Guns and Roses

by Brennan, Allison; Armstrong, Lori G. ; Tabke, Karin; Causey, Toni McGee; St. Claire, Roxanne; Brown, Josie; Littlefield, Sophie; Griffin, Laura; James, Lorelei; Day, Sylvia

  Adam said, “Let’s put her on the gurney and get her out of this garbage. Her pupils aren’t responding the way they should. She’s shocky.”

  His words cut through the rage burning within me. When I nailed Keller’s ass, I would make sure every convict in Folsom State Prison knew what he’d done and then he could be given the same treatment he dished out to his victims.

  We lifted her up and onto the gurney. She was still in a tight ball. Adam said, “Can you stretch out your legs for me, Ashley?”

  “I saw him before,” she whispered to me. “I saw him at Annie’s, and thought I recognized him, but didn’t know why. Why would he hurt me like this?”

  She’d seen him. I had an eyewitness. I tried to restrain my excitement. As soon as she was stable and in the hospital, I’d show her photos. If she positively ID’d Greg Keller, and I could get both a search warrant and a DNA warrant. Victory and justice were within reach.

  I touched her face. “I’ll find him and put him in jail. I promise.”

  A streak of blood crossed her cheek where I had touched her. I looked down at my hands. The purple gloves I wore were wet. “Adam, she’s bleeding.”

  He removed the blanket even though Ashley cried out in protest.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Blood seeped from Ashley’s fingers, which clung tight around her waist.

  “Did he stab you?” I asked.

  She looked down as if just remembering she was injured. “It’s just a scrape. I’m fine. Really, please I want to go home.”

  She was anything but fine. I pulled her hands away and restrained them so the medic could do his job. Ashley screamed, “No! No!”

  “Ashley, I’m here. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again.” I spoke to her soothingly, murmurs that weren’t really words, trying to get her to calm down. I wanted to give the cop who’d found her a tongue-lashing. Why hadn’t he seen this?

  “Detective,” Adam snapped. “Hold her down.”

  I did as the paramedic ordered, wincing at the pain and panic in the young woman’s eyes as Adam strapped her to the gurney, for her safety. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Let us help you. We need to get you to the hospital.”

  Wasn’t it as much my fault as the responding officer that Ashley’s injuries had gone unnoticed for so long? I could’ve inspected her body. I probably should have. It didn’t matter that she told me she was fine. I knew better than anyone that victims often lied about their injuries, especially at first when they were in shock, as a measure of protection while their brain processed what had happened to them.

  Was stopping Greg Keller more important to me than the victim’s well-being?

  I didn’t want to contemplate the person this case was turning me into. I’d been a cop for nine years and a detective for three. I had investigated homicides and sex crimes. I had seen the worst that people could do to others, and until now, I had handled each case professionally.

  I knew why I took Keller’s continued freedom personally. It wasn’t just the fact that I’d been in Ashley Young’s shoes fifteen years ago; it wasn’t just that Keller was a brutal rapist who was a threat to women of Sacramento. It was because I knew he was guilty, and he knew I knew he was guilty, and I could do nothing to stop him.

  “Ready,” Adam said. “Help me push her out.”

  I did, glad that someone else had taken over at this point. Ashley was out of my hands, but her assault wasn’t.

  The EMT met us at the corner and took over from me. They wheeled her into the ambulance.

  I ordered the cop standing guard, “Secure the scene until the CSU gets here.” Then I ran toward my car to meet the ambulance at the hospital.

  Chapter Two

  The bustle of the shift change woke me. This wasn’t the first time I’d fallen asleep at my desk. I’d come to the station after Ashley went into surgery, frustrated that I couldn’t talk to her and worried about her injuries, which were far more extensive than we’d known when she was first found.

  I sat up and stretched, my shoulders and neck were stiff to the point of pain. I reached for my coffee mug, half filled with cold coffee, and fumbled in my top drawer for an aspirin bottle. I swallowed three pills chased with disgusting coffee before noticing that Joe Lin, my partner on the River City Rapist investigation, was sitting across from me.

