The Color Dead Read online

  The Color Dead

  A Dickie Floyd Detective Novel

  Danny R. Smith

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Afterword

  The Series

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 Danny R. Smith

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7322809-7-7

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to offer a special thanks to my beta readers, whose eyes for detail have helped me polish this novel: Scott Anderson, Michele Carey, Teresa Collins, Andrea Hill-Self, Steve Jenkins, Henry “Bud” Johnson, Phil Jonas, Ann Litts, Dennis “Deac” Slocumb, and Heather Wamboldt. Also my wonderful wife, Lesli, and daughters Jami and Randi Jo.

  A special thanks to Steve Jenkins who also shared his knowledge and expertise of the operations of Gorman Station, a unique and challenging outpost of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Others who have held assignments there and took the time to assist me in my research include: John Grisbach, Jim Jeffra, Steve Newman, Wayne Stickle, and John Sylvies. Any inaccuracies about Gorman Station, its operation, history, or region, are my mistakes—not theirs—or have been altered for the purpose of the story.

  Narcotics Bureau legend Ernie Banuelos provided his expertise and knowledge of marijuana grows, and the procedures, tactics, and efforts of the Marijuana Eradication Team (MET). I am grateful to him for the education.

  I have flown the skies, sailed the seas, and patrolled the dark allies of South Los Angeles and beyond with my good friend and former training officer, Sgt. Mike Griffin. I am grateful for his friendship, and I thank him for his technical advice on the operations and equipment of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Aero Bureau.

  And last—but never least—my good friend and long-suffering editor, Patricia Brennan. Without her guidance, I would never know if something should lay or lie, or if it had laid or lain, and I would literally lose my ever-loving literary mind.

  For the partners and loved ones of

  Deputy Arthur E. Pelino

  End of Watch: Sunday, March 19, 1978

  Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

  Gorman Station

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  In the blood business, finality was compassionate. The dead no longer suffered pain, and the terrors of their final moments were behind them. For the survivors, a sense of peace could accompany the scenes of unspeakable violence, in the way gentle winds persisted against the black-green skies over the ruins of a tornado. The destruction, the pain, the death that was left behind, those were manageable things that required sensible and logical responses, plans, and actions. Perhaps the tasks to recover and rebuild were only distractions from the terror that had struck when the winds roared like trains and giant hailstones crashed through the darkening skies and earthly possessions were mercilessly uprooted and hurled from one place to the other. Those were moments that seemed like lifetimes, as the battle had yet to be measured and survival was uncertain. Death, though, is finality. Certainty.

  1

  I sat anxiously with Josie’s mother, Esmeralda, an awkward silence between us as I fussed with my hat. Josie’s mother sat picking at the fabric of the oversized chair that swallowed her frail body. A clock ticked slowly against the wall. The pool filter hummed outside the open patio door. I glanced quickly through the living room window at the sound of a passing vehicle, and so did she. The car passed, and each of us returned to waiting in silence. I drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, easing some of the tension. Esmeralda sighed, seemingly her way of expressing similar disappointment. Her thoughts were likely no different than mine, only in Spanish. My bilingual skills were limited to the few basics: alto—stop, or more accurately, halt; manos arriba—hands up; muerte—death. Those weren’t the words I needed in my communications with Josie’s mother—I hoped. When I first arrived, I had smiled at the small woman with graying hair, and asked where Josie was: “¿Dónde está Josie?” Esmeralda, her small dark eyes showing fear and concern, had shaken her head and shrugged. “No sé.” She didn’t know.

  Like many cops, I was quick to assume the worst. Josie was missing, so something terrible had happened to her. My experiences had conditioned me to think that way. But I had also been trained and conditioned to never give up, so I forced myself to see my partner alive and well. There had to be a reasonable explanation of her absence.

  Josefina Sanchez had been a deputy sheriff for twelve years. She had survived three shootings and dozens of altercations. She knew the streets, and she knew the hustlers, gangsters, and junkies who roamed them. She had put countless bad men away, and she had even put some down. Josie was a cop any other would be proud to have as a partner. It wasn’t as if she was the vulnerable type, and her personal lifestyle wasn’t the type to put her at risk. As far as I knew.

  Though two things did bother me: Josie and I had picked up a new murder case three days ago, one that had bizarre written on it from the start. It was a case of a gunshot victim found in the mountains near rural Gorman, the last stop headed north through Los Angeles County. Gorman felt more like an outpost in Wyoming than a sheriff’s substation in southern California. When we were given the assignment, I had frowned at Rich Farris who was manning the desk and had dispatched the callout. “Gorman?” I questioned. “Are you shitting me, Rich?” After Farris explained the basics of what he knew—a man was found in the woods with a single gunshot wound to the chest and a rifle at his side—I had said, “Rich, this sounds like a suicide to me, or an accidental death. Maybe a hunting accident?”

