Cold Case Closure: A Police Procedural Novel

By Patrick Ian O'donnell and Chuck Gaylor

In many capital crimes in which no one has been convicted there has been little doubt in the minds of law enforcement personnel as to the identity of the perpetrator, who for lack of admissible evidence has never been brought to trial. In Cold Case Closure five such fictional cases continue to be pursued by

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Vine Press
• Release date: Feb 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781953699817

Patrick Ian O'donnell

Patrick Ian O’Donnell was born and raised in Los Angeles and has enjoyed a varied career including teacher, university administrator, resort operator, and a principal of a registered investment advisory firm. His books include Death of an Oysterman, Illicit Cargo, and the Phil and Paula Oxnard murder mysteries: Ortega Night, McCollum’s Run, Of Doggerel and the Dean, and A Wrathful Vintage He has also published a book of short stories set in the California mother lode: Gold, Greed, Guile, and Gumption, and a chapbook of verse: The Least You Can Do Is Smile. He and his wife, Lorraine, live in Yorba Linda, California.

Book preview

Prologue

Detective Sergeant Grant Frazier stopped at the Alpine Lodge bar on route to his cabin at Big Bear Lake, a small resort city in the San Bernardino National Forest two hours from his home in Los Angeles. Grant, fifty-five years old, stood a shade under six feet tall with hair trimmed to a mere shadow on his balding pate. He was in excellent health due to a strict regimen of exercise. He had, from its inception, served as one of two appointees from the Los Angeles Police Department to the Governor’s Commission on Unsolved Cases, otherwise known as the California Cold Case Taskforce or CCCT.

He was not a regular patron of the dimly lit tavern. His wife Anne said she found the establishment depressing and had never been in favor of stopping there on their way to the lake. The saloon would have worn a happier countenance had the management seen fit to up the lighting a few watts, and Grant could have done without the country music emanating from the juke box. However, he was in the mood for a couple of beers, and their cabin was less than a mile from the lodge, so he wouldn’t have to get back on the main highway. He’d left town alone late that Saturday afternoon in February to see to the few repair jobs he had been putting off. Most important was installing a new valve in the kitchen to replace the one that had gone awry a month or so earlier. Anne didn’t relish turning off the water at the supply valve beneath the sink. It was perhaps too late to get much done that evening, but by getting an early start on the work on Sunday, he could complete his maintenance tasks in ample time to be home for Sunday dinner with his beloved Anne. He would reluctantly eschew his usual fishing; he wouldn’t really have time.

Anne had not been feeling up to par for some time, and since Grant would be there solely to see to the repairs, she suggested she stay at home, as she would have been of little help at the lake that weekend.

Just before he walked through the lodge door, Grant pulled his ancient floppy fishing hat from his head and stuffed it into the front of his half-zipped lightweight jacket. It had been drummed into his head as a young boy that hats were not to be worn indoors, and that particular hat had been described numerous times by his loving wife as ‘disreputable’. Why he had brought it with him this weekend when fishing wasn’t on the agenda, he didn’t know; habit, he guessed.

There were five other patrons, a middle-aged couple and three younger men, gracing the bar when Grant slid onto one of the ten remaining stools. The bartender, currently unoccupied, greeted him, Evening sir, What’ll it be?"

Grant noticed a sign on the back-bar reading, We’ve Got Double Bastard. It was something Grant had not yet tried. Although normally restricting his beer intake primarily to Anchor Steam and the occasional craft lager, he had tried Stone’s Arrogant Bastard ale on a couple of occasions and found it flavorful, albeit a bit heavy for regular consumption. He had heard about the eleven percent alcohol Double Bastard in a twenty–two-ounce bottle, almost twice of both the alcohol and the volume of his usual quaff. He normally drank two or three beers at one sitting. No reason he couldn’t handle it. Pointing to the sign, he said, Give me one of those.

Ah, a man with taste, the bartender said as he turned and extracted a bottle from the refrigerator under the back bar, pored half the bottle into a chilled pint glass, and pushed glass and bottle toward Grant. That’ll be eight bucks. Shall I run a tab?

No. Think one will probably be enough.

Grant placed a ten-dollar bill on the bar and took a sip of the ale. It was good he thought to himself. Perhaps he could be weaned off lager. Or, given the alcohol level, to say nothing of the price, maybe not such a good idea after all.

