by Mike Markel
“Hey, Karen. Ryan.” She nodded in our direction and gestured for us to sit at the Formica-covered table in the middle of the room.
She was about thirty-five or forty, medium height but thick in the middle. She had platinum hair, short on top and buzzed along the sides. In her left earlobe was a rainbow-colored plug; in her right ear, a half-dozen small stones of different colors ran up the cartilage. No makeup. She wore cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a man’s old white dress shirt with the top three buttons open to show a thick black crucifix surfing some significant cleavage. If I had to guess, the statement she was making was that you’d never be able to figure out the statement she was making. I’m fine with that. The word was the guys in Vice thought she pulled her weight.
She took the seat at the head of the steel table. Ryan and I flanked her. As she opened a folder on the table, she looked out at me and then Ryan over a pair of half-glasses. “This is Krista.”
She passed the booking photo to me. It showed a pale-skinned young woman with a broad, Russian-looking face. Strands of shoulder-length hair, an unconvincing shade of red, had escaped the ponytail. Her brown eyes were wide-set underneath thin, penciled dark eyebrows. The nose was thin, the lips full. Her expression was blank.
“Krista is Elena Moranu. Twenty-seven. We think she comes from Romania.”
“She got an AKA as Krista in our system?” I didn’t think so, since Ryan hadn’t found her when he did a search.
“No, one of our guys said he remembered booking a prost goes by Krista. He pieced it together and we pulled her out of the system.”
“She here legally?”
“I doubt it, but we don’t follow up on that unless it’s a felony.”
“We got a good address?”
Helen tapped the folder. “This is for you to take.”
“What can you tell us about her?”
“We arrested her three times, going back four years. She works regularly in town. Fairly high-level.”
“As in?”
“By-the-night. Five-hundred bucks and up. She doesn’t blow truckers.”
“She do time for anything?”
“No, not in Rawlings. She could have a bunch of other identities in her past we don’t know about. Since simple prostitution is a misdemeanor, not a felony, if the girl isn’t robbing the john or selling him drugs or doing something else nasty, she’s not going inside. Krista’s never given us any problems.” Helen Paddington shrugged her shoulders. “She does like to pretend she’s not a hooker.”
“How’s she do that?”
Helen put her hand into a loose fist and waved it up and down, the gesture every eleven-year-old boy uses to mean jerking off. “Not sure the extent of her legal training, but she appears to know that if she didn’t take a dick in her cunt, her ass, or her mouth, it wasn’t sexual intercourse.”
Ryan shifted in his seat. He’s not fully comfortable with women using plain language.
I said, “She wants us to believe a guy’s giving her five-hundred bucks for a handjob?”
Helen smiled, showing a gold crown on the side. “Like I said, unless we’re booking her for something in addition to the hooking, we don’t really give a shit. And I’m pretty sure she doesn’t give a shit what we believe. She doesn’t give us any backtalk. She makes her phone call, the lawyer comes. She cops to the misdemeanor, pays the five-hundred dollar fine, and walks away. Nobody gets hurt. Everybody’s happy.” She smiled sadly. “What are you looking at her for?”
“The professor went down the stairs last night? We think Krista was living there.”
“Living there?” Helen Paddington’s eyebrows shot up, like she hadn’t seen that coming.
“The professor’s students tell us there was a local sex worker name of Krista got in an argument with the professor upstairs during halftime in the class last night at her house. Krista storms out, carrying a backpack. We get there this morning, the professor’s lying at the bottom of her stairs, wearing a couple of injuries that don’t look like they came from the trip down the stairs. We go through the house. There’s definitely a young woman living there. She’s got all kinds of hooker outfits.”
“The professor a les, or she just giving Krista a place to live for some reason?”
“We haven’t gotten that far. We think maybe she was les or bi. The professor apparently had Krista come to her class about a month ago to talk about being a hooker or whatever. Whether that means the two of them were a couple …?” I put my palms up.
“Something’s off here.” Helen Paddington frowned, trying to put the pieces together. “A prost as good as Krista can afford her own place. No reason for her to be renting a room. Unless she’s got a thing for the professor. I’ve known a lot of working girls do guys for a living but they’re really gay.”
The three of us were silent for a minute.
Then Helen said, “You see Krista killing the professor upstairs, pushing her down?”
Ryan said, “No. We think there was a struggle downstairs, in the kitchen.”
Helen was shaking her head. “This woman weighs one ten, tops. If she killed the woman downstairs, no way she’s getting her up the stairs. You sure she didn’t just drag the body from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs?”
“We’re sure,” I said. “There’s evidence on the staircase and the walls showing she really went down the stairs.”
“Maybe Krista’s laying low.”
“From who?” I said.
“That’s a good question.” Helen leaned to the side and pulled her phone from a rear jeans pocket. “Give me a second.” She speed dialed someone. “Jason, that prost Krista you busted—from Romania, whatever—you know who runs her?” She listened a few seconds. “When was this?” Jason said something to her, and she thanked him and ended the call. “Jason thinks she was run by a guy named Christopher James Barrow.”
“He’s not sure?”