  Farris said he had thought so too, at first. He had been at Homicide a long time—several more years than I had—and he had handled scores of suicide cases in which men had taken their pistols or rifles out to their favorite hunting or camping grounds and sat down beneath the shade of a large oak or pine for last moments of reflection before taking their own lives. He said, “When’s the last time you saw a dude off himself standing up?” I hadn’t. For whatever reason, people didn’t want to fall, once dead. They’d sit beneath a tree, behind the wheel of a car, or on their favorite sofa or chair, or maybe they’d lie down in bed. But rare was the case of the man or woman who put a bullet through their own power plant while standing upright, thus allowing their dead bodies to fall to the floor or ground. Even the soon-to-be departed were hesitant to take a fall.
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  What bothered me most about the latest case and Josie’s absence was a comment she had made after we had wrapped up Thursday evening and driven back into civilization. Josie had asked if we would be going back up to the mountain over the weekend, and she seemed puzzled that I had suggested we take the weekend off and start back up on Monday. It hadn’t sounded good in my head when I said it, and it tasted sour coming out of my mouth. But we were scheduled to be off for a three-day weekend, and there was no immediate workable information that needed to be pursued right away. The captain had been complaining about overtime again, and I didn’t care to give him more to gripe about. So, I had thought, why not take a weekend off? I suggested to Josie that we let the case sit for three days, handle the detail we had been asked to deal with Sunday evening for another detective on an unrelated case, and then we’d get back to the new murder Monday. The murder on the mountain. Josie had frowned and questioned, “On a fresh case? We’re going to just park it?”

  The question I had now was would she have taken it upon herself to work the case over the weekend without me? I didn’t think so, yet there was a possibility she had. I had told her to enjoy a few days off and I’d pick her up from her home at five on Sunday.

  I glanced at my watch, looked through the front window toward the quiet street, and then my eyes slowly drifted back to the anxious mother.

  The second thing that bothered me was how little I actually knew of Josie’s personal life. She was private, even after six months of partnership, careful to guard against revealing much of her life outside of the job. Was she seeing someone? If so, had she been having trouble with him? Or her? Jesus, I didn’t even know whether she was straight or gay. Not that it mattered, but it accentuated the point that was troubling me: I knew almost nothing of my partner’s personal life. Floyd and I had had no secrets when we were partners, and probably still didn’t.

  I forced myself out of my naturally pessimistic thought pattern and considered the fact that she may have just gone away for the weekend without telling anyone. It was a question I’d have to ask Esmeralda. But how?

  I glanced at my watch again, and only five minutes had passed. I had been waiting for more than an hour now, and I needed to do something other than sit here and worry. I stood up from the couch and paused, searching my brain for the Spanish translation of “Excuse me.” Esmeralda waited, watching, seemingly knowing my thoughts. I nodded, smiled, held up my index finger and said, “Momento,” and walked outside.

  Under the bright sunlight, I put my ball cap on, thumbed my phone to life and called Floyd. I waited impatiently as the call went unanswered and was eventually picked up by voicemail. I disconnected and called again. Same result. I shoved the phone in my pocket, removed my hat with one hand and wiped dampness from my forehead with the other. An airplane passed overhead, inbound to LAX, I assumed, as I caught a glimpse of it against the late afternoon sun to the west. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other, antsy, my mind racing as I fought to control my emotions. Not being able to get ahold of either of my partners—my new one, Josie, or my old one, Pretty Boy Floyd—threatened to send me over the edge. For a brief moment, I pictured them somewhere together, living it up, a dark barroom or maybe a Jacuzzi.

  Through the open front door I could see that Esmeralda had left her chair. She was probably in the kitchen making something to eat. That’s what Mexican women of her generation did at times of peril; they fed you. They fed everyone. The more people they could feed, the more content were their lives. You’d never see them partaking, only providing. Nurturing. Mothering. God bless them all.

