by Wendy Heard
I get in the truck, turn it on and go right at the light, heading east for downtown.
It takes all my willpower not to break the speed limit, but I manage to make it back to Skid Row without getting pulled over. There’s a street I remember from a Google Maps detour to Little Tokyo that’s full of car stereo shops and scrap yards with plastic-covered chain-link fences.
I pull the truck over in front of an abandoned warehouse with broken window eyes. I leave it unlocked with the key in the ignition. I take my house keys with me.
So now I have to walk through Skid Row alone, which isn’t great. I transfer my driver’s license, credit cards and house keys into my bra. Just in case.
I walk fast, purse clutched to my side, eyes straight ahead. No one bothers me as I pass the tents, but a few drunk-looking dudes hanging around the bus stop at the corner holler at me. I ignore them, but my steps slow as I pass the corner. My eyes are fixed on a grate, which I know leads down into another drainage channel. I squat down by it, pull the new flip phone out of my pocket and wipe it off on my shirt to get rid of any fingerprints.
I hesitate.
Whatever else the murder club has done, they know where Joaquin is. They could lead me to him.
This is my last connection to Joaquin.
They’re not going to help me, I scream at myself. And it’s a piece of forensic evidence that could maybe link me to Kevin’s murder. What if it has trace amounts of his blood on it?
This is too much. I need to tell the police. I can’t keep running from this on my own. But I need something, some form of evidence, anything, to link even just one of the other murder club members to the crimes. The thought, juxtaposed against the former worry about trace amounts of blood, brings my memory rushing back to the night at Villains when I got the first flip phone.
I remember the guy pushing his way through the crowd, desperate to get out of there. I’d read his expression as hostility, but it was panic, right? He’d just committed his murder and he was running, and there I was, blocking his way, attacking him, making him drop his flip phone, punching him in the face...
Punching him in the face. Giving him a bloody nose.
I have his blood. At home. On my clothes from that night. They’re buried in the bottom of the hamper.
I wipe the phone off one last time and throw it into the drainage channel.
Behind me, a bus makes a limping path down the potholed street. It screeches to a stop at my corner, and the doors hiss open to admit the three drunk guys.
Across the street, a new Jeep approaches, shiny and out of place on this broken-down street. It comes to a stop by my truck. The front door opens, and a woman steps out. She bends down to peer into my truck’s driver’s side window.
Oh, shit.
I hop up onto the curb and run to the bus stop. Just as the doors begin to swing shut, I push them open and jump inside. Outside the scratched, dirty window, I see the woman outside my truck pull a flip phone out of her pocket and start to dial.
30
NIELSEN
THE WOMAN WHO sits across from Nielsen in Interview Room 3 is skinny, birdlike and obviously unhappy to be here. It’s a different vibe than he got from Jasmine, though. Jasmine’s suspicion felt related to police, or maybe authority in general, where this woman feels...sketchy. Manic.
Next to him, Patel scribbles in her little notebook like she always does. Nielsen elbows Patel and gives her a meaningful look. It means she should lead the interview; it’s their standard protocol with women and children.
“Don’t I need a lawyer or something?” the woman, Carol, asks. Her voice is rough, like she’s been smoking cigarettes since she came out of the womb.
Patel plasters a smile on her tired face. “Not at all. You’re a witness. We’re here to help you.”
“Where’s my son?”
“He’s just on the other side of that wall, and he’s being taken care of by my colleague. I believe she’s spoiling him with some hot chocolate and cookies.”
Nielsen almost says something. This is bullshit; there’s no hot chocolate or cookies anywhere in here. He’d have eaten them if there were. But Patel shoots him a tiny look that tells him to be quiet.
Carol hesitates. “You shouldn’t feed him that stuff. He’s got diabetes.”
Patel scribbles something in her notebook. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is his diabetes quite serious?” Her British accent is stronger when she’s being solicitous.
“Are you a Christian?” Carol asks.
Patel blinks, and Nielsen almost laughs at her face as she tries to make sense of this response. “Why do you ask?”
“‘For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord.’ Nothing is beyond His ability to heal. Nothing. Not diabetes, not cancer, nothing.”
Patel says, “So Joaquin has been healed of his diabetes, then?”
The forehead scrunches into a frown. “He’s in the process.” Into the silence that follows, she says, “‘Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up.’” The skinny chin lifts, which tumbles the mullet into the stretched collar of the oversized pink blouse. “He who has ears, let him hear.”
Wow.
Patel taps her index finger on the table. It’s the signal to switch interviewers; in other words, he’s up.
Nielsen smiles at Carol, deferential. “Did you know your daughter was almost killed by the serial killer who’s been in the news?”
“I don’t have a daughter. I have a son.”
“Your foster daughter? Jasmine Benavides?”
“We don’t speak.” She raises her hands to make air quotes. “‘They have given themselves over to all kinds of evil pleasures.’”
Jesus. Nielsen thought his own mom was religious—Irish Catholic—but this woman takes the cake.
Patel leans forward. “Did you see anything at the church? Anything unusual, particularly a woman who looked like you?”
