Land of Shadows

by Rachel Howzell Hall

  05/11 LLJ Nike, white.

  Forensic scientist LLJ was now examining Tori’s shoe.

  But …

  What if the DNA test proved that Napoleon Crase didn’t do it? That the blood belonged to someone else and that person was not in the National Crime Information Center? Humans were only separated genetically by 0.5 percent of our total DNA. Not much, but enough to determine the innocent from the guilty.

  I tugged at the small silver hoop in my left ear, not wanting to be in this room now, not wanting the shoe to be in LLJ’s possession. My hands shook as I held that box, shook as though someone had been imprisoned behind my rib cage and was now grabbing the bars and trying to break out.

  Not knowing: you can imagine the best of scenarios when you didn’t know. For more than twenty years, that blood on Tori’s shoe belonged to Napoleon Crase. For years I thought, If only they could examine it …

  Now that they were, there was a chance I had been chasing a shadow all this time. Now there was a chance that the sun would shine into that dark place and show me … nothing. Now there was the chance I’d realize that all this time I had been Don Quixote dressed in a Calvin Klein pantsuit.

  I shook the evidence box again. A boulder had lodged in my throat and I couldn’t swallow.

  Maybe I should retrieve the sneaker before LLJ runs a swab over the blood. Steal back that shoe and destroy it just to keep my imagination intact.

  It had been so long since Tori’s disappearance that my hatred for Napoleon Crase had become a part of me. Not to have it anymore would be akin to losing my hand.

  39

  The purple roses were dying.

  But then I had neglected the bouquet, relegating it to the edge of my desk since its arrival on Wednesday. No new water. No sunlight. No love. And now the petals resembled the new scales of a molting dragon. Unfortunately, the flowers weren’t dead enough to throw away. Like many things in my life.

  My eyes wandered back to the computer screen. The same screen that said 1 result for Napoleon Crase’s “secretary.”

  Brenna Benevides, a pay-to-play girl, had been busted for prostitution every other year. Her government name was Oleta Brown and she specialized in sex games that, literally, took your breath away. She was stunning even in her mug shots. One parent had been black and the other parent was some kind of Asian. Brenna had long, shiny hair; big boobs; high cheekbones; and lips that men loved. In her industry, though, she was a senior citizen at thirty-one years old.

  My iPhone vibrated on my desktop.

  Syeeda’s picture flashed on the screen. “Hey,” she said. “What’s going on with the Darson case?”

  I opened the PDF of Monique’s autopsy report that Dr. Brooks had just e-mailed, then slumped in my chair. “Hello, dear friend. I’m well, thanks for asking.”

  She snorted. “We’ve known each other since 1993. We can skip the foreplay, sweetheart. I forwarded an e-mail to you. Did you read it?”

  “Is it the Daily Candy Shop-Til-You-Drop e-mail thing?” I asked, scrolling through my inbox. “Or is it…?” I clicked on Syeeda’s last message—three PDFs.

  Letter of Protest.

  Special Events Permit.

  A picture of Angie Darson, picket sign in one hand, a bullhorn in the other.

  “Okay,” I said. “So what is all this?”

  “Behold,” Syeeda said, “the power behind the anti-Crase, anti–Santa Barbara Plaza revitalization movement.”

  I scrunched my eyebrows. “The Darsons. I know this. And? So?”

  “Not the Darsons. Angie Darson. Cheese and bread, dude. Look at the shit I sent you.”

  I sat up in my chair and eyed the three PDFs. And then, I saw. “She’s the contact on the letter. She’s the contact on the event permit. She’s the one leading the march.”

  “And he?”

  My eyes scanned the documents again. “He is nowhere to be found.” I rubbed my thumb across my lip. “She’s the one pushing Cyrus into this role of community leader, and he’s…”

  “Just not into it, obviously.”

  “Interesting,” I said.

  “Wanna know what’s even more interesting? The last approval for Crase’s project went before the city council in April. The Darsons didn’t show up.”