  “You’ve been here all night,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “You heard?”

  He nodded once. “Why didn’t you call me in?”

  “You had the trial this morning; you need to be fresh to keep that bitch in prison.” He’s been the lead detective on a case last year involving a female pedophile—high profile because it was so rare. But if I looked into my motives for not calling Joe, I don’t know if they would have been that pure. Joe was a good detective, but he’d been pulling back on Keller. Not because Joe was corrupt, but because we had forty-nine unclosed cases that had hit our unit the first six weeks of this year alone—not including the cases we’d closed or were left over from last year.

  “I read the report you filed last night. Sounds like our guy. What did you fall asleep in the middle of doing?”

  “Viewing the footage from Fat Annie’s, the bar and grill our vic was at before the attack.” I restarted the DVD I’d gotten from the bar and watched from when Ashley first arrived at 9:47 p.m. I didn’t remember where I fell asleep, so I fast-forwarded, keeping my eyes on the screen while Joe talked.

  “The D.A. promised to call me to the stand this morning. He hopes it doesn’t go until after lunch, so I’m all yours this afternoon.”

  “Harrumph,” I muttered. I didn’t have a lot of faith in the D.A.’s office right now. They were as intimidated by the prospect of indicting Greg Keller as half my department. Going after the Attorney General’s Ivy League pet lawyer made everyone squeamish.

  “What are your plans?”

  “I’m going to get a warrant.”

  “Warrant? For what?”

  “Keller’s car and clothing he wore last night. I’m working on getting the guest list from Ashley’s employer, but if I can find him on tape at Fat Annie’s, that’ll give us something to take to a judge. I can put him at the same place Ashley was before her attack, we have a shot.” I hoped.

  “But she didn’t identify her attacker, right?”

  “No, but she said she recognized him. She didn’t know his name, but said she’d seen him somewhere before the attack. If I can get Keller’s picture in front of her—a line up photo, all proper and official, she’ll point him out. I’m certain of it. She’s still in surgery, though.” I frowned, worried about the victim’s chances. She’d lost consciousness in the ambulance driving over and went right into surgery. “He stabbed her, Joe. He’s escalating. The rapes are getting closer together, the attacks getting more vicious. Before it was just their faces; now he stabbed her in the stomach.”

  “I don’t think a judge is going to give us a warrant for Keller unless she can positively ID him.”

  “That’s why I’m doing this.” I nodded toward my computer screen where the security camera captured everyone going in and out of Fat Annie’s.

  “That’s still thin.” Joe walked around his desk so he could look over my shoulder. “The place was packed for a Monday night.”

  “There were a lot of events downtown last night, plus a concert at the River Cat Stadium that ended at ten.”

  I didn’t tell Joe this was the third time I was viewing the disk. I said, “I’m going to talk to her boss this morning, get the guest list—I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t share it—and when I verify that Keller was there—”

  “And if he wasn’t?”

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t at Fat Annie’s.” I couldn’t ask Keller questions—Keller had a lawyer. He was a lawyer, who, the first time we’d attempted to question him, had said he didn’t rape anyone, and he wasn’t answering any questions on what he called a ‘fishing expedition.’

  “Selena,” Joe b
egan, but I put up my hand, practically bouncing in my chair.

  “Joe—I got him!”

  All remnants of fatigue drained away. I rewound the disk and played back the last minute at half-speed. The time stamp was 10:13 p.m., approximately thirty minutes after Ashley arrived.

  Joe and I watched. The angle of the camera was odd—high and tilted slightly. I know why I missed Keller on the previous passes. Other than the poor quality that rendered the black-and-white picture fuzzy, Keller had walked in behind a large guy in a dark suit. Keller was also in a dark suit and almost blended in with the other guy. He also was only in profile, until for one second he turned and faced the camera. He looked directly at it, smiling, then walked out of the frame.

