by Twisted
“Something better than being honored?”
He kicked one shoe with the other.
“C’mon, Isaac,” said Petra. “We common folk don’t get the chance to hobnob with the powers-that-be. I’m living vicariously through you.” She cupped her hand around her mouth. “Is it true what they say about Reyes? Is there a slight flatulence problem?”
Isaac smiled weakly.
Petra said, “What can I do? Mr. Gomez is the soul of discretion.”
He laughed loud enough to make Kaplan and Salas turn. Then he grew serious. “A date,” he blurted. “I had to go on a lunch date.”
“Had to? You make it sound like homework.”
Isaac sighed. “In a sense it was. I was assigned by my mother. She thinks I need to get out more.”
“You disagree.”
“I’m social enough, Detective Connor. I just don’t need— The problem is my mother was of the firm belief that once I entered college, some golden gate of sociability would open. Sometimes I think she’s more concerned about that than academics.”
“Mothers care,” said Petra. What did she know? Her own had died pushing her out.
“They do—she does, but . . .” Isaac rubbed his cheek. When his hand dropped, Petra saw a red, raised spot. Fulminating zit. Brains or not, he was clinging to adolescence.
He said, “My mother’s notion of maximal personal success is that I meet a girl who elevates me socially. She was never comfortable visiting my school—it was an upscale private school. She felt herself inferior, which was nonsense, she’s an incredible woman. But I couldn’t convince her, so she refused to have anything to do with the parents of my classmates. But I believe part of her would have liked me to hook up with one of those girls. It’s the same with her employers. They’re doctors, they’ve been mentoring me. They think she’s fabulous but she won’t step out of the servant role . . . there’s a whole Pygmalion thing going on. It’s complicated and I’m sure you’re not interested.”
He bit his lip. One eyelid ticced. Poor kid was under real pressure. Petra felt bad about ribbing him.
“Hey,” she said, “you’re smart in all kinds of ways. You’ll do what’s best for yourself.”
“I try to tell my mother. My plate’s full enough, I’m not ready for a relationship.”
Petra pointed to the chair alongside her desk. He sat down heavily.
“Lousy date, huh?”
He grinned. “I’m that obvious.”
“Well,” she said, “I figure Mom sets you up with a high I.Q. beauty queen, maybe you’d forget about your plate.”
“The girl was nice enough, but not—We had absolutely nothing in common. Her family’s new in our church. She’s religious and modest, and for my mother, that’s enough.”
“No beauty queen,” said Petra.
“She looks like a mastiff.”
“Ouch.”
“That was cruel,” said Isaac. “But so what? She was also aggressive. Sweet in church but take her to dinner and watch out.” He shook his head.
“Aggressive about what?”
“Everything. She had opinions on matters about which she knew nothing. Religion really got her going. Nuclear-strength dogma. We’d barely sat down and she was telling me I needed to go to church more often. Instructing me what to believe. And not with any particular theological elegance.”
“Oh, boy,” said Petra. “You’re not even married and she’s running your life.”
He laughed again. “You sound like a guy. I mean, that’s something one guy would say to another.” Blushing deeply. “Not that you’re not feminine, you’re very feminine, it’s just that— Are you married?”
“Used to be. It didn’t end because I tried to run his life. I was the most perfect spouse in the universe but he was a lout.”
He said, “You’re joking but I bet that’s true.” He looked at her, helplessly.
“In terms of sounding like a guy,” she said, “I grew up with five brothers. You pick stuff up.”
“That must help in terms of working here—the predominantly male environment.”
Somehow the subject had changed. She said, “It does help.”
He said, “Anyway . . . about those June 28 cases. I neglected to mention that four of six took place here, in Hollywood Division. I’m not sure yet if it adds another layer of statistical significance to the—”
“We’re a high-crime district, Isaac.”
“Several divisions have higher homicide rates. Ramparts, Central, Newton—”
“Maybe you’ve got a point, Isaac. I promise to take a look, but right now I’m kind of tied up.”
“The Paradiso shootings.”
“Exactly.”
“Has that girl been identified?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay. Sorry for—”
“She had an abortion within the last month or two. That say anything to you?”
“The obvious thing,” he said, “is a possible source of conflict. With the father.”
“Over the abortion?”
“I was thinking of the pregnancy itself. In certain situations, an unwanted pregnancy would be a pretty robust motive for homicide, wouldn’t you say? Theodore Dreiser wrote a wonderful book about it—”
“She terminated the pregnancy, Isaac.”
“But maybe she kept that fact to herself.”
Petra considered that. Why not? “It’s an angle. Thanks. Now all I have to do is figure out who she is.”
She flashed him a smile and turned back to the mess on her desk.
“Detective Connor . . .”
“Yes?”
“Would it be feasible for me to ride with you? To observe what you do firsthand? I promise not to be intrusive.”
“It’s pretty boring, Isaac. Lots of routine, lots of dead ends.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “The longer I’m here, the more I realize how ignorant I am. Writing a dissertation about crime and I don’t know the first thing about it.”
“I’m not sure riding along will help you much.”
“I think it will, Detective.”
