These Women

by Ivy Pochoda

  Rules will be set. Parameters. Decisions will be made about how much or how little to give to the media. And regardless of that more will be leaked and more will be invented.

  Serial is a cottage industry.

  Essie figures after this last victim, they’ll bring in the profilers and the geoprofilers and the genetic profilers, who will paint a complex picture of an average person. Possibly below average. Just some guy. You wouldn’t recognize him. Wouldn’t notice him. Not in a crowd. Not sitting on his own porch.

  She gets on her bike and pushes off, skirting a bump in the road where a tree root has pushed through the asphalt. She wobbles wide into the street before finding her balance.

  Morgan Tillett. Now Essie realizes what she might have missed when she scrolled through the activist’s social media. She was looking for the salacious story. The out-of-town affair.

  She didn’t check the feeds of Morgan’s other local Los Angeles friends, other activists. She only looked for a possible outlier. A mistake.

  Essie turns right onto Cimarron and collides with someone. Her bike bucks, throwing her on the handlebars.

  The moment after a crash seems to exist outside the conventions of space and time—stretching out slow and wide, like a black hole drawing everything inward, containing everything at once. A dead zone, unreachable by the past and the present—an atomic aftermath, a flat sonic ring.

  For a moment, she’s too stunned to see. Her heart races. Her mind is white, then black. Then there are two girls, one landing east-west, the other north-south.

  “Detective Perry?”

  Essie opens her eyes, or were they already open?

  “Detective Perry?”

  A woman has her by the arm. Her face is close to Essie’s. Too close.

  “Are you all right?”

  The corner of Cimarron and Thirty-Eighth. Leaving a crime scene. On her way to notify.

  She knows this woman. White. Sixties. No makeup. Frizzy gray bob.

  Dorian Williams.

  “I’m fine,” Essie says. “I hit you?”

  “Knocked,” Dorian says. “Slightly.” Dorian looks over Essie’s shoulder toward the crime scene. “Who is it?”

  There’s a look on Dorian’s face that Essie doesn’t like. It’s the look the mother wore when she flew down Plymouth, past the jackknifed car to reach her daughters.

  This isn’t Dorian’s tragedy.

  Essie’s not going to give it to her.

  “I’m not at liberty to say. The investigation is ongoing.” Press conference nonsense. A cut-and-paste brush-off.

  “But—” Dorian begins.

  There are no buts. She’ll find out in time. There’s no need for her to know immediately.

  “Any more dead birds?” Essie asks.

  “What?”

  “The hummingbirds,” Essie says. “Any more?”

  Dorian doesn’t reply. She’s already pushing past Essie toward the crime scene.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER Essie’s up on Twenty-Ninth Place, bike locked, the chipped gate to Julianna’s house behind her. She faces the short set of stairs. They were painted red a long time ago. I’m a police officer. That’s what she had said to the parents as they ran past her and the sputtering car to their kids.

  I’m a police officer. She said it twice as the mother took the girl on the north-south street and the father, the one lying east-west.

  As if it would make a difference.

  You take a deep breath. You put your mind elsewhere. It’s just a job to be done. Just words to be said. There are around three hundred homicides a year in Los Angeles. This is just business.

  She unwraps a piece of gum.

  The door is opened by a sturdy woman in jeans and a PORTS O’CALL, SAN PEDRO T-shirt. She’s wearing slippers. She has half a foot on Essie.

  “Yes?”

  Her voice is deep and nasal.

  I’m a police officer. The words don’t change anything. They don’t soften blows or bring back the dead. They don’t rewind time.

  Essie pulls out her badge.

  The woman tilts her head to one side. She’s been here before. She’s opened this door to cops and detectives. People looking for her daughter and possibly her husband.

  “Yes?”

  The moment before Essie speaks flattens out. Until she opens her mouth, her presence is just an inconvenience, a nuisance, another cop turning up with another problem about another family member.

  “Mrs. Vargas? Alva Vargas?”

  “Yes.”

  Julianna’s mother sounds impatient.

