by Mark Nykanen
Sean blundered up, saw Jesse, and said “Man, I’m taking some.”
Jesse backhanded him so fast blood dribbled almost instantly from Sean’s nose, redder than his hair. “No, she’s all mine.” About her size, maybe shorter, but he looked insane, rigid with fury as he tried to grab her.
“Stop that shit,” Dexter X said as he came up. “You get us all in the joint, fool.”
Jesse turned on him. “You want me to fuck you instead?”
Dexter X looked affronted, but backed up. When Jesse spun back to Gwyn, she aimed the pepper spray right into his eyes. Sean, still hovering hungrily nearby, got it next.
Dexter X threw up his hands, “Hey, I tried to stop that shit.”
She eyed him closely for another moment, then looked away, spotted Lupe prying the door open. Two cops in dark blue piled in, launching themselves over the furniture. Say what she might about cops—and she was plenty pissed at Trenton and Warren and everyone else in the justice system who’d coerced her into keeping the group going—Gwyn had never been so happy to see those uniforms.
Her eyes burned from the lingering spray, and as she moved away she brushed against Jesse, blind and burying his face in the crook of an elbow. He grabbed her leg, and she kicked him to get free.
Across the room, Barr hauled Ryder off Kaj, who was still down, and rammed him into the stone wall. Ryder, though reeling, remained standing long enough for a cop to grab him.
Hark hurried over to Gwyn leaning against the desk. Lupe came over too. The women looked at each other and shook their heads.
A cop cuffed Dexter X while another one shoved Ortiz against the stone wall and patted him down. More cops rushed in. So did several television crews.
Gwyn wanted to get out. Her cheek still throbbed, and her eyes still burned. She looked down, saw Jesse, cuffed now, banging his head on the floor as if to banish the chemicals from his eyes and nose. Then she saw Owens, who had propped himself up against the stone wall out of any easy line of sight. He was smiling at her as Jim and Hap crawled out from under the upturned couch looking terrified. The rest of the men had stopped moving, stood there blank-faced as manikins while the cops rushed around. In some cases they were cuffed, but Sean and Neal were simply standing still, as if a temporary madness had seized the room and just as suddenly moved on.
She turned to Hark for the first time. “Thanks,” she said softly.
He nodded.
The cops pushed the news crews back out the door, but the cameras had recorded enough mayhem to feed the cable channels and tease the late newscasts all night long. They probably already had sensational glimpses of it running in the commercial breaks and on YouTube.
A cop came toward them, and Gwyn pointed to Owens, who was wiping blood from a split lip. Lupe said, “He’s the one who started it,” and walked the officer over to him.
Owens was still leaning against the wall. He looked up and smiled again, which infuriated Gwyn. The group, her career, all in shambles, and he’s smiling. Her fingers explored the spot where he’d punched her. A lump had formed right above the bone, and she knew she could count on a shiner.
Hark flexed his hand and swore.
“Break it?”
He shook his head.
The EMTs rushed in, and a pair of them checked Jesse.
Gwyn scanned the upturned room: folding chairs flattened on the floor, end table flipped, lamp shade crushed, logs and notebooks scattered, sofa upside down, even a dark smear that looked like blood on the back of a stuffed chair.
This is insane.
Yeah, it is, she said to herself. But it’s exactly who they are. Every one of these guys has a history of violence toward women. Not one woman, but women. Overwhelming odds were that most of them had beaten other females before getting popped. Frank Owens, somehow, had set them all off. And there he was, still sitting against the wall, cuffed now, probably waiting to be carried out, same smile on his face.
“You’re never gonna get me now. I’m goin’ off to the joint,” he said, like he’d just scammed the system. “Maybe they’ll stick me in for a year, but you won’t get me in there. I knew I was next. You,” he managed to raise his cuffed hands to point to her, “knew it, too.”
