City of Saviors, page 25
“Soda,” Pepe and Luke shouted together.
My phone vibrated—Greg had texted. Want company tonight? Tix to Hollywood Bowl.
My heart tripped in my chest—was my ex-husband asking me out on a date? I typed back a single word. Nope.
Pictures had been tacked on every wall—from Eugene Washington’s blue-splotched body to the heaps of junk in every room to the gold coins in the freezer and the pair of hands in the cigar humidor. Pepe had created a “family tree” with Washington as the trunk and connecting branches holding leaves—people in his life like Ike Underwood and Bernice Parrish. Some leaves—Marcus Sandford, Thomasina Jacobs, and Peachy Yates—were waiting for me to make the connection.
Two pizza boxes sat at the center of the long table alongside foam containers filled with Dulan’s peach cobbler. I hated this room—pipes above us whooshed each time a toilet flushed somewhere in the building.
“Do you think she’s right about the church?” Colin asked as he took a second slice of pizza from the box. “Or do you think she’s a crazy old lady with no manners?”
I nibbled a slice of pepperoni as I thought. “Peachy Yates may have been sour and rude, and suspicious of everything and everyone, but then so am I.” I grabbed a blue marker and approached the dry-erase board. Under TO DO FOR MONDAY, I wrote CHECK LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES FOR TOMMIE & MARCUS.
“Really?” Colin asked.
“Totally,” I said.
“So I,” Luke said, “a random-ass person, can take out an insurance policy on anybody I want? Without them knowing?”
“Basically,” I said. “You have to prove that their death could impact your finances. And one less person paying tithe to a church that needs to raise seven hundred thousand—”
Pepe held up his hand. “You really think the church killed a seventy-five-year-old woman with stage two colon cancer?” He gaped at Colin, who gaped back at him. “What pills you been popping, Lou, cuz . . . wow.”
I dropped back in my chair and rubbed my temples. “Just do it, okay? Next?”
“But the church isn’t a beneficiary of Washington’s policy,” Pepe continued, “Oz Little is.”
“Oz whose hands were found in Eugene Washington’s bathroom?” I asked. “The one man we can’t find cuz he’s in Belize but calling from Malibu—that Oz Little? Shall we move along, then, like to the copies that Sonia Elliott made us this afternoon?”
“Who’s Sonia Elliott?” Luke asked.
“Blessed Mission’s church secretary.” I opened the PDF. “This is Sunday’s log.”
A ledger with different signatures filled the slots beneath IN/OUT/TIME headings.
“Lot of vans out,” Pepe said. “I count five.”
“The picnic was on Sunday,” I said. “Probably used them to cart people, including Eugene Washington, to Bonner Park.” I clicked to the next page. “And here’s Monday.”
Two vans in, with van number 6057 checked out by Q. Lessing at 9:15 a.m., and then returned at 1:50 p.m. The second van, number 6381, had been checked out at 12:10 p.m. There was no signature until it was checked back in on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.
“That says ‘Ike Underwood,’ ” Pepe said.
I cocked my head. “So Ike had the van. And it looks like there were no other vans out on Monday night.”
Colin nodded. “So the van Gene’s neighbors saw in his driveway on Monday night—”
“Had to be number 6381,” Pepe said. “The van Ike was driving.”
“I thought he claimed he didn’t see Washington after the picnic,” Luke said. “Cuz he had a tummy ache.”
“We’ll ask him again tonight,” I said. “Maybe he misremembered.”
“And wasn’t there a woman with him?” Luke asked.
Colin and I exchanged glances—had Charity Tate gone along for the ride?
My partner’s jaw tightened, and his blue eyes darkened, and this time he said, “Next?”
“Charity Tate,” I said.
Colin blushed. “What about her?”
“We have Bishop Tate’s fingerprints now,” I said.
“And I sent them in for analysis,” Pepe added.
“But we still don’t have Charity’s.” I arched an eyebrow. “She call you back?”
Colin tore his pizza crust in half. “Not yet.”
“When you gonna get ’em, amigo?” Luke asked. “When she climbs on top? If that’s your plan, just put the inkpad next to the pillow.”
Colin turned flamingo pink, and the nerve beneath his left eye twitched.