Meanwhile, he looked, around, the room. He’d been in the place a couple of times before. Nothing had changed. A slight aroma of stale beer permeated the air. A bear trap hung on the wall opposite the bar along with a watercolor of an idyllic mountain lake and another of a fisherman casting on a trout stream. Neither would have made its way into a reputable gallery. The room held half a dozen tables for four, still unoccupied at that six o’clock hour. He and Anne had never eaten at the place. He couldn’t imagine that the food, apparently barbeque and sandwiches, would be particularly appealing, certainly not to Anne.

While he sipped his ale, he glanced down the bar at his fellow drinkers. There was something about the profile of a man at the far end that struck him as familiar. He’d have to see the front of the guy’s face for his memory to kick in. Then again, he didn’t really care. He would finish his beer and get along to the cabin and get to work. Maybe change the valve, which he had picked-up at Lowe’s on the way, and take care of the minor repairs on Sunday before driving home.

The bar was beginning to fill, keeping the bartender busy. Just as well Grant thought. He wasn’t in the mood for the usual therapy session, or whatever it was bartenders thought they were about when making idle conversation with their customers. Although he supposed, for the inveterate barfly, it was a chance to unload at considerably less than the price of a shrink. He settled back to thinking about Anne. She hadn’t been feeling well. She had promised to make a doctor’s appointment, although she hadn’t gotten around to it yet. When he got home, he would call their daughter, Cindy, and get her to cajole Anne into seeing Dr. Feldman.

Although not normally one to overindulge, before he knew it Grant had polished off the first glass as well as the ale remaining in the bottle. Really smooth. What the hell, he could hardly feel it. He’d have another for the road. If Anne had been along, she would probably have questioned his wisdom. However, she wouldn’t harp; it wasn’t the way she was.

He waved to the bartender and pointed to his empty bottle. The man raised his hand to show he had gotten the message. After serving a draft beer to a newcomer, he applied his rag to the bar in front of Grant before setting down the second Double Bastard. Grant brought out another ten and said, Gotta hit the men’s room. Don’t let anyone touch my ale. I’ll be right back.

Don’t worry, I’ll be here watching.

On his way back to his ale, Grant caught a glimpse of the face of the man he thought familiar. Within a matter of seconds, he realized the man was Stanley Krakow. The man’s face told he was several years older than he appeared in the booking photo Grant had examined many times as he sifted through the files of unsolved crimes being pursued by the CCCT. There was no doubt, however, that this man was Krakow.

Stanley Krakow, the police believed, had committed at least five rapes, two of which culminated in murder. Most had taken place in the town of Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains overlooking the Coachella Valley, home to Palm Springs and several other desert communities. The rapist always wore a woolen watch cap pulled down over his face with eye-holes cut out. None of the victims had seen his face, although two said they could smell liquor on his breath and he had a somewhat strong body odor. One victim, who had survived the ordeal, originally said she thought he might have a tattoo on his upper arm. Each of the women was alone in her home when he struck, leading police to assume Krakow spent a good deal of time on surveillance to learn the habit patterns of his potential victims.

The police had no doubt as to Krakow’s guilt in the case of the last known victim, because of an unrelated arrest by San Bernardino Sheriff’s Deputies during which he was found to have a wool watch cap with eye-holes, gloves, a length of rope to bind potential victims, and a pry bar. It comprised what law officers refer to as a rape kit. The lack of neither physical evidence nor a witness who could positively identify Krakow prevented his prosecution. The District Attorney’s Office is obligated only to pursue cases they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt is in the eye of the beholder. Charges were not brought.

Krakow’s was one of five cases Grant had marked for his personal attention while assigned to the Cold Case Taskforce. At the onset of his investigation, after determining that Krakow had recently moved from Palm Desert to San Bernardino, Grant telephoned police in that area so they could keep an eye on him should there be reported rapes in the area with the with same MO.