Hark started for him. Gwyn put out her arm, gave him enough pause to stop himself. She never took her eyes off Owens. You fool, she thought, almost in sorrow. Frank had punched her out of fear, because he wanted to get his parole revoked.
Two cops dragged him to the door. Except for Barr, Gwyn had seen all the men cuffed and arrested.
A white detective, not Warren, started taking a statement from Lupe. Another one took Hark’s. This went on for fifteen minutes. Gwyn rested against the desk. The spray had dissipated, and going outside where all those camera crews lurked felt like a bad idea.
When the detective who’d questioned Lupe came up to Gwyn, she told him about Jesse, Dexter X’s brief attempt to stop him, but nothing about Owens. He asked her directly about Frank and the punch that had triggered the melee.
“I don’t recall him hitting me,” she said.
Hark started to speak up but she silenced him with her eyes.
“You don’t remember some guy punching you?” the detective asked.
“I could never testify to him hitting me,” she said carefully.
“Were you knocked unconscious?” He sounded genuinely concerned.
“No, I saw everything, but I didn’t see him hit me. Nobody else had a good angle on it either.”
“You’re going to press charges, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not,” Gwyn said firmly.
The detective snapped his notebook shut. “He can be charged anyway, based on the testimony of others.”
Gwyn eyed Lupe, who nodded. She knew what Gwyn was up to.
“I know,” she said to the detective, “but with my testimony saying that to the best of my knowledge he didn’t hit me, your case’ll never have wings.”
She’d never, short of murder or an assault more grievous than that punch, reward a man’s violence by giving him what he wants, even if it’s prison. That was lesson number one, and she’d make sure Owens learned it the hard way by sentencing him to a harsher punishment: living with his panicky fear of the men’s group murderer.
The detective glared at her. “We could have him guarded.”
“What are you talking about? Wait, you mean to protect him from me?” She pointed to herself. “You think that’s why I—”
“Yeah,” the detective interrupted sharply.
“That’s ridiculous. And you’re not going to be guarding him. A wife-beater?” She remembered Detective Warren’s words from their first meeting. “’Politically,’ and now I’m quoting one of your colleagues, ‘it’s not going to happen.’”
“This group’s over. You know that.”
“Tell Warren and Trenton.”
“I don’t have to. They told me. They’re outside.”
Lupe limped over and took Gwyn’s arm as the detective walked away.
“I should be helping you,” Gwyn said to her. “All I’ve got is another lump on my head.”
“This?” Lupe said cheerfully as she brushed her side, “it’s just that the son of a bitch caught me right where I got a hip pointer sparring. It’s nothing.”
“You were great, Lupe.” Gwyn kissed her.
“Hey, I do it again you kiss me.”
“Any time,” Gwyn joked back.
The news crews were waiting at the top of the stairs.
“We’re on live,” one of them shouted as Gwyn, Lupe and Hark exited the door. “Got anything to say?”
A couple of choice words came to mind, but Gwyn restrained herself.
Hark got hit the hardest as they reached the ground level. It was as if every last reporter had been Googling like mad since he’d shown up. They fired questions, but without his answers their noise came off as smoke, kids with cap guns.
Blanche walked alongside Gwyn, saying “I swear I
didn’t know my guy was going to do that.”
“Right.”
“Really, I swear I didn’t. I sent him back to the station. I don’t even have a camera. See? No mike. I just want to talk to you.”
“Blanche, just get the hell out of my face.” It took all of Gwyn’s self-control to leave it at that. She moved along with Hark and Lupe, slowed by the cluster of reporters, questions like cankers.
Blanche tried again. “You hear me the other day when I said I’d been there? Been beat up? That’s why I did that series. I don’t care if they all end up dead.”
Gwyn looked at her and wondered—yes, really wondered—how far a reporter would go.
“So when you want to talk,” Blanche pressed on, “I’m all ears.”
Lupe and Hark broke away, splitting the pack into two. Most of them stayed with Gwyn, the others chased Hark, sparing Lupe for the moment.
