Bleeding Out lf-1 Page 8

  "Who's winning?"

  "Trojans, six to three."

  "Sounds like a baseball score," she noted, glancing back down at the jeweled mirror. Johnnie was jogging outside the barred window, head tucked into his jacket against the rain. He ran inside, shaking himself out of his wet coat like a dog.

  "Goddamn, it's cold!" he bellowed, pulling out the stool next to Frank's. "Mel! Hit me with a whiskey beer back," he ordered, his voice husky.

  They discussed the day's college games while Mel poured. Then Mel drifted toward the other end of the bar to take care of two uniforms Frank recognized. Johnnie said, "Heard Fubar reamed you a new asshole yesterday."

  Johnnie was talking about a newscast the mayor had heard where the anchor claimed LAPD sources confirmed Agoura's and Peterson's murderers were, indeed, the same person. He'd gone on to make some other erroneous claims, and the mayor had called Foubarelle in a tizzy to find out why he hadn't been told about this first. The captain, in turn, flew into the squad room, fed up with always having to ask for information, and shot at Frank with both barrels. When he'd finished his tirade, Frank had tactfully pointed out that had any of what the newscaster said been true, she personally would have informed her boss right away.

  Frank hissed, "Shit," and wagged her head in disgust. "What I wouldn't give to see that squint on the street for a couple years."

  "They're givin' us some heat, huh?"

  "Yeah. You know if those girls were black or Mexican and dumped in Beverly Hills or Westwood, the press wouldn't even have slowed down as they passed by on their way to a 'real' story."

  Johnnie shrugged, licking foam delicately off his lip.

  "What's the latest on 'em? Anything?"

  Mel slipped Frank's hamburger onto the bar, and she ordered another stout.

  "Let's get a table," she said, picking up the plate.

  Johnnie followed, and when Frank had finished her first bite she answered his question.

  "I got an interesting string of rapes from around that area and a stack of case folders two feet high. So I'm plowing through them this morning—"

  "Don't you ever do anything fun?" Johnnie interrupted.

  "—and at least three of them so far are similar to what we know about our guy. He was big, maybe left-handed, restrained them with a towel around the throat."

  "Kinda grasping at straws, aren't you?"

  "Got a better idea? We know there's at least one rapist in that area, our guy's into rape, we know the girls were in that area. Weak lead's better than no lead."

  Johnnie shrugged again, a typical gesture for him. "Hey, Mel," he held up his empty mug, "I'm dying over here."

  After Mel brought another shot and chaser, Johnnie asked if the whitecoats had revealed anything useful.

  "For the DA, but not much right now."

  Frank told him the rest of the details from the case folders, then settled up her tab, throwing Johnnie's in, too. She slapped his back and dodged through the raindrops to her Honda. She cruised easily along the slick, gray highway, grateful for the weather keeping everyone home. Upstairs at the station, she started a pot of coffee and slid Beethoven's Fourth Symphony into her little boom box. She closed her eyes while she waited for the coffee and let the Adagio swell over her.

  Besides chasing bad guys, music was the greatest passion Frank allowed herself. The singular exception to her general denial of sentiment, she allowed Mozart and Bach to sweep her off her feet like lovers, Sinatra and Fitzgerald to soothe her. She used AC/DC and Led Zepplin to amp herself up, Getz and Jobim to calm down.

  During the pause between movements she lowered the volume, poured her coffee, and got back to the stack of cases. The felicity of the Fourth Symphony gave way to the more stately Seventh, then the tape reversed and started all over again. By the time Frank sighed loudly and stretched against the hard chairback, the somber Allegreto of the Seventh was playing for the third time.

  Frank turned it up, regretting she hadn't paid attention to the beginning. She allowed the strength of the movement to divert her from the ugly dossier she'd been culling, and as she relaxed it occurred to her that she was tired—deeply, achingly tired.

  The Presto began and Frank snapped the player off, determined to concentrate on the lists in front of her. They might pan out to nothing, but at least they offered a glimmer of hope on an otherwise darkened trail. The clock over her door read 6:24. She hefted the phone receiver, debating, then dialed.

  "Hey, Trace, it's Frank."

