Текст книги "The Death Sculptor"

Автор книги: Chris (2) Carter

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

Fifty-Four

Garcia had just finished reading the files Alice had given him when Hunter pushed the office door open. The drive back from the Grub café to the PAB took him longer than he expected.

‘You’ve gotta read this,’ Garcia said, even before Hunter got to his desk.

‘What is it?’

‘Alfredo Ortega and Ken Sands’s prison files and visitation records.’

Hunter frowned and looked at Alice, who was pouring herself a cup of coffee.

‘The captain said get a move on; I got a move on,’ she said matter-of-factly.

‘You hacked into the California prison-system database?’

Alice gave him an almost imperceptible shrug.

‘What?’ Garcia chuckled at the question. ‘You said that these reports were one of the perks of having the DA, the Mayor of Los Angeles, and the Chief of Police on our side.’

Alice gave him a sideways look followed by a smile. ‘I lied. I’m sorry. I didn’t know how you would react to the fact that I broke protocol. Some cops are very strict in their ways.’

Garcia smiled back. ‘Not in this office.’

‘OK then, what have we got?’ Hunter asked Garcia.

Garcia flipped back a few pages on the first file. Alfredo Ortega went to prison eleven years before Ken Sands, who, as Alice told us yesterday, was named by Ortega as his next of kin. During those eleven years between Ortega going to prison and Sands getting arrested, Ken Sands visited Alfredo Ortega no less than thirty-three times.’

Hunter leaned back against the front edge of his desk. ‘Three times a year.’

‘Three times a year,’ Garcia repeated, nodding. ‘Because of the heinous nature of Ortega’s crime, he was what is called a “Condemned Grade B” prisoner, and that means that they may only receive non-contact visits.’

‘All “Condemned” visits take place in a secured booth and involve the prisoner being escorted in handcuffs,’ Alice explained.

‘Visits to death-row inmates are restricted to availability; usually one visit every three to five months,’ Garcia carried on. ‘They can last from one to two hours. We have Ortega’s entire visitation history here. Every time Sands visited him, he stayed for the maximum duration.’

‘OK, anyone else visited Ortega?’ Hunter asked.

‘When it got closer to Ortega’s execution date, then he got the usual visitors – reporters, members of capital-punishment abolishment groups, someone wanting to write a book about him, the prison priest . . . you know how it goes.’ Garcia flipped another page on the report. ‘But during his first eleven years of incarceration, Sands was his only visitor. Not a single other soul.’ Garcia closed the file and handed it to Hunter.

‘We could’ve guessed Sands would have visited Ortega,’ Hunter said, leafing through the pages. ‘From Alice’s research we knew they were like brothers, so that was expected. Is that all we got?’

‘Ortega’s visitation files simply serve to confirm that Sands kept in contact with him for all those years,’ Alice said from the corner of the room, sipping her coffee. ‘Visitations are supervised, but the conversations are private. They could’ve talked about anything. And no, that’s not all we got.’ She moved her gaze from Hunter to Garcia as if to say ‘show him’.

Garcia reached for the second file and flipped it open.

‘This is Ken Sands’s prison file,’ he explained. ‘And here is where it gets a lot more interesting.’

Fifty-Five

Garcia pulled a new A4 report sheet out of the second folder and handed it to Hunter.

‘Sands’s prison-visitation file is pretty unimpressive. He received four visits a year during the first six years of his jail sentence, all by the same person.’

Hunter checked the report. ‘His mother.’

‘That’s right. His father never visited him, but that isn’t surprising given what their relationship was like. During the remaining three and a half years of his prison term, Sands had no visitors whatsoever.’

‘Not a very popular guy, huh?’

‘Not really. His only real friend was Ortega, and he was in San Quentin.’

‘Cellmates?’ Hunter asked.

‘Yep, a hard-as-nails guy called Guri Krasniqi,’ Alice replied.

‘Albanian, kind of a big ringleader,’ Hunter said. ‘I’ve heard of him.’

‘That’s him, all right.’

Garcia chuckled. ‘Well, we have a better chance of stepping on unicorn shit on our way out of the office than getting an Albanian crime lord talking.’

