Who Killed Jenny Schecter? Ch. 27

Chapter 27 Match

The Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center was an unremarkable white, five-story office building at the corner of State University Drive and Paseo Rancho Pastilla, just off the El Monte Busway plus the San Bernardino Freeway and the Christopher Columbus Transcontinental Freeway, otherwise just known as the I-10. It was east of Chinatown, south of Pasadena, west of El Monte and north of East LA. It was only seven miles from Shane and Jenny's house. Lauren took the 101 to the 10 to get there.

The facility housed the LAPD's Forensic Science Division and Cal State LA's Criminalistics Program as well as the LASD's crime lab. The facility was surrounded by a tall red brick wall and on the University Drive side it said "California State University Los Angeles" in huge brushed metal letters. Ivy covered some of the walls. Carmen thought Lauren was heading back to her headquarters when she took the Eastern Avenue exit instead.

"Where we going?" Carmen asked. "I thought Marybeth wanted us back ASAP?"

"She did, but I want to drop this jar off at the Scientific Services Bureau. Crime lab to you."

"Can't you drop it off at your own building?"

"Yes, but it would a couple days just to get from there to here, and I'm in a hurry."

"Isn't it, like, only a mile away?"

"Yep. Welcome to the real world. Evidence travels from one facility to another at the speed of about a third of a mile a day, unless you hand-deliver it. And anyway, I know some people here, and I want to try to get it expedited." Lauren pulled into the parking area behind the building. "If you stay in the car I can leave it running," Lauren said, "and that'll keep the A/C running."

"Got it," Carmen said.

"I'll hurry," Lauren said, jumping out and taking her evidence envelope into the building with her. She blew Carmen a kiss.

Carmen sat in Lauren's car and checked her e-mail on her cell phone. She wondered if Lauren was a good kisser. She'd bet serious pesos and her mother's chimichanga recipe on it.

When they got back to the office Lauren led them directly to Marybeth's office. "Hey," she said.

Marybeth looked up from her paperwork, glanced at her wristwatch, picked up her phone and punched in a number. "I've got Jack on standby, and he's got an ADA he wants briefed."

"We're nowhere near ready for that," Lauren said.

"I know," Marybeth said, "but it won't hurt anything. They just want to know what's coming down the pike at them. According to you guys, we're now looking at four murders. I can't blame them for wanting into the loop."

"Okay, I guess I see their point of view. When are—"

"Jack?" Marybeth said into the phone. "They're here. Ready to rock and roll? Okay." She hung up the phone. "Conference room, five minutes. Go pee, get coffee."

"Shane here?"

"Yes, she's been here all morning. She asked me what she could do. I told her to read through the files again, see if anything popped out. She seemed skeptical, but I told her it wasn't busywork, that sometimes on the ninth or tenth pass all of a sudden you see something you didn't see before. You've got four minutes now."

Carmen and Lauren hustled to the woman's bathroom then the break room for coffee. By the time they got to the conference room Marybeth, Jack and a tall woman in her fifties had joined Shane around the table.

"Carmen," Marybeth said, "I think you're the only one who hasn't met Jack, who was Lauren and my old boss in the homicide division, and this is LA County Assistant District Attorney Deirdre Collins."

Deirdre stood and leaned over the table to shake hands; Carmen leaned over, too.

"Heard a lot about you," Deirdre said.

"Good, I hope?" Carmen asked.

"Oh, yes. And your mother's cooking came up a couple of times."

"Shane and I spent some time this morning bringing Deirdre and Jack up to speed," Marybeth said.

"And mom's cooking came up?"

"That was me," Shane said quietly.

Carmen looked at her, thought about what to say, then decided to drop it.

"Sit. Talk," Marybeth said.

They did. "First things first," Lauren said. "I couldn't sleep last night, so I came in here early. I'd been thinking about Niki's testimony that she and Jenny had talked about hiring a private detective to find out who was blackmailing them."

It took Lauren half an hour to describe her early morning search for Jenny's credit card payment to Spade and Archer, and then her early morning phone call to Carmen (minus the juicy parts and the sex banter), Carmen's theory about the Creep being a smoker, and their visit to the Scofield's home, a.k.a. the Creep House, behind Shane and Jenny's place, and Carmen finding the cigarette butts in the jar in the camping chair arm rest pocket. Deirdre and Jack took notes on legal pads.

"I dropped it off at the crime lab on our way in," Lauren said. "I asked for fingerprints and of course DNA."

