by Lee Taylor
Aurora opened her computer and brought up the e-mail the office secretary had sent to everyone who was working on the case. Loaded into a special file, each page from the journal was scanned and added in order of place and date. She pushed the print button on two copies, one for her and one for Kai, then sipped the vile coffee they brewed in-house.
“Once we get the info, we can organize the victims and make some house calls. Maggie, our old secretary trained Linda well, and she’s already gotten the addresses for each person, or at least those she could find. They’re working on getting the others. But we have enough here to get started.”
Kai sipped with enjoyment. “Mmm. Good coffee—”
Aurora choked on the sip she’d just taken. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What do you think?”
With his eyebrow raised and the sideways smirk on his face, she really couldn’t tell. “I don’t want to know. If you say you like it, I’ll have to report you to PEAP.”
His confused look said he didn’t understand.
She decided to enlighten him. “Psych assistance.”
His laugh sent eddies of delight coursing through her body.
She swung around to hide the shock. Good Lord, he’s delicious! The beeping of the copy machine warned her to get her mind back on the job so she wouldn’t embarrass herself. “Do you want to split up on these names or work together?”
Kai thought about the options and realized that many of the women would refuse to talk to him simply because he was a guy; they’d likely open up to a female officer much easier. “I’ll stick with you. Two of us doing the questioning will work better I think. You okay with that?”
“Sure. Tell you the truth? I kinda suspected it’ll be a lot smoother for me than you.”
“Yeah! I came to the same conclusion. You ready?”
***
The first two names on the list were young women living in crappy apartments near the strip. Both knew the ropes and had grown thick skin from seeing and doing too much in their short lives. They answered the questions with a bored attitude that personally hurt Aurora. These girls had accepted their ordeals with Rhondo and had become desensitized. Just another fucked-up scenario in their screwed-up lives.
The next place they pulled up to was a home, well-loved, and so was the girl. She was younger than the other two, in her late teens. Her demeanor showed clearly that Rhondo’s torture had damaged her mentally. Her poor folks had been working hard for months to undo the destruction that one animal had managed to accomplish in a few terror-filled hours.
While Aurora questioned the girl, dealing with her tears and her self-recriminations, Kai talked to Mrs. Wright, the mother.
“Can you tell me how you found her? It says here that she called from a payphone on West Sahara.”
“Yes. When she called, she told us he’d dumped her from the vehicle onto the side of a road, and she’d crawled to the phone. Only reason she could give us directions was because she’d recognized the country club in the distance. That animal left her almost naked, ripped and bleeding…” The sobbing cut into her monologue.
After he handed over the tissues he’d thoughtfully collected before leaving the office, Kai waited patiently.
“I’m sorry, Detective. It’s just that every time I picture her looking that way, it brings the nightmare back. My daughter had it all. She got straight A’s in her classes, had more friends than she had time for, and her whole life planned out—from university to medical school. Now…”
The sigh lasted a long time, but still Kai waited. With his hands fisted so tight they hurt, he tried arching his neck and taking deep breaths, a relaxing technique he’d recently acquired.
Finally the woman straightened her shoulders and turned to him. “These last few months have been unbearable. Nothing has made any sense. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes, Mrs. Wright. I do understand.”
A strange look passed over her face, and her expression lightened. “Except maybe something my mother used to say. It’s called The Serenity Prayer, do you know it?”
“No, ma’am. Can’t say that I do.”
The woman walked in a controlled manner that told him more than words ever could about the pain she bore. She opened the drawer of a small table near a wall of plants and slowly stepped toward him, with her hand outstretched, holding a plastic card that wavered slightly. “I want you to have this. It might help you some day.”
Kai glanced down to see a short poem. Trying not to appear rude, he placed it in his shirt pocket and then patted it.
“Thank you. Are you feeling up to answering a few more questions? Sometimes small bits of information you think are unimportant can help us in our investigation.”
The woman nodded. “All right.”
“Do you remember what her first words were when you reached her?”
After a taking a deep breath and blowing her nose once again, she replied, “Yes. She apologized for not being more careful.” Visibly shaken and trying desperately to control the pending outburst, the distraught woman bit her bottom lip to stop the telltale quiver. “She said she was sorry for deciding to walk home after dark. He’d picked her up a few blocks from here. A few blocks—”
Again, Kai waited patiently.
Wiping her cheeks, Alicia’s mother continued. “S-she said he approached her, asking for directions. When she stopped to answer, he zapped her with a stun gun, and the next thing she knew, he had her in a field outside of town. She could see the city lights in the distance. He’d thrown her to the ground near the car and was drinking from a bottle of rum, singing an Elvis song, and dancing to the music on the radio. He tried to force her to drink too, and when she refused, he hit her. So she drank. Then he hit her anyway because he could. That brute told my baby he liked how it sounded when he slapped her. It reminded him of when he was a kid!”
“Does she recall how long he kept her there?”
“It was ten in the evening when she’d started walking home and five in the morning when her call woke us up. Neither my husband nor I were aware she wasn’t safely sleeping in her own bed. You see, with Alicia, we never had to worry. She was a good girl—the best daughter in the world. Now? Since that night, she craves the blindfolds of booze.”