I patted his wrist, then cooed, “It’s okay, buttercup. Anyway, we’ll drive by Thomasina’s house en route to talking with Ike Underwood.”
Colin gave a thumbs-up.
“And on Monday, should we call her oncologist?” Pepe asked. “Or on Tuesday, after the holiday?”
“Either day is fine.” A small part of me clenched—I wouldn’t be at my desk on Monday or Tuesday.
Luke passed out photocopies of Oswald Little’s phone bills. “So I went back.”
“How far back?” Colin asked.
“To 2011, a year after his retirement. This is the landline from the house on Garth.” On the laptop, Luke double-clicked on a PDF. The digital version of the phone bill blinked to the screen. “You can see . . .” He clicked forward to last month’s bill. “Five calls in a row to one number. There’s a lot of that—lots of calls, then nothing. Lots of calls, then nothing again. That’s Eugene Washington’s telephone number. But the most interesting stuff happened a few weeks ago.”
“Did Oz call Eugene before August third?” Colin asked.
Luke said, “Nope.” Then, he pointed to the pink highlighted rows. “August fourth, there were more calls to that number, and then incoming phone calls, one right after the other.”
“Whose phone number is that?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he admitted. “Came from a public phone off Western and Vernon, near that Louisiana Fried Chicken. And then the landline number wasn’t used for any outgoing calls. Incoming from telemarketing, election robo calls, that kind of stuff.”
Pepe pushed back a lock of dark hair that hung over his eyebrow. “Maybe Mr. Little switched to using his cell phone. If he has disability issues, calls are easier with voice activation and whatnot.”
Luke flipped pages in his notepad. “Oswald Little does have a cell phone. It’s the one that called Lou from Malibu.”
“And who is he calling from that phone?” I asked.
“Other than you? No one.” Luke double-clicked to open another PDF. “Ike Underwood also has a cell phone in his name, and this is his last bill.” Three green highlighted rows of outgoing calls made on August thirty-first, the Monday before we found Washington dead in his armchair. “Calls to and from another pay phone,” Luke said, “but this time, the pay phones are downtown, near Sixth and Central.”
“Who’s he talking to on Skid Row?” Colin wondered.
“Other calls Ike has made and received,” Luke continued, “are to you, Lou, and to Blessed Mission’s main number, and to Solomon Tate.”
I stared up at the dark corpses of dead insects collecting inside the fluorescent lighting tubes. “Were there any calls from Oz Little’s phone to the church or to Bishop Tate?”
“Nope.”
“That’s strange, right?” Colin asked. “Little’s a big donor to the church. He’s a mason in the same lodge. But he has absolutely no contact with Solomon Tate?”
I grabbed the container of peach cobbler we’d just purchased from Dulan’s—the one without coconut and roaches. The sparkly sugar crust, brown syrup speckled with cinnamon, firm and sweet peaches . . . I took a bite and my head exploded, my pulse raced and the stars collided. “While you were out fetching a coke, Miss Peachy said something very interesting.”
Colin dunked his spoon in the cobbler and cut away a wedge. “Yeah? Besides calling ‘pop’ by the wrong word?” He shoved the spoonful of cobbler into his mouth.
I laughed. “The word’s ‘soda,’ dude. Anyway, she said that Blessed Mission was becoming like Jonestown. Men with guns—”
The guys snorted, and rolled their eyes.
I cocked an eyebrow. “She mentioned gold coins and vacation homes in Central America.”
The trio froze and their smirks died.
“Uh huh.” I waggled my cell phone. “And speaking of Central America, Oz hasn’t returned my call yet. Not from Belize. Not from Malibu. Where he at?” Then, I shouted at my phone: “Where you at, Mr. Little?”
Next, we turned to financials, with Pepe passing around stapled hard copies before turning to the computer. “And the bank sent me copies of checks from Underwood’s checking account.” Three years ago, Ike Underwood purchased a Ranger Bass fishing boat for eight thousand dollars. It was a fancy thing with a sonar unit, stereo, and trawling motor. “The boat we saw in that photograph of him and Washington,” Pepe said. He flipped through his notes. “And the trailer’s license plates are linked to the Corning Avenue address, where the old lady with the stuffed dog lives. Ike doesn’t pay a mortgage or a car note. He buys a lot of junk at Home Depot.