It was improbable the guy had shown up at that particular bar at the same time as Grant, but perfectly understandable. San Bernardino, a city of some two-hundred thousand, lay at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, less than half-an-hour’s drive away. Grant quickly downed the ale in his glass and immediately filled it with the remainder from the bottle. He needed to think clearly, but the ales had taken their toll. All he could do was focus on the anger welling up in him as he was reminded of the shitty decision on the part of the DA’s office not to at least file a case and work with the detectives to tighten up the prosecution by finding more witnesses, evidence, whatever. Prosecutors were looking for perfection in an imperfect world.

Ten minutes after Grant returned to his ale Krakow lurched off his bar stool, threw a couple of coins on the bar, and headed toward the front entrance of the lodge. Grant finished his remaining ale in two quick swallows as Krakow, from what Grant could make out, exchanged a few not very pleasant words with the customer occupying the stool next to him. Grant thought to himself, yeah that’s exactly how people like Krakow go through this world, doing and saying whatever they want to people with no concern about repercussions or how they impact other’s lives.

As Krakow left through the door, Grant rose from the bar and without any plan in mind moved slowly in the same direction. At least he might learn the make and model of the vehicle Krakow was now driving, something that could be useful in tying him to any current or future crimes. When he emerged from the building, he saw Krakow crossing the bar’s parking lot and heading across the highway and into a housing development. A wooden sign reading Pine Crest Village hung spanning the road at its entrance.

Grant had driven past the place numerous times and knew of the enclave of upscale mountain cabins, the smallest of which was probably two- thousand square feet. What’s this guy up to? Grant wondered. Although feeling the effects of his ale, Grant’s police instincts came alive, and he noticed the setting was similar to that in Idyllwild where Krakow’s crime spree was centered. Grant knew most criminals were, to a great extent, creatures of habit, invariably committing the same type of crimes in the same manner. Could this guy really be preparing to attack another woman? If nothing else Grant wanted to confront Krakow and have the satisfaction of reminding the son-of-a-bitch that he should always be aware there is no closed book on a murder case, and that eventually justice would prevail. Whether Grant’s confidence and his decision to confront Krakow sprang from reality, anger, or from the two-and-a-half pints of strong ale he had consumed was a matter of conjecture.

Grant crossed the highway. Hey Krakow!, he shouted as he gained on the man on the road into the development. Lookin’ for the ladies, are you?

Krakow looked over his shoulder. Then, stopping in his tracks, he turned around to confront Grant. What’s that supposed to mean asshole? And who the fuck are you anyway?

Just someone who would like to remind you the cops aren’t done with you yet. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.

Krakow, five foot eight and one hundred and sixty pounds stared at the somewhat larger, physically fit Grant, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talkin’ about. Krakow’s words were slurred. Grant had overdone his ale, but Krakow was feeling his drinks even more. Remember, he went on, The cops don’t have shit, and they don’t know shit. They had no right to question me in the first place. That’s all over. Been over for years. Get lost, asshole! With that, he took a step closer to Grant and shoved him in the chest with the flat of his hand, causing Grant to stumble backward before regaining his balance. Grant, his better judgement hijacked by the ale and instinctively reacting to being shoved, reached out with his left hand and closed it on Krakow’s shirtfront. For me, it’ll never be over. Remember, he repeated, there’s no statute of limitations on murder.

Krakow, in turn, grabbed at Grant’s jacket, ripped the zipper apart and lashed-out with a right jab to Grant’s face. While Grant, with sudden adrenaline rush that mitigated the numbing effect of too much alcohol, found himself possessed of a kind of tunnel vision that excluded everything beyond the task at hand.

Grant blocked the jab and hooked his right leg behind Krakow’s right leg, while pushing on Krakow’s upper torso, causing the man to tumble backwards to the ground. The fight was on. After several seconds of rolling back and forth, Grant managed to straddle Krakow’s supine body and began punching the man’s face. When Krakow attempted to sit up, Grant quickly thrust his own palm into Krakow’s forehead, causing the back of Krakow’s head to slam against the asphalt. Grant, now even more focused on Krakow and the women’s lives he had inextricably ruined, took Krakow’s head in his hands and struck it to the asphalt. How does it feel to be on the receiving end?"

Grant suddenly stopped his assault as he became aware of Krakow’s now limp and unresponsive body. As quickly as he had flown into a rage, he began to regain his senses. He stood up and backed away from the unconscious Krakow. Best to leave before the bastard wakes up.

