by Baxter Clare
She paused, searching for a glimpse of sympathy from either detective and finding none.
"You know I still don't know what you—"
"Just a few more questions, Mrs. Wyche. What happened next?"
"I don't know...nothing I think. I didn't want to listen to her and Randy going at it all day so I just let her go."
"How did she get there?"
"The bus. She takes it everywhere."
"Did she go to the park often?"
The woman nodded, then realized Noah had referred to her daughter in the past tense. When she asked again what her daughter had done, it was with a genuine note of concern in her voice. Frank had been standing near the door, letting Noah ask most of the questions. Now she crossed the small room and sat on the arm of the empty chair next to Delia Wyche.
"Mrs. Wyche," she said, as gently as one could say such a thing, "Jennifer is dead."
"No," she chuckled, "you've got somebody else's Jennifer. Mine couldn't possibly be dead."
She turned her head, smiling at Noah as if in confirmation of this very simple error, and when he didn't smile she looked back at Frank. The detectives could see comprehension slowly sinking in around the shock of the words. She shook her head.
"How do you know it's Jennie?" she whispered.
"Fingerprints. But we'd like you to come to the morgue with us to confirm that," Frank said, still gentle.
Her last sentence penetrated the shock, and Mrs. Wyche broke down in huge, gulping sobs. Noah offered the wad of tissues he always carried for such occasions, as Frank left the room to call Delia Wyche's husband.
Foubarelle finally caught up to Frank in her office the next day. She was knocking back a bottle of water and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, characteristically unfeminine, characteristically Frank.
"I understand we have an ID on the girl at Carver."
Frank confirmed that, and Foubarelle complained that he always had to hear his information secondhand.
"We got with the mother at the morgue kind of late last night. I wanted to wait until she'd ID'd her but I didn't want to disturb you."
Foubarelle hated being bothered once he'd left the office. He didn't press the issue.
"So what have we got?"
Frank filled him in. When she was finished, he said, "Any word on the autopsy yet?"
"Crocetti's going to cut her. Hopefully first thing this morning."
"He said it looked similar to that girl we found at Crenshaw."
Frank almost snapped, Great. Now Crocetti's a detective, but she checked her temper. When she didn't respond, Foubarelle said impatiently, "Well? What do you think?"
Frank was debating how to tell him the truth without getting him too excited. She didn't want this case, or Agoura's, walking out the door to Robbery-Homicide. If Foubarelle was nervous about it he'd send it up in a blink. Both cases had drawn media attention, but fortunately the public didn't seem to notice. If Frank could keep a lid on them, she'd be alright. RHD only wanted high publicity, politically sensitive cases, and Foubarelle only wanted to ditch the ones he thought might make him look bad.
"I think it's possible."
"Shit." Foubarelle wiped his hand over his eyes. "Level with me, Frank. How big is this?"
Frank shrugged. Even Foubarelle had to see the deep-shit potential here. Despite her own qualms she assured him, "We can handle it."
"That doesn't tell me anything."
"Are you going to toss it to RHD?"
"If we're in over our heads, yes. If you think we can handle it, no."
Foubarelle crossed his arms and waited for her answer. He was putting the decision in Frank's hands. She really had to admire his spinelessness.
"It could be an impressive coup," she countered, throwing the ball back into his court.
"How confident are you?"
"We don't even know if this is the same perp yet. Assuming it is, he's got to slip sooner or later. All we need is some time."
"Give me an estimate."
"I can't," Frank sighed, "you know that. But we've got more on him than anyone else does."
"Oh really? Like what?"
Simply, with no trace of pretension, Frank said, "Me."
He became a fearsome football player. Even the kids on his own team were afraid of him. He didn't respect pain or fear and couldn't understand it in others. The coach frequently had to take him aside and point out that they just wanted players temporarily stopped, not maimed for life. He tried to control himself, but it felt so good to let go on the field. It was the only place he ever felt safe. He was in control out there: just him and the ball and bodies to block and slam into and hurt. He loved hurting the other players, and in a contact sport—if he was careful—he could get away with it. Yet, as satisfying as it was to see a kid writhing on the field with a torn kneecap or snapped ankle, there was still something missing.