  “I’m an officer at Southwest,” Essie says. “You’re the mother of Julianna Vargas.”

  Behind Alva, Essie can see Armando sitting on the couch. The same place he was last time she was here.

  Someone is watering the plants next door just like last time, with a spray that reaches into the street.

  Alva turns toward the spray. The hose stops and a woman steps out from behind a bush. She’s thin and white with a narrow face and pale hair, blond fading to gray.

  “Are you coming inside, Detective?”

  The riot gate bangs behind Essie. She checks over her shoulder. She can see the woman next door hosing the square of pavement between her house and Julianna’s.

  This moment has already gone on too long. It’s like she’s playing a trick on Julianna’s parents.

  “Mrs. Vargas,” Essie says.

  “I’m a police officer.” That has nothing to do with what I’m about to say. It just means I’m speaking from a place of authority. I can’t undo what was done. “I regret that I have to inform you that your daughter’s body was found earlier today. It appears that she was murdered. I know this is a lot to take in right now. I can call a car to take you to the medical examiner’s office so you can make the identification.”

  If you’re there at the scene of your child’s death, there’s no gray area. No questions. No time when a chance remains that things could be otherwise, that someone made a mistake. That the body in question isn’t your child’s. There’s no drawn-out ride to the morgue or the M.E.’s office. No time for a final round of denial.

  I’m a police officer. It was an accident. Essie hadn’t been able to stop talking. For a full minute the only sound at the intersection of Plymouth and Sixth had been her voice and the hiss of her car’s engine or radiator or whatever was smoking in the aftermath of the collision. She had looked over at Mark, sitting in the car, eyes wide, fixed on nothing, hands rigid on the wheel. Stunned. She’d kept talking and talking, filling the silence until the mother’s screams drowned her out. Mark didn’t move.

  Essie’s first mistake was trying to explain away the accident.

  Her second was calling Deb.

  “Or you can drive yourselves,” Essie says.

  Alva hasn’t taken her eyes off Essie, scrutinizing her like she’s trying to catch her in a lie. “Julianna? You’re sure it’s Julianna?”

  “I’m sorry,” Essie says.

  Alva shakes her head. “I don’t believe you.”

  Twenty to thirty minutes to get to the M.E.’s office. Then maybe another ten to get to the morgue to make the ID. Essie figures Alva has forty minutes max to keep her delusion.

  “I understand,” Essie says.

  Armando hasn’t moved from the couch. He’s settled back, arms crossed over his chest.

  “What makes you sure it’s Julianna?” Alva asks.

  “The victim was wearing an oversized Lakers sweatshirt and faded shorts. She has curly dyed orange hair.”

  Alva shrugs. “Could be anyone.”

  “All right,” Essie says. So easy not to believe. “Will you be driving to the station?”

  Alva looks at her husband. “You go,” he says. “I don’t need proof it’s Julianna. If that’s what the lady detective says, I’ll save myself the trip.”

  Essie pulls out her phone and calls for a cruiser.

  “You’re not going to tell my wife you were here the other
day, already asking questions?” Armando says.

  “Detective?” Alva asks.

  “Questioning Julianna about some puta got killed last week. Lots of questions, no answers.”

  “Detective?” Alva repeats.

  “I was here about Kathy Sims,” Essie says.

  “You knew she was in trouble?” Alva asks.

  See. Alva knows. In her heart she knows. She’s accepted it’s her daughter. She’s just tricking herself into believing otherwise as long as she can.

  “You knew and you did nothing?”

  “Kathy was a straight-up dirty puta,” Armando says.

  Essie checks her phone. Less than a minute since she called for the squad car. Until it arrives she’s going to be shouldering the blame. She’s the killer, the bearer of bad news, the one who didn’t protect Julianna. The one who didn’t clean up the streets.

  Alva steps up to Essie and looms over her. “You allowed someone to kill my little girl?”

  Stripper. Possibly a sex worker. Drugs. Men. The Fast Rabbit. Sam’s Hofbräu. Miss Crystal’s. A rap sheet that was a work in progress. And it’s Essie’s fault.