“And then, there’s Oz Little. He’s footing the bills in the relationship. He pays the mortgage, the Jag’s note, food. He made a big buy at Tiffany.com back in February, around Valentine’s. That’s it. His bank statement lists no major stores. Well, Target’s on there, but no bill over one hundred fifty dollars. And income taxes—they both filed.
“Ike made about thirty-five thousand dollars, and Oz Little almost sixty, mostly from investment income, Social Security, and his pension plan. He gave charitably—a couple grand to Blessed Mission.”
“Let’s not forget,” I said, “he’s also getting Washington’s house and he’s the sole beneficiary on Washington’s life insurance policy.”
“That’s quarter of a mil, right?” Colin asked.
Whoosh. Somewhere, a toilet flushed and water rushed through the pipes. Whoosh. Another flush. Whoosh again.
“Uh oh,” Luke said. “Sullivan broke the crapper again.”
I picked up copies of Little’s checks that Sonia Elliott had provided. “Let’s look at these.”
Colin double-clicked the PDF.
The first check was payable to Blessed Mission for three thousand dollars and dated November 17, 2010. Spidery cursive especially on the signature line with those Ls and Ts that comprised “Oswald Little.”
“And now a check from this year,” Colin said.
Another check payable to Blessed Mission for three thousand dollars.
“Is that the same writing?” I asked.
No one spoke.
Colin cleared his throat. “May I ask the obvious question again?”
Pepe crushed his Diet Coke can. “How can a man with no hands write a check?”
“Prosthetics,” I said. “And robots—they’re taking over, don’t you know. Let’s look at the checks dated in 2000, when Little was still working at the bank.”
Pepe squinted at the screen and those checks. “So . . . what am I supposed to see?”
“No idea.” I grabbed my phone. “But I know someone who knows someone who will.”
An hour later, a balding Asian man wearing squeaky shoes bustled into the room. William Wu, Ph.D., had a cool superpower: he could look at a document or a person’s handwriting to determine its authenticity, authorship, or alteration. “You wanted to look at checks and signatures?” he asked.
He placed the check from Oswald Little’s checking account in 2000 next to a check he wrote to Blessed Mission just last month. “No one writes their name the same way ten times,” Wu said. “And then, when they’re injured, it all changes—letter form, lines and pressure, formatting. So the thick start, and shakiness here . . .” On the latest check, Wu pointed to the O in “Oswald” and the darkness of the e in “Little.” “This may not be of any concern. However . . .” He pointed to the 2000 check. “Here, though, we don’t see the weird O or the dark e.” He minimized the recent check on the screen and opened a check from Ike’s account, payable to Bass Pro Sporting Goods. He pointed to the d in “Underwood” and the d in “Oswald.” “Same decisive finish,” he said. “Same slope and upward lift at the stem.”
“And the e, too,” I said.
Wu nodded. “Correct.”
“Is it possible the same person wrote both checks?” Colin asked. “Bass Pro Ike and last month Oz?”
Wu nodded again. “It is possible.”
After Wu left, I said, “What about the envelope I found in Washington’s house? The one with the initials on the back.”
“What about it?” Colin asked.
I clicked to the copy of the envelope, and my pulse jumped as I noticed two initials. “O.L.,” I said. “Could that be ‘Oswald Little’? And N.M. Could that stand for ‘Nell Montgomery’?”
No one spoke.
The other initials: A.A., R.T., M.M. were not Marcus Sandford or Thomasina Jacobs.
“Think there are fingerprints still on this?” I asked.
Pepe said, “Maybe.”
“If this is a list on the back,” I said, “who are these people, and why are their initials crossed out? Because they’re dead now?”
“O.L. and N.M. could be anything,” Colin said.
“Including Oz Little and Nell Montgomery,” I countered. “So I wanna check for that and . . .” I studied the envelope and the still-closed flap that sealed it. “See if Zucca can grab any DNA from the adhesive—the sender probably licked it.”
Luke held up his hand. “I’m confused.”
“It’s Saturday,” Pepe said, “of course you are.”
My phone rang: Brooks was calling. “Gotta take this, guys.”
I rolled my chair away from the table and into the corner of the room. “What’s up, Doc?”
