My Dark Places - James Ellroy [31]
The personnel man said he’d cooperate. Lawton called Jim Bruton and ran the Escalante thing by him. They decided to drive up to Sacramento.
They made the drive that night. They got a motel room and went to Aerojet the next morning—July 17th.
The security boss delivered Serena AKA Escalante. Lawton and Bruton drove him to the Sacramento County Sheriffs Office and grilled him.
He was built stocky. He didn’t really look like their guy.
He said he got married in Mexico on June 3rd. He moved back to California three weeks or so later. He heard a radio report on the murder while he was driving through El Centro. He ran into Tito Mancilla the next day. They discussed the nurse who got clipped.
He said his wife was his alibi. She didn’t speak English, though.
Bruton called the local Border Patrol Office and nailed down an interpreter. They met him at the Escalante residence.
They talked to Elena Vivero Escalante. She alibied her husband up convincingly. They were in Mexico on June 21st. Salvador was never out of her sight. She corroborated all her husband’s statements.
The suspect was released.
Sheriffs Homicide was a centralized division. It was made up of thirteen sergeants, two lieutenants and a captain. The squad room was above the County Morgue. A stench wafted up sometimes.
Murders were assigned on a rotating basis. There were no regular partnerships—the men were teamed up catch-as-catch-can. The unit was handpicked and elite. They handled sticky extortion cases under Sheriff Biscailuz’s direct orders. Gene Biscailuz shot his top-secret shit straight to Homicide.
The unit handled suicides, industrial accidents and 35 to 50 murders a year. Twelve substations and a flock of contract cities fed them victims. Most of the men kept bottles in their desks. They drank in the squad room and hit the Chinatown bars on their way home.
Ward Hallinen was 46. Jack Lawton was 40. Their styles contrasted and clashed.
Ward was known as “the Silver Fox.” He was a small man with light blue eyes and wavy gray-white hair. He wore slender-cut suits better than a window mannequin. He was soft-spoken, authoritative, meticulous. He did not like to carry a gun and disdained the rowdier aspects of police work. He did not like working with impatient and impetuous partners. He was married to former Sheriff Traeger’s daughter. They had a girl in high school and a girl in her first year of college.
Jack was mid-sized, heavyset and balding. He was hard-charging, hardworking, thorough. If you gave Jack grief, he would kick the shit out of you in two seconds flat. He loved kids and animals. He routinely rescued dogs and cats found at crime scenes. He cut his homicide teeth in the army—investigating Jap war crimes. He dug the gravity of his work. It meshed with the volatile and protective parts of his nature. He had a tendency to fly off the handle. He was married and had three young sons.
Ward and Jack got along okay. They deferred to each other when they had to. They never let their conflicting styles fuck up a case.
The Ellroy case was stalled out. They weren’t coming up with shit on the blonde and the dark man.
Court commitments interrupted them. Hallinen caught a Mexican knife killing on July 24th.
A punk named Hernandez got shivved. Three pachucos got popped at the scene. It all pertained to youth gang intrigue or somebody fucking somebody’s sister.
Sheriff’s Narco logged an Ellroy tip on August 1st. The tipster was a nurse named Mrs. Waggoner.
She said she answered a lovelorn ad and met a Mexican man named Joe the Barber. He was 45 years old, 5′11″, 200 pounds. He drove a light green ’55 Buick. Mrs. Waggoner had an affair with Joe the Barber. He tried to get her to steal narcotics from the hospital where she worked. He told her that he sold marijuana.
A Narco deputy liked the nurse angle. He forwarded the tip to Homicide. Joe the Barber was interviewed and crossed off as a suspect.
The El Monte PD logged a tip on August 3rd. Two Mexican men and a white woman