Despite the joke, Hunter knew Garcia was right.

‘Sands’s life received a double hit during his sixth year of incarceration,’ Alice said. ‘First, Ortega’s sentence was carried out and he was executed after sixteen years on death row – lethal injection. Sixth months later, Sands’s mother passed away from a brain aneurysm. That’s why the visits stopped. He was allowed to go to her funeral under a heavy guard escort. There were only ten people there. He didn’t say a word to his father. And apparently he showed no emotions. Not a single tear.’

Hunter wasn’t surprised. Ken Sands was known as a tough guy, and to tough guys, pride is everything. He would never have given his father, or his guard escorts, the pleasure of seeing him crying or hurting, even if it was over his dead mother. If he cried, he did it on his own, back in his prison cell.

Garcia stood up and moved to the center of the room. ‘OK, all that’s very interesting, but not as interesting as this next part.’ He nodded at the report in his hands. ‘You do know that the state penitentiary, as a rehabilitation institution, provides its inmates with courses, apprenticeships and work experience when possible, right? They call it educational/vocational programming, and according to their mission statement, it’s designed to encourage productivity, inmate responsibility and self-improvement. It never quite works that way, though.’

‘OK.’ Hunter folded his arms.

‘Some inmates can also, by request, and if approved, take a correspondence course. Several US universities have joined this program, offering inmates a vast choice of higher-level degrees.’

‘Sands took one of those courses,’ Hunter deducted.

‘He took two, achieving two university degrees while inside.’

Hunter’s eyebrows lifted.

‘Sands obtained a degree in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences, part of the American University in Washington DC, and . . .’ Garcia stole a peek at Alice, holding the suspense, ‘a minor degree in Nursing and Patient Care from the University of Massachusetts. No practical experience with patients is needed to graduate, but the course would’ve allowed him to request medical study books. Books that weren’t available in the prison library.’

Hunter felt a tingle run through him.

‘Remember . . .’ Alice asked, ‘. . . when I said that Sands’s school grades were much better than one would expect from such a disruptive student?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He aced both courses. Honorable mention at the conclusion of his psychology degree, and outstanding grades throughout his nursing degree.’ She started fidgeting with the silver charms bracelet on her right wrist. ‘So if it’s medical knowledge we’re looking for, Sands sure as hell fits the bill.’ Alice sipped her coffee while holding Hunter’s stare. ‘But that still ain’t all.’

Hunter questioned Garcia with a look.

‘Spare time in prison . . .’ Garcia read on, returning to his desk, ‘. . . is very rarely spent at an inmates’ own leisure. They are all encouraged to do something useful with their time, like reading, painting or whatever. Several –’ Garcia made quotation marks in the air with his fingers – ‘“personality-enhancing activities” are organized by the California State Prison in Lancaster. Sands read a lot, checking books out of the library on a regular basis.’

‘The problem is,’ Alice joined in, ‘the library-book register isn’t online, and frankly that doesn’t surprise me. But it means that there’s no way I can get that list by hacking into the system because it doesn’t exist in electronic form. We’ll have to wait until Lancaster sends it to us.’

‘Sands also spent a lot of time in the gym,’ Garcia said, returning to the notes. ‘But when he wasn’t reading or studying for one of his long-distance courses, he was dabbling in his hobby. One he picked up inside.’

‘Which was?’ Hunter crossed to the water cooler and poured himself a cup.

‘Art.’

‘Yeah, but nothing to do with painting or drawing,’ Alice noted, her demeanor urging Hunter to take a guess.

‘Sculpting,’ he said.

Both Garcia and Alice nodded.

Hunter kept his excitement at bay. He understood California’s psychological approach to its rehabilitation institutions very well – encourage every inmate to guide their negative emotions into something creative, something constructive. Every prison in California has an extensive arts program, and they urge every inmate to take part. The truth is, the great majority does. If nothing else, it helps pass the time. The three most popular arts activities in Californian prisons are painting, drawing and sculpting. Many inmates take up all three.

‘And we still have nothing for a possible location on Sands?’ Hunter asked.

Alice shook her head. ‘It’s like he’s vanished since he left prison. No one has a clue where he is.’