“I think we hit something,” Brooks said.
“Like?”
“Teeth.”
“Cats, maybe?” I asked.
“We found a few skeletal bones, too. And unless cats have now evolved to have thumbs, what we’ve found are human remains.”
41
A WEEK OF FIRES AND SMOKE, MURDEROUS HEAT AND NO BREEZES WOULD NOW PAY off. In the west, the five o’clock sun dipped closer to the horizon. Soon, the sky would turn the color of orange juice and red popsicles, bruises and dragon scales. The windows of cars were rolled down, and Notorious B.I.G. and Drake drifted from stereos. Grandmas bopped their heads to Roberta Flack or Andrae Crouch as they drove. Iced coffees and wide smiles and little girls wearing Krispy Kreme hats . . . it no longer hurt to live in Los Angeles.
Death happened. Poison, cancer, heart attacks. Murder for profit. Insurance policies on dead church members. “But the show must go on.” Colin navigated the car west on King Boulevard to reach the neighborhood of Helen “Nell” Montgomery.
Butterflies swirled in my stomach. “I know this will sound hyperbolic, but I’m with Peachy on this—I keep thinking about Jim Jones and Peoples Temple and the almost thousand people who were bilked out of everything they had. And for what?” They thought they’d done the right thing, only to be betrayed by their leader. Only to be murdered by their leader.
“So you’re still convinced the church is involved?” Colin asked.
I gaped at him. “You’re not? What are you waiting for?”
He gripped the steering wheel tight, and his knuckles whitened. “My gut’s telling me that . . . I don’t know. It just feels wrong, blaming people of God.”
Throughout Baldwin Vista, OPEN HOUSE signs sat on street corners and pointed us to Helen Montgomery’s remodeled contemporary. It had a high-pitched roof and big windows, trimmed white rosebushes, a new garage door, and a CPT PROPERTIES sign jammed into the too-green-for-a-drought lawn. A gay white couple, each man holding the hand of a black toddler with Afro puffs, stood on the porch. At the curb, a middle-aged woman and teen girl climbed into an Audi. Another young family walked up the brick pathway, ready to see what $818,000 bought you in 90008.
“I’ll stay here,” Colin said, sinking in the driver’s seat.
The house’s open floor plan boasted dark wood floors, a stone fireplace and modern light fixtures. It smelled of new paint and fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.
In the foyer, a real estate agent with flawless brown skin and a short Afro frowned at me—I had refused to sign the visitor’s book. “It’s beautiful,” I told her, “but I’m just looking, so no need for a name. When did it go on the market?”
“Last week,” she said.
In the kitchen, the gay couple marveled at the quartz countertops. Their daughter jumped up and down, making her tennis shoes sparkle with pink lights.
“And why are the owners selling?” I asked the agent.
She gave the couple in the kitchen a “one minute” finger, then said to me, “The owner died, and now the investors want to sell.”
“You can go help them,” I said, nodding to the potential buyers. “I’ll just wander around.”
The glassed-in dining room had a great view of a redwood deck and the backyard. Out in that yard, a pretty grade-school girl with hair twists and pink shorts frolicked on the jungle gym. A preteen boy sat in a swing, his eyes glued to a cell phone.
A husband, kid, jungle gym, dining room, badge, and gun. Once upon a time, that’s what I’d dreamed about. And still wanted. Some women did have it all—and such creatures existed throughout the LAPD.
So what’s my problem?
Breathless, I scratched my scalp, grazing the never-healing wound never healing there.
“Surprise, surprise.” The woman’s voice pulled me from my family planning. “Didn’t know you’re looking to buy.” Charity Tate had snuck up on me. Worse, she flaunted near-perfect foundation even in this heat.
“I’m not looking,” I said. “But you are?”
She shook her head. “I’m the selling agent. That sign out front? CPT Properties? That’s me. Charity Patricia Tate.” She curtsied and smiled.
That churning in my stomach returned—but not because of my fears of dying alone. “You help run the church and you sell houses?”
She raised a finger. “And I’m raising two kids. Yes—I am an overachiever. No—I will never slow down, not until God forces me to.” She touched her temples. “And all that church business drives me insane. I need to get out sometimes.”
