Interest of Justice

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  “Give me a rundown,” Rickerson said.

  “Well,” Stewart said, “none of these are recent photographs. We’ve classified them in groupings. In group A, we estimate that these were taken approximately two years ago. We can denote age by the texture and rigidity of the photo itself, particularly instant print film. They tend to get more brittle as time goes on. Also, this is Kodak and they haven’t produced this backing in at least two years. The photos in group B were taken with Polaroid SX-70 film and are probably about five years old or older.” She paused and sighed, mumbling under her breath, “I wish we’d had the negatives.” Then she dimmed the lights as an image appeared on the screen.

  “This first slide is a solitary young man, as you can see. You can’t see his genitalia, but he has no underarm hair. We estimate his age to be about eleven or twelve, prepuberty.” She hit a button and the next slide fell into place. “This is not the same young man, although they do resemble. They could even be brothers. These are from group A. He’s even younger than the first young man. Our pathologist believes he’s no more than nine or ten. This is based on his size, musculature, and other factors.”

  “Is that your kid?” the chief asked Rickerson.

  “Nope,” he said. “I thought at first he was, but I was evidently mistaken. I’m fairly certain none of these photos are of Josh McKinley.”

  Once they had stopped talking, she clicked another slide into place. “These are from group B, so they’re the oldest of the photos. Of course, it’s obvious that the nude male standing behind the boy is an adult, probably in his forties or early fifties. He could be much older or much younger. We can’t be certain, but his skin does appear to be sagging a little, therefore, we made a guess. As in just about everything, there are a lot of variables. The man could be a young man who had lost a lot of weight. Who knows? Anyway, the only distinguishable thing we can determine is that he suffers from scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. He’s in all the photos—the same man. He never faces the camera. Someone else is taking the pictures,” she said. “See, there’s his hand reflected in the mirror.”

  “Did you enlarge that shot?” Rickerson asked. “That could be him. Josh McKinley. He might be the one taking the pictures.”

  “Certainly,” she said, flicking fast through the slides until she came to the right one. “Here it is. From the looks of it, he’s young. Note how slender and small his hand is. Of course, it could be a girl. We’re just guessing it’s a male because all the others are males.”

  Rickerson got up and walked up to the screen, studying the image. “Can’t you do better than this? I need to know if this is the kid.”

  “Sorry, Charley,” she said. “I can’t give you something that isn’t there. But if you’ll just be patient, Ted, I do have something.” She brought another slide into place, held it a few moments, and then replaced it with an enlargement of one section of the photograph. “This is where you got lucky. See this right here?” she said. ‘These weren’t taken in a hotel room or something. They were taken in someone’s home. This is an enhancement of a reflection in the mirror, probably on the dresser or something from the looks of it. What you’re looking at is a photograph in a silver frame. It’s a middle-aged woman and a young man. Hold on,” she said, clicking another slide into place. “Now you’re looking at the enlargement of the photograph itself. I know it’s distorted, but if you try real hard you can see the similarities in their appearance. My bet is the young man is the woman’s son. Looks about seventeen, doesn’t he? Now, assuming the older man with his back to the camera in the photographs is the young man’s father, we have even more to go on.”

  Chief Bradshaw and Detective Rickerson were mesmerized. They spent a solid hour viewing slide after slide, studying each one intently. “Had enough, gentlemen?”

  She turned and faced them, leaning back against a desk and crossing her heavy legs at the ankles. The room was still dark. Only the light from a neighboring lab filtered through a glass window behind them. Dr. Stewart’s voice echoed in the tiled room. “What you’ve just seen is the photo collection of a pedophile. As I’m sure you both know, most pedophiles prefer prepubescent children. Once the child passes puberty, they are no longer desirable and are frequently discarded.”

