Last Call lf-4 Page 7

  But why not farther away? Frank wonders. The perps were obviously mobile enough to get the kids here, so why not keep going and hide them really well? Organized offenders usually make some attempt to hide the bodies. The Pryce attempt was half-assed, leading again to the idea of two perps. Frank thinks the woman might have pleaded to leave the children close to home, in a place where they'd be found quickly. The thought of the children rotting and being eaten by animals might have been so disturbing that for once she argued with her man. He might have been distracted enough to cave. He would have been anxious to get rid of the bodies. If the abduction was as spontaneous as it seemed, he wouldn't have planned out a disposal site. The lot probably put a comfortable enough distance from where they lived, or from wherever they abducted the kids, while concealing the bodies in the rubble bought them time to clean up.

  She is mindful as she walks that one of Ladeenia's shoes was found next to a sprung sofa. It appeared that the shoe had snagged off her foot in passing. Either the killer hadn't noticed or didn't care. Probably the latter as he was no doubt in a hurry and what evidence would there be in a shoe? But it tells Frank her perp is tall enough to carry Ladeenia so that her foot dangled at the height of the couch. It's also in the back of her mind that Ladeenia's panties were never found. Frank has thought about this.

  Power-assertive rapists, as she has tentatively classified her perp, don't usually take trophies, but it's possible this is one of the ways her perp doesn't completely fit the profile. Frank's hope is that whoever killed Ladeenia kept her underwear. It's a long shot, she knows, and she mumbles, "If wishes were horses ..."

  Frank is so deep in thought that she reminds herself to ask Noah if Mrs. Pryce might know what was in Trevor's pockets. Then memory guts her like a switchblade. Her immediate reaction to the pain is fury. It mutates into helplessness. Frank swallows it down, all the hot little knives. She clenches her teeth and stares at a tag on the south fence. She will absolutely not lose it and certainly not here.

  Noah was rarely in the office after the case went down. When she'd catch up to him, he'd explain this was where he'd been, probing inch by inch through garbage, dog shit and weeds, climbing up on rooftops to survey the scene from that vantage, sitting for endless hours amid the cold debris. This is where he'd been. And for Frank, this is where he still is. She's awed by how much she misses him.

  Frank blinks hard, forging her composure on the anvil of deliberation. The transformation is made manifest—her jaw unclenches, shoulders drop and fingers relax. The effort is exhausting, but Frank disregards this too. Stoic the Magnificent is back and at the top of her game. She continues through her grids as if nothing has happened.

  For the next few weeks Frank runs on alcohol, caffeine and a smoldering rage. Pacing the cage of her office, she is Blake's "tiger, tiger burning bright." Her detectives give her a wide berth. She can feel their edginess around her. Though they would never admit it, they are probably afraid of her, afraid of being in her line of fire if and when she should blow. And they're likely even more nervous that whatever Frank has might be contagious, so they keep their distance.

  Frank helps. She does what she has to do in the office as quickly as possible then heads for Raymond Street. Unless she has a meeting or gets called to a homicide, she is gone all day. She has become a regular fixture in the neighborhood. The crazy-ass white bitch walking up and down the street late afternoons is such a familiar sight that the dopers smoking on stoops don't even bother hiding their chronic. The really perking ones might call out to her, but an ugly void in Frank's eye keeps them where they are.

  She mad-dogs each house. One of them must have borne witness to Ladeenia and Trevor's abduction. She curses that she can't get wood to speak. Prowling the sidewalk day after day, she waits for the houses to yield their secrets. She can't envision what the sign, the clue, will look like, yet she walks and waits for the burning bush that will crack the case. When it doesn't appear, she's not disappointed. Burning bushes work on their own schedule.

  Frank has drawn multi-colored lines on a map. The festive lines connect the Pryces' house to Cassie Bertram's duplex in myriad configurations. The most direct route is marked with a fat red line. Frank believes this is the route Ladeenia would have chosen. Her reasoning is simple; it was late in the day and Ladeenia would have wanted to spend her time with Cassie, not wandering along indirect routes. Plus, the cold weather and threatening rain would have added to Ladeenia's haste. So Frank walks the red line. She checks alleys and yards. She knocks on every door, questioning the occupants along the route.