My phone vibrated—Greg had texted. Want company tonight? Tix to Hollywood Bowl.
My heart tripped in my chest—was my ex-husband asking me out on a date? I typed back a single word. Nope.
Pictures had been tacked on every wall—from Eugene Washington’s blue-splotched body to the heaps of junk in every room to the gold coins in the freezer and the pair of hands in the cigar humidor. Pepe had created a “family tree” with Washington as the trunk and connecting branches holding leaves—people in his life like Ike Underwood and Bernice Parrish. Some leaves—Marcus Sandford, Thomasina Jacobs, and Peachy Yates—were waiting for me to make the connection.
Two pizza boxes sat at the center of the long table alongside foam containers filled with Dulan’s peach cobbler. I hated this room—pipes above us whooshed each time a toilet flushed somewhere in the building.
“Do you think she’s right about the church?” Colin asked as he took a second slice of pizza from the box. “Or do you think she’s a crazy old lady with no manners?”
I nibbled a slice of pepperoni as I thought. “Peachy Yates may have been sour and rude, and suspicious of everything and everyone, but then so am I.” I grabbed a blue marker and approached the dry-erase board. Under TO DO FOR MONDAY, I wrote CHECK LIFE INSURANCE POLICIES FOR TOMMIE & MARCUS.
“Really?” Colin asked.
“Totally,” I said.
“So I,” Luke said, “a random-ass person, can take out an insurance policy on anybody I want? Without them knowing?”
“Basically,” I said. “You have to prove that their death could impact your finances. And one less person paying tithe to a church that needs to raise seven hundred thousand—”
Pepe held up his hand. “You really think the church killed a seventy-five-year-old woman with stage two colon cancer?” He gaped at Colin, who gaped back at him. “What pills you been popping, Lou, cuz . . . wow.”
I dropped back in my chair and rubbed my temples. “Just do it, okay? Next?”
“But the church isn’t a beneficiary of Washington’s policy,” Pepe continued, “Oz Little is.”
“Oz whose hands were found in Eugene Washington’s bathroom?” I asked. “The one man we can’t find cuz he’s in Belize but calling from Malibu—that Oz Little? Shall we move along, then, like to the copies that Sonia Elliott made us this afternoon?”
“Who’s Sonia Elliott?” Luke asked.
“Blessed Mission’s church secretary.” I opened the PDF. “This is Sunday’s log.”
A ledger with different signatures filled the slots beneath IN/OUT/TIME headings.
“Lot of vans out,” Pepe said. “I count five.”
“The picnic was on Sunday,” I said. “Probably used them to cart people, including Eugene Washington, to Bonner Park.” I clicked to the next page. “And here’s Monday.”
Two vans in, with van number 6057 checked out by Q. Lessing at 9:15 a.m., and then returned at 1:50 p.m. The second van, number 6381, had been checked out at 12:10 p.m. There was no signature until it was checked back in on Tuesday at 10:00 a.m.
“That says ‘Ike Underwood,’ ” Pepe said.
I cocked my head. “So Ike had the van. And it looks like there were no other vans out on Monday night.”
Colin nodded. “So the van Gene’s neighbors saw in his driveway on Monday night—”
“Had to be number 6381,” Pepe said. “The van Ike was driving.”
“I thought he claimed he didn’t see Washington after the picnic,” Luke said. “Cuz he had a tummy ache.”
“We’ll ask him again tonight,” I said. “Maybe he misremembered.”
“And wasn’t there a woman with him?” Luke asked.
Colin and I exchanged glances—had Charity Tate gone along for the ride?
My partner’s jaw tightened, and his blue eyes darkened, and this time he said, “Next?”
“Charity Tate,” I said.
Colin blushed. “What about her?”
“We have Bishop Tate’s fingerprints now,” I said.
“And I sent them in for analysis,” Pepe added.
“But we still don’t have Charity’s.” I arched an eyebrow. “She call you back?”
Colin tore his pizza crust in half. “Not yet.”
“When you gonna get ’em, amigo?” Luke asked. “When she climbs on top? If that’s your plan, just put the inkpad next to the pillow.”
Colin turned flamingo pink, and the nerve beneath his left eye twitched.
