A Family Business (3 page)

Determined to get to the bottom of it, Westall paid an unannounced visit to the Altadena facility and asked to be allowed inside so he could inspect the operation. Since Westall had no legal authority to demand such an inspection, David turned him away. Frustrated, Westall went back to his office to ponder his next move.

Less than a month later, however, before Westall could take further action, a fire destroyed the Altadena facility. In one respect the news cheered Westall. If the Altadena crematorium was out of business, it meant a probable end to any possible illegal activity. The fact that Westall probably would never know exactly what had been occurring there was of little consequence. At least whatever had been happening would stop. Except it did not.

Not long after the fire at Altadena—beyond the point at which Westall would have expected to stop receiving cremation reports from David—he got another summary indicating that David was cremating just as many bodies as he had been before the fire. To Westall that meant only one thing: David had opened an illegal crematorium. Of that he had no doubt; David’s own reports substantiated it. The big question was
where
. Although David continued to report cremations, he had not applied to the state for a permit to construct a new facility, and his reports did not indicate where he was operating from. Instinctively Westall knew that David was still in Southern California. Still, that was a big area and finding him would not be easy. But Westall resolved to try.

From another state agency he secured a list of all the air pollution control districts in that part of California. Methodically, one by one, he began calling them, asking each if a man named David Sconce had applied for a permit to operate
any
kind of facility in their area. When he got an affirmative answer from San Bernardino, he swung into action.

2

Early in January, Westall drove to Hesperia to see for himself what Oscar’s Ceramics looked like. Parking across the road and far enough away to prevent arousing David’s suspicion, Westall studied the facility. What he saw was an unremarkable metal building some forty feet wide and fifty feet long, painted a light green. There were no windows and only one door, which was closed, so Westall had no clue of what the interior might contain. He had no hope of getting a closer look because of the tall chain-link fence surrounding the building, a fence with only one gate, which was secured with a formidable-looking padlock.

What particularly interested him, however, was the chimney. There were no large smokestacks such as would be necessary for a proper crematorium. Under ordinary circumstances large smokestacks would be essential in controlling emissions. Instead, Oscar’s was equipped with only one small pipe. That was curious, Westall told himself, since if the chimney he could see was the only exhaust, it meant that either David was not using the facility as a crematorium or, if he was, the smell would be horrendous because the smoke would not be properly filtered.

On the first day he was there, there were no cars parked inside the fence and no smoke coming from the chimney, which told Westall that he had not picked a time when cremations were in progress. He came back several times after that, always in the daytime, and each time he was there, Oscar’s Ceramics appeared deserted. Yet David’s reports of cremations kept coming in.

Certain in his own mind that he had found David’s secret crematorium, Westall considered his next move. Having learned from his experience at Altadena that all David had to say was no to keep him out, Westall determined that this time he would seek the help of someone whom David could not refuse, someone who had the authority to enter the building despite David’s likely unwillingness to cooperate.

Westall decided late in January to take his suspicions to Richard Wales. Intrigued by his tale, Wales had brought him to Will Wentworth. Wentworth had the authority to get into Oscar’s.

As Westall explained how his search for David’s elusive, illegal crematorium had brought him to Hesperia, Wentworth grew increasingly anxious. The lack of smokestacks appropriate for a crematorium would explain why he had been receiving complaints about a foul smell, Wentworth figured, and the fact that David had to keep the existence of a crematorium secret would explain why he was so standoffish and why so much work seemed to be done at night. The more he listened to Westall, the more certain he became that the Cemetery Board official was correct.

“Let’s go take a look at Oscar’s,” he said when Westall had finished his tale. “Let’s go see if we can find out just what’s going on.”

Piling into Wentworth’s four-wheel-drive vehicle for the short trip, the men decided that Wentworth would do the talking since he alone among the four had the law behind him. He was the only one who could insist on being allowed inside. When they got there, however, Oscar’s was deserted. As Westall had experienced on previous trips, there were no cars within the enclosure and no one came to the gate when they called out. Disappointed, they climbed back into Wentworth’s vehicle for the trip back to his office. En route they agreed they would try again another day.

While Wentworth and Wales went back to their respective offices, Westall and Gallagher decided to grab a quick lunch before returning to Los Angeles. After their sandwiches, however, instead of going straight back to the city, they agreed to make one more pass by Oscar’s to see if they might be able to detect something they had not spotted earlier.

This time, unlike on their visit ninety minutes previously, there was a car parked inside the fence. What excited the two men even more, however, was that there was evidence of activity inside the building. On the earlier trip a bare wisp of smoke had been issuing from the chimney but it was not in sufficient quantity to indicate that the kilns were in full use. This time, however, both flames and clouds of heavy black smoke were gushing out of the small pipe, proof to Westall that the ovens were wholly fired.

Westall rushed to a pay phone and dialed Wentworth’s number. “You have to come back,” Westall told the fire marshal breathlessly, “things are happening.”

When Wentworth screeched to a stop in front of the locked gate, he was slightly taken aback to see that the man who got out of the car and approached them was not David Sconce but one of his workers, a man whose name Wentworth later learned was John Pollerana. Every time Wentworth had been there before, David had been present.

Identifying himself as an assistant fire chief and fire marshal, Wentworth told Pollerana he had the right to inspect the facility and asked to be admitted.

“I can’t do that,” Pollerana said, “not without checking with my boss.”

Wentworth looked down; the gate was chained and padlocked. “Do you have some way of getting in touch with him?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Pollerana replied sullenly. “Wait here a minute.”

Turning on his heels, he returned to his car. For the first time, Wentworth noticed there was a desk telephone sitting on the car’s dashboard with a long cord running to the telephone connection box on the side of the building. Apparently, the man had rigged an outside extension.