  Most of the people she talks to don't want to talk to her. They have already talked to the police. To Noah, to the uniforms that canvassed with him, to Noah again. Frank reminds them that South Central residents accuse cops of not caring, not trying hard enough. Here it is six years later, she stresses, and we're still looking for whoever did this to these kids. We haven't forgotten. She flaps Ladeenia and Trevor's smiling school photos. They talk. But it's been a long time. They add nothing that's not anecdotal from the media. Some don't remember and others didn't live here then. But Frank doesn't get discouraged. She expects as much. The case is old. People forget. But she has to satisfy herself that she has talked to every possible witness, every potential suspect.

  A second, longer line on Frank's map stretches from the red line to the dumpsite. She will start questioning people along the most direct route, working backward from the site to the home where the Pryces lived at the time of the abduction. Then she will canvass secondary routes, and tertiary. More if necessary. She is determined to cover a wide radius between the two lines.

  She studies the dozens of photos Noah took of the crime scene and neighborhood. She carries pictures of onlookers from the crowd with her. Noah's already identified most of them. Frank makes everyone she questions study the faces in the photos. One man identifies his brother. He's moved to Las Vegas. The man Frank talks to can't remember what he was doing the night the Pryces were murdered, let alone his brother.

  Frank tracks the brother down. Jorge Medina. He buses tables at the Riviera Casino. He has a history of misdemeanors and fails to return Frank's phone calls. On a starry Saturday morning she drives to Las Vegas to catch Medina during his noon shift. Medina's an unimpressive character who remembers nothing. He racks his brain but can't tell Frank what he was doing that night six years ago. He doesn't even remember why he was visiting his brother. When he lived in Orange County it wasn't unusual for their families to get together and have dinner, play cards. Frank watches his apprehension grow in proportion to the failure of his memory.

  Finally she flips him her business card, tells him to call if he thinks of anything. She leaves with the conviction he's clueless. Civilians are naturally nervous around cops, but only guilty people try to hide their worry. In addition, barring a traumatic event in their lives, the only people who can tell you what they were doing on a given night six years past are people who have created an alibi and memorized it. Innocent people don't need alibis.

  Frank leaves Las Vegas no closer to a suspect than when she arrived. Still she's pleased with the miles of desert highway between her and L.A. Plenty of hours to think about the Pryce kids. Hot air blows through the car and she cools off with a six-pack of Coronas triple-bagged around a bag of ice. Frank slaps her hand against the door, keeping time with ZZ Top and Stevie Ray Vaughn. Well insulated, she cruises into the burning sunset.

  Chapter 16

  Despite a traffic jam in Barstow, Gail is still awake when Frank gets in from Vegas. She puts down the book she is reading and smiles.

  "Any luck?"

  "Nope. Guy didn't know a thing."

  "Sorry."

  Heading for the bathroom, Frank shrugs. "No big. I'm gonna get the dust off of me."

  She spends as much time as she can in the shower, hoping Gail will be asleep by the time she's done. But she isn't and Frank gets into bed beside her. Gail closes her book and turns the light off. She sn
uggles into Frank, and Frank accommodates the doc's head on her shoulder. Gail caresses Frank in a way that used to drive her nutty. Now Gail's touch is almost repulsive. She's relieved when Gail quits.

  "Talk to me," Gail whispers to Frank.

  Except for a mad desire to be back on the highway, Frank feels nothing.

  "I can't," she confesses.

  "Why not?"

  "I just can't. There aren't any words inside me."

  "Just empty?" Gail sympathizes.

  Frank thinks again about the frozen quarry. "Yeah. All empty."

  This seems to satisfy Gail but then she asks, "Is it Noah? Is it still missing him so much?"

  The answer that leaps to mind is worse, and Frank is furious. Furious at Gail for bringing up what she's worked so hard to ignore, furious at this invasion of privacy, furious that Gail cares, furious that she can't go to sleep, furious that she has to constantly defend herself. Inside, she is a raging ball of self-contained fiery hell. Outside she is a sheet of glass—cold, rigid and just as fragile.