“Krista wouldn’t say. She’s not a prost, so she doesn’t have a pimp. But the lawyer she called, Jason knows the guy works for Barrow.
Ryan said, “Why’d you say Krista was run by Barrow?”
“We heard Krista might’ve gone freelance. Within the last couple weeks.”
“What do you know about Christopher James Barrow?” I said to Helen.
“He’s a fairly rough character.”
“He beat up his girls?”
Helen thought for a second. “Haven’t heard of him hitting the girls. The kind of girls he runs, the johns don’t want to see bruises.” She paused. “But I have heard of a couple of girls disappearing without telling anyone where they went.”
“Sent them home?”
“That’s my impression. They weren’t making quota.”
“So how’s he rough?”
“We think he’s beat up other pimps trying to move in on one of his girls.”
“He ever get convicted of any of those?”
She shook her head. “No, never on felony assaults or anything. Nobody would be stupid enough to press charges.”
“But on pimping?”
“Couple times. Ended up doing less than six months for each one. But I think he paid twenty-five K each time. He’s willing to do the time. He pleads out, doesn’t name the girls. Goes quietly. I think he believes it gives him more cred with the girls—that he won’t rat them out.”
“You see him as capable of killing that professor to get Krista back in his stable?”
“I’m sure he knows some guys who could use five grand. But no. It would scare the shit out of his girls. Half of them would get on a bus and leave town. It wouldn’t work as a business decision. He’d know we’d have to get involved and eventually trace it back to him.”
Ryan said, “What if he and Krista had some kind of personal relationship?”
“You mean, like he killed the professor because Krista was doing her? And he was jealous?” She said it slowly so she didn’t unintentionally insult Ryan.
“It’s possible.” He
gave her a small smile.
She returned his smile. “That theory hadn’t occurred to me.” Which was more polite than saying, “You’re quite a Gump, aren’t you?”
“Helen.” I stood up. “This is great. Thanks very much for helping us out.”
“Let me know if you need anything else, all right?”
“You bet.” Ryan and I left the Vice room and headed back to the bullpen.
When we got settled, Ryan said, “You want to make sure this is the right Krista?”
I nodded. “Who was that student—you know, this morning?—with the brother committed suicide?”
Ryan opened his folder and pulled out the seating chart from the meeting in the conference room. “Donna Boyles. Want me to call her?”
“No, I think she’d be more comfortable with me. Dial her number for me, will ya?”
Ryan got her number and punched it in. Line 2 on my phone lit up. She picked up and I reminded her of who I am. “Donna, we’re hoping you can help us out. It will take just a minute.”
“Sure, what do you need?”
“Could you take a look at a few photographs and tell me if you recognize any of the people?”
“Yeah, send them over.”
“I can’t send them, but we’d be happy to come over to wherever you are. Like I said, it’ll just take a minute.”
She said she was at the Student Union, in the main dining area, with a couple of other girls, working on a project. I told her we’d be there in eight or ten minutes.
With the afternoon traffic picking up, it took us eleven minutes to get to the Student Union. We walked into the two-story brick building, past the ticket counter, the information desk, and the little snack-food store.
“There she is,” Ryan said. She was over near the food court.
The two other girls gave us wide-eyed stares as Ryan and I came over. As we led Donna off to a booth in the corner, I glanced back and saw the two girls checking Ryan out, big smiles on their faces. Every damn female. Every damn time.
The three of us sat down, and Ryan pulled five mug shots from a folder and arranged them on the table in front of Donna.
I said to her, “Recognize any of these people?”
Donna Boyles immediately put her finger on Krista’s photo. “That’s her. That’s the sex worker.”
“Any of the others?”
“No.” Donna looked at me, then at Ryan. “Is that it?”
“One more thing,” Ryan said. “Do you happen to have the syllabus for the porn class with you?”
It took me a few seconds to figure out where he was going. Then I remembered how Cletis Williams, the car dealer, told us to take a look at her syllabus.
“Let me pull it up.” She opened her laptop, logged into the university system, and opened it. She swiveled the laptop so Ryan could see it.
“Could you give me thirty seconds to look at it?”
She was checking him out. “As long as you need.” She smiled at him. When she wasn’t all messed up about her brother, she was a pretty girl.
“You already started on the final project, right?”
She nodded. “Almost done.”
“What’s your topic? I mean, if you don’t mind the question.” He shifted in his seat, putting his hand on the table near hers. He turned on the smile. I watched her take a breath. She had caught his cologne.
“No, not at all.” She was all his. “I’m doing a study of how first-year females here use online porn.” All of a sudden, she started to blush. “What I mean is, what their viewing habits are. I’m an RA, so I invited twenty of the girls on my hall to take an online survey—completely voluntary and anonymous, of course—on their awareness of online porn, how much they watch it, you know. I let them contact me if they’re willing for me to follow up with an interview.”
“That’s really interesting.” Ryan put on his serious face. “How many of the twenty filled out the survey?”
The color rose up her neck again. “Thirty-six. Some of the girls forwarded the login information. Apparently, the girls want to talk about it.”
