On Sunday, Liova hears a radio news broadcast. A Latin couple named Carlos and Delia Guevara have been reported missing in Lancaster. She gets another strong vibe: Her dead man is Carlos Guevara.
She calls the Antelope Valley Sheriff’s Missing Persons unit. An officer tells her that Sergeant jim Sears and Deputy jerry Burks of Sheriff’s Homicide have already been assigned to the case– because a bullet hole was found in Carlos and Delia Guevara’s living-room wall.
Joe Guzman returns from Texas. Liova drives him up to Lancaster and explains the case en route. The team meets up with Burks and Sears at the Guevara house. Sears drops a belated bomb: Delia Guevara’s body was discovered in Yermo over the weekend.
The woman had been shot and similarly dumped–in San Bernardino County, sixty miles from the spot where Guzman and Anderson’s body was found.
Liova checks the Guevaras’ family records stash and finds a fingerprint ID card on Carlos. She takes itto the L.A. County crime lab and has a technician compare it to the rehydrated digits cut off her victim.
The prints match.
Burks and Sears work the Delia side of the case. Anderson and Guzman stick with Carlos.
Liova’s original vibe simmers: This is a sex or sexual-revenge killing. She begins an extensive background check on the Guevaras.
She learns that Delia worked at a local Burger King 2nd Carlos worked at a local appliance store. She learns that the couple had emigrated from Mexico illegally and were living above their means. She learns that Delia had been receiving menacing phone calls at work and that Carlos loved to talk lewd in mixed company–even though it made his friends and neighbors uncomfortable. Carlos was also known for chasing women outright.
Joe Guzman finds numerous toys in a sealed-off bedroom at the Guevara house. It is a striking anomaly. The Guevaras were childless and had often told friends they did not intend to have children. The motive takes circumstantial shape.
Two killings. Vengeance perpetrated by a cuckolded lover or the parents of an abused child.
Ray Peavy wraps his account up. Anderson and Guzman, Burks and Sears are still on the case–which remains one baffling whodunit.
Sergeant Jacque Franco pokes her head in the door and eavesdrops. Deputy Rick Graves sidles by for a listen; Dan Burt shoots him an attaboy for his work on that drowning case off Catalina Island.
Ray Peavy says, “It never ends.”
Jacque Franco says, “We’re still six short of breaking the record.”
Dan Burt pats his fat ceramic bulldog.
Sergeant Bob Perry and Deputy Ruben “Bj.” Bejarano get called out on Christmas Eve. It’s cold, dark, and rainy–good indoor mayhem conditions.
They roll to a video store near the Century Sheriff’s Station. A Taiwanese woman named Li Mei Wu lies dead on the floor behind the counter.
The weather has kept rubberneckers to a minimum. Patrol deputies have rounded up eyewitnesses and sequestered them at the station. A sergeant lays things out for Bejarano and Perry.
Three black teenagers entered the store around closing time. They gave the victim some verbal grief, split, and returned a few minutes later. One of them shot Li Mei Wu with a rifle. They ran outside and disappeared on foot.
The victim is positioned faceup. There’s a live .22-caliber round and a .22 ejected casing behind the counter. A coroner’s assistant lifts the body, notes the exit wound, and points to a projectile tangled up in Li Mei Wu’s clothes. He says the shot probably tore out the woman’s aorta.
The assistant finds $300 in Li Mei Wu’s pockets. Perry and Bejarano note the untouched money and the full cash register and tentatively scratch robbery as a motive. The patrol sergeant tells them what eyeball witnesses told him: The perpetrators bopped to a coin laundry a few doors down before they bopped back and bopped Li Mei Wu.
The body is hustled off to the county morgue. Bj. diagrams the video store in his notebook, zooms down to the laundry, and quick-sketches the floor plan. A deputy from the crime lab arrives. He begins snapping crime-scene shots and dusting both the video store and the coin laundry.
Bob and Bj. secure the location and drive to Century Station. Two witnesses are waiting; three have signed preliminary statements, left their phone numbers, and gone home.