Danny checked the clock: 8:53; the other officers should be arriving at 9:00. He decided to stick behind the lectern, got out his notepad and went over the assignments he’d laid out. A moment later, he heard a discreet throat-clearing and looked up.
A stocky blond man, thirty-fivish, was walking toward him. Danny remembered something Dudley Smith said: a Homicide Bureau “protégé” of his would be on the “team” to grease things and make sure the other men “fell in line.” He pasted on a smile and stuck out his hand; the man gave him a hard shake. “Mike Breuning. You’re Danny Upshaw?”
“Yes. Is it Sergeant?”
“I’m a sergeant, but call me Mike. Dudley sends regards and regrets–the station boss here says Gene Niles has to work the case with us. He was the catching officer, and the Bureau can’t spare any other men. C’est la vie, I always say.”
Danny winced, remembering his lies to Niles. “Who’s the fourth man?”
“One of your guys, Jack Shortell, a squadroom sergeant from the San Dimas Substation. Look, Upshaw, I’m sorry about Niles. I know he hates the Sheriff’s and he thinks the City end of the job should be shitcanned, but Dudley Side 87
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The said to tell you, ‘Remember, you’re the boss.’ Dudley likes you, by the way. He thinks you’re a comer.”
_His_ take on Smith was that he enjoyed hurting people. “That’s great.
Tell the Lieutenant thanks for me.”
“Call him Dudley, and thank him yourself–you guys are partners on that Commie thing now. Look, here’s the others.”
Danny looked. Gene Niles was walking to the front of the room, giving a tall man with wire-frame glasses a wide berth, like all Sheriff’s personnel were disease carriers. He sat down in the first row of chairs and got out a notepad and pen–no amenities, no acknowledgment of rank. The tall man came up and gave Breuning and Danny quick shakes. He said, “I’m Jack Shortell.”
He was at least fifty years old. Danny pointed to his name on the blackboard. “A pleasure, Sergeant.”
“All mine, Deputy. Your first big job?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve worked half a dozen, so don’t be too proud to yelp if you get stuck.”
“I won’t be.”
Breuning and Shortell sat down a string of chairs over from Niles; Danny pointed to a table in front of the blackboard–three stacks of LAPD/LASD paper on the Goines/Wiltsie/Lindenaur snuffs. Nothing speculative from his personal file; nothing on the lead of Felix Gordean; nothing on Duane Lindenaur as a former extortionist. The men got out cigarettes and matches and fired up; Danny put the lectern between him and them and grabbed his first command.
“Most of what we’ve got is in there, gentlemen. Autopsy reports, log sheets, my summary reports as catching officer on the first victim. LAPD didn’t see fit to forensic the apartment where the victims were killed, so there’s some potential leads blown. Of the officers working the two separate jobs, I’ve been the only one to turn up hard leads. I wrote out a separate chronology on what I got, and included carbons in with your official stuff. I’ll run through the key points for you now.”
Danny paused and looked straight at Gene Niles, who’d been staring hot pokers at him since he tweaked LAPD for fumbling the forensic ball. Niles would not move his eyes; Danny braced his legs into the lectern for some more frost.
“On the night of January one, I canvassed South Central Avenue, the vicinity where the car that was used to transport Martin Goines’ body was stolen from.
Eyewitnesses placed Goines with a tall, grayhaired, middle-aged man, and we know from the autopsy reports that the killer has O+ blood–typed from his semen.
Goines was killed by a heroin overjolt, Wiltsie and Lindenaur were poisoned by a secobarbital/strychnine compound. All three men were mutilated in the same manner–cuts from an implement known as a zoot stick, bites with the dentures the killer was wearing all over their abdominal areas. The dentures could not possibly be duplicates of human teeth. He could be wearing plastic teeth or duplicates of animal teeth or steel teeth–but not human ones.”