by Leslie Glass
She wondered what kind of place Potoway Village was. Was it some old Indian site where they once threw their pots away, sacrificed them to the Gods for rain, or something? She had talked briefly to the sheriff. He had a rich, rumbly voice and said the country around it was hills and high desert. The village was several thousand feet up. There was no hotel or motel in town, no place for transients to stay. The people who had houses there were pretty well off, generally older, he told her. What was a city girl like Ellen Roane doing there?
Sheriff Regis told her that bikers liked to ride out there on the rough terrain. He also said they had a similar case three months before about forty miles south, and both dead girls appeared to have been branded and abandoned. It was an unusual sort of situation. More commonly in crimes of this nature, the girls would be killed and then mutilated. This guy seemed to be a mutilator, but not a killer. They didn’t know if he was a rapist.
Well, if the body in Potoway Village turned out to be Ellen Roane, April would send Regis more pictures of the girl so he could start looking for people who had seen her.
Only seventeen days had passed since Ellen’s last credit card charge. April had called the stores to check the receipts and find out what each one was. The last charge was a bathing suit, a skimpy red-and-gold Cole of California bikini, on sale for $34. The salesgirl actually remembered Ellen. She told April that Ellen had a gorgeous body, but no, she had had no idea where the customer was staying. The other items Ellen had charged were three San Diego T-shirts from San Diego Tee for $38.69, a white leather belt from Fashion City for $46, a lipstick, shampoo, and conditioner from Kay Drugs for $15.76, and two dinners at the Beach Café on the night she arrived and the next night, for $19.42 and $15.73 respectively.
April had spent a lot of time studying the two photographs Jennifer Roane had given her of Ellen. Ellen’s fine Caucasian features framed by her golden mane of wavy hair, her unclouded eyes and perfect figure, troubled April. All her privilege showed in the eyes. Ellen Roane had had no reason to be afraid of anything when those pictures were taken. There was no tension in her anywhere.
She had the kind of curves and curls April would give a lot for. Also the room at college with its printed bedspreads and no mother around to nag. There was a time April would have given a lot for that, too. But her parents wanted the house in Queens, so she went to work instead of to college.
Well, maybe Ellen was all right. Maybe she did know enough to be afraid. Anyway, with those looks there were sure to be other people who remembered her. Her luggage had to be somewhere. It wouldn’t be hard to find if only someone tried.
And then there was the Chapman case. How could there be a biker’s symbol on all the letters from San Diego, and a whole lot of references to branding? The coincidence of two women in her precinct both being involved in different cases with bikers from San Diego was too freaky. On the other hand, a connection between them didn’t make sense. Writing and branding were not the same kind of activity. It occurred to April that he might have written Ellen Roane, too.
Her heart started beating faster as she considered the possibility that the biker might not come from San Diego. He could be from here. Two women in this precinct pointed to the possibility that he knew them from here. Maybe he even went with Ellen Roane to San Diego, had a fight with her, branded her, and left her in the desert.
At the same time as he was writing letters to Emma Chapman? Not so likely. And three months before that he had done the same thing to another girl, also in San Diego?
No, it couldn’t be the same guy. But April made a note of calling to ask the two California coroners for a rendering of the burn on the two dead girls to see if it was anything like the drawing on the letters. She would also go back to Ellen Roane’s room at the dorm and check out if she had received any letters there. Her roommate would know that. With a jolt April realized that she didn’t know what Emma Chapman looked like. She hadn’t seen the movie. She was working without any sense of the woman at all.
The smells of cooking oil, garlic, and roasted meat finally overcame her desire to give Jimmy a chance to redeem himself. She simply wasn’t going to sit there starving for any man, especially one who had less than six hairs on his entire chest and had never had a truly sexy moment in his whole life. She got up, her head lowered a little with shame for drinking a whole pot of tea and eating the whole bowl of fried noodles and then leaving without ordering a thing.
She shook her head at the waiter. “Guess my mother got lost,” she told him. “I’ll go find her and come back.”
April took her usual position on the subway going uptown. She stood on one end of the car by the door. Even though she wasn’t on duty, she took the demands of her job seriously and didn’t consider herself ever off duty. On the street she watched the parked cars and who was standing near them. In the subway she kept an eye on people’s hands, where they were, what they were doing. But today, even as she studied the scene constantly playing before her, she was thinking about getting her car back. She had decided, without even knowing she was thinking about it, that there would be no more monkey business with Jimmy Wong. She’d tell him today. The decision cheered her up.
She was further elated when she found a message waiting for her from Sergeant Grove. Her desk was occupied, so she had to take an empty desk to make the call to San Diego.
“Yeah, Sergeant Grove speaking.”
“This is April Woo in New York.”
“How’s it going, April.”
“The sun is out, Sergeant.”
“That’s very good news. The name is Bob, April. You can call me Bob. Do you have a positive ID on that girl in Potoway Village yet?”
“No. I’ve sent out the data. They’re probably working on it now. But I’m not calling about the Ellen Roane case. Something else has come up. It’s probably not connected. But maybe it is.”
“All right, April. What do you have?”
