The Last Days of Ray Cobb

5. Chapter 5

1

“Propinquity.”

“Hmm?”

“Propinquity. It means an affinity or kinship,” Detective Hsu said, his face glued to his phone.

“Great,” Nick sighed.

He had only been partners with Hsu for a week. They weren’t exactly bosom buddies. On paper, David Hsu was a good a cop. College grad. Detail-oriented. Loved the hell out of paperwork. But his social skills sucked. Like his need to read his “Word of the Day” out-loud every morning, no matter what sort of environment they were in. Under the on-ramp of jammed cars honking to squeeze onto the 101 freeway, Nick could’ve used a break from the vocabulary lesson.

“It can also mean nearness, either physically or psychologically,” Hsu said. He put his phone away and looked both ways down Juanita Avenue. “You think anyone had propinquity with the victim at the time of death?”

“Pretty sure they all did,” Nick said.

The short stretch of Juanita between Beverly Boulevard and the 101 had become a mini-version of Skid Row over the years. A small group of homeless people who the gentrified Arts District had pushed into the underside of Silverlake’s hipster haven.

The tiny tent city was the homeless equivalent of upscale living. If there was an economic tier in street residency between a fifteen-dollar tent bought at Target and Section 8 housing provided by the city, the structures on Juanita fit the bill.

Tents tethered together with tarpaulin and cardboard boxes. Pressboard stolen from construction sites to set up a makeshift latrine. The sheer innovation of the homeless who had put the mini-subdivision hovel together was impressive. A few of them were feats of engineering and architectural genius. Each tent-house built on Juanita was going to be there for a while. Even if a bad El Niño came through, some of those makeshift houses would withstand the weather better than the mudslide-prone mansions in Nichols Canyon.

What the residents of Juanita Village had to worry about was the body. The victim was inside one of the smaller tents. The “owner” was in custody, but he swore up and down he had an alibi from the night before, complete with witnesses. He’d told the girl she could sleep there if she needed to. It seemed like a hollow gesture for a man who looked like he didn’t give a f**k about anybody. The corner of Wilshire and Alvarado, where he claimed to have slept the night, had several security cameras. Nick and Hsu would know soon enough if his story checked out.

He must have been confident that the girl was too far along to give him any action. Some guys were grossed-out about that sort of thing. They’re happy to pick through festering garbage for a stained baseball cap, but God forbid they have s*x with a beautiful woman just because she’s growing a life inside of her.

Scratch that. Had been growing a life inside of her.

Her life was gone. Whether the baby’s heart still beat was anybody’s guess.

“We may be looking at a Caesarian kidnapping,” Hsu said. A search of the area hadn’t come up with an aborted fetus.

“That sounds made up,” Nick said. He knew Hsu would elaborate, no matter what his response had been. It was his way. If Hsu had read about it within the last five years, he would regurgitate it to anyone in the nearby area. Nick had made the mistake of going out for a beer with Hsu on the first day they were assigned together. Jeopardy! was playing on the TV above the bar. The guy had an explanation for every f*****g answer. And yet, the only thing Nick had retained was that priapism was the medical term for an erection lasting over four hours. How that ended up in a discussion about a quiz show he couldn’t remember. Though he had a vague recollection it had started with an answer about Grecian wine.

“It’s rare, but becoming exceedingly common. Usually premeditated. In the old days, it was called a hysterical pregnancy. There was a lot of preparation that went into keeping up the illusion. Now, all a perpetrator needs is access to a social media profile and a sonogram. For months, a woman can post about how she’s expecting. When the time comes to produce the child, they go into a panic, find a pregnant woman, and take the child by force.”

“Sounds a little Manson Family to me,” Nick said.

He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. One of these days, he might get Hsu to play along with his sarcasm.

And on that day, he’d buy a large cake.

With buttercream frosting.

And those little flowers on it.

Today wasn’t that day.

