Don't Leave Me (13 page)

After sixteen years on the force, six as a detective, Sandy Epperson knew what made a good homicide cop. Three unalterable things.

First, the determination of a pit bull.

Second, attention to details, especially the little ones.

And third, the ability to get complete strangers to tell you their deepest, darkest secrets.

It was about those three things, and those three things only. Not the posturing you see from TV and movie cops. And it drove her crazy every time one of these slapped cuffs on a suspect and immediately Mirandized them. You never did that. You want the arrestees to run off at the mouth, and it’s all admissible if you don’t question them. Give them the standard warning up front, and they could clam.

The real cop world was so much different, but it all came down to that trio of attributes.

Sandy Epperson knew she had them, and that’s why she knew she was going to keep on the trail, wherever the evidence in the Nunn case led.

Even if it led her to Kern County.

At her desk in the squad room, she opened up the murder book, the blue binder system she still favored. The goal was to get everything in one of the smaller binders. This one, though, was the larger size. Because this case wasn’t going to be open and shut.

She flipped past the cover page to the chronolog, the time-line record of her and Mooney’s activity on the case. She always put her notes in contemporaneously, unlike some of the younger detectives who waited until they got back to the station. Too many of them would get fuzzy on what they’d done, and have to reconstruct by memory.

Mooney was like that, only he kept little notes on his Blackberry. Sandy had to remind him he better print out and keep all those notes, as they were discoverable by the defense in a criminal case. The last thing you wanted in court was some lawyer claiming the police destroyed electronic jottings, without backup.

Sandy turned next to the link chart. The computer analysis company the LAPD contracted with had just provided the report that linked Grant Nunn’s cell phone to recently called numbers. With a search warrant, easy enough to secure in a murder case like this, Sandy would be able to get the phone company records for each of those numbers. Then it would be a matter of shoe leather. Knocking on doors and finding out what connection these people had with Nunn.

That was another thing about real detective work. Some of the new school kids thought you could sit at a computer all day and solve cases. No way. You had to get face time. And you had to get it fast. People were much more likely to talk when the killing was “hot.” The longer you waited, the more memories got fuzzy, naturally or for some other reason, like self-protection.

Yet somehow Sandy was convinced the real connection in this homicide was not going to be there, in that web of numbers.

The details of the killing kept moving around in her mind, begging to be brought into some sort of pattern. She was doing her best, but doubts kept blowing the details around like dry leaves.

For one thing, the time and location was odd. Nunn was killed sometime between 7 and 7:30 a.m. in the back of the Target parking lot. There were actually two large lots, one on either side of Target. On the north side, the lot stretched all the way to Vanowen Street, and was utilized by those going to the 24 Hour Fitness next to the store.

South of Target was another lot that went to Victory Boulevard. The west end of the lot backed up against a cinderblock wall and oleander plants, and was well removed from store fronts and backs.

It was here by the wall that Nunn was found in his car dead of a single gunshot wound to the back of the head.

What was he doing sitting in this location at that time? And after calling 911 and supposedly being on his way to work?

Something, or someone, had convinced him to drive there. And park.

To get popped?

Which would bring it right back to something connected with Charles Samson and the guy who pulled the knife on him.

Sandy scribbled a note on the legal pad she’d laid out next to the murder book. At the top she wrote
Samson
then drew a two inch line and wrote
guy w/knife,
connecting them. She drew a small line sideways from the knife guy and wrote
black Escalade, no plate.

In the middle of the page she wrote
Nunn
without any connecting lines.

On the left side of the sheet, in the margin, she wrote down times with notations.

The timeline didn’t make any sense. The Escalade was gone, Samson was off to drop his brother at Ralphs. Nunn was supposed to be on his way to work. But instead he went the opposite direction, almost immediately after calling 911.

The house fire was a wild card. Sandy drew a line from Chuck’s name to a ? she put on the page. From the question mark she drew spokes pointing to these terms:
Samson drugs, landlord, arson/set-up.
From
arson/set-up
she drew a dotted line, indicating weak but possible link, back to
guy w/knife.

Finally, at the bottom of the page, she wrote the name
Raymond Hunt
and drew a line to Samson’s name.

Then she leaned back and looked at the page. It was something she did well. Like at a scene. So many detectives depended on what SID told them, but never bothered to do the most important thing––step back and ask,
What is this scene telling me?

As she did now.

Until her cell buzzed.