Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (23 page)

CHAPTER 32

DOGGIE BAGS

On the drive over to the Walker house, I thought about my dinner with Langston and what we’d talked about. It was possible he’d already cued me in to his ghost and provided me with suspects for his murder. He’d referenced the Spook Town Compton Crips killing Catalina Ceballos’s husband. A spook is a ghost. The fact that Walker was trying to reopen the investigation couldn’t have made him popular with the gang. Catalina had already claimed the gang had made threats on her life. Would they go so far as to kill a cop, albeit one who was retired? And what was it about this ghost case that had haunted Walker?

From what Walker had implied, Catalina hadn’t believed her husband was involved in dealing drugs. The two of them had been college students at the time. Was there another reason he’d died? And was it possible the gang had been set up to look like the murderers?

I had lots of questions and couldn’t wait to look at the case notes.

My GPS directed me to the Walker residence on South Sherbourne. During our dinner conversation, Langston had asked me if I’d ever been to Ladera Heights, and I told him I hadn’t. I wonder what that said about my social circle and the racial divide. This was my first foray into what he said was often referred to as the “Black Beverly Hills.”

The houses I drove by were well kept up, and most of the residents I saw were African American. It was nice to see the American dream on display in a form that wasn’t lily-white.

Cars lined the Walkers’ circular driveway. Savannah’s visitors had already arrived. I parked on the street and walked up a driveway bordered by rosebushes. Even though it wasn’t yet May, all the roses were in bloom, and the air was awash in their fragrant scent.

I rang the doorbell and waited. When the door opened, I was expecting to see Savannah Walker, but instead was greeted by Catalina Ceballos. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

“Detective Gideon,” she said, extending her hand.

“Ms. Ceballos,” I said.

It was clear she hadn’t expected me to remember her name.

Her furrowed brows also made it clear she wondered what I was doing there.

“Are you here for our meeting?”

“Actually, I came by to have a word with Mrs. Walker,” I said. “But seeing you here, I wonder if I might also talk to you.”

Her brows were still furrowed. “About what?”

“I know Detective Walker was trying to help you reopen your husband’s homicide. Was he dealing with LAPD, or the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department?”

I asked the question because LASD had jurisdiction over Compton.

“Carlos’s murder happened just outside of Compton,” she said. “The South Bureau’s Criminal Gang and Homicide Division were assigned to it.”

I nodded. “Who was the lead detective?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know?”

She didn’t try to hide being suspicious of my motives. “I know Detective Walker was advocating for you in reopening the case. Now that he’s gone, I thought I might look into the situation.”

What I said was true enough, but far from the complete story. Still, it changed Catalina’s tone and attitude. “I would be very grateful for that.”

She gave me the name of the detective. Without my asking, she also provided me with her cell number, volunteering to answer any questions I might have.

“I’ll be sure to follow up with you,” I promised, at which time Catalina seemed to realize I was still standing on the stoop.

“Please come in,” she said. “I’m answering the door because the club is here today to pay its respects. Savannah was also nice enough to allow us to use her house for an emergency meeting. With Langston’s death, everything’s crazy.”

“I hope you’re making plans to keep the club going.”

“That’s what we all want, but no one seems to know how to make that happen.”

“At least you’ve started planning.”

She nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “Langston was the club’s glue. If we didn’t know how indispensable he was before, we sure do now. But let me take you to Savannah.”

I followed Catalina, assuming I would be taken to a quiet location where Mrs. Walker was waiting. What I wasn’t expecting was to find her sitting in the living room with at least a dozen members of the 187 Club. Everyone stopped talking when they saw me, and I offered a nod to the room.

Mrs. Walker rose from her chair and said, “Please excuse me.”

She came up to me and offered me a pleasant as well as circumspect greeting: “Thank you for coming, Detective.”

“My pleasure,” I said.

We escaped the room’s scrutiny by starting down the hallway. Paintings lined both sides of the corridor. There were spiritual scenes, and folk art with mostly black subjects.

“You have a beautiful house,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “We’ve lived here for almost thirty years. When we first looked at this house, Langston said we couldn’t afford to buy it, and I said we couldn’t afford not to buy it. The backyard was always my refuge. It looks out over Marina del Rey, and on clear days you can make out Catalina Island. I wanted to have a mortgage-burning party this year, but Langston wasn’t convinced. He said no one did that anymore.”

“That’s only because in California no one ever pays off their mortgage,” I said.

“You’re probably right about that.”

She opened a door, and I was shown into a small room that had been made into an office. The desk had stacks of paperwork. There were composition notebooks, files, and computer printouts. In the center of the desk was a laptop, which was attached to a three-in-one printer. Next to the desk was a filing cabinet.

“Welcome to Langston’s inner sanctum.”

“Is his computer password-protected?” I asked.

Savannah shook her head. “I’ve used it on a few rare occasions, so I know it’s not, but that’s about all I can tell you about anything in this room. Langston didn’t like his work space disturbed. That’s why you’ll have to excuse the mess.”

“It’s a lot neater than my own work space,” I confessed.

She began to take her leave of the room, but paused at the doorway.

“Langston always liked the door closed, even when it was only the two of us in the house. I always said, ‘Why do you need the door closed?’ And he would say to me, ‘I think better that way.’ Would you like the door opened or closed?”

“I’m with Langston. If you don’t mind, I’d prefer it was closed.”

“I should have known,” Savannah said. As she closed the door, I noticed the small, sad smile on her face.