“Oh, no. The murder of Sharon Tate and her unborn child was more of a ritualistic sacrifice than a crime of envy. In Caesarian kidnappings, the death of the mother is merely a by-product of her housing the unborn individual the kidnapper wishes to abscond with.”

Abscond was the “Word of the Day” yesterday.

Nick wondered if there was going to be a day where Hsu didn’t use one of his new vocabulary words.

“Have you had enough of a breather?” Nick asked.

“I’ll be honest,” Hsu let out a sigh, “for as detached as I try to be, this is hitting close to home. If you don’t mind, I’ll conduct more interviews.”

The murder hitting too close to home was the extent to which Hsu talked about his life off-the-clock. There were pictures of his pretty Korean wife on his desk. All of them were of her alone, standing in front of some landmark — Stonehenge or Golden Gate — nothing of them together. It was as though she’d brought her husband along on her vacations to serve as her personal photographer. Either that or she had similar pictures sitting on her desk of him, alone, in the same poses.

Nick still wasn’t sure if her name was Jin or Jen. Hsu only mentioned her in passing. Which Nick found strange because Hsu had once gone on for an hour about the migration patterns of the North American pronghorn antelope. Nick also knew Jin or Jen had been sick, causing Hsu to take an extended leave of absence from the force. When he came back, he was assigned to Nick Archer.

Willie Grant, Nick’s former partner, had asked for a transfer after he’d accused her of leaking the details of a high-profile investigation to the press. This was only hours before she stopped a young entertainment assistant high on psychedelics from putting a bullet in Nick’s brain.

Nick watched his new partner approach the homeless witnesses, each of them spooked by the yellow tape and uniforms. Street instinct was to disappear when the cops showed up, but they wanted to know who it was in the tent. By the time they’d realized it was an outsider and not a member of their little community, they were stuck being held for questioning.

There was bruising around the girl’s neck where she had been strangled and held down. He didn’t see any hair or skin under the fingernails. The victim hadn’t gotten a hand on her attacker. If she had, the medical examiner was going to have to do some digging for it. There would be plenty of DNA evidence to collect, but the tent looked dirty enough that every piece pulled would come from someone with a record. Those who lived on the streets didn’t do a great job of avoiding the law. A better bet would be to watch the hospitals for anyone coming in with a newborn in distress.

Nick emerged from the tent and made a beeline for Hsu.

“Anyone report hearing a child crying?”

“Haven’t asked.”

“If our perp meant to keep the baby alive, it was making noise. And at that hour, a child’s screams would wake up the block.”

There was probably more he could learn from the body, but he didn’t want to go back into the tent. Forensics would give him plenty to go through later. Then he could examine it without the mixing smells of s**t, body odor, and rotting viscera.

Juanita looked like an ancient excavation site. Cordoned off with yellow tape, each of the tent structures stood empty, their residents held for questioning. Forensic techs in full blue pajama suits took detailed photographs of each, the most attention paid to the torn-apart woman by the freeway. Each of the structures would be cataloged and stripped, some of them taken apart and boxed up. These people’s homes would be destroyed because they lacked permanent addresses. Rights pertaining to search, seizure, and private property were non-existent because they lived on the sidewalks. Nick hoped he could get enough of a story out of some of them before they realized what was happening.

No one thinks about how many rights they retain just from the ability to close their doors. In all the time Nick had spent trying to understand the street community and how they lived their lives, he would never really relate to them. He would always be one of the normal people. The “haves.” A cop who can steal their property and mark it as evidence just because they slept on the wrong block.

Among those waiting to be questioned was a Hispanic man, about twenty-five years old. Dark clothes, faded, but coordinated. The emblem on his Yankee cap was grey from dirt, but the bill remained crisp and unbent. He kept getting on and off a BMX with scuffed paint, holding onto it to make sure it wasn’t heaped into evidence with anything else. A uniform was watching him, scolding him from hopping onto the seat, afraid he would bolt from the scene. Nick could see the man trying to play it cool, but his eyes were darting toward the lean-to made from Rite Aid shopping carts. Colored bungee cords held the structure together. He jumped any time an officer or tech got too close. That house was his.