  "I can't talk about this," she manages.

  "Why? What would happen if you did?"

  "You're asking the impossible, Gail. Do you want to see me crack into a million pieces? Is that what you want? To see me all busted up like Humpty Dumpty? You'd be stuck with a thousand broken pieces and you'd have to sweep me up with a broom and put all my pieces into a paper bag where they'd scream for all eternity, and you'd have to hear that and I'd have to hear that and we'd go crazy with all the endless screaming. Is that what you want?"

  Gail soothes, "Do you really believe that?"

  "Yeah. I do. Don't ask me to go there."

  Frank feels Gail nod. Still she asks, "Would the same thing happen if you talked to Clay?"

  "Don't you remember? Once Humpty Dumpty breaks, it's all over. No one could put him back together again. Not all the King's horses, not all the King's men. He shattered beyond all hope. If he'd just stayed on the wall, he'd have been all right. So I'm hanging on to the wall."

  "What if the wall's crumbling?"

  "The wall's not crumbling," Frank insists. "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. He jumped or slipped. Maybe he was pushed, but the wall didn't break."

  "Frank, Humpty Dumpty's a fairy tale, and you're not an egg. If you break, you'll heal. If you don't break, you won't heal. Don't you know that by now? Isn't that what happened with Maggie. You didn't break and look what happened. You ended up in Clay's office. He broke you properly, like a bone that was badly set, and helped you mend. You've got to break in order to get everything out or you'll explode trying to keep all it in. Do you want to go through all that again?"

  Frank argues, "Fairy tales are metaphors for real life. If Humpty had just minded his own business and paid attention to staying on that wall he'd have been okay. But he slipped. He started snooping around in places where he had no business. He was an egg trying to be something he wasn't. I'm a cop, trying to pretend I'm not. I'm trying to pretend I can live like other people. That I can deal with life by talking and feeling, and I can't. For me to do what I've got to do I can't feel it and I can't talk about it. I've got to bag up my shit and dump it like the trash it is. Then forget about it. I'm hanging on to the wall, Gail. I'm bagging up the trash. I'm not going to fall off into that touchy-feely never-never land. I tried that. It doesn't work for me."

  "Oh, I see. Alcoholism and workaholism are so much healthier. Is that it?"

  "How many times do we have to have this conversation?" Frank sighs into the dark.

  "You tell me."

  "You're the one that keeps bringing it up."

  Gail separates her body from Frank's. She lies motionless on her side of the bed. Frank silently begs Gail to fall asleep. She believes her wish has been granted until Gail demands, "Are you satisfied with our relationship?"

  Lacing her fingers under her head, Frank breathes, "Fuck."

  She should have known better. Gail's a pit bull in an argument.

  "Are you?"

  "Not right now, no."

  "Generally?"

  "Generally it's fine."

  "Tell me what you like about it."

  "Gail, why are you doing this?"

  "Because I need to know. What do you like about our relationship? From what I can see, it doesn't look like much. Half the time you beg off seeing me, and when you do deign to grace me with your presence you're remote, aloof and unapproachable."

  Frank notes the triple redundancy of Gail's description, thereby making her guilty of only one fault.

  "And in case you haven't noticed, we haven't made love since Noah died. I don't think you even like breathing the same air as me! But you're perfectly happy."

  Guilty as charged, Frank thinks. Gail is absolutely right. Frank doesn't want to be with her. It's more effort than she can manage right now. It's not fair to drag Gail down to her level, but neither is it sporting of Gail to demand Frank meet her bar. Searching the air above the bed, Frank knows she must choose. Gail or the wall. Falling or staying. She makes her decision, but her words are halting.

  "You deserve better, Gail. Someone who can go through things with you. I can't. I just can't. I'm not built that way. I'm sorry." She rolls her back to Gail. "Good night."

  To ensure she won't fall, Frank has crucified herself to the wall.

