Three months after Lourdes Unson’s murder, McCartin is still waiting for fingerprint and lab results. Knolls is working as a patrol sergeant in Van Nuys, so, for now, McCartin is tracking the case alone.
One hair was found on Unson’s body and one on the mattress. If technicians can find a root, DNA can be obtained from the hair. But even when there is no root, sometimes the race of the suspect can be determined, which would help McCartin enormously. No body fluids were recovered after the sexual assault, but skin tissue was found under Unson’s nails, which is also being tested for DNA.
McCartin has been so busy on the Blake case he has had little time to devote to the Unson murder. He felt particularly guilty when he met one of her brothers, a monsignor in the Philippines, who recently visited Los Angeles to settle her estate. The man stopped by the squad room and told McCartin how many Irish priests he had enjoyed working with in Manila. Then he shook McCartin’s hand, stared into his eyes intently, and murmured, “I have faith in you.”
Two other cases from the past year have lost momentum. Dave Lambkin and Tim Marcia have been so busy investigating the murder of an elderly Valley couple, they have had little time for the Stephanie Gorman case. And Paul Coulter and Jerry Stephens, after months of intensively tracking the Susan Berman homicide, are discouraged because the more they learn about Nyle, the more certain they are that he is not the killer. After questioning many more people, they have a better understanding of Nyle. What motive he might have remains obscure and he simply does not seem to be the type who would kill a woman. His friends and acquaintances contended it was unlikely he would own or even have access to a gun. Although the handwriting analyst reported that it was “highly probable” that Nyle wrote the note to the Beverly Hills Police Department alerting them to the corpse, that finding was far from a conclusive identification. Coulter and Stephens still hope to interview Robert Durst, but a few weeks ago they were pulled off the Berman case to investigate the murder of a teenage girl whose body was dumped in Elysian Park.
Ito and his team have been working the Bakley homicide since early May, and they feel they have put together a comprehensive enough case to book Blake for murder. Greg Dohi recently presented the evidence to his superiors at the DA’s office; now, he sets up a meeting with the detectives on a Monday afternoon in mid-July.
Ito, Eguchi, Tyndall, Lieutenant Hartwell, McCartin, Bub, and Whelan meet with Dohi in the captain’s empty office. Dohi, who slips off his suit coat, is wearing suspenders with a blue and white diamond pattern, a blue button-down shirt, and a red tie. While some deputy district attorneys imperiously order cops about, Dohi always couches his requests in a respectful, soft-spoken manner that the detectives appreciate.
Dohi hands out a document he has put together: “The Case Against Robert Blake.” After they spend several minutes riffling through the pages, Dohi says, “I think we have a number of bases for prosecution.”
He points to the document, which lists the main points: “Scientific/Physical Evidence”; “Motive/State of Mind”; “Hitmen”; “Statements”; “Witnesses at the Scene.”
“Tell me if you think I’m wrong,” Dohi says, “but I feel we’re getting close.”
“I think you’re right,” Ito says.
Dohi begins by asking Ito about the scientific evidence. “What more can we get on the gun?”
“We’re not done yet,” Ito says. The World War II–era German pistol found in Caldwell’s car, he explains, suggests that the bodyguard may have provided Blake with the Walther P-38. They still plan to interview more friends and acquaintances of Caldwell and his late father.
“If we get a friend who says they saw him with several war relics, we’ve got a circumstantial case,” Tyndall says.
Ito is still waiting to learn whether the DNA in the vomit found on Blake’s car was his.
“How could he shoot her twice and no one hear?” Dohi says.
“If you fire in a car I don’t know what it sounds like,” Ito says.
“No stippling?” Dohi asks.
Ito shakes his head. “But if you take half the powder out there’d be less sound and less stippling.” He adds that he will soon visit the plant that manufactured the bullets.
“What do you think about the oil on the gun?” Dohi asks.
“He could have told her the car needed oil,” Tyndall says. “Then he opens the hood, pulls the gun out, and boom, boom.”
“He’d oil the gun after he shot it,” Ito says.
“Anyone see grease on his hands?” Dohi says.
“He had plenty of time to wipe them,” Ito says.
They then discuss a number of tapes Blake made—apparently for himself, as a cathartic exercise—in which he describes how his father abused him, declares he hates his mother, and says both parents robbed him of his childhood.
“After dating a psychologist for eight years,” Dohi says, “my interpretation is he wanted to save this little girl from the exploitation and abuse that he endured. And we’ve got a victim who leeched onto a guy with a hair-trigger temper.”