“Thirty-six out of twenty. That’s pretty good.” Ryan smiled. “One more question—you got another minute?”
“Sure.” She held her head a little higher, blossoming under his attention.
“I notice that Professor Rinaldi gave the students two options for the final project: a research project, like the one you’re doing, and a creative project. Can you tell us what a creative project is?”
“Professor Rinaldi is …” She caught herself, and she looked down at the table for a moment, as if she was ashamed to be thinking more about the handsome detective than the dead professor. “Professor Rinaldi was very big on giving us options. So she said we could do something creative if we wanted. We could write an erotic short story, or a little script for a porn video. The thing was, we had to incorporate one or more of the themes we studied this semester.”
“Can you give us an example?”
“I haven’t really thought this out, so it’s pretty lame. But if we wanted to write an erotic short story, we’d bring in … I don’t know, an economic angle, for instance. Like with Krista. She started out being trafficked or whatever. She was poor, didn’t speak much English. So if she’s in the story, it has to include how her poverty and the other stuff determine how the story turns out. Do you know what I mean?”
Ryan nodded. “I think I do. Instead of a standard erotic story, the poverty messes up the romance or the sexual relationship.”
“That’s it. The reader thinks they’re going to be reading a standard erotic story, but then it goes in a completely different direction because the reality of her life makes her respond in some unexpected way that screws everything up. The professor said she wanted us to take a standard plot and turn it on its head. I think that’s what she was getting at.”
“That’s really interesting.” Ryan offered another smile. “Do you know if any of the other students are doing a creative project?”
She nodded. “A couple of them are doing short stories, little screenplays. They say they’re really having a great time. You know, exploring the issues but in a way they never would have been brave enough to try.”
Ryan’s face was solemn. “Professor Rinaldi sounds like she was a terrific instructor.”
“She was.” Donna’s eyes were glassy. “She really was.”
All very interesting: watching Ryan dazzle another parched damsel with his teeth and his body and his cologne and his undivided attention. But I wasn’t seeing how anything in the professor’s syllabus got her killed.
Chapter 11
I ate dinner that night with my two closest friends: Keith Somebody and Emily Somebody Else from Action 6 We’re On Your Side News. The death of Virginia Rinaldi was a big enough story that the station sent Emily herself rather than one of their teenagers. Emily interviewed President Billingham. The prez, a soft, round grandpa figure with a fringe of white hair, was standing next to the statue of the cougar, the school mascot, outside the Business Building. Billingham offered a couple of sentences about how inspiring Virginia Rinaldi was to the sociology kids and all the others who were lucky enough to study with her. The only hint she was controversial was a little blather about how she was unafraid—both in her courses and in her public activism—to fight for the rights of the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, and the ostracized.
Then three or four students, including a weepy girl, said similar nice things. Although there was no way to tell whether the news crew had interviewed anyone who said a discouraging word about the professor, no grumpies made it onto the air. We were still in the Shocked and Saddened Phase.
Nobody said anything about how the professor died. That’s because Chief Murtaugh had not yet issued a statement. The chief knew that when you say you’re investigating whether it was murder you plant the idea, which makes the public hyperventilate. Then, if it turns out she was drunk and fell down the stairs, cracking her skull open, you have t
o announce “Never mind,” which makes you look like amateurs. So he doesn’t say anything until he’s ready to call it a homicide.
Plus, not saying anything about it being a homicide makes it easier to run down the truly stupid killers, who make up a surprisingly large percentage of killers. They’re the ones who think if we don’t say we’re investigating a murder that we’re not. It’s kind of sweet how these morons assume we always tell the whole story.
If the killer is not truly stupid and we didn’t call it a homicide, he’s a little less likely to hit the interstate. I say “a little less likely” because most killers try to disappear before the body is discovered. That’s assuming they’re mobile killers: folks who can toss all their stuff in the back of a pickup and disappear in a half-hour. That includes most students, day workers, and guys with cardboard signs who stand near the off-ramps. The pillars of the community can’t just take off; it would be too obvious. They have to hang around, cook up alibis, and in general hope cops are as stupid as we often seem to be.
The two guys we had interviewed already—Daryl Sorenson, the chair of the sociology department, and Cletis Williams, the car dealer—obviously are pillars of the community. If they just took off, we’d hear about it within a half-hour and track them down within a day or two, tops. But I didn’t like either of them for killing Virginia Rinaldi. Both were strong enough to beat the crap out of her and carry her up the staircase, and she pissed off both of them pretty good. But, like most adults, they were used to being pissed off. Typical day, I get pissed off twelve or fourteen times, so I don’t even remember half the episodes. No, Daryl Sorenson and Cletis Williams wouldn’t have survived as long as they had if they went around killing people just for pissing them off.
Now, Christopher James Barrow, Krista’s pimp—he was a different story. Pimps are all about money and control. If they think they’re losing control, they’ll spend the money to protect it or get it back. If Barrow thought Krista was disrespecting him or going freelance and therefore encouraging his other girls to do the same, he’d do whatever it took to stop her or turn her into an object lesson. He’d pay almost any amount to send that message.
