Pretty Corpse

by Linda Berry

  “Tall. Just over six feet. Dark hair. Blue eyes.”

  She was stumbling upon her share of blue eyes today, in addition to strong men about the right height. “He’s a pretty diligent kid? Organized?”

  “Oh yeah. A parent’s dream. As close to perfect as they come.”

  “Too perfect?”

  He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

  “The pressure to constantly excel can be stressful. Has he exhibited any unusual behavior lately?”

  “Is he under suspicion?”

  Lauren lightened her tone. “No one’s under suspicion. These are just routine questions.”

  Tenney looked thoughtful. “Well, he has missed several practices in the last two weeks. Like I said, he’s been distracted. A little sullen, too.”

  “Is he Melissa’s boyfriend?”

  “Was. I think she broke up with him. Maybe that’s why he’s been skipping class.”

  “I heard he and Chris slugged it out.”

  Tenney studied her with appreciation. “You’ve been busy.”

  “Just getting started.”

  “It’s true. Kevin got the brunt of it. Black eye. Bruised jaw. Certainly a bruised ego. Not easy for a track star to fall from grace. Since the showdown, Melissa’s been hanging with Chris.”

  Lauren scribbled in her notepad.

  “Hi, Mom!”

  Lauren turned to see Courtney emerging from the locker room, her gym bag slung over one shoulder. From her exuberance, Lauren suspected all was forgiven between them, for now.

  “By the way, Mrs. Starkley,” Tenney said, recapturing her attention. “A reporter from The Daily was hanging around today. He asked about you. Said he wanted to interview you.”

  “Peter Duff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  “No problem.” Tenney shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Look, don’t worry about Courtney. I’ll keep an eye out for her.”

  Lauren was prompted by his friendliness to ask a favor. “Say Coach, would you mind alerting me if you see any stranger lurking about?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Lauren thanked him and handed him her card. She was not above rewarding him with a special smile she kept on reserve. He walked off beaming, and said with a backward glance, “See ya tomorrow at soccer.”

  Courtney gave Lauren a peck on the cheek. She smelled like soap and shampoo, and a few strands of wet hair clung to the nape of her neck.

  “It’s sickening how obvious he is,” Courtney said, her eyes following the coach.

  “Coach Tenney?”

  “Yeah. He’s so hot for you, Mom. I’ve seen him watching you at soccer matches.”

  Lauren looked after Tenney with new interest. The coach did go out of his way to speak to her at the matches, but she had never read more into it than friendliness. Seemed Courtney, who had never been on a date, had picked up on sexual nuances Lauren missed entirely. Realizing how inept she had become at romance, she turned back to her daughter and was suddenly taken by how mature she looked, how provocative. Courtney’s skin glowed from her shower, and her curves were emphasized by her body-hugging outfit. She had shot up several inches in the last two years and now matched Lauren in height.

  Confronting her daughter’s ripening sexuality was a daunting prospect. Maybe it was time to reassess her parenting strategies. How much freedom should she give this child who was now in possession of a woman’s body? How much latitude? How could she keep the evil in the world from encroaching on Courtney’s innocence while she found her way to maturity? Making a mental note to take Courtney shopping for clothes that would camouflage her sex appeal, Lauren took off her raincoat and draped it around her daughter’s shoulders.

  Courtney looked at her and made a face.

  “It’s pouring outside,” Lauren said. “Let’s go.”

  ***

  At six thirty, Lauren tapped lightly on Courtney’s bedroom door and opened it. Seated at her desk, her daughter was testing her mental dexterity by doing homework to the pulsing beat of ’N Sync. She looked aloof and brainy, yet still childlike. Tango was curled into a ball on her lap like a stuffed toy. This past summer, Courtney traded the canopy bed she had coveted since she was seven for an upgraded computer and a daybed draped in Laura Ashley linens. This foray into sophistication had pleased Lauren, but now she felt a growing sense of dread. Her baby was growing up too fast.

  “Have a minute?” she asked.

  “Yep. I’m just finishing up.”

  Lauren settled herself on the bed. Courtney closed her math book, neatly arranged her desk top, scooped off the cat, and plopped down next to her. Lauren smoothed her daughter’s tangled hair with a gentle hand. Courtney’s shoulders relaxed.