“If those North Hollywood detectives had your psychological insight,” Whalen jokes, “Blake would have copped right then and saved us all this hassle.”
“The baby’s real but the marriage is a farce,” Ito says.
“I think this will be the strongest part of our case—how much he hates her,” Dohi says. “Was it obvious to him that she was shot?”
Ito laughs. “Well, there was a bullet hole in her head.”
“But all he said that night to witnesses was that there was something wrong with her,” Dohi says.
“In my experience,” Ito says, “suspects avoid saying exactly what happened to avoid particulars.”
“You feel comfortable there’s no more potential hitmen out there?” Dohi asks.
Ito nods.
“You going to talk to Blake’s daughter?” Dohi asks.
“Isn’t that risky?” Ito asks. “What’ll we gain?”
“She’ll probably tell you to pound sand, but you never know until you try,” Dohi says.
Ito asks Dohi about the witnesses who have been paid by the tabloids.
“I don’t see it as a major problem in this case.”
Dohi then directs them to the heading “To Be Done,” which includes questioning Bakley’s probation officer in Arkansas, her oldest daughter, and several of her ex-husbands; setting up a second interview with Caldwell and one of Blake’s friends; rechecking Bakley’s correspondence for any more possible threats; and a number of other time-consuming tasks.
After the meeting, Ito is a bit deflated. He has no doubt the case is a strong one, and he is encouraged by Dohi’s certainty that a murder charge will eventually be filed. But he has spent two and a half months investigating this homicide—up to twelve hours a day, sometimes seven days a week—laboring under immense pressure and intense scrutiny. Now, realizing that he may have to spend more months reinterviewing witnesses, reexamining countless documents, retracing Blake’s steps during his vacation with Bakley, reviewing every step of the investigation, he is suddenly exhausted and disheartened and knows he will feel no relief until he drives out to Blake’s house and slaps the handcuffs on him.
One evening two weeks later, while Ito, Eguchi, and Tyndall are slogging through Dohi’s To Be Done list, McCartin returns to the office and spots a note on his desk with a message to call the LAPD’s latent print section. Although McCartin is weary at the end of a long day, he feels a rush of excitement because he figures a fingerprint technician has just identified a suspect in the Lourdes Unson murder. There are only two potential suspects, McCartin believes: the Armenian whose mother was a neighbor of the victim, and the tall black man who lived with a woman in the building. He has a distinctive name—Jammie Hendrix. But McCartin has not been able to do much work on the case lately, and every time he spots the murder book, which has been gathering dust on the edge of his desk, he feels a pang of conscience.
He immediately calls latent prints and hears the news he was hoping for: “We got a match on your case.”
“Jammie Hendrix?” McCartin says.
“How’d you know?” the technician asks.
McCartin is exultant. “He’s one of the guys we’re looking at.”
Hendrix left two fingerprints in the apartment: one inside the front door, and one on a bathroom wall. The print on the front door was lifted the first day. But the one on the bathroom wall is a testament to McCartin’s and Knolls’s thoroughness. Because they did not believe the fingerprint technician at the crime scene was sufficiently meticulous, they made arrangements for a new group of technicians to dust the apartment. That second team lifted the print on the bathroom wall.
The day after McCartin learns the good news, he calls Hendrix’s former girlfriend and casually asks whether she knows where he is living. McCartin explains that he has talked to everyone else loosely connected to the case and just wants to bring Hendrix to the station for a routine interview. Hendrix is living in Austin, Texas, she says, and working for a telephone company.
A security officer at the company informs McCartin that Hendrix was hired June 4 and was involved in a sexual harassment incident the next month. He received one hour of counseling, never showed up for work again, and was officially fired July 24. Unfortunately, the only address he gave his employer was a post office box.
From an Austin Police Department detective, McCartin learns that Hendrix recently pawned five pieces of women’s jewelry and a man’s ring. A detective e-mails McCartin pictures, which he shows to several of Unson’s coworkers. They recognize three of the pieces as Unson’s.
On a Monday afternoon, a week after McCartin learns of the fingerprint match, he presents the case to a deputy district attorney, who files murder charges against Hendrix and issues an arrest warrant.