“What’s your name?” Nick asked.

“You guys gonna be done here soon? I got to get my work uniform, man,” Yankee Cap said, not answering the question.

“You’re probably not going to get back in there today unless we find something definitive in the next half hour.”

“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with this, all right. Weren’t even here last night. Was at my mom’s.”

“Can she confirm that?”

“No. She wasn’t there, otherwise, I wouldn’ta been.”

“Doesn’t make for a great alibi. You know whose tent that is?”

“Thought that guy said it was his, um… Yusuf… the Muslim-looking guy.”

Yankee Cap nodded in the direction of the tent’s confessed owner. Nick was glad Hsu wasn’t with him at the moment. He would’ve made an irrelevant comment about Muslim not being an ethnicity.

“That’s not what I asked,” Nick said.

“People come and go. I was only staying for a few days ‘til I got a new place,” Yankee Cap shrugged. “Can’t I get my clothes and go? I’m gonna be late.”

“A few days, huh? You got a driver’s license?”

“All right, s**t. I’m gonna reach for my wallet. Don’t shoot me.”

“You see my gun out?” Nick asked.

“I watch the news. You don’t need no excuse.”

Nick held his hands up in supplication, away from his service weapon. Yankee Cap pulled out his wallet and tossed it over. Nick flipped through the worn flaps. Not much in it but a bunch of club cards, a Costco employee I.D., and a California driver’s license. He snapped a picture of the license with his phone.

“Forno Garcia,” Nick read. “Forno? You get teased a lot as a kid?”

“What the f**k for?”

“No one clever enough to call you Porno?”

“What’s the law say about grounds for police harassment?”

“Meant nothing by it, sorry. My mouth moves quicker than my brain sometimes.”

“Okay, you saw it. Gimme it back.”

Nick flipped to the back flap and noticed there were eight crisp hundred-dollar bills inside.

“Costco pays pretty well, huh?”

“Man, what the f**k?” Forno took a step forward, but the uniform was quick to block his way. “You looking for a bribe, dirty pig?”

Nick closed the wallet after replacing the I.D. and put it back into Forno’s hand.

“Hsu,” Nick called across the tape. His partner made some last notes with the haggard woman he was interviewing and trotted over.

“Yeah.”

“This is Forno Garcia. My partner, Detective Hsu.”

“You want a handout, too?” Forno asked Hsu.

“Forno, did I take any money from your wallet?”

Forno counted the bills. Twice.

“No. Don’t mean you won’t later.”

“Is that the confirmation you needed?” Hsu asked, “I’ve got a few more I need to get to over there.”

“Have the unis do it,” Nick said. “I think we’ve spotted a person of interest.”

Forno’s eyes darted back and forth between the two cops. They could see he wanted to bail and wanted to bail hard.

“Okay, Forno, it’s honesty time,” Nick glanced back at Forno’s tent. It was next in line for photographs and cataloging. Forno was huffing and sweating. “Whatever you got in that tent is now potential evidence in this case. We’re going to pull down each of those tarps and canvases that you probably spent days stringing together, and we’re going to find any dirty little secrets you might be hiding. Maybe even a murder weapon.”

“I didn’t kill nobody! I just—”

“Want to get to work. I know. You typically get your paychecks in cash?”

“How much did he have on him?” Hsu asked.

“Eight Franklins. Foil strips.”

“Legit money,” Hsu said. “You don’t believe in banks, huh?”

Every conversation Nick had ever had with Hsu had been strained and awkward. Hsu was in cop-mode now. He knew how to mirror his interviewee. Even his posture had changed. A by-product of years spent in Vice.

“Since when is it a crime to have money?”

