The Scarecrow

She seemed embarrassed by my profanity. She would have to get used to it, dealing with cops.

“There’s one other thing,” I said. “They have a hidden nobility. The good ones, I mean. And if you can somehow get that into your stories, you will win them over every time. So look for the telling details, the little moments of nobility.”

“Okay, Jack, I will.”

“Then you’ll do all right.”

While we were making the rounds and the introductions in the police headquarters at Parker Center we picked up a nice little murder story in the Open-Unsolved Unit. A twenty-year-old rape and murder of an elderly woman had been cleared when DNA collected from the victim in 1989 was unearthed in case archives and run through the state Department of Justice’s sex crimes data bank. The match was called a cold hit. The DNA collected from the victim belonged to a man currently doing time at Pelican Bay for an attempted rape. The cold case investigators would put together a case and indict the guy before he ever got a chance at parole up there. It wasn’t that flashy, because the bad guy was already behind bars, but it was worth eight inches. People like to read stories that reinforce the idea that bad people don’t always get away. Especially in an economic downturn, when it’s so easy to be cynical.

When we got back to the newsroom I asked Angela to write it up-her first story on the beat-while I tried to run down Wanda Sessums, my angry caller from the Friday before.

Since there was no record of her call to the Times switchboard and a quick check with directory assistance had turned up no listing for Wanda Sessums in any of L.A.’s area codes, I next called Detective Gilbert Walker at the Santa Monica Police Department. He was the lead investigator on the case that resulted in Alonzo Winslow’s arrest in the murder of Denise Babbit. I guess you could say it was a cold call. I had no relationship with Walker, as Santa Monica didn’t come up very often on the news radar. It was a relatively safe beach town between Venice and Malibu that had a pressing homeless problem but not much of a murder problem. The police department investigated only a handful of homicides each year and most of these weren’t newsworthy. More often than not they were body dump cases like Denise Babbit’s. The murder occurs somewhere else-like the south end of L. A.-and the beach cops are left to clean up the mess.

My call found Walker at his desk. His voice seemed friendly enough until I identified myself as a reporter with the Times. Then it went cold. That happened often. I had spent seven years on the beat and had many cops in many departments that I counted as sources and even friends. In a jam, I could reach out. But sometimes you don’t get to pick who you have to reach out to. The bottom line is you can never get them all in your corner. The media and the police have never been on comfortable terms. The media views itself as the public watchdog. And nobody, the police included, likes having somebody looking over their shoulder. There was a chasm between the two institutions into which trust had fallen long before I was ever around. Consequently, it made things tough for the lowly beat reporter who just needs a few facts to fill out a story.

“What can I do for you?” Walker said in a clipped tone.

“I’m trying to reach Alonzo Winslow’s mother and I was wondering if you might be able to help.”

“And who is Alonzo Winslow?”

I was about to say, Come on, Detective, when I realized I wasn’t supposed to know the suspect’s name. There were laws about releasing the names of juveniles charged with crimes.

“Your suspect in the Babbit case.”

“How do you know that name? I’m not confirming that name.”

“I understand that, Detective. I’m not asking you to confirm the name. I know the name. His mother called me on Friday and gave me the name. Trouble is, she didn’t give me her phone number and I’m just trying to get back in-”

“Have a nice day,” Walker said, interrupting and then hanging up the phone.

I leaned back in my desk chair, noting to myself that I needed to tell Angela Cook that the nobility I mentioned earlier did not reside in all cops.

“Asshole,” I said out loud.

I drummed my fingers on the desk until I came up with a new plan-the one I should have employed in the first place.

I opened a line and called a detective who was a source in the South Bureau of the Los Angeles Police Department and who I knew had been involved in the Winslow arrest. The case had originated in the city of Santa Monica because the victim had been found in the trunk of her car in a parking lot near the pier. But the LAPD became involved when evidence from the murder scene led to Alonzo Winslow, a resident of South L.A.