The next day McCartin and his new partner, Tom Mathew, fly to Texas and search for Hendrix. They cannot find him, but they do interview two women in Austin who recently filed assault reports against him. The women tell similar stories. When they first met the thirty-one-year-old Hendrix, they were drawn to his looks, charm, and affectionate manner, but when they were not in the mood for sex, he turned violent. Hendrix smacked one woman so hard, she said, he knocked her off the bed and then stomped on her. The other woman told police Hendrix picked her up by the neck and choked her until she passed out—which, since Unson was strangled, will be powerful testimony in court.
After examining Greyhound bus records, the detectives discover that Hendrix left Austin on July 30 and arrived in Los Angeles in August. McCartin searches a computerized database service that includes extensive public records and turns up an address for Hendrix in Los Angeles. He then checks utility records and discovers that the woman who rents the apartment works for a nonprofit organization that aids homeless people. The detectives, now familiar with Hendrix’s approach, suspect that he has insinuated himself into this woman’s life.
McCartin and Mathew decide to find the woman in the hopes she can lead them to Hendrix. Mathew, who was born in India and lived there until he was thirteen, is McCartin’s best friend in the department. They have an easy camaraderie, but the other detectives—and some suspects—often haze him because Mathew is one of the few Indian cops in Southern California. In the squad room, the detectives call him Hadji after the elephant-riding character on the cartoon show Jonny Quest, and on the street suspects sometimes call him Snake Charmer, Gandhi, or 7-Eleven King. McCartin is one of the few detectives who uses his actual first name.
On a warm afternoon in mid-August, the detectives head to South San Julian Street, the central artery of downtown’s skid row. In many areas of Los Angeles the sidewalks are almost always empty, but here they are clotted with the homeless, who sleep in cardboard boxes, sit on plastic milk crates, read Bibles beneath tarpaulins, push shopping carts, and lug black plastic garbage bags filled with clothes. Enterprising winos trudge down the street selling cigarettes and dollar T-shirts. A few transvestites, juggling pocket mirrors, apply makeup. The gutters overflow with trash, and pigeons peck at the rubble. Boom boxes blare along both sides of the street and the smell of ripe garbage, cheap wine, and marijuana drifts along the sidewalk. A few daring denizens fire up crack pipes with plastic lighters. In the distance, the skyscrapers of Bunker Hill tower above skid row, shimmering in the August heat.
The detectives stop by the homeless center where the woman they are looking for works. She is out for a few hours, so they leave a message for her with a clerk. They then show him a picture of Hendrix, whom he immediately recognizes. Hendrix is staying at a nearby hotel, he says.
The detectives walk through the dingy lobby, which smells of Lysol, past a few toothless residents staring vacantly at a small television. The manager confirms that Hendrix checked in for a few nights, but says he recently moved to another nearby hotel.
“We’re just one step behind this fucker,” Mathew mutters.
They stop by a few more dilapidated flophouses and end up at the Los Angeles Mission. When they find no record of Hendrix there, Mathew says, “Let’s just walk the streets. Maybe we’ll run into him.”
There is a pocket park across from the mission and they decide to check it out. The park, enclosed by an eight-foot metal fence, teems with people dozing on the grass, sprawling on benches, or playing cards, chess, or dominoes on the cement tables beneath the jacarandas and spindly palms.
McCartin and Mathew, in their dark suits, white shirts, and ties, immediately draw suspicious stares and hostile glances as they cut through the park. When they reach the center, McCartin whispers, “Tom, I think it’s him,” and motions toward a black man with a small gold hoop earring standing beside a group of domino players and watching the game.
“I can’t see his face too good,” Mathew says. “He’s looking down.”
When the man briefly looks up, Mathew says, “That’s him, man. Let’s go.”
As McCartin and Mathew casually stroll toward Hendrix, people in the park look up in alarm and scurry out onto the street. When the detectives reach the table, the players freeze. The detectives know they can cuff Hendrix, lock him up, and book him for murder. But they would much rather persuade him to ride with them to the station voluntarily and interview him first. Although his fingerprints were found in Unson’s apartment, he might be savvy enough to devise an innocuous explanation. If, however, Hendrix denies ever visiting Unson, the case will be infinitely stronger.
They hope to immediately lower the tension level and convince Hendrix that he has nothing to fear. Just in case, Mathew has a hand in his pocket, on his Mace canister.
“Hey Jammie, where the fuck you been?” asks Mathew, who picked up a ghetto inflection during the years he spent as a gang cop in South-Central. “We been lookin’ everywhere for you.”
