by Dianne Emley
“Yes, ma’am.” He managed to make sarcasm drip from even that brief utterance.
“Did you write up your interview with our witness, Kevin?”
“Kissick took that over, remember?”
“You were the first to question him. Your report needs to be in the file.”
“You’d better touch base with Kissick about that.”
She frowned at the cubicle wall in the direction of his desk. “Oh-kay …”
Her eyes trailed to a bulletin board above her desk on which she’d displayed mementos and photos. She’d recently installed a couple of new ones, including a nice shot of her entire family during a recent dinner at Mijares, a favorite family-style Mexican restaurant in Pasadena. She and Em were there, as was Granny. Her mother, Patsy was there with her current beau and prospective fifth husband. Her younger sister Stephanie was with her husband and their two young boys. Looking at the photo anew, Vining was struck by how mature Em looked. She seemed to have grown up overnight.
Beside that was a photo that Emily had taken for her photography class. Her teacher had heaped praise on it and was going to submit it for inclusion in a city-wide exhibit. In the background were the imposing gates of the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. The 1924 two-story structure, with a courtyard garden and pond, was originally a custom-built home designed to look like a Chinese palace, complete with a teal-green pagoda roof. The iron gates were painted brick red and decorated with serpentine dragons. The gates were rounded at the top and set inside a cream-colored arched entryway that was decorated with an elaborate bas-relief frieze. A pair of Chinese-style stone lions guarded the entrance.
The photo was in color, but the primary hues were shades of cream, gray, and red. On the sidewalk in front of the closed gates, a young man, dressed in a long black coat, was bent over, picking up a red hibiscus flower from the sidewalk.
Emily’s teacher had praised the intense detail in the shot, the effective use of red, and the contraposition of the formal gates and lions with the casual act of the youth reaching for a flower that was incongruously on the sidewalk.
Vining had often looked at this photo, but today it commanded new interest. The boy’s face was in profile, a shock of pale skin visible between his black hair and the high collar of the coat. She took a magnifying glass from her desk and rose from her chair to examine it more closely. She realized it was Ken Zhang.
“Nan, do—”
She wheeled around at Kissick’s voice, clasping the magnifying glass to her chest. “Jeez …”
“Sorry.” He gave the magnifying glass a questioning look. “Do you have a minute?”
“Sure.” She returned the glass to her desk drawer.
“Early wants to have a brief meeting.”
“Okay.”
She walked ahead of him down the row of cubicles.
“Nice suit,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“New?”
“Sort of.” Under her breath, she asked, “Does this have something to do with what you and Sarge were talking about behind closed doors?”
“Yes,” he replied, not offering a further explanation. “By the way, I turned over that bloody shirt to Forensics. Tara’s taking care of it personally.”
She dubiously pulled her mouth to the side. “It’s evidence in an old case. The Crime Lab won’t get to it for months.”
“It’s become a high priority. Tara’s going to have it expedited.”
“Why is it now a high priority?”
As they rounded a corner, passing Ruiz’s area, Vining saw him packing items from his desk into a box. “What’s going on here?”
Kissick only said, “A lot.” He let her enter Early’s office ahead of him and closed the door.
The sergeant stood and extended her hand to Vining. “Good morning, Nan. Have a seat.”
Vining pulled a chair over. Kissick sat in a chair beside her. The papers on Early’s desk that she and Kissick had been discussing were gone.
Early didn’t begin speaking right away, but silently studied her. Only a few seconds passed, but it was sufficient to make Vining uneasy. She recalled Ruiz’s comment about “pillow talk.” That was it, she decided. Her and Kissick’s affair had been exposed. They’d been discreet, but his behavior had become more casual. Their work hadn’t been compromised, but maybe their relationship was creating a distraction for others or … Who knows? She’d warned him. She would take the fall for it. He had more seniority and less controversy. Early was going to transfer her out.
“Nan,” Early began.
Vining’s palms grew clammy.