  “I’ve been unfair to you, Courtney,” she said. “I should’ve been straight with you about Captain Monetti. I wanted all of us to spend some time together. Get to know one another. You had fun playing Frisbee with him at the zoo last week, didn’t you?”

  Courtney shrugged, pulled away, picked at her blue nail polish. “Mom, can’t you date someone normal?”

  “What’s normal?” Immediately, Lauren tensed.

  “A regular guy. Like a salesman, or a teacher. Just someone who doesn’t wear a uniform.”

  Lauren was silent for a moment. “Honey, what Jack does for a living is less important than his integrity and character.”

  “Dad had those things. But the uniform got him killed. If he wasn’t a fireman, he’d still be alive.” Tears filled her eyes, and her voice choked with emotion. “You got shot at last night. What if you got killed, too?”

  Lauren wasn’t prepared for the immediacy of her daughter’s grief. Even as she offered comfort, she felt her own hot sting of tears. Trying to get her family back on stable ground after Ken’s death seemed to be an insurmountable effort, like trying to construct a wall around them with smoke. The wound ripped open again and again, with the smallest provocation. “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” Lauren said. “No one has ever been killed at my station. We’re the best trained officers on the force.”

  With a sniffle, Courtney reached for two tissues from the box on the nightstand and handed one to her mother. They simultaneously dabbed their eyes and blew their noses.

  “That guy who shot at me wasn’t trying to hit me. They were warning shots. Fired yards away.”

  “Really, Mom?”

  “Yes, really.”

  A long pause. “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  The tension in her daughter’s face softened. She glanced at the digital clock on her bookcase and said in a grown-up tone, “You’d better get ready. Captain Monetti’s going to be here in a few minutes.”

  “No, he isn’t. I cancelled our date.”

  Courtney looked at her mother, wide-eyed, then her expression turned to relief. Lauren saw she’d made the right decision. Clearly, they all needed more time before tackling the dating issue. Lauren recognized her own relief too, laced in a wreath of disappointment. When she called Jack earlier, he had accepted her decision graciously, but she’d detected an edge of frustration in his tone. Caught between two forces, she knew she was taking the easy way out. In the interlude between hearing Jack say goodbye, and hanging up the phone, she’d realized a piercing need for intimacy. She wanted a partner in life, like Ken, with whom she could share the highs and lows, and private thoughts too intimate to share with anyone but a trusted lover. “I’m not saying I won’t see Jack again,” Lauren said. “I’m just giving us time to get used to the idea.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Mom,” Courtney said flippantly. “No one could ever compare to Dad.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  SATURDAY MORNING, Lauren stood on the sidelines of the soccer game wearing jeans, a red sweatshirt, and running shoes. Unable to keep her mind on the game, she quietly slipped away from the crowd and walked to the north side of Cypress Pa
rk, drawn irresistibly to the footbridge and trolley car ravine. The bridge had a charming appearance in the light of day, with its striking Spanish architecture and trellised overhang covered in wisteria. She climbed the steps, walked halfway across the bridge, and sought out the spot where Melissa’s assailant had emerged from the fog and taken potshots at her two nights ago. As her eyes swept across the trolley tracks, pinpointing where she had descended the ravine and tumbled to the bottom, she saw clearly how exposed she had been. If the suspect’s intention had been to shoot her, he could have done so easily.

  The trees in the park were saturated with color: persimmon, scarlet, gold, and the sycamores in the grove stood stately and tall in the morning sun. Beyond the stand of trees, the city spread eastward to the bay in an orderly geometry of houses, high-rises, and church steeples. In the foreground, people were making good use of the neighborhood park: walking dogs, picnicking on the grass, chasing Frisbees.

  The scene must have looked much the same when Melissa’s assailant scouted the place, planning her abduction, seeking the perfect place to stage her body. Lauren followed the rapist’s footsteps in reverse, down the steps of the bridge, back to the fringe of the woods where he had secretly watched her and Steve as they discovered Melissa, getting his voyeuristic thrill.