Hendrix shrugs. Unlike many of those in the park, he is cleanshaven and well groomed. Tall and muscular, he wears black and red Air Jordan basketball shoes with no laces, baggy beige shorts, and a T-shirt with a large DARE insignia, which the detectives find amusing, because DARE is an antidrug program created by the LAPD—Drug Abuse Resistance Education.
McCartin guides Hendrix away from the domino players, mentions the Unson murder, and asks Hendrix to ride with them back to the station for a routine interview.
Hendrix looks down at the detectives through his sunglasses, which are perched at the end of his nose, and asks sullenly, “What for?”
“You’re the last witness we need to contact,” McCartin says. He then adds reassuringly, “You’ll be back before the next domino game.”
“Why can’t we do it here?” Hendrix asks.
“It’s too noisy, too many people,” McCartin says. “Come to our office. It’s more comfortable.”
Mathew puts his hand on Hendrix’s shoulder and says, “Hey man, we’re not trying to fuck with you. Ain’t no big thing. If you saw some shit, you can tell us. If not, fuck it, you’re gone.”
“You’re free to go whenever you want,” McCartin adds. “We just got to get this done. It won’t take more than a half hour.”
Finally, Hendrix nods and follows them back to their car.
In the interview room, he keeps his sunglasses on and stares at the detectives, fists clenched. McCartin attempts to put him at ease so he can lure him into a trap.
“You’re here as a witness,” McCartin says. “You’re free to go. You’re not under arrest, obviously. We brought you over to talk to you, like we said. Hopefully no longer than a half hour and we’ll bring you back. You aware of that?”
“I understan’,” Hendrix says.
Then McCartin, with the bonhomie of a real estate agent showing off a property to a prospective buyer, says cheerily, “I know you have some questions, which is fine. As soon as we’re done, you can shoot away and ask as many questions as you want and we’ll see if we can answer them for you.”
McCartin then spends a few minutes questioning Hendrix about his relationship with the woman he lived with in the Los Feliz apartment building. Hendrix stares at him, arms crossed, with an arrogant expression, and says he cannot recall when he moved out and headed east on the Greyhound.
“Did you ever hear about this murder?” McCartin asks. “She’s a little Filipino woman. Her name is Lourdes Unson. Were you there when it occurred?”
Hendrix considers the questions for a few seconds. “I don’t know when it occurred,” he says defensively. He explains that his ex-girlfriend told him about the murder over the phone, while he was living in Texas.
“Did you know the woman?” McCartin asks.
“I didn’t know her,” he says flatly.
“Did you ever wave to her or say hi to her or any of that? Or were you friendly with her in any way?”
“No,” Hendrix says. “I wouldn’t say I was friendly with her, I’d seen her here and there, going to and fro.”
McCartin bides his time with more background queries and then, finally, asks, “Did you ever go in her apartment?”
Hendrix pauses for a moment. “Umm …” McCartin and Mathew stare at him poker-faced, trying not to reveal how anxious they are about his response. He stares at his hands and says, “One time. I was going downstairs to the laundry and she was going upstairs and she had some bags. I carried them to her apartment for her.”
While Hendrix is still looking down, McCartin and Mathew exchange a quick glance and roll their eyes in frustration. Hendrix, they figure, knows the system, knows he left prints in the apartment, and is protecting himself.
“Where did you go in the apartment?” McCartin asks.
Hendrix leans back and folds his hands on his lap. “The kitchen area.”
“Did you ever go in there and socialize with her and hang out with her?” McCartin asks.
“Naw,” Hendrix says dismissively. “I set the bags in there. She offered me a couple of dollars for taking her bags and I said I didn’t want the couple of dollars. And that was pretty much it.”
McCartin backs off and asks a few general questions about Unson so Hendrix will not know that the detectives are keying on what rooms he entered.
“Where did you put the groceries when you got into the house?” McCartin asks.
“I put them on the counter, by the kitchen.”
McCartin pauses for a few seconds and decides to ask the critical question, the question that could determine the outcome of the Lourdes Unson murder investigation and the fate of Jammie Hendrix. “Did you go in any other part of the house after that?” he asks matter-of-factly. “Did you see what the rest of the house looked like, by chance?”
Hendrix studies McCartin for a moment. “No,” he says softly.
“Did you go anywhere else in the apartment?”
“I went into the living room,” Hendrix says. “I went over by the kitchen area. And between the kitchen area there’s a counter there. I put the bag up on the counter.… And that’s it.”