‘There’s always someone who knows something,’ Hunter countered.

‘That’s for sure,’ Garcia said, clicking away at his computer. The printer next to his desk kicked into life. ‘This is the last list you asked for,’ Garcia said, retrieving the printout and handing it to Hunter. ‘All other inmates housed in the same facility block as Sands during his entire prison term. There are over four hundred names in that list, but I’ll save you the trouble. Have a look at the second page. Recognize anyone?’

Alice threw Garcia a surprised stare. ‘When you read through the list earlier you never told me that you recognized a name.’

Garcia smiled. ‘You never asked.’

Hunter flipped the page and his eyes sped through the names, stopping three quarters of the way down. ‘You are kidding.’

Fifty-Six

Thomas Lynch, better known as Tito, was a scumbag, small-time junkie, who got busted seven years ago after a grocery-store armed robbery went terribly wrong, producing two fatalities – the store owner and his wife.

Though neither masked men’s faces were ever uncovered during the whole robbery, when analyzing the CCTV footage, Hunter and Garcia had identified a slight, nervous head movement from one of the men. A tic brought on by stress. It took them three days to get to Tito.

Tito was just a petty criminal. That had been his first armed robbery. He was talked into it by the second man, Donnie Brusco, a lost-case crack-head, who’d already killed twice before.

It took Garcia less than an hour to get Tito talking. From the CCTV footage they knew Tito hadn’t pulled the trigger. In fact, he’d even tried to stop the second masked man from shooting the old couple. Garcia convinced Tito that if he cooperated, because it had been his first serious offence, they could plea with the DA for a reduced sentence. If Tito didn’t cooperate, he would certainly get death.

Tito talked, and Donnie Brusco was arrested and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He was now sitting in San Quentin’s death row, waiting on his execution date. Tito got ten years for armed robbery and accessory to murder. Hunter and Garcia kept their side of the bargain and pleaded with the DA, who recommended early parole. After serving six years of his ten-year sentence, Tito had been released under the supervision of the California Probation Department and a parole officer eleven months ago. He served his time in the California State Prison in Lancaster – Inmate Facility A. The same facility where Ken Sands had served his sentence.

Fifty-Seven

The fact that he was under the supervision of the California Probation Department meant that Tito wasn’t hard to find. His registered address was a small apartment in a public housing project in Bell Gardens, East LA. His probation officer told Hunter over the phone that Tito was as good as they got when it came to paroled inmates. He was always on time for their scheduled meetings, held a steady job at a warehouse, and he hadn’t missed a single weekly group session with the assigned psychologist.

Hunter and Garcia’s first stop was at Tito’s workplace, a privately owned warehouse in Cudahy, southeast Los Angeles. The owner, a short and very round Jewish man who never stopped smiling, told Hunter that Fridays were Tito’s day off, but he would be in tomorrow, if they cared to come back. Saturdays he worked the nightshift, from nine in the evening to five in the morning.

Tito’s housing project was a redbrick, square-box monstrosity just west of Bell Gardens Park. The building’s metal entrance doors clanged like prison gates behind Hunter and Garcia as they stepped into the dingy ground-floor hall. The small space smelled heavily of urine and stale sweat, and there wasn’t an inch of wall that wasn’t graffitied. There were no elevators, just a set of dirty, narrow stairs going up five floors. Tito’s apartment was number 311.

Graffiti followed Hunter and Garcia all the way up, as if the stairwell was a colorful psychedelic tunnel. As they reached the third floor, they were greeted by an even more sickening smell than the one at the entrance hall – something like sour milk, or old, dried-up vomit.

‘Damn,’ Garcia said, bringing a hand up to cover his nose. ‘This whole place stinks like a sewer.’

In front of them, a long and narrow corridor in semi-darkness. Halfway down it one of the few working tube florescent lights that ran along the ceiling was malfunctioning, disco dancing on and off.

‘All we need is some music,’ Garcia joked. ‘And a whole cleaning squad with disinfectants and air fresheners.’

The door to apartment 311 was directly under the flickering light. They could hear Spanish dance music coming from inside. Hunter knocked three times. Instinctively, both detectives positioned themselves to the left and right of the door. There was no reply. Hunter waited about fifteen seconds and knocked again, placing his right ear closer to the door. He could hear movement inside.

