigned to the Homicide table. Pacific Division was number fourteen of twenty-one decentralized police stations. It was a small piece of the Los Angeles pie—25.74 square miles of the city’s 468—and included 200,000 of the approximately three million residents. Its western border was the Pacific Ocean with Culver City to the east, the Los Angeles International Airport to the south, and National Boulevard to the north, and included the neighborhoods of Venice Beach, Oakwood, Mar Vista, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista, Palms, and Westchester.

  As Davie drove, she noted how the years of drought had made neighborhoods look like dusty brown outposts in some third-world country. It was striking how much she missed the greenery. The landscape would change once you entered neighboring West L.A. Division, where affluent residents could afford the cost of second– and third-tier water usage to keep their lawns lush.

  When they arrived at the Culver Boulevard gate, Davie pressed her ID to the security sensor and parked in the area designated for detective cars, just steps away from the back door of the two-story brick station. Once inside, she and Vaughn turned right into the squad room. Her boss, Det. Frank Giordano, was sitting in his workstation cubicle. She could almost hear the crinkle of his starched white shirt as he waved to acknowledge her presence.

  Giordano was bent over the phone, speaking in a low voice, which was unusual because he was a big man with an even bigger personality. His retirement was a couple of months away and she wasn’t looking forward to the day. She hoped he was quietly lobbying to postpone the inevitable. Giordano had lobbied the brass after the second shooting until they returned her to Pacific. His loyalty and support meant everything to her.

  Giordano ended the call and peered over the gray cubicle wall that separated their desks. “How did it go, kid?”

  She filled him in on the homicide. “So far, we don’t know why the victim was at the airport this morning. You think the airlines will tell us if his name was on a passenger list?”

  “They might,” Giordano said. “Call and ask. If he was at Bradley terminal, he was probably flying international. That narrows the field. If anybody asks for a search warrant, you can write up a boilerplate and get a judge to sign all of them at once.”

  “I’ll make some calls,” Vaughn said. “I can type up a warrant if we need one. In the meantime, Luna is working on getting us the garage surveillance video.”

  “Keep me posted,” Giordano said.

  Vaughn sat at his desk across from hers and logged onto his computer. A moment later, he called to her
. “Look at this. Luna already came through with the surveillance footage.”

  Davie grabbed her notebook. She and Giordano stepped to Vaughn’s workstation, hovering over his shoulder to see the screen. Luna had included the video feed from two hours before the murder until an hour after the body was found. There wasn’t much happening in those early hours, so Vaughn fast-forwarded until the Audi came into view. Davie noted the time Woodrow’s car entered the garage and pulled into the parking spot. A moment later, Vaughn jammed his finger on the pause button. “There’s the BMW. Looks like a black 740i.”

  Davie noted the make and model of the car and that it had entered the garage a couple of minutes behind the Audi. The BMW’s windows were tinted so it was difficult to see inside the car, but the driver appeared to be alone and wearing a ball cap pulled low over his face. She couldn’t make out the license plate number because both front and rear plates were obscured.

  “Hard to see the guy’s features,” Vaughn said. “I’m not even sure it’s a male.”

  The BMW drove to the second floor and rolled slowly forward. Vaughn adjusted the screen so they could see several views at once. Woodrow got out of the Audi, walked to the trunk, and opened it. He jerked upright when the BMW stopped next to him. There was a muzzle flash and Woodrow disappeared from sight. The BMW’s tinted windows blocked some of the action, but it was clear the shooter got out of the car and ran toward the body, perhaps grabbing a wallet, passport, and the dog tag. The man then reached inside the trunk, pulled out a black carry-on bag, and ran back to the BMW. After that, the car made a U-turn and raced down the ramp. The schoolteacher appeared on screen less than a minute later. Vaughn switched to the camera shot of the exit kiosk. A woman collected the parking fee from the BMW’s driver and then he casually drove into the night.

  “I’ll talk to the cashier,” Vaughn said. “Maybe we can get an artist to meet with her and come up with a composite.”

  “Forget it,” Giordano said. “All we can see is he’s male, probably white, medium build, agile, dressed in dark clothes, but the guy’s face is obscured by a ball cap. My guess is he knew there’d be cameras in the garage, so he probably disguised himself in other ways, too. If the cashier didn’t get a good look at him, she might guess and your composite won’t be worth shit. You put a sketch on TV that looks like half the US male population and offer a reward, a million people will call in to say, ‘Hey, I know that guy.’ Where does that leave you? Nowhere.”

  Davie leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “At least we know why we didn’t find a suitcase in the victim’s car. The shooter took it.”

  “He didn’t seem to care if the victim was identified,” Vaughn said. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t have left the second dog tag. We still don’t know why Woodrow was wearing it.”

  Davie thought again about the single dog tag. Luna had told her the two were separated when a soldier died in combat. She wondered if that missing tag was symbolic to the killer. Maybe he was in the military and familiar with battlefield protocol, or perhaps he’d killed before and this was another trophy to add to his collection.

  Davie rolled the chair back and got up. “I’ll run the Audi plates. See if I can find the victim’s address. He might have a family member who could tell us why he was at the airport.”

  Vaughn closed the video file. “I’ll start calling airlines, see if they’ll provide intel about his travel plans without a warrant.”

