UNDER THE BRIDGE

Los Angeles River, 1975

The medical examiner read off the preliminary details to Bill Gannon. "White female, late Twenties, brown hair, two stab wounds in the back, near her kidneys. The second wound was fatal."

Bill nodded. "Same as the other two that were found in Long Beach," he said quietly to his partner, a temporary replacement-or so he hoped-for Joe. He was a good cop, ten years on the job, and had a quiet restlessness about him that came from wanting to do more.

"I'd better let the captain know." Bill nodded again as he handed the clipboard back to the medical examiner. Serial killers weren't all that rare in a city the size of L.A., and like all others this one left a "signature" modus operandi. They'd find him, he was sure of that, but it was times like these that he missed Joe's straightforwardness. Dammit, Joe, Bill thought. Why did you have to be so stubborn on that last case?

It had been a buy and bust in coordination with Vice. They were looking for the supplier of a new, potent form of cocaine that was hitting the streets. Joe initially took the case with his relentless professionalism, but then they'd brought in that kid for questioning. Maybe it was the kid's background that got Joe worked up-he came from the Valley, and had no reason to score drugs other than out of apparent boredom. Maybe it was the changing times, the way the public and the department were now looking at possession. Maybe Joe had just been feeling his age, with a view of the world that hadn't caught up with the times.

It had been Joe's decision to charge the kid with dealing and possession, which would have carried a stronger sentence-if they'd had the evidence. But, as Bill had tried telling him at the time, it wasn't there-and they were looking for somebody higher up on the food chain.

Joe would have none of it. He went to the captain, the DA's office, and tried to call in old favors from cops who were often no longer on the force. Joe had never gone so far as to plant evidence-which Bill, in spite of Joe's dogged insistence, knew happened in some cases like this-but he was determined to get the kid on something more than possession. Finally, the kid gave up one of his contacts-who happened to be a teacher, who'd apparently been something of a hippie in the Sixties and hadn't completely outgrown it.

"You know, that kid was just a cog in the wheel," Bill said after the case went back to Vice. "Not all suspects are equal…"

"Not in the eyes of the law," Joe had replied with unusual harshness. "The law…"

"Has its flaws, and we have to work through them," Bill calmly replied. He knew what was really the matter-Joe was as dedicated to the job as any cop could be, but he'd had trouble dealing with change in the past several years. Bill could see it in the way he still kept his hair short, still wore the same clothes, and still looked at the world in the same way he had for nearly thirty years.

So now Joe was on vacation-the first one he'd taken for as long as Bill could remember. When he got back to LAPD headquarters, however, the captain wanted to see him.

"Joe left this for you," he said, handing Bill an object. Bill looked down at it. Without any further explanation, he understood what it meant.

"Than you, captain," he said. And then went back to his desk, where he looked at the object some more before quietly putting it away in his desk drawer. It was a piece of metal, with a number-714.

"Goodbye, Joe," Bill thought to himself. Then his new partner-and now, Joe's replacement-arrived, and it was time to move on to the next case.

THE END