The Violated

by Bill Pronzini

  THE VIOLATED

  For Marcia

  By the Same Author

  The Hidden

  Blue Lonesome

  A Wasteland of Strangers

  Nothing but the Night

  In an Evil Time

  Step to the Graveyard Easy

  The Alias Man

  The Crimes of Jordan Wise

  The Other Side of Silence

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Part One: Saturday, April 16

  Part Two: Sunday, April 17–Thursday, April 21

  Part Three: Friday, April 22

  Part Four: Saturday, April 23–Sunday, April 24

  A Note on the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

  —Warren E. Burger

  All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

  —Reinhold Niebuhr

  PROLOGUE

  The dead man lay faceup on the grassy riverbank, legs together and ankles crossed, arms spread-eagled above his head with palms upturned and fingers curled, in a grotesque parody of the crucifixion. He was positioned closer to the water’s edge than to the asphalt path that paralleled the river, the soles of his shoes less than a yard from its thin rind of mud. Early-morning April sunlight laid a pale gold sheen on the waxen features, causing the sightless eyes to shine as if with a faint inner fire. Flies and other insects crawled in the wounds in head and groin, though the blood was dry now.

  Two boys on their way through Echo Park for a Saturday morning of fishing saw the body shortly after they emerged from the wooded area above where it lay. They ventured close enough for a clear look, then turned and raced back to the parking lot beyond the picnic area and children’s playground, where the older of the two used his cell phone to call 911 as he’d been taught to do in an emergency.

  The first patrol unit, responding to the Santa Rita Police Department dispatcher’s Code 2, possible 187 radio call, arrived in a little more than five minutes. The officers, Leo Malatesta and John Jablonski, questioned the boys briefly, then followed the route the boys had taken to the riverbank. After a brief visual examination of the corpse, Malatesta, the senior member of the team, told his partner to make sure both boys stayed put in case they were needed for further questioning. He then flipped the switch on the shoulder radio mic velcroed to his uniform epaulet to confirm the 187 and request immediate assistance.

  While he waited, Malatesta studied the crime scene. The dead man appeared to have been shot twice, maybe three times, with a handgun of undetermined caliber—a revolver, if the lack of shell casings in the vicinity was any indication. Probably right here on the bank, since there were no drag marks or other indications that the homicide had taken place elsewhere and the victim transported here.

  Judging from the dried blood, the state of rigor, and the accumulation of insects, he had been dead since sometime the previous night. On a cold night this time of year, the area would have been deserted after dark. The dew-damp grass was thick and spongy, the ground beneath it fairly solid; you could tell where it had been walked on, but there wouldn’t be any clear footprints. Here and there around the body the grass was mashed down but not torn up as it would have been in any kind of struggle or dragging. In addition to the asphalt path above, an irregular, man-made path angled upward through the grass into the line of evergreen trees above, the route the boys had taken. Victim and perp or perps could have used either to get to this point.

  There was little chance of anyone having witnessed the crime. This was a sheltered spot, trees hiding the picnic area to the north, more trees growing down close to the water’s edge to the south. Malatesta turned toward the river. The recent drought had narrowed it some, but it was still fairly wide here, and brown with silt. It ran in a more or less straight line past the park, then bellied sharply eastward to where it tapered down on its course through the town proper. Farmland lined the far acreage at this point, the few visible buildings too far away for anyone to see over to this bank in the daytime, much less at night.

  That was all there was for him to look at and conclude. A careful search of the area and a hands-on search of the corpse was the Investigative Unit’s job.

  He was still looking out at the river when his partner returned. “Coroner and ambulance on the way,” he told Jablonski. “Lieutenant Ortiz and the rest of the IU likewise.”

  “Chief Kells?”

  “Also being notified.”

  “Kids’ll stay put. I got their names and addresses to make sure.” Jablonski looked around. “Any sign of the weapon?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  “Thrown in the river. Or else the perp took it away with him.” Jablonski moved to where he had a better view of the dead man’s face. “You know him, Leo?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Not with all that blood—” Then, in sudden recognition: “Christ!”

  “Yeah,” Malatesta said. “It’s him, all right. No wonder the shooter put a round or two in his crotch.”

  “If that’s why he was killed.”

  “Why the hell else? Capped him in his junk first so he’d suffer some, then finished him off.”

  “Execution-style.”

  “Not quite. No star-shaped laceration, just powder tattooing. Close range but not a contact wound.”

  “Mad as hell, whoever pulled the trigger.”

  “Right.”

  “Why lay him out like this, I wonder.”

  Malatesta made no comment.

  “Funny,” Jablonski said. “Even with the guy’s past sex crimes record, the DA wouldn’t charge him on account of insufficient evidence. If he’d still been in jail on the other felony rap, this wouldn’t’ve happened.”

  “Not now, it wouldn’t. Not here. Some other time, some other place, maybe.”

  “You think he was guilty, Leo?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Bound to be a hell of an uproar whether he was or not. Another media swarm, too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe they’ll interview us, put us on TV. First officers on the scene.”

