Chapter Twenty-four
Hollenbeck Station…Monday, Feb 23, 2009…10:00pm
The look on Rebecca Tran's face was pure elation! She was so sure that her slick piece of police work would land her in tight with her CO, that she was actually scribbling Josh Stanford's name all over her note pad like a High School freshman crushing on her homeroom teacher. It was somewhere between cute and pathetic. Cute because, well, she was very cute! It was pathetic because her CO, Lt. Oscar Celaya is rarely impressed; and almost never enough to actually inspire action. I suspected young Rebecca's bubble was about to be burst.
Oscar's office door opened abruptly, swinging hard enough to bounce off the wall and rattle the windows. Startled, Becca jumped out of her chair and walked around her desk when she saw Iggie and the lieutenant heading her way. Her partner was grinning like he'd just run over a small child. But the LT looked as if he were about to eat one! This wasn't a good sign and Becca suddenly felt bile rising from her stomach, burning her esophagus.
"Is this what you call smart police work Detective Tran," roared Lt. Celaya angrily?
"Um, what do you mean sir," she answered meekly, retreating half a step and crossing her arms defensively. Truth be told she was she was fighting the urge to bolt. More bile reached her throat and burned uncomfortably, causing her voice to crack a bit. She tried to look cool, calm and collected but was obviously failing. Iggie smirked like a true tattletale and she could see that the lieutenant wasn't buying her little Miss innocent act.
"What do I mean? Are you serious Tran? Look sunshine, if you expect to still have that gold shield on your belt when you leave here tonight I suggest you drop the cute stuff. Don't you know cute is wasted on me? I'm ten years past my prime, hopelessly married, and a card carrying member of the 'he-man woman hater's club', you got it," Oscar ranted! He always was pretty entertaining when he ranted and raved. To be honest I kind of missed that.
"Yes sir, I didn't mean anything, I'm just confused about what's the issue here," Becca replied finding her voice? She scooted back around her desk to put a physical barrier between her and her psycho boss. She didn't know this guy but had heard some terrible stories about his temper.
"The issue Rebecca is that you removed a potentially critical piece of evidence from an active crime scene without contacting CSI. That is a clear violation of protocol detective, you should have known better," Officer Ingram offered condescendingly.
"Put a sock in it Iggie, I don't need any help scolding the rookie," quipped Lt. Celaya.
"And just so we're clear, you're walking on the same rice paper as your partner here, you got that!"
"Right, sorry LT, my bad," Iggie stammered apologetically. He stepped back a couple of feet, crossed his arms and stared down at his shoes, waiting for Oscar's eyes to look Becca's way again.
"Anyway, like laughing boy here said, you blew it Tran. You contaminated a crime scene, a Cardinal sin in police work. Fortunately for you it's also a common sin among rookies like you, so the blame belongs to Iggie, he should have known better," Oscar said, transferring the heat from student to teacher.
"Wait just a min…" Iggie started.
"I told you to can it Detective Ingram, that means shut up and listen," Oscar said, cutting Iggie off in mid sentence.
"Sir, it's not all his fault, I'd already started to…" Becca began. Oscar raised his hand like a beat cop stopping traffic at a busy intersection.
"Spare me Tran. I appreciate your loyalty to a guy you barely know, but the fact is this is the second time in 24 hours that the BOTH of you have fouled up on this investigation," Oscar said, scolding his new detective as he took a seat on the corner of her desk. He removed his glasses and slowly rubbed his tired eyes. After a moment he sighed and put his glasses back on his face.
"Ah, I'm getting too old for this job'" he said looking down at Becca who had seated herself while he was massaging his temples. He studied her young face for a few seconds and waited for her to make eye contact. When she did they considered one another without words, sizing each other up so to speak. Finally Oscar broke the silence.
"You have a lot of potential Tran, I mean that, you wouldn't be here if I didn't think so," Oscar said sincerely. Becca remained silent, stunned by the sudden change in the lieutenant's demeanor? She allowed herself to relax enough to reply without squeaking.
"Thank you sir," she replied smiling weakly, secretly scolding herself for smiling!
