I'll Be Gone in the Dark(36)
It wouldn’t influence his physical appearance. His health and behavior wouldn’t be affected. He simply possessed rare markers.
Investigators appreciated the forensic results, but they needed a face and name. They felt certain the answer was in Janelle’s immediate orbit. The theory persisted that one of the young men in her life was responsible.
*
TEN YEARS LATER, MARTINEZ AND ALL THE OTHER BOYFRIENDS AND guy pals who drifted into Janelle’s circle were conclusively eliminated when the DNA profile of her killer was developed. It matched none of the original suspects. Instead, it matched an unidentified killer responsible for three other murders.
Mary Hong has a scientist’s dispassion and isn’t easily shocked. But the Harrington/Witthuhn/Cruz match dented her composure. She stared wide-eyed at the spreadsheet.
“That’s unbelievable,” she said to her computer screen.
Ventura, 1980
THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT FORMED A SPECIAL COLD-CASE UNIT TO deal with the sudden influx of new leads. Members of the Countywide Law Enforcement Unsolved Element, known as CLUE, began digging through old case files in January 1997. Meanwhile, Mary Hong faxed the Harrington/Witthuhn/Cruz DNA profile to hundreds of crime labs throughout the country. There was no response.
Investigator Larry Pool transferred into CLUE from the sex-crimes unit in February 1998. Pool is an air force vet with a stiff bearing. His moral perspective lacks gray. He loves God and abhors cursing. When cops are asked about their favorite part of the job, most reminisce about times they got to work undercover, the adrenaline that comes with unleashing your dodgy id with no idea of what’s coming around the corner. Pool never worked undercover. It’s hard to imagine that he ever could. He once interrogated a serial killer on death row in another state about a missing woman in Southern California police suspected him of killing. Pool suggested that the killer tell him where to find the body. It was the right thing to do. For his conscience. For the woman’s family. The killer began mild negotiations, remarking about the better conditions in California prisons. Maybe a transfer could be negotiated in exchange for information?
Pool organized his paperwork and stood from the table.
“You’ll die here,” he said and walked out the door.
Cold cases suited him. They were blanks that edgier cops, the
ones itching to kick in a door, might never fill in. Pool could. He was an insomniac who liked to “launch a command” in his brain, mull an investigative challenge in the background of his mind, until sometime later, maybe brushing his teeth or getting into his car, an answer came to him. Streetwise cops could sit down with a father who’d just set his family on fire and talk with him as though they were buddies sharing beers at a baseball game; they’d accept a degree of moral ambiguity, or at least pretend they did. For someone like Pool, who couldn’t fake it, cold cases were perfect. He was a twelve-year veteran at the Sheriff’s Department but relatively fresh at homicide investigation. A cardboard box containing three cases (Harrington, Witthuhn, and Cruz) was his new assignment. Inside were four stolen lives. One featureless monster. Pool told himself he would launch commands until he found him.
Pool noticed a Ventura Police Department case number scribbled in the margin of one of the reports in the Harrington file. He called and inquired. That’s the Lyman and Charlene Smith murders, he was told. Notorious case in Ventura. Lyman was a well-known attorney. He was on the verge of a superior court judgeship. Charlene was his knockout former secretary–turned– second wife. On Sunday, March 16, 1980, Gary Smith, Lyman’s twelve-year-old son from his first marriage, biked over to his father’s house to mow the lawn. The front door was unlocked. An alarm clock buzzing drew him tentatively to the master bedroom. Bark fragments were scattered across the gold carpet. A narrow log lay at the foot of the bed. Two shapes under the covers were the bodies of his father and stepmother.
Investigators were deluged with leads. The Smiths’ hilltop home overlooking Ventura Harbor was a slick sheen obscuring instability and drama. Affairs. Less-than-squeaky-clean business deals. They quickly zeroed in on a friend and former business partner of Lyman’s named Joe Alsip. Alsip had visited the Smiths
the night before their murders; his fingerprint was on a wine goblet. Worse, his minister told police that Alsip had essentially confessed to him. Alsip was arrested. The police and prosecution entered the preliminary hearing braying with confidence. They were especially pleased to see that Alsip’s defense attorney was Richard Hanawalt. Hanawalt was best known to them for successfully defending drunk drivers. He was partial to mixed metaphors and non sequiturs.
“Briefly during the lunch hour I wondered what the definition of ‘strong’ was,” he announced to the Alsip courtroom one day. About the opposing narratives in the case, he said, “Little by little it begins to unroll like a long carpet in front of a hotel.”
What they thought were Hanawalt’s fumbling antics hid a bombshell. Anonymous tipsters had encouraged him to investigate the minister’s past. He found a decades-long history, spanning the country from Indiana to Washington, of the minister bizarrely seeking police protection and trying to insert himself into investigations. Sergeant Gary Adkinson, one of the lead investigators on the Smith case, had quietly anticipated the minister’s unraveling and cringed when Hanawalt gleefully began to dismantle his story. The chief had given the minister a police radio after he insisted that he’d received threats on his life after turning in Alsip. One afternoon the minister’s terrified voice came panting over the radio. “He’s here! He’s coming at me!” he shouted. Adkinson happened to be at the intersection of Telegraph and Victoria, just a block from the minister’s house, and he raced over. The minister stood inside the front door, holding the radio dumbly to his chest, looking devastated to see Adkinson so soon.