I patted his wrist, then cooed, “It’s okay, buttercup. Anyway, we’ll drive by Thomasina’s house en route to talking with Ike Underwood.”
Colin gave a thumbs-up.
“And on Monday, should we call her oncologist?” Pepe asked. “Or on Tuesday, after the holiday?”
“Either day is fine.” A small part of me clenched—I wouldn’t be at my desk on Monday or Tuesday.
Luke passed out photocopies of Oswald Little’s phone bills. “So I went back.”
“How far back?” Colin asked.
“To 2011, a year after his retirement. This is the landline from the house on Garth.” On the laptop, Luke double-clicked on a PDF. The digital version of the phone bill blinked to the screen. “You can see . . .” He clicked forward to last month’s bill. “Five calls in a row to one number. There’s a lot of that—lots of calls, then nothing. Lots of calls, then nothing again. That’s Eugene Washington’s telephone number. But the most interesting stuff happened a few weeks ago.”
“Did Oz call Eugene before August third?” Colin asked.
Luke said, “Nope.” Then, he pointed to the pink highlighted rows. “August fourth, there were more calls to that number, and then incoming phone calls, one right after the other.”
“Whose phone number is that?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” he admitted. “Came from a public phone off Western and Vernon, near that Louisiana Fried Chicken. And then the landline number wasn’t used for any outgoing calls. Incoming from telemarketing, election robo calls, that kind of stuff.”
Pepe pushed back a lock of dark hair that hung over his eyebrow. “Maybe Mr. Little switched to using his cell phone. If he has disability issues, calls are easier with voice activation and whatnot.”
Luke flipped pages in his notepad. “Oswald Little does have a cell phone. It’s the one that called Lou from Malibu.”
“And who is he calling from that phone?” I asked.
“Other than you? No one.” Luke double-clicked to open another PDF. “Ike Underwood also has a cell phone in his name, and this is his last bill.” Three green highlighted rows of outgoing calls made on August thirty-first, the Monday before we found Washington dead in his armchair. “Calls to and from another pay phone,” Luke said, “but this time, the pay phones are downtown, near Sixth and Central.”
“Who’s he talking to on Skid Row?” Colin wondered.
“Other calls Ike has made and received,” Luke continued, “are to you, Lou, and to Blessed Mission’s main number, and to Solomon Tate.”
I stared up at the dark corpses of dead insects collecting inside the fluorescent lighting tubes. “Were there any calls from Oz Little’s phone to the church or to Bishop Tate?”
“Nope.”
“That’s strange, right?” Colin asked. “Little’s a big donor to the church. He’s a mason in the same lodge. But he has absolutely no contact with Solomon Tate?”
I grabbed the container of peach cobbler we’d just purchased from Dulan’s—the one without coconut and roaches. The sparkly sugar crust, brown syrup speckled with cinnamon, firm and sweet peaches . . . I took a bite and my head exploded, my pulse raced and the stars collided. “While you were out fetching a coke, Miss Peachy said something very interesting.”
Colin dunked his spoon in the cobbler and cut away a wedge. “Yeah? Besides calling ‘pop’ by the wrong word?” He shoved the spoonful of cobbler into his mouth.
I laughed. “The word’s ‘soda,’ dude. Anyway, she said that Blessed Mission was becoming like Jonestown. Men with guns—”
The guys snorted, and rolled their eyes.
I cocked an eyebrow. “She mentioned gold coins and vacation homes in Central America.”
The trio froze and their smirks died.
“Uh huh.” I waggled my cell phone. “And speaking of Central America, Oz hasn’t returned my call yet. Not from Belize. Not from Malibu. Where he at?” Then, I shouted at my phone: “Where you at, Mr. Little?”
Next, we turned to financials, with Pepe passing around stapled hard copies before turning to the computer. “And the bank sent me copies of checks from Underwood’s checking account.” Three years ago, Ike Underwood purchased a Ranger Bass fishing boat for eight thousand dollars. It was a fancy thing with a sonar unit, stereo, and trawling motor. “The boat we saw in that photograph of him and Washington,” Pepe said. He flipped through his notes. “And the trailer’s license plates are linked to the Corning Avenue address, where the old lady with the stuffed dog lives. Ike doesn’t pay a mortgage or a car note. He buys a lot of junk at Home Depot.