"Look, I don't believe in throwing the baby out with the bath water. This is your first case with us. And let's face it. Iggie isn't exactly teacher of the year, are you professor," Oscar said, turning to glare at her partner? Poor Iggie seemed to actually shrink about an inch under the heat of that stare.
"No excuses sir," Iggie replied without making eye contact. Every good Marine knows there is only one way to answer a question like that from a commanding officer. No excuses sir. Oscar let him off the hook, returning his attention to Becca.
"So heres your next move young Tran. I want you to take this flash drive upstairs to IT and have those nerds see what’s on it. I'll clue you in right now there's nothing except the vic's homework and personal shit," directed Lt. Celaya.
"What makes you think that," Becca asked?
"It's a hunch Tran, a hunch, you never heard that term before? Forget it! Look, because I'm a 35 year veteran in this town it's a goddamn good hunch," Oscar answered tiredly.
"Yes but…" Becca started.
"No buts Tran! This isn't rocket science. You have got to know your subjects. The principle character in this murder scene is Dr. Looney, work-a-holic egghead professor. Next is Whitey Roode, well known low-life. After that comes whoever killed the poor slob that Doctor Feel-good may or may not have been boinking. Last and definitely least is our victim, Ernie Namura. Forget him, he's insignificant, a statistic only," Oscar said, accentuating each point by raising a finger one at a time. Rebecca perked up scooting closer her chair closer to the desk. Even Iggie had looked up from his shoes and moved closer to the conversation.
"But I thought you liked Dr. Looney for this murder? Iggie thought so too?"
"Well you're both wrong. I like Dr. Looney for being the key to solving this puzzle. Actually, I was hoping that Whitey Roode would be the perp. But unfortunately it's not adding up that way. As big an asshole as Whitey is, he's no murderer. No sir, whoever did this thing does it for a living. It's too neat. And that's how I know that your flash drive is useless. The murderer left that for you to find. Well, it was left for you or Whitey, depending on who got there first," Oscar explained, standing up to stretch.
"Oh Lordy, I'm way too old for this," Oscar whined, arching his back.
"If Whitey and Dr. Looney are clear where does that leave us," asked Becca?
"It means that our unknown subject is playing with us. He planted that stick under the soda machine knowing we'd find it easy enough. Then, he left us to play grab ass with Whitey Roode while we deciphered a device containing bupkis. The real target is Judy Looney. She took whatever was worth finding with her when she left the lab," Iggie said joining the brainstorm.
"Give that man a prize," Oscar replied sarcastically.
"Now here's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, where is Dr. Looney now," Oscar asked looking down at Becca? Suddenly she was afraid, not for herself, she was afraid for Judy Looney!
Following leads can take you into the belly of the beast...PI Whitey Roode...
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
("Well I bet you wish you could cut me down with those angry eyes…")…Loggins & Messina…1972
Chapter Twenty-three
UCLA, Molecular Sciences Building…Monday, Feb 23, 2009…9:30pm
When I left Judy's place she and Ronnie were packing for a well timed vacation. It was a no brainer that Hassan had tailed me to her apartment and I was equally certain that if we split up he would follow me over her. What I wasn't sure of was whether or not he worked alone? My gut said that he did and so far my old gas factory has kept out of more jambs then I cared to remember. I had given Judy specific instructions as to who to look up once they got to Vegas. My old partner Wally Price was a Lieutenant now with the LVPD working homicide. I hoped that he was as good at preventing one as he was at solving one. Wally would put her in touch with someone at UNLV which, believe it or not, has an excellent computer sciences department, who'd have thunk it? In any event the two of them would be in good hands with my old friend. I've trusted the Chief with my life on more than one occasion, both on the job and in the Nam.
Me, Wally Price and Bob Ingram go way back. We served together in Southeast Asia from late 1967 to the summer of 1969. Iggie and I were one of the lucky few to be drafted into the USMC. We first met each other at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, right after basic. Wally on the other hand had been in the service 5 years already, a Navy corpsman, by the time we met up with him. The three of us became fast friends while stationed at the US combat base in Khe Sanh near the Laotian border in the Quảng Trị Province, South Vietnam, Republic of. Unfortunately we arrived in country at exactly the wrong time in history! Because not two months later the whole goddamn North Vietnamese Army and their rat bastard lackeys, the Viet Cong decided to take one big ass swing at Uncle Sam, striking simultaneously from the DMZ all the way down to Saigon. It was a pretty bold move but a costly one. Historians speculate the real objective was to shock US citizens back home and incite them to insist we get the hell out there and bring the troops home. They were right I think; it worked! What happened over the next several weeks as we fought off the TET offensive will stay buried within ourselves forever, along with all those ghosts we left back there. Such a beautiful country and culture, what a waste! That's all I want to say about that.