  The bastard knew I’d get the tape. He knew and didn’t care. My chest tightened as my heart pounded. It was a game to him, a sick, twisted game.

  I rewound again and captured the screen shot of Keller, printing it out as well as emailing a copy to our tech guy to enhance.

  “That’s him,” I said.

  “Probably,” Joe said.

  “Definitely.”

  “The quality sucks, Selena.”

  “We can fix that.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “You know that’s him, right?”

  “I know that’s him, but I also want to catch him as badly as you do. And he’s not seen on tape with the vic, right?”

  “No,” I admitted, “it’s circumstantial, but it might be enough to get a warrant for his clothing.”

  “We should wait until the victim is out of surgery.”

  “She may be unconscious, or incoherent. There’s no guarantee we’ll be able to talk to her before tomorrow or the next day. Enough time for Keller to clean his car and destroy his clothes.” If he hadn’t done so already. But I couldn’t think that way. We had to cover all our bases.

  Joe said, “You’re right, but I still don’t think the judge is going to go for it. Any other rapist, yes—but no grey areas with Keller. Did you interview her friends last night?”

  “One of them came by the hospital,” I said. “She didn’t know Keller, hadn’t seen anyone following them, wasn’t helpful at all.”

  I finished watching the tape. Ashley left with her friends at 10:56. Keller didn’t leave the bar—at least, he wasn’t on tape as leaving. But there were several points on the disk where larger groups left together, and the camera didn’t capture every face.

  “I need to get someone on this looking for his suit, or the way he walks, or something,” I said.

  “Good luck with that,” Joe said, sitting back down.

  We were short-staffed and underfunded. If I wanted someone to go through the disk, I’d need to do it myself.

  Joe was re-reading my report. “You have a clear timeline for the attack—only a small window.”

  “It’s not enough,” I said. Joe grunted his agreement.

  Ashley and her friends had been captured on the parking garage security camera at 11:03. They’d entered the garage, which was built under the freeway and easily accessible to pedestrians, and walked as a group to a row of cars. After Ashley parted from her friends, she sat in her car for several minutes. It was impossible to see what she was doing, but I imagined she was going through her purse looking for her cell phone.

  At 11:08, she got out of her car and headed back the way she’d come. We knew from several witnesses at Fat Annie’s that she’d never made it back to the bar. At 11:40, a 911 call came in from a lone female who said she heard someone crying in the alley, but was too scared to investigate. The responding officer had interviewed the woman, but she hadn’t seen anything. I planned on talking to her later, but didn’t hold out much hope that the not-so-good Samaritan would be helpful.

  I’d walked the stretch from the garage to the bar and it took five minutes tops. The narrow walkway that led to the alley where she’d been raped was halfway between the bar and the garage. I had uniformed officers going to every business on the street, asking if they had any security footage, but I hadn’t spotted any active cameras in our hot spot.

  My guess was Keller was waiting for her to return. If she was with friends, he would have let her pass. But she was alone, and he grabbed her.

  For him, it was the excitement of the hunt. Not knowing if tonight would be the night for victory, waiting in anticipation for his prey to walk into his trap. He was patient, but bold. A deadly combination.

  I had to stop him.

  I stared at the print out of Keller from Fat Annie’s. “I hope this is enough for the judge.”

  “It might, if we get someone like Forsyth.”

  “Say a prayer.”

  Chapter Three

  Unfortunately, Marianne Forsyth was preparing for a trial and at eight in the morning. Only Judge Robert Healy was hearing warrants. His clerk said he was in a meeting and we sat down to wait.

  Joe said, “The ADA wants to see me for a few minutes. I’m going to run upstairs—be back in two shakes.” He must have seen concern in my expression because he added, “I promise.”

  “Fine.” It wasn’t fine—we’d wanted Judge Marianne Forsyth because she was liberal in granting warrants for sex offenders. Healy was a former civil lawyer turned criminal court judge when appointed by the governor the year I was born. He was a dictator in court. Great when you got him on the bench because he didn’t take bullshit from anyone—in fact, I didn’t think he particularly liked anyone. If you had your case in order, you fared well in his court. If you let one thing slide, didn’t cross one damn ‘t’, you were reamed.