  Chapter 17

  Frank's commute always gives her time to reflect, and the next morning she will go so far as to say she's a heavy drinker and sometimes she drinks too much. Who doesn't? But there is drinking, and then there's problem drinking. If drinking doesn't interfere with her daily functions, then there's no problem. If it does interfere, then it's a problem. Frank can't see how her drinking is a problem. She does the same things that teetotalers do—she gets to work on time, does a good job, pays her bills and keeps her house up. What more does Gail want?

  To prove she has no problem, Frank vows to stay sober for a week. If she can get through the week without seeing purple spiders or ending up in the Betty Ford clinic, then she must be okay. If she can't, then she has a problem. She tests herself the week Foubarelle goes out of town. Being on call the whole week is good incentive to stay sober. The days are easy, the nights a little harder. Around four or five o'clock, her body nags that it's time for a drink. She distracts herself with work. She spends the hours interviewing residents along the street where the Pryce family used to live. She knocks as late as eight o'clock and then spends another couple hours writing notes. Twice she sleeps on the skinny vinyl couch in her office. The other nights she slips in next to Gail for what is little more than a nap and change of clothes.

  When Fubar returns, Frank celebrates her week of sobriety at the Alibi. Tossing off a double, she orders another. Johnnie joins her and at midnight Nancy asks, "Want me to call you a cab?"

  Frank thinks, you can call me anything you like, but says, "Good idea."

  Next morning her hangover is exquisite. She wonders how she got that drunk. She didn't mean to, and scolds that she should've had dinner. She resolves to go easy tonight. Two beers, max, she tells herself.

  Alcohol has always been a friend Frank can count on. When she feels low it consoles her. When she wants to celebrate it takes her higher. When she mourns, it comforts her. When she needs to chill, it calms her. If she's a little down, it brings her up. If she's amped too high, it brings her down. The booze oils her enough to fit comfortably into her own skin, no matter how tight, how large, how raw or how exhilarated she feels. It makes bad times bearable and good times better.

  Because the booze has always been such a loyal and dependable friend, Frank cannot—will not—see its betrayal. And the betrayals start off small enough: a hangover on a workday, the fuzzily recalled evening, a tiff that in the sober light of dawn seems senseless. They're petite mignons, really, little sins, of fleeting concern during her shower or drive to work.

  Because she hasn't noticed the smaller betrayals, she's equally blind to the larger ones—the recriminating arguments th
at leave her bruised but justified; remorseful cold shoulders to those deserving better; the dull head that shadows much of her workday followed near the end of watch by distractive planning of what to drink and where.

  Alcohol is Frank's right-hand man, her Robinson Crusoe and Gal Friday rolled into one. It's the cavalry routing the bad guys in the final desperate hour. It's the lifeline suddenly appearing in a walloping sea. So of course she has ignored all the hints and signs that her old friend is going behind her back. Who could look at that? Who would want to see? She keeps loving her buddy, her pal, sharing the bulk of her time with it and all her confidences. And her friend pats her hand or gives her the high-five just as it always has. And because she still trusts it, unable to believe it has anything but her best interests at heart, she willingly takes its hand and follows it too far.

  When she wakes from a blackout wondering how she got home, while she pulls her guts up through her teeth at the kitchen sink, or hides bloodshot eyes behind Ray Bans and shaking hands in pockets, she wonders how she's crossed the line again. She berates herself for going as far as she has and swears she won't do it again. But when the booze calls her and says one or two won't hurt, just for old time's sake, she says, "Sure," certain, trusting even, that her old friend won't hurt her. And because she trusts it, she follows it repeatedly, again and again, over the line.

  Frank decides her vow to stick to two beers is unnecessary. By nine o'clock that night she has finished a six-pack. There are no notable aftereffects and Frank thinks no more of limits or abstaining. She is fine. Just fine.

  Chapter 18

  There are two people that Frank has yet to talk to—Mary and Walter Pryce. She's put off calling Ladeenia and Trevor's parents because she knows they will ask about Noah. He had stayed in touch, calling them regularly just to check in. To let them know he hadn't forgotten. He'd been fond of the Pryces and they of him. Everyone liked Noah. He was just that kind of guy.