  Davie sat at her computer, searching the Department of Motor Vehicles database. Zeke Woodrow had no vehicle registered to him, but he might have listed it under the name of a spouse or a business. The Audi was registered to a rental agency in Carpinteria, but when she called to speak to a representative, she got a message that the office was closed for the day.

  She found Woodrow’s California driver’s license in DMV records but the information was restricted. It showed his photo but not his address. That often meant the driver was a law enforcement officer, but there was no LEO note on the file. Luna had told her that Woodrow’s blackened dog tag likely meant he’d operated behind enemy lines. Perhaps his address was hidden because of that past military service. She continued searching until she was able to access his residential address from a non–law enforcement database.

  Woodrow was leasing a house in Topanga managed by a local real estate company. A few minutes later, Davie located the agent’s name, Amber Johnson. The woman sounded surprised when Davie called with the news of Woodrow’s death and offered obligatory condolences. She told Davie that, as far as she knew, the victim lived in the house alone. She agreed to meet them at the address with a key.

  Davie leaned toward the half-wall partition that separated her workstation from Jason Vaughn’s. “I found Woodrow’s address.”

  “At least one of us has good news. I just got off the phone with a buddy in the DA’s office. To get information about Woodrow’s military record we have to send a subpoena and cover letter to the headquarters for military records in St. Louis, Missouri. She said they take at least ten weeks to respond, that is, if they respond.”

  “We’re investigating a homicide.”

  “The military doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about that. Their mission is to protect the privacy of their personnel.”

  “Maybe Luna knows a back door into the database.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  Giordano was on the telephone again. He didn’t even look up when Davie opened his desk drawer and grabbed the keys to a detective car. She and Vaughn logged out of the building and headed for the parking lot.

  4

  Topanga was a narrow mountain canyon between Santa Monica and Malibu, accessed by a two-lane road with 25 mph curves. Just beyond the shoulder, the hills were covered with sagebrush, sycamore trees, cacti, and a few token palms. Davie had always thought of the place as a haven for artists, musicians, aging hippies, and people who just wanted to be left the hell alone. She wondered if Zeke Woodrow fell into any of those categories.

  As they neared the summit, a smattering of small businesses and a few claptrap houses lined the road. Davie turned left near the Fernwood Fire Station and continued up a narrow road to the top of a hill that ended at a gated driveway.

  Vaughn scanned the terrain. “It’s isolated up here.”

  “Looks like there’s only one way in—and out.”

  “I’ll check the gate.”

  He got out of the car but stopped a few feet away, leaning over to pick up a metal object from the dirt shoulder. Davie rolled down the window as he walked toward her.

  He held out a damaged lock for her to inspect. “Looks like somebody cut it off the gate. You think it was the real estate agent?”

  “Not likely. If she has a key to the house, she probably has one for the gate, too. If somebody broke in, they were sloppy to leave evidence behind.”

  Vaughn pushed open the metal barrier and returned to the car, setting the lock on the floor mat. “Or maybe they didn’t care if we found it.”

  The driveway led to a modest two-story stucco house. Morning glory vines snaked around the trunks of three maple trees that obscured the front façade. If someone was looking for privacy, they had come to the right place.

  No cars were parked in the driveway, which meant the agent hadn’t arrived. Davie knocked but no one came to the door. She and Vaughn walked along the side yard to see if the house had an alarm system. If it did, it was well hidden. After ten minutes of waiting for the agent, Davie grew impatient. She climbed the three flagstone steps to the front entrance, pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, and reached for the doorknob. It turned with no resistance.

  Before she could open the door, Vaughn grabbed her arm. “Whoa, partner. We can’t just barge inside. What if this is a secondary crime scene?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  She drew her Smith & Wesson from its holster
. As she eased open the door, the aroma of wax and ammonia hit her like a wrecking ball. “Smells like cleaning products,” she whispered.

  Vaughn drew his Glock and followed her inside, his shoes echoing on the hardwood floors. He stopped with a jerk. “What the hell—”

  The space was what designers called an open floor plan—nothing blocking the view from the living room to the kitchen to the dining room to the outside. On the back wall, French doors led to a flagstone patio with a panoramic view of the mountains. That scene was unobstructed because the house was empty—no furniture, no artwork, no magazines on a coffee table, no coffee table, no nothing. The stripped interior had Davie feeling uneasy about what else she might find.

  She pulled a flashlight from her belt. The smell of wax grew stronger as she bent down, aiming the beam obliquely over the floor, knowing that the angle of light would show any small item that wasn’t otherwise visible—maybe something that had inadvertently been left behind.

  “See anything?” Vaughn said.

  “Not even a dust bunny.”

  “Maybe Woodrow moved out and the management company already cleaned it for the next tenant.”

  “Seems like the agent would have told us that. All she said was he lived here alone.”

  She and Vaughn climbed the stairs to the second floor and found two bedrooms, both stripped of furniture, and a bathroom that was so spotless it beamed like a Maine lighthouse. Once they’d cleared the house, Davie returned her weapon to its holster.

  “Hello. Anybody here?”

  The voice was female and came from the first floor. Vaughn kept his weapon ready as they walked down the stairs and saw a tall, willowy woman wearing baggy cut-off jeans rolled to mid-thigh and an oversized man’s plaid shirt. Her brown hair was shoulder-length and tangled. The sun had blanketed her face with a healthy glow and a crop of fine wrinkles.