In this episode, LAPD detectives Aguilar and Lee are pursuing a serial killer who is terrorizing the area in the Harbor/Gateway District along Sultan Road.
On the chance that Ben Williams’s killers would turn up at the offices of the South Bay Neighborhood Association the next day to get paid, Aguilar and Lee drove to Torrance at six thirty in the morning and staked the place out. Again, they parked strategically in order to observe who walked through the front door, as well as minimize their own presence.
Time passed, and they watched as the employees walked through the front door one at a time. Then Harry asked, “Wasn’t Napier the money man of this operation?”
“Yes,” Aguilar said, his eyes firmly fixed on the building’s entrance.
“Well, since he’s been arrested, why would the killers come back here to get paid? I mean, there must be somebody else filling that job.”
“Hmm. That’s a good point. Somebody else has to pay them—either here or someplace else.”
“How do we know that the new moneyman even works here?”
“We don’t. But we do know that the money is in there. It’s our only lead right now.”
Then around eleven thirty, a woman walked out of the front entrance with an attaché case.
“Does that woman look familiar?” Aguilar asked.
“Yes, but I don’t remember from where,” Harry said.
“She’s the lady who controls the money in the safe,” Aguilar said.
“And she’s carrying a briefcase full of it somewhere,” Harry said as he started the car.
The woman got into her car and drove toward the parking lot exit. Casually, the two detectives followed her car, being careful not to crowd her, but also keeping her in plain view. After a ten-minute drive, she led them to a public park that was quiet on this workday morning. She got out of her car with the briefcase, sat at a nearby picnic table, and started to read a magazine.
Harry parked their unmarked police car on a side street, near the park’s entrance. Aguilar could view the woman with the briefcase through binoculars. Harry was poised to photograph the transaction using a digital camera with a powerful telephoto lens. A short time passed, and then a gray pickup truck came down the street and turned into the parking lot. It parked in an angled space next to the walkway that went around the park. Out jumped two Latinos, one thin and of medium height, and the other taller, with a ponytail. They walked over to the woman sitting at the picnic table, and after a short conversation, they received the briefcase. Suarez, the one with the ponytail, opened it, and Aguilar could plainly see stacks of bills neatly packed inside. Harry clicked a dozen or more photos while this took place.
“We’ve hit the jackpot,” Aguilar quietly said . “Start the car and move up slowly. Don’t catch anybody’s attention.”
Harry put his camera onto the back seat and drove into the parking lot. At just the same time, the conversation at the picnic table came to an end, and the two suspects started back toward the pickup truck. Harry then pulled the car a few feet behind the truck and blocked it in its parking space. Both detectives got out of the car with their pistols drawn while Aguilar shouted, “Police!” The man with the briefcase was walking a few feet in front of the truck. He looked directly at Aguilar, providing him with a clear view of the mysterious man he’d been after. The shock of black hair and droopy eyes made an immediate imprint on Aguilar’s mind.
Ignoring the shout, Suarez continued to slide into the truck’s seat on the driver’s side, but the man Aguilar now knew to be “El Puma” stopped in his tracks. He was carrying the briefcase with the money.
“Baja el malentin!” Aguilar told him. Put the case down! “El Puma” slowly bent down and placed the case upright on the ground.
Suarez had not closed the truck driver’s side door yet when Harry shouted, “Get out of truck, now!”
Suddenly, Suarez slammed the door shut, making a loud, distracting noise. Instinctively Aguilar turned his head toward the sound and “El Puma” quickly pulled a pistol out of his waistband and aimed it at Aguilar, who was caught out in the open. “El Puma” opened fire, sending two bullets directly into the car door behind Aguilar. Just as Harry opened fire at Suarez, Aguilar immediately dashed behind the trunk of the car for cover. “El Puma” fired at Aguilar while he was running, hitting the closed rear door. Aguilar starting shooting at his assailant, hitting him in the leg, and the two men continued to exchange gunfire.
While Harry continued to shoot at the driver, Suarez started the truck and put it into reverse. He roared backward, slamming into the detectives’ car and knocking Aguilar on his backside. “El Puma” reacted quickly to this distraction and pitched the briefcase inside the truck’s bay. As Suarez switched gears to go forward, “El Puma” dove head first into the truck bay. Aguilar got back to his feet and shot at him several more times as the pickup drove away. Bullets zinged back and forth, hitting the car, the pickup, the park’s public toilet building, and a nearby palm tree.
Harry also fired again several times trying to hit Suarez, who had ducked down in the seat as he drove. Suarez drove over the curb and onto the park’s walkway to get around the detectives’ parked car. He bounced back into the parking lot, directly into the line of fire of both detectives. Aguilar loaded another magazine and fired eight more times, and Harry fired another five shots. Again, bullets ripped into the driver side door, through the open windows, and into the siding that went around the truck’s bay, but none hit either of the suspects. The pickup raced down the parking lot to the street and turned right.