Even though I’m a cop, and even though I had permission to go through Langston Walker’s papers, it still felt like a breach of privacy. To sit at someone else’s desk is revealing, even before you start digging through the contents. You get a feel for the person by what’s on the walls, what pictures they value enough to place close to them, and what items are within reach. Walker’s love of family was on display, but his desk was first and foremost a work area. At first glance the area might have looked disorganized, but everything was functional. He had sorters, trays, and organizers filled with paperwork, pens, highlighters, tape, staplers, and such essentials as glue and scissors.

Early in my scrutinizing, I realized Walker was definitely old school. I went into his computer and searched its history. He hadn’t cleared its cache for some time, if ever, and I was able to look at all his browsing data. Nothing immediately jumped out at me as relevant to the case. I studied all the computer documents he’d worked on during the last month.

These days police work, like so many other professions, is electronically dependent. Walker had risen through the ranks writing reports rather than inputting data. That would have changed at the end of his tenure, but in his retirement he had reverted to what was most comfortable for him. There were lots of handwritten composition notebooks piled atop one another. Each seemed to serve a different purpose, and I spent some time getting used to his system.

I pulled out my own notebook. In that regard, Walker and I weren’t too different. I noted the date and time. One section of my notebook was for taking notes, and another section was for compiling questions or making notations for things I would need to do. My first entry was:
Get Walker’s cell phone and make list of incoming and outgoing calls.
Then I wrote down:
Find out why Walker was late to our dinner.
He had apologized for being late, and had told me that he’d had to put out some fires. I needed to know what fires those were.

Walker was also a believer in file folders, in which he stored articles and printouts. The folders weren’t color-coded, and some weren’t even labeled. Sifting the wheat from the chaff wasn’t going to be easy.

I made my own priority pile of those folders and notebooks that interested me most. One folder contained half a dozen maps of L.A. In two of the maps,
X
didn’t mark the spot, but instead marked half a dozen spots. Judging from where the
X
s were, I was looking at Santa Monica, Westwood, Hollywood, La Brea, Northeast L.A., and Central L.A. There were no street addresses, and nothing to designate what the
X
s meant except that on one of the sheets, the number “480” had been written, and the Central L.A.
X
had been circled. Walker apparently liked his maps to be enigmatic. There was a map of L.A. and the surrounding area marked with red lines, and a map of Westside and Central City with red, green, blue, yellow, and purple lines. It would have helped if Walker had printed out a key of what I was looking at.

On one piece of paper in his map file folder, Walker had written the words “comfortable street.” He’d underlined the word “comfortable” twice. Not only maps were in the folder. I found a piece of paper where he’d written, “It’s like the line from Hamlet about protesting too much.”

While thinking about Walker’s Shakespeare reference, I suddenly started. It was already four o’clock. I called up Lisbet, and when she answered, the first thing she said was, “Why do I get this feeling I’m being stood up?”

“I’m going to be late,” I admitted.

“How late?”

“Six o’clock,” I said, but Lisbet heard my wishful thinking in those words.

“More like seven?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said.

“I have work I should be doing anyway. How about I come over for pho tomorrow night at six thirty?”

“I am pho-tunate to have an understanding girlfriend like you.”

“I am going to pretend I am deaf in one ear.”

“I promise to nibble both your ears tomorrow.”

“I’m going to hold you to that promise.”

We said our good-byes, and each of us offered a last smooch over the phone. Then I went back to Langston’s paperwork, picking up the largest of his folders. On its cover he’d written “187”; inside was a hodgepodge of material that pertained to the 187 Club. Near the front of the paperwork, I found my name and telephone number and the notation, “April’s speaker.”
There were inspirational articles about overcoming grief, notes about meetings, and reminders of things that needed to be done. Deeper into the folder was a list of the members’ names, addresses, and phone numbers. Still deeper were photocopies of police reports, along with notes pertinent to some of those cases. Altogether there were five reports, each detailing a homicide.

The contents of the folder couldn’t be hurried through. There was a lot inside, and I settled down to my reading and note-taking. The common denominator was a lot of death.
It was the 187 Club, after all,
I thought.

The case that interested me most was my potential ghost case, which was held together with a large binder clip. I flipped through the pages and read about Carlos Ceballos’s death. The DA had opted not to prosecute the gangbangers from the Spook Town Compton Crips, telling LAPD there was insufficient evidence to get a conviction. LAPD said they had the shooters. Gang graffiti bragged about the killing, and the word on the street also fingered the shooters.

A knock at the door almost made me jump. I’d been so absorbed in the material that I’d lost track of place and time.

“Come in,” I said.

Savannah Walker opened the door. On her face was the same sad smile I’d seen earlier.

“How many times do I remember seeing a dazed expression just like that one?” she asked. “I’d always have to awaken Langston from his other world.”

Time had gotten away from me. It was now dark outside, and my surprise showed.

“Langston and I had a private joke. I would call him Punxsutawney Phil. That’s how he’d look when I interrupted him in here. I’d often bring him a meal.” She looked at me. “What about you?”

I realized she was offering to bring me dinner; I’d long overstayed my visit.

“That’s not necessary,” I said. “I was just leaving. If you don’t mind, though, I’d like to bring some of your husband’s paperwork home with me. There’s still a lot I need to go through.”

She gestured to the desk, indicating I could take anything I might want.

“I have all sorts of food in my refrigerator,” Savannah said, “more than I could ever eat. You’d be doing me a favor by taking some of it home.”