A couple of seconds later the door was opened by a five-foot-three Latin woman with dark hair and in her early-twenties. She was beyond skinny. Her olive-tanned skin clung to her bones as if they were the only things left to cling to. Her pupils were dilated to the size of coffee beans, and her stare was distant and dopey. She was naked except for an ill-fitting Chinese-style robe draped over her scrawny shoulders. She didn’t bother closing it.

‘Oh, sexy visitors,’ she said with a Spanish accent, before Hunter and Garcia could introduce themselves. ‘We like visitors. The more the merrier.’ She gave them a cigarette-stained smile and pulled the door fully open. ‘Come in and let’s partyyy.’ She blew Hunter a kiss and started swinging to the sound of the music.

‘What the fuck are you doing, bitch?’ Tito stepped out from the bedroom, wearing nothing but a pair of lacy purple panties. ‘Get back in here and . . .’ He choked mid-sentence when his eyes rested on the two new arrivals. ‘What the fuck?’ He tried covering himself up. Hunter and Garcia were already inside the apartment, both staring at Tito – a six-foot-one, two-hundred-and-ten-pound man with a pear-shaped body, wearing a pair of women’s panties.

‘That’s not right,’ Hunter whispered.

Garcia’s headshake was barely noticeable. ‘So, so wrong.’

‘We’ve got some more people for our party, Papi,’ the woman said, closing the door. ‘Let’s get naked and daaance.’ She let her robe drop to the floor and reached for the buttons on Hunter’s shirt. He gently moved her hands away.

‘No, unfortunately we’re not here for the party.’ He collected her robe from the floor and helped her back into it.

‘Ai, chingado. Stupid bitch, get back in the room,’ Tito said, walking over and pulling the woman by her arm before wrapping himself in a white bath towel.

‘Thank you for covering yourself, Tito,’ Garcia said. ‘I was starting to feel queasy.’

‘Tito, waz going on up in there?’ a new female voice called from the bedroom. This one sounded very young.

‘Nothing, girl. Shut the fuck up.’

Garcia kept a smile locked. ‘How many people have you got in there, Tito?’

‘None of your goddamn business, cop.’

The Latin woman seemed to sober up instantly. ‘They’re cops?’

‘What do you think, you dumb ho? They sure as hell ain’t pizza-delivery boys. Now get back in there and stay there.’ Tito pushed her into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. ‘What do you guys want? And why are you inside my apartment without a warrant?’

‘We don’t need a warrant,’ Garcia replied, looking around the room. ‘We were cordially invited inside by your . . . girlfriend.’

‘She ain’t my girlfriend . . .’

‘We need to talk, Tito,’ Hunter cut him short. ‘Right now.’

‘Screw that, cop. I don’t need to talk to you. I don’t need to do shit.’ He opened a drawer on the wooden sideboard next to him and quickly reached inside for something.

Fifty-Eight

In a blink of an eye, both detectives sprang into synchronized action, Hunter moving left and Garcia right, widening the distance between them, and drawing their guns at the same time. Both of their aims dead on Tito’s chest. They moved so fast that it made Tito freeze in place.

‘Easy there, lacy panties,’ Garcia called out. ‘Let me see your hands, nice and easy.’

‘Hey, hey,’ Tito jumped back and lifted his hands high up in the air. He was holding a stereo remote-control unit. ‘Holy shit, homes. What the hell is wrong with you all? I just wanted to turn down the music.’ Almost imperceptibly he jerked his chin towards his left shoulder. The same nervous tic that gave him away in the CCTV footage from his armed-robbery adventure seven years ago.

Hunter and Garcia thumbed their safeties back on and holstered their weapons.

‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Garcia replied. ‘You should know better than to make sudden moves like that in front of cops. You’re gonna get yourself killed.’

‘I’ve done OK so far.’

‘Tito, sit down,’ Hunter said, pulling a chair from the round wooden table that occupied the center of the small living room. Tito’s lounge/diner was dull and dark, decorated by someone with no taste and probably half-blind. The walls were a dirty shade of beige, or maybe they were white once. The laminated wooden floor was so scratched it looked like Tito wore ice-skates in the apartment. The place reeked of pot and booze.

