Sullivan's Justice (37 page)

“Have you already released the Ferrari?”

“Neil Sullivan picked it up less than twenty minutes ago,” Pauldine said. “Is there a problem?”

“Yeah, there’s a problem,” Hank shouted. “According to your report, Raphael Moreno’s blood was found inside that car. Why wasn’t I notified?”

“Don’t yell at me,” Pauldine said defensively. “I sent you the report yesterday. I also called you to let you know we were finished working up the car. Since you didn’t call us back, we assumed you didn’t object if we released it. As I understand it, Sullivan is no longer a suspect. What’s the big deal?”

“Do you know who Raphael Moreno is?”

“I think the morgue has a Moreno on ice,” Pauldine answered. “I’m not sure if his first name is Raphael. Traffic accident. We’ve got the wrecked car. It’s a common name in the Hispanic community. What’s going on?”

“Raphael Moreno slaughtered an entire family. One of the victims was a six-month-old baby. How could you not know about something like that? Mr. Hartfield’s Cadillac was sent to you guys.”

“I didn’t handle that case. Bernie Wolcott did, I believe. Since the defendant pleaded guilty, the DA’s office pressured us to work the Caddy up in five days.”

“You obviously remember it, then,” Hank argued.

“Now that you mentioned it, I do. When the case involves kids, I try my best to forget. What’s that got to do with the Ferrari? We held the car long enough. We got everything we needed. You don’t need the car anymore.”

“That Ferrari may be tied into the deaths of nine people.”

“Where do you come up with nine? Weren’t there only five members of the Hartfield family?”

“Here they are,” the detective said. “The five you mentioned, along with Moreno’s mother and sister. Those occurred in Oxnard, so they were out of our jurisdiction, but they were all tried as the same case. That makes seven. Then there’s the Goodwin and Porter homicides. Got it?”

“You’re telling me they’re all connected?”

“It’s looking that way. We thought we had the killer, but I’m not certain now. This is big, Pauldine. As soon as you realized Moreno’s blood was in the Ferrari, you shouldn’t have released it. What if you missed something? It’s not like it’s never happened before.”

“Remember, we process evidence. We don’t solve murders, Sawyer. That’s why we sent
you
the report. We also sent it to you twenty-four hours before we released the car. We were well within protocol. After you read the report, if you still have questions, call me. Otherwise, do your job, partner, and let me do mine.”

“Fine,” Hank said, slamming the receiver down. Damn crime scene techs. Most of them weren’t even cops. Because the work they did was so essential to solving crimes, they could bring an investigator to his knees.

He picked up the report and continued reading, something he should have done before he’d jumped on Pauldine. When they’d removed the driver’s seat in Neil Sullivan’s Ferrari, they’d found a small quantity of blood. DNA testing determined that the blood belonged to Raphael Moreno.

Hank had to resist the urge to call Carolyn. She was the only one who’d ever spoken to Moreno. He couldn’t call the probation officer, however, as her brother owned the car in which they’d found Moreno’s blood. It was no longer a speculation that the murders were connected, it was fact.

How did Neil Sullivan fit into the picture? A drug deal had been one of the first things that had crossed Hank’s mind. This was somewhat supported by the fact that the lab had found trace elements of methamphetamine in the trash can of Sullivan’s next-door neighbor. They hadn’t pursued it because they didn’t have a search warrant.

Stupid rookies, he thought. They were always tossing things without a warrant. The instructors at the academy drilled them on what was known as the “Fruits of the Poisonous Tree,” or the exclusionary rule, but the lesson never seemed to stick. Basically, any evidence that was obtained without the benefit of a search warrant was inadmissible in a court of law. When they ended up with stacks of evidence and no warrant, district attorneys would go to extraordinary lengths. They’d have the cops perjure themselves and swear the person wasn’t a suspect when they searched their property. Sometimes they had already booked the suspect and then had to set him free long enough for a jury to buy their story. No one wanted to be responsible for putting a guilty person back on the street, so the majority of judges would simply pass the buck.