April waited while a suspect in handcuffs, screaming obscenities, was led through the detectives’ room into an examining area behind it.
“April, you still there?”
“I’m having a little noise interference. Can you hold for a second?”
Two doors slammed on the curses. A few phones rang. “It might be kind of a Hinckley case,” April told Grove when it was finally quieter. “An actress is getting some threatening letters.”
Anyway, her husband said they were threatening. April hadn’t been so absolutely convinced about any of it until the postmark on the envelopes came up San Diego.
“Uh-huh,” came the noncommittal reply from the other coast. “So what can I do for you? I’m in Missing Persons.”
“I know that, Bob. But these threatening letters are coming from San Diego.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, I was surprised, too. Six years on the force and I’ve never had a case with any ties to San Diego. Now I’ve got two.”
“So, do you figure they’re a conspiracy?” Bob gave a little laugh.
“No, I think they’re just a coincidence. But the thing is … that other unidentified female body you’ve got out there, the one that has a similar burn on it?”
“You got me on that, April. What Jane Doe?”
“Don’t you talk to each other?” April asked. “There’s another case of a girl, tortured, burned, and apparently left in the desert to die.”
“There’s no desert in San Diego.”
“What?”
“I’m in Missing Persons, San Diego Police Department. We don’t have desert areas in the City of San Diego. You’re talking about other jurisdictions, and I wouldn’t hear about missing persons in other jurisdictions unless other authorities like you ask me to check them out.” Grove was peeved.
“Well, if there get to be a few more of them, I guess you’ll hear about it.”
“You talking about some kind of serial thing?” His voice sharpened.
“I really couldn’t say. I’m a detective here in New York. It’s n
ot my jurisdiction. I’m just trying to put a few pieces together, and I thought you could give me some advice.” She let that sink in.
“All right, April, I have to admit you’re persistent, and let’s say you’ve caught my interest. What can I do for you?”
“Okay, at the bottom of these letters there’s a—kind of a biker symbol.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I need to know if anybody out there is getting threatening letters with a signature drawing like it. I need to know, maybe from Sex Crimes, if maybe anybody’s been branded with a symbol like that and lived to talk about it.”
“You don’t want much, do you?”
“Look, your computer may have come up with the first missing person I was looking for, Bob. Now I’m looking for a guy who’s writing letters. He’s kind of a missing person, too, isn’t he?”
“Uh-uh. Doesn’t work that way. But did you say this was a brand or a drawing? I’m a little confused.”
“The letters have a biker’s symbol drawn on the bottom, kind of like a signature. The guy writing them talks about branding. The two Jane Does you got out there in other jurisdictions appear to have been branded. See?”
“So you think there might be some connection?”
“I really don’t know,” April confessed. “But both cases seem to involve bikers.”
“Uh-huh,” Sergeant Grove said. “Bikers aren’t usually big on letter writing. But I’ll ask around and see what I can find out.”
“It might not be a biker,” April said quickly. “It’s just a biker symbol. Harley-Davidson.”
“Lot of Harley fans out here.”
“I’m sure there are, Bob. I appreciate your asking.”
April took his fax number and sent off copies of the two strangest letters Emma Chapman had received. She hadn’t had the delicious Chinese lunch with Jimmy she had hoped for, and her stomach was growling ferociously. She decided to ignore it. She’d go up to the dorm to look for Ellen’s roommate.
32
Ronnie’s broad face puckered with rage. “What’s the matter with you? What’s going on? A whole week goes by and I can’t get a straight answer from you. What kind of shit is this?”
She covered a block of Sixth Avenue with quick little steps, her heels pounding the uneven sidewalk. It was the last day of April. The sun was finally out. Tomorrow was May Day. Ronnie went on without an answer.
“I’ve been telling Elinor Zing every day for more than a week that we want to do this film, and now you say you’re not sure you do. How much longer do you think I can hold them off? I can’t hold them off.” She stopped and turned to Emma. “Are you listening to me?”
Emma had her eye on the street behind her.
“What’s the matter with you?” Ronnie demanded fiercely.
“Nothing.” Emma shook her head, looking puzzled. “It’s weird.”
“You know what Elinor told me? She said they like you very much, but just between us, she doesn’t think Jack and Albert have a long attention span.”
Emma took a few steps forward and then turned around again, frowning.
“What is the matter with you?”
“I don’t know. I have the strangest feeling.…”
“Emma, look at me. Elinor told me not to jerk them around. She told me to tell you that no one who turns Jack down gets a second chance.”
Emma studied the array of people behind Ronnie on Sixth Avenue. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual mix of business people and street people. There was a crowd around two huge black men playing three-card monte.
“I told her you adore Jack,” Ronnie went on. “I said you’re dying to work with him. What are you looking at?”
“I told you, I have a funny feeling someone is—Oh, forget it.” She shook her head.
“So Elinor said, ‘What more could anyone want?’ She could tell you liked Michael. God! Anybody would kill to work with him. I told her you would kill to work with him. You’re crazy about him, aren’t you? Can you imagine being with him for six weeks in a small hick southern town, huh?”
“I liked him,” Emma admitted. “I liked him a lot.”
