by Jenna Rae
The general assumption seemed to be that this was not an isolated incident, that it was the peeper again and the peeper had escalated. At Monday morning’s hastily assembled emergency task force meeting Del tried to address the dangers of such an assumption, but Bradley rolled over her words as though he hadn’t heard them. Later Phan commiserated with her but clearly agreed that the peeper was the perpetrator of the assault. Internally vowing to fight that assumption and follow a separate line of inquiry on top of the official one, Del wondered how she would fit that in with solving Mikey’s murder. She was failing in every area of her life, not least professionally. She resolved to put aside her personal concerns in light of the more pressing professional ones and tried not to notice how much relief this resolution brought with it.
By Tuesday everyone in the station was alight with frantic activity and earnest inquiry, not least Del and Phan. Alana, Phan’s girlfriend, again threatened to walk out on him. She said he worked too much, was too obsessed with his job. It was just like his ex-wife all over again. Kaylee wasn’t talking to her dad because he was gone too much. Del offered to fill in so Phan could spend an evening with his daughter, but the kid wasn’t done punishing him yet so he turned down the offer. Captain Bradley allocated extra men, extra resources. None of them knew how to use the men or the resources except to do the same useless things over and over. Police work was often a matter of interviewing and reinterviewing, reviewing notes again and again, scouring the same limited pieces of information several times in an effort to find a pattern, or a break in a pattern, or some inconsistency that like a loose thread in a tapestry could be pulled to unravel a crime’s cover of secrecy. But they were picking at the same lack of loose ends over and over to no avail. They were zombies. Phan was heartbroken over Alana and Kaylee, and Del was heartbroken over Lola. They talked about drinking it off, but neither of them even wanted to hit the bar.
“Pretty pathetic,” Phan commented Tuesday night after another eighteen-hour day. “Too fucked-up to drink?”
Del nodded blearily and trudged off to her truck to drive home. All she wanted to do was sleep. But even when she could manage to doze off, she woke up exhausted. Her stomach hurt all the time. She was caught in a whirling cloud of guilt, frustration and anger. What occupied her mind was that a whole neighborhood was scared. One victim was shaken and scared and humiliated and didn’t even remember the attack. Del was unable to do anything to help any of them. She wasn’t even able to help herself. She thought about all the victims she’d failed in her two decades as a police officer. And of course so far she’d failed to find Mikey’s killer. She kept forgetting about him for minutes at a time, because she was so focused on the peeper-turned-batterer. If, she reminded herself at odd intervals, they were the same man.
When she closed her eyes she could smell the body of Mikey Ocampo. She’d smelled worse, of course, but the metallic tang of blood and sweat and dirt and decay colored her memory of the sweet young kid who’d spent a third of his childhood locked up as a murderer. She’d given him a chocolate bar, and his breath had smelled of chocolate when he’d told her his terrible story. When she thought of chocolate now, she thought of the scent of his body on the Shotwell Street. He was one of her great failures. Had he been lonely and scared every day and every night of his detention, of his time in the group home, on the streets? If Del had been better able to get his mom to open up, if she’d been able to get one victim to roll on Ernie White, maybe Mikey Ocampo would be alive, trying to graduate high school and find a way to pay for college. Maybe he wouldn’t have ended up half-starved and beaten to death, his body dumped like garbage on a street where no one knew or cared about him.
“Why didn’t I try harder? What did I miss?” She was plagued by the nagging feeling she’d missed something but no closer to clarity on what that something might be. She’d tried not to get too attached to the kid and failed utterly. She definitely hadn’t connected with Mikey’s mother. She wondered if this was perhaps the most damning failure, the fatal flaw in her investigation. If Mariposa had been able to open up to Del, maybe Mikey would still be alive. A fog lay over her, thick, blinding and polluted by guilt and inadequacy.
Unable to sleep, Del got on the computer at three in the morning and started typing, realizing only after several minutes that she was writing to Lola.