"Did they give you any hope for a quick turn-around? Marybeth asked.

"My friend at the lab thought they could have something in two or three days."

"Today's Friday. Does three days mean Monday, or next Wednesday?"

Lauren seemed to blush, Carmen thought.

"I didn't think to ask," Lauren said. "I was so happy they'd expedite it I didn't want to push my luck."

Just then a face appeared at the door. It was Richard, the older civilian Shane and Carmen had met the first time they visited Marybeth. They'd become well acquainted with him since then.

"Sorry to interrupt, Lieutenant," he said. "We got a small emergency downstairs. Could Miss McCutcheon come down?"

Shane sat bolt upright. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing real serious," Richard said. "One of the cruisers, he was pulling out kind fast, and he tapped your bumper. He don't think he did any damage, but he needs you to look. And your alarm went off, you know, and it's making a racket in the parking lot."

"Oh, shit," Shane muttered. "I'll be back soon as I can." She followed Richard down the corridor to the elevator.

Everyone stayed silent until they were sure Shane was gone.

"You guys set that up," Carmen said.

"I can neither confirm nor deny," Marybeth said in a way that made everyone grin.

"She'll know," Carmen said. "Five bucks on it."

"You think? Okay, I'll play," Lauren said. "Five bucks." They fist-bumped.

Deirdre ignored them. "Lauren said you think it could be Shane's father. We need to talk about that. Lauren, what have you got?"

"Gabriel McCutcheon, age about 53 or thereabouts. Last known address about six or seven years ago was Oregon. This theory is only a few hours old, and I haven't had time to plug his name into any data banks, so I have nothing official. Ask me again in two hours. As for the rest, I'll let Carmen tell you about him. She actually met him, once."

"We have to credit Marybeth with an assist," Carmen began. "Something she said gave me the idea. She said blackmailers and extortionists are predators like sharks that return time and again to their favorite feeding grounds. That got me thinking about Gabe McCutcheon, because he was a predator who struck the group once before. I thought, what if he's back for a second bite? A much bigger bite, at that."

It took Carmen 10 minutes to tell Jack, Deirdre and Marybeth about the aborted wedding in Whistler, and how Gabe had conned Helena out of $10,000. She made no attempt to disguise her own role as Shane's once-upon-a-time fiancé.

"What happened afterward? To you and Shane, I mean," Jack asked.

"I moved to San Francisco, jump-started my life over again, and never spoke another word to Shane until a month ago, when she came to see me to start this investigation. The question in your mind is, what is our relationship now. The answer is, there is no relationship, and never will be ever again. She's my ex, that's all. Just think of it as a bad marriage that never actually happened."

"I've got two that did," Jack said. Everyone smiled.

"So then you know," Carmen said.

"I understand you also had a relationship with Jenny before she was murdered."

"About four years before, and only for a month or two," Carmen said. "Nothing serious. We weren't in love or anything, if that explains anything."

"I'm curious about your motives in this," Deirdre said, looking her straight in the eye.

"Jenny was my friend. Alice is still my friend. One got murdered. The other one is in jail for something she didn't do. I guess my motive is pretty simple. Catch the real killer of my friend, get my other friend out of jail. Nothing more complicated than that."

"Fair enough," Deirdre said. "What about Shane?"

"Same thing. Jenny was her friend and lover. Alice was her oldest and best friend, even more than Jenny. They were never lovers, if that tells you anything, which it doesn't. But Shane was even closer to both of them than I was, so she has the same motivation I do, but even more so. I guess that's one of the few things Shane and I completely agree on. Our mutual friend and mutual ex-girlfriend was murdered, and our mutual, current, non-romantic, non-sexual friend is in jail."

"But Shane had motive to kill Jenny. You never did, never mind you were out of town when it happened."

"That's true," Carmen said.

"But you're convinced Shane didn't kill Jenny."

"Convinced, and beyond convinced. Dead sure. Positive. Bet my life on it."

"Why"

"Lots of reasons. One, Shane internalizes anger, she doesn't lash out at other people. Two, at heart she's a coward. Three, if she had done it, even accidentally pushed her off the deck, Shane could never have walked down the steps and rolled Jenny into the pool. The first part, sure. The second part, the drowning, no fucking way. That's just beyond absurd. And then if you still say, what if she had? Then the answer is Shane would have come apart at the seams. Crying and sobbing and carrying on fit to beat the band. Which didn't happen. She was in the media room watching the movie and eating popcorn. If she left the room to take a piss, she was back in a minute or two. If she left the room for five minutes and killed Jenny in that very brief time slot, there's just no fucking way on earth she rolls Jenny into the pool, walks back upstairs, sits back down in the media room and watches the goodbye video, eating popcorn, like nothing happened. Just not possible in this world."