8
Homicide victims are frequently killed by someone they know, so Frank and Noah wasted no time interviewing Randy Wyche. He had plausible excuses at the garage for the days around both Agoura's and his stepdaughter's disappearances, but because the police couldn't pinpoint the exact time of either girl's abduction, his alibi wasn't infallible. What they could more closely approximate was the time each girl died, and for those times, all Wyche had was his wife's backing. He readily admitted to not much caring for his stepdaughter, though he resented the fact that he was in any way a suspect in her death.
"We have to pursue all avenues," Frank explained patiently. "It's not uncommon for stepparents, especially in the heat of an argument, to kill their stepchildren. We see it a lot. It happens. Usually no one means for it to, but things just get out of hand..."
Frank trailed off and Noah asked, "Did you and Jennifer ever fight?"
"We had arguments, yeah, but nothing like this."
"Did you ever hit her?"
Wyche's head drooped toward the chipped linoleum, and Frank had to prod the answer.
"A couple times. She was so fresh, thought she knew everything."
"A teenager," Noah lied, "I've got one at home."
"Then you know how they are?" Wyche insisted.
"'Fraid so," he agreed, siding with the man. "Curfew's a big thing in our house. What about you? What did you and your stepdaughter argue over?"
"Everything. But the worst was when she'd just take off. It worried Dee sick. We got into a big fight about that one time. She called me a lazy fucker, said I couldn't tell her what to do, so I hauled off and smacked her. That shut her up."
"Where'd you hit her?"
"I slapped her face.”
"What did she do after that?"
"I don't know. Ran up to her room crying, I guess. Her mother went after her."
"What did you do?" Frank pressed.
"Went out into the garage, I guess."
"What do you do in the garage?"
"I got a '56 Jeep I'm fixing up."
"How long you been working on it?"
"'Bout two or three years now. I don't get as much time out there as I'd like, especially with the weather we've been having lately."
Frank made a note to have Johnnie look at the car, to see if it had been worked on lately. She also wanted to check out the garage at Wyche's job. Whoever had killed Agoura, and now Peterson, had worked them over in a secluded place where they wouldn't be disturbed. Maybe one of the garages offered a spot like that.
"You said you'd hit her a couple of times," Frank said. "What were the other occasions?"
"Shit, I don't know, let me think. I know we had a big fight when she got arrested for shoplifting. We grounded her and she had a fit about that. Started mouthing off again."
"Where'd you hit her that time?"
"I don't know. It all happens so fast, you know. I didn't mean to hit her, but I got a temper you know, and I'm not just gonna take crap from some kid."
"How do you think you hit her?"
"I probably slapped her. I never like pun
ched her out or anything. Not like the guy that did that to her," he said, indicating the photos arrayed before him.
"How do you know it was a man who did that to her?" Frank jumped on him.
"Why would a woman do it? I mean, whoever did this had to be pretty strong."
"You're pretty strong aren't you?"
"Yeah, but so are a lot of guys."
"Yeah, but a lot of guys don't have a bratty stepdaughter hanging around the house insulting them all day."
"Well, you're right, she could be a pain, but you don't kill someone for that."
"Isn't it true that you wished she'd go live with her father?"
"Yeah. I would've liked that a lot, but Dee would've hated it. It's her kid. She loved her."
"But you didn't."
"No," he shrugged, "I didn't."
"Man," Noah sighed, shaking his head, "it's hard enough having your own kids copping an attitude with you, but it must be really hard with a stepkid."
"It wasn't always so bad. We usually just ignored each other. Sometimes I'd even forget she was around."
Noah grinned sheepishly. Turning conspiratorially away from Frank he asked quietly, "Randy, you know I look at my girls and I think, man, they are lookers, but you know they're my daughters, but Jennifer, man, she was a pretty girl and she wasn't really your daughter. You know what I'm saying?"