Grant rose to his feet and looked around, his cop’s ability to analyze quickly and evaluate the situation at hand reasserted itself. He reflected briefly on how this knock down and drag out affair, typical of the numerous street fights he had encountered, was a dirty disheveling business, so different from the scripted versions fought by Hollywood’s film heroes.

The question that leaped to his mind, had anyone witnessed this ill-advised and alcohol induced lapse in judgement? If such were the case it could result in suspension or worse, prosecution. This was not how his exceptional and unblemished career should end. Looking around in the darkness, he ended his encounter with Krakow had gone on unobserved. The deed was done. It was now time for damage control. He had administered at least a modicum of extra-judicial justice, known by an earlier generation of cops as street justice. This sense of justice was now being supplanted by an awareness of having crossed the line. Whether it was justice, or something less honorable, Krakow would awaken with one hell of a headache. Grant quickly walked back across the highway to the inn parking lot, got into his car, and headed for his cabin no more than half-a-mile away. All the while he was overwhelmed by regret from having lost control of himself. How often had he preached to rookies under his supervision that cops are never supposed to act on their emotions?

Three days later, back at home, Grant spotted a short article in the L.A. Times about the discovery of a body on the path to the entrance of Pine Crest Village in the Big Bear Lake area. The police were treating man’s death as murder.

Because Krakow had struck the first blow, Grant attempted to convince himself he had simply acted in self-defense and further he had merely knocked the man unconscious. Although somewhere in the depth of his mind, he feared from the time he left the scene that Krakow would not survive the beating.

The same day as the article appeared, Anne finally agreed to be seen by a doctor, something Grant had been urging for the previous month or more. They learned that she was suffering from pancreatic cancer. Anne died six months later.

Grant remained after the others left, sitting in the front pew of the chapel staring at the simple casket holding Anne’s body until it would be taken to the crematorium. This was the last time, except in memory, he would be close to Anne, his wife of thirty-five years. The job of scattering her ashes off the coast would fall to his daughter, Cindy, and her husband, his fellow LAPD detective, Michael Grayson. As strong as Grant was, he could not face that task. The just concluded service was bad enough. The platitudes of the non-denominational minister who had never met Annie were hardly sincere. How could they be? The man, however, had certainly meant well.

As Grant sat alone in the pew, he knew his life from here onward would never be the same. The two things that made his life worth living were his pursuit of justice and the love he shared with Anne since he had first met Anne Holmes two months before their marriage. There were, of course, his daughter Cindy and his granddaughter, but they were simply an extension of their love, his and Anne’s. Her devotion to Grant and to his law enforcement career had been unwavering throughout. She had tolerated without a word his occasional minor over indulgences in alcohol. They were few, although more frequent of late. However, she realized he was often under great stress, much of which was self-imposed because of his dogged dedication to the concept of justice, an abstraction made concrete by his career as a homicide detective. They had raised their daughter together, thanks to Grant’s unfailing willingness to help with domestic chores so Anne could continue with her practice as a CPA. It was a career she had pursued from before they had met and married until the end of the previous tax season, when, at Grant’s urging, she had made the decision to retire.

Beyond his work and his family, Grant had few if any interests, fishing being an exception. When up at the cabin during the season he would fish for rainbow trout or bass, sometimes fly casting from the shore, sometimes from his eight-foot skiff, which he kept at one of the lake’s several marinas. Each year he would take a week of his allotted vacation time and head for a trout stream, usually in the Sierra Nevada, sometimes in Oregon, Wyoming, or Montana. Often, he was accompanied by his friend of many years, Marty Jackson, a long-time homicide detective with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

Anne had encouraged these annual fishing trips. Grant always returned relaxed, a relaxation that never lasted more than a week or two, but that, Anne always felt, was at least something.

I

THE TASKFORCE

Chapter 1

The Cold Case Taskforce, under the jurisdiction of the California Department of Justice, drew its membership from law enforcement agencies throughout the State. The Taskforce maintained an office in Los Angeles and one in its Sacramento headquarters which served primarily the northern part of the State although there were no rigid territorial distinctions.

Eligibility for an appointment to the Taskforce was based not on seniority but on the proven ability of the appointee to investigate homicides and other violent crimes. As much as Taskforce leadership were loath to acknowledge it, the occasional appointment was political, the nephew of some powerful member of the State Senate or the like. Fortunately, these deadweight appointments were rare.