“I’m sorry. May I suggest that you find a good support group. Sometimes it helps victims to be around others who’ve suffered in the same way, because they truly do understand.”
“Do you think so?” Hope lit up the woman’s pale face across from him. The dark roots in the tied-back hair added to the look of one who no longer cared about personal grooming.
“Yes. Phone the precinct for information. They’ll be happy to help you. Now, can you think of anything else that might help us locate Mr. Rhondo? Did he tell her anything she might have spoken about in those first few hours?”
“She told the therapist that he took a break from hurting her to stop and write in some kind of a book, like a journal. He made her tell him her name, and then he checked her wallet for identification, so she couldn’t lie. Strangely, he also said that if she got pregnant, he’d know and it would make him happy. My God! Those words alone were enough for her to demand the morning-after pill at the hospital. He was a monster, Mr. Lawson, and God forgive me, I hope he burns in hell.”
“Yes, Ma’am. I have no doubt he has a reservation.”
Chapter Fifteen
Near the end of the day, frustration set in as Kai and Aurora wrote up their notes back at the station. They shared information and added their findings on the boards: pictures of the girls they’d interviewed and relevant clues they’d garnered from talking to each of them. One board had turned into two, and just that morning, a third had been added.
All of that evidence and they still had no idea where the culprit lurked. The quiet ate away at Aurora. She realized Rhondo was keeping a low profile on purpose and it worried her. Whenever he’d been in town, the man liked to be in the thick of things. It was
n’t in his DNA to hide out for long.
They’d contacted other districts, some of his favorite hangouts, but had no luck. He’d gone into hiding, though her gut instinct screamed that he was here in Vegas. The drugs he’d managed to sneak through their nets were showing up on the streets. Common sense warned her he’d have to mess up soon.
Ham stalked into the room and sat with one hip on the corner of Aurora’s desk. “Hey, Morelli, you okay? Looks like you’ve had a rough day.”
“Because I have. All those women’s lives ripped apart to satisfy one freak’s needs. It’s sick.”
“What’s really sick is spending the day checking out their neighbors. They act as if remembering their own name and address is taxing their intelligence.”
“I know what you mean. Their brains turn all mushy when it comes to stepping up, being accountable. Some people! It’s like they come in dumb waves.”
Kai snorted and caught her attention. She leaned back in her office chair, drawing him into the conversation. “On the other hand,” she said, “talking to the victims frustrates the hell outta me too. I thought the journal full of sufferers would give us a lot more to work with, but so far, they mostly tell the same story.”
Kai added, “He likes to hurt people, he likes to make them scream, and he likes them to fight.” He picked up a stack of pages stapled together, highlighted with notes he’d made in the empty spaces. “I think I’ve finally figured out what he means by the letters A, B, and F. After talking to some of these women, I figure the ones who fought the hardest have earned an A. The ones who lay back and let him do his dirty deeds were the ones who he marked with an F. I just can’t figure out what the B stands for.”
Ham looked over his shoulder. “I know. The sick bastard’s lettered every one of the pages, like grading them.”
“Yup! That’s my theory. Look here! We know Tamryn and Alicia fought him, and they have A’s on their pages. Deb had to have given him quite a battle because she earned an A+, but he’s marked her with a B also. The other two we interviewed today both have F’s. I got the feeling that all they did was stay alive.”
“Is there anyone else with a B on their page?” Disgust rang in the Irish cop’s tone while his expression screamed distain.
“Here, by this girl, Ruth Grainger. She lives outside of Reno and was one of those who filed a complaint. Except she’d waited for weeks before she came forward. She got an F, guess she didn’t satisfy the freak. No fun if they lie there and take it. But he gave her a B, and with different coloured ink, he crossed it out, which denotes he probably did that sometime later. The letters have to mean something. I just wish I knew what.”
Aurora held the back of her neck in both hands. First she stretched one way, then the other. “Who know what goes through the psycho’s mind? The profiler we called in on the case gave us the regular jargon. Single mom, probably beat him, and brought home men who most likely beat her. They surmised he must have learned physical brutality from behavior he’d witnessed. Most likely lived through it continually during his formative years. They’ve labelled him as psychotic, and explained that the drugs and alcohol he uses exacerbates the condition. His hallucinating that the females he’s hurt have liked what he did to them is another symptom of his delusions.”
Kai shot from his chair, his expression explosive. “I don’t care what the professionals say. There is no excuse for his behavior—none! To think a defense attorney could use that shit to get him off one day makes me sick.”
Aurora spoke soothingly. “Hey, big guy, calm down. He won’t get off. We have too many key witnesses not to mention all this corroborating evidence the idiot wrote incriminating himself. He’ll go down for life.” Aurora hated to see her partner lose it. Showed how close he was to the situation. Unhealthily close.
Her cell phone cut off her spiel. She fished in her pocket and looked to see the name of the caller. Her hand went up to warn the others, but just by her body language they seemed to know something had happened.
“This is Detective Morelli. How can I help you?”