“You’ll be taking the lead on the Scrappy Espinoza homicide. I’m assigning Jim to a special project.”
TEN
VINING BLINKED, NOT CERTAIN SHE’D HEARD CORRECTLY. SHE WAS relieved, yet not. She looked at Kissick. What did he know and when did he know it? And why hadn’t he told her?
He was the master of the dead stare. She was unable to read him.
Early did little to answer Vining’s unasked questions. “Jim’s going to be working another investigation. I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.”
Viningwas certainly capable of spearheading the Scrappy Espinoza investigation, another round-up-the-usual-suspects gang murder. Even with the possible Chinese connection, it was all the same— taking names, asking questions, getting answers. But the thought of not having Kissick to back her up made her a bit uneasy. She hated to admit how much she’d come to rely on him. They were a team. Their alliance, that had at first been only professional, had become personal, too. She also had to admit a twinge of jealousy. He was off to do something interesting while she was left to sweep up. What gives?
“There’s another change.” Early languidly blinked. Some had mistaken her low-key persona for sluggishness. They had also felt her swift reprisal. “Ruiz is transferring out of detectives. He’ll be working on a multiagency task force in conjunction with the DEA.”
Privately delighted with this news, Vining just nodded. So that’s what Ruiz’s venom toward her had been about. When he’d had to work with her, he’d been civil. Now the veil had been pulled away and she was surprised to see the depth of his animosity.
The transfer sounded like a lateral move, although some would perceive it as a demotion, even if the job classification was the same and there was no pay change.
Transferring a problematic cop to a different job was a strategy sometimes used to juice his enthusiasm and improve his performance. Often, the transfer was to an area where there was less risk to the public and other officers. She didn’t know if that was part of the strategy with Ruiz. She didn’t care. Glancing toward the suite, she saw Ruiz leaving with his box. She tried not to gloat.
Early continued. “Alex Caspers will be working with you until Jim completes his project, which we figure might take a week. With any luck, we’ll have this Scrappy Espinoza case wrapped up before then. Use Sproul and Jones as much as you need. In terms of Jim’s special project…”
She paused. “He’s going to be following up new leads in your attempted murder.”
Vining couldn’t hide her surprise. Unlike Kissick, she hadn’t mastered the dead stare. What new leads? She couldn’t be talking about the bloody shirt. If it concealed a hair, fiber, or bodily fluid that led them to a name or location, then their work would begin.
“Jim, why don’t you explain?” Early picked up a manila file folder from her desk and handed it to him.
From it, he removed four sheets of photocopy paper.
Vining knew the images on them well. They all did. They were copies of the four grisly drawings found on the pad of art paper in the mute transient Nitro’s backpack.
The mysterious stranger the PPD had nicknamed Nitro had entered their lives a few weeks ago. They guessed that he was in his early twenties. His skin was pasty white; his spiky hair was also nearly white, with dark roots. His eyes were an innocent cornflower blue. He had been well-dressed with some cash on
him. What he didn’t have was ID. No one could explain his behavior that day. Nitro, if he could, wouldn’t. He would not speak. Not one word.
In the middle of the Labor Day holiday, in the middle of Old Pasa dena, Nitro had stripped down until he was nude except for penny loafers, socks, and a beat-up pearl necklace. He then ran through the streets, eluding a horde of PPD officers until one finally managed to tackle him. They would have considered him just another nut, perhaps more colorful than most, except for that spiral-bound drawing pad in his backpack that hinted at something sinister.
Among Disney-like drawings of cute animals and flowers were four charcoals of women either being attacked or threatened with violence. Not just any women. The details were sparse but evocative.
One depicted Vining’s stabbing. She was drawn from the shoulders up, a knife deeply embedded into her neck. A shiny, black trail of blood flowed from her wound. Her lips were parted in what could be horror or ecstasy. Her attacker was standing close to her. As close as he’d stood in real life. The drawing showed only the back of his head, but in her wide eyes, his shadowy image was reflected.
