by Twisted
Wanda Leticia Duarte, seventeen. Gorgeous, pale, with long black hair, rings on eight of her fingers, five ear-pierces. Three chest shots. Left side, bingo.
Kennerly Scott Dalkin, fifteen, looked closer to twelve. Fair-skinned, freckled, shaved head the color of putty. Black leather jacket and skull pendant hanging from a leather thong around the neck that had been pierced by a bullet. His getup and scuffed Doc Martens said he’d been aiming for tough, hadn’t even come close. In his wallet was a card proclaiming him to be a member of the honor society at Birmingham High.
The unidentified girl was probably Hispanic. Short, busty, with shoulder-length curly hair dyed rust at the tips. Tight white top, tight black jeans—Kmart house brand. Pink sneakers—the shoes Petra had spied—not much larger than a size five.
Another head shot, the puckered black hole just in front of her right ear. Four others in her torso. The pockets of her jeans had been turned inside out. Petra inspected her cheap leatherette purse. Chewing gum, tissues, twenty bucks cash, two packets of condoms.
Safe sex. Petra kneeled by the girl’s side. Then she got up to do her job.
Eighteen know-nothings.
She addressed them as a group, tried coming on gently, being a pal, stressing the importance of cooperation to prevent something like this from happening again. Her reward was eighteen blank stares. Pressing the group elicited a few slow head shakes. Maybe some of it was shock, but Petra sensed she was boring them.
“Nothing you can tell me?” she asked a slim, redheaded boy.
He scrunched his lips and shook his head.
She had them form a line, took down names and addresses and phone numbers, acted casual as she checked out their nonverbal behavior.
Two nervous ones stood out, a serious handwringer and a nonstop foot-tapper. Both girls. She held them back, let the others go.
Bonnie Ramirez and Sandra Leon, both sixteen. They dressed similarly—tight tops, low riders, and high-heeled boots—but didn’t know each other. Bonnie’s top was black, some sort of cheap crepelike fabric, and she’d caked her face with makeup to cover up gritty acne. Her hair was brown, frizzy, tied up in a complicated ’do that had probably taken hours to construct but managed to look careless. Still wringing her hands, as Petra reiterated the importance of being open and honest.
“I am honest,” she said. Fluent English, that musical East L.A. tincture that stretches final words.
“What about the car, Bonnie?”
“I told you, I didn’t see it.”
“Not at all?”
“Nothing. I gotta go, I really gotta go.”
Wring, wring, wring.
“What’s the rush, Bonnie?”
“George’s only babysitting till one and it’s way after that.”
“You’ve got a kid?”
“Two years old,” said Bonnie Ramirez, with a mixture of pride and amazement.
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“What’s his name?”
“Rocky.”
“Got a picture?”
Bonnie reached for her sequined handbag, then stopped herself. “What do you care? George said if I don’t get home on time he’ll like just leave and Rocky sometimes gets up like in the night, I don’t wanna him to be all like scared.”
“Who’s George?”
“The father,” said the girl. “Rocky’s a George, too. Jorge, Junior. I call him Rocky to make him different from George ’cause I don’t like how George acts.”
“How does George act?”
“He doesn’t give me nothing.”
Sandra Leon’s blouse was skin-hugging champagne satin, off one shoulder. Smooth, bare shoulder stippled by goose bumps. She’d stopped tapping her foot, switched to hugging herself tightly, bunching soft, unfettered breasts to the center of her narrow chest. Dark skin clashed with a huge mass of platinum blond hair. Deep red lipstick, an appliqué mole above her lip. She wore cheap, fake-o gold jewelry, lots of it. Her shoes were rhinestone mules. Parody of sexy; sixteen going on thirty.
Before Petra could ask, she said, “I don’t know nothing.”
Allowing her eyes to drift to the victims. To pink sneakers.
Petra said, “Wonder where she got those shoes.”
Sandra Leon looked everywhere but at Petra. “Why would I know?” Biting her lip.
