Stumbling on the Sand

by Jenna Rae

  Del led the way to the parking lot.

  “My turn to drive,” she said, and Phan grunted in agreement.

  On their way to interview the latest peeping victim, Phan called to cancel dinner with Alana, who was none too happy. Phan rubbed his eyes.

  “I’m glad the victim called it in, but there’s gotta be a way to balance this job and having a life.”

  “I wish someone would figure it out.” Del eyed the fannypack-sporting tourists jaywalking in front of them. Based on the direction from which they ambled through traffic, she guessed they were on their way back from viewing the colorful Clarion Alley Mural Project, situated just across busy Valencia Street from the Mission Station.

  Phan grunted. “I wish someone would figure out why so many of the victims didn’t call us until Bradley started doing the media blitz asking women to come forward.”

  “Being a woman means constantly being judged. Harshly. You’re never good enough. You’re always in the wrong and it’s other women as much as men.” She huffed as she braked to avoid a cyclist who cut in front of her in the descending mist that characterized San Francisco’s late-autumn evenings. “Shit. Imagine not knowing if the cop you talked to would be Milner. No wonder they underreport.”

  “If a woman came to me to report any crime, I’d treat her with respect. If a man came to me, same thing. Whoever.” Phan’s tone was mild, but she felt his tension. “Just ’cause I’m a guy, that doesn’t mean I’m a pig.”

  “I know.” Del smiled. “But you are a rare and wonderful creature, that most mysterious and mythical being, the truly evolved male.”

  Phan grunted and scratched his chin. “And they may figure, all he did was look.”

  “Yeah.” Del eyed the night sky, wondering if the peeper was in one of the houses they were passing at that moment. “All he did was look. Not enough to bother with, according to Carter.”

  She and Phan had already met with sex-crimes specialist Angela Carter with a plan of going over the case files and building a profile. This had been days earlier, when they’d first been pulled into the widening investigation, and the cold shoulder they’d gotten still rankled.

  “Listen,” Carter had muttered, looking up from the files after a cursory glance. “Odds are this is as much as he does. I mean, he hasn’t even spoken to one victim or gone inside. He’s not exposing himself to them. Yeah, the guy’s a creep and I hope you catch him, but even your victims didn’t think it was enough of a problem to bother calling it in.”

  “You don’t think he’s escalating?”

  “Well, he’s getting physically closer to the domiciles. But is he still running away when they see him? Seems like it. He’s not trying to get in, that’s the main thing.” Carter had stood and stretched. “I don’t mean to sound callous, you guys, but I’ve got six rapes and four abuse cases on my desk and a partner out ’cause his wife had a kid. I hope your guy doesn’t hurt anybody. I hope you catch him. Until or unless he escalates, I can’t do more than that. Get a good sketch if you can, tell people to put in motion-sensor lights and close their drapes and hope for the best. Everybody on the damn planet has a cell phone with a camera, so why don’t you have a photo? Maybe we have bigger fish to fry, right? Mason, you know what I’m saying, I’ve seen your arrest numbers. You wanna come back here, you’re welcome, as far as I’m concerned. This loser? Get someone to take a picture of him. Call me when he yanks out his dick or refuses to leave or tries to get inside a victim’s house. Until then, I have to go interview a foster kid who was rescued from a sex trafficker and has now sexually abused at least three other foster kids. So, you know, I’m kinda busy.”

  “Ridiculous,” Phan muttered as they neared the latest crime scene, and Del knew he was still thinking of Carter too.

  Del was thoughtful. “I don’t think I could work that division again, could you? Fucks you up. You see a six-year-old raped by her dad, and you have to baby her in to get a med workup. Interview the whole family, look for other victims, talk to the so-called experts, write up a report. Then the kid recants, her mommy told her to. Mommy calls her a lying slut right there in front of you. That’s just another day, there’ll be another one tomorrow or sooner. Peeper seems like nothing.”

  “And—”

  “And I get it. I’d rather work Mikey’s murder than this.”

  “We both would. And I understand that he’s especially important to you. I get why.”

  “Which I appreciate.” Del made a face. “But we still have nothing.”