“So she wanted to know what the trouble was and I couldn’t think of a thing. So she, I don’t know how, she got the idea you wanted more money.”
“Jesus,” Emma muttered.
“So she said she’d call me today and see if they can do any better.” Ronnie pointed to her watch angrily. “Look at this. You waited too long, you asked for too much, and now they may not want you anymore. Do you think she called me back? Huh? Do you? No. She did not call me back.”
“It’s only twelve-thirty,” Emma muttered. “It’s still early in California.”
“Yeah, but they may be talking to other people. I could just kill you. Hey, where are you going?” Ronnie protested. “I have a reservation at the Tea Room. Don’t you want to be seen?”
Emma had continued up Sixth Avenue and was heading toward the park.
Ronnie huffed after her. “Speak to me,” she demanded. “You finally got what we wanted, and now you’re teetering on the edge of losing it. What the fuck’s the matter with you?”
Ronnie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk by Café De La Paix and planted herself in Emma’s path. Her face was red and angry. “Don’t do this to me.”
“You’re my agent. You’re supposed to represent my best interests,” Emma said, “not just yours.”
“But mine is yours,” Ronnie insisted.
“Then you’ll understand it isn’t so simple.” Emma started walking again.
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop. I can’t walk anymore. Where do you think you’re going?” Ronnie protested helplessly.
“I’m going into the park. I don’t want to eat. I want to sit on that bench over there in the sun.” Where she could see the people around her. She started to cross with the light.
Ronnie plunged after her, puffing with the effort of keeping up. “You’re making me crazy,” she muttered.
“I can’t make you crazy.” Emma replied sharply, because it was a sore point. She wasn’t exactly sure whether she could make someone crazy or not. Jason said she could do something that could trigger a crazy reaction. And now he was out of town. But she had a very strong feeling that he was still around. It was extremely unnerving.
“Look, I may be thwarting and frustrating you, but you’re already crazy.”
“Don’t give me that shrink shit!” Ronnie cried. “I’m sick of that shrink shit. Just talk normal.”
Emma made for the newly painted green bench just inside the park wall. It had no homeless person on it, no bird droppings. And just at that moment it was in the sun. Emma sat, and Ronnie collapsed next to her. Ronnie’s red-and-blue silk skirt rose like a tent as she sat down, then gently deflated around her.
“You’re already crazy,” Emma repeated.
“Maybe,” Ronnie said, more gently. “Maybe I am, but I know a few things, and you’re making a big mistake here. What’s going on with you?”
Emma paused for a long time. “Maybe I don’t want to change my life,” she said, starting cautiously. “Being so—public isn’t all terrific.”
“What are you talking about? Of course it’s terrific.”
“Something’s happening, Ronnie.”
Ronnie scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been getting … letters.” Emma’s lips trembled.
“So? Everybody gets letters. It’s part of the game. You get famous, you get letters. Forget it. Let’s go have lunch. You’ll feel better.” Ronnie stood up.
Emma’s face was white. “Not like these. It’s somebody who knows me.”
“How do you know?” Ronnie was irritated again.
“How do I know? He talks about things that happened in high school. I was the ghost in Blithe Spirit. He knows what my costume looked like. He talks about how pure I was. There was an incident in my senior year with the captain of the football team.…”
Y
ou were the Ice Queen no one could touch you.
“What kind of incident?” Ronnie was curious now.
Emma looked at a squirrel running up a tree. “It happened so long ago.”
“What?” Ronnie asked again.
“Oh, nothing. Just … I don’t know.”
Ronnie sighed. If Emma were a big star, then she, Ronnie, would be a big star’s agent. Other actors would come to her. She’d make a lot of money and be thin. She screwed her face up with the effort of looking for the right thing to say.
“Um, so, you’re kind of freaked by these letters.”
“It isn’t just the letters,” Emma said, looking at some serious scuff marks on the toe of her new shoes. It was Jason.
“Actors are recognized and talked to on the street all the time. They get thousands of letters. It’s the price you pay for fame.”
“What do they do?” Emma asked after a long moment.
“They don’t open the letters. Give me the go-ahead, Emma. They’re not going to wait for you forever.”
Why did you become a piece of shit?
“It’s not so easy,” Emma said. “I’m scared.”
“I don’t believe this,” Ronnie said. “What’s there to be scared of? Do the damn film. Don’t open the fucking letters. What’s so hard?”
“You don’t understand,” Emma said. Somebody knew how to scare her from the inside.
She rubbed at the scuff mark. She didn’t want to believe that she could do something that could make a person go crazy. But what if it was true? What if seeing her naked in a film made her own husband crazy?
Jason said he left town. Her parents said they saw him when he arrived last night. But she had the distinct feeling he was back. He had come back without telling her and was following her around. She shook her head. How could that be?
Planes flew all night. That’s how it could be.
“Aw, shit. I’m going to call Elinor. So what if we leave a few thousand on the table.” Ronnie put her arm around Emma and gave her a squeeze. “Come on. Come, let’s go eat something. You’ll feel better,” she said soothingly. “Come on, Em. You know I love you.”