With nearly one-third of the Nation’s homicides going unsolved, the work of the Taskforce work was especially beneficial to those smaller jurisdictions lacking the manpower or technical resources available to larger law enforcement agencies, although there were numerous unsolved crimes on the books of even the largest departments.

Grant Frazier had known from experience that the key to unraveling these unsolved cases usually lay within the pages of the cases themselves. He knew there would be a mention of some fact or piece of evidence that had not been thoroughly examined or witnesses who had not been sufficiently interviewed. Often the case could be solved if one could determine what that missing factor was and then pursue it to its logical conclusion: identification of the suspect and development of sufficient evidence leading to an arrest and prosecution. There was a high potential for solving other agencies unsolved cases, even though a CCCT investigator usually did not have the benefit of working in the jurisdiction originally investigating the case.

During Grant’s tenure at the CCCT, he had more than his fair share of successful prosecutions, and after eight years believed that it was time for what could be called a sabbatical. He found the sometimes-futile attempts to solve these crimes could be frustrating. Moreover, most disturbing to Grant was that in many of these cases he and other detectives were able to identify the suspect, yet the physical evidence and witness statements would fall short of what was necessary to file the case with the District Attorney’s Office. Thus, he returned to regular duty as a detective sergeant with LAPD for three years before being persuaded, because of his recognized skill at cold case detection, to accept reappointment to the commission. There was something about working an unsolved murder case, identifying the killer, and seeing it all the way through to a successful prosecution that gave him a feeling of satisfaction that was unmatched by any other aspect of Grant’s law enforcement career.

It was during his three years back as an LAPD detective that Grant met Mike Grayson, the man who would become his son-in-law. Mike had served in the department as a patrol officer for four years, when the opportunity arose for an assignment to the Detective Bureau where Grant became his immediate superior. He soon learned that he could not have been more fortunate than to learn the investigator’s craft under Grant’s tutelage.

Some value their job as a cop simply as a means of livelihood, others out of an honest desire to serve the community. Grant would not deny that a decent salary and the opportunity to serve were important, but as Mike learned early on, the concept of justice was Grant’s greatest motivator. It was a matter of working the case by reading the clues, analyzing the facts, and delivering the criminal, especially the brutal criminal, to the judicial system, where he or she would hopefully pay the price for what Grant saw as a wanton disregard for the social order.

Mike learned to appreciate the skills of the man and his dedication to the case at hand and how strongly he felt about getting it right. Mike would never forget what Grant had told him on the first day he served as the older man’s partner.

Police work is a people business. The best cops, the ones who make the system work whether, as a patrol officer or detective, are those who understand human nature. They make no un-vetted assumptions. They know every case and every call has to be handled based on the facts of that particular situation. The successful detective painstakingly pursues his case carefully and completely before arriving at a conclusion. Innocent until proven guilty is not simply a cliché. It is a necessary approach to assure the right suspect is arrested. You must be careful not to harm the innocent in your desire to make an arrest. Once the suspect’s guilt is determined, justice should be swift. By that time, though, the matter is out of your hands. It’s then up to the courts to determine the appropriate sentence. Unfortunately, prosecutors are sometimes hesitant to bring cases in which they feel a jury might deny them a conviction. In others, plea bargains result in sentences far short of what is deserved, but we have no control over the outcome. We can only do our jobs and deliver our suspects to the system. The truth, Michael, is that some folks do, in fact, literally get away with murder.

Chapter 2

Mike Grayson’s path to police work began at California State University Long Beach where he majored in history, following in his father’s footsteps. In his sophomore year Mike began dating Shelley McFarland, a determined young woman studying criminal justice. She talked him into enrolling in an introductory course. He found it fascinating and ended up with a minor in the subject. Teaching, the most obvious path for someone with a degree in history, was not particularly appealing. He had heard his father often say that the study of history is really more satisfying than teaching it.

Shelley and he didn’t have enough in common to guarantee a smooth everlasting connection. Upon graduation she took a job in the Bay Area with the San Jose PD. Mike was never sure whether the job three hundred and fifty miles from home was because of the appeal of the Silicon Valley or, because a goodly distance between them would assure their