  Malatesta shrugged. “You go back to the parking lot, Johnny. I’ll wait here. Don’t let anybody come down except the lieutenant and his crew.”

  “Right.”

  Alone again, Malatesta stood over the body and watched the feeding insects. One of the swarm of flies, a big bluebottle with its wings glistening in the pale sunlight, sat on a staring eyeball. Ants moved in a solid line from the torn and bloody crotch across a pant leg and down into the grass.

  He spat into the mud rind beyond the up-pointed shoes. “Just what you deserved, you son of a bitch,” he said. “Whoever blew you away ought to get a medal.”

  PART ONE

  SATURDAY, APRIL 16

  LIANE TORREY

  When I opened the door and saw Police Chief Kells and the detective lieutenant, Ortiz, standing on the porch, I knew right away why they were here. The other times they’d come, together and separately, it had been to hound and arrest Martin and search the house and car and question me, but this time it was different, terribly different. I could see it in their faces.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he,” I said. “My husband is dead.”

  Ortiz started to say something, but Kells silenced him with a gesture.

  “Answer me. Is he dead?”

  “Yes,” Kells said. “We’re sorry, Mrs. Torrey.”

  No, you’re not. You’re not one bit sorry, either of you. “How? Where?”

  He cleared his throat. “It would be better if we talked inside.”

  I said, “All right,” but I couldn’t seem to move. I’d been cold all morning—no
w my skin felt as if it had been sprayed with dry ice.

  The two cops looked at each other. Big men, both of them, Kells fair-haired and slow-speaking, Ortiz dark and sharp-tongued. Neither wore a uniform, now or at any of the other times I’d seen them. The chief’s conservative blue suit was rumpled, the knot in his plain tie crooked, as if he’d dressed in a hurry; the lieutenant’s gray suit and patterned tie were immaculate. I don’t know why I should have noticed any of that now. I hadn’t paid attention to how they were dressed the other times.

  Kells took a half step forward, tentatively lifting his hand. I thought he was going to touch me, and I couldn’t have stood that. I willed myself to turn around, walk back into the house. Slow, heel and toe, my legs so numb I could barely feel myself moving. I heard them come in behind me, one of them close the door. In the living room I lowered myself into one of the Naugahyde chairs. Both men stayed on their feet.

  “Would you like a sweater, a blanket?” Kells asked.

  The question seemed strange until I realized I was trembling and he’d noticed it. “No. I’m all right. Tell me what happened to Martin.”

  “He was killed sometime last night.”

  “Killed. How?”

  “Not by accident, I’m afraid.”

  “How?”

  “Shot to death,” Ortiz said. He was the blunt one, the angry one who’d given Martin such a hard time. There was an undercurrent of anger in his voice now—he still believed as strongly as ever in Martin’s guilt. “In Echo Park, near the river.”

  Shot … murdered. Very little shock in that, almost none. I would have been more surprised to hear that Martin had died in a car wreck or suffered a fatal coronary. “Who shot him?”

  “We don’t know yet,” Kells said. “But we’ll find out.”

  “Will you.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, we will.”

  “Even if you do, there won’t be any justice for my husband.”

  There was a little silence that Kells seemed to find awkward. He cleared his throat again before he said, “Are you up to answering a few questions, or would you rather we came back later?”

  “Tell me something first. Do I have to see the … do I have to go look at him?”

  “No, it’s not required. Your sister or her husband can make the official identification. It might be better if you didn’t.”

  Yes, it would. I didn’t want to see Martin for the last time like that, dead. Add that sort of memory to all the other ugly ones. “Then I won’t,” I said. “Go ahead, ask your questions.”

  “We’re not sure yet exactly when the shooting took place. Sometime last night, after dark.”

  “Martin had no reason to go to Echo Park after dark.”

  “Didn’t he?” Ortiz said. “At least once?”

  Kells gave him a sharp look. I didn’t look at him at all.

  “It doesn’t appear that your husband went to the park voluntarily,” Kells said. “At least his car wasn’t found in the vicinity, or anywhere else yet. Do you have any idea where he might have gone last evening, who he might have met?”

  “No.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “After dinner. About seven.”

  “Did he say anything to you before he left?”

  “No.” Not even good-bye.

  Ortiz said, “Closemouthed about everything, as usual.”

  “Not everything, no.” Just the things he thought might hurt me, hurt us. “Protective.”

  “How’s that again?”

  “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “What kind of mood was he in?”

  Restless, uncommunicative, depressed. The way he’d been ever since they arrested him two weeks ago and he was fired from his job because of that and all the suspicion that went with it. But I couldn’t tell them that—they would have put the wrong meaning on it again. “No different than usual,” I said.

  “Taking one of his night drives. Is that what you thought?”

  “Yes.”

  “Always went alone. Never once invited you along.”

  He preferred to go by himself, it was his way of unwinding so he could sleep. We’d both told Ortiz that before. He didn’t believe it, so why say it again?

  “But not last night,” he said. “There would not have been enough time for a long drive before he was killed.”

  I had nothing to say to that, either.