The detectives got back into the car to give chase. As they turned to go back toward the exit to the street, the woman who had brought the briefcase to the park backed out of her parking spot near the exit and blocked their way. Harry pounded on the horn and Aguilar shouted out of the passenger window at her to get out of the way, but she slowly pulled her car forward down to the exit, stopping there momentarily. Right behind her Harry blasted on the horn again and Aguilar shouted until she finally turned right and pulled out into the street.
Once on the street Harry sped the car out from behind her and they raced past her to chase the pickup, which by now was approaching the entrance to the 405 freeway. Aguilar picked up the radio handset and called for backup, trying to get a helicopter to join the pursuit. Within a few moments the freeway traffic had slowed the pickup down, enabling the detectives to gain on it. When Harry pulled behind the truck, “El Puma,” who was still riding in the bay, reached one arm over the bay’s back gate and fired a shot, bouncing off the detective’s windshield.
“Ease up!” Aguilar said. “We can’t have a gun battle out here on the freeway.” Harry let the pickup gain more distance, but then he and Aguilar saw that it was heading down the transition road to the eastbound lanes of the 105 freeway. They followed it down the transition lane but lost it momentarily in the freeway traffic.
“This is where we need a helicopter,” Aguilar said. He tried again to get a helicopter to join the pursuit. At that point, they’d found the pickup again, but it got off the freeway onto Prairie Avenue and disappeared into the Inglewood-Crenshaw District before the LAPD backup support could mobilize and come to the detectives’ aid. They exited and continued the pursuit, combing the area and looking for the gray pickup truck. They checked the area north of the freeway, but then Harry pointed out that the pickup might have gone south after exiting the freeway. With the helicopter and other police cars now involved in the search, the two detectives turned south toward Hawthorne and Gardena. But after a thorough, street by street search of that area, they found no trace of the gray pickup truck or either of its occupants.
The helicopter and other police cars kept searching the area south of the freeway, but the two detectives started making their way northward to expand the search zone. As they cruised up Crenshaw Boulevard for another look, suddenly Aguilar shouted, “There they are, going the other way!”
In that area Crenshaw Boulevard was a divided parkway. They were in the middle of the block when Aguilar saw the pickup. They were also seen by Suarez and his partner as the pickup began to speed up, heading in the other direction, back toward the intersection with Century Boulevard.
“Cut across the middle!” Aguilar said.
With no hesitation, and many car horns honking, Harry drove up onto Crenshaw Boulevard’s parkway and down onto the other side, putting them half a city block behind the pickup which was now turning right onto Century Boulevard.
Aguilar radioed in the new location of the assailants as they gave chase by going westbound on Century. In a few minutes’ time, they became bogged down in traffic, since Century Boulevard was undergoing construction. When they reached an intersection with a traffic light, Aguilar spotted the truck on the other side of Century as it pulled into the parking lot of a Target Store.
“Pull through the intersection and turn left in front of those cars!” Aguilar told him. “They went into the Target parking lot.” With his emergency lights flashing and while honking the horn, Harry cut in front of the cross traffic, causing several cars to slam on their brakes to avoid a crash. A few curse words were uttered, but luckily there was no collision.
Thinking they might be able to trap the fugitives in the busy parking lot, the detectives turned into the fire lane next to the store. A moment later, they saw the pickup traveling away from them on the far end of the parking lot.
“Down that way and then to the left!” Aguilar said as he saw the gray pickup move across open parking lanes headed in the other direction. Harry turned down the lane, chasing the truck, but they immediately got halted as a car pulled out of its parking spot and another one waited to claim it. Showing his badge, Aguilar shouted out of his window, trying to get the car to move out of the way. It took a couple of minutes, but they were finally able to pass by. They lost sight of the pickup in the process. Trying to get back into the fire lane to exit, they saw a huge traffic jam. Carefully, Harry managed to squeeze the car out of the parking lot avoiding the jam, but by then the gray pickup was long gone.
“Damn it!” Harry said as he banged his fist against the steering wheel. “Where in the hell are the helicopters?”
“They have to fly back around to avoid the flight path of LAX,” Aguilar said.
They both looked right and left to be sure that the truck was not still in the lot somewhere. “Back over this way!” Aguilar said pointing to his right.
Harry drove down the fire lane, but he had to slow down to avoid hitting shoppers who were walking to and from the store’s entrance. The detectives got to the end of the building but did not see the pickup.
“All the way down to that street!” Aguilar said.
They drove down to the end of the adjacent parking lot to get a view in both directions. There was still no sight of the gray pickup.
“Check it row by row,” Aguilar said. A thorough search of each aisle of the side parking lot took them twenty minutes and turned up nothing. Aguilar again reported his status and the last sighting of the gray pickup to the support command. Then they sat and waited. An hour later, the helicopter reported that it had had no sighting of the truck and was returning to its base.
Seeing that the chase was over, Aguilar said, “All right, back to the precinct.” He let out a deep sigh as he spoke.
When they made their way back to Century Boulevard and then to Crenshaw to return to the freeway, Harry said, “We must be the first cops in history to lose two serial killers in a Target Store parking lot.”