  I sent another call to Floyd’s phone and was startled when it was answered. “Hold on,” a woman snapped. It was Cindy, Floyd’s wife, but she wasn’t her usual friendly self. I waited and listened to the sound of a slider being opened and the faint sound of a boy’s voice. I then heard Floyd. His voice was distant at first but seemed to draw nearer. I pictured Cindy walking the phone to him, my old partner standing at the barbecue, a meat hook in one hand and a can of beer in the other. The uniform of the day would likely include board shorts, flip-flops, and a cowboy hat, no shirt. Never a shirt. He’d have wire-rimmed mirrored circles covering his eyes, something Elton John or John Lennon might wear on stage, something he had grabbed at the market when he picked up a box of beer and two bags of ice. He’d be content in his haven, his private retreat from the world, all the peace and quiet a man could want right in his own backyard.

  “What’s up, Dickie?”

  2

  Floyd hovered a meat hook over a sizzling tri-tip while sipping his beer at the barbecue. His son ran toward him, then jumped into the pool not far from where Floyd stood, tucking himself into a cannonball mid-flight. He landed with a whoosh, and water sprayed across Floyd’s back, cooling his shoulders. He jolted and thrust his beer toward the sky, cat-like instincts saving it from a wave of water.

  “Cody, not in the shallow end, bud,” he said flatly.

  Cody went under and headed to the other end, a skinny porpoise gliding effortlessly through the crystal-blue water. Like his father, he had taken to the water early in life and spent hours every week swimming laps for exercise.

  “Little shit,” Floyd mumbled, smiling as he swigged his beer and watched the boy turn at the far end of the pool, still not coming up for air.

  Cindy appeared at the slider, her blonde head and tanned shoulders squeezing through the small opening. She swatted at a fly and spoke as if it was urgent. “How much longer on the meat?” she asked.

  Floyd regarded the slab of beef smoking on the grill. He dropped the curved part of his meat hook from a couple inches above the center of the four-pound tri-tip. It had no bounce, which indicated it was far from finished. He glanced at his watch and turned back to his bride. “Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. I don’t know.”

  She waved her hand at another flying intruder and disappeared, the glass door hitting hard in its frame.

  “The hell is your problem,” Floyd said at the closed door. He took another drink of his cold beer, and it felt good going down. He cherished his days off, though few they were nowadays. That was the life of a homicide detective.

  “Dad, watch this!”

  He looked in time to see Cody launch himself from the top of the slide and into the water, foregoing the slow ride down.

  “For fuck’s sake,” Floyd said, before the boy surfaced.

  The sound of the slider drew his attention again, and he turned to see his wife approaching with his cell phone held out toward him.

  “What’s up?”

  She didn’t answer. She handed him the phone and turned to walk away. Floyd let his eyes settle on her ass as she did, and he smiled and took another swig of beer. If there was one thing he loved, it was a nice ass. If there were two things he loved, it was a nice ass and cold beer. If he had to list three things, he’d add a medium-rare steak. It was a perfect day, he thought, until his attention turned to the screen displaying “Dickie Cell.”

  “What’s up, Dickie?”

  He listened while watching Cody climb out of the pool, the young man’s eyes upon him. Nearly a teenager now, the kid watched him closely at all times. Cody emulated him in many ways and cherished the time they had together. Floyd knew this, and he could see the look of concern in the boy’s eyes each time he took a business call at home. Many times, those conversations would result in a change of demeanor, and then attire, followed by a hasty departure in the county car. Floyd always felt guilty when it happened.

  Dickie said, “I need your help, partner.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Josie.”

  Floyd waited a moment, his eyes on Cody who now stood nearby toweling off. He knew the boy would be taking in every word, wanting to know the details. He turned back to the barbecue and dropped the hook on the slab of meat again.

  “What about her?”

  “We were supposed to meet at five. I have no idea where she is.”

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; Floyd set the hook down at the side of the barbecue, picked up his beer, and took a swig before speaking. “Well, it’s not my turn to watch her, Dickie. Cindy won’t allow it. Not that I wouldn’t mind—”

  “I’m at her house. Her mother is worried.”

  “Whose house?”

  “Josie’s. Her mother lives with her, and from the best I can get—because wouldn’t you know it, she only pinky panty—Josie didn’t come home last night.”

  Floyd mumbled, “Jesus, dude. So you want me to come pinky panty; that’s where this is going?”

  “You speak it better than me.”

  “Dickie, you can’t order tacos in Spanish. Why don’t you call Miguel, or Joe the Mo, one of them assholes who gets paid to habla? I’m fu—” he glanced at his son “—I’m in the middle of cooking a tri-tip.”

  Dickie said, “Dude, I’ve got a bad feeling on this.”

  “You always do,” he said, though he could hear the concern in Dickie’s voice.

  “But I also don’t want to blow this up just yet, get others involved, just in case I’m wrong.”