  “Did he contact you at any time after he left?”

  “No. I went to a movie with my sister and I had my phone turned off, but there weren’t any voice mail messages. And no call after I got home.”

  “He didn’t usually stay out all night, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Weren’t you worried when he didn’t come home or call?”

  “Yes, I was worried.”

  “But you didn’t report him missing this morning.”

  “What good would it have done if I had? You’d have just thought he ran away.”

  “But you didn’t think that.”

  “No, I didn’t. He had no reason to run or hide, no matter what you think.”

  “Mrs. Torrey,” Kells said, “did anything … well, anything we should know about happen the past few days?”

  “Such as what?”

  “Someone threatening your husband, or exhibiting hostility toward him.”

  Two or three anonymous calls. Whispers, stares, glares, pointing fingers whenever people recognized him from his picture in the papers and on TV. Sex offender, suspected rapist. Little gusts of suspicion and hate like a polluted wind. But that wasn’t what Kells meant.

  “Two days ago,” I said, “a man accosted Martin in the parking lot at Safeway.”

  “Accosted him how? Physically?”

  “Not exactly. He called Martin vicious names, spat in his face.”

  “Threaten him with bodily harm?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Do you know the man’s name?”

  “Yes. Martin worked with him at the brewery. Spivey.”

  “Jack Spivey,” Ortiz said. “Husband of the second assault victim.”

  “We’ll have a talk with him,” Kells said. “About last evening, Mrs. Torrey. Did you have visitors or calls while you and your husband were home together?”

  “My sister called before dinner, to invite me to the movie.” You need to get out of the house, Liane, take your mind off all the trouble. It’s a comedy, supposed to be very funny. But Holly was wrong, it hadn’t been even a little bit funny. “That’s all.”

  There were a few more questions, not many, not important, and then Kells said again that they were sorry for my loss, as if he honestly meant it, and then they left me alone.

  I sat in the silence. Once I closed my eyes, but I didn’t like the dark, I’d come to hate the dark, and I opened them again right away. I knew I ought to get up and call Holly and Nick, let them know what had happened, but again I seemed to have lost the will and the ability to move. Frozen in the chair. Trembling inside and out. Thinking: He’s dead, he’s gone, I’ll never see him again. Thinking: God help me, maybe it’s better this way. Better for both of us.

  I wondered how long it would be before I was able to cry for him. Or if I’d ever be able to cry at all.

  GRIFFIN KELLS

  Neither Robert nor I spoke for a while after we left the Torrey house. We’d come in my cruiser, and now that the task of informing and questioning the widow was done, I was a little sorry I hadn’t come alone. The unpleasant duty would have been less difficult, less stressful, if Ortiz hadn’t been present.

  When I turned onto Hillsdale Avenue, I said to break the silence, “You were a little rough on Mrs. Torrey.”

  “You know why.”

  “Still. Recent widow, grieving. She didn’t have anything to do with the assaults, even if her husband did.”

  “Except possibly concealing evidence or guilty knowledge.”

  We’d been over that befor
e. I repeated what I’d said previously, that she didn’t strike me as the type.

  “She stood by him the entire time in Ohio,” Robert said. “Moved out here with him, arranged his bail on the felony charge, kept defending him.”

  “Love and loyalty don’t have to mean knowledge or complicity. Assuming Torrey was guilty of more than just failure to register as a nonviolent sex offender.”

  “Short step between nonviolent and violent. He was guilty, all right.”

  I wished I were similarly convinced, but no evidence supported Robert’s conviction. “No attacks since you first latched onto him,” I pointed out.

  “Only a little more than two weeks, and his MO was one assault per month. He wasn’t stupid. Now that he’s dead, there won’t be any more.”

  We lapsed into silence again. Robert was a good cop, a good man, but he had a stubborn streak and there was no point in arguing with him on the subject. He also had a constant need to prove himself, despite an exemplary record and one of the top ratings in the California Peace Officers Association’s highly specialized “advanced officer” training course. It might have had something to do with his heritage, not that there was any obvious prejudice in Santa Rita against Latinos or any other ethnic group; another IU officer, Sergeant Al Bennett, was African American, one of our patrol officers was Chinese and two others Latino, there was a black woman on the city council, a Latino on the Planning Commission.

  Or maybe it was just part of Robert’s DNA; in addition to being stubborn he was intense, hardworking, dedicated, ambitious. Hard to judge exactly what drove him because it was not the kind of thing you could discuss with him. He didn’t invite personal confidences. Not that he was aloof or standoffish, just that he was all-business in the work environment. He reserved his private life for family and friendships outside the department.

  When he got his teeth into something, he was like a dog with a bone: he wouldn’t let go until it was finished to his satisfaction. He’d had his teeth deep into the serial rapes from the beginning, and not only because of his position as SRPD’s head investigator. He was a staunch Catholic with a strong sense of moral rectitude. And he had two teenage daughters and an attractive wife. Even though he’d never said so, I suspected he was dogged by the possibility, however remote, that one of them might wind up defiled, beaten, humiliated, like the four victims to date.