“You wanted to talk to me,” Del told the computer screen. “I should have tried harder to talk to you. I should have tried harder to listen to you.”
The letter was a rambling mess, nearly incoherent, and she deleted it when she was done. She felt ridiculous, but she was able to sleep for a couple of hours after that.
On Wednesday Del arrived at the station to learn that another woman had been found naked and drugged on another sidewalk in the Mission. She had suffered bruising and abrasions and had no memory of an attacker. Del’s middle cramped at the rapidity with which the attacker had taken another victim. Elizabeth Street was the scene this time, and again the victim remembered only that she’d been walking to her car.
The scene was another forensic desert, which meant the doer was smart enough to employ forensic countermeasures and that he was learning. That didn’t bode well for the investigation, and Del considered what she knew of psychopathic behavior patterns. She and Phan went over the reports and tried to piece together some coherent picture of their bad guy.
Del grimaced. “He’s ramping up, I think. He’ll have to kill one, probably soon.”
“The more he gets away with, the more arrogant he’ll get.” Phan didn’t look up from his computer.
“Then sloppy.” Del sighed. “Hopefully sooner rather than later.”
“How many women’ll get terrorized and how many will get killed before he gets sloppy enough to get caught?”
“Too many.” Del pursed her lips and returned to her phone work. She’d left so many messages at so many numbers that she was starting to get a sore throat to go along with her seemingly permanent stomachache. She kept careful track of what she’d done and what she still needed to do or should do again, but the notebooks were filling up and her thoughts were no clearer.
The department chugged along like a runaway train, trying to balance the escalating sex crime case and the other crimes that took place with their usual disturbing regularity. Patrols in the Mission District were increased even more. Ever more fervent warnings went out through the media, and citizen watchdog groups took turns questioning the department’s ineffectual efforts. The Mission should have been the safest place in the world, Del thought, with all the officers, reporters, and safety patrols on the streets. But with no solid leads, they were busy chasing their bad guy instead of trapping him.
Del told Phan about hunting with her daddy, about the way he would catch a dangerous animal by watching its patterns of behavior and using its predictability against the animal.
“But people are smarter than animals,” Phan put in. “Less predictable.”
“Are we?” Del rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just harder for us to see human patterns because we’re human too. And we are much more interested in doing harm for the sake of doing harm. Animals usually kill for a reason. They’re hungry or scared or competing for resources. Our guy is harming women because he likes to harm women.”
Phan waggled his head. “It’s the worst kind of case.”
She nodded. “No good evidence and a wide pool of victims.”
“Don’t forget that big, bright spotlight on every move we make.”
“God,” Del said with a wry smile, “we sound like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
“Which of us is Dum?” Phan cocked an eyebrow at her.
Del laughed and shook her head. “Both of us.”
Examining the extensive database of predators they’d compiled, she played with the data and created a variety of alternate analyses. She teased out discrete sets comprised of men who’d been expensively and well defended and had either been acquitted or not h
ad charges filed, men who’d gotten away with multiple counts of peeping, sexual battery, rape, kidnapping and murder. There were too many of them, and a lot were the same basic type: rich, spoiled, utterly selfish and clever. These sets of names were disturbingly numerous and heavily populated, and there was significant crossover with some of the men.
She created a handwritten list of the names that recurred most often and another of those that stood out for her because their victims were similar to the victims in the current cases. Again the lists were too long. She looked for names that ended up on both of her scrawled lists and saw fourteen. One she recognized immediately—Ernie White. The other thirteen she didn’t know, but she wanted to follow up on them.
She’d been systematic but was aware of the potential for her own biases to corrupt her processes. She couldn’t be sure of her objectivity. Dissatisfied by the nebulous nature of her interest in these suspects, she wrote a list of the details of the fourteen men she’d isolated. She looked at what they had in common and didn’t share. Just before midnight, while examining her lists, Del noted that Mikey Ocampo had been dead for nine days.