  The normally sunny Mission District was by this time blanketed in the heavy fog that arrived each November. Behind the damp shroud, Del knew, were the shops, restaurants and homes that served as the backdrop for a swirling mass of human dramas.

  Housing one small human drama was a diminutive beige house on Guerrero Street. It was dwarfed on both sides by three-story stacks of flats. Linking the apartment buildings and their sandwiched neighbor was a matching set of black wrought-iron gates. Each sported a hefty keyed lock. Pausing before they ascended the half-dozen stairs that led to the front door, the partners eyed the home’s points of entry.

  “The front windows, maybe living room and kitchen,” Phan noted.

  Del murmured in assent before pointing at the narrow gaps between the small house and its neighboring apartment buildings. “So either the guy looked in one of those windows or he got past one of the gates.”

  A baby-faced patrol officer Del had never met let the pair in and offered a brief summary of what he’d learned before disappearing to the front of the house. The living room was tiny, with barely enough room for a small couch and chair. A budget television hung over the rounded fireplace. The home was tidy, with a notable absence of clutter. Del examined the pictures on a small shelf above the entry tiles: beaming mom and dad with young college graduate daughter, smiling women in fancy dresses, pretty little girl in Catholic school plaid.

  The victim came out of the bathroom, red-eyed and pale. She was a pretty, thirtyish Hispanic woman sporting a chic, short hairstyle and a thick pink bathrobe and matching fuzzy slippers. She had a small bandage on one knee but wasn’t limping.

  “Hi, I’m Inspector Del Mason. This is my partner, Inspector Tom Phan.”

  “Hi. Sofia Gonzalez.”

  Del and Phan exchanged a glance, and he withdrew, mumbling some nonsense about a perimeter.

  “Can I get you some coffee? Tea?” Sofia Gonzalez gestured at the couch.

  “Actually, how about we sit in the kitchen? Is that okay?”

  “Sure. It’s bigger anyway. Tea all right?”

  At Del’s nod, Sofia Gonzalez led the way to a small white kitchen that was almost completely bare. It looked more like a display used to advertise cleaning products than a place where people might cook or eat.

  “Ms. Gonzalez?”

  “Sofia, please. Chamomile okay? I have to work in the morning, and it’s late.” The petite woman glanced at the wall clock as she put on a teakettle. She sat at the table and started fussing with her hair.

  “Sofia, Inspector Phan and I are here to help you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you already talked to Officer Chang, but I need to ask you to do it again, and don’t worry about telling me too much or taking too long or repeating yourself, all right?” She sat back, pulling out her notebook. The cellphone didn’t work in interviews; witnesses and victims seemed to see note-taking on a phone as texting.

  “Okay.”

  “You came home,” Del prompted, and Sofia gave a nervous laugh.

  “I came home from work.” She stopped, shrugged. “It sounds—”

  “Where do you work? What do you do?”

  “RN. The burn unit at Mercy.”

  “Whew. Sounds like a tough job. Pretty hot in there, right?”

  Sofia laughed. “It really is.” She sobered. “But of course our patients don’t usually have a lot of skin to keep them warm.”

  Del nodded.

  “It wa
s a rotten day, to tell you the truth.”

  “How come?”

  “We lost a patient, a really amazing guy. We knew there was almost no chance he’d survive so it wasn’t a shock, but still. He suffered so much for so long and then his heart finally gave out. My friend Luz, we work together, we both know better, of course. But he was special, we got attached to him. After all those weeks. All that suffering, all that time, and then he just died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged.

  The two sat in silence that was broken by gurgling from the teakettle. Del watched as Sofia made their tea and brought the cups to the table.

  “How do you get over something like that?”

  “Ha.” Sofia shook her head. “You figure it out, be sure and let me know.”

  “Yeah.” Del nodded. “Right back at you.”

  Sofia took a sip from her steaming mug, sitting back with her legs crossed. Del mirrored her posture.

  “There are so many people like us,” Sofia offered.

  Del gestured at her to continue.

  “We do these jobs, wanting to help, wanting to make a difference. Then we get attached to people we don’t even know personally. Then they die or do something stupid or whatever, and we’re a mess. And we keep coming back for more.”