  Within the trembling shadows of the grove, a man stood facing the picnic table. Lauren instinctively lifted her sweatshirt and put a hand near her holstered Glock 19, which she carried off duty. The man turned and stared at her. Her training kicked in and she summed him up in seconds—tan corduroy sports jacket, black jeans, black work boots, blond hair curling over his ears. Thick glasses with black frames, late twenties.

  She had no right to question him, but she did. “Do you have a reason for being here?”

  He squinted at her, accentuating lines around his eyes that added maturity to his thin face. “Who are you?” he asked brashly. “The picnic table police?”

  “I’m an off-duty police officer.” She asserted authority with her professional tone. “This area was the scene of a crime Thursday night.”

  “I’m aware of that.” His heavy boots crushed dried leaves and twigs as he approached her. Wind crackled leaves in the branches above them. She saw he held a palm-sized tape recorder. “I’m a reporter,” he said. “Covering the story for The Daily.”

  “Peter Duff?”

  “Yes. And you’re Officer …?”

  “Starkley. You were asking about me at the school yesterday.”

  “Right.” The reporter’s gaze was penetrating, his eyes startlingly blue. “Can we talk?”

  “No comment” was routine police response for a case under investigation. “I have to get back to my daughter’s game.” She glanced across the park to the soccer field and saw the girls in play, then her gaze was pulled back to the paint-chipped picnic table flickering in the dappled light. A memory stirred of Melissa’s naked body, red eyes, and brutal ligature marks. “I don’t know any more than what you wrote in the paper.”

  “Actually, you do. You were the first to arrive at the scene. You witnessed how the suspect leaves his victims.” His pause accentuated the drama of his words. “I’ve been following this case since the initial assault.” He lifted his cap, ran a hand through his curls, then replaced it, his face revealing frustration. “The facts are locked up tight. No one at the school will talk to me. Obviously, they’ve been advised not to. There’s something very odd going on here. Something that would scare the public if revealed, yes?”

  “He’s attacking young girls. Crimes against kids frighten people in a way no others do.”

  The lens of his glasses made his eyes appear smaller, yet his gaze pierced hers with an unusual intensity.

  “This case has a special interest to you. Otherwise you wouldn’t be back here on your day off.”

  “I have a fourteen-year-old daughter, Mr. Duff. Yeah, I have a special interest.”

  “We’re on the same side, Officer. My daughter, Tina, is a freshman at Cypress High. I’m gonna do all I can to get this predator off the street.” Duff pulled his wallet from his back pocket, took out a card, handed it to her. Again, he fixed her with his piercing gaze. “As a patrol officer, you’re shut out of the case. But if you want in, we could work something out.”

  Lauren studied the card. Duff was asking her to divulge inside information. He would reward her with info he collected. Some cops would consent if it meant helping to catch a dangerous predator. Not here, not now. There was something about the reporter she didn’t like. She tucked the card into her pocket. “Good luck, Mr. Duff.”

  Turning away from his look of disappointment, Lauren returned to the game, just in time to watch her daughter’s team win with the final goal. Courtney’s teammates burst into a chorus of cheers, lobbing hats and sweatshirts into the air.

  Lauren searched for Coach Tenney in the crowd. The coach had disappeared from sight, leaving his female assistant to supervise the team. Lauren examined the men standing at the sidelines, her eyes flitting from one face to the next, looking for a subtle sign, an uneasy glance, a man taking too keen an interest in the girls.

  Her eyes landed on a solitary figure standing under an oak tree across the field. His features were mottled by shadows, but he was lean, and dressed in dark clothing and a dark ball cap. Adrenalin charged her system. Melissa’s assailant was lean, and had worn dark clothing and a ball cap.

  The man’s gaze seemed fixed on the girls. Suddenly, it shifted to Lauren and brazenly held it. He lifted his hand, pointed an imaginary gun at her, and unmistakably, pulled the trigger.

  Her heart pounded as she weaved through the happy throng of people crowding the field, but by the time she broke through, the dark figure had vanished. She quickly scanned the area under the oak. Something lay on the ground where the man had stood. She froze, pulled her cell phone from her pocket, and called the station lieutenant’s direct line.

