One Step Ahead

Tipped Off

November 4th, 2014 :

      As Detective Whitman hung her purse and jacket on the coatrack in the corner of her office , her phone rang. Checking her caller ID , she saw that the call was from her supervisor, Garrett Sanger, and immediately answered. "Hello, Garrett. How are you enjoying your trip?"

      "It's actually almost over, Lena. We should be back in LA in two or three hours, then I figure I'll sleep most of tomorrow, and be back in first thing Thursday."

      "You're not talking to me while you're driving, are you?" she teased him.

      "Hardly. No, Adam's taking this last leg, and Nora's crashed out in the back seat, so I figured I'd check in. Is there anything interesting I should know about?'

      "Actually, there is. I'm pretty sure we have a serial killer running the streets right now. As near as I've been able to determine so far, he's killed at least five people, probably more."

      She pulled the phone away from her ear as he exploded, "Excuse the hell out of me? Back up and start at the beginning, Detective. And don't leave anything out."

      She sat down, took a gulp of her coffee, and proceeded to outline the story for Sanger, beginning with the call from Briar Malveaux, and her confrontation with Weintraub. She then told him about the call from Ashley Purdy regarding his discovery of the journal, and the other items that she had subsequently recovered, and how she had been able to make the connections between the unsolved cases.

      "So the Baxter woman's cousin identified her necklace, and earrings that may belong to Grayfox." he mused. "Any ideas on who the other things might belong to?"

      "Not yet, but I've got Ignacio Suarez coming in today to have a look, to see if he can identify any of it as Alma's. And some of this stuff clearly belonged to a man, or men. The rings are too big for just about any woman to wear, and I doubt they go much for cufflinks, either. So far, the only man on the list is Leonard Graff, and I'm not sure who we'd hit up for an ID on anything for him."

      "Talk to Lew Bremerton in Vice." Sanger told her. "Odds are he'd know if any of Lenny's girls are still in the area. You might even be able to get him to talk to them for you. The man is a straight-up genius at getting the street girls to talk to him, it's almost like they see him more like a priest or something than as a cop."

      "I guess that would make his job easier," she replied. "Must be nice. We could get a lot more done if people were that willing to talk to us."

      "True, but it does sort of make sense. Most of the people we deal with have either just lost someone they care about, they're afraid of being accused of something they didn't do, or they actually did it, and they're hoping like hell that we don't figure it out. None of those things are real conducive to a 'free and open dialogue', as Nora's boss apparently likes to talk about in their staff meetings."

      "Oh, yeah, I made a copy of the journal and put it in your desk, so you can start on it as soon as you come in. I figured that would be a lot easier than having to constantly check it in and out of evidence when we want to check on something. Also, it'll save wear and tear on the book itself, in case we need a handwriting comparison or something later."

      "Good call!" he said approvingly. "But let's just keep that between the two of us right now, until I can get in and look at it myself. We don't need everybody jumping in and muddying the waters until we can figure out how many cases are actually linked."

      "That was my plan. If you're here, you can keep Irv from trying to horn in and take over. That would probably screw up any progress I might have... Oh, crap! This I don't need today!"