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     Killer Weekend Cut and Run Diary of Ellen Rimbauer Parallel Lies Chain of Evidence Hard Fall Probable Cause Seizing of Yankee Green Blood of the Albatross Never Look Back    |
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PROBABLE CAUSE CHAPTER ONE 
"DBF at Scenic and Eighth," announced the warm-toned voice of Virginia Fraizer, who acted as both receptionist and radio dispatcher. Dead body found. Down by the beach. They used telephones where dead bodies were concerned. Too many blood-and-guts freaks monitoring police bands to use the radios for something like this. Thank God for Ginny. She seemed to hold the department together."I'm on my way," Detective Sergeant James Dewitt replied, returning the receiver to the cradle of the bedside phone. DBF! Not a one-eighty-seven, thank Cod. That would be a homicide. Not after just two months on the force. Had to hurry. Outdoor crime scenes deteriorated quickly, and to make matters worse, it had been raining when he had awakened at 5:30. He knew the location: a turnout in the blacktop in the otherwise impossibly narrow scenic road that fronted Carmel's beach. Enough room for three parked cars. A hit-and-run, maybe. Dead body found. One thing was certain: He was wide awake now. He was in his boxer underwear. He was waiting for the coffee to finish brewing, waiting to wake up Emmy and get her ready for school. He looked in the mirror. He was anything but on his way. The body lay spread out on the pavement, posed inhumanly like a malfunctioning mannequin discarded on the showroom floor. Suicide, by the look of the car. A hose taped from the exhaust to the passenger window. Dewitt approached the body and stopped. Given the remarkable gift of life, he wondered how someone could choose death. Sight of the suicide made him angry and a thought flashed through his mind: If only this man's unwanted life could be traded for Julia's. It was a chilly January morning. Dewitt wore his brown wool sport coat – his only wool sport coat – a garment that begged for replacement. Its two black buttons drooped like the sad eyes of a basset hound. His identifying trademark remained his bow ties, a holdover from his fifteen years in forensics: In the lab, a bow tie stays out of your way. He wore green paisley today, a gift from Emmy. He removed his glasses, exhaled onto their lenses, and afforded them a long methodical polish. He returned them to the bridge of his nose, seating them in a permanently pink dent there. He stepped over the body and squatted by the man's feet, taking one general all-encompassing look first, then focusing detail by detail, head to toe. James Dewitt still existed in the world of the microscopic particle. His eyes missed very little. He was unaccustomed to victims – especially dead ones. Having served as a man of evidence for so many years, he tended toward the material evidence first, which justified, at least in his mind, disregarding the body at present, turning away and focusing his attention on the vehicle. Technically, he was Detective Dewitt now. Detective Sergeant. But at a crime scene such as this, he instinctively reverted to his former self, a forensic investigator, a specialist dealing in the invisible world of trace evidence. His colleagues derisively referred to forensic criminalists as "nitpickers." What did they know? Would your standard off-the-shelf detective have already noticed that there was no sand on the bottom of the decedent's shoes, this despite a sugarlike coating covering the entire parking lot? And if no sand on the bottom of the shoes, then how had the decedent placed that hose in the passenger window? That was the beauty of hard evidence: It could either be explained or it couldn't. Witnesses might offer a dozen different accounts of the same incident, but the hard evidence eventually told one, and only one, story. The car and the dead body would have to tell this story. Unlikely to have witnesses at this early hour. Dewitt carried surgical gloves and a Swiss Army knife in the right pocket of his sports coat; forceps, Baggies, small magnifying glass, and a Mag-Lite in his other. He snapped the pair of gloves on and called out to Patrolman Anderson, who was stringing the bright plastic POLICE LINE tape around the perimeter of the parking area. DO NOT CROSS, it warned. The wind changed and Dewitt could hear the comforting concussion of nearby surf more clearly, could smell the salt and the sap. The struggling Monterey pines with their wind-torn limbs and awkward weather-sculpted shapes leaned painfully toward shore. Anderson ashamedly confirmed that he had dragged the body from the car. Dewitt was going to have to call a meeting of Carmel's twenty patrolmen and remind them of the responsibilities of the first officer, the first cop to arrive at a crime scene. The problem was not stupidity as much as unfamiliarity. Carmel saw few dead bodies in any given year. However, procedures were what kept investigations consistent, and the courts required consistency. Dewitt fished out the dead man's wallet. California driver's license. Name: John Galbraith Osbourne. Sacramento. The detective experienced a short flutter in his heart, like sudden indigestion. Third card down