Her mouth opened. “That’s a lot of miles.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You didn’t go with him?” Dad asked me.
“They started at seven to beat the heat. Thanks, but I’ll pass.” To Sarah, I said, “Is Ella sleeping?”
Sarah nodded.
Louise said, “I just put her down—”
“I put her down,” Sarah piped in.
“Right.” Louise gave a half smile. “She won’t be up for a couple of hours.”
“That’s okay, Louise. We actually wanted to talk to Sarah … if that’s all right.”
The older woman frowned. “What about?”
I glanced at my father. He had changed from a T-shirt to a polo shirt, but he still wore jeans. I thought that gave him a casual touch. He said, “Just to clear up a couple of things.”
“Maybe we should all sit down,” I said.
Louise started tossing the plush toys into the playpen to clear up room on the couch. “Have a seat.”
“You sit, too, Louise,” Decker said. “This could concern you as well.”
“What’s this all about?” Louise sat.
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “But I need you to trust me. ’Cause this was all my idea.”
“What is going on?” She put her hand to her heart. “Something else?”
My father shrugged. I said, “It may take a little time, so please be patient. Because I want to do this right.”
Louise looked at me, unhappy, but then she ultimately nodded for me to go ahead.
My father smiled at Sarah. “So you like Koby?”
Sarah nodded.
“I like him, too.”
Sarah nodded.
“Why do you like him?”
Sarah giggled. “’Cause he’s … cute.”
Decker smiled. “I’ll tell you why I like him. I like him because he’s nice.”
Sarah nodded.
“Do you ever play games with him?”
Sarah thought a moment. “Sometimes.”
“What kind of games?”
“Ball.”
“What kind of ball?”
“Handball.”
“On the garage door?”
She hugged herself and smiled. “I always win.”
“So you must be really good at handball.”
Sarah giggled.
“What other games do you do with Koby?”
She thought a long time. “Once, he took me to the high school to play basketball. We brang my handball. I made one basket. He had to pick me up. I was too short.”
Decker nodded. “How’d you get to the high school?”
Sarah seemed confused.
“Did you drive in a car or walk or take a bus?”
“We walked.”
“You walked.”
“Yes.”
“Did you have to cross streets to get there?”
“Yes.”
“Did Koby hold your hand when you crossed the street?”
Sarah thought a moment, then nodded.
“That’s good. What other games did Koby play with you?”
Sarah thought about the question. “Sometimes we drew squiggles.”
“Squiggles are fun. Do you like to draw?”
“Sometimes.”
“Me too. What else did you do with Koby?”
Sarah shrugged. “I don’t know … just stuff.”
“Did he ever play … like tag with you? Or maybe a tickling game?”
I shot a glance at my father. He ignored me.
Abruptly, the girl grew melancholy, very silent. Louise and I exchanged glances. I shrugged. An unexpected sweat came over my body.
Dad said, “You know, tickle your ribs or something like that?”
Sarah waited for what seemed like an eternity, then shook her head. “I …” She fell silent.
“What, Sarah?” Dad asked.
“He sometimes tickled Ella’s foot. I wanted him to tickle me. So I asked him to stop tickling Ella and tickle me.”
“And what did Koby say when you asked him to tickle you?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “He said that big boys don’t tickle big girls unless they’re boyfriend and girlfriend.” Sarah opened her eyes and glanced at me. Then she rubbed her arms. “I asked him to be my boyfriend, but he said he was already Cindy’s boyfriend.” Her eyes watered. “So he didn’t tickle me.”
Decker nodded. “That makes sense.”
She turned her head away. Obviously, it didn’t make sense to her.
Decker said, “What about David? Did he ever tickle you?”
Her voice grew quiet. “Sometimes.”
“But David was your boyfriend, right?”
She nodded.
“Did you like it when he tickled you?”
Again she nodded.
“So it was okay with you that David tickled you.”
“Yes.”