“It’s not, as far as I know,” Hsu said, “Just a matter of how you got it. That’s enough for a down payment on a small apartment. If I had that kind of walking around money, I’d upgrade my living arrangements.”

“Obviously, you haven’t looked for an apartment in L.A. lately. Probably live in Valencia or some shit.”

“Chino Hills,” Hsu said.

Forno watched the crime scene techs move one tent closer. “There’s nothing in there. Don’t take my tent apart, man,” he whined, “That’s all I got.”

“That license expired two years ago and my guess is that permanent address expired with it,” Nick said. “The way you were twitching at the officers milling around your tent made me think it was more than just a crash pad for you. So, you see how I might be suspicious with your handful of lies along with your lack of an alibi and wallet full of cash?”

“That sort of information might even make you a prime suspect,” Hsu added.

“I just live on this block. I didn’t do nothin'.”

“Who else lives on this block that we don’t know about?” Nick pointed over to where the girl was found. “Whose tent is that, really?”

Forno stared at the detectives with a pleading look in his eyes and took a deep breath.

“I dunno,” he mumbled.

Nick turned to Hsu. “Rock Paper Scissors?”

“I grew up playing Odds and Evens,” Hsu said. “I would prefer odds.”

“Suit yourself.”

In unison, the detectives held out their fists.

“One, two, three, shoot.”

Nick held up two fingers, as did Hsu. Evens.

“Winner’s choice,” Hsu said.

Nick turned back to Forno, smiling.

“All right, Forno, you don’t know anything. But somebody does. You want to point us in the right direction?”

Forno was watching them carefully. His brow scrunched up in confusion, wondering what the cops had decided with their little game of Odds and Evens.

“Under the overpass on Virgil. Zeke been there forever. Knows everybody who sets up down here. Everybody that comes and goes on the regular. Thinks he’s king of the fuckin’ mountain, but he ain’t nothing but a troll under a bridge.”

“What’s Zeke look like?” Nick asked.

“Hunched back. Dreads. Muthafucka looks like some kinda Igor George Clinton,” Forno said, “Can I go?”

“Well?” Hsu asked.

Nick looked at Forno, who was twitching to get back on his bike.

“I’ll look for Zeke,” Nick said.

“You sure?” Hsu asked.

“Yeah, I’d rather be out here.”

Hsu nodded.

“Forno, we’re going to head downtown and make sure you’ve got your story straight,” Hsu said. “I can call your boss to tell him you’ll be late.”

“Am I under arrest?” Forno asked.

“Do you want to be?”

“No.”

“Then get in the squad. I’ll even buy you lunch. We’ll put your bike in the trunk.”

Forno hung his head, but did what he was told.

After the car had pulled away, Nick turned back to the scene and scanned the tents. He could interview every person living on that street until he was blue in the face and come up with nothing. With a murder this brutal, there was one guy he knew who would have his ear to the ground. A guy who would take an interest in a woman’s uterus being torn open, her body left to rot in a dirty tent. But that guy was long gone. And Nick only had one connection to him left.

He dropped it into the inside pocket of his suit coat every morning and didn’t touch it again until he emptied the contents at night. The last thing Nick needed his new partner to see was that he was carrying around a second phone. The type of phone that was notorious around Vice and Narco as hard to trace. It would raise a lot of questions Nick couldn’t answer.

“Got a tip on a witness,” Nick called to the closest uniform, “Heading over to Virgil for a bit.”

He could feel the stares of the detained homeless as he passed. People who wanted nothing more than to be left alone. People like Ray. As Nick made his way up the street, he could feel the burner phone thumping against his chest with every step.

He should have snapped the SIM card, broken the thing in half, taken a ferry to Catalina, and dumped it over the side into the ocean. Instead, Nick kept it with him, waiting for it to ring. Waiting for the man at the other end to ask for his help.

But as far as Nick knew, Ray Cobb was already dead.