Page 69 of Nightshade
“That’s a pretty strong statement.”
“Yeah, well, it’s the truth. You ever know a guy named Carl Dobbin? He was a deputy worked out of Lennox until they caught him on camera shaking down street dealers for cash and coke.”
“I didn’t know him. Never worked Lennox, but they had a lot of problems down there with that kind of stuff.”
“They did, and IAB came in and cleaned it up. Dobbin was one of the guys that got washed out. That was seven, maybe eight, years ago.”
“Okay, so what did he have to do with the case you and Rex locked horns on?”
“Everything. After he left the department, Dobbin was able to get a PI ticket because they let him retire with a clean record. Then two years ago, he ends up killing a guy in a divorce case he was working. He claimed self-defense, said that the guy he was following confronted him and pulled a gun, but Dobbin pulled his and got off the first shot. Because he was an ex-deputy, our whole team rolled out on the case. So I was there that night. Ahearn was lead but I worked the first night. I got next-of-kin duty on the dead man. I went to his sister’s house to notify her that he was dead, and she told me she believed it was a setup. Her brother had told her he thought his soon-to-be ex was going to try to kill him so she’d get all the money.”
“You believed her?”
“I believed the claim should have been investigated, but Ahearn didn’t do it. He just took Dobbin at his word and presented the case to the DA as a self-defense. The DA signed off and that was it. Then, guess what: I get a call from the sister. She still has my card from when I made the notification. She’s absolutely livid because Ahearn never talked to her and never even looked into her suspicions that it was an orchestrated hit.”
“So, let me guess—you did.”
“Yeah, I did some digging. The gun the dead guy supposedly pointed at Dobbin had been reported stolen ten years before. I pulled the records because Ahearn had never checked. It was stolen during a burglary in Lennox, and guess who took the initial report.”
“Dobbin?”
“Yeah, Dobbin. The gun was listed on a supplemental report. The house had been ransacked, tons of stuff taken, and the owner wasn’t initially sure what all he had lost. So, two days later, he comes into the substation in Lennox with a whole list of stuff he said was gone, and the gun was on that list.”
“Your theory was that Dobbin piggybacked on the burglary, that he saw the gun when he was there to take the report and grabbed it?”
“Pretty much. Then he kept it in his sock in case he ever needed a throwdown. He eventually gets booted out, gets his private ticket, and this shooting goes down. The stolen gun ends up in the dead man’s hand.”
Stilwell let that sink in for a few moments before continuing.
“There was a lot at stake in the divorce,” he said. “The dead guy was a former gangbanger and drug dealer who’d turned completely legit and invested in businesses all over South L.A. There was a lot of money on the table that he didn’t want to split with the wife. So the wife hired Dobbin to supposedly get the goods on him to use as leverage. But what if Dobbin told her he could make it so there was no money split and she got it all?”
“You know what I call that? A lot of coincidence and conjecture.”
“I’m not arguing with that, but it should have been investigated and it wasn’t. Ahearn either took a dive or just looked the other way. I did some digging on that too, and it turns out Ahearn and Dobbin were in the same academy class. They went way back. So now you have another coincidence, and that is one too many not to be looking at this.”
“You go to the captain with it?”
“Nope, and that was my mistake. I went straight to IAB when I should have started with Corum.”
“And the bureau took a pass.”
“They used the same words you did—coincidence and conjecture. That’s what our vaunted Internal Affairs Bureau said. It went no further. Ahearn ended up with an ‘unfounded complaint’ in his jacket and I got sent to the Island of Misfit Toys. End of story.”
“Till now.”
“Till now. Ahearn has the ding in his jacket that he blames me for and he can’t see past it to properly work the case. His ass must be burned that Corum is making us work together.”
“He’s not too happy, but he’s a professional. It’ll be fine.”
“I’m glad one of us thinks so.”
“What was your thinking back then? That Dobbin paid Ahearn off?”
“Or he just looked the other way for an academy pal. And once he did that, Dobbin owned him. But I don’t really care which it was, and for the record, I didn’t care too much about the dead ex–drug dealer either. But Dobbin is still out there and people who get away with stuff tend to think they can do it again.”
Sampedro drove in silence for a few more moments before speaking.
“I appreciate the detail,” he said.