The pit bull was still chained in the yard, still lunging at the bipeds. This one really was dumber than dirt, meaner than a machete. Not everything they say, Gwyn glanced at the reporters, is built on sand.
Yeah, look at yourself.
As she opened her car door, enveloped by a wave of heat, the tiny Times reporter, Lynne Votars, elbowed her way forward and repeated her earlier plea.
“My number’s on your answering machine. Call me, please.”
Give her a dime for dignity, Gwyn thought. The rest of them? Not a centavo.
She closed the door, started the engine, put the a/c on high, and thought if they’d screwed with the tires . . . But they hadn’t. Or she’d parked so far away that they couldn’t find the car. As she drove past the church, she saw that the crews had brought out lights, and reporters worked the cameras and cast dark shadows on the dead grass.
Dead as my career, she said to herself.
“Do you care?” she said aloud. “No,” still talking to herself, “I’m done with these groups.”
She pulled the shoulder belt away from her chest and fluffed her top to try to cool off, and once again felt Frank Owens’ hand on her clothes and saw his fist. Cringing then, cringing now.
Well, you should be a free man soon, Frank. You and your fear.
She made it back to the freeway without hitting any stoplights, and slammed the accelerator to the floor. She remembered Barr in the midst of battle, straightening up and fending off Kaj for Lupe, a few moments later pushing Ryder into the wall. Then he was gone. Disappeared. Arrested? Or had he slipped away?
How does a guy like that slip away?
No matter, she wanted to talk to him. Sure, great, he came through in a dangerous situation, but he’d lied to her about the fire, the quake, pretty much everything. So who the hell was he? A poly sci major from USC? Twenty-three years old? The age didn’t feel right. Nothing she could put her finger on. It just didn’t. Which made everything else about him feel phony, and brought to mind that art expert, Hoving, who took one look at a ten million dollar marble statue and knew it was a fake. The Getty, right here in L.A., spent a year doing X-rays, all kinds of archeological and geological analysis and everything else, and said it was real. Bought it. Hoving gave it half an eyeball, one second of his time, and called foul.
Gwyn felt the same way about Barr. Not the burns, this wasn’t some sophisticated Hollywood makeup job, but the man under them. Other than Hark, he’d been the only guy in the room to act human. Maybe, she thought, even heroic.
Her phone rang as she claimed a lane on the 10. Delagopolis.
“I just saw you on TV,” he said. “You didn’t look so good, Gwyn.”
“You calling to tell me I need a makeover?”
He laughed, sounding genuinely amused. That always worried her. He laughed hardest when he had the worst news to deliver. Tonight’s call would prove no exception.
“We have to go up to Big Bear tomorrow. That’s you, me, and your mother, because the sheriff up there called today. He says he’s officially reopening the case and wants to talk to you two.”
She swore.
“I hear you,” Delagopolis said. “He could force you to come, or the three of us can go in voluntarily, and I think that’s what we should do. It’s Hastings. He was the detective who led the original investigation, remember? He said there was no case back then, so I don’t see any point in antagonizing him. Let’s see what he wants. If there’s any undue pressure, we just back out. You two are getting to be old hands at this.”
Big Bear. Gwyn hadn’t been up there for twenty-three years. Not even for a quick visit. She’d hoped that unblemished record would last a lifetime. A long lifetime.
“Do you think he’s got any new—”
“Not on your cell, Gwyn. Okay? Just be at my office by nine. We have to be up there by two. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”
At 3:45 in the morning, responding to an anonymous tip, police found the bludgeoned body of a forty-year-old white male in his Echo Park apartment. Investigating officers identified the victim as Frank Owens, one of thirteen names on a watch list. A senior commander on the night shift alerted Detectives Trenton and Warren.
They found Owens lying on his living room floor, blood splatters from the “instrument of death” on the nearest wall. He’d made bail only hours before. The detectives also noted in their report that upon entering, they smelled pepper spray in the room, and that the “vic” appeared to have been clubbed repeatedly with a blunt instrument. His ability to fend off his assailant, or “possibly assailants,” they further noted, “had apparently been compromised by a badly injured leg.”