  “Really?” My attention turned back to Monique Darson’s autopsy report. Remarks: Decedent originally presented to this office as a suicide victim. Contusion … 0.25 inch linear fracture … occipital bone … no hematoma … laceration with abrasion of scalp … presence of the post-mortem ligature mark suggests that suicide in this case is highly improbable.

  Suicide: that had been the initial thought only two days ago. So much had changed since.

  I yanked a dying petal from a rosebud. “Do you know anything else about Cyrus Darson? He’s not talking straight to me and that pisses me off.”

  “What’s he being shifty about?”

  “Who did he work for before Crase?”

  “Is my finding out predicated on you giving me an update?”

  “Yep.”

  Syeeda huffed. “Fine. I’ll call you back.”

  I crumpled the rose petal in my palm—there was no crunch, still some give, still some meat. Again: just like many things in my life.

  * * *

  In the spirit of “Please like me, please?” Colin had pizzas delivered for lunch. Over greasy pepperoni pizza slices and cans of Coke, the Who Killed Baby Girl? team huddled around the whiteboard for a midday update.

  “So where are we?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked as he folded his slice in half.

  I told them about my meetings with Cyrus and Angie Darson, and then with Macie. I told them about finding Monique’s best friend, Renata, stuffed into the spare-tire compartment of her Ford Taurus.

  “I’ll make sure Jefferson shares info with you,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said to me. “Make sure you do the same.”

  After only taking two bites of pizza, the dough and cheese sat in my stomach as heavy as a gold bar. “During my meeting with Macie, she gave me a list of potential suspects. Well, more like the names of guys Monique had dated over the last two years.” I passed the list to Pepe. “I’ve only had a chance to hit one name: Todd Wisely.”

  “Any reason you’re starting with him?” Pepe asked.

  “He plays basketball for UCLA,” I said. “And he’s twenty-one years old.”

  “‘Got me a big baller,’” Luke said.

  “Exactly. But Todd’s been at training camp up in Arrowhead since last week. He was nowhere near Los Angeles on the night Monique was murdered.”

  “Says who?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked.

  “Says Todd. Says his coach. I talked to both a few minutes ago.”

  “So Todd is out,” Lieutenant Rodriguez said, ticking off his fingers. “And the church boy is out—”

  “Possibly,” I said. “But not definitely.”

  Lieutenant Rodriguez continued. “The gangbanger’s out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So we may have two people of interest?” he asked, two fingers in the air, a screech creeping into his tone. “And those two are Napoleon Crase and Von Neeley. After three days working this case? Maybe two?”

  I cleared my throat as heat prickled my armpits. “I’d like to send a few vice cops over to Santa Rosalia to see if any of the girls or the tweakers saw anything that night.”

  Lieutenant Rodriguez nodded. “Anything else?”

  “A little more on the Crase angle,” I said. “I found his home address written on a slip of paper in Monique’s diary. Macie, her sister, bought a car from his dealership—and so did Monique. That’s where the Lexus came from.”

  “Anybody see Crase with Monique Darson?” my boss asked. When I didn’t answer, he crumpled his napkin and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Lou, I put you on this because you usually get results.”

  “Pepe called Crase just a few minutes ago,” I said. “Asked him to come down today for an interview. Nothing formal. Just to
talk. No lawyer needed.”

  Lieutenant Rodriguez turned to Pepe. “And is he coming?”

  Pepe nodded.

  “It’s just gonna take a little more time,” I said, my nerves jangled, my voice sounding wary even to me. “The lab will come back with prints. A witness will come forward. And there will be blood.” I forced a smile to my face, clinging to optimism like a junkie clutching the last eight ball in the galaxy. “This case is solvable,” I said. “Everybody repeat after me. This case is solvable.”

  They all played along.

  This case is solvable.

  This case is solvable.

  This case—

  My desk phone rang. Grateful for the interruption, I grabbed the receiver.

  “Lou!”

  “Zucca!” I said. “Please tell me that you have good news.”

  “I have good news. First, the acrylic nail found in the trailer belonged to Monique. So she definitely was attacked there. And I got a print off her underwear.”

  “What? A print? How?”

  “VMD.”