was the organ-donor card. Another flutter, this time more painful. The card contained an entry for the next of kin to be notified upon death: Jessica Joyce Osbourne. Everyone knew Jessie Osbourne, the fiercely outspoken Republican state representative. "Jammin' Jessie" they had called her last year because she had played basketball with the statehouse boys for a charity function and had come out of the game at halftime with two points, two assists, and a bloody nose. At fifty-five, Osbourne still had the spunk of a young woman. Dewitt slipped the wallet into a Baggie and then removed his glasses again, polishing them slowly and then hooking them back around his ears, establishing them on his nose. He circled the Tercel once, eyes alert. Osboume had done a neat job of it – but why here? The location of the crime scene itself was as much a piece of evidence as anything. Did he want to die with a nice view? Had there been any view an hour earlier, or had it been too dark? Why here? Rusty, his shepherd collie mutt, barked from the back of Dewitt's unmarked police car, a Mercury Zephyr. Dewitt shouted a reprimand and the dog went silent. Dewitt knelt by the body again. Decent-looking guy except for his bluish gray skin. The headlights of the arriving coroner's wagon swept the pavement as it descended the hill of Eighth. Three jewels sparkled in the light, drawing Dewitt's attention. He duck-walked the short distance. Fresh motor oil by the look of it. It had been raining heavily when Dewitt had awakened at S:30, yet this oil had not washed away. Was that possible in that strong a rain? Using his Swiss Army knife, he took a sample of some of the oil, sealed it in a Baggie, and then labeled it. "Was your radio car parked over here at any time?" he shouted over to Anderson. "No, sir," Anderson replied as he finished with the crime-scene ribbon by tying it off to the bumper of his radio car. Dewitt carried what amounted to a portable crime lab in the trunk of the Zephyr. Besides the spare tire, the bulletproof police vest, and the first-aid kit, he kept two large black salesman bags back there. Between them, they carried every conceivable investigator's tool. He retrieved his camera and photographed the oil and its relationship to the crime scene. Rusty protested from the backseat and had to be silenced again. "What's up?" Anderson asked, joining him a moment later. Looking the young patrolman in the eye, Dewitt pointed his gloved finger at the dead man, John Osbourne. "He had a visitor," he said. Police Chief Clarence Hindeman's office, the biggest in the building, was by no means large. The clock on the wall read 3:30. Dewitt had yet to eat lunch. Gommander Karl Capp and James Dewitt sat in gunmetal gray steel chairs facing their superior, who presided from behind a large but nondescript matching steel desk, the window behind him looking out on Garmel's picturesque storefronts. Karl Gapp, who had been born perspiring, chewed vigorously on a Mongol number-two pencil. His soft round belly protruded over his tight belt, and he sat with his feet spread to accommodate its sag. He had a pale rubbery face and bright red cheeks. He lived under the conspiracy of angry eyes. Even when smiling, Capp had a bully image to overcome. Flecks of yellow pencil paint clung like canker sores to his lower lip. Capp was clearly uncomfortable. A veteran Monterey Peninsula cop and a man who ran his own show – with Hindeman more as a figurehead, by his way of thinking – the commander didn't like being on this side of a desk. He made a point of establishing and maintaining the pecking order. Capp had yet to speak business in Dewitt's office. Instead, the detective sergeant was always summoned to the commander's office, where Capp apparently found security in his leather throne of an office chair. Clarence Hindeman, a physical man, rock solid in his early fifties, sported an ash-gray trimmed beard that hid his lack of chin. He preferred an open-neck shirt and a Western bolo to a conventional tie. He used his hands when he spoke, hard calloused hands that reflected his hobbies of carpentry and river rafting. He spoke in a forced, hoarse voice through a constricted throat. "So what we've got here is the apparent suicide of Jessie Osbourne's boy." Capp said boldly, "Apparent? We put this sucker to bed just as quickly as we can." "Apparent suicide," Dewitt reminded. "There are some inconsistencies." "What the hell does that mean?" Capp complained. "I'd like to keep this open for a couple of days," Dewitt explained. "Wait for the various reports before we issue any statement. His clothes have been sent to the lab. Jessie Osbourne's people gave us the name of a cousin, Priscilla Laughton, to I.D. him. Wanted to speak with Jessie, but she hasn't returned my call. Autopsy is tentatively scheduled for tomorrow, though Thursday seems more likely. The thing of it is, Commander," he said, addressing Capp, "if we go making a statement that we then have to correct, we're a lot worse off. This'11 take a day or two at the most. A couple of tests and we're a hell of a lot more certain what we have here." "You have Jessie's permission for the autopsy?" Capp asked. "That surprises me." "Don't need it," Dewitt said, looking to Clarence for