I stormed out of the office, furious that Al didn’t believe me. I found Jeanelle chopping zucchini with Sadie sitting on the kitchen floor at her feet, stacking Tupperware cups. I plopped myself down next to the baby and pulled her into my lap, bussing the top of her downy-soft head with my lips.
“I’d better take her back up to the city with me,” I said to Jeanelle. “I have to go harass a cop and I won’t have time to make it back down here before I have to pick Isaac up. He’s got an early playdate this afternoon.”
“I was going to puree her a little of this,” Jeanelle said. “See if she’d eat it.”
“She eats anything,” I said.
“That is the truth. I had to move the dog dish into the other room when I caught her up to her elbows in the kibble.”
“Oh Sadie-sue,” I said, snuggling my little girl.
“You and Al have an argument?” Jeanelle asked, her eyes on her long knife as she sliced perfect circles of pale green squash.
“I guess so.”
“Oh we did not,” Al said. He stood in the doorway, the cordless phone in his hand. “You are one weak-kneed woman if you call that an argument. I’ve got Robyn on the telephone. She’s going to check ViCAP for us.”
Al’s daughter Robyn was an FBI agent working out of the bureau’s office in Houston, Texas. She had inherited her father’s love of firearms but, luckily for her, not his looks. She was a beautiful girl, long-limbed and possessed of the kind of confidence that I feared would guarantee her never finding a man. That and the fact that every boyfriend she brought home was given the stink eye and a tour of Al’s gun cabinets.
“What’s ViCAP?” I said.
“Ask her yourself.” Al handed me the phone and I greeted the woman I hadn’t talked to since she’d stood guard over my husband and children over a year before.
Robyn said, “Hey Juliet, good to hear your voice.”
“Same here. How are things?”
“Good. Good.”
I got down to business. “Robyn, what’s ViCAP?”
“The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. It’s a system designed to identify serial murders. It synthesizes aspects of homicide investigations from around the country, looking for patterns. It was developed by an ex-chief of police in Los Angeles.”
“How does it work?” I asked.
“Police departments send information to NCAVC, the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, located at Quantico. The idea is that if a series of cases is flagged, then the local police departments can coordinate their investigations.”
“How do the analysts decide if a serial murderer is at work?”
“They look for similarities of method, of victim, that kind of thing. Some serial killers are so adept at police procedure that they can adjust their methods to thwart the investigation. But the analysts are experts at sifting through the data.”
“So if they haven’t flagged these murders, then I’m probably wrong? There’s no serial killer at work.”
“Not necessarily. The system depends on the information it receives. Local law enforcement can’t access the system without FBI cooperation, so that makes them less interested in it. Oftentimes, they don’t even bother to send us data from their cases, even when they’re required to do so. Things definitely slip through the cracks.”
“Did your dad tell you about our case?”
“He did. I’ll tell you what, I’ll run this material and see what we’ve got for unsolved murders of African-American women in the Southern Los Angeles area. How was your victim killed?”
“Blunt force trauma to the head. He bashed her skull in.” I gave Robyn as many details about Violetta and about the other women as I knew. Sadly, what I knew about them was pretty much limited to their race and profession, and to the fact they’d been killed.
“Okay, Juliet. I’ll get back to you in a couple of days. Maybe less. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks.” I hung up the phone, and looked up at Al. “And thank you,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. “Now, do you want to know about your friend Heavenly’s criminal record?”
I sighed. “Sure.”
“One juvenile arrest under the name Henry Spees, looks like a loitering charge. Referred to diversion and dismissed. Another arrest for lewd and lascivious conduct in a public park. Pled guilty to a misdemeanor. No jail time.”
“Men’s restroom sweep.”
“Yup. Standard stuff. Cops probably found him and another guy doing in public what they should be doing in private.”
I shrugged. “So nothing, right?”
“Right. You going over to the 77th Division to bust some heads?”