  “Masochists, obviously.”

  They shared a grim smile. Sofia Gonzalez was, from what Del could see, easy to like. She was empathetic, smart, appropriately responsive. She’d be a good witness, in the unlikely event of a court case. Phan showed up and hovered in the doorway to the kitchen, waiting for Del’s casual nod. He came in and leaned against the kitchen counter.

  Del nodded at Sofia. “So you came home feeling lousy. You came directly home?”

  “Around four. It was really foggy, which did not improve my mood. Worked a double. I should’ve gone to bed early, but I wasn’t that tired. Actually I was starving, wanted to eat something before my shower. I always take a shower when I get home.” She laughed. “Sorry. Am I making sense? Now I’m tired.”

  “You’re doing fine. What’d you eat?”

  “Oh!” She laughed again. “Toaster waffle with peanut butter. You know, single-girl food. I ate it standing up. Pretty sad, right? My mom would be horrified. I went to my room, undressed. I only have the one bathroom, I put on my robe first, so I didn’t have to take my clothes from the bathroom.” She waved at a door off the hallway that divided the living room and bedroom on the left side of the house and the bathroom and kitchen on the other. “So I’m putting on my robe and I see a face at my window. I scream like some stupid teenager in a horror movie, and he’s just standing there staring at me.”

  Del waited. Sofia pushed back her hair and shrugged.

  “I started to run into the hallway, but I bumped into the bed. All the rooms here are what realtors like to call ‘cozy.’” She took a deep breath. “He laughed. I fell down, and he was laughing and I got mad. I grabbed something, I think it was a shoe, and I threw it at the window. He just stood there laughing at me, and my robe was falling open, and I started crying.”

  Del nodded, not wanting to interrupt.

  “Oh,” Sofia groaned, covering her face. “I get up, and he’s looking at me, like, why are you crying?” She shook her head. “And I’m scared again. He starts fussing with the window, like he’s trying to open it, and I start screaming, and I run to the front door. I go to open it, and then I’m thinking, no, he’s outside, and then I’ll be outside too.” She shrugged.

  “It’s natural,” Del put in. “You don’t want to be near the guy.”

  “Exactly.” Sofia shrugged and took another sip of tea. “And the fog was so thick, I couldn’t have seen a thing anyway. So I grab my cell and call nine-one-one. I stay in the kitchen, and by the time that first cop gets here—Officer Chang—the guy is gone.” She crossed her arms. “This is so stupid. I watch the news, I have an alarm, I know there’s a creep out there watching women, but I didn’t think it would happen to me. I thought he did his thing at night, plus I guess I figured these guys like looking at young girls, you know?”

  “What did he look like? Can you remember?”

  “Oh,” she closed her eyes. “Youngish. Baby face, big cheeks. Dark eyes, you know, sleepy eyes, bedroom eyes? Pointy nose, small chin. High forehead, light brown hair, thinning on the top. Widow’s peak. Hardly any eyebrows.” She shuddered and then took a sip of tea. “The thing is, he looked totally harmless. Really. I mean, if I saw him on the street or in a store or something, I wouldn’t even notice him. He seemed totally innocuous. Well, except I thought maybe he was touching himself. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure he was. Maybe I just assumed he was.”

  Del looked down at her notes. “When he laughed, could you hear him?”

  Sofia thought for a moment before she shook her head. “Actually, he covered his mouth with his hand, like a little girl. Oh, he had a ring on his hand!”

  “Left or right?”

  “Um, right. A plain gold band, like a wedding ring, but it was on the middle finger of his right hand.”

  “Big hand, small?”

  “Um, smallish.”

  “White guy?”

  “I don’t know. Medium everything. Totally a blank canvas. Seriously, the more that I think about it, the guy looked like somebody who’d get beat up by a bully. I don’t know why I was so scared.” She was laughing nervously.

  “Sofia, if I saw a face at my bedroom window, I’d be scared. I don’t care how harmless the guy looks at Starbucks, at your bedroom window, any stranger is scary. Calling for help was absolutely the right thing to do. Is your bedroom at the back of the house?”