“And then, there’s Oz Little. He’s footing the bills in the relationship. He pays the mortgage, the Jag’s note, food. He made a big buy at Tiffany.com back in February, around Valentine’s. That’s it. His bank statement lists no major stores. Well, Target’s on there, but no bill over one hundred fifty dollars. And income taxes—they both filed.
“Ike made about thirty-five thousand dollars, and Oz Little almost sixty, mostly from investment income, Social Security, and his pension plan. He gave charitably—a couple grand to Blessed Mission.”
“Let’s not forget,” I said, “he’s also getting Washington’s house and he’s the sole beneficiary on Washington’s life insurance policy.”
“That’s quarter of a mil, right?” Colin asked.
Whoosh. Somewhere, a toilet flushed and water rushed through the pipes. Whoosh. Another flush. Whoosh again.
“Uh oh,” Luke said. “Sullivan broke the crapper again.”
I picked up copies of Little’s checks that Sonia Elliott had provided. “Let’s look at these.”
Colin double-clicked the PDF.
The first check was payable to Blessed Mission for three thousand dollars and dated November 17, 2010. Spidery cursive especially on the signature line with those Ls and Ts that comprised “Oswald Little.”
“And now a check from this year,” Colin said.
Another check payable to Blessed Mission for three thousand dollars.
“Is that the same writing?” I asked.
No one spoke.
Colin cleared his throat. “May I ask the obvious question again?”
Pepe crushed his Diet Coke can. “How can a man with no hands write a check?”
“Prosthetics,” I said. “And robots—they’re taking over, don’t you know. Let’s look at the checks dated in 2000, when Little was still working at the bank.”
Pepe squinted at the screen and those checks. “So . . . what am I supposed to see?”
“No idea.” I grabbed my phone. “But I know someone who knows someone who will.”
An hour later, a balding Asian man wearing squeaky shoes bustled into the room. William Wu, Ph.D., had a cool superpower: he could look at a document or a person’s handwriting to determine its authenticity, authorship, or alteration. “You wanted to look at checks and signatures?” he asked.
He placed the check from Oswald Little’s checking account in 2000 next to a check he wrote to Blessed Mission just last month. “No one writes their name the same way ten times,” Wu said. “And then, when they’re injured, it all changes—letter form, lines and pressure, formatting. So the thick start, and shakiness here . . .” On the latest check, Wu pointed to the O in “Oswald” and the darkness of the e in “Little.” “This may not be of any concern. However . . .” He pointed to the 2000 check. “Here, though, we don’t see the weird O or the dark e.” He minimized the recent check on the screen and opened a check from Ike’s account, payable to Bass Pro Sporting Goods. He pointed to the d in “Underwood” and the d in “Oswald.” “Same decisive finish,” he said. “Same slope and upward lift at the stem.”
“And the e, too,” I said.
Wu nodded. “Correct.”
“Is it possible the same person wrote both checks?” Colin asked. “Bass Pro Ike and last month Oz?”
Wu nodded again. “It is possible.”
After Wu left, I said, “What about the envelope I found in Washington’s house? The one with the initials on the back.”
“What about it?” Colin asked.
I clicked to the copy of the envelope, and my pulse jumped as I noticed two initials. “O.L.,” I said. “Could that be ‘Oswald Little’? And N.M. Could that stand for ‘Nell Montgomery’?”
No one spoke.
The other initials: A.A., R.T., M.M. were not Marcus Sandford or Thomasina Jacobs.
“Think there are fingerprints still on this?” I asked.
Pepe said, “Maybe.”
“If this is a list on the back,” I said, “who are these people, and why are their initials crossed out? Because they’re dead now?”
“O.L. and N.M. could be anything,” Colin said.
“Including Oz Little and Nell Montgomery,” I countered. “So I wanna check for that and . . .” I studied the envelope and the still-closed flap that sealed it. “See if Zucca can grab any DNA from the adhesive—the sender probably licked it.”
Luke held up his hand. “I’m confused.”
“It’s Saturday,” Pepe said, “of course you are.”
My phone rang: Brooks was calling. “Gotta take this, guys.”
I rolled my chair away from the table and into the corner of the room. “What’s up, Doc?”