McCartin now poses a few quick questions so Hendrix will not have a chance to construct an alibi. “Did you go in the bedroom for any reason?”
“No.”
“Did you go in the bathroom for any reason?”
“No.”
McCartin has the key denial, but he continues peppering Hendrix with questions to prevent him from hedging. “Go through any of the drawers or closets for any reason?”
“No.”
“Move stuff or lift stuff?”
“No.”
“Did you open the door or did she open the door?”
Hendrix considers the question for a moment and says, “I can’t remember.…”
“Okay, you were never in any other rooms of the house?”
“No,” Hendrix says weakly.
“No?” McCartin asks again.
“It’s like what I said. And that’s it.…”
“After that time you helped her with the packages, you ever been in her apartment again?”
“No.”
While the detectives ask him about his stay at the ex-girlfriend’s Los Feliz apartment, why he left, and when he moved to Texas, Hendrix studies their cards on the table. He asks who is McCartin and who is Mathew.
“I’m Tom—that’s a good Indian name,” Mathew says sarcastically.
Hendrix smiles wanly.
McCartin asks Hendrix if he wants something to drink, but he shakes his head.
“Let me get a drink,” McCartin says. He and Mathew head for their desks, but not for a drink. They grab DNA swabs and return to the interview room.
“One more thing,” McCartin says, dropping the swabs on the table. “You ever hear of DNA?”
Hendrix slips off his sunglasses, drops his palms on the table, and says, “Yes.”
“We got all sorts of DNA tests going on,” McCartin says. “What we want to do is take a swab of your throat and the inside of your mouth so we can rule out that you were ever in the house or had anything to do with her in any way. That make sense?”
Hendrix abruptly sits up and grabs the side of the table. “That makes sense,” he says uneasily. “I understand what you’re saying.”
McCartin is still amiable, because he wants Hendrix’s cooperation. He knows he can obtain a court order for the DNA, but it would be easier if Hendrix provided the sample voluntarily. McCartin explains the complexities of DNA, then asks, “Am I getting clear to you?”
“I’m listening …” Hendrix responds warily. “I guess one of my questions is … am I under arrest?” His voice is tinged with fear.
After McCartin takes a deep breath and slowly exhales, his manner changes. He casts a cold, disdainful glance at Hendrix. “You are under arrest.”
Hendrix stares at McCartin, a look of pure hatred. His body tenses.
Mathew believes Hendrix is going to attack McCartin. The detectives’ guns are in the squad room, so Mathew stands up, prepared to restrain him.
After McCartin reads Hendrix his constitutional rights, he says, “Do you want to discuss it further, what happened out there that day?”
“Do you want to tell your side of the story?” Mathew adds.
“My side of the story?” Hendrix asks uneasily.
“DNA does not lie,” McCartin says. “We have a lot of information. Do you want to keep going with it or end it right here?”
“What do you mean go on with it?”
“You’re acting stupid,” McCartin snaps. “It’s a simple answer. I read you your rights. Now the question is: do you want to continue talking with us about this case? Tell us your side of what occurred with this poor woman?”
“I know one thing for certain,” Hendrix says with resignation. “I won’t be leaving today.”
McCartin tells him about the evidence they have amassed—the fingerprints lifted at the apartment and Unson’s jewelry pawned in Austin.
“I’ve murdered no one,” he says without conviction.
“You want to take a lie detector test?” McCartin asks.
Hendrix refuses. “I’ll tell you this. I do know an important thing. And the important thing is I’m under arrest.”
McCartin stares at him contemptuously. “Yes, you are.”
“Then counsel’s in order,” Hendrix says.
“So you want a lawyer now. That’s what you’re telling us?”
“Yes.”
Now that McCartin knows the interview is over, he feels immense satisfaction. He thinks to himself: This guy’s a predator who preys on the vulnerable. He raped and killed one woman and attacked a few others. I’m glad I got this piece of shit off the street and nipped his act in the bud. McCartin believes he has saved other lives. Also, he has grown fond of Unson’s brothers and sisters and is pleased he will be able to tell them that he has caught their sister’s killer and avenged her murder. Tracking down Jammie Hendrix, putting together the case against him, and locking him up is why McCartin became a homicide detective.
He jumps to his feet and commands, “Turn around and face the wall! Now you’re in our custody. You’ll do what you’re told.”
“Whose custody am I going to be under?” Hendrix asks.
“You’re in the custody of the Los Angeles Police Department. You’re going to jail for murder.”