  She turned the lights back on and continued, “If you find him, we can positively identify him by the spinal curvature. No one’s spine curves exactly the same way, to the same centimeter. We can prove this by photographing this man’s back and superimposing it over the photograph you’ve just seen, studying and comparing his X rays and medical records, and we can back it up with the latest computer technology.” She smiled and her full face creased with two large dimples. “All you have to do is find him. Piece of cake, huh?”

  “Sure,” Rickerson said, exchanging glances with the chief. “Pretty impressive.”

  “I saved the best for last. Follow me.” They followed her across the tiled floor to another work space and a computer terminal. “Have a seat, guys. I’ve been working on this all night.” She turned around and squinted at Rickerson. “And I mean all night, Ted. I haven’t been to bed.”

  By the time the men had pulled up two chairs, Dr. Stewart had the computer up and running. “This is new software. We just recently got this whole system. It requires the use of high-speed computers.” She waved her arms around the room. Behind a glass partition was row after row of huge computers, lights blinking and tape spilling out of printers. “I generated a computer composite of the young man in the photograph with the woman and a torso of the nude adult male. Working under the assumption that they are related, or even father and son, we developed another composite photograph of what this older man might look like. Of course, we’ve aged him as well.” She tapped a few keys on the keyboard and an image appeared on the screen. “Here it is. What do you think?”

  Both the chief and Rickerson leaned over and peered at the screen. The image was three-dimensional. While they watched, Dr. Stewart rolled a mouse around on the pad, tapped instructions into the computer, and the naked image actually walked, turned, and moved its arms and head.

  “The technology you are seeing is called artificial reality along with computer-assisted design, or CAD. It’s the latest thing. They even used something like this recently in San Francisco in the trial of that guy who murdered his brother. You know, the porno kings. They’ve been using it in the movies for a while now, but of course, it’s extremely expensive, so we’re just getting it.”

  “Isn’t this fascinating?” the chief said. “It looks like a video game or an animated movie.”

  “See,” the woman continued, “this is a very rough attempt here. That’s why his facial features are so generic at this point. It actually takes weeks to make it perfect. If it’s complex, it can take months. We can create a crime scene, put the suspects in the picture, and then move them around like the crime really occurred. This way we can tell if someone is telling the truth, match their testimony to what actually occurred. We can also tell the exact point a bullet would strike if fired from a certain location, which way the body would fall, and basically recreate every aspect of the crime. The possibilities are endless.”

  She glanced at both men and then turned back to the screen. “Now, watch this image walk. I didn’t spend a lot of time on the face yet. We have no way of knowing that the young man and the older nude male in the pictures are actually related, and therefore I thought this was a little premature. If you will notice, however, this man has a noticeable limp on the right side of his body. We developed this from data entered into the program on the scoliosis. I can print this out, but it won’t be three-dimensional like you’re seeing.” She hit a button and a printer generated a hard copy. She handed it to Rickerson. “I’m going to keep refining this, and eventually you’ll have something pretty realistic to look at.”

  “You did good, Gail,” Rickerson said, visibly excited. He turned to the chief. “Told you she was the best. There’s no one around like he
r.”

  “Yeah,” the chief said, rubbing his chin and addressing Dr. Stewart. “This is all intriguing, but you hit the nail on the head. Until we find him, we don’t have anything. And this is all just speculation. To assume that the two people in the small picture were his wife and son is a mammoth assumption. They might not be related at all.”

  “Right you are,” the woman replied, “but you’ve got to start somewhere. Let’s watch this man move again, officers. A person’s walk is a distinctive thing, and this man’s spinal curvature is quite severe, enough to have an effect on how he moves all of his limbs.” She started tapping like wild on the computer, and the figure on the screen appeared inside a room, with doors, furniture, walls. While they watched, she moved him to the back of the room and then brought him forward. “One hip is actually higher than the other, therefore, the limp. Also, watch how he moves his arms. That swing right there—” She stopped the figure and locked the image into place. “That’s a compensation factor, meaning in simplistic terms, that he must balance himself, particularly since his body is physically imbalanced by his deformity.”