Tito hesitated, trying to look hard.

‘Tito, sit down,’ Hunter repeated. His tone didn’t change, but his gaze demanded obedience.

Tito finally had a seat and slouched back on the chair like an angry schoolboy. His flabby bare torso was covered in tattoos, as were his arms. His shaved head displayed several scars. Hunter guessed he’d acquired most of them in prison.

‘This is bullshit, man,’ Tito said, nervously fidgeting with a yellow plastic lighter. ‘You guys have no right to be here. I’m as good as gold. You can ask my parole officer. He’ll vouch for me.’

‘Of course you are, Tito,’ Hunter said, staring directly at him and softly tapping the tip of his nose three times. ‘White gold, you mean.’

Tito pinched his nose then looked at his thumb and forefinger. A white powder residue clung to them. He quickly re-pinched his nose four or five times, snorting with each pinch to clear away what was left. ‘Oh man, that’s horseshit. We were just having a little fun in the room, you know what it is? Nothing heavy, man. Just something to liven us up. It’s my day off. We were just letting off some steam, you feel me?’

‘Relax, Tito. We’re not here to bust your balls, or spoil your little party,’ Garcia said, tilting his head in the bedroom’s direction. ‘So just secure that hard-on for five minutes. We really just want to talk.’

‘You must be tripping, homes. If I had a hard-on I’d tip this table over.’ He nodded, smiling. ‘That’s right, homes, I’ve got more game than a pheasant hunt.’

‘OK, whatever, King Ding-a-Ling,’ Hunter said, standing directly across the table from him. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions and then we’re out of here.’

‘Questions about what?’

‘About another inmate from CSP in Lancaster.’

‘Fuck, homes, do I look like information services?’

Garcia clapped his hands once, bringing Tito’s attention to him. ‘Pay attention, homes, ’cos I’m not saying this again. I said we’re not here to bust your balls, but I can easily change my mind. I’m sure your parole officer would love to hear about these little drug-fueled parties of yours. How would you like to spend the remaining three and a half years of your term back inside?’

‘More than that,’ Hunter said. ‘If you get busted for possession and possibly distribution of drugs, that’ll add at least a couple of years to your sentence.’

Tito bit his lip. He knew he was fighting a losing battle.

‘Look, Tito, we just need to know if you know where we can find a guy called Ken Sands.’

Tito’s eyes widened like a shark’s jaw. ‘You gotta be shitting me.’

‘I take it you know him then,’ Garcia said.

‘Yeah, I know him. Everybody in Facility A knew him. He was a bad mother, man. And I mean real bad, you dig? Did he escape?’

‘No, he was released six months ago,’ Hunter said. ‘He served his term.’

‘And he’s already got the cops after him again.’ Tito chuckled. ‘I’m not surprised.’

‘So you guys were friends inside?’

‘Screw that, man. I knew who he was, but I stayed the hell away from him. The guy had a temper like an atomic bomb. Hated the world. But he was smart. Every time the guards were around the guy acted like a pussycat. Real polite and respectful. He barely ever got into trouble in Lanc. And he was always surrounded by books. The guy read like a champion. Like a man with a mission, you get me? But he sort of had a reputation, and people just didn’t mess with him.’

‘Reputation?’ Garcia asked.

Tito’s head jerked again. ‘There was this guy who dissed him once. You know the type, big-muscle gorilla who thinks he’s king ass-kicker. Well, this guy dissed Ken right in front of everyone. Ken did nothing for a while. He just waited for the right time. He was patient like that, you know? Never rushed anything. Well, the right time came and he got to the guy in the showers. The guy never saw Ken coming.

‘No one saw it happening. So much time had passed between the initial dissing and the attack that it was hard to link the two things together, you know what I’m sayin’? Ken never got heat for it.’

Hunter and Garcia knew that stories like that were common inside prisons.