“You okay?” said Petra.
The girl forced herself to meet Petra’s gaze. Her eyes were dull. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Petra didn’t answer.
“Can I go now?”
“You’re sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”
The dull eyes narrowed. Sudden hostility; it seemed misplaced. “I don’t even have to talk to you.”
“Says who?”
“The law.”
“You have experience with the law?” said Petra.
“Nope.”
“But you know the law.”
“My brother’s in jail.”
“Where?”
“Lompoc.”
“For what?”
“Stealing a car.”
“Your brother’s your legal expert?” said Petra. “Look where he is.”
Sandra shrugged. The platinum hair shifted.
A wig.
That made Petra take a closer look at her. Notice something else about the girl’s eyes. Dull because they were yellow around the edges.
“You okay?”
“I will be when you let me go.” Sandra Leon righted her hairpiece. Slipped a finger under the front and smiled. “Leukemia,” said the girl. “They gave me chemo at Western Peds. I used to have real nice hair. They say it’ll grow back but maybe they’re lying.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Can I go now?”
“Sure.”
The girl walked away.
CHAPTER
3
Over the next week, five detectives worked the Paradiso shootings, interviewing family members of the dead teens, recontacting potential witnesses. None of the victims had gang affiliations, all were praised as good kids. No relatives had criminal histories; no one had anything of value to say.
The girl in the pink sneakers remained unidentified, a personal failure for Petra. She’d volunteered to do the trace, worked at it, came up empty. One interesting fact from the coroner: The girl had undergone an abortion within the last few months.
Petra asked Mac Dilbeck if she could go to the media and he said sure. Three stations ran sketchy renderings of the girl’s face on the evening news. A few calls came in, nothing serious.
She worked the shoes, figuring maybe an item like that was unusual. Anything but: Kmart special, made in Macao, shipped to the States in huge lots for over a year, she even found them for resale on eBay.
She tried to recontact Sandra Leon because Sandra had given off an uneasy vibe, though maybe it was just tension about being sick. Resolving to go gently with the poor kid, Lord knew what she’d been through with her leukemia. The phone rang but no one answered.
Ten days after the mass murder, the team still hadn’t developed any leads, and at the next sit-down Mac Dilbeck informed them they’d been cut from five D’s to three: he’d remain as the principal and Luc Montoya and Petra would do backup.
After the meeting, Petra asked him, “What does that mean?”
Mac collected his papers and didn’t look up. “What does what mean?”
“Backup.”
“I’m open to ideas.”
“The unidentified girl,” said Petra. “I’m wondering if she’s the key. No one’s reported her missing.”
“Funny, isn’t it,” said Mac.
“Maybe someone wanted her really gone.”
Mac smoothed his glossy hair. “You want to try to chase her down some more?”
“I can try.”
“Yeah, it’s a good idea.” He frowned.
“What?”
He touched the front of his flat, seamed brow. “I got a big fat what-if floating
around in here. As in what if there was no motive. Just a bunch of bad guys out to kill some people.”
“Wouldn’t that be lovely,” said Petra.
“It could be, though.”
“It sure could.”
Two days of working the anonymous girl proved maddening. Petra was at her desk eating a hot dog when the sound of a throat clearing made her look up.
Isaac Gomez. Again.
He stood off to the side, wearing his usual blue button-down shirt, pressed khakis, and penny loafers. Black hair parted and plastered down like a choir boy’s. Smooth, brown face all freshly scrubbed. He held a stack of old murder books to his chest and said, “I hope I’m not bothering you, Detective Connor.”
Of course, he was. Of course, she smiled up at him.
Every time she saw Isaac, Petra thought of a Diego Rivera kid grown up. The hair straight as brush-bristle; the nutmeg skin; the huge, liquid, almond eyes; the clear hints of Indian blood in the elevated cheekbones and finely boned nose.
Isaac was five-ten, maybe one-fifty, with square shoulders, bony wrists, and a deliberate but awkward way of moving.