  Finally stepping away from the computer, she turned and punched Rickerson on the arm with a fleshy fist. “Hey, big guy, you promised me a steak dinner if I shelved everything else I’m working on and delivered. I delivered. When do I get my dinner?”

  “You’ll get it,” Rickerson said, smiling. “I’m not sure you need it, though. You don’t look very hungry to me.”

  “Asshole,” she said, shaking her head and laughing. “Why am I so gullible? Next time you can wait your turn like everyone else.”

  “Thanks a lot, Gail. We’ll be in touch.” Rickerson headed for the door and the chief followed.

  Dr. Stewart yelled to him, “You know what I’d do?”

  “What?” Rickerson replied.

  “I’d let Lois Anderson at the FBI take a look at these pictures. She heads the task force on missing children. One of these boys might be a runaway that’s since been returned to his parents. I hope you catch this bastard. You know why?”

  Rickerson just stood there and stared at her. Of course he knew why. Whoever this person was, he felt certain he was involved in contracting the Perkins homicides. Cummings might have been the hands-on killer, but Rickerson’s assumption right now was that it was a contracted assassination.

  “In an active pedophile’s career, certainly one as old as this one, he can have hundreds of victims. Maybe it’s time this fellow pays the price.”

  “Send them over to her now,” Rickerson said, thinking of all the young lives this man had destroyed—children so devastated that they might never be the same.

  “No problem,” she said, plunking her large body down in a chair that looked like it was about to collapse beneath her and snatching a Snickers bar from her desk. She unwrapped it and then held it in the air. “Brain food,” she said. “Secret to my success. Person just can’t think when they’re hungry.”

  “So what do you think?” Bradshaw said as they headed back down the hall, their shoes tapping on the linoleum.

  “I think we’ve got one hell of a case on our hands, Chief. Someone killed that couple to get their hands on these photos. There’s no doubt about it. I was hoping we could exclude the kid.”

  “I’m not sure you can do that. If the boy was being exploited or sexually abused, your motive is right there.”

  “I don’t think Perkins and his wife took these pictures or even sold them as I originally thought. I think they found them. What do you think about that?”

  “They just found them, huh? Interesting. Want to be more specific?”

  They hit the double doors and stepped outside. It was overcast and muggy. The smog was so thick they could see it hanging like a foul cloud over the entire city. They stood for a few minutes on the steps, as officers and other law enforcement personnel passed them coming in and out of the building. “Can you believe this place?” Rickerson tossed out to the chief. “It’s like Grand Central Station here.”

  “Yeah,” the chief said, uninterested. “Lot of crime.”

  Rickerson looked at him. “Last weekend they had twenty-five homicides in L.A. County. We’re talking one weekend, Chief—one lousy weekend and twenty-five lives.”

  The chief belched and looked at the detective. Every year the crime stats went up. Just thinking about it made his stomach churn. And crime was working its way out from the inner city to the suburbs, particularly since the riots. There wasn’t much left in south central Los Angeles, other than burned-out buildings and rubble. “Want to tell me about the case?”

  “Okay, Ivory Perkins was working as a prostitute, see,” Rickerson said, leaning back against a spiral column in front of the building, “with heavy emphasis on S and M. I think she had a client that was a pedophile, liked to have sex with kids.”

  “Wait a minute,” the chief retorted. “That doesn’t make sense. Why would a guy who liked kids go to a hooker? That doesn’t fit anything I know about pedophiles. They usually abhor sex with adult women.”

  Rickerson had thought of this and was ready with an answer. “I already talked to the S.O.‘s staff psychologist. He thinks this man was masochistic, possibly out of guilt over his attraction to young boys. I mean, he could have been sadistic, but it really doesn’t work as well. One day when the Perkins broad serviced him, she somehow came across his little X-rated photo collection, and that’s when she and her husband decided to try their hands at extortion.”