“Did any other big boy ever tickle you?”
She eyed Decker with suspicion and didn’t answer.
“You know …” Dad smiled. “Tickle you to make you laugh?”
She maintained silence. She wasn’t as slow as her tested intelligence indicated.
Dad said, “Let’s talk about David some more. David used to tickle you, right?”
She nodded.
“And that was okay … when David touched you.”
“Sometimes I liked it. Sometimes I didn’t.”
“When didn’t you like it?”
“You know”—her face got very red—“when he did sex.”
Louise was about to talk, but she managed to control herself. I put my hand on her knee and patted it. She eyed me for a moment; then she tried a stiff smile that died.
Decker said, “That’s right, Sarah. You told me that you didn’t like the sex at all.”
She nodded.
“I want you to think very hard, Sarah. Can you do that for me?”
She didn’t answer.
“I want you to think about the times you had sex with David. Did you ever tell him not to have the sex with you?”
Her eyes were downcast. “No.”
“That’s okay, that you didn’t tell him no. But I am curious. If you didn’t like it, why did you do it … the sex?”
Sarah didn’t speak for a long time. I was waiting for my father to repeat the question, but he didn’t. Finally, she said, “Because he was my boyfriend.”
“Ah … so it’s okay to have sex with your boyfriend?”
“You have to do sex with your boyfriend. If you don’t, he isn’t your boyfriend.”
“Ah. Now I understand. Did David tell you that?”
She didn’t answer. I eyed Louise sitting as stiff as steel, kneading hands that should have been resting in her lap.
“Someone else?”
She was silent.
From the other room, Ella let go with a few halfhearted cries. Maybe we were talking too loudly.
Louise got up quickly. “Excuse me.”
Sarah started to stand, but her sister told her to stay put.
“But it’s my baby,” Sarah protested.
“I’ll bring her in if she’s up, all right? Just sit, okay?”
Sarah didn’t argue, but she remained sulky. Decker waited until Louise was gone. Then he smiled and said, “You know, a beautiful girl like you, I bet you had … a hundred boyfriends.”
Sarah’s face softened. “No.”
“Fifty?”
“No.”
“Twenty-five?”
She attempted to hold back a smile. “No.”
“But more than one. I’m sure of it.”
She gave a half smile. “Maybe.”
“And your other boyfriends … did they tickle you?”
The smile widened. “Maybe.”
“Maybe, huh?” Dad made a mock skeptical face. In a singsong voice, he said, “I bet they did.”
Sarah giggled.
“Did they also do sex with you?”
/>
Instantly, the merriment died.
“Sarah,” Decker said. “Remember we talked before. And I told you how it’s okay to tell secrets if they’re bad secrets.”
She didn’t speak.
“If you had sex with a man, it’s okay to tell me. Even if he told you not to tell.”
She turned her head away.
“Please, Sarah. You’ve got to trust me. You can tell me.”
“But he was my boyfriend.” Tears were in her eyes. “Then he said he didn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore.” Wet streaks rolled down her cheeks.
“Who, Sarah?” Decker asked. “Who didn’t want to be your boyfriend anymore?”
Sarah shook her head. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Sarah, you don’t have to keep a bad secret.”
“I don’t have to, but I want to.”
Decker glanced at me and shook his head. “Okay, Sarah. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t have to. But if you ever change your mind, I’ll be happy to listen to you.”
She nodded, and for a minute, I thought she might actually relent. Instead, she got up. “I want to see Ella.”
My father’s words rolled through my brain: Molesters are usually charming. They often inspire an unbelievable amount of loyalty, enough trust to get a retarded girl to follow the molester into Hollywood and walk alone in the middle of the night. I still retained my last image of Belinda, crossing the street with her head down, her demeanor so forlorn. A disconsolate figure mowed down by some evil force. Someone had to bury this child properly!
“Sarah,” I called out.
She turned around.