Disbelief appeared and was replaced with cold acceptance. “Hang on, Darlene. We’ll be right there.”
She hung up and retrieved her gun from the side drawer. She holstered it and then slipped on her jacket. All the while she spoke in a controlled tone. “Darlene needs us. Seems Rhondo’s back in action. Except this time we were wrong, he wasn’t after her.”
“What the hell?”
“The son-of-a-bitch took Wayne.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Just tell us exactly what you remember.” Official, yet tender at the same time, Kai took the lead in questioning the girl whose cheek looked twice its normal size.
Aurora sat holding on to the hand that clutched hers. “Start with when it happened. It’ll help clear your mind.”
Darlene roused herself from the stupor she’d reverted to after they arrived. Aurora sensed that shock had taken her to a safe place where she could handle the confusion and pain. “Please, Darlene. You have to help us. What time did Rhondo show up?”
Shudders shook her small frame, but she did glance at her watch. In a voice so low they had to strain to hear, she answered, “I guess about an hour ago. It seems like it’s been a lot longer, but I’d just come home from the early shift at the restaurant where I work. I’d swung by to pick up Wayne at the school. Since we’ve moved here, we try and walk home together. Wayne’s been concerned about me.” The sobbing laugh that erupted made the hairs on the back of Aurora’s neck shoot up. “Some joke, right? He worried about me, and I never once gave a thought about him being the target.”
“Neither did we, Darlene. We only recently discovered that Rhondo swings both ways when it comes to his games. Otherwise, we’d have warned you and Wayne.”
Kai passed over a tissue from the seemingly constant supply he kept in his pocket. “Then what happened?”
“He was waiting, right here in the apartment, as if he owned the place. Pleased as punch with himself.” Darlene blew her nose and lowered the Kleenex to be shredded in her lap.
“Wayne, acting the man, pushed me to the bedroom and tried to behave all friendly-like with him, but Earl just laughed in his face and told me to come closer. I did as he asked and tried to give Wayne time to run, but he never would. He went for the fiend and got smacked for his trouble. He wouldn’t stay down, went for him again. I tried to stop him, but you think he’d listen? He wanted to protect me.”
“Brave kid to take on someone twice his size,” Kai spoke, pride ringing clearly.
Except that it seemed to excite Earl. He said, “Look at that you chicken-shit whore. This little sucker’s got spirit. I like that.”
“I knew then what he meant to do, and I threw myself at him, begging him to take me instead. I begged…”
At that point, neither Kai nor Aurora could make out any words—just babble and groans. Eventually, when she became coherent again, they continued.
“Did he say where they were going?”
“They didn’t go anywhere. He tazed Wayne and then flung him over his shoulders like a sack of potatoes. When I tried to stop him, he hit me, and I banged my head on the corner of the coffee table. I must have conked out. When I woke up, they were gone.”
“I’ll get out an Amber Alert. Do you have a recent photo of Wayne? I’ll need to send it in, so his ID will go out to highway patrol, plus to the officers on duty in town. If he’s on the streets, we’ll find him, Darlene.”
Kai took the proffered picture and, using his phone, he took a copy. Within a few seconds, he’d sent it in to headquarters.
A knock at the door informed them that the crime scene investigators had showed up and were given space to set up their equipment. The medics also arrived and examined Darlene; her stamina had fizzed out, and she was now in the state of collapse.
Aurora stepped out of the way to let the others do their jobs. She looked down at her tear-stained blouse, where the first onslaught of D
arlene’s weeping had happened the minute they’d stepped into the apartment. She’d chosen her nicest blue tailored blouse that morning, not quite sure why, and it now resembled the rag she felt like.
Standing took so much energy that she wondered if she’d fall flat on her face. Clutching the photograph and seeing the cocky smiling face of Darlene’s brother reminded her of how a real trooper acted, full of bravado and confidence and bullshit luck. Only this kid’s luck had run out.
“You okay, Aurora?” Kai’s soft voice in her ear straightened her spine and got her adrenalin flowing.
“I’m good. I need to see someone. Get one of the black-and-white’s to drop you off at the station.”
“You’re taking personal time? Now?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business.” She stalked toward the door until his hand on her arm steered her into the hallway, effectively putting a stop to her hysterics. A ringing in her head began, but he pulled her attention away before she could concentrate on what put it there.
“It is my business. We’re partners, remember? Where are you going?” His tone warned her to be careful.
She looked at the fingers still encircling her arm and then stared into his eyes, the intense blue, glacier cold. Time passed as she waited. Finally he let her go.
“To round up an old friend whose memory works well when he gets his palm greased. But he hates having cops around his place, especially male cops. So you can’t come with me. You gotta trust me on this.”
Seconds passed as he reflected. “Fine. I’ll grab a ride to headquarters and catch up with you there.” He gently massaged her arm before letting it go completely. A slight twinkle appeared.
Aurora’s surprise, evidenced by the look in her eyes, appeared before she lowered her head.
“You thought I’d insist?”
“You’re a cowboy. How the hell do I know how you’ll react?”
“With common sense—always.”