  Vacuum metal deposition. Lovely. Zucca had placed the panties into a vacuum chamber where gold was heated to the point of evaporation. He then reduced the pressure inside the chamber, causing a very thin film of evaporated gold to spread over the fabric. He heated zinc next and that attached to the gold, but only in the spots where there were no fingerprint ridges. Those left-behind fingerprint ridges couldn’t be “lifted,” but they could certainly be photographed. In a way, it was like a reverse X-ray.

  “I’m dancing,” I told Zucca. “You can’t see me dancing. No one can see me dancing, but I’m freakin’ Lord of the Dance jigging on the inside right now.”

  Because girlfriend-beating Napoleon Crase’s fingerprints were in the system.

  He laughed, then said, “A fingerprint tech is about to feed them into AFIS to get possible matches. Shouldn’t take too much longer. As for DNA from the victim and on that handkerchief: still out on that. And the high-tech guys still haven’t gotten around to the victim’s netbook. Sorry. We’re just really jammed.”

  Despite the DNA delays, I still couldn’t help but smile as I hung up. Couldn’t help but picture my shiniest pair of handcuffs clamped around Napoleon Crase’s wrists. “Zucca got a print,” I announced to the room. “Shouldn’t be too long now.”

  “Okay. What about that mystery phone number?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked, not placated by this recent development.

  “Still working on it,” Luke said. “The provider is slower than a snail in a snowstorm.”

  Joey laughed. “Say that three times.”

  Luke said, “Slower than a snail in a—”

  “So what’s next?” Lieutenant Rodriguez asked, ignoring them.

  “Next up,” I said, “Napoleon Crase comes in for an interview this afternoon.”

  “According to his secretary-slash-girlfriend,” Pepe said, “he’s been in Chicago all week. He flew back this morning.”

  “Tread carefully,” my boss warned. “And keep looking at everybody. No fuck-ups. None. What about the press?”

  “The press release is done,” Joey said, “but no one’s demanding answers right now.”

  I had three voice mails from reporters; fortunately, none of them worked for major dailies.

  “What about your friend?” Colin asked me.

  Joey laughed. “Oh, yeah! Sexy Sy.” He turned to Pepe for a high five.

  Pepe left him hanging.

  Meanwhile, I glared at Colin for bringing up Syeeda.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez considered both of us, then focused on me. “And what are you going to tell Miss McKay if she asks?”

  “We’re pursuing all leads at this time,” I said, unblinking.

  Lieutenant Rodriguez grabbed another slice of pizza from the box. “You better go find some leads to pursue, then. We don’t wanna lie to the press now, do we?”

  40

  Napoleon Crase needed to feel something. He needed to step inside interview room 1 not as a self-made man and not as BFF to the councilmen of black Los Angeles. No. He needed to come in as a human, vulnerable and uncertain of his fate. And he needed to confess that he had been involved in the death of Monique Darson and the kidnapping and murder of Victoria Starr.

  I wanted to tape autopsy pictures of the Darson girl along the room’s wall, mixing in a few shots of her laughing, posing with Butter, and accepting her high school diploma at graduation just a week ago. On one of the walls, I wanted to tape up pictures of Tori, too. Shots that I had plucked from our family photo albums long ago: high school graduation, baptism, church fashion show. I wanted to tape up area maps, the condo site circled in red, just a block away from the old liquor store, also circled in red.

  But I couldn’t contaminate the interview. Any lawyer worth his degree would claim intimidation and false confession. So the room had to be stark, bare, blank.

  I could, though, bring in a folder that held my eight-ball pictures. And those pictures, I hoped, would pound the man into a true confession.

  Colin pointed to the camera bolted in the upper north corner of the room. “Is it good?”

  Pepe nodded. “Yeah. Luke put in a new tape and made sure that the microphone was working.”

  “And I brought provisions for our guest.” I waggled a bottle of water and a disposable cup wrapped in plastic.

  Pepe said, “Good luck,” then squeezed my shoulder before he left the room.