  Armando snorts. “Sounds like you’re certain it’s Julianna, Mami,” he says.

  Alva turns, storms in his direction fist raised.

  Essie grabs her from behind, pulling her away from him.

  “It’s LAPD let my little girl get murdered,” Armando says. “No reason to be beating on me.”

  6.

  THE LINK IS THERE. ESSIE’S NOT SURE WHAT IT MEANS BUT still she sees it. Julianna Vargas was the last person to see Lecia Williams alive and now she’s been murdered in the same way. Bourke and his team haven’t made the connection to the past murders yet. They’re too wrapped up in the present—too eager for a neat solution. They don’t want a seventeen-body problem.

  What do you do with information? What do you do about certainty? Both are easily stolen and easily corrupted. Release the information the wrong way to the wrong people and it will be distorted, destroyed, misused, or abused. People might co-opt it, making your discovery into their find and cutting you out. Or it could be stashed and shelved for good. Purposefully forgotten.

  Break the news poorly and you can be called off the case, made to feel crazy. No matter how certain you are.

  Essie’s certain. And she doesn’t want to lose that.

  Which is why she heads straight from the Vargas residence to Robbery/Homicide headquarters downtown, where Deb runs the show.

  After the accident, Deb went to bat for Essie, or so Essie thought. She had her back, told everyone that Essie was good, a solid cop, not cracked, still dependable. Little did Essie know she didn’t matter at all to Deb. Deb was proving herself. Showing that she was one of the guys, that her blood was blue, that she’d go to the mat for a fellow officer.

  Deb said she’d been doing Essie a favor.

  Funny favor.

  Her star rose. Essie’s stuck in Vice in fucking Southwest.

  There’s commotion and news crews. The word serial has already leaked. She’ll be lucky to catch Deb.

  She’s surprised when Deb opens her own office door. She’s in uniform and it takes Essie a moment to realize why. There’s going to be a press conference. The case is officially serial now. Deb’s on prime time.

  “Perry,” Deb says, shaking her hand.

  Partners for five years and Essie gets a formal handshake.

  For a while after the accident, after Essie’s extended leave of absence while things were being settled, and after she’d stepped down to Vice, she and Deb met for drinks. Once a week, then once a month. Then Deb got promoted. And then again. Soon they were in different orbits.

  Deb’s hair is perfect. Naturally blond, unlike Essie’s. “What a surprise,” Deb says. She smooths the front of her immaculate uniform. “Bad timing. Serial, I’m sure you’ve heard.”

  “It’s my beat,” Essie reminds her. She can feel Deb’s need to keep this conversation at the threshold. Deb has places to be and needs to keep moving, fearful of getting bogged down by whatever it is Essie’s come all this way to tell her. “This is important.” She pushes past her old partner into her office.

  On a wall is a framed photo of the two of them from when they were partners, a profile in the L.A. Times about Hollywood Station’s real Cagney and Lacey. Real go-getters. Except now only one of them is.

  They used to be so casual with each other, drinking out of each other’s cup, sharing sandwiches, trading makeup. Feet up on their desk, papers and possessions commingling. Now they barely touch.

  Deb steps back into her office but doesn’t shut the door. “Is this about the serial? Those women were on your beat? You knew them? You want in?”

  Efficient. Presenting all the possible answers up front so all Essie has to do is choose.

  “I don’t want in,” she says. Even if she did, she wouldn’t get it. Not now. Not even with what she knows. Not even though, as she sees it, she’s already in.

  “Listen, Perry, I don’t have a lot of time. There’s five local news crews waiting. Maybe we can grab a drink.”

  “You’re going to be too busy for a drink,” Essie says.

  “Not after we catch him.”

  “Confident,” Essie says. “Good.” Except she knows it’s all bluster.

  “So what’s this visit about, if not the case? I know how you feel about coincidence. Dead women on your patrol about to hit the news. And here you are.”

  “Listen,” Essie says, “remember that spate of killings on Western back when we were in Hollywood? Prostitutes mainly, but also others. All women.”