support. "Officially, Karl, we have to go with suspicious causes for the time being. That's why I thought we should talk. You've read Dewitt's notes I take it?" "Manny Roth's not going to like this, Chief," Capp said. His tongue found a flake of yellow paint he had missed on his lip. He spit it out. "He and Jessie are tight. She's the one sponsoring his fund raiser, don't forget." "Our distinguished Mayor is a former golf pro, Commander," Dewitt reminded, "not a policeman. There are certain procedures – " "And our detective's a former nitpicker," Capp interrupted. "If you were a policeman with a little more experience, you might understand the difference in approach between the Salinas lab and a cop shop." To Hindeman he said, "In my opinion we ought to rethink this assignment, Chief. I realize I'm supposed to be the desk cop, but Dewitt's only been with us two months. You couldn't have foreseen something like this when you brought him on." For Dewitt, the five months since the death of Steven Miller had been hell. He had been arrested on a charge of voluntary manslaughter for the shooting of Miller, and had endured a three-week trial that carried with it the pain of front-page publicity. His acquittal by jury was covered by CNN's "Prime Time News" and picked up the following day by all three networks. He had been rescued by his friend of several years, Clarence Hindeman, now Carmel's Chief of Police, who had called with a job offer of Detective Sergeant, a newly created position on the Carmel force, designed specifically for a man of Dewitt's talents and experience. He had hoped, by accepting Hindeman's offer, to settle into a quiet existence of tracing down bad checks and stolen bicycles in a small resort community. With the discovery of Osbourne's body, he sensed they had a major case on their hands. It would be a simple matter to accede to Capp's wishes, and forfeit the case. Instead, however, Dewitt, catching Hindeman's eye, shook his head no. He wouldn't give in that easily. Hindeman said sharply, "It's Dewitt's case, Karl. He reports to you, same as every investigation. This is why I brought him on: He has fifteen years of forensics behind him. Eight of those as an investigator. We're set up just fine to handle this – " "He's never handled a one-eighty-seven – " "One-eighty-seven?" asked Hindeman. "Who said anything about a homicide? We're talking suicide here." "He's talking one-eighty-seven," Capp contradicted, pointing at Dewitt. "He's implying a one-eighty-seven." 'Tm asking for some reports," Dewitt complained, "nothing more. Besides which, I've handled plenty of one-eighty-sevens as an FI. That's not an issue here." All three launched into a brief shouting match, which was only silenced by Rusty barking from the corner. Hindeman allowed Dewitt the luxury of having the dog in the station house. Rusty was technically considered a mascot. Hindeman gained control again. Dewitt snapped his fingers twice; Rusty lay down. "I've handled dozens of one-eighty-sevens," Dewitt resumed. "There's very little difference – " "There's a fuckin' huge difference," Capp disagreed. "The point is moot," Hindeman roared. "Have you or haven't you read Dewitt's crime-scene notes?" "So there's no sand on the bottom of the guy's shoes. So there's some motor oil nearby. It's a parking lot for Christ's sake. That's enough for suspicious causes, Chief? Gimme a break! We're talking about Jessie Osbourne's son, unless I missed something." "Dewitt? You want to respond to that?" By nature of his rank and position, Hindeman tried to remain as neutral as possible, this despite their friendship, despite the fact their daughters were best friends. Although he slipped from time to time, Clarence Hindeman made a point of calling Dewitt by his last name when around the station house. He couldn't afford to play favorites. "I'm simply pursuing a variety of possibilities," Dewitt explained. "One thing you learn as a 'nitpicker,' "he said with a glance at Capp, "the evidence will tell one and only one story. Anderson compromised the site. That's an added headache. If you read my report, then you're familiar with the fact that Osbourne's luggage was jammed into the back of the trunk. Why? Can you explain that easily?" "Who cares?" "I care! I have evidence that isn't adding up." "Completely circumstantial," Capp sneered. "Agreed. I won't argue that. The evidence is circumstantial, and it may be nothing. But we won't know that until all the evidence is in, right? Why are we making such a big deal out of this?" he asked Hindeman. "All I'm asking is we run a few tests and eliminate any surprises." "You're asking to delay a statement to the press. This is Jessie Osbourne's son, Dewitt. This is an election year. You need it spelled out?" "Since there are those in this department who do not hold my opinion in very high regard," he said, directing his comment at his commander, "I thought it only appropriate to solicit outside help. You will accept an opinion from the Salinas lab, I take it?" "Don't start with me, Dewitt." "Is that a yes or a no?" Capp's face turned scarlet and .he adjusted his weight in the chair. "I think this is a mistake. My vote is to clean it up, make a statement to the press, and get this behind us as quickly as we can. Drawing