Hollywood Moon by Joseph Wambaugh Read Free Book Online Page B

both the busy Seventy-seventh Street Division as
     well as at Newton Street for three years. And she’d also done a couple of dangerous UC assignments where they’d needed Hispanic
     women. Aaron had felt that his police career had been tame next to Sheila’s.
    Aaron had also heard that she’d been married to a sergeant at Mission Division for about a year but had divorced him shortly
     after her baby was stillborn. It was not something she’d ever talked about to him, but nowhere on the planet was gossip as
     rife as in the police world, and secrets were nearly impossible to keep. Well, now he’d shown her that he too was someone
     with a history. It wasn’t everyone that was chased through the window of a Big 5 store.
    “My picture and UC name are in the high school yearbook,” Aaron said. “I have one at home. I’ll bring it in if you’d like
     to see it. I look really dorky.”
    “Sure, let’s have a peek,” Sheila said.
    Their second call just after dark gave Aaron Sloane a chance to see another side of supercool Sheila Montez. After reading
     the southeast Hollywood address on the computer screen, she rogered the message and hit the en route key. When they arrived
     at the call, they saw a rescue ambulance already parked on the street, and a Latina in a lavender dress was waiting under
     a streetlight in front of a stucco duplex that had been tagged from roof to concrete slab with gang graffiti.
    When she saw Sheila Montez, the woman started to speak Spanish, then saw that the male cop was a gringo and said in English,
     “My neighbor. Her baby…” Then the woman shook her head and walked back to her apartment.
    The two cops entered just as the paramedics were leaving. Before exiting, the older paramedic said, “The baby’s probably been
     dead for a few hours. Letting a sick infant with a respiratory infection sleep next to a broken-out window night after night
     wasn’t helpful, that’s for sure. And today Little Momma gave the baby a child’s dose of medication, not an infant’s dose.
     Then she put the baby facedown on a bulky quilt and decided to take a long nap after downing a glass or two of cheap chardonnay.
     It looks like the baby’s illness, the overdose of meds, and the quilt around the baby’s face resulted in accidental asphyxiation.
     But it’s yours now. Catch you later.”
    The young mother was not Latina. She was rosy-cheeked and freckled, the teenage wife of a Marine deployed in Iraq. She was
     sitting on a kitchen chair, crying, a wineglass beside her on the table. The crib was in the only bedroom. Sheila Montez hesitated
     for a moment but walked to the crib to look at the infant.
    The baby might have had her mother’s rosy cheeks in life, but in death she was already turning gray, now lying faceup, nesting
     in the heavy quilt. Sheila Montez stared down at the baby for a long time, and Aaron Sloane was more than happy to let her
     take charge, figuring this was a job for a woman.
    “She was like that when I woke up,” the young mother said between sobs, looking at Aaron. “She was ice-cold, and I knew right
     away she was gone!”
    Sheila Montez picked up the medicine bottle from a table beside the crib, looked at it, and put it back. For no apparent reason,
     she reached down and lifted the baby from the quilt that had smothered her and put her back down on the sheet. She adjusted
     the pink pajama across the infant’s chest and, using a towel that was draped over the crib, wiped some dried mucus from the
     baby’s face and smoothed back her corn-silk hair.
    Aaron Sloane didn’t learn until later that night that this was the first dead baby Sheila Montez had seen since the night
     that her own lay lifeless in her arms, when a nurse had let Sheila hold her dead baby for a few minutes before taking it away
     forever. He was just getting ready to put in an obligatory call to the night-watch detective so he could verify on-scene that
     it was an accidental death before