I stood up, taking Sadie along with me. “No, I’m not going to bust any heads. I’m just going to calmly and reasonably suggest that Detective Jarin take another look at this case, in light of the statements of the witnesses I interviewed.”
* * *
CALM and reasonable was a good goal. Calm and reasonable would have been nice. I even started out calm and reasonable, but Detective Jarin’s implacable refusal to even consider the possibility that a killer was on the loose turned me shrill and histrionic in record time. I gave him the names of the women who had been killed. I told him about my conversation with the prostitutes at the taco truck. He was unimpressed.
“Look, ma’am,” he said. “Do you know how many people get killed in South Central every year? You know how many prostitutes get killed by their pimps or their johns all over this city?”
I’d had this conversation once and I was ready. “No, I don’t. Do you? Do you even bother to count the women who get killed? Or do you just chalk it up to an angry john without even spending five minutes investigating?”
“I don’t have to listen to this, lady.”
We were standing out by the sergeant’s desk; this time Jarin wasn’t letting me anywhere near the working area of the station. I had Sadie on my hip and was jiggling her while I talked to him.
“Detective Jarin, the women on the streets are terrified. They know this man is out there. They’ve seen him. You have to help them.”
“They can’t be that scared, or they wouldn’t be working the streets every night, would they?” He turned his back on me and walked back down the hall to the door leading into the precinct house.
“Just compare the files!” I shouted after him. “How hard can that be? Just compare them. Look for similarities. Run a few goddamn DNA tests!”
My loud voice frightened Sadie and she burst into tears. As if on cue, I began leaking, large wet circles appearing on the front of my shirt.
“Damn it,” I muttered, plucking at my wet shirt. “It’s okay, sweetie,” I said, trying to soothe Sadie. But she smelled the milk now and nothing was going to calm her but the breast. I looked around the dank waiting room. A few desperate-looking people were slumped on chairs. One older woman stood at the desk, crying and arguing with a uniformed officer. I didn’t want to nurse my baby in here, but I realized that neither did I particularly want to be sitting in my car outside on the street in this neighborhood.
“Come on in here, ma’am.” I looked over to find the desk sergeant holding a door open for me. “Take the baby in here. I’ll watch the door.”
“Thank you so much,” I said, so relieved my voice cracked.
I followed him into a small room with a metal table and two folding chairs. I sat down and pulled Sadie close. On his way out the door the desk sergeant paused, one hand on the doorknob. “You might want to give Detective Stephen Sherman a call, over in cold cases.”
“Who?” I said.
“Steve Sherman. He used to work Robbery Homicide down here. He transferred over to the cold case unit in 2001. He’s the man to talk to.”
The sergeant closed the door before I could thank him.
Ten
THIS part-time work thing can really wear a person down. Just when you’re finally immersed in your work, just when you’re m
aking progress, it’s time to quit. But I’d promised Isaac a playdate and I had to deliver. I met Isaac’s friend Jackson’s mom, Sandy, outside the preschool and before we went to sign our kids out we transferred Jackson’s booster seat into my car.
“I’m so sorry,” Sandy said. “I know the car seat cover smells disgusting. Honestly, I washed it, but I think it’s my minivan. It’s got this smell. Everything in the car starts to smell like it sooner or later. I think I even smell like it.”
“Don’t worry, I’m sure my minivan’s worse. I’ve tried everything, even one of those horrible little pine trees. I think the only solution is to throw the car away and start from scratch.”
“Or we could just give in and market the scents as cologne,” Sandy said. “Eau de old yogurt. Sour milk and stale Goldfish body wash.”
I liked this Sandy. She had a sense of humor. I also liked her because she looked like she could stand to spend a few hours a week at the gym. She wasn’t fat, just a little flabby around the middle. Like me. She looked like a mother is supposed to look, not like the rest of the midriff-baring twig-mommies whose Hannahs and Tylers populated the expensive preschools of the city of Los Angeles. It was such a relief to find someone else who wasn’t wearing a skimpy Marc Jacobs top and a pair of size two, two-hundred-dollar jeans. Not that I wouldn’t be thrilled to wear a skimpy Marc Jacobs top and a pair of size two jeans, if I could. If I could cram my huge behind into a pair of size two jeans I’d probably own a dozen of them. I’d probably hang a pair on my front door so that everybody, including the UPS driver, could see how tiny I was.