One depicted the upper body of a woman in uniform wearing a round-brimmed Ranger Stetson. On her long-sleeved shirt, a badge and insignia were sketchily outlined. In her left hand, she held two leather straps that disappeared off the edge of the paper. She looked afraid. In the distance, off her right shoulder, was a distinctive, domed mountain. Kissick had said the mountain looked like Morro Rock in the Central California coast city of Morro Bay, a favorite getaway spot for him and his two sons.
One depicted a woman lying on the floor of what appeared to be a storage closet. Her white blouse was covered with dark stains. She looked dead. Around her neck, on top of her blouse, was a pearl necklace with a pendant.
Through Vining’s surreptitious investigation, she’d learned that this drawing portrayed another victim of T B. Mann— Tucson Police detective Johnna Alwin. Only the killer, the cops, and Alwin’s husband knew she’d been given a pearl-and-pendant necklace and was wearing it the day of her murder.
Vining had secretly traveled to Tucson and met with the lead investigator, Lieutenant Owen Donahue. She’d planned on stealing Alwin’s pearl necklace and had succeeded.
Then there was the fourth drawing. It was by far the most gruesome. The setting was a ramshackle barnlike structure. A nude woman was tied by her ankles and hanging from the rafters. A great pool of blood had spilled from a gash across her neck onto the dirt floor. A cloud of fluffy, darkhair obscured most of her face and kept the necklace around her neck from slipping off. The necklace was drawn with loving details. Dozens of tiny circles depicted pearls. From the middle dangled a pendant.
Some at the PPD had made good arguments that Nitro was a crime groupie. The assault upon Vining had been well publicized. The other women in the drawings could be creations from Nitro’s twisted imagination or he could have gleaned inspiration from media reports of real crimes.
While the necklace the silent streaker Nitro was wearing when the PPD had apprehended him had been a source of amusement for the officers involved, Vining knew better. He was not T B. Mann. She detected something eerily reminiscent of T B. Mann in Nitro, but he was not him. He was his messenger. To Vining, T B. Mann’s message was this: My evil acts have a long and complex history, and I’m not finished. Watch what happens next.
Nitro’s necklace— a sorry, beat-up thing— was also in her collection. She’d confiscated it with aplomb. Unfortunately, her other scheme for Nitro had gone to hell. She’d planned to wait for him after his release from the seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold at L.A. County General Hospital, where the PPD had sent him. But Nitro had eluded her. He was gone.
After quickly leafing through the drawings that she knew only too well, she looked from Kissick to Early. “We have new leads?”
Kissick began, “I followed up on my hunch about that one drawing, that the mountain in the background is Morro Rock. The woman in it is wearing a Ranger Stetson and there are a couple of state parks in that area. I sent an inquiry to the California State Park Service headquarters. Last night, they faxed a response.” He took stapled papers from the folder and handed them to Vining.
She silently skimmed them, stopping to reread this line: “In response to your inquiry, the woman in your drawing might be California Park Ranger Marilu Feathers.”
Vining repeated the name. Marilu Feathers. It glowed for her. It was as if she’d found a long-lost sister. She continued reading.
“Ranger Feathers was stationed at Montaña de Oro State Park. While patrolling the sandspit on Christmas Eve eight years ago, she exchanged gunfire with an unknown suspect and was shot to death. Her murder is unsolved. After an exhaustive investigation by the California Park Service and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department, the case went cold. We would be happy to share our information with you in the hope of bringing the perpetrator to justice, and delivering closure to Ranger Feathers’s family and to her fellow rangers.”
Closure, Vining thought. Feel-good bull.
With the letter was a copy of Feathers’s official Park Service photograph, in uniform. In the background were the U.S. flag and the California state flag with the now-extinct California grizzly on a white background. Feathers’s thin lips were closed, the edges barely upturned. Her features were plain and square. Her lank, dark hair, cut in a blunt, utilitarian style that reached her large jaw, looked plastered to her head. Her appearance was severe, yet there was something open, honest, and kind about her face.