“How about this?” I suggested. “How about if you tell Louise?” Sarah fixed her eyes on me. She remained stubborn and silent. My last-ditch effort. “Well, how about if you tell Koby?” Slowly, she began to smile. Then she began to giggle. “Well … maybe Koby.”
44
By midmorning, the sky had turned sooty gray, the sun blazing down on the top of my head. It was only one-and-a-half blocks to the Strip, but in the heat it felt like a mile in the Sahara. There was a small café at the intersection of Sunset and Willem. Dad and I settled in at a back table, which was serviced by a red-haired waitress with a crew cut, droopy eyes, and an open mouth. She got the order wrong: a pretty slick trick because all we had asked for were coffee variations. Then she realized she was bringing the wrong java to the wrong table. A minute later, she fixed her mistake.
“Who gets the latte?”
“Me,” I told her.
She served me the latte. “Who gets the black coffee?”
My father was the only other one at the table. He looked at me and winked. “Right here, please.”
“Six bucks.”
“I pay now?” Dad said.
“Now or later.”
Decker frowned, then took out a ten. “It’s all yours. Just give us some privacy.”
She stared at the bill. “Okay. Are you a cop or something?”
The Loo took out his badge. “Yes.”
“Wow! Neat!”
“Privacy?” Decker repeated.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“That means you leave.”
“Oh. Right.”
Eventually, she left. Dad turned to me. “I’m reluctant to get Koby involved.”
“Why?” I said. “He’ll do it—”
“I know he’ll do it. That’s not the problem. He’s a nurse; that’s the problem. As a health-care professional, once she tells him about any kind of molestation, he’s obligated to report it, just like we would be as cops. The difference is, if he reports it, the case jumps into the system and it’s out of our hands. Yeah, we could get involved, but it would be messy. Someone would probably call in DSS. Then some social worker starts talking to Sarah and before long the whole thing about Sarah abandoning the baby comes up. Didn’t you tell me that Louise went through hurdles to get legal custody of Ella?”
“Yes.”
“Who knows? This might jeopardize the custody decision. Once it’s out, we open a big can of worms, Cindy.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“Furthermore,” Dad continued, “a good lawyer can claim that Koby is biased against Buck or whoever it is, and he’d have a point. It would look like a setup. And in a way it would be a setup because we dragged Koby into it. I’m not saying we won’t use him. But if we do it without considering the consequences, the perp could slip away.”
“But if we don’t jump soon, Daddy, Sarah could change her mind about talking to Koby. Then we’re back to square one. Aren’t you the one who told me to just go for it?”
“Cindy, this isn’t someone who’s pointing a gun at you. This is a crime that happened maybe a year ago—”
“Belinda Syracuse happened only a few months ago.”
“And that’s another thing. Even if Sarah was being molested, you have nothing to tie that to Belinda Syracuse’s hit-and-run.”
“We have DNA on the car. If Buck molested Sarah, we could arrest him and demand a DNA sample.”
“Why would the DA bother with a DNA sample? Sarah’s molestation isn’t a recent rape where there’s evidence. It’s he says, she says. We have to show a link to connect the molester to the hit-and-run, if there even is a molester. The only thing we do know is that if Sarah tells Koby about any kind of impropriety, it’s all over. So we’ve got to map out the contingencies before Sarah makes the confession.”
“But Sarah is the case,” I said.
Decker said, “No, Sarah isn’t the case, Cindy. The DNA from the blood smear on the license plate is the case. Our first priority is to see if we can get a matchup. If we do get a match and if it is Buck, then we have Buck associated with the car. Now that still doesn’t place him at the crime. But it will be enough to get us a search warrant for his house and start a file on him. From there, we can probably get his phone records, go through his papers, start asking around town for witnesses who may have seen Buck and Belinda together the night of the murder. That’s our best bet. And even if people did see them together, Buck can always say that he was just trying to be a nice guy to Belinda, much in the way Koby was just being nice to Sarah.”
