“How do I use this?”

She almost laughed.

“It’s a pager. All our computers are being used at the moment. I will page you as soon as one becomes available.”

“Oh.”

“The pager doesn’t work outside of the building. It also does not emit an audible page. It vibrates. So keep it on your person.”

“I will. Any idea how long it will be?”

“We set one-hour use limits, which right now would mean one won’t be available for another thirty minutes. However, people often don’t require the full hour.”

“Okay, thank you. I’ll be nearby.”

I found an empty table in one of the reading rooms and decided to work on the case chronology. I got out my notebook and on a fresh page wrote down the three key dates and events I knew.

Angella Benton-murdered-May 16, 1999

Movie set heist-May 19, 1999

Martha Gessler-missing-March 19, 2000

I then began adding the things I was missing.

Gessler/Dorsey-phone call-?????

And after a few moments I thought of something else that might help explain something that bothered me.

Dorsey/Cross-murder/shooting-?????

I looked around to see if anyone was using a cell phone. I wanted to make a call but wasn’t sure it would be allowed in a library. When I turned and looked behind me I saw a man standing by a magazine rack quickly turn away and take a magazine off the display without seeming to look at what it was first. He was dressed in blue jeans and a flannel shirt. Nothing about him said FBI but it still seemed to me that he had been looking directly at me until I had looked at him. His reaction had been too quick, almost furtive. There had been no eye contact, nothing that suggested any sort of overture. The man clearly didn’t want me to know he was watching me.

Putting my notebook away, I got up from the table and headed toward the magazine racks. I passed the man and noticed that the magazine he had grabbed was called Parenting Today. It was another strike against him. He didn’t look like the parenting type to me. I was pretty sure I was being watched.

Back at the reference desk I put my hands on the counter and leaned over to whisper to Mrs. Molloy.

“Can I ask you a question? Is it okay to use a cell phone in the library?”

“No, it’s not. Is somebody bothering you by using a phone?”

“No, I was just wondering what the rule was. Thank you.”

Before I could turn away she said she was just about to page me because a computer was now available. I gave her back the pager and she led me to a cubicle where the glowing screen of a computer was waiting.

“Good luck,” she said as she headed back to the desk.

“Excuse me,” I said, beckoning her back. “Um, I don’t know how to get to the Times stuff on this.”

“There’s an icon on the desktop.”

I turned back around and scanned the desk. There was nothing on it but the computer and the keyboard and the mouse. The librarian started to laugh behind me but then covered her mouth with her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… you don’t know the first thing about how to do this, do you?”

“Or the second or the third. Can you just help get me started?”

“Hold on. Let me just go check the front desk and make sure there is no one waiting for me.”

“Fine. Thank you.”

She was gone thirty seconds and then came back and leaned over me to work the mouse and click through screens until she was inside the Times archives and at what she called the key word search template.

“So now you type in the key word for the story you are looking for.”

I nodded that I understood that much and typed in the name “Alejandro Penjeda.” Mrs. Molloy reached across and hit the ENTER key and the search began. In about five seconds I had the results on the screen. There were five hits. The first two were from 1991 and 1994 and the final three were all from 2000. I dismissed the first two as being unrelated to the Penjeda I was interested in. The next three were all from March 2000. I moved the mouse to the first one-March 1, 2000-and clicked on the READ button. The story filled the top half of the screen. It was a short report on the opening of the trial of Alejandro Penjeda, who was charged with the murder of a Korean jeweler named Kyungwon Park.

The second story was also short and it was the one I wanted. It was the verdict story in the Penjeda case. It was dated March 14 and reported events from the day before. I took the notebook out of my pocket and completed that part of the chronology, putting the new information in the right time slot.

Angella Benton-murdered-May 16, 1999

Movie set heist-May 19, 1999

Gessler/Dorsey-phone call-March 13, 2000

Martha Gessler-missing-March 19, 2000

I looked at what I had. Martha Gessler disappeared and presumably was murdered six days after talking to Jack Dorsey about the currency list anomaly.

“If there isn’t anything else, I’m going to go back up front.”

I had forgotten that Mrs. Molloy was still standing behind me. I stood up and signaled her to the seat.

“Actually, this might be faster if you could do it,” I said. “I need to do a couple more searches.”

“We are not supposed to do the searches. You are supposed to be proficient with the computer if you are going to use it.”

“I understand. I am going to learn but at the moment I’m not that proficient and these searches are very important.”

She seemed to be wavering on whether to continue to help me. I wished I’d had the small wallet-size copy of the private investigator’s license I had gotten from the state. Maybe that would have impressed her. She leaned backwards to look down the row of cubicles to the front desk to see if anyone was waiting for help. The Parenting Today guy was milling about, trying to act as though he was either waiting for someone or waiting for help.

“I’ll come back after I ask this gentleman if he needs help,” Mrs. Molloy said.

She walked off without waiting for a response from me. I watched as she asked Parenting Today if he needed something and he shook his head and then glanced back at me before walking off. Mrs. Molloy then came back down the aisle to me. She took the seat in front of the computer.

“What is the next search?”

She moved the mouse smoothly and quickly and got back to the key word template.

“Try ‘John Dorsey,’” I said. “And to narrow it down, can you also add ‘Nat’s bar’?”

She typed in the information and started the search. It came back with thirteen hits and I asked her to bring up the first one. It was dated April 7, 2000, and reported events from the day before.

ONE COP DEAD, ONE HURT IN HOLLYWOOD BAR SHOOTING

By Keisha Russell

Times Staff Writer

Two Los Angeles police detectives on a lunch break and a bartender were gunned down in a Hollywood bar yesterday when a man entered the establishment and attempted to rob it at gunpoint.

The 1 p.m. shooting at Nat’s on Cherokee Avenue left Detective John H. Dorsey, 49, dead of multiple gunshot wounds and his partner, Lawton Cross Jr., 38, in critical condition with head and neck wounds. Donald Rice, 29, a bartender working in the lounge, was shot multiple times and also died at the scene.

The suspect, who wore a black ski mask, escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash from the cash register, said Lt. James Macy, of the Officer Involved Shooting unit.

“It appears this was about a few hundred dollars at most,” Macy said at a press conference staged outside of the bar where the shooting took place. “We can find no reason for this guy to have started shooting.”