Wyche shared the grin.
"Yeah, I hear you."
"Was she like into that at all with you? You know, you being the older man. Girls like that, huh?"
"Naw, nothing like that ever happened, but I'll tell you it was hard to not stare when she walked around in her nightie or in some of those shirts."
"So'd you ever get any? A little feel? Brush up against her in the hallway kinda thing?"
Wyche was motioning no, but he was blushing. Noah whispered lewdly, "But you wanted to, didn't you?"
"Crossed my mind a time or two," he agreed.
Noah was folded over the table toward Wyche, leering at him. "Did you get any?"
"Naw, man, nothing like that. She's my wife's daughter."
"Man, you didn't even try for a little? Who'd have known?"
Wyche was shaking his head. "Nah. It ain't right, you know? How'd you feel if some guy was poking your girl?"
"That'd be different," Noah conceded. "But she wasn't your girl."
Noah's line of attack was slipping away so Frank bluntly took over.
"Mr. Wyche, who's to say that nothing happened between you and Jennifer. You certainly wouldn't tell your wife about this and the only other person who'd know is dead. Why should we believe you didn't have a sexual relationship with Jennifer?"
Ticking off points on her fingers, Frank continued, "You've already told us you were attracted to her. You've already told us you hit her in anger. You've said you have a temper. You said you didn't like her—"
Now Noah interrupted. "Aw, man, I totally feel for you. It'd be so easy to lose your temper and what starts off as a slap turns into something else. And man, if I had a hunk of her in my hands...I don't know. I mean, one thing leads to another sometimes. I've been there."
Wyche adamantly protested to Frank, "Nothing like that happened. I know I lost my temper a couple times, but I never hurt Jennie. Not like that."
"Then how?" Frank asked.
"Like I told you."
"Tell us again," Noah soothed, and that's how it went for hours. Wyche's accounts never varied. The detectives didn't catch him in a lie or break his composure. He was earnest, insistent, and paced around the table during a five-minute break. It was Frank's observation, after thousands of interrogations, that guilty people tended to nod off. Sometimes they were so deeply asleep they'd fall out of the chair. Other times they'd curl up in the corner and be cutting Z's. But Wyche was worried, as well an innocent man should be with two homicide detectives grilling him like a cheese sandwich.
They let him go home after midnight. He was simultaneously relieved, exhausted, and furious. The detectives both apologized for the work-over but insisted they had to know, that Jennifer deserved the truth. The apology served a number of purposes: one, if Wyche really was innocent, it was a genuine apology to a citizen they were paid to protect. Two, lawsuits against the department were routine. Innocent or not, they didn't want Wyche going home pissed off. But most importantly, if Wyche was involved with the murder of either girl, he'd think he had the cops fooled and sooner or later he'd start bragging about it.
The squad room hummed with activity, but in her office Frank quietly sipped coffee while she reviewed Peterson's preliminary autopsy report. The bruising was nearly identical to Agoura's and of indeterminate origin. Peterson's nose, left clavicle, and the second and third fingers of her right hand were fractured. She'd been anally assaulted with no other evidence of sexual assault. This time, instead of an elderberry branch, the perp had used something resembling a yellow broom or mop handle.
Along the path of insertion, Crocetti's eyes had found minuscule fragments of yellow paint that had been sent to the lab for analysis. The trajectory of the path was similar to Agoura's, indicating a left-handed assaulter. Like Agoura, Peterson had bled to death slowly enough to know she was dying. Several major organs had been shredded, and again the perp had rammed his victim hard enough to pierce a lung. The coroner's team had found fibers similar to Agoura's, as well as what appeared to be blue nylon fibers and additional short brown hairs. They were on their way to the lab with the paint frags and tox samples.