  Colin and I waited for Napoleon Crase in the crowded lobby. My partner took my hand more than once. “You’re doin’ the ear-tugging thing. Keep it up and you’ll tear your earlobe.” He paused, then said, “You sure you don’t want me in the room?”

  I nodded.

  “Because I’m here.”

  “I know.”

  “And you sure you wanna do this?”

  “Do what? My job?” I frowned at him. “You think I’m being irrational?”

  His bottom lip disappeared. “I just…”

  I snorted. “Weren’t you the one ready to go over and kick his ass?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Colin, I spent my entire teenage life writing in a journal and nightmaring about what this man did to my family. You would do whatever it takes to stop those dreams, dreams that I still have, wouldn’t you?”

  Colin scratched his jaw and didn’t speak for a long time. Then: “I enjoy working with you, Elouise, and … And I don’t really wanna start over with a new partner, know what I mean? But you do what you have to.”

  At three o’clock sharp, a chauffeured Maybach pulled up in front of the station.

  Colin grinned at me. “He’s kidding, right?”

  I stared at the car’s passenger climbing from the backseat. The old man wore a tailor-made Italian suit and so much gold that he could be seen twinkling from the stratosphere—fancier than the green chinos and brown short-sleeved shirts he wore during my childhood. I glimpsed Brenna inside the Maybach. Well, I glimpsed her long legs, one manicured hand, and the egg-sized diamond on her finger.

  Napoleon Crase, gaunt and crinkly, opened the station’s glass door, and his cologne (pine forest and musk) wafted in on top of the draft. Had the weight loss been the result of the diet recommended by his proctologist? Or was Brenna Benevides into yoga and vegan macrobiotics, and therefore so was he?

  Colin and I met Napoleon Crase in the middle of the lobby. I introduced my partner and without thinking, I offered Crase my hand.

  We shook—my stomach lurched and the rest of me went stiff. I tried to keep my Scowl of Disgust stored in its bin, but its tail end muddied the feigned, it’s-not-personal, just-doing-my-job cop smile.

  “I don’t have much time,” Crase said, glancing at his gold Rolex. “I have a meeting at City Hall in an hour.” His voice was still deep and craggy, like canyon walls as tall as Mount Everest.

  I wiped my Crase-contaminated hand inside my pants pocket. With each step, that soiled lining burned my leg.

  We e
scorted the businessman deeper into the building.

  Crase’s eyes never stopped moving, and he was already sweating as he took in the commotion of the Southwest Division. The angry mother demanding information about her jailed son; the tired grandmother holding a pink slip from the bail bondsman; an adolescent Hispanic girl translating for her bleeding father.

  And through more chaos: ringing telephones, undercover cops wearing black ski masks, screams from the drunk tank …

  We arrived in the quiet of interview room 1. Crase cleared his throat, then said, “Busy today.”

  “The days are longer now,” I said, easing into the interview. “That means more time to hang out, more time to drink, more time to get in fights. Please have a seat, Mr. Crase.” I plopped into the chair across from his.

  He thanked me and sat with his hands folded on the table.

  “Have you ever had to do something like this?” I asked. “Be interviewed by the police?”

  He smiled. “A long time ago.”

  I faked a smile of my own—his last domestic assault had happened just last year. Not much of a “long time ago.” “Well, I certainly appreciate you coming in to talk with me. It’s very important that we turn over every rock in this case, big and small.”

  He offered a nod full of understanding.

  I waved my hand over the bottled water and cup. “If you’d like coffee, I can get you some, although I must warn you: it’s horrible.”

  He chuckled and unscrewed the bottle cap. “Water’s fine.”

  I leaned forward. “So we’re here to talk about Monique Darson, who was found Wednesday evening, murdered in a condo unit on Santa Rosalia Drive.”

  He crossed his legs and glanced at his watch again.

  “And we wanted to talk to you because there’s a connection—well, a few connections between you and the victim.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Because she was found on my property.”

  I pushed away the notepad and pen—he’d talk more freely if he saw that I wasn’t taking notes. “First things first. Where were you on Tuesday, June 18?”

  He narrowed his eyes as he thought, then said, “For most of the day, I was at home, packing for my trip to Chicago.”