Lethal Measures Page 9

  “I’d guess all the body parts are going to the doc’s laboratory at Memorial.”

  Farelli broke the silence.

  “Yeah.”

  The sergeant nodded.

  “So that’s why you didn’t want to examine the tattooed piece of arm back at the site.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “You just wanted another excuse to visit Joanna Blalock.”

  Jake shrugged.

  “I don’t need an excuse.”

  “Sure you do,” Farelli said at once.

  “You two have split again and you don’t know how to get back together.”

  Jake sighed heavily, knowing Farelli was right. The more he and Joanna were apart, the more he thought about her. Particularly at night, when he was alone in the silence.

  “It’ll happen when it happens.”

  “She’s a special woman, Jake,” Farelli went on.

  “Like one in a million. She’s pretty and smart and sexy as hell. And

  you’re taking her for granted.” Jake shrugged again.

  “You want some advice?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Stop screwing around,” Farelli said earnestly.

  “Or one day you’ll go by there and Joanna Blalock will be gone.”

  “What the hell brought all this on?”

  “Getting shot and watching yourself damn near bleed to death,” Farelli answered.

  “It focuses your mind on the important things in life.”

  Jake stopped in front of a single-story house with white asbestos siding. There was a front porch with an empty swing on it.

  “Here we are,” he said.

  “How do you want to handle it?”

  “I’ll start.”

  They walked up the steps and rang the bell. A plump woman in her mid sixties with gray-brown hair came to the door. The detectives showed their badges and introduced themselves to the widow’s sister. They followed her down a hallway into a small living room. In the background Jake heard music playing softly. It was Frank Sinatra singing “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

  “Claire,” the sister said quietly.

  “These two gentlemen are detectives. They’d like to ask you some questions. Do you feel up to it?”

  Claire Stonehauser nodded slowly and pointed to a sofa covered with a well-worn tan fabric.

  “Please have a seat.”

  The detectives sat across from the widow and studied her briefly. She was a small, frail woman with short white hair that was neatly combed. Her rocking chair squeaked against the hardwood floor as she gently rocked back and forth.

  “We’re sorry about your husband, ma’am,” Jake began.

  “We were married almost fifty-eight years,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

  Jake leaned forward to hear better. The music in the background seemed louder.

  “Does the song bother you?” Mrs. Stonehauser asked.

  Jake shook his head.

  “Not at all.”

  “This song is very important to me,” she said.

  “They were playing it the night I met my husband.” She rocked back as a faint smile crossed her face.

  “It’s a wonderful story. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes, I would.” Jake really didn’t want to listen to the story, but

  he knew that witnesses who were at ease talked more and remembered more.

  “My husband was a senior at West Point in nineteen forty-one,” she reminisced, “and my brother Phillip was his roommate. Phillip fixed me up with Art, and we went to the prom together. The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra was playing, and Frank Sinatra was their lead singer. Art and I fell in love to Mr. Sinatra singing “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Eight months later Art and Phillip were in Europe fighting the Nazis. I didn’t see Art for four years, but every day I listened to this song on my phonograph. And every time I heard Mr. Sinatra sing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” I could see Art’s face and feel his touch and hear his voice. It brought him back to me, just like it’s doing now. That’s why this song is so important to me.”

  Jake asked, “You married him after the war?”

  Mrs. Stonehauser nodded.

  “A month after he returned.”

  “And Phil should have been his best man,” the sister added sadly.

  The widow continued to nod.

  “Our brother Phillip was killed at the battle for Bastogne. He died in Art’s arms.” She reached for a Kleenex and sniffed back tears.

  “At our wedding there was no best man, just an empty space where Phillip should have been standing.”

  Farelli stared ahead expressionless, but he swallowed hard.

  With effort Mrs. Stonehauser took a deep breath.

  “So tell me, Lieutenant, how can I help you?”

  “I’ve got just a few questions, ma’am,” Jake said, taking out his notepad.

  “Your husband told me that he usually went for a walk with the dog a couple of times a day.”

  “Sometimes more,” she said.

  “Whenever Ralphie wanted to go, Art would take him.”

  The German shepherd looked up with sad eyes at the mention of his name. He studied Jake briefly, then put his head down next to a pair of brown slippers tucked under an empty overstuffed chair.

  “Did he ever mention the house that was blown up?” Jake asked.

  “He thought it might have been used as a drug house.”

  Jake’s brow went up.

  “Why?”

  “Because of the people who rented it,” she said.

  “They were young and not too friendly and came and went mainly at night. And they always kept the blinds drawn, day or night.”

  “Did he ever see them dealing drugs?” “No. But there were a lot of them for a single small house. Maybe six or seven of them, white and Mexican, and definitely lower-class.”

  “What made him think they were lower-class?”

  “The way they dressed, and a couple of them had tattoos.”

  Jake leaned forward.

  “Was there anything unusual about the tattoos?”

  “My husband didn’t say.”

  Jake jotted down a note, thinking about the piece of upper arm that had just been uncovered at the bomb site.