Carol raises her eyebrows. “Looked like me?”
“The woman who was killed—one of them—was wearing an outfit and a wig that looked very similar to your own hair and clothes. Can you think why that would be?”
She looks baffled. At last, she says, “No.”
“I see.”
“So you think she was killed on accident? That I was really supposed to be the one who got killed?”
“That’s what we’re trying to ascertain.”
It’s interesting, the idea that Blackbird would want to take out an entire family, and even more interesting to consider why someone was at that church wearing what appears to be a disguise meant intentionally to look like Carol. This case isn’t just a mess; it’s a convoluted steaming pile of shit.
Nielsen asks, “Have you had any unusual experiences lately? Anything strange at home, anyone hanging around your house, anything you can think of that seems out of place, no matter how small...”
“We’re not staying at home. We’re staying with friends.”
“Why?” asks Patel.
“Family reasons. I wanted to surround Joaquin with the Word.”
Nielsen scribbles the words “psych evaluation?” in his notebook and passes it to Patel.
She writes, “Can’t psych eval someone for being religious unless you want to get sued.”
He heaves a sigh. Of course she’s right. He writes, “Checking on the kid,” and she nods. He gets up, casts a last disgusted look at Carol and heads for the door.
He closes it lightly behind him and lets himself into Interview Room 2. It’s empty except for a plastic cup. He retreats down the corridor and catches Gonzalez at the desk, buried in paperwork on a computer from the Dark Ages.
“Where’s the kid from Interview Room 2?”
She barely glances up. “Bathroom.”
Nielsen goes to the men’s room, which is just around the corner, and pokes his head in. “Joaquin?” he calls. A few cops are in front of the urinals, but the stalls are all open, unoccupied.
He hurries back to the desk. “Gonzalez. Where the fuck is the kid?”
“He’s in the bathroom, last I checked.”
“He’s not in there,” Nielsen says, his voice warming up with anger.
Her eyes go wide. She jumps up from her desk.
Yeah, now she’s in a hurry. Goddammit, Nielsen curses, as they run to check the security footage. “Patel,” he calls as he passes Room 3. She bursts out of the room. “Kid’s missing,” he says. She runs behind him, down the hall to the security room. They’re holding their breaths, waiting for the video to play, when a suited man with gray hair and a beer belly pops into the darkened room behind them. It’s Marcus, one of the detectives on the Blackbird team.
“Got another one,” he says, out of breath.
Patel and Nielsen whirl around. “Where? Who?” Patel asks.
“Kevin Stanley, down on Adams and La Brea. Guess where he works.”
“Where?” Nielsen asks.
“Trader Joe’s, Third and La Brea.”
“Motherfucker,” says Nielsen. Patel closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose.
Marcus goes on, “And he had a houseguest yesterday. Guess who.”
Nielsen says, “Jasmine Benavides.”
“Yup.”
“She’s not there now?” asks Patel.
“Nope. And we found her truck in a scrap yard south of downtown. Dried blood all over the front seat.”
Nielsen’s stomach drops. Jasmine is dead. He knows it. They’ve been trying to reach her for twenty-four hours with no luck, and Blackbird leaves no survivors. To Patel, he says, “You find the kid. I’ll go work this lead.” She nods. Her face is pale. He can see she’s thinking the same thing he is.
31
JAZZ
THE STREET OUTSIDE my apartment is quiet when I drive by. I’m in the rental Hyundai I paid for with my new prepaid Visa debit card. I’m totally off the grid now, with an Android burner phone I can barely figure out how to use. I can’t think of a single way they could be tracking me now.
But after all that trouble to be untraceable, I’m coming back to my apartment, where they might be waiting for me. This is dumb. I know it. But I need to get those clothes out of my hamper.
It’s dark but not late, only eight thirty, and the sidewalks are cheerfully bustling with moms pushing strollers, men pushing elote and paleta carts, and tired-looking people trickling off the bus from long, hard workdays. I drive by slowly, examining every pedestrian, checking every parked car. My building looks small and haphazard, some windows yellow and curtained, some slatted with blinds.
I find a parking spot pretty close to my apartment. I turn off the engine and power on the Android phone so I’ll have a way to call 911 just in case. As the phone lights up in my hand, I wonder if I should call Sofia, and then I realize I don’t have her number memorized. It’s in my iPhone that the murder club stole. It’s probably better this way. I should stay away from her. I just want to know she’s safe, and I want to tell her about Kevin. Maybe I could call her at work tomorrow. That’s probably safest.
Someone tall and slender lopes across the street. They slip between parked cars and trot up into my apartment building. It looks like they’re wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up.
I rack my brain, remembering all the occupants of the other seven units in my building. There’s the family downstairs with the mom who always gives me a bag of her bomb Christmas tamales. There’s the old man who lives alone, the young couple who has sex really loud, the roommates who fight, the single musician guy who always needs a drummer...
I can’t think of anyone in my building who looks like this. Maybe it’s a friend of someone who lives here.