  Getting a search warrant was a bitch. We were so screwed.

  I couldn’t sit. I was both tired and antsy. I had Keller on camera, but that didn’t mean he’d raped Ashley Young. I didn’t have a frame where the two of them were together, and Ashley hadn’t told me anything specific. It was going to be a stretch, but I had to try. I hoped she was out of surgery by the time I got to the hospital and if I could just get one word from her positively ID’ing Keller, I’d have him.

  Keller was sly. The one positive ID I had was tossed out, and the victim was so upset and angry with the system, I couldn’t get her to talk to me. Maybe he’d scared her, intimidated her. I didn’t put anything past Keller. Maggie Van Allen just wanted it all to “go away.”

  But rape didn’t just go away. It stayed with you, even when you beat it. Even in victory, it was a reminder of the past.

  In five rapes, I had a lot of circumstantial evidence on Keller, but not enough for the DA to go after a prominent government lawyer. Proximity was the primary evidence—Keller had been at the same location as each victim the night she’d been attacked. The only other commonality was that the victim was blond and left their cell phone or another personal item at an event or bar, then went back to retrieve it. Two were attacked before they returned; three were attacked after they retrieved the item.

  The rapist had left DNA on the first victim, and that’s why I desperately needed Keller’s DNA. But that warrant had been quashed two victims ago, when I first put Keller on my radar. I needed something substantive in order to arrest Keller and force him under state law to submit for DNA testing.

  The judge’s chamber door opened. A voice from the doorway caught my attention.

  “Thank you, Judge. I’ll see you on Friday.” He closed the door.

  Greg Keller.

  He stepped out and didn’t seem surprised to see me waiting, the warrant I’d written up at the station in my hands.

  “Detective Black. Selena Black.”

  He’d caught me off-guard. I hadn’t expected to see him. My first urge was to bolt—I was between Keller and the door. Then shame washed over me, because I had sworn to protect and serve, and that meant facing evil head on.

  He’s only a man. Small, weak, needing to prove his dominance over women by hurting them.

  I’d read No Exit in college, a twisted story about three people stuck in Hell. For eternity, they’re locked together in a windowless roo
m, each the other’s torturer. No violence, just hate and hopelessness.

  I sat, filled with the same hate and hopelessness. Greg Keller was my personal purgatory, the rapist I couldn’t catch.

  When I looked at Keller, I saw evil, a twisted ugliness that overshadowed his clear blue eyes, aristocratic features, and square chin—a psychotic Ken doll that wanted to damage and deface all the Barbies out there.

  He leered at my discomfort. “The early bird catches the worm, Selena.”

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded. My voice, at least, hadn’t failed me.

  His lips curled into a snarky grin. “Meeting with an old friend, Detective. And you?”

  He knew. I saw it in his eyes. He knew I was going after him again, just like he’d known I’d been warned to back off after Madelyn Lane’s ID was tossed by a judge. Was he planning on glad-handing it with every judge the morning after he attacks another woman? So when I came calling, they’d toss me on my ass?

  “I will prove you’re a rapist.”

  His expression didn’t change at first, but his eyes darted quickly right and left, to see if the clerk had returned. When he realized we were alone, he leaned closer to me and my body betrayed me.

  I flinched.

  And he knew I was scared.

  “You can’t,” he whispered.

  The door opened and Keller turned, almost walking into Joe. Joe was surprised, glanced from Keller to me, then was about to speak when Keller said, “Keep your bitch on a leash or I’ll have both your badges.”

  Keller stomped out as if I had attacked him.

  “What the hell happened?” Joe asked.

  “Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

  “He was livid.”

  “It was an act.”

  But I could see Joe doubted my word. Something cracked inside, despair flooding through me.

  “Did the judge call us yet?”