The prints from the shooting gallery had come back with a lot of partials and unknowns, offering only two solid leads. Later in the day, Frank and Noah found one of them at a corner mart a block away from the high school. She was a nineteen-year-old black female, a strawberry. She was chain-smoking Kools, searching for someone to blow for a hit off a crack pipe. They worked her for about an hour, but she was useless and barely able to stay in her skin. Next they chased down a seventeen-year-old black male. Noah knew him. He had a crook in his nose and hustled ass, so everyone called him Hooker. He insisted he hadn't been in the gallery the night Jennifer Peterson died. Noah assured him they didn't want anyone in the shooting gallery for criminal charges.
"We're just looking for witnesses, and it ain't a gang thing. In fact, it's probably a white guy dumpin' his shit in your 'hood, makin' it look like somebody inside's doin' it. You'd like to see that mother caught, wouldn't you?"
"Be alright wit me," Hooker answered noncommittally.
"Besides, if you cooperate now, maybe we could cut you some slack later on down the line."
"Right," he said, disbelief written all over his face.
"I'm straight up with you, my man, I ain't lyin'."
"Ain't yo man."
"Look," Frank broke in, "even if you weren't there, just give us some names, tell us who shoots there regularly."
Through the GREAT sheet that the LAPD gang details generated, they'd already made a list of Hooker's homies. Noah spat them out.
"Does Dr. Dread hang there, or Little-Kool or maybe T-Square?"
At first Hooker looked surprised, then confused, and finally resigned.
"Sometime," he said, and supplied the detectives with the names of over a dozen junkies and crackheads.
It would take weeks for Frank and Noah to contact all the leads, but so far no one would admit to seeing anything the night Peterson's body had been dumped at Carver. And no sound of crowing from Randy Wyche, either.
Using the major incident list Noah had compiled from in and around the rec area, Frank had found some two dozen rapes and eight murders that might match their perp's MO and time frame. She spent Saturday morning poring through four of the thick rape folders. She discounted the first case because the rape victim was older, knew her attacker, and hadn't been raped anally. The second case was a woman who hadn't seen her assailant even though he'd talked to her, growling obscenities and directions while holding a gun to her neck. After careful consideration Frank put the folder in the
reject pile in spite of the fact that the victim had been anally raped.
The next two cases had a lot of similarities. Both victims had been young teenagers, neither had seen their assailants, but they reported he was "strong" and "big" and hadn't said a word to either girl. After examining photographs, diagrams, victim statements, police reports, and hospital reports, Frank put the two folders in a "keeper" pile.
Pleased, she tipped back on the rear legs of the dining room chair and ran her fingers roughly through her hair. She watched the rain pissing down furiously on the other side of the sliding glass doors; it was the first good storm of the season. Gough'd be happy. So would Ike and Diego. They were on call, and good weather lent itself more readily to homicides than bad, so hopefully they'd have a quiet weekend. She thought about calling Noah but hated bugging him at home. Instead, she changed out of her sweats and headed down to the Alibi. Maybe Johnnie'd be around, and if not, at least Nancy could serve her a brew and a burger. But to Frank's surprise, neither of them were there. She straddled a seat at the bar, quickly dousing a tiny flicker of disappointment, and asked Mel where Nancy was.
"Called in sick. Got that damn flu everybody's down with. Stout?"
Frank nodded and ordered the hamburger.
"How's the dead body business?" Mel asked, wiping a slip of foam off her mug.
"Better than yours," she replied looking around.
"God, isn't that the truth. It's the rain. Keeps people home."
"Guess so."
Frank gazed onto the grimy, wet street, glad to be inside and dry. A gas fire glowed in the hearth opposite the entrance and cast warm light on the bar's dark wood. All the lights were on, and behind the jeweled bottles a huge mirror reflected them back.
"That's a damn shame 'bout all those dead girls, huh?"
"It's a shame, alright."
"You think it's the same guy?"
"Mel, how long have I been coming here?"
"A long time, Frank."
She nodded. "And have I ever discussed an open case with you?"
Mel shook his head, laughing. "And have I never not asked?"
Frank smiled softly, sucking the dark beer through its creamy foam, eyeing the football game playing over her head.