"Okay. Lauren, Marybeth, your thoughts?"

"I absolutely agree," Lauren said. "Not Shane. No way. Same reasons."

"I admit I was skeptical for quite a while," Marybeth said. "But yes, I agree. Not Shane."

"Then my next question is obvious. Does Shane suspect her father? Even if she had nothing to do with Jenny's murder, does she know he's the blackmailer? Does she think he's the stalker? What do you call him, the Creep? Does she think it's Gabe?"

"No, again, absolutely not. She's clueless. If it's Gabe, she has no idea," Carmen said.

"I agree," Lauren said.

"Okay, I have to say something now you guys really aren't gonna like, but here it is," Deirdre said. "I'm really worried about Shane and Carmen's roles in the investigation. Two civilians running around and taking part in a murder investigation, civilians with connections to the case, which is even worse. I'd be worried to death even if it wasn't Gabe McCutcheon as the suspect, but now that he is, it's ten times worse. I'm mildly worried about Carmen, because she was Jenny's girlfriend at one time. I'm ten times more worried about Shane, who has motive up the wazoo, from what you tell me. By rights she ought to be sequestered a thousand miles away from this investigation."

"That's my fault," Jack said. "I let Marybeth and Lauren run with it."

"That doesn't bother me, Jack," Deirdre said. "They are both crackerjack detectives with murder investigation experience. The thing is, because they are working with Shane and Carmen they've broken wide open a closed homicide case into three additional murders we never knew about. That's pretty impressive. If we ever get to trial with Gabe McCutcheon, or anybody else, the trial is going to be a prosecutor's nightmare. But at least we'll have a defendant, and we'll be able to close out four murders."

"That we know of," Lauren said.

"You think there's more?"

"I have no idea. All I know is, we started with one. Now we're at four. Who knows what tomorrow brings?"

"Point taken," Deirdre said. "All I'm saying is, if and when we ever get to court, your participation is going to be a problem, but we'll just have to handle it. All right, how do we deal with Shane as of this moment? She could be back any second."

"We say nothing," Marybeth said. "Lauren works on tracking down Gabe without telling Shane. Otherwise, Shane can stay in the loop. You guys have plenty of other stuff to work on, and anyway it's Friday. You can take the weekend off, and hopefully we'll get the DNA results back on Monday or Tuesday. That'll tell us where to go from there. In the meantime, you have a lot of work to do on the private detective who went missing in Mexico, and Shane's free to concentrate on that. Jack?"

"I'm good, Marybeth, Carry on. And hey, Lauren and Carmen, well done," Jack said.

"Thanks," Lauren said. Carmen blushed.

Just then Shane opened the conference room door and came in and sat down.

"Shane, everything okay?" Marybeth asked.

"Yeah, one of the patrol cars backed into my truck. I had to fill out a lot of paperwork saying there was no damage, I wasn't gonna sue the county. A lot of bullshit and paperwork. I know you guys were talking about me. Carmen and Lauren told you I didn't do it."

Carmen held out her hand toward Lauren, palm up. Lauren reached into her pants pocket, fished out a five-dollar bill, and laid it in Carmen's palm.

Deirdre was quick on her feet, steering the conversation where she wanted. "Do you have a theory of the case?" she asked, mostly at Lauren but including Shane and Carmen.

"We do," Lauren said. "Here it is. Jenny and Niki Stevens were being jointly blackmailed by someone we now call the Creep, who had been surveilling them for some extended period of time, and videotaping them having sex. They had each made five monthly payments, each one under the $10,000 bank notice thing--"

"Structuring," Deirdre said.