  “Yes,” Deb says.

  “There were protests that LAPD wasn’t taking them seriously. A lot of outrage.”

  “Yes, yes. That’s not going to happen if that’s what you’re worried about. We’ve got a task force. We are going to make sure that this is handled correctly and publicly. All hands on deck.” Deb pats her hair. Runs a finger under each eye.

  “You look perfect,” Essie says.

  She goes on, “Back then the serial killer was never named. The case was hardly publicized.”

  “Yes,” Deb says. “We have this covered. Don’t worry.”

  Essie’s tempted to pull out her phone. Distract herself. “I’m not. I’m wondering about those women back then.”

  “And what about those women?”

  Essie unwraps a piece of gum. She needs to stay with this. “Don’t you think it’s strange that someone just stopped killing them? No real investigation. But the killings stopped?”

  “Perry. We have an active serial killer case now. Do you really think this is the right moment to be warming up a case, what, two decades cold?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You see, I found something interesting. A link to the old cases.”

  “You what—? You’re Vice.”

  “Do you know who your latest vic is?”

  Deb exhales. Essie knows she wants to roll her eyes. Instead she holds the door open. “I’m going to make time for that drink. You need to get out more. I know how your mind works. Circles. Patterns.”

  Essie holds up her hand. “It’s the same guy.”

  “Same as who?”

  “Whoever it is you’re planning to bring in so quickly with your task force.”

  Deb steps back into the office and closes the door behind her. “Perry,” she says, “I’m going to warn you once. Don’t poke your nose into this case. Don’t complicate things. Don’t overstep.”

  Essie pulls out her phone, finds a news article about Lecia Williams’s death. She zooms in on the detail about the last place she’d been seen alive, babysitting for a girl in Jefferson Park. “That,” she says, “was Julianna Vargas.”

  Deb squints at the phone. “I don’t have time for this,” she says. “I’m about to go downstairs and announce to the press we have an active serial killer who has killed four women. If you think I’m goi
ng to tie this up with some old case that had hundreds of women from South L.A. picketing Parker Center, you are crazier than I thought.”

  “And why would you ever think I was crazy?”

  Deb inhales sharply. “You know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Because of what happened.”

  “And what happened?”

  Deb exhales, rearranges her face diplomatically. “Listen, Perry. Solving a whole bunch of cold cases isn’t going to fix anything.”

  Essie snaps her gum. “What needs fixing?” Her mind wants to fly. It wants to race back to Plymouth when Deb appeared and started managing everything. Mismanaging it. Making it into her scene. Her case. Working Essie and Essie didn’t even know.

  Deb adjusts her lapels. “I know what you’re trying to do here.”

  Her old partner is working her. “I’m not trying to do anything but my job,” Essie says. She finds a picture of Lecia Williams on her phone. “You don’t think she deserves your attention?”

  “Not now I don’t,” Deb says. “This woman was killed fifteen years ago.”

  “There’s a connection. I can see it.”

  Deb takes a deep breath. “I know you’re not going to give this up.”

  Essie opens her mouth to reply, but Deb cuts her off. “But there’s one thing I’m not going to let you do. I’m not going to let you make another mess I have to clean up. You’re lucky to have your job.”

  “Lucky?” Essie says, holding her former partner’s eye.

  “I understand that watching those two girls die—” Deb stops and clears her throat for effect. “I mean, I understand how killing those girls might deform the way you see things. But this is a reach. And it’s a reach way out of your reach.”

  “The way I see things?”

  “I’ve got a million questions waiting for me downstairs.” Deb turns the handle and opens the door wide. “I know you. Your mind is going to keep turning, looking for connections that will help you make sense of the world. There’s nothing I can do to stop you. So go on. Be my guest.” She stands aside, letting Essie pass.

  Essie walks halfway down the hall, then lets Deb go on ahead.

  The way you see things. Deb’s words ring in her head. The way you see things. As if Essie’s view, her way of seeing, had been changed after the accident. As if that made her see things differently or any which way at all.