  “Lieutenant Cowley,” a man’s voice replied.

  “Tom, this is Lauren. Our rapist may be in Cypress Park. He’s fleeing. We need a perimeter up here fast.” Lauren described the suspect.

  “Got it.” Cowley clicked off.

  “Mom, what are you doing?”

  Courtney and a soccer mate stood staring at the article at her feet. Courtney’s face reflected confusion, then distaste. “Whose panties are those?”

  The white cotton panties had a print of tiny pink hearts, a style a teenager might choose.

  “Stay here,” Lauren said with urgency. “Don’t let anyone touch this evidence.”

  Lauren broke into a jog, running around the periphery of the soccer field, sizing up every person in sight. Most were accompanied by dogs, kids, lovers. She trained her gaze on individuals wearing dark clothing. The suspect was smart. To elude her, he could have changed shirts, discarded his hat, put on a different jacket, but he’d still have on dark pants and shoes.

  A radio car screeched to a halt at the curb on Grifton. Another pulled over on the opposite side of the park. Officers raced from their vehicles, splitting off to all four corners. Another black and white slowly patrolled the parking lot where soccer families were piling into cars.

  As she concentrated her search, her anger flared. The rapist was watching teenage girls in broad daylight with impunity. Watching Courtney. After a thorough search of the park, the public restrooms, and the trolley car tunnel, and coming up empty, Lauren joined the other patrol officers in the parking lot. Numerous bystanders had been questioned but no individual matched the description of the man who stood under the oak tree. The suspect had disappeared while well-trained officers scurried through the park like mice in a maze. Sergeant Birenski instructed the officers to abandon the chase and they headed for their patrol cars. Lauren silently cursed.

  Another female officer, Peanut Farrell, accompanied Lauren back to the oak tree where Courtney waited with several teammates and a fellow soccer mom, Peggy Tate. The group watched in silence as Lauren slipped the pant
ies into an evidence bag, sealed and labeled it, and gave it to Farrell to take to the station. She and Farrell were friends, but today they were all business.

  A fellow soccer mom took Lauren aside and questioned her in a low but anxious voice. “What’s going on, Lauren? Are those panties related to the rape case? Was the rapist just here? Watching our kids?”

  “I don’t have answers for you,” Lauren said. “The panties could have been here for any number of reasons. For any length of time. They need to be analyzed.”

  “Should I pull Jennifer off the team?”

  “No. The station captain will make sure uniformed police are here from now on during daylight hours, and in increased presence around the clock. If that doesn’t calm everyone, we’ll talk to Coach Tenney. Get the game moved to another location.” She made a sweep of the field. “Have you seen the coach?”

  “No. Not since the last quarter of the game.”

  Lauren glanced at the four grim-faced teenage girls nervously watching her. She hoped her smile looked reassuring as she approached. Draping an arm across her daughter’s shoulders, she congratulated the girls on their teamwork and guided them toward the parking lot. “That goal at the end of the game was awesome, Kendall,” Lauren said to a red-headed teen covered in freckles.

  She beamed.

  The conversation turned to the highlights of the game, and the park-wide police search for the moment was forgotten, but Lauren knew Melissa’s rapist would haunt each girl later in her private thoughts. The suspect had darkened their world and altered the texture of their lives in ways they couldn’t fully understand. Anger gnawed at Lauren’s gut. This man would not drive them out of their neighborhood park. She had no intention of standing idle while he tightened a net of fear around them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT WAS PEGGY’S TURN to take Courtney and her teammates to Chevy’s, their favorite hangout, which freed Lauren to meet Holly Baker for lunch. After parking at The Marina, she weaved her way down one of the piers through the hordes of tourists crowding gift shops, galleries, and eateries. Alma’s, a San Francisco seafood legend, was perched above the wood pilings at the end of the pier, sun-bleached and sturdy as a tugboat. Lauren lingered outside for a minute, enjoying the autumn sun on her face and the sea breeze carrying the smell of brine and grilled fish. Sailboats and gulls cut graceful lines in the cloudless blue sky and at the mouth of the Pacific, where the Golden Gate Bridge soared across the bay.