Before sunrise on Thursday she was at the station and looking up more extensive and updated information on the fourteen names. Five were incarcerated, five were in the military and stationed elsewhere, and two were dead. They’d managed to live good long lives, though, Del noted with disgust, before keeling over in their nice comfy beds. How many women and children had each victimized in the course of his long life?
That left two names from her list of fourteen: Ronald Teager and Ernest White. She took a quick coffee break, wanting to be clearheaded. She shot Phan an email requesting he look into Ronald Teager and briefly explaining the process by which she’d isolated him as a possible person of interest. After thirty seconds of sitting still and staring at her scummy Snoopy mug, the one she’d been using nearly every day for more years than she cared to count, she got back to work.
Five years after Mikey Ocampo shot him, Ernie White was a multimillionaire. He’d inherited his mother’s properties and money and lived in the Sunset District. He drove a black Lexus, nearly identical to the one he’d been driving five years ago. No wife, no kids. A condo on Oahu, a cabin in Tahoe, and several dozen other properties rounded out his real estate portfolio. He owned pieces of several commercial buildings and was a shareholder in several apartment complexes. He maintained a very limited online social profile and virtually nonexistent online professional profile. From what she could see, White lived how, when and where he wanted and did only what he felt like doing. Mikey Ocampo and his mother were dead, and Ernie White was living it up. Del swallowed bile.
He’d kept his nose clean as far as the justice system was concerned, which as Del knew too well was relatively easy for a rich man to do. He’d burned through four black Lexus sedans, one a year, each a little more embellished with luxury features and the latest technology. Del pictured the guy seeing a speck of bird dirt on his car and trading it in on another one, the cars as disposable to him as the women he abused. Del started to feel desperate. She didn’t want to confuse her feelings of frustration over letting Mikey’s life go down the tubes with certainty that Ernie White needed to be put down like a rabid animal. There was something wrong with White, though, and Del couldn’t shake her building tension—Ernie White was a bad guy. She went into law enforcement twenty years ago specifically to protect the innocent from people like Ernie White. What was she, if not a guardian of the thin veneer of civility that kept White from destroying what little was decent about humanity?
Del fairly hummed with impatience. White wasn’t even on the department’s radar. He’d continue to do whatever he wanted behind the shield his money provided, and there was nothing Del could do about that. How many victims had Ernie White left behind in his years on the planet? How many more would he leave behind before, like the others, he died an old man? Del shook her head. She made a decision that she belatedly realized had been brewing for a while. Without mentioning it to Phan and with more than a few pangs of guilt, she went outside and called an old friend, leaving a message that she guessed was likely to be returned immediately. That was the pattern. That was the way Mac insisted things should be. Del would call one number to leave a message and get a call back on another line.
Del wondered if she would get the expected return call. It had been a long time. Were she and Mac friends? Del wasn’t sure. Mac had tried to lure her into leaving local law enforcement for some federal beat, and though she’d refused the offer several times they’d developed a kind of rapport over the years. Mac now worked in Homeland Security and therefore had access to information she was unlikely to get any other way. The phone rang, and Del let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Mac’s greeting was cordial, and she was grateful that Mac didn’t give her too hard a time about their years of heated argument over what Del saw as the Patriot Act’s overreach and violation of Americans’ privacy. They skipped the usual catching up of old friends, as they always did, and Del jumped into the subject at hand with more than a little trepidation.
Mac laughed when Del explained the reason for her call. “You finally ready to come over to the dark side, kiddo?”
“I’m sorry to put you on the spot,” she said, her voice subdued. “You have every right to say no, I get that. But I need help.”
“Oh. Well. Okay.” Mac’s tone was neutral.
But then, Del recalled, when hadn’t it been? That had been one of Mac’s most overriding characteristics, neutrality. Wasn’t that one of the things Del had both admired and hated?
* * *
A mysterious stranger called her home phone number. In the mid-nineties, that was how people got in touch with each other.