A trickle of sweat made its way down his left hairline and reached his ear. He swiped at it. How long had he been building up the courage to ask her? Behind the precocious pronouncements was so much anxiety.
“Okay,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, when I recontact some of the witnesses on the Paradiso case, you can come along. But only on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Start calling me Petra. If you don’t, I’ll start calling you ‘Dr. Gomez.’ ”
He smiled. “I’m a ways off from earning that.”
“I’ve earned my title but I’m forgoing the honor,” she said. “You’re making me feel old.”
CHAPTER
8
The bus that Isaac took to the Union District was a big, loose-in-the-rivets, half-empty, diesel-fed dinosaur that rumbled and bumped through dark city streets, brakes squeaking, belching pollution. Brightly lit; a crime-reduction measure.
By car, the ride from Hollywood would be twenty minutes. Using the MTA, an easy hour.
He sat at the back, read the latest edition of Davison’s Abnormal Psychology. His fellow riders were mostly cleaning women and restaurant workers, a few drunks. Nearly all Latino, mostly illegal, he figured. Just as his parents had been until the Doctors had intervened.
And now he was wearing his father’s hand-me-down suit and playing at scholar.
There but for the grace . . .
When he got home, his father would probably be at work. Lately, Papa had been taking a second shift dipping sheets into noxious vats, wanting to earn a little extra money. Isaiah, home from his roofing job, would be sleeping, and Joel, of late a gadabout, might or might not be around.
His mother would be in the kitchen, changed from her uniform to a faded housedress and slippers. A pot of albondigas soup simmering on the stove. A rack of tamales, both savory and sweet, fresh
out of the oven.
Isaac had barely eaten all day, taking care to be hungry for her food. He’d learned the hard way his freshman year, eating a late lunch on campus and arriving home with insufficient appetite. Not a word of protest from Mama as she wrapped his uneaten dinner in foil. But those sad looks . . .
Tonight, he’d gorge as she sat and watched him. Eventually, he’d try to get her to talk about her day. She’d claim it was boring and want to know about the exciting world he lived in. He’d resist, then finally parcel out a few details. Not the crime stuff. The numbers and polysyllables.
A few well-chosen polysyllables always impressed Mama. When he tried to simplify his language, she stopped him, told him she understood.
She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. In any language multiple regression analysis and percentage of variance accounted for were incomprehensible except to the initiated. But he knew better than to patronize her.
Sensitive guy that he was.
One of the initiated.
Whatever that meant.
He’d dozed off and dreamed when the bus came to a quick stop. Jolted awake, he looked up in time to see the driver throw out a homeless man who’d failed to produce the fare.
Angry words and clenched fists shot through the bus’s wheezing door as the wretchedly filthy evictee stood in the gutter and howled vengeance. Isaac watched the man, bent over in shame, turned tiny by the bus’s departure.
The driver cursed and put on speed.
The cusp of violence. So much of the crime Isaac had studied began that way.
Not the June 28 murders, though. They were something different, he was sure of it. You could lie with numbers, but the numbers he’d divined weren’t lying.
Now to convince Detective Connor.
Petra.
Thinking of her by name was unsettling; it reminded him that she was a woman.
He sat lower in his seat, wanting to sink out of view. Not that any of his co-riders were the least bit interested in him. Some were regulars and surely recognized him, but no one spoke.
The geek in the borrowed suit.
Occasionally someone—a woman not unlike his mother—smiled as he boarded. But for the most part everyone wanted to rest.
The Somnolent Express.
Before being wakened, his dreams had been pleasant. Something featuring Detective Connor.
Petra.
Had he been in it? He wasn’t sure.
She had. Lithe and graceful, that efficient helmet of black hair.
The crisp features. Ivory skin, blue vein tracings at the periphery . . .
She wasn’t anywhere close to the contemporary female ideal: blond, busty, bubbly. She was the antithesis of all that, and Isaac respected her doubly for being herself, not giving in to crass social pressures.
A serious person. There seemed to be very little that amused her.
She always dressed in black. Her eyes were dark brown, but in a certain light, they appeared black as well. Searching eyes—working eyes—not vehicles for flirtation.
The overall impression was a young Morticia Addams, and Isaac had heard other detectives refer to her as Morticia. But also as “Barbie.” That he didn’t get.
There was plenty about Hollywood Division, about police work in general, that continued to elude him. His professors thought academia was complex, but now, after time spent with cops, it was all he could do not to burst out in laughter at departmental meetings.
Petra was no Barbie.
Just the opposite. Focused, intense.
He’d lain awake in bed more than once, imagining what her breasts looked like, only to shake himself out of that, appalled at his vulgarity.
Small, firm breasts—stop.
Still . . . she was a beautiful woman.
CHAPTER
9
Petra stayed at her desk until well after midnight, forgetting about Isaac and his theories and anything else that didn’t relate to the Paradiso shootings.
She talked to some Hollywood gang cops and their cohorts in Ramparts. They’d heard nothing about the killings being turf-related but promised to keep checking. Then she attempted to recontact all eighteen kids she’d interviewed in the parking lot.
