“Can’t say that,” Tracy said. “Her article says that the topic of sex is expressly forbidden in the profiles, though the couples are encouraged to make their own choices after getting to know one another. What a bunch of crap. They make it sound romantic.”
“What, you don’t consider Aditi Banerjee’s experience romantic?”
“Yeah, that’s every girl’s dream.”
“The real question is, what’s a doctor doing on that site?” Kins asked.
“I don’t think pond scum is limited to any one profession.”
CHAPTER 37
Del stepped from the elevator inside Eduardo Lopez’s apartment building, this time with a handkerchief clasped over his mouth. He’d contemplated the stairs, but only briefly. Climbing five flights with a gimpy back was just asking for trouble. By the time he exited the elevator onto the fifth floor, his eyes were watering and he felt nauseated from the smell and holding his breath. He’d take the stairs down—his back be damned.
He’d driven to South Park to tell Monique Rodgers’s husband and mother about Eduardo Felix Lopez’s death and that ballistics matched the bullet that had killed her to the .38 revolver found in Lopez’s apartment. They asked him about Little Jimmy, whether there was any evidence to tie him to the shooting. Del said the investigation was ongoing.
He considered the numbers on the apartment doors as he walked the cracked tile floor. Windows at each end of the hallway provided ambient light, as Faz had described. Technically, Del shouldn’t have been at the South Park apartment building. Technically, he should have already buttoned up the file and sent it to narcotics, as Nolasco had instructed. He would do so, but not before he had tied up loose ends, and one burning question.
Del reached the apartment door second from the end, next to what he understood to have been Eduardo Lopez’s apartment. He considered where Gonzalez and Faz said they’d stood, and he agreed with what Faz had told the FIT investigator. It made much more sense for Faz to stand to the left of the door frame, not behind Gonzalez, so he could evaluate whoever came to the door and determine whether anyone else was in the apartment and a potential threat—not to mention avoiding a bullet if the person opened the door and fired a weapon.
He knocked on the door of the adjacent apartment. No one answered. He knocked again, more forcefully. The door rattled in the jamb. No answer. He knocked a third time, waited a beat, then put his ear to the door, hearing nothing. When he pulled back, he noticed the door did not contain a peephole, which made it unlikely anyone stood on the other side making him for a cop. More important, Lopez also hadn’t had that opportunity before he’d opened the door and walked out.
Del heard a door open and bang shut down the hall. A woman and a young boy exited the stairwell, and the woman lowered the boy to the ground. She carried a plastic bag of groceries in one hand and keys in the other. The boy looked no older than two or three and had something in his hand—a toy dinosaur. As the woman approached, she looked at Del and came to an abrupt stop. She said something under her breath to the boy, gripped his hand, turned and walked back in the direction of the stairwell. The boy looked over his shoulder at Del and the mother quickly admonished him.
“Excuse me,” Del said.
The woman did not turn around.
“Excuse me.” Del increased his volume and his pace, what his gimpy back allowed. “Ms. Reynoso? Ms. Reynoso.” The name was in the FIT reports. Del caught up with the woman just before she pushed the door handle leading to the stairwell.
“Ms. Reynoso?”
“No hablo inglés.” She smiled apologetically and looked frazzled.
“¿Hablas español?”
She shook her head. “Tengo prisa. No puedo hablar ahora.”
She was in a hurry and could not talk now. Del had taken Spanish in high school and he’d worked in Eastern Washington when he first graduated from the Academy. He could speak and understand street Spanish, though he was far from fluent. He didn’t need to understand any Spanish to know Reynoso was lying.
He pointed to her apartment door and asked why she had turned around when she’d been coming home. “Estabas volviendo a casa. ¿Por qué te volviste cuando me viste?”
“No. No. I can’t talk now. I’m late.”
“So you do speak English?”
She paused. “Sí. Yes. A little.”
“Why did you turn around when you saw me?”
Reynoso looked frightened. “Please.”
Del held up his badge. “I’m a detective with the Seattle Police Department,” he said, though Reynoso seemed unimpressed with his credentials. “I’d like to ask you a few more questions. Do you want to talk in your apartment or here in the hallway?”
Reynoso didn’t have to talk to Del at all, but most citizens didn’t know this. Resigned, Reynoso nodded to her apartment and they walked the hallway together. At the door, Del gave her some space. The boy looked up at him with both suspicion and trepidation. Del smiled, but it didn’t change the look on the kid’s face.
Reynoso opened the door and stepped into the apartment. Del looked past her into the apartment, not seeing anyone inside. She put the bag of groceries on the counter and spoke to the boy. “Daniel, ve a jugar a tu cuarto con tu dinosaurio.”
Daniel looked from his mother to Del, as if afraid to leave her.
“Seguid,” she said. “Haré quesadillas en un rato.”
The boy walked to the door on the other side of the room, glancing back at Del a final time before going through it.
The woman crossed her arms around her body and lowered her chin.
“You were here the other night when Eduardo Lopez was shot. I just want to ask you a few questions,” Del said.
“I’ve already talked to the police. You should ask them.” She spoke without raising her gaze.