When we got to the classroom Jackson and Isaac were, unfortunately, not speaking. Sandy pulled a note out from Jackson’s cubby that informed her that “another child” had hit Jackson over the head with a steamshovel, but that the teachers had put a boo-boo bunny on his lump and he was feeling much better. I had a note in my box that said Isaac had been “having a hard time using his words” and was obliged to come into the classroom while the other children were building a fort in the sandbox.
“Should we cancel the playdate?” I asked Sandy.
She looked stricken. “I have a dentist appointment and then I’m taking Chelsea to her riding lesson.”
“Go, we’ll be fine,” I said.
“Are you sure? I could take him with me . . .” She clearly didn’t want to, and I was profoundly relieved that she hadn’t suggested hanging out at my house all day to monitor the boys’ behavior. I got the feeling that Sandy and I had a lot in common. Jackson was her third child, and I was betting she viewed a playdate at someone else’s house like a Get Out of Jail Free card.
“They’ll work it out. They always do,” I said.
I pushed the feuding nations into their side-by-side booster seats, impressed at the extent of the frost in their relations. Most four-year-olds don’t hold grudges this long. Clearly Jackson and Isaac were exceptionally gifted, at least as far as the expression of hostility was concerned. It took two packages of rainbow Goldfish, a couple of juice boxes, and finally, once we got home, hot cocoa with marshmallows before détente took hold.
I put Sadie down for her nap and then went into my bedroom. Peter lay snoring under a mound of pillows and the down comforter.
“Hey!” I said, jumping on the bed. “Hey! It’s 1:30. Rise and shine, husband of mine.”
He groaned and pushed his head farther under a pillow.
I pulled my socks off and then shoved my feet under the covers, right up to his warm belly.
“Jesus Christ!” he shouted, leaping up. “Popsicle toes!”
“Warm them up, c’mon.” I chased him around the bed with my feet. He grabbed a pillow, stuck it over my feet, and sat on it.
“That is unacceptably brutal, Juliet,” he said. “Seriously, can’t you think of a more pleasant way to get me out of bed?”
“Like what?”
“Like you could bring me a cup of coffee, or a give me a tender massage.”
“Oh please, you’d never get out of bed for coffee or a massage. I could get an air horn. Or dump a cup of water on your head.”
“Very funny.”
“What time did you come to bed last night?”
He scratched his head vigorously. Like Ruby’s, his hair stood up around his head in a cloud of red curls. “I don’t know, four-thirty?”
“Well that means you’ve been asleep for nine hours, buddy. I can’t remember the last time I had anywhere near that much sleep. Get your butt out of bed and stop whining.” I leaned over to kiss him, to reassure him that I wasn’t really bitter about my relative sleep-deprivation. Except of course I was. And he knew it.
“Can you pick up Ruby at school in an hour?” I said. “Isaac’s got a playdate, and Sadie’s down for her nap. I thought I’d do some laundry and a little research while everything is quiet.”
“Sure,” Peter said. “Maybe I’ll take her to the comic book store. I want to pick up the new issue of The Escapist.”
“Just keep her away from the big boob comics,” I said. When we first had Ruby, I was only too happy to relinquish to her the task of accompanying her father on his comic book runs. Those stores are no fun for the un-obsessed. They’re not much fun for any woman, frankly. Sure there’s always some pierced young girl in there, asking for a copy of Rurouni Kenshin or the new Eightball, but by and large the denizens are guys like Peter, guys who have wholeheartedly embraced the word “geek.” Ruby and Isaac love going with their dad, and as long as they avoid the borderline pornographic books with their drawings of pneumatic-breasted women in spangled leotards, I’m fine with it. Not that I have anything against pneumatic breasts or spangled leotards per se; I just don’t want to give either of the kids unrealistic expectations of what their futures hold.