Tito shook his head and started fidgeting with the plastic lighter again. ‘That guy doesn’t ever forget, man. If he’s got a beef with you, you’re positively screwed in red, white and blue with fifty stars, you feel me? Because one day he’ll come for you.’ Tito coughed like a sick man. ‘I was in the yard on the day big gorilla-man dissed Ken. I saw the look in Ken’s eyes. A look that I’ll never forget. It made me scared, and I wasn’t even involved. It was like bottled hate, you get my meaning? Like he had a devil inside him, or something.

‘I haven’t heard his name since I left Lanc. And if I never hear it again, that’ll be too soon. That guy is bad news all the way, homey.’

‘Well, we need to find him.’

‘Why are you asking me for? You’re the detectives, aren’t you? So detect.’

‘That’s what we’re doing, genius.’ Garcia walked over to the open-plan kitchenette. The smell of pot mixed itself with that of rancid milk. The old-fashioned sink was piled high with dirty dishes. The counters awash in paper plates, takeout containers and empty beer cans. ‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ Garcia said, pulling the fridge door open. ‘Do you wanna beer?’

‘You’re offering me my own beer?’

‘I’m trying to be nice here, but you’re spoiling it, big time.’ Garcia slammed the fridge door shut and stepped on the pedal for the flip-top trashcan. As the lid came up, so did the overpowering smell of cannabis. ‘Damn!’ Garcia took a step back and screwed up his face. ‘Are those joint butts? There must be over a hundred of them.’

‘Hey, what the hell, man?’

‘Tito,’ Hunter sat down in front of him – a much less intimidating position, and he wanted Tito to relax a little. ‘We really need to find Sands, do you understand?’

‘How the hell would I know where he is? We weren’t even friends.’

‘But you were friends with others who might know a thing or two.’ Hunter observed Tito’s eye movement. He was searching his memory. Seconds later the eye movement stopped and his stare became fixed and a little distant. Hunter knew he had thought of someone specific.

‘I don’t know who to ask, man.’

‘Yes you do,’ Hunter hit back.

Tito and Hunter locked eyes for an instant.

‘Listen, man.’ Garcia circled the table to the other side. ‘The only thing we want is some information. We need to know where we can find Sands, and that’s very important. In return, you get to avoid a visit from your parole officer and a few of our friends in vice squad in the next hour. I’m sure they’d love to search these premises, especially that room with your two young friends.’

‘Ah, this is bullshit, homey.’

‘Well, it’s the only deal we’re selling.’

‘Shit.’ One more nervous tic followed by a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can find out, but I need some time.’

‘You’ve got until tomorrow.’

‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’

‘Does it look like we’re kidding?’ Garcia asked.

Tito hesitated.

Garcia reached for his cellphone.

‘OK, homey, I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Can you leave now?’

‘Not yet,’ Hunter said. ‘There’s someone else too.’

‘Oh, no way.’

‘Another inmate – Raul Escobedo. Heard of him?’

On their way to Tito’s house, Hunter had told Garcia all about his meeting with Detective Seb Stokes and his mention of Raul Escobedo.

‘Who?’ Tito’s eyes narrowed.

‘His name is Raul Escobedo,’ Hunter repeated. ‘He was a guest at Lancaster as well. A sex offender.’

‘A rapist?’ Tito cocked his head back.

‘That’s right.’

‘Nah, man, are you high or something? Are police donuts made of hash these days?’

‘I don’t like donuts.’

‘Me neither,’ Garcia added.

‘I was in Facility A, man, which houses real bad mothers and the Seg – the Segregation Unit. There’s no way in God’s creation they’d put a rapist with us, you feel me? Unless the police wanted him dead. He’d be gang-raped and dead within the hour.’

Tito wasn’t lying. That was the way prisons in California worked and Hunter knew it. Every inmate, no matter which crime they’d committed, hated rapists. In prison, rapists were viewed as something lower than scum – as cowards who didn’t have the guts to commit a real crime, and who weren’t good enough to get their own women without the use of force. Plus, every inmate in the country had a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife, a girlfriend – someone who could easily have become a rapist’s victim. Rapists were usually placed in a separate prison ward or block, away from all other inmates, otherwise they’d surely be given a dose of their own medicine, before being brutally murdered. That had been proven many times over.