Anyway, I don't want to traipse down memory lane anymore, so, back to the business at hand. Whatever was on that nano nano chip that Judy was so excited about was likely to get us killed unless I could throw Hassan and his Russian bosses off the scent for a while. I needed a diversion, possibly something from this lab? This is where I should logically find something useful. In any event I needed to buy Judy time to extract whatever was on that micro chip; I needed to keep Hassan's focus on me. He has to think that I'm onto something here in California. If I fail, Judy and Ronnie are goners. For that matter, so am I, but Hassan will kill me last and he'll kill me slow just for shits and giggles.
I parked my beat up jalopy of a car (Ronnie refers to it as the rat-mobile) around the corner, wedged between a Hummer on one side and one of those giant off-road pick-up trucks that have probably never actually been off-road on the other. Basically out of sight. I was about to get out and walk to the building when I spotted Iggie's new partner, Rebecca Tran. She strolled past my car without noticing me. Rookie mistake, she should have sensed my presence! Observe everything; be aware of your surroundings at all times, that's the detective's mantra. I quickly lay down across the front seats anticipating Iggie to be right behind her. If I was lucky his eyes would be on her shapely little ass and he wouldn't notice my old heap, which by the way he has ridden in at least a hundred times! I held my breath for a ten count and sure enough here he came. I heard him huff and puff as he raced to catch up to Becca.
"Wait up rookie," he bellowed!
"The Lieutenant's on the phone, he wants to talk to you," he said, sailing right past me.
Whew, I must have stepped over every crack in the sidewalk this week because this was my lucky day! Ninety-nine times out of a hundred Iggie would have spotted me. But I could tell he was distracted by more than Rebecca's fine little backside, he was pissed! I could hear it in his voice and could picture the small blue vein at his right temple popping out like it always did when he blew a gasket. I had to stifle a laugh. I could hear the two of them talking faintly and then I heard two distinct door slams. Good, they were leaving. I waited a good fifteen minutes before sitting up and looking around. When I felt the coast was clear I got out of the car and slowly walked to the building. No rushing, I wanted to make sure Hassan was convinced that I felt unobserved and safe. Secretly I hoped he was not using binoculars because I was nervously sweating like a pig!
The doors were unlocked, and even though part of the building was still taped off there was a fair amount of the normal activity that one would expect on a busy campus. I dodged a student exiting with her nose inside a textbook and a cell phone plugged into her ear, she never even saw me, kids! As the door closed behind me I saw the crime scene down the hall, stage right and turned to look in the opposite direction, stage left, checking for potential witnesses to my inevitable breaking and entering misdemeanor. The coast was clear and I headed down the hall to the SEM Lab. I stopped short after about five steps and listened intently. I thought I heard more than my penny loafers echoing off the high ceiling? There was no sound other than my breathing and an occasional door slam further down the hall behind me. I shook it off but still had the feeling of being watched, Hassan maybe? I didn't think so; he was more direct than that. If he were around he'd want me to know it. I continued on to the lab and stopped at the barrier tape, paused then went under it and into room 1187, bypassing the gory display on the floor. Dead is dead, if you've seen one bloody outline you've seen them all.
The room was dark and I pulled out my penlight to help me navigate. Sneaking around always charges me up, makes me feel like I'm getting away with something, like an eight-year old. Frankly I had no idea what I was looking for, or for that matter what would be worth looking for. Everything in this room was over my head except the furniture and even some of that was sort of high tech, like the weird contraption at what must have been Ernie Namura's desk? I guess could be a chair of some kind, but I had no idea how you were supposed to sit in it? Actually I think it's Scandinavian because I'm pretty sure I saw on in the IKEA circular that I receive monthly like clock work. So few trees, so much spam! You'd think they would have figured out by now that most men only look at the two catalogs religiously, Sears and Victoria's Secret!