  "Frank! You humma-humma, how the heck have you been?"

  Tracey Jantzen had a mouth like a sailor in a shipwreck, and it was amusing to hear her curb it around the kids. She was an outgoing, gregarious woman, with a heart as big as the South Pacific, and just as warm.

  Frank smiled.

  "I've been fine," she replied. "How's the most beautiful woman in L.A. been?"

  Tracey came back with the standard reply. "Well, if I knew her Frank, I'd ask her. When are you coming over for dinner? I haven't seen you since forever. Noah says you're working too hard. Why don't you come over next Saturday? We'll drug the kids and play strip poker all night, what do you say? Or at least Noah could barbecue some steaks and I could make a pitcher of margaritas. How's that sound?"

  Frank interpreted the slight pause as her chance to answer and she said it sounded real good.

  "Go-o-od! Now that I've gone and invited you over, let me go check the calendar and see what we're doing Saturday. Hang on, I'll get No for you."

  "Bye, Tracey." But the words just echoed onto a tabletop. After a minute Noah greeted, "Whassup?"

  "Hey. You busy?"

  "Yeah, I'm playing cowboys and Indians with Markie."

  "Who's winning?"

  "Man, he is. I'm dead meat, 'cause he's a fierce hombre."

  She could tell he was still playing with him.

  "Do you have a sec?"

  "You bet."

  It wasn't unusual for Noah's weekends or evenings to be interrupted by work, but it was unusual for Frank to call. He asked if they'd had a break on Agoura or Peterson.

  "No such luck. But I combed through the MI list you ran for me and I've found some spooky shit here."

  "Speak to me."

  She gave him a synopsis of the information extracted from the rape cases.

  "The first one happened on December 8, 1996, at the Culver City Park. It's not far from Kenneth Hahn, and it's a lot like it: both places are surrounded by oil companies. There's a lot of brush back in there where anything could happen. Anyway, a ten-year-old Hispanic female wandered away from her brother who was playing baseball. No one noticed she was gone until she came running back screaming. She was hysterical, and the brother took her home. Turns out she'd been assaulted, anally, but by the time they brought her to the hospital the next day, there was no evidence at all.

  "When they finally got her to talk, seems a man had grabbed her from behind and choked her with his arm around her neck. Then he'd pulled her shorts down, rubbed something wet on her with his hand, and penetrated her. She tried to scream even though she could barely breathe, and from the way she described how everything was looking gray she was close to passing out. Then he dropped her and she got her breath back. She looked behind her but no one was there and she ran to find her brother.

  Caucasian, had rolled up his sleeve and said, 'Like my skin?' To which she replied, 'Yes, but not so much hair.'"

  Frank continued reading excerpts from each report.

  "The second case was about six weeks later, January 22nd, again at the park. This girl was older—thirteen, Hispanic again. A man, a tall man, abducted her on her way to the restroom, choking her with a towel. He dragged her into the surrounding shrubs, pressed her down onto her stomach, fell onto her, and masturbated against her fully clothed. He did that for a while, then eventually lifted himself off and she could breathe better. Then he proceeded to rape her exactly as the first girl had been raped, with the exception that he kept banging his head into
her shoulder blades. This time the girl went straight to the ER and somebody was thinking. They did fingernail scrapes and semen swabs, and CCPD determined the assailant was a white male, A-type blood. Collected pubic hairs were light brown."

  Noah interrupted, "Okay, so far we've got two prepubescent Hispanic girls who've gotten raped in Culver City. Before Markie graduates from high school, is this going to somehow be connected to two white girls murdered in South Central or am I missing something?"

  "Hold on. It gets better. March 25th, a white, twelve-year-old brunette is attacked at Kenneth Hahn. Same MO, on her way out of the restroom, but this case had a witness. A man entering the men's side noticed a tall, slightly overweight man, maybe late twenties, early thirties, peering into the women's restroom. He assumed the guy was waiting for his wife or girlfriend. The wit said this guy was big, broad-shouldered. He was wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt. Straight brown hair. No facial hair or obvious tattoos. No glasses.