“Yeah, I was wondering where you were going with that line of questioning.”
“I know I made you nervous. I brought up Koby for a couple of reasons. One, to get rapport with Sarah. She obviously likes Koby and I knew I could build on that. But also, I wanted to show you how easy it is to screw up a molestation case, how easy it is to get the facts wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing. You start saying things like he took her away from home to get her alone. Then he lifted her up to the basketball hoop ostensibly to make a shot, but really he wanted to touch her or look up her dress. Then he held her hand—”
“He was helping her across the street, for God’s sake!”
Decker said, “Cynthia, I’m aware that Koby’s not a child molester. And the mere fact that I can get you rattled so easily shows how simple it is to throw out false allegations. Koby knew exactly what he was doing with Sarah. Why? Because he’s a male who works almost exclusively with kids and women, and has probably been trained in how to respond to sexual overtures. His answer to Sarah’s request to get tickled was a good one. He refused to engage in any kind of dubious physical contact with her, even if it meant hurting Sarah’s feelings. When you question witnesses, you’ve got to go in without a bias. Which is why I don’t want Sarah talking to him. We’ve got a bias.”
I was frustrated. “So what do we do?”
Decker furrowed his brow. “You really hate this guy Buck, don’t you?”
“Dad, I don’t know him well enough to truly hate him.” I sipped my latte. “But I would like to remind you that there were other deaths that resulted from the hit-and-run, including a baby. Whoever killed Belinda is responsible for multiple deaths.”
“You’ve exchanged angry words with him?”
“Yeah, I kind of browbeat him, but then I
apologized.”
Dad’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Actually, yes. Afterward, we began to talk. He knows I’m suspicious of him.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I asked him where he was the night Belinda was murdered. It was a throwaway comment at the time. I wish I had taken him more seriously.”
“Where was he?”
“Home with his dog, watching a movie.” I shrugged. “He actually seemed to be enjoying the questions. I think they made him feel like a big shot instead of the bug that he is.”
“Interesting.” Decker smoothed his mustache. “So this is what you do, Cindy. You call him up and ask him out for coffee to go over the night again with him.”
I was confused. “Warn him that we still consider him a suspect?”
“Then be smart about it. Be casual. Whose case is the hit-and-run?”
“Brill’s.”
“Great. I’ll talk to him and we’ll get the details nailed down. But it’ll go like this. You ask him to meet you anywhere they serve coffee exclusively in paper cups. Run a few questions by him. Generic questions. Keep it light. Even flirt a little. Then when you’re done, offer to throw away his cup for him. Don’t wait for an answer, just pick it up and head for the garbage. Brill will arrange to have a team near the trash with a hidden video camera on you as backup so no one can say that you planted evidence. You throw your cup away, but drop his cup in an evidence bag that’ll be placed right near the garbage can. If the cup’s still partially full, make sure it doesn’t spill over the rim. And whatever you do, don’t get your cups mixed up.”
I sat up. “His saliva will be on the cup. We get his DNA.”
“Depends on the residue … how much he drools when he drinks. Wouldn’t hurt if you wore something sexy.”
“Like fishnets?”
“A little more subtle for professionalism.”
“You really think you can get his DNA from a coffee cup?”
“It’s worth a shot.” Decker sat back in his chair. “Let me have a minute to clear my thoughts.”
“Take your time.”
He did. A few minutes later, he straightened. “Okay. This is the approach. We have two independent investigations going on. One is Sarah Sanders and her dark secret. We suspect molestation, but we don’t know for sure and we don’t know who’s involved. She won’t talk to us, but she’ll talk to Koby. When the timing’s right, you or Brill will talk to Koby and explain that we suspect something’s amiss and would he mind talking to Sarah about it. You don’t mention, hint at, or imply that this has anything to do with Belinda Syracuse, okay? Because as of right now, it doesn’t.”
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