Enough of that, I'm getting sidetracked. Spying a regular chair on the other side of the room I walked over and sat down. I used the penlight to peer around the room, mentally cataloging each piece of confusing equipment. I saw the SEM unit, conveniently under the sign that read SEM, and studied it in the dim light. It wasn't as big as I had imagined. The way Judy talked I was expecting something huge with flashing lights and eerie vapors emanating from its hidden recesses. Nope, it was the size of the dryer at my Laundromat and painted a dull battleship gray. It didn't look so special, but what did I know? I almost moved on to the rest of the room when something caught my eye. My penlight had run by the meter console and something blinked at me, a super bright green light. What the hell was that anyway? I got up and walked over to have a look, keeping the penlight on the blinking green whatever it was every step of the way.
Standing in front of the machine a moment I watched the light blink at me. I noticed that my penlight was creating a glare off the console glass from the angle at which I was shining it. I moved my hand left and right, then up and down trying to compensate but no good. Finally I knelt in front of the console and pressed my penlight right on top of the glass, and then I saw it. The blinking light was part of a small tubular device, set right above a lens of some sort, and whatever it was, was not attached to the SEM at all? Balls! It was a camera, and I was being watched right this minute! Before I could even think what the hell the green light changed to red. Oh crap, now what!
UCLA, Molecular Sciences Building…Monday, Feb 23, 2009…9:30pm
When I left Judy's place she and Ronnie were packing for a well timed vacation. It was a no brainer that Hassan had tailed me to her apartment and I was equally certain that if we split up he would follow me over her. What I wasn't sure of was whether or not he worked alone? My gut said that he did and so far my old gas factory has kept out of more jambs then I cared to remember. I had given Judy specific instructions as to who to look up once they got to Vegas. My old partner Wally Price was a Lieutenant now with the LVPD working homicide. I hoped that he was as good at preventing one as he was at solving one. Wally would put her in touch with someone at UNLV which, believe it or not, has an excellent computer sciences department, who'd have thunk it? In any event the two of them would be in good hands with my old friend. I've trusted the Chief with my life on more than one occasion, both on the job and in the Nam.
Me, Wally Price and Bob Ingram go way back. We served together in Southeast Asia from late 1967 to the summer of 1969. Iggie and I were one of the lucky few to be drafted into the USMC. We first met each other at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, right after basic. Wally on the other hand had been in the service 5 years already, a Navy corpsman, by the time we met up with him. The three of us became fast friends while stationed at the US combat base in Khe Sanh near the Laotian border in the Quảng Trị Province, South Vietnam, Republic of. Unfortunately we arrived in country at exactly the wrong time in history! Because not two months later the whole goddamn North Vietnamese Army and their rat bastard lackeys, the Viet Cong decided to take one big ass swing at Uncle Sam, striking simultaneously from the DMZ all the way down to Saigon. It was a pretty bold move but a costly one. Historians speculate the real objective was to shock US citizens back home and incite them to insist we get the hell out there and bring the troops home. They were right I think; it worked! What happened over the next several weeks as we fought off the TET offensive will stay buried within ourselves forever, along with all those ghosts we left back there. Such a beautiful country and culture, what a waste! That's all I want to say about that.
Anyway, I don't want to traipse down memory lane anymore, so, back to the business at hand. Whatever was on that nano nano chip that Judy was so excited about was likely to get us killed unless I could throw Hassan and his Russian bosses off the scent for a while. I needed a diversion, possibly something from this lab? This is where I should logically find something useful. In any event I needed to buy Judy time to extract whatever was on that micro chip; I needed to keep Hassan's focus on me. He has to think that I'm onto something here in California. If I fail, Judy and Ronnie are goners. For that matter, so am I, but Hassan will kill me last and he'll kill me slow just for shits and giggles.