Chronologically, he was twenty-two.
Twenty-two and a year from his Ph.D. Lord only knew how old he was intellectually. But when conversation veered away from facts and figures, he could end up mired in aw-shucks adolescence.
Petra was sure he was a virgin.
“What’s up, Isaac?”
She expected a smile—the embarrassed smile she seemed to elicit from him. Nothing about happiness, everything about the jitters. More than once, when they were together, she’d spotted a tenting of khaki in his crotch area. The flush around the ears, the quick cover-up using a textbook or his laptop. When that happened, she pretended not to notice.
No smile this evening. He looked tense.
Eight-fourteen P.M. The detectives’ room was nearly empty, reasonable people had gone home. She’d been playing with the computer, logging on to missing kids’ databases, still trying to trace the girl in the pink shoes.
“You’re sure I’m not intruding?”
“I’m sure. What are you doing here at this hour?”
Isaac shrugged. “I got involved . . . started with one thing and ended with another.” He hefted the pile of blue notebooks. His eyes looked hot.
“Why don’t you put those down,” said Petra. “Pull up a chair.”
“I’m sorry if this is disruptive, Detective Connor. I know you’re working Paradiso, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t intrude.” Flicker of smile. “I guess that’s not true. I’ve intruded quite a bit, haven’t I?”
“Not at all,” Petra lied. The truth was, babysitting Brain Boy could be a butt-aching disruption when things got busy. She motioned to a side chair and he sat.
“What’s up?”
Isaac played with a collar button. “I was working on my multiple regression analysis—plugging in new variables . . .” He shook his head. Hard. As if emptying it of extraneous information. “You don’t need to hear all that. The essential point is I was searching for additional ways to organize my data and, serendipitously, I came across something I thought you should see.”
He stopped. Took a breath.
She said, “What, Isaac?”
“It’s going to sound . . . on the surface, it may look like nothing, some kind of coincidence . . . but I’ve done statistical tests—several tests, each one covering the mathematical weaknesses of the others—and it’s obvious to me that it’s not just factitious, not just a quirk. As far as I can tell, this is real, Detective Connor.”
Unblemished, brown cheeks were suddenly slick with sweat.
Petra sat there.
“It’s totally weird,” he went on, suddenly sounding like a kid, “but I’m sure it’s real.”
He began flipping open murder books. Started off talking softly, at a near whisper. Ended up shooting out words, like an automatic weapon.
Assault-brain.
Petra listened. Brilliant or not, the kid was an amateur, this had to be nonsense.
As if reading her mind, he said, “I promise you, it’s genuine.”
She said, “Why don’t you tell me about those statistical tests of yours?”
CHAPTER
4
Irma Gomez had been working for the Lattimores for nine years before she said anything about the problem with Isaac.
Doctors Seth and Marilyn Lattimore lived in a nineteen-room Tudor on Hudson Avenue in Hancock Park. Both Lattimores were surgeons in their sixties, he a thoracic man, she an ophthalmologist. Both were no-nonsense perfectionists, but pleasant and generous when not weighed down by professional concerns. They cared deeply for one another, had raised three children, all presently in various stages of medical training. Thursdays they played golf together because Thursday was co-ed day at the country club. In January they traveled for one week to Cabo San Lucas and every May they flew to Paris on Air France, first class, where they stayed at the same suite at the Hôtel Le Bristol and made the rounds of Michelin three-star restaurants. Back in California, every third weekend was spent at their condo in Palm Desert, where they slept in and read trashy novels and wore copious amounts of sunblock.
Six days a week, for ten years, Irma Gomez had taken the bus from her three-room apartment in the Union District and showed up at eight A.M. at the Lattimore mansion, where she let herself in through the kitchen door and disarmed the security system. She began by cleaning the entire house—the prettying-up chores, the surface work. Detailed tasks—polishing, scrubbing, serious behind-the-davenport dusting—were divided up, per Dr. Marilyn’s suggestion, because the house could be overwhelming.