  “Did he mention anything about the guys who had the tattoos?”

  “Only that they were Mexican.”

  “Based on what?”

  “The Spanish they spoke.”

  Jake sighed. The men could have come from anywhere in Central or South America.

  “But he really couldn’t be sure they were Mexican.”

  “Oh, yes, he could,” the widow said firmly.

  “My husband was a linguist, Lieutenant. He spoke five languages fluently, including Spanish. According to my husband, Mexicans speak a distinct type of Spanish at least it was distinctive to his ears. He believed the two men he heard talking came originally from Northern Mexico.”

  “He couldn’t by chance narrow it down to a city,” Jake said, half in jest.

  “He thought the Monterrey area,” she said promptly.

  “Could he be that precise?” Jake asked, not convinced.

  Mrs. Stonehauser smiled thinly.

  “If I put you in a room with two Americans, one from New York City and the other from Atlanta, could you tell me the area they came from?”

  “You’ve got a point.” Jake wrote down the information, now wishing even more that the old man had survived. Art Stonehauser would have been a hell of a witness once his senses returned.

  “Did these people at the house have a car?”

  “My husband never mentioned it.”

  Jake leaned back and studied his notepad, then began flipping pages. It was a signal to Farelli.

  “Just one or two more questions, ma’am,” the sergeant said.

  “Your husband stated there were six or seven people coming out of that house. Right?”

  “Right.” “And a couple of the
m were white guys,” he went on, watching her nod.

  “Was there anything unusual about the white guys? Did they have any distinguishing features?”

  The widow thought back, concentrating hard. Her lips began to move as if the answer was on the tip of her tongue.

  Jake smiled. Farelli hadn’t lost his touch. Of course, the old man would have focused in on the white guys. Stonehauser came from a generation that didn’t believe in racial mixing, and when they saw it they zeroed in on the whites, giving them a long, hard look.

  “Now that I think about it,” Mrs. Stonehauser was saying, “I remember one afternoon after he’d returned from his walk, we were watching television and one of those boys with the shaved heads came on. You know, they call them skin—ah—skin something or other.”

  “Skinheads?” Farelli asked.

  “Yes. Skinheads,” she said, nodding.

  “The fellow on TV had all of his hair shaved off with just a little stubble on his chin. My husband said one of those people looked like that.”

  Jake leaned forward, eyes narrowed.

  “By stubble, do you mean a short beard? Like a goatee?”

  “Yes.”

  Jake wondered if the man she was describing was the cleaning man with the goatee who had killed her husband. It had to be. The skinhead had probably seen the old man getting a good look at him. When the news broke about the eyewitness who was walking his dog, they knew who it was and had to kill him. They couldn’t take a chance.

  Jake was about to ask another question, but the woman had her face turned toward the phonograph. The record was beginning again. Mrs. Stonehauser started softly singing along.

  Jake got to his feet and handed her a card.

  “If you can think of anything else, please give us a call.”

  She nodded absently, her mind going back sixty years to a prom at West Point.

  She was dancing with a handsome cadet captain, the most handsome man she had ever seen. His name was Art Stonehauser.

  She didn’t hear the detectives say goodbye. Monday, March 22, 2:08 p.m.

  Maxie Birnbaum was giving Joanna and Lori McKay a boxing lesson in the forensics laboratory.

  He crouched down and moved gracefully in a counterclockwise circle, his eyes riveted on an imaginary opponent.

  “You’ve got to stay low and keep away from the other guy’s power.”

  “And make him reach for you,” Lori added.

  “You got it, kiddo. If a guy has to reach for you, he can’t hurt you.”

  Joanna smiled at the man, liking him more and more. He was an old-time boxer, now seventy-six years old, with broad shoulders and a firm body. He looked as if he could still handle himself in a fight.

  “What weight class did you fight in?”

  ” I was a welterweight.”

  “Any good?”

  Maxie’s eyes sparkled.

  “At one time I was ranked sixth in the world.”

  “Did you ever fight for the title?”

  “Once, against Sugar Ray Robinson,” Maxie said, now standing a little taller. He was wearing an old dark suit, shiny in places but clean and neatly pressed.

  “He took me out in ten rounds, but he knew he’d been in a fight.”

  “So you’ve been around the boxing game for a long while.”

  “Longer than most.”

  “And you work for the Boxing Commission?”

  “I’m a consultant,” Maxie said un importantly

  “That means I do part-time work for them.”

  “In their archives section,” Lori said.

  “Archives.” Maxie scoffed.

  “When I first heard the word I thought it was something you put in a

  salad.” Joanna grinned.

  “I think you just might be the man who can help us.”

  “I think I can point you in the right direction.” Maxie took a neatly folded piece of paper from his coat pocket.

  “As I understand it, you’re interested in a fighter that weighed between a hundred ten and a hundred twenty pounds.”

  “He may have weighed a little less.” Joanna told him how they’d approximated the fighter’s weight from the size of the hand bones and how she had learned from a friend that boxers often have larger hands than one would expect.