“I did,” Del said. “They sent me back out because your story doesn’t match the other witnesses’. They asked me to try to determine why that is, why your story is different.”
The woman responded with a shoulder shrug but no words.
“A woman down the hall said she heard a woman yell Gun! just before she heard the shots. You said you heard a man yell Gun!” There was no such report.
Reynoso shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Del changed tactics. “How did you know Eduardo Lopez?”
“He lived next door.”
“Did you have a relationship with him?”
“No.” She shook her head, frowning.
“Then what was he doing here in your apartment?”
“I told—”
“No, you didn’t answer that question. No one asked you that question. What was he doing here in your apartment?” Del had read the witness statements, including hers.
She shrugged, buying time. “He just came here.”
“You were friends?”
“Sí. Yes. We were friends.”
“How did you meet?”
“I told you. He lived next door.”
“Where did he work?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
“What did he talk about?”
“Please,” she said. “I have to feed my boy.”
“Why did you say you heard a man yell Gun!, Ms. Reynoso?”
“Because that’s what I—”
“No. It’s not what you heard. The police wear body cameras now. Do you know what a body camera is? It’s a tiny video camera, Ms. Reynoso. It videotapes everything that happens and records everything that is said.” The officers didn’t wear cameras, at least not all officers and not yet anyway. That issue was still being negotiated between the city and the police union. Del was just pressing her to see if she changed her story.
“So we know that a man did not yell Gun! Why did you say that he did?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I make a mistake.”
“Ms. Reynoso, you can’t get in trouble for telling the truth. But if you lie to a police officer—”
“Please.�
�
“Did someone tell you to say that you heard a man yell Gun!?”
“Please.”
“Did someone tell you to say that?”
“You tell me to.” She raised her voice and her gaze. “You. The police. The woman. She say, ‘You heard a man yell Gun!’”
Now they were getting someplace. “Did you?”
“I don’t know. It was loud and Daniel was crying. I told her I don’t know what I hear, but she say again, ‘You heard a man yell Gun!, didn’t you?’ So I say, ‘Okay, I hear a man yell Gun!’ Then she say, and you heard me ask him, the other police, ‘Why you yell Gun!?’”
“Did you hear her say that to the other officer?”
Reynoso shook her head. “I no hear nothing. I just say it because she say to.”
“Did she say why she wanted you to say that?”
“She say Eduardo Lopez, he shoot someone. She say I am hiding him and could be in trouble, that I could lose Daniel if I no say it. So I say it.”
“Were you hiding Lopez?”
She shook her head, emphatic. “No. He knock on my door and say someone coming to his apartment. He say he need to not be there.”
“He knew someone was coming?”
“He say he need a place to go until they go. I tell him I no want to be involved, but he say only for a minute. He say they are immigration.”
“So you let him in.”
“I was afraid. He had men at his apartment all the time.”
“Do you know why?”
She shook her head.
“Was he selling drugs?”
A shrug. “I no know.”
“Was he in a gang?”
“I no know.”
“Did he say who was coming to his apartment? Who was he hiding from?”
Another shrug. “He just say ‘immigration.’”
Del thought of what Faz had told him and moved close to Reynoso’s apartment door. “Was he standing by your door?”
She nodded. “He listening. Someone in the hallway, knocking on his door and . . .”
“You heard someone knocking?” Del asked. Faz said Gonzalez never got the chance to knock.
“Yes. They knock hard. Bam, bam, bam.”
Del pointed to her apartment door. “On this door?”
“No. His door. Next door.”
“You heard someone knocking?”
“Yes. Bam, bam, bam, like that.”
Del thought of something else and asked, “Were you talking to Lopez?”
She shook her head. “I no say nothing.”
“The officers who came said they heard someone speaking Spanish. Was Lopez speaking to you in Spanish?”
She shook her head, but stopped.
“Do you recall something?”
“Someone call his phone. He speaking Spanish on his phone.”
“What did Lopez say?”
“I no know.”
“You don’t remember anything he said?”
She shook her head.
“Was this before or after you heard someone knocking? Did he get the call before or after someone knocked on his door?”
“After.” Reynoso appeared to be fighting the effects of a headache. “Someone bang on the door but Lopez, he just listen. He no answer. Then, no more banging and Lopez, he go to the window,” she said, pointing.
Del walked to the window. From it, he could see the parking lot. “He walked over here and looked out the window after he heard someone knocking?”
“He hears the knocking. Then he walks to the window, watching. Then he looks at me and he says ‘Gracias’ and he starts to leave. Then his phone rings.”
It explained why the phone was in Lopez’s hand when he walked out the apartment door, and possibly why he had surprised Faz and Gonzalez. Whoever Lopez had been hiding from, whoever had knocked on his apartment door, Lopez believed that person had left, maybe even saw him leave from Reynoso’s window. He wasn’t expecting anyone to be outside when he opened Reynoso’s door, and without a peephole he had no way to check before he did so. Faz and Gonzalez had surprised him.
And he had surprised them.