Should I get out? Should I wait?
Before I can make up my mind, the hooded figure exits my building, trots across the street and gets into a gray Honda Accord three cars in front of me.
That’s weird. Why would someone come and go so fast?
The answer is obvious. It’s someone from the murder club, someone looking for me.
The taillights go red and the headlights flicker on.
Maybe I could point the cops toward this guy. With the blood, that would give them two members of the club. And I bet this person still has their murder kit, their flip phone. I start the engine but keep the headlights off.
The Honda takes a few tries to get out of its parking spot before speeding up the street. I wait a beat and follow it.
I tail the car east through Echo Park and onto the 2 freeway. It heads north to the 5, then west to the 134 toward the Valley. The 134 turns into the 101, and my stomach starts to gnaw as we enter Studio City, which is where Sofia lives.
The car gets into the right lane to exit at Laurel Canyon.
“What the hell,” I mutter to myself. This is Sofia’s exit. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.
“Turn left, turn left,” I whisper, willing the Honda to head south, away from Sofia and toward Hollywood.
It turns right. “No,” I groan. It flips around to park on the street, a block away from Sofia’s building. I don’t want to flip a U-turn, which would make it pretty obvious that I’m tailing them, so I pull over on the opposite side of the boulevard.
What do I do?
Should I call the cops? Maybe they can catch this person in the act?
The gray Honda’s headlights turn off, and the car goes dark. The driver’s side door opens, letting the hooded figure out onto the street. Quick and lithe, the silhouette slips along the sidewalk, back bulging as though with a backpack. The figure bypasses the front entry and lopes around the corner, where I know there is a metal gate opening to the underground parking garage.
Oh, shit. No time to waste. I jump out of the car, wait for a few cars to pass, and run across the five lanes and along the sidewalk to the front gate. My hands are shaking as I find Sofia in the directory. It starts ringing. “Come on come on,” I whisper.
“Hello?” Her voice fills me with a warm wave of relief.
“Sofia, it’s Jazz. Is your door locked?”
“Jazz! Are you downstairs?”
“Is your door locked? Just answer. It’s important.”
A pause. “Yeah. Why?”
“Your windows? Are they locked?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Go check them right now. Don’t answer the door for anyone. Promise. No one.”
“O...kay.”
“Buzz me in.”
The gate buzzes and I slip in, making sure it closes behind me. I don’t want to head to the elevator alcove, which takes me close to the parking garage, so I turn right down a hallway and look for a stairwell. Sure enough, I find the door to the stairs at the northern corner of the building, on the opposite side of the apartment building from Sofia’s unit. I poke my head in, imagining a syringe-wielding old person leaping out at me from behind one of the darkened staircases. It’s nowhere near as creepy as the stairs in my building; it’s well lit, the stairs carpeted and the walls clean white. I close the door behind me and jog silently up to the second floor.
I keep myself pressed to walls as I hurry past peaceful front doors. Don’t forget to breathe, Apartment 201 instructs me.
I stop at the intersection of corridors that leads to Sofia’s apartment. I slip across the hallway and peer around the corner.
There’s a man crouched down by her door, doing something to the doormat or maybe shoving something under the door.
I’m about to jump out and start yelling when he lifts his f
ace.
It’s Charles. He’s putting more pictures on Sofia’s door.
Motherfucker.
He examines one, and I hate the proprietary way his eyes look at the image of her naked body. He snaps a piece of tape off a roll and attaches the picture to her door, obsessive in his placement of the image next to another one just like it.
I want to launch out into the hallway. I want to call the cops and catch his stalker ass in the act. But I remember Sofia’s frantic begging. She doesn’t want the police knowing about this, not now when she’s in the murder club.
Charles tapes another flyer to the door. He’s deep into the task, a spiteful smirk twisting his lips into a smile.
Inspiration strikes. I get the Android phone out and poke at the home screen until I find the camera app. I set it to video and push the record button. I focus on Charles and record him at work.
It’s like he can feel me watching him. His head snaps up and he looks right at me. “Hey! Who’s there?”
What am I going to do, turn and run? I round the corner, still recording. He jumps guiltily to his feet, and the stack of unused photos falls from his hands.
“What’s up, dickwad? Doing another stalker collage? You are such a loser.” I turn the camera on the door, then back on him, capturing his handiwork and his stupid, caught-in-the-act face.
“It’s a felony to record someone without their permission,” he says, his voice pinched and livid.
What a wiener. “Why don’t you call the cops, then?”
He fumes silently.
“Oh right. Because you’re being a psycho stalker and you don’t want them to know.”
“Give me that.” He lunges at me, hands outstretched. I snap the phone behind my back and slither out of his grip. He throws his arms around me, tries to pin my arms against my sides. I spin out from the hold and shove the phone in my back pocket. He rams himself at me, using his size and no skill at all, and pins me to the wall, trying to get his hands in my pockets. His chest heaves against mine. His breath is hot and smells like day-old coffee. He leans real close to my cheek and says, “You think you can fight like a man, little dyke?”