Hank knew how the system worked. A suspect was arrested and arraigned, then a date was set for the preliminary hearing. The preliminary hearing was held in the municipal court. Many judges weren’t concerned if their case was overturned on appeal as long as they appeased the public while the case was hot. After the defendant was held to answer in the superior court or supreme court, the name depending on the jurisdiction, the case then went to trial. If it was still hot in the court of public opinion, even a superior court judge might allow the evidence to be admitted, with full knowledge that the ruling would be overturned once it reached the appellate court.

Evidence that was illegally obtained was eventually brought to light, no matter how desperately the prosecution attempted to hide it. The sad part, at least as Hank saw it, was that the person or persons who screwed the case from the get-go were cops. Some were rookies, like the officer who went through the neighbor’s trash in the Goodwin homicide. It was worse when the officer had been on the force for years and simply decided to make his own rules, thinking he could lie his way out of it.

Hank no longer wasted his time with illegally obtained evidence. He didn’t mind knowing about it—he just knew he couldn’t build a case around it. Why take it to a DA and watch him salivate over it, or start scheming for a way to get it admitted as evidence? Some of the DAs were fresh out of law school, and not Ivy League schools, but cram schools like the one Carolyn was attending. Give an overeager DA a sloppy case and they’d screw it up so the suspect could never be convicted. Try them once and the jury finds them not guilty and they could never be tried again.

Hank called Captain Gary Holmes. “Things blew up on us, Captain.”

“Which case?”

“All of them,” Hank told him, his voice sparking with excitement. “The lab found Raphael Moreno’s blood inside Neil Sullivan’s Ferrari. The Hartfield killings occurred at 1003 Seaport Avenue. Laurel Goodwin was found dead in Sullivan’s pool located at 1003 Sea View Terrace. Three blocks away, Suzanne Porter was murdered in the same fashion. Her address was 1003 Seaport Drive.”

“The killers are looking for something.”

“Exactly my thoughts,” Hank answered. “Even then, how does it explain Moreno’s blood inside Sullivan’s Ferrari?”

“Have you asked Sullivan about it?”

“No, he disappeared,” the detective said. “The lab released the Ferrari before I found out about Moreno’s blood. Since we arrested Sabatino, they assumed Sullivan was no longer a suspect.”

The captain’s voice elevated. “Why didn’t you read the report? You’re not back on the sauce, are you?”

Hank angrily yanked his tie off, tossing it on his desk. His affair with the bottle had lasted six months. The way it seemed, it would follow him forever. “I’m not drinking, okay? We’ve had two homicides in less than a week. You’re the captain. Tell me what to do.”

“We need to have a conference,” Captain Holmes told him. “I’ll have Louise take care of the notifications from my end. All you have to do is call in whatever people you have on the street. It’s one-fifteen now. Let’s call it for two-thirty. Make sure you fire off an e-mail to everyone in your department. Just because you’re computer handicapped doesn’t mean your people are. The city paid a fortune to create an integrated network connecting the entire department, including unmarked as well as regular patrol units. Try using it every now and then, Sawyer.”

Hank disconnected and stared at his computer screen. First, the captain implied he was drinking, then he made him sound like a dinosaur because he didn’t worship this stupid box on his desk. He checked his e-mail at least once a week, and he occasionally used the Internet for research. He didn’t like deleting messages, though, fearing he might need to review them again. He squinted and saw a small envelope at the bottom of his screen indicating he had e-mail. He’d never tried to send e-mail to several people at one time.

He clicked the icon for Lotus Notes and discovered he had forty new e-mails. Most of them were junk, either advertisements or cops forwarding jokes to everyone in the department.

“That’s strange,” he said aloud. The most recent message was from Hank Sawyer. Must be a mistake. He highlighted it and double-clicked. When it opened, he could see that a file was attached. The technicians had told him to always be careful about opening attachments because many of them contained viruses. The file was named
GoodwinMurder.wmv.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mary Stevens. “Come here, I need you.”

Hank was slouching over the keyboard, his face inches from the screen. “You’re not trying to use that thing, are you?” Mary asked.

“Yeah,” he grumbled. “The captain just told me it’s mandatory that I learn how to send e-mails. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, we’re having a meeting in the conference room at two-thirty. There’s been some major developments in our homicides. Can you send e-mails to all our people? If you don’t get a response, do it the reliable way and call them.”