it out with a bunch of circumstantial evidence isn't going to help anyone, least of all Jessie Osbourne. And if Jessie's unhappy, then Manny's unhappy, and that's bad for business." "Karl," Hindeman said, disappointed. "I'm not looking for votes, I'm looking for input. Are you saying that the John Osbourne death is clearly a suicide? This in light of what Dewitt has turned up?" "I'm saying he hasn't turned up squat." He considered this for a moment. "You talk to Bill Saffeleti about some oil drops and the way this guy packed his trunk. You tell me how the DA's office feels about it. Save ya the trouble. They'll laugh you outta town." Dewitt told Hindeman, "I think I'm being misunderstood here. We're a small outfit. We don't want to look like one by making a statement prematurely. A suicide note would help. A despondent phone call made to a close friend. Something along those lines. There again: We have to do the legwork if we're going to explain this thing. I want to know where Osboume was coming from, where he was headed, what he was up to. I want to be able to sit Jessie Osbourne down and tell her exactly what her son did from say six last night to six this morning. The media, if no one else, will put his last twenty-four hours together. Do we risk playing catch-up with the media?" "Karl?" "I don't like it. The guy sucked fumes, Chief. Let's bury him, not slice him open." Rusty growled and rolled onto his back, awaiting affection. "We'll wait for all the evidence to come in," declared Hindeman, eyeing the dog. "For now, it's an apparent suicide, investigation pending." Capp pushed himself up from the uncomfortable chair and stormed out of the office. "There goes trouble," said Dewitt. "If that dog farts in my office, you'll know the meaning of trouble." Dewitt and Rusty were gone in seconds. The strip was held in a gloomy darkness, refreshed only by the occasional colorful glow of street signs and window advertisements. An eighteen-wheeler streamed past, its grinding whir caught in the Doppler effect, subsiding in the distance with a painful scream. The man paced in front of the pay telephone, toying with the quarters in his pants pocket. The air smelled of diesel. Across the way, through the dirty window of a bar, a pink neon palm tree pulsed intermittently, advertising a wine cooler. When the door to the bar was in use, the impatient man at the phone could hear the cheers from the Lakers game on the TV. He stopped his pacing and stared at the phone, his profile a craggy silhouette in the limited light. Would Lumbrowski even answer? They had to talk. He slipped the quarter into the slot and listened as it descended, clanking into the guts of the phone. By now, the number was memorized. One ring... He tapped his foot anxiously. "Come on," he said. Two rings... "Bastard, answer the phone!" "Yeah?" spoke the wet husky voice. The sound of a voice took him so totally by surprise that he hesitated momentarily. "Yeah?" Lumbrowski repeated. "I've been trying to reach you all day," he said. "Been busy. Real busy. Who the hell is this?" "You should stay closer to your phone." "You should mind your own fuckin' business." The phone went dead. The man squinted, attempting to control his temper. He reeled his head back and exhaled indignantly. Calling to help, and he dares to hang up. "Mind your own business," indeed. He stuffed another quarter into the phone and punched out the seven numbers. "Yeah?" "I saw what you did this morning," he told Lumbrowski. Silence. The man's heavy alcoholic breathing could be heard clearly. "I thought you might be interested in that." "What do you know about it?" Lumbrowski asked. "I have certain needs." "Money?" "That would help." "Have we done business before?" "No." "I'm busy right now. I got my own agenda." 'Tm sure you do. But I saw you." Silence again. "You want what | have?" "You want what I have," the man insisted. "I don't think so." He hung up. Again. The man pounded his fist against the phone and then tugged ferociously on the receiver. With both hands around the gooseneck sheath that housed the wire, he leaned his weight against the receiver and jerked on it repeatedly until it finally broke loose. He studied the phone's receiver in his hand, its gooseneck casing and stripped wires dangling like a tail. He slammed it into its cradle and hurried across the street to the bar. He took a seat in a corner booth where the light didn't hurt his eyes. After the game, a late-night "News Update" came onto the TV. He was on his third beer, and feeling better now. The anchorwoman wore a lot of makeup and smiled falsely, like a nurse. She said in a strident voice, "The body of the son of Sacramento County Representative Jessica Osbourne, John Galbraith Osboume, was found by Carmel authorities in what has been described by a police spokesman as an apparent suicide. No details have been released and an investigation is pending, but sources at 'News One' have been told by persons close to the investigation that murder has not been ruled out. Detective James Dewitt, who is handling the investigation, refused comment. More on the intriguing investigation on tomorrow's 'Wake Up News Hour.'" The man drinking the beer set it down. 
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