Vining silently asked her: What did you do to attract his attention?
Kissick said, “I’ve had a telephone conversation with the assistant director. He says a park ranger, named Zeke Denver, who was stationed at Montaña de Oro at the time of Feathers’s murder and who participated in the investigation, is still there. I’m driving up to meet him as soon as we’re finished here.”
Vining wondered why Early said that it would take Kissick a week to work the new leads. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two at most. He’d found Marilu Feathers. Good for him. She desperately wanted to go to Montaña de Oro. Kissick was a great investigator, but this case was different. She knew the right rocks to turn over. She knew the right questions to ask, such as: Had Feathers been involved in an incident on duty that had propelled her into the limelight? Had she subsequently been given a pearl necklace with a gemstone pendant that foretold the month of her murder?
Of course, Kissick could ask these same questions if she turned over all the information she’d gathered. She’d have to someday. Maybe that day was here. Her dilemma was how to do it while omitting the companion piece to the tale, that she had lied, cheated, and stolen to get the evidence. Still, only she could bring her unique perspective to the investigation. Only she and T. B. Mann had breathed the same air, charged with violence and sex.
She set the fax on her lap, on top of the drawings, not daring to hand the materials back to Kissick lest he see her trembling hands. She folded her hands on top of the papers.
Kissick continued. “Since I got a hit on my hunch about Morro Rock, Sarge and I decided to examine the last two drawings for clues about who the women might be.”
He held out his hand for the papers that Vining held.
She quickly passed them on, again clasping her hands in her lap as the trembling hadn’t completely subsided.
He found the drawing of the woman hanging by her ankles and held it up. “Sarge remembered a murder like this.”
Early spoke up. “After we’d dismissed Nitro as a nutcase, I didn’t give those drawings another thought and hadn’t looked at them too closely to begin with. Our star investigator here, with his tremendous instincts, felt there was more than what met the eye. He wouldn’t let it go and thank goodness, because we finally have some new leads.”
Vining knew that Kissick was embarrassed by Sarge’s praise. He allowed himself a modest smile. Meanwhile, she, who had taken great personal and p
rofessional risks in pursuing T. B. Mann and had collected critical evidence, was forced to suck in her pride and sit quietly.
Early held out her hand for the drawing of the dangling woman, which Kissick gave her. “So while Jim and I were looking at this sketch, a murder that happened in Colina Vista popped into my head.”
Colina Vista was one among the string of what locals called the foothill cities. They numbered about a dozen, and the northern border of each abutted Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains. Pasadena was one of the largest. Several of the foothill cities were little more than villages, throwbacks to a gentler era tucked away from the hustle-bustle of their larger neighbors and blissfully free of most of their big-city problems. Their well-heeled, well-educated, and mostly Caucasian residents shared other traits— disdain of urban sprawl and chain retailers, fear of wildfires, and a fierce protectiveness of their lifestyle.
The twin cities of Colina Vista and its neighbor, Sierra Madre, the jewels in the crown, had both been mountain resort towns in the late 1800s. Both shared a deep connection with the Pasadena P.D. Each had a female police chief who had come up through the ranks of the PPD. Colina Vista was the smaller of the two towns, with a population of barely 7,500 and a police department of eleven sworn officers, plus the chief.
“I called the Colina Vista P.D. earlier this morning,” the sergeant said. “Of course, my friend Betsy Gilroy was already at her desk. Do you know Chief Gilroy, Nan?”
“Not personally,” Vining replied. “I’m familiar with her reputation.”
“She was deputy chief at the time of the murder I was recalling. It happened ten years ago. The victim was a young female police officer named Clarissa Silva. Her nickname was Cookie.”
Cookie Silva, Vining thought. My sister.
“Chief Gilroy was the lead investigator. She’s more than happy to discuss the case with Jim, though she says they got their man. He’s on death row in San Quentin.”
That information meant nothing to Vining. The lieutenant in Tucson had also been certain they’d nailed Johnna Alwin’s murderer. He was wrong.