“I think we hit something,” Brooks said.
“Like?”
“Teeth.”
“Cats, maybe?” I asked.
“We found a few skeletal bones, too. And unless cats have now evolved to have thumbs, what we’ve found are human remains.”
41
A WEEK OF FIRES AND SMOKE, MURDEROUS HEAT AND NO BREEZES WOULD NOW PAY off. In the west, the five o’clock sun dipped closer to the horizon. Soon, the sky would turn the color of orange juice and red popsicles, bruises and dragon scales. The windows of cars were rolled down, and Notorious B.I.G. and Drake drifted from stereos. Grandmas bopped their heads to Roberta Flack or Andrae Crouch as they drove. Iced coffees and wide smiles and little girls wearing Krispy Kreme hats . . . it no longer hurt to live in Los Angeles.
Death happened. Poison, cancer, heart attacks. Murder for profit. Insurance policies on dead church members. “But the show must go on.” Colin navigated the car west on King Boulevard to reach the neighborhood of Helen “Nell” Montgomery.
Butterflies swirled in my stomach. “I know this will sound hyperbolic, but I’m with Peachy on this—I keep thinking about Jim Jones and Peoples Temple and the almost thousand people who were bilked out of everything they had. And for what?” They thought they’d done the right thing, only to be betrayed by their leader. Only to be murdered by their leader.
“So you’re still convinced the church is involved?” Colin asked.
I gaped at him. “You’re not? What are you waiting for?”
He gripped the steering wheel tight, and his knuckles whitened. “My gut’s telling me that . . . I don’t know. It just feels wrong, blaming people of God.”
Throughout Baldwin Vista, OPEN HOUSE signs sat on street corners and pointed us to Helen Montgomery’s remodeled contemporary. It had a high-pitched roof and big windows, trimmed white rosebushes, a new garage door, and a CPT PROPERTIES sign jammed into the too-green-for-a-drought lawn. A gay white couple, each man holding the hand of a black toddler with Afro puffs, stood on the porch. At the curb, a middle-aged woman and teen girl climbed into an Audi. Another young family walked up the brick pathway, ready to see what $818,000 bought you in 90008.
“I’ll stay here,” Colin said, sinking in the driver’s seat.
The house’s open floor plan boasted dark wood floors, a stone fireplace and modern light fixtures. It smelled of new paint and fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies.
In the foyer, a real estate agent with flawless brown skin and a short Afro frowned at me—I had refused to sign the visitor’s book. “It’s beautiful,” I told her, “but I’m just looking, so no need for a name. When did it go on the market?”
“Last week,” she said.
In the kitchen, the gay couple marveled at the quartz countertops. Their daughter jumped up and down, making her tennis shoes sparkle with pink lights.
“And why are the owners selling?” I asked the agent.
She gave the couple in the kitchen a “one minute” finger, then said to me, “The owner died, and now the investors want to sell.”
“You can go help them,” I said, nodding to the potential buyers. “I’ll just wander around.”
The glassed-in dining room had a great view of a redwood deck and the backyard. Out in that yard, a pretty grade-school girl with hair twists and pink shorts frolicked on the jungle gym. A preteen boy sat in a swing, his eyes glued to a cell phone.
A husband, kid, jungle gym, dining room, badge, and gun. Once upon a time, that’s what I’d dreamed about. And still wanted. Some women did have it all—and such creatures existed throughout the LAPD.
So what’s my problem?
Breathless, I scratched my scalp, grazing the never-healing wound never healing there.
“Surprise, surprise.” The woman’s voice pulled me from my family planning. “Didn’t know you’re looking to buy.” Charity Tate had snuck up on me. Worse, she flaunted near-perfect foundation even in this heat.
“I’m not looking,” I said. “But you are?”
She shook her head. “I’m the selling agent. That sign out front? CPT Properties? That’s me. Charity Patricia Tate.” She curtsied and smiled.
That churning in my stomach returned—but not because of my fears of dying alone. “You help run the church and you sell houses?”
She raised a finger. “And I’m raising two kids. Yes—I am an overachiever. No—I will never slow down, not until God forces me to.” She touched her temples. “And all that church business drives me insane. I need to get out sometimes.”