  “Sounds plausible,” the chief said, looking at the sky. “Think it’s actually going to rain?”

  “Never,” Rickerson said, lighting a cigar. ‘Trust me. Weather is my specialty.”

  “How does Packy Cummings fit into this picture?”

  “Well, that’s the glue that holds this whole thing together. On September seventh, the day before the murders, Judge Leo Evergreen informed Lara Sanderstone that Packy was a police informant and insisted that she release him without bail. If he is, no agency in the state of California will claim him. And if you review his criminal history, I think you’ll agree that they would’ve never used a guy like this one. Jesus, he was a prime suspect in a cop killing a few years ago, Aryan Brotherhood membership paid in full, prior convictions for rape.”

  “Really?” Chief Bradshaw said. “What happened to the case? The officer-related killing.”

  “Got off for some reason. They couldn’t put it together. Anyway, I think Evergreen was lying.”

  The chief started down the steps. Rickerson followed, puffing clouds of cigar smoke into the atmosphere. “Go on,” the chief said. “I don’t understand why you think he was lying, but go on.”

  “I think he’s our man.”

  Chief Bradshaw stopped halfway down the steps and looked straight at Rickerson, his mouth open, his eyes enormous behind his thick glasses. For a few moments he was completely speechless. “The presiding judge of Orange County? Really, Rickerson, isn’t that taking things a little too far? We’re only in the preliminary stages of this investigation anyway.”

  “Not hardly,” Rickerson said, his voice laced with conviction. Not as far as he was concerned. “Have you ever met Evergreen?”

  The chief was at the bottom of the steps and looked back up at the detective. “Not that I recall. I think I’ve seen his picture in the paper sometime in the past, but to be honest, I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

  Rickerson moved the cigar to the other side of his mouth and clenched it between his teeth, the words snaking out of one corner of his mouth. “Well, I have,” he said, his chest expanding. “I’ll never forget that bastard. Years ago, one of my first big cases to go to trial was dismissed on a technicality. Evergreen was the judge.”

  “And…”

  “Just listen, okay. What if Leo Evergreen was Ivory Perkins’s client and had no idea she was Judge Sanderstone’s sister? Obviously, the Perkins woman didn’t broadcast this information to all her clients. Might tend to make a client a little
nervous. Know what I mean? So, Evergreen sprang Packy Cummings to do his dirty work: get the pictures back, kill the people that had them. He knew from court records that Packy was down for a fall, headed straight back to prison, and this time he was going for the long haul. The D.A. was planning to prosecute him as a career criminal, tacking on all those five-year enhancements for his priors. Old Packy had nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

  “Hold on,” the chief said just as a burly motorcycle cop bounded down the steps and almost knocked him down. “Once this man was out on the streets, why didn’t he just split?”

  “Bucks, cash, bread,” Rickerson said, rubbing his fingers together. “Can’t go too far without it, and I never saw anyone come out of jail or the joint with an abundance of green. Not only that, before this asshole could drive two feet, Evergreen could have every cop in town after him with handfuls of warrants. He’s certainly in a position powerful enough to do a man a lot of harm, particularly if you’re on the wrong side of the law.”

  “As I understand it,” the chief said, “his prints were found in Sanderstone’s house in Irvine. All you’ve got him on right now is 459, residential burglary. How do you put him into the homicides?”

  The two men started walking to their car. This was typical L.A., Rickerson thought, glancing around him in disgust. Almost every building and every wall in sight were covered with graffiti. The names of rival gangs were spray-painted in fluorescent colors in large block letters.

  “Let me give you my theory, Chief,” Rickerson said as they crossed the street at the light. “Ivory Perkins came to her sister’s house almost exactly two months before the murders claiming that someone was following her. Whoever it was, they were completely unaware that the house belonged to Judge Sanderstone. They probably thought Ivory lived there herself or something. Like I said, why would anyone in their wildest dreams connect these two individuals? One a prostitute…one a judge.”