Huntington Park rolls a unit over. Patrolmen find the body of Joseph Romero, male Latin, DOB 5/1 1/69. He’s dead behind the wheel of his car, ripped through the torso by five AK-47 rounds.
Spent shells rest near the curb. One round blew straight through Romero and out the driver’s-side door.
Sheriff’s Homicide is alerted. Lieutenant Peavy, Deputy Bob Carr, and Sergeant Stu Reed make the scene.
Carr and Reed are short, heavyset, and fiftyish. They joined the department back in the ‘6os. Reed’s an expert wood-carver; Carr sports the world’s coolest handlebar mustache. Both men talk as slow and flat as tombstones.
A crowd forms. Huntington Park cops seal the people out with yellow perimeter tape. Coroner’s assistants remove the body; a sheriff’s tow truck hauls Romero’s car off to the crime lab.
Reed and Carr eyeball the scene. They hit on a hypothesis fast.
Romero was sitting in the car by himself. He was parked six doors down from his pad. He was waiting for somebody.
The passenger-side window was down. “Somebody” walked up, stuck the gun in, and vaporized him.
The crime vibes “gang vengeance” or “dope intrigue,” or somebody flicking somebody’s girlfriend or sister. The cops have got some wimesses on ice–just dying to offer their interpretations.
Reed and Carr interview them at the H.P. station. Three solidcitizen types tell similar stories: shots fired and two male Latins running off in divergent directions. One man was short; one man was tall–their descriptions match straight down the line. Reed and Carr go over their statements from every conceivable angle.
It’s an exercise in spatial logic and a master’s course in the plumbing of subjective viewpoints. It’s the culling of minutiae as an art form–and Carr and Reed are brilliant cullers.
It’s starting to look like another neighborhood crime. The shooter and his accomplice fled on foot and were probably safe at home within minutes.
Reed and Carr interview a Mexican kid named Paulino. Paulino denies being a gang member and states that he hasn’t done dope since he got out of rehab. He says he saw the tall male Latin fifteen minutes after the shooting. The guy was waving to a babe leaning out a window in that beige apartment house on Salt Lake Avenue.
A fifth witness independently corroborates the story. He saw the tall man running toward that same building moments after the shooting.
It’s coming together. Reed and Carr decide to wait and not hit the building tonight–too many things could go wrong. They agree: Let’s check with the HPPD Gang Squad when they come on duty. We’ll find out who lives in that building and move accordingly.
Three non-eyewitnesses remain: Joseph Romero’s uncle, aunt, and brother. Carr and Reed talk to them gently, and phrase all intimate questions in a deferential tone. The family responds. They say Joe was a nice kid trying to put dope and gang life behind him. They supply names: Joe was tight with a dozen male Latins in the neighborhood.
Reed and Carr do not mention the beige apartment house. They do not know who the family knows and might feel compelled to protect.
The family leaves. Reed and Carr drive home to get a few hours’ sleep. They look old and cumulatively exhausted–like they never had a chance to get caught up while murders accumulate.
The holidays are over. Bob Perry and Jacque Franco are bulishitting at their desks.
Bob says he just notched a score on the Li Mei Wu case. The kids arrested turn out to be the punks who robbed the video store a month before the murder. The suspects are 13, 13, and 16.
Stu Reed sidles by. Jacque asks him how the Romero job is going. Stu says they’ve got one shooter ID’d but can’t find him. J acque says, “Don’t worry–he’ll come back to the neighborhood to brag.”
Gil Carrillo sits down. He straightens a mimeographed sheet of paper he keeps pressed to his desk blotter.
“The Homicide Investigator” jumps out in bold black print. A single paragraph is inscribed below it:
“No greater honor will ever be bestowed on an officer or a more profound duty imposed on him than when he is entrusted with the investigation of the death of a human being. It is his duty to find the facts, regardless of color or creed, without prejudice, and to let no power on earth deter him from presenting these facts to the court without regard to personality.”