“Officer Mason, you’re wasting your time patrolling the Tenderloin. Probably get yourself knifed before you turn thirty. My name’s Mac. I work for Uncle Sam. You’re gonna leave the local beat to come work for me,” Mac growled, and Del wasn’t able to tell if the stranger was joking or serious. She also wasn’t able to tell if Mac was a man or a woman. Del wasn’t interested in leaving local law enforcement for a federal gig, and she rejected the nebulous offer with a curt negative.
“Not even gonna listen to the deal, huh? Well, I’ll be in your neck of the woods,” Mac rumbled. “You’re not working Sunday night. Meet me at Fiddler’s Green—you know it? Seven thirty. I’ll be wearing black.” Without waiting for a response, Mac hung up.
Too curious to pass up the invitation, Del drove past the San Francisco International Airport—SFO to its many passersby—and found the Irish pub by seven fifteen. It met her every expectation: glossy wooden bar, rows of liquor arranged stadium-style behind the bartender, and sudsy steins at every place. She identified Mac, the only patron sporting a black suit and tie and a brutally short crew cut. Mac was twisted sideways on a barstool, squinting at the doorway and waiting, and Del fought a smile. Was she making some Faustian deal, simply by meeting this federal agent at a bar? She honestly couldn’t tell if Mac—no last name, no job title, and no distinct gender markers—was a legitimate federal agent or a criminal. But she slid onto the stool next to the mysterious stranger. They talked about a variety of topics for a good twenty minutes before Del decided Mac was probably a woman. If nothing else, she was definitely curious about the ill-defined job offer Mac was making. Mac’s baked skin, squinting gaze, and gravelly voice made her seem otherworldly. Del almost wondered if someone was playing a practical joke on her.
“Why me? How do you even know my name?” Del asked. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
“You’re smart. You’re wasted on patrol. Even in San Francisco you’ll end up working twice as hard as anybody else. You’ll kiss the fourth point of contact on a lot of guys with half of your intellect and a third of your drive.”
“That’s a lot of numbers,” Del noted, sipping the dark, smoky-sweet whiskey Mac had ordered for her before her arrival.
/> Mac ignored this. “In my group you’ll work independently most of the time. You’ll report directly to me or to my second. Name’s Guy. Smart. Smarter than you, almost as smart as me.”
Del allowed herself a small smile at this. “Work on what exactly?”
“Depends. Training for a while, mostly cold cases to hone your skills. Your primary source of knowledge about investigation so far has been the library. That’s okay, for now, but you’ll need to sharpen your skills on a more varied surface. You’re too rough around the edges. Too hotheaded. Too inexperienced. Too comfortable relying on your instincts instead of solid investigation.”
Del, at that point five years out of college with five years on the force, pushed away defensiveness and examined the stranger’s assessment.
“I am inexperienced in too many areas,” she admitted. “Mostly I deal with domestics and drunks and bar fights. I’ve been on nights five years. I’d like to learn more about how people work, why they do what they do.” She grimaced. “You know a lot more about me than I do about you and your group. What organization do you belong to? Who would I answer to if you quit or died or whatever? How do I even know you’re American? For all I know, you’re a KGB recruiter trying to sucker me into treason. Or a criminal. Maybe you work for the Yakuza. Maybe you’re—”
Mac’s laugh sounded more like a car backfiring than an expression of humor, but it made Del smile anyway.
“You’re a cynical kid,” Mac opined. “I like that. But I’ll tell you what. Go spin your wheels with SFPD for a few more years. The sergeant’s exam is in a few months. Take it. Get some experience using your head more than your feet. Call me at this number and leave a message. Don’t bother me until you get your stripes.” Mac slid a business card across the bar’s smooth surface. It was plain white with only a phone number on it. The area code was one Del didn’t recognize. Then Mac dropped a five-dollar tip on the bar and sketched a wave before striding purposefully out of the bar’s front door. Del sat looking at the card for a minute. She looked at its matte surface and wondered if it held any fingerprints. She tucked it carefully into her shirt pocket.