  "Three weeks later, on Texaco property just southeast of the CC park, a fourteen-year-old white female was smoking dope and drinking tequila with her friends. The girl became nauseous and went into the bushes to vomit. She crawled out later—bruised, scratched, sodomized.

  "May 12th, fifteen-year-old white female, sunbathing with her sister and two friends at Kenneth Hahn. The girl was sent back to the car for sunscreen. She was grabbed at the edge of the parking lot, raped. Her left shoulder was dislocated. Not even two weeks later, another girl, fourteen, brunette, was raped outside of Kenneth Hahn, again on oil property, followed by two more in June. But get this, the June girls are fifteen and sixteen, Hispanic and white, a blonde, respectively, but the Hispanic girl is assaulted near Crenshaw High and the white girl's done near Culver City High. Same MO on all of them. A towel was pulled over their heads and twisted under their throats. Their assailant was big, strong. All were forced into the surrounding shrubbery and subdued by strangulation.

  "Here's the kicker. During these last four attacks, the perp repeatedly rammed each girl with his head and shoulders while he was raping them. The second girl was lucky and passed out from the force of a blow to her diaphragm, the third girl suffered a concussion, and the fourth girl had two broken ribs."

  Frank paused.

  "Gotta be the same guy, No. Where he attacks them, how he attacks them...it's pretty consistent throughout all these cases."

  Noah interrupted. "How do you make the jump from these last rapes to murder?"

  "Look at his style. He's evolving through each attack, becoming more and more aggressive. We can expect that as he gets more practice and more confidence. The earlier victims were mauled and handled pretty roughly, but as he learned he could get away with that much, he graduated to battery. This battery is as clear as a calling card. It's his signature, and even though his MO might vary according to circumstance, this battering's going to remain consistent."

  "If it's so consistent, why wasn't he more aggressive earlier?"

  "Probably not enough time. If he'd never done this before, he was probably nervous, didn't know how much he could get away with. By the time he gets to the fifth girl he's got things worked out. He's experienced, more secure, knows what he's doing and how much time he's got."

  Noah could hear the excitement in Frank's voice, but skepticism forced him to play devil's advocate.

  "Isn't it a broad jump from raping girls in parks to kidnapping and killing them?"

  "Remember we haven't had a reported rape in that area since...," she quickly scanned her notes, "...June. And Agoura showed up in late October. Maybe he's gone underground for some reason. Maybe he got arrested for something else. I'm going to run a query on arrests for that time frame, see what we get."

  "Well, it's something," Noah conceded. "Are you gonna talk to these girls?"

  "Going to have to. The witness, too."

  "That oughta be fun."

  "I know, but something might shake loose."

  The line was silent until Noah finally sighed, "I hate this guy."

  There was a long silence between them, then he said, "Why don't you rent a video and go home. Get some rest."

  He heard the long intake of breath, then the lie on the other end.

  "Yeah. Maybe I'll do that."

  His father liked hanging out at Gil's Pub. It was a sports bar, with a wide-screen TV and two smaller sets perched over either end of the bar. It wasn't uncommon for him to bring his son to the bar and brag to the other patrons about what a great football player he was while the boy ducked his red face down to his Coke. What was uncommon was the night he got really drunk just before the boy's fourteenth birthday and paid a woman at the end of the bar for a little action in the hotel a few blocks away.

  She was drunk and willing enough. A little kinky, she thought, but hell, the boy was big enough and he was pretty cute. Everything was amiable until the father slammed her down on the bed and ripped her skirt up over her ass. She tried to protest, but he yanked her head back by a handful of hair and told her to keep her mouth shut unless she wanted to get hurt worse.

  The boy watched his father, curious about this shift in power. His body was starting to harden into a man's, and though the father hadn't done that to him for a while, he was still wary. But now it was almost as if he were being treated as an equal. When the father finished, he growled, "Get on," and the boy did. The woman tried to talk to him, but he jerked her head back like his father had and told her to shut up. The boy didn't want to hear her, see her, smell her. He just wanted to hurt her. And he did. His father leered approvingly. The boy had never been happier.