“I’ll take care of it, Hank,” Mary said. “We wouldn’t want you to break a fingernail.”

“Thanks,” he said, still staring at the screen. “How do you know if you’ve got a virus? I think I have one here.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Mary said, moving around in back of him. “Get up, Hank. This isn’t a virus, it’s a video file. The letters WMV stand for Windows Media Video.”

“Should we open it?”

“Already have, it’ll play in a minute,” she told him. “Since when did you start sending video files to yourself ?”

“I didn’t. I don’t mess with this stuff unless I have to. You know how I feel. Cases aren’t solved inside a box, they’re solved on the street.”

The first image they saw was a leather-clad figure wearing a motorcycle helmet moving along the side of the garage.

“Jesus,” Mary exclaimed, “it’s Neil Sullivan’s house. That’s got to be Sabatino.”

“Hold your horses,” he answered, wanting the video to play out. The next scene showed the person in the backyard. Laurel Goodwin could be seen standing at the open French doors, her face stricken with fear as she placed a portable phone to her ear. “Looks like we’re going to watch a murder,” Hank said, remembering the death mask Goodwin wore after they’d pulled her from the pool.

They watched as the man grabbed her, placing a gun to her head and marching her into the house. The screen went blue. “Is that it?” Mary said, sliding the mouse to see the video progress bar. It was only 25 percent complete. “There’s more, Hank.”

The video shifted to a different camera angle, and they could see Goodwin and the assailant in the master bedroom. She stripped down to her bra and panties. “There’s the syringe,” Hank said excitedly, placing his finger on the screen.

“Don’t do that,” Mary said, knocking his hand away. The video continued as the helmeted figure injected Laurel Goodwin. The gun appeared again as the killer forced her into the bathroom. “She’s going to vomit like Suzanne Porter did,” she said, placing her hand over her mouth. “God, this is so awful. I feel like I’m about to throw up.”

The next image they saw was Laurel being dragged by her ankles facedown across the backyard pavement. “Look,” Hank said, “her body’s gone limp from the narcotics.”

“This is it,” she said, taking a sharp intake of oxygen.

Laurel was propped up at the side of the pool, her head bleeding. The killer faced the camera, still wearing the helmet and darkened face mask. With one push, he shoved Laurel Goodwin into the water.

“Where did this come from?” Hank asked, still shocked at what they had witnessed.

“From you,” Mary said, her eyes widening.

“How did it come from me? If I had a video of the murder, we would have all seen it.”

“All I know is it was sent from your workstation.”

“Could somebody have done this remotely?” Hank asked.

“No,” Mary told him. “Unless they somehow hacked into the system. I don’t think that’s possible. As far as I know, our network has never been infiltrated.”

“So let me get this right,” Hank said, perplexed. “You’re saying someone managed to get through the security checkpoint, sat at my desk, and used my computer to send me a video of the Goodwin murder?”

“Looks that way,” she answered, as distraught as Hank. She stepped back from his desk and raised her hands in the air. “Damn, this is a crime scene. We probably obliterated the fingerprints. The killer himself could have sent you the video. How could I have been so stupid?”

“Carl Duval is the desk officer today, right? I’ll talk to him. Get forensics over here. Then copy the video and bring it to the meeting. Don’t forget to notify everybody about the meeting.”

“I’ll pull the video down off the file server and burn it onto a DVD,” Mary told him. “That way, it can be entered as evidence as soon as everyone sees it.”

“Great,” Hank said, trying to catch his breath.

He walked rapidly out of the detective bay to the front desk. “Carl, what happened here? Someone was in my office. Did they check in?”

“Oh, you mean that pretty FBI agent, Samantha Rodriguez? She said she had an appointment with you. I told her you were at the mayor’s luncheon. She asked if she could wait in your office so she could catch up on some of her work. I assumed it was okay.”

“How long ago?”

He picked up the sign-in sheet. “About thirty-five minutes.”

“She could still be in the building!” Hank said. “Secure the exterior, and send officers to check the parking lot.” He waited until the desk sergeant relayed his instructions, then asked, “What did she look like?”