A shattered phone, later determined to have been ripped from Owens’ bedroom wall, lay by his side, pieces of black plastic embedded in his toothless skull.
Chapter 9
Gwyn’s phone rang about 4:30, but didn’t wake her; she’d been up most of the night, rattled sleepless by that brawl in Pomona.
After the evening news, which she’d watched just long enough to confirm that she was still a suspect in the ghastly murders, she’d brushed her teeth and caught her reflection in the mirror. Puffy, purplish rings had formed below her eye, making her furious at Owens all over again, enough that a string of expletives burst from her foamy lips.
She rinsed her mouth, offered Owens a final imprecation, and tried to sleep. Couldn’t. Tempted—mightily—to invite Hark over, but by then it was really late.
After lying in bed for at least an hour, she drifted out to the balcony, hoping the sea air would calm her. Finally, at 2:30, she gave up and decided to go for a drive.
The effects of driving had soothed her since she was a baby. She’d been colicky at night for her first few months, and Mommsa had found the only way to calm her was to put her in the car and take off. These were the days before mandatory seatbelt laws and car carriers for infants, so she’d lie on the seat next to Mommsa holding her finger, sometimes suckling it, comforted by touch and taste and motion. A real L.A. girl even then.
Around 4:15 she’d pulled back into the condo garage, in time to catch the call.
“You hear?” Blanche. Unbelievable.
“How’d you get my number?”
“I’ve got everybody’s number. What’s the worry? You didn’t hear, I guess.”
“Hear what?”
“Frankie boy ate it tonight. Pepper spray, beaten to death. Coup de grace was the phone. Killer left pieces of it in his head. Found the pound sign in his eye.”
Gwyn said nothing.
“You there?”
“I’m here.”
“Wanna hear about his teeth?”
Again, Gwyn fell silent.
Again, Blanche plowed on. “Every one of them was pulled out. They think he was alive when it happened ’cause there was so much blood around his mouth. You know, you’re alive the heart keeps pumping it out.”
“I’ve heard rumors to that effect, yes,” Gwyn said flatly, not even a flicker of feeling in her voice. Her complete lack of sympathy didn’t surprise her—Frank Owens was an animal, and since
Croce, her concern for the most violent men in her group had been sapped by all the blood and beatings—but it did serve as a painful reminder that she was very different from the idealistic young woman who’d entered the field sixteen years ago. In that time she’d gone from sincere caring to utter indifference, at least with the Owenses and Croces of her world. She couldn’t fake caring about Frank, not even to the cable queen. He was never going to change. He would have beaten women and children to the day he died. So now the beatings would stop. Little Melanie from the 911 tape would never have to face him again. How could Gwyn possibly grieve that? Even more striking to her as she gripped the phone: How could she ever have grieved the death of a man like Owens? And yet she knew that at one time, long ago, she had.
“You want to know where they found his teeth?”
She already knew. This killer thought of everything. Wouldn’t miss a detail like that. But Blanche might wonder about her even more if she gave her the answer. “Where?”
“You sure you don’t know? Think about it.”
“Look, Blanche, it’s 4:30 in the morning. This isn’t some game show called Corpus Delicti . . . ”
Blanche laughed.
“. . . so if you want to tell me, tell me. Otherwise, I’ll wait to hear about it.”
“In his throat! Isn’t that great?”
This was one twisted sister.
“You still there?” Blanche demanded after several moments of silence.
“Yes.”
“Has you written all over it, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t do it.” She hardly had the energy to hack up another denial, and almost didn’t bother. It was time to end the call, but before she could say another word, in parting or otherwise, Blanche shocked her.
“I know,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yeah. Your buddies say they had you covered.”
“My buddies?”
“Oh, come on, Trenton and Warren. They didn’t tell me, but I overheard them on their cells.”