  She nodded. “And my side gates were locked last night. I know because I have to check. The kids in the neighborhood know I work a lot, if I leave one open the yard turns into a Belushi movie.”

  “Is there a lock on your bedroom window?”

  “Yes, and I put a stick in it.”

  “Good. Sofia, did the guy look at all familiar to you? A face you’ve seen before, maybe?”

  She shook her head. “Honestly, he was pretty bland. Invisible, you know? I could have seen his face a dozen times somewhere else and never remembered it. Not ugly, not handsome, not anything.” She rubbed her eyes. “I think he’s been here before.”

  Del frowned. “Tell me about that.”

  Sofia glanced at Phan and looked down. Phan took the hint. He made some excuse to leave the room, and Del nodded at Sofia to continue.

  “I should’ve—I don’t know. I called the police station on Valencia, not nine-one-one. It didn’t seem like an emergency. Anyway, I’m not sure it was the same man.”

  Del nodded slowly. “Maybe you could walk me through that, the whens and whats, okay?”

  Ten minutes later Del was scribbling her cell phone number on a card—something she hadn’t done but a handful of times before—and handing it to Sofia. “Anything else? Okay, thank you very much for talking to me. We rely on folks to tell us what’s going on, and I’m sorry you didn’t get a good response the first time. If anything hinky happens, will you please call nine-one-one and then me?”

  “I will,” Sofia promised, glancing at the clock. “Is it okay if I get dressed now?”

  As they headed back to the station, Del rolled her head from one side to the other, cracking her neck.

  Phan muttered, “Seeing the victim like that.”

  Del nodded. “Makes it feel more like a crime than a nuisance.”

  “She’s a nice lady.”

  “I agree, and she shouldn’t have to feel scared in her own home.” She hesitated. “Listen, I think it’s interesting that the guy’s been there before, maybe. She saw movement in her backyard one night a few weeks ago, but it was really dark and she wasn’t sure. She called the station and got someone—I’m guessing Milner—who told her to buy curtains. She was embarrassed, almost didn’t call us this time.”

  Phan was quiet for a moment. “You’ll pu
t this in the report?”

  “Of course. Makes you wonder how many others there are who’ll never call in. How many just move in with their boyfriend or move back home or buy a gun or just lose sleep or drink or whatever. Because they think they can’t call us or we won’t take them seriously.”

  A few minutes later Del and Phan watched Bradley process their verbal breakdown of the interview, including the fact that Sofia Gonzalez had been rebuffed weeks earlier when trying to report a peeper. After making notes to himself, Bradley visibly waved this aside and focused on the current issue.

  “Is this another escalation in the peeper’s behavior? The backyard, trying to open the window?” Bradley’s gaze bounced from Del to Phan and back again. His eyes were red-rimmed, his tie askew. Like the detectives, he’d been at the station for over sixteen hours and was still not finished for the day.

  Phan gestured at Del, who shrugged.

  “Hard to tell. He might have had an impulse to help the vic. He laughed when she fell down but he might have been startled. People laugh when they’re nervous. She started crying and he might have felt bad.”

  “Hm.” Bradley tilted his head. “You make him sound pretty sympathetic.”

  “No, he’s a creep, but he doesn’t seem all that overtly dangerous at this point.” Del shrugged. “It doesn’t sound like he was trying to get in to harm her physically.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy,” Bradley put in.

  “Well. Maybe not.” Phan cleared his throat. “We think we need more specifics before we can really guess at his motives.”

  Making a face at his relentlessly ringing phone, Bradley rubbed his forehead, waving them off.

  “I actually feel bad for the guy,” Del said, gesturing at Bradley as they left his office.

  “Oh, shit.” Phan made as if to feel her forehead. “You feeling okay?”

  “Bradley’s doing a decent job, other than the results. Now he has to deal with a nonresponsive officer. If that goes public, the investigation goes to hell along with our reputation.”

  Phan grimaced. “How many other women called and got the same response, or didn’t bother calling in because they figured they’d be flicked off? What if Kaylee was off at college and something happened and she didn’t call because of that?”