  9

  She lay still for a moment, grateful she couldn't remember any dreams. In the soft cradle between sleep and wakefulness, Frank was peaceful. Before anything could ruin that she jumped out of bed, pulling on baggy sweats and a T-shirt so old she could read through it. She interchanged Sticky Fingers and Abbey Road on the CD player, and rocked and sweated and pumped cool steel for two hours. After that she filled the Mr. Coffee with water and French roast and left it dripping while she showered. Frozen croissants baked in the oven as she spread an arrest printout on the dining room table. The Stones and the Beatles had been replaced by Delibes' Lakme, and wedges of apple and Brie waited on a glazed ceramic plate for the croissants.

  Frank's painstaking attention to detail checked any intrusion of discord, and she was almost happy. An hour later she rolled south on the Harbor Freeway, whistling the "Flower Song" and looking forward to the Chiefs' game. By the time she got to the Alibi, Johnnie and Ike were already at a table in front of the large-screen TV. Lifting a hand toward Mel, she noticed Deirdre McCall filling in for Nancy and Johnnie already on at least his second beer. It wasn't even ten o'clock. She ordered coffee as Boy-red joined them, joking with the boys and excluding Frank from the banter. Around noon they started ordering pitchers, and Frank helped with a couple more as the Niners trounced the Panthers. After the late game she drove carefully home through the November dusk.

  Frank made a chicken sandwich and took the arrest printout into the living room. Listening absently to the news, she scribbled notes in the margins, brushing crumbs away while she worked. A handful of records fit the time frame she was looking for, and three of the perps had priors for assault and/or rape. Between the rape victims, the murder books she'd yet to read, and this list of possible suspects, she had wiggled out a few more leads. Frank yawned widely. She and Noah could start on them in the morning. She hoped like hell they wouldn't fizzle on her.

  But Frank's plans to follow up on the Agoura/Peterson leads got shelved, and she spent all the next day working a drowning with Diego. By six that evening, they had a suspect in the locker downtown. Frank celebrated, leaving the office in time to catch all of the Monday night game. She even managed another good night's sleep. Tuesday she was in meetings and at court, but late in the afternoon she finally was able to dig into the rec area murder books. They were cold cases, and Frank had borrowed them from the Culver City P
D and LASD without anyone breathing down her neck to get them back. In fact, both agencies had been surprisingly cooperative.

  She picked up the first binder and pulled out the pictures and the coroner's report. A handful of scene sketches corresponded to the photos, and Frank spread those in front of her. They were the next best thing to being on scene. She studied them, formulating her own ideas before she was prejudiced by the investigating detective's report.

  Jane Doe, fifteen or sixteen years old, Hispanic. Her body was on its stomach in a ditch. She was missing footwear, pants, and underwear. She still had on a white bra and T-shirt, but they'd been pushed up around her collarbone. She showed bruises, too, but they seemed more evenly distributed around her body, especially around the arms and breasts where the perp had grabbed her. The coroner's report indicated anal as well as vaginal rape. She was asphyxiated, but manually. The bruising was obvious on her neck.

  Frank closed the file. It was too inconsistent with the profile she was expecting. The same for the second report, a sixteen-year-old Korean girl who'd been found off the 405 near Huntley. The third case was Cassandra Nichols.

  A twelve-year-old black girl. The first picture caught her spread-eagled near a dumpster in an empty parking lot. Pink skirt bunched up around her waist, underwear around her knees, blood stains and bruises on her legs. Her bra was pushed above tiny breasts.

  Frank's first impression was that this case was also unrelated, but she kept circling around, making notes on a legal pad. The coroner's photos showed consistent bruising. Ligature marks around the neck indicated asphyxiation. Frank held one of the pictures up, squinting into it. It was a morgue shot emphasizing scattered posterior bruising. She searched it carefully, then restudied the photo of Nichols in the lot. Frank unconsciously stroked the empty spot on her ring finger.

  The coroner's report told her that Nichols was found shortly after she'd died, roughly 7:00 p.m. The autopsy revealed anal assault and significant contusion of the dorsal region. Cause of death was asphyxiation; the manner was strangulation by ligature with an object similar to a leather belt. The internal exam discovered nothing unusual.