Twelve were home. In five cases, scared and/or indignant parents tried to block access. Petra charmed her way past all of them but the teens reiterated complete ignorance.
Among the six she didn’t reach were her two nervous ones, Bonnie Ramirez and Sandra Leon. No answer at either number, no machines.
She got on the computer, figuring to surf her way through some more missing kid sites. Her mail tag was up so she checked that first.
Departmental garbage and an e-mail from Mac Dilbeck.
p: luc and i were out in the field today nothing at our end, what about yours? there’s talk if we don’t make progress of giving it over to HOMSPEC wouldn’t that be fun. maybe we should pick your genius kids brain we could use a good brain to pick around here. m.
She e-mailed back:
nothing plus nothing equals you-know-what. going home. tomorrow i check out a couple of nervous w’s. planning to take the genius along. though if you want him you can have him. p.
But once she logged off and got her purse from her locker, the thought of an empty apartment repelled her. Filling herself a cup of detective-room coffee, she bought some insomnia.
Someone had left half a box of sweet rolls out by the machine. The pastries looked none too fresh—the custard ones were hardening around the edges. But the apple seemed passable so she brought it back to her desk along with the mocha-flavored Liquid Plumber.
Kaplan and Salas had left and no one had replaced them. She sat there alone, going through old messages and nonessential mail, filling out a long-overdue pension form and one for departmental health insurance.
What remained was Isaac’s summary.
June 28.
She separated the Hollywood cases from the others, copied down the vics’ names, got back on the computer, and logged on to the station’s stat file.
Just as Isaac claimed, all four remained open. Of the four primary D’s assigned to the case, she recognized two.
Neil Wahlgren had caught the most recent murder—Curtis Hoffey, the twenty-year-old male hustler. Jewell Blank, the runaway teen bludgeoned in Griffith Park had been assigned to Max Stokes.
Neil had transferred to one of the Valley divisions, wanting to cut down on drivetime. A while back—not too long after Hoffey. And Max Stokes had retired nearly a year ago.
Meaning both cases could have gotten short shrift.
Both Neil and Max were competent, by-the-books guys. Would they have taken the time to work whodunits hard knowing they were leaving soon?
Petra wanted to think so.
The cases were certain to have been transferred but the computer didn’t list the newly assigned detectives.
Onward to the next one. Coral Langdon, the woman who’d died with her dog up in the Hollywood Hills.
That one had been handled by Shirley Lenois. Seeing her name made Petra’s eyes ache.
When Petra had started at Hollywood, Shirley had been the only other female Homicide D. A short, stocky, fifty-two-year-old woman with a corona of yellow-gray hair, Shirley looked more like a substitute teacher than a detective. Married to a motorcycle vet in Traffic Division, she had five kids and treated Petra like the sixth, going out of her way to make things smooth for the Homicide virgin.
Making sure there were tampons in the ladies’ room because no one else would give a damn.
Last December, Shirley had died in a skiing accident up at Big Bear. Stupid tree, stupid goddamn tree.
Petra cried silently for a while, then wiped her eyes and moved on to the fourth Hollywood murder. First of the six, chronologically. The killing that began Isaac’s alleged series.
Marta Doebbler, the woman who’d gone to the theater with her friends. Six years ago, well before Petra’s time. Two detectives she’d never he
ard of, a DIII named Conrad Ballou and DII named Enrique Martinez.
Cops were leaving the department faster than they were coming in. Maybe another couple of retirees.
Maybe Ballou and Martinez had done their best, anyway.
Sometimes that didn’t matter.
CHAPTER
10
When Petra showed up at ten the following morning, Isaac was at his corner desk, poring over documents, pretending not to notice her arrival.
She felt hungover and queasy, in no mood for babysitting.
By ten-twenty, she’d swallowed two cups of coffee and was ready to pretend to be human. She got up, waved Isaac toward the door, and he followed her, carrying his briefcase over. No more suit, but not the button-down and khakis. Dark blue slacks, navy shirt, a navy tie. Dressing for ride-along. That monotone thing young guys did nowadays. Cute, though on Isaac it looked a bit like a costume.
They exited the building together but didn’t talk. Petra left her Accord in its spot and took the unmarked she’d signed out from the motor pool. No-smoking regulations had been in effect for years, but the car reeked of stale cigars, and when she started the engine, it protested before kicking in.
“Bad equipment,” she told Isaac. “Talk to Councilman Reyes about that.”
“We don’t talk on a regular basis.”
She steered out onto the street. He wasn’t smiling. Had she offended him? Too bad.
“What we’re going to do today,” she said, “is recontact two witnesses. Both are sixteen-year-old girls, both seemed nervous when I interviewed them the first time. One might have a reason to be nervous that has nothing to do with the case. She’s got leukemia.”
Isaac said, “That would do it.”
“You okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’m asking because you seem a bit quiet.”
“I don’t have anything to say.” A beat. “As opposed to most of the time.”
“Nah,” she said, “you’re not gabby, you’re smart.”
More silence.
She steered the unmarked clunker through smoggy Hollywood streets. Isaac looked out the window.
Eric did that when she drove. Eric noticed things.