I left Peter to get dressed and started down the hall toward Isaac’s bedroom. I had heard nothing from the boys since they were done with their snack, and I feared that silence boded ill. I had no idea how ill, however. They weren’t in Isaac’s room, and neither were they in Ruby’s doing harm to her American Girl dolls. I figured they were probably in the ballroom on bikes or scooters, but I didn’t find them there, either. They hadn’t tried to sneak into the TV room. I was reluctant to start yelling for them. Sadie was a light sleeper at naptime, and I didn’t want to risk waking her. I peeked down into Peter’s dungeon; the lights were out and I knew Isaac would rather give up television for the rest of his life than be down there in the dark.
The last room I checked should have been the first. They were in the kitchen. They’d taken a bottle of glass cleaner and a can of Ajax out from under the sink and dumped them in one of my good Italian pottery bowls, then stood up on a chair to reach the bleach on the shelf above the washer in the laundry room, and were in the process of adding the bleach into their concoction.
“Stop it!” I shouted. “Stop it right now!”
Jackson, who was holding the bleach, dropped it on the ground. It splashed over his jeans and sneakers, leaving instantaneous white streaks. I ran across the room, picked up the bottle, closed it, and grabbed the two of them by the arms.
“What do you think you’re doing? Are you crazy? Are you trying to kill yourselves?”
The two boys stared at me, at my flaming red face, my wild eyes, and promptly burst into tears. Isaac wailed, “We’re just making a blue potion!”
“You can’t mix Windex and bleach! They make poison!”
“Poison? Cool!” Jackson said.
I pulled his wet and ruined pants and shoes off him, hauled both boys over to the sink and scrubbed their hands and faces. Then I carried one under each arm and put them out of the kitchen.
“Get Jackson a pair of your pants,” I said to Isaac. “And don’t you dare leave your room. Jackson, go with Isaac. If you two even poke your noses out of Isaac’s room before I say you can, there will be hell to pay.”
“But. . .” Isaac began to argue.
“Don’t even open your mouth. You’re lucky I
don’t spank you until your tushy turns blue. Go. Now!”
Mopping up the spilled bleach and avoiding ammonia poisoning wasn’t what took time. That I managed in about two minutes. It was the home improvement project that I launched into that ruined my afternoon.
“What are you doing?” Peter said. He was carrying a bleary-eyed Sadie.
“How did you not hear that?” I said.
“I was in the shower, and when I got out I heard Sadie screaming. Juliet, sweetheart? What are you doing?”
I was down on my hands and knees screwing a latch onto the cabinet under the sink. I’d already put a hook and eye on the laundry room door. “Isaac-proofing the house.”
“But I thought we decided that those latches would just ruin the kitchen cabinets.”
As he spoke a long crack appeared on the inside of the door where I’d turned the screw one too many times.
“Damn it,” I said.
“Here, you take Sadie. I’ll do it.”
I ran carpool that afternoon, leaving Peter with strict instructions. By the time he was done there was no way any child was ever going to open a cabinet or drawer in our kitchen, bathroom, or laundry room ever again. The only problem was that we couldn’t open them either.
“You have to push with one hand and pull with the other. At the same time,” Peter said, sweat breaking out on his brow as he struggled to open the cutlery drawer. “Ow! I think I broke my finger.”
I took his hand and ran it under cold water.
“My mother never baby-proofed our house,” he said while we watched his fingernail turn bright red.
“Your mother sent you to the corner store for cigarettes and beer when you were six years old.”
He pulled his hand out of the water. I kissed it, and he winced.
“I turned out okay, though, didn’t I?”
“Peter, glass cleaner has ammonia in it. When you mix ammonia and bleach you get poison gas. They could have killed themselves.”
Bye-Bye, Black Sheep Page 6