"Yes," Lauren said. She saw the looks of mystification on Carmen and Shane's faces. "'Structuring' is the legal term for the crime of making a financial transaction just under the ten-thousand-dollar reporting threshold. Over ten thousand, and if it looks funny, the bank files an SAR, a suspicious activity report. Yes, they were structuring to avoid the SARs. Before the sixth monthly payment, Jenny apparently decided enough was enough, and hired a private detective without telling Niki, probably to find out who the blackmailer was, or otherwise do something about it, make a final settlement, get the blackmail videos back, or whatever. Maybe he finds something, we don't yet know. The Creep is watching Jenny and Shane's house, and on the night of the farewell party next door at Bette and Tina's, the Creep leaves his surveillance post in Scofield's garage, comes into Bette and Tina's backyard, meets Jenny on or near the stairs or the deck, gets into an argument, and pushes her off the deck. Our theory is he did not premeditate homicide. But once she's lying down below by the pool, he has to do something so she won't identify him, so he rolls her into the pool. That's when a possible assault turns into a definite homicide, not the push off the deck. He leaves the scene the same way he came, a gap in the fence behind Scofield's garage. He goes into Scofield's garage, quickly folds and puts the camp chair back in its place, returns the weightlifting bench to its position, and gets the hell out of there before anyone discovers Jenny's body in the pool and the shit hits the fan. Police arrive, Marybeth starts her investigation. Within a few hours, Alice falsely confesses, believing she is shielding Shane, who she thinks is the murderer. The false confession stops the investigation in its tracks, except for the forensics and autopsy, and not much further ever gets done. No other suspects are explored, no other leads or possibilities followed or even developed. Niki lies, so the blackmail is never discovered."

"Now," Lauren said, "this next part is really just spit-balling, because we've had no time to work on it. The private eye Jenny hired, Henry Hooker, goes on vacation to Ensenada, where he likes to go sport fishing for marlin. He has his favorite charter boat captain, a local Mexican fellow, and they go out one day about a week after the murder, and they never come back. Among the many questions we don't know is, did Hooker know about Jenny's murder? My guess is no, or he'd have volunteered it to us, unless he instead had decided to blackmail the blackmailer who is now a murderer. But I really don't think that's it. I think Hooker simply didn't know. I'm guessing he went to Mexico even before the murder occurred. But I also think he found something, and told Jenny before he went on vacation, like he was tasked to do. Maybe he had identified the blackmailer. Maybe they were in negotiations. In any case, we think the Creep went down to Mexico and took care of Henry Hooker, and the boat captain was collateral damage. He probably found a way to scuttle the boat, because neither it nor the two men have ever been seen again. We think they are out there somewhere off Ensenada at the bottom of the Pacific, and that was two years ago, so even if we ever found the boat, the bodies are gone by now."

"Then eight months go by," Lauren said, "and somehow, some way, Max makes contact with the Creep, or the other way around."

"She was one of the women at the farewell party?" Deirdre asked.

"He," Carman and Shane both said, quietly but simultaneously. "Max was a transman," Carmen said.

"Right," Deirdre said. "Sorry. He was at the party."

"Yes," Lauren said. "And also one of Jenny's ex-lovers several years earlier. Anyway, we think that at some point well after Jenny's murder, Max and the Creep have some kind of contact. Max was living and working out in Bakersfield. One night after work at a computer repair shop he was lured out onto the highway somewhere, was forced to get drunk and take some oxycodone, and was deliberately run down in a way that made it look, superficially, like an accident, at least at first blush. In a way, that's a common theme that runs through all four homicides: They each were made to look like accidents, at least for a little while. And for two of the four, Hooker and the boat captain, we're really just guessing until we look at it further."

"The other pattern you have is lack of clear, unambiguous motive," Deirdre said.

"That's true," Lauren said. "We concede that. We have guesses, but that's all they are."

"Deirdre," Marybeth put in, "in fairness to Lauren and Charlie's Angels, we've only known about two of the four deaths for a few hours, and only about Max for a week or so. It's still very early days yet."

"I understand," Deirdre said. "I'm not criticizing. I'm only summarizing what you know."

"Okay," Marybeth said.

"I guess that's all I need for now," Deirdre said.

"Jack, you have anything?" Marybeth asked him.

"No, I'm good, Marybeth," he said. "Lauren, at the risk of Marybeth kicking me out of her office, if you ever want to transfer back to homicide, you let me know. And I'm serious as a coronary about this next part. You're looking at what may be a serial killer, with four murders under his belt. Maybe more. At some point you're going to going to be at crunch time. Do NOT, I repeat NOT, hesitate to call in backup. Hit the button. And you have a secondary responsibility, which is keeping these two civilians out of harm's way. It's bad enough I have to deal with Marybeth. I don't want Bosley and Charley and all the other Angels all over my ass."