CHAPTER 38
Tami Peterson lived on Capitol Hill but told Tracy she’d meet them at a corner pub called the Stumbling Monk. She sounded young and enthusiastic, brimming with excitement, and not the least bit intimidated to be meeting detectives. Tracy and Kins hoped Peterson could help them get a better handle on sugar dating, information they might be able to use if Shea were reluctant to talk to them, or if he lied. The more they knew, or Shea thought they knew, the more they could push him out of any comfort zone.
Peterson had been literal when she described the Stumbling Monk as a “corner pub.” The entrance to the brick, single-story building faced the intersection of East Olive Way and Belmont Avenue East, just beneath a sign of a bald monk and beer kegs. Kins pulled open a solid wood door with iron bolts and hinges intended to depict a medieval abbey. The décor inside the pub was austere. Half a dozen bar stools lined a nicked and scraped wooden bar. Televisions were noticeably absent, along with their persistent chatter. A bookcase supplied well-worn paperbacks and board games. A handful of people sat on bar stools or at tables and booths, sipping Belgian beers—a handwritten list to choose from on a whiteboard.
Tracy spotted Peterson sliding from one of the booths to greet them. She looked a lot more like her working picture in the newspaper article—black eyeglasses, blue jeans, sandals, and a sleeveless white blouse. The three introduced themselves, and Tracy and Kins slid into the booth across from her. Peterson had a cup of black coffee on the table and her laptop computer open.
“Interesting place,” Kins said, considering an old-fashioned bicycle perched on the roof of a closet in the back corner.
“I come down here to write,” Peterson said. “It gives me a break from my apartment and at least makes me feel like I got out during the day.”
“What do you write?” Tracy asked.
“Whatever pays. Mostly freelance articles, local-scene-type stuff. And, yes, I am one of those people writing a novel.”
“Anything published?” Tracy asked.
“Haven’t finished it yet,” Peterson said. “I’m a great procrastinator. It’s sort of a literary romance.” She shrugged and sipped her coffee. “My editor said you were interested in the article I wrote on sugar dating. That was almost two months ago.”
“We’d like to ask you some questions about your research,” Kins said.
“My undercover work as a ‘sugar baby.’” Peterson smiled. “Can I ask what this is about? You’re both wearing wedding rings so I assume neither of you is interested in creating a profile, though that didn’t stop some of the men.”
Tracy and Kins returned her smile. “We’re working on a case—a young woman apparently did some dating,” Tracy said, “and we’d like to find out more about it. From reading the article, it sounds like you put in a lot of time and effort.”
“Homicide case?” Peterson asked. The young woman had done her research, and Tracy could see the journalism wheels spinning. She’d be on the Internet the minute they left, trying to figure out who had died, and then she’d try to look up her profile.
“Yes, but we have no information the two are related. We’re just starting to run it down.”
“But she had a profile and she was dating men from her profile?”
“That’s what we’re told,” Tracy said. “From the tone of your article, I got the impression you didn’t think much of the concept of sugar dating.”
“You mean my line about it promising a Ferrari and more times than not producing a Kia? I thought I was being subtle.”
“We saw through it,” Kins said, returning Peterson’s smile. “We’re highly trained detectives.”
“Honestly, I found the whole thing kind of sad. Some of the girls I spoke with saw this as their Pretty Woman moment—you know the movie with Julia Roberts?”
Tracy did, and thought the co
ncept of a prostitute and a millionaire falling in love and living happily ever after more than a little far-fetched.
“And that’s not how every encounter turns out,” Kins said with mock surprise. “I’m shocked!”
“I’m sure some of the sugar daddies tell themselves they’re being supportive, helping these girls realize dreams, that they’re mentors or something.” She shrugged again, a habit. “You can pretty much tell yourself whatever you want to hear and I guess you’ll eventually start to believe at least some of it. Other guys I spoke to were more practical. They tell themselves that at least they’re not hiring a prostitute.”
“And how do the girls rationalize it?” Tracy asked. “Those not living the Pretty Woman dream?”
“That’s what’s so sad. Some of the girls told me they figured they were being used, but at least they were getting paid for it. Some said the money was supplementing their income, and a few said they were still in school and needed the money to pay bills.” Peterson shrugged again, this time accompanied by a frown. “From my perspective, everyone was on the hustle and everyone thought they were winning. Nobody really was.”
“The websites say these women are making upwards of three thousand dollars or more a month,” Tracy said. “I take it you didn’t find that to be true.”
“The websites say a lot of things.” Peterson sat back. “I don’t know. Maybe a few are making that much, but I couldn’t verify it, and the large majority I spoke with were basically making spending money. I look at it this way—how many guys can afford three thousand dollars a month for a girlfriend?” she said. “From my research, a man can get a really good-looking prostitute for four to five hundred dollars. So, if it happened, I’m betting it wasn’t often.”
“How are these dating sites even legal?” Kins asked. “Did you find anything about why this isn’t considered prostitution? The concept of money for sex seems pretty blatant.”
“The websites fly under the radar of local law enforcement because they forbid any specific agreement to exchange cash for sex. From what I was told by vice officers, to be considered prostitution there has to be an explicit agreement that is consummated immediately, or very soon after the agreement is reached. These sites that call themselves dating sites say they’re providing companions and that sex is not the primary motivation.”
A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6) Page 23