Monday through Wednesday, the downstairs; Thursday through Saturday, the upstairs.
“That way,” Dr. Marilyn assured her, “you can end the week on an easier note. What with the children’s rooms being closed off.”
The “children” were twenty-four, twenty-six, and thirty, and they’d been out of the house for years.
Irma nodded assent. As it turned out, Dr. Marilyn was right, but even if she hadn’t been, Irma wouldn’t have argued.
She was a quiet woman, made quieter by her failure to learn English better during the eleven years she’d lived in the United States. She and her husband, Isaiah, had three kids of their own and by the time Irma began working for the Lattimores, Little Isaiah was four, Isaac two, and baby Joel, a rambunctious infant, active as a monkey.
At age twenty-three, Irma Flores made her way from the village of San Francisco Guajoyo in El Salvador, up through Mexico, and across the border into the United States, just east of San Diego. Prodded along in the darkness by a vicious coyote named Paz who attempted to blackmail her for more money than they’d agreed upon, then reacted to her refusal with an attempted rape.
Irma managed to free herself and, somehow, found her way to downtown L.A. To the door of the Pentecostal church where sanctuary had been promised. The pastor was a kind man. A janitor when he wasn’t preaching, he found her night-work, cleaning downtown office buildings.
Church was her solace and it was in church that she met Isaiah Gomez. His quiet demeanor and shabby clothes brought out something soft in her. His job was dying sheets of fabric in an East L.A. plant, leaning over steaming vats, inhaling toxic fumes, trudging home pale and weary in the early-morning hours.
They married and when Irma became pregnant with Little Isaiah she knew night-work would no longer do. Acquiring false papers, she registered with an agency on Larchmont Avenue. Her first boss, a film director living in the Hollywood Hills, terrified her with his rages and his drinking and his cocaine, and she quit after a week. God was good to her the second time, delivering her to the Lattimores.
Midway through the ninth year of Irma’s employment, Dr. Marilyn Lattimore came down with an uncharacteristic cold and was home for two days. Perhaps that’s why she noticed the expression of Irma’s face. For the most part, Irma labored in solitude, humming and singing an
d setting off echoes in big, vaulted rooms.
It was in the breakfast room that the conversation took place. Dr. Marilyn sat reading the paper and sipping tea and dabbing at her red, drippy nose. Irma was in the adjoining kitchen, had removed the covers of the stove-burners and was scrubbing them single-mindedly.
“Do you believe this, Irma? A week of surgeries and I come down with this arrogant little virus.” Dr. Marilyn’s voice, normally husky, now bordered on masculine.
“Back in medical school, Irma, when I rotated through pediatrics, I caught every virus known to mankind. And later, of course, when I had the children. But it’s been years since I’ve been sick and I find this positively insulting. I’m sure some patient gave it to me. I’d just like to know who so I could thank them personally.”
Dr. Marilyn was a pretty woman, small, with honey-colored hair, who looked much younger than her age. She walked two miles every morning at six A.M., followed that with half an hour on an elliptical machine, lifted free weights, ate sparely except when she was in Paris.
Irma said, “You strong, you get better soon.”
“I certainly hope so . . . thank you for that bit of optimism, Irma . . . would you be a dear and get me some of the fig preserve for my toast?”
Irma fetched the jar and brought it over.
“Thank you, dear.”
“Something else, Doctor Em?”
“No, thank you, dear. . . . Are you all right, Irma?”
Irma forced a smile. “Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure, yes, Doctor Em.”
“Hmm . . . don’t spare me because of my cold. If there’s something on your mind, get it out.”
Irma started to head back to the kitchen.
“Dear,” Dr. Marilyn called after her, “I know you well, and it’s obvious something’s on your mind. You wore that exact same look until we had your papers taken care of. Then you did it again, worrying about whether or not the amnesty would take effect. Something’s definitely on your mind.”
“I fine, Doctor Em.”
