When we got back to the newsroom I asked Angela to write it up-her first story on the beat-while I tried to run down Wanda Sessums, my angry caller from the Friday before.

Since there was no record of her call to the Times switchboard and a quick check with directory assistance had turned up no listing for Wanda Sessums in any of L.A.’s area codes, I next called Detective Gilbert Walker at the Santa Monica Police Department. He was the lead investigator on the case that resulted in Alonzo Winslow’s arrest in the murder of Denise Babbit. I guess you could say it was a cold call. I had no relationship with Walker, as Santa Monica didn’t come up very often on the news radar. It was a relatively safe beach town between Venice and Malibu that had a pressing homeless problem but not much of a murder problem. The police department investigated only a handful of homicides each year and most of these weren’t newsworthy. More often than not they were body dump cases like Denise Babbit’s. The murder occurs somewhere else-like the south end of L. A.-and the beach cops are left to clean up the mess.

My call found Walker at his desk. His voice seemed friendly enough until I identified myself as a reporter with the Times. Then it went cold. That happened often. I had spent seven years on the beat and had many cops in many departments that I counted as sources and even friends. In a jam, I could reach out. But sometimes you don’t get to pick who you have to reach out to. The bottom line is you can never get them all in your corner. The media and the police have never been on comfortable terms. The media views itself as the public watchdog. And nobody, the police included, likes having somebody looking over their shoulder. There was a chasm between the two institutions into which trust had fallen long before I was ever around. Consequently, it made things tough for the lowly beat reporter who just needs a few facts to fill out a story.