I parked my beat up jalopy of a car (Ronnie refers to it as the rat-mobile) around the corner, wedged between a Hummer on one side and one of those giant off-road pick-up trucks that have probably never actually been off-road on the other. Basically out of sight. I was about to get out and walk to the building when I spotted Iggie's new partner, Rebecca Tran. She strolled past my car without noticing me. Rookie mistake, she should have sensed my presence! Observe everything; be aware of your surroundings at all times, that's the detective's mantra. I quickly lay down across the front seats anticipating Iggie to be right behind her. If I was lucky his eyes would be on her shapely little ass and he wouldn't notice my old heap, which by the way he has ridden in at least a hundred times! I held my breath for a ten count and sure enough here he came. I heard him huff and puff as he raced to catch up to Becca.
"Wait up rookie," he bellowed!
"The Lieutenant's on the phone, he wants to talk to you," he said, sailing right past me.
Whew, I must have stepped over every crack in the sidewalk this week because this was my lucky day! Ninety-nine times out of a hundred Iggie would have spotted me. But I could tell he was distracted by more than Rebecca's fine little backside, he was pissed! I could hear it in his voice and could picture the small blue vein at his right temple popping out like it always did when he blew a gasket. I had to stifle a laugh. I could hear the two of them talking faintly and then I heard two distinct door slams. Good, they were leaving. I waited a good fifteen minutes before sitting up and looking around. When I felt the coast was clear I got out of the car and slowly walked to the building. No rushing, I wanted to make sure Hassan was convinced that I felt unobserved and safe. Secretly I hoped he was not using binoculars because I was nervously sweating like a pig!
The doors were unlocked, and even though part of the building was still taped off there was a fair amount of the normal activity that one would expect on a busy campus. I dodged a student exiting with her nose inside a textbook and a cell phone plugged into her ear, she never even saw me, kids! As the door closed behind me I saw the crime scene down the hall, stage right and turned to look in the opposite direction, stage left, checking for potential witnesses to my inevitable breaking and entering misdemeanor. The coast was clear and I headed down the hall to the SEM Lab. I stopped short after about five steps and listened intently. I thought I heard more than my penny loafers echoing off the high ceiling? There was no sound other than my breathing and an occasional door slam further down the hall behind me. I shook it off but still had the feeling of being watched, Hassan maybe? I didn't think so; he was more direct than that. If he were around he'd want me to know it. I continued on to the lab and stopped at the barrier tape, paused then went under it and into room 1187, bypassing the gory display on the floor. Dead is dead, if you've seen one bloody outline you've seen them all.
The room was dark and I pulled out my penlight to help me navigate. Sneaking around always charges me up, makes me feel like I'm getting away with something, like an eight-year old. Frankly I had no idea what I was looking for, or for that matter what would be worth looking for. Everything in this room was over my head except the furniture and even some of that was sort of high tech, like the weird contraption at what must have been Ernie Namura's desk? I guess could be a chair of some kind, but I had no idea how you were supposed to sit in it? Actually I think it's Scandinavian because I'm pretty sure I saw on in the IKEA circular that I receive monthly like clock work. So few trees, so much spam! You'd think they would have figured out by now that most men only look at the two catalogs religiously, Sears and Victoria's Secret!
Enough of that, I'm getting sidetracked. Spying a regular chair on the other side of the room I walked over and sat down. I used the penlight to peer around the room, mentally cataloging each piece of confusing equipment. I saw the SEM unit, conveniently under the sign that read SEM, and studied it in the dim light. It wasn't as big as I had imagined. The way Judy talked I was expecting something huge with flashing lights and eerie vapors emanating from its hidden recesses. Nope, it was the size of the dryer at my Laundromat and painted a dull battleship gray. It didn't look so special, but what did I know? I almost moved on to the rest of the room when something caught my eye. My penlight had run by the meter console and something blinked at me, a super bright green light. What the hell was that anyway? I got up and walked over to have a look, keeping the penlight on the blinking green whatever it was every step of the way.
Standing in front of the machine a moment I watched the light blink at me. I noticed that my penlight was creating a glare off the console glass from the angle at which I was shining it. I moved my hand left and right, then up and down trying to compensate but no good. Finally I knelt in front of the console and pressed my penlight right on top of the glass, and then I saw it. The blinking light was part of a small tubular device, set right above a lens of some sort, and whatever it was, was not attached to the SEM at all? Balls! It was a camera, and I was being watched right this minute! Before I could even think what the hell the green light changed to red. Oh crap, now what!
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