  “Your friend is right,” Maxie said.

  “Boxers’ hands are big, probably from all the hitting they do. But that’s not important here, and I’ll tell you why. The smaller boxers the featherweights, the flyweights, the bantamweights are like peas in a pod. They can go from one weight class to another by sitting in a sweatbox and skipping a few meals. So to make sure I didn’t miss anyone I included everybody who weighed between a hundred and a hundred and twenty pounds. They must have fought sometime in the past ten years or so. And they now must be retired.”

  “Your list must be a mile long.”

  “And some,” Maxie went on.

  “But I was able to whittle it down for you. First, you got to understand that at these lighter weights almost all of the fighters are foreigners. Since you’re looking for a Mexican American, I could cross out the Koreans, the Japanese, the Thais, the Filipinos, and what have you.” Maxie nodded, obviously pleased with his performance.

  “How am I doing so far?”

  “Great,” Lori said.

  “You’d have made a pretty good detective.”

  Maxie thought about that for a moment, then dismissed the idea with a shake of his head.

  “Anyhow, I came up with twenty-two Mexican American fighters who fit the bill. And then I started tracking them down.”

  “How did you do that?” Joanna asked.

  “Does the Boxing Commission keep files on retired fighters?”

  “They don’t give a damn about old fighters,” Maxie said bitterly. His face hardened briefly, then he came back to the sheet of paper and the question Joanna had asked.

  “I tracked the guys by asking around. Some of the old boxers stay in the game as trainers and cut men and things like that. And they keep in touch with their old buddies one way or another, or maybe see each other at the fights. The guys in the same weight class tend to stick together, kind of like the old fraternities. So, if you ask around you

  can pick up a lot of information. Here’s what I found out. Of the twenty-two Mexican American fighters I started with, there are two that died, six who live in Arizona or Texas, and four nobody knows anything about. That leaves us ten possibilities, and only one of those had the tattoos Love and Hate on his fingers. His name is Jose Hernandez.”

  It can’t be this easy, Joanna thought. It just can’t.

  “Were you able to find out Mr. Hernandez’s whereabouts?”

  “His friend says that Jose dropped out of sight about three weeks ago,” Maxie said.

  “The friend thinks he went back to Mexico to die.”

  Joanna nodded, thinking the time frame was right. The hand was about three weeks old.

  “Why would he go back to Mexico to die? He was still a young man.”

  “A young man with a bad cancer,” Maxie said.

  “He didn’t have too long to live.”

  Joanna asked quickly, “Do you have an address or phone number for him?”

  “Not yet,” Maxie said.

  “But I’m working on it.”

  “It would really be important.”

  Maxie folded the sheet of paper carefully and placed it back in his coat pocket.

  “Do you think he’s the guy in the morgue?”

  “Could be,” Joanna said. They had told Maxie Birnbaum that they had a body with a disfigured face at Memorial. They didn’t want to give him the details of the dismembered hand.

  “For now, I think it’s best not to mention that the corpse might be Jose Hernandez. We should wait until we’re absolutely positive.”

  “Not a word from me,” Maxie said and made the gesture of zipping his lips shut.

  “Let me go do a little digging and see if
I can get you the information you need.”

  “We really appreciate your help.” Joanna watched the boxer leave. He had a lively step, an old man suddenly useful again, back in the flow of life.

  “I think we’re about to get lucky,” Lori said quietly.

  “I hope so,” Joanna said, returning Maxie’s wave as he went out the door.

  “I’d like you to do me a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Find out when the next important boxing match is in Los Angeles and get Maxie Birnbaum a ringside seat. Use money from the miscellaneous

  account to pay for it.” “He’d love it,” Lori said, then grinned up at Joanna.

  “It’d be a nice touch to hire a limo to take him there.”

  “Do it.”

  Joanna’s gaze went over to the blackboard where the projects under investigation were listed. The mystery of the dismembered hand was about to be solved. But she’d need proof beyond any doubt. And that would require DNA testing. She hoped Jose Hernandez had children, because she wanted to type their DNA as well as the mother’s and match them against the DNA from Jose’s hand. That would give her proof positive. The question of how and why Jose was killed would have to be answered by the LAPD’s Homicide Division.

  Joanna moved to the blackboard and circled the subsection DNA under the category Hand. One project would be out of the way, she was thinking, and there would only be one remaining. The bomb and its victims. And once that was over, she’d be free to start her new life with Paul du Maurier. She glanced down at the gold bracelet he’d given her, then at her ring finger, where she was certain a diamond would soon be sitting.

  There was a sharp knock at the door. A young technician entered and hurried over to Lori.

  “This fax just came in for you, Dr. McKay,” he said and handed Lori a sheet.

  Lori read it quickly, then reread it.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said under her breath.

  “What?” Joanna asked.

  “Remember that orange, triangular-shaped fragment I dug out of the dismembered hand and sent for analysis?” she asked, reading the report a third time.

  “It’s made out of a plastic material.”