As he watched, Pollerana lifted the receiver and dialed a number. He was too far away, however, for Wentworth and the others to hear the conversation.

When David came on the line, he was totally calm, unlike Pollerana, who obviously was quite agitated.

“Be cool,” he told Pollerana after his employee excitedly explained the situation.

“What do you mean, ‘be cool’?” Pollerana asked edgily. “Something’s wrong. Otherwise the man from the Cemetery Board wouldn’t be here.”

“Are you burning?” David asked calmly.

“Yeah.”

“How far along?”

Pollerana paused to consider. “About four and a half hours,” he replied.

David was silent for several moments, contemplating his options. If Pollerana had been running the kilns for as long as he said, the process was almost complete. If he could stall them just a little longer he might—just might—be able to reach the point where they would not be able to prove their suspicions. In the end, though, he knew he had only one choice. If it had been the police banging on the gate, David could tell them to go away until they produced a search warrant. But a fire marshal didn’t need a warrant; he had the authority to insist on being allowed to make a fire inspection at any time during normal working hours, provided he had permission. And David had no grounds to deny him that permission.

“Go inside,” David instructed Pollerana carefully, “and get things straightened out as much as you can. And then let them in.”

Pollerana hung up and, without a glance at the men standing outside the fence, he strode across the open ground and into the building.

The men at the gate stared at each other in amazement. Pollerana had disappeared without a word of explanation. Now they were stranded outside without anyone to talk to or any way to summon Pollerana. There was no bell at the gate, and even if they yelled, they could not be certain that the man inside the building, a good fifty feet away, would be able to hear them. They could not telephone because Pollerana had left the instrument sitting on the car’s dash.

What made it worse was the weather. A cold front had swept through earlier in the day and, although the brisk north wind had died down, the air was still frigid. In an attempt to keep warm, the four men bounced from foot to foot, angrily discussing what they could do.

“I’m going to call for some help,” Wentworth finally announced. Returning to his vehicle, he picked up the microphone on his fire department radio and asked the dispatcher to send a couple of deputies to Oscar’s Ceramics.

When they arrived, Wentworth explained that he wanted to make an inspection of the facility but the only man who could let them in had disappeared and they had no way to get his attention.

“That’s no problem,” one of the deputies said. Striding to the patrol car, he opened the door, reached inside and flipped a switch. The unexpected blast of the siren almost knocked Wentworth off his feet.

The noise also startled Pollerana, who had been working so hard trying to conceal evidence of the operation that he had lost track of time. It had been thirty minutes since he talked to David.

The first thing he had done when he walked inside, ignoring the men standing at the gate, was scoop up several pieces of blackened metal, which he tossed into an empty ice chest, slamming the lid closed.

Scattered around the room, particularly near the kilns, were several large drums which Pollerana wrestled into a corner and covered with a tarp in a vain attempt to make them inconspicuous. He was gathering up some discarded clothing and stuffing it into a bag when the siren went off. When he heard that, he knew his time was up.

Crossing quickly to the door, he peeked outside. It took only a glance to confirm that the cavalry had arrived. That’s it, Pollerana told himself, the stall’s over. From now on it’s David’s problem.

Resignedly, he walked across the open space and unlocked the gate. As Westall, Gallagher, and the two deputies started for the building, Pollerana stopped Wentworth and Wales.

“My boss wants to talk to you,” he told the fire marshal, leading him and Wales to the extension phone. Silently, he dialed David’s number a second time and handed over the receiver.

“Why are you there?” David asked Wentworth.

“I want to make a fire inspection,” Wentworth replied.

“Go ahead,” David said without hesitation.

Wales tapped Wentworth on the shoulder. “I want to talk to him,” he said.

Wentworth passed the receiver to the air pollution control official and walked away, heading straight for the building, which was so filled with foul smoke that Wentworth was afraid he might retch.

Despite Pollerana’s efforts to clean up the place, Wentworth found the interior in considerable disarray. On the concrete floor was a huge pool of dark, smelly liquid that analysis later determined was a mixture of diesel fuel and amino acids, which are fluids emitted from a body when it is incinerated. Flames were spurting from around the metal doors of the two homemade kilns, which were nothing more than simple rectangular boxes constructed of angle iron and firebrick. Wentworth kept a wary eye on the flames, fearful they might ignite the fuel on the floor.

Picking his way through the clutter, Wentworth was joined by Wales, who had finished his conversation with David. Together they searched the large room, and what they found seemed to bolster their suspicions.

Lifting the tarp that Pollerana had thrown over the metal drums, Wales spotted the remains of a garment that once had been either a pajama top or a hospital gown. The drums themselves contained ashes and pieces of a substance that Wentworth, for the second time, suspected was human bone. They found the ice chest and tentatively identified the pieces of charred metal inside as the remains of human prostheses. Impatiently, they waited for the kilns to cool enough for them to open the doors. But when the point had been reached, Wentworth was sorry that it had.

Grasping one of the handles and giving it a heavy tug, he swung open the door. As it creaked open, a burning object plopped out and fell virtually between Wentworth’s once highly polished shoes. It was the very recognizable remains of a human foot.

Pollerana, who had been standing silently by during the search, asked quietly if he could leave. He knew what he had been doing was illegal, and he could hardly wait to escape before he was cuffed and led away. Wentworth, still numbed by the sight of the burning, detached foot, nodded his consent. Instead of returning home, however, the terrified Pollerana drove to a friend’s house in Pasadena, where he holed up for three weeks. When they went to his home looking for him later, investigators were not able to find him. David, however, proved much easier to track down.