“Yes, dammit. I was so sure Martin Torrey was the one and the whole nightmare was over and we could start living a normal life again—”
“We could?”
“All right, you could.”
“The kind of so-called normal life you’re talking about is dead and gone, beyond resurrection.”
“It doesn’t have to be. You can still pick up the pieces.”
“Pick up the pieces. You’re just like my father, you know that? Full of stupid clichés.”
“I’m only trying to be supportive.” The exasperated pinch-mouthed look again. “Why do you keep fighting me, turning everything I say around, making every conversation confrontational?”
I didn’t say anything. My head was pounding, pounding.
“Sherry, if you’d only—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, go away and leave me alone!”
I shut my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I heard him go over to the wet bar, ice and glass clinking as he made himself a drink. If he sits down next to me, I’ll scream. But he didn’t. He did what I’d told him and went away, out of the family room into some other part of the house.
When I was sure he was gone, I got up and refilled my glass. I had to pee, so I carried Johnnie with me into the guest bathroom. I was back in the family room when I heard the sudden thumping noise, not loud but loud enough to carry from one of the other rooms. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard Neal exclaim, “Jesus Christ!” As if he’d hurt himself or something.
But that wasn’t it. Oh, no, the reason he’d yelled was much worse than that.
He came storming into the family room, his face flushed and his eyes snapping. “What the hell are you doing with this?”
He had the Pink Lady in the palm of his hand.
The way he was holding her, as if she were something obscene like a dead rat, made me so furious my head felt as if it were about to explode. “Snooping in my bag, you son of a bitch!”
“I wasn’t snooping, I accidentally knocked it off the dresser and this thing fell out. Where did you get it? When?”
“I bought her, I’ve had her for weeks.”
“Her?”
“She’s a Pink Lady.”
“Pink Lady. Christ Almighty! A pink gun! Have you lost your mind? You know how I feel about guns.”
“I don’t give a shit how you feel about guns. All that matters is how I feel about them now.”
“You never fired one in your life—”
“Oh, yes, I have. Hundreds of times the past few weeks.” I put my glass down on the table and started toward him. “Give her to me.”
“No. I won’t let you have—”
He didn’t expect me to lunge at him, but that’s exactly what I did. I clawed his arm with my left hand and snatched the Pink Lady with my right and then started to back away with her. But the stupid idiot reached out and caught at my wrist and tried to take her back.
And she went off.
All by herself, it seemed. Just went off.
The crack of the shot and the smack of the bullet’s hitting something and Neal’s yell were all mixed up together. At first I thought he was shot, but there wasn’t any blood on him and he didn’t clutch at himself or fall down. He just stood there with his face the color of smoke and ashes and his eyes bulging like a character’s in a horror film.
“My God,” he said. “My God, the bullet almost took my ear off.”
Yes, it had. There was a hole in the wall behind and a little to one side of his head.
“Don’t ever touch her again,” I said. “Or next time she might not go off by accident.”
He kept on staring at me in that bug-eyed way. “I don’t know you anymore. I don’t want to know you anymore.”
“You never knew me. And I don’t want to know you anymore, either.”
I stepped around him and took the Pink Lady into the bedroom and put her back in the Baggallini where she belonged.
HAROLD INGERSOLL
I almost missed seeing the bundle. And almost didn’t stop to look at it when I did spot it.
It was underneath one of the benches on the walkway above the boat slips, more or less in plain sight if you were looking down in that direction. It was some kind of cloth bundle, a grubby-white color, pushed up against one of the bench’s wrought-iron supports. A garbage can stood on the other side, a few feet away, and my first thought was that somebody had tossed the bundle at the can and missed and just left it where it lay.
Well, I’m not usually nosy. Particularly when I’m on my way home from a relaxing day cruise on River Nymph and some pretty good fishing down in the marshes. It’s not often I can take a day off during the week—the real estate business keeps you hopping—but I had a clear schedule today. Some men’s passion is golf, boating is mine. And River Nymph is my pride and joy—a sleek Ebbtide Cuddy Bow Rider, 430 horses, the sweetest little craft in the entire North Park Marina if I do say so myself.
So I started to walk on by the bench, but something about that bundle stuck with me and finally made me turn back. I sat on the edge of the bench and reached under to pull it out. It was about a foot long; the cloth, a thin towel of some kind, wrapped around whatever was inside. The towel had an oily feel. It was damp, too, as if it had been lying there in the grass overnight or maybe even longer. That could be, because not a lot of boat owners come down to the marina during the week, and those who do aren’t as observant as I am.
There was something sharp inside the bundle; when I picked it up and started to unwind it, it nicked my finger right through the cloth. That almost made me toss it over into the garbage can unopened. But curiosity got the best of me. I went ahead and finished unwrapping it, being much more careful while I was doing it.
When I saw what was in there, my jaw unhinged and I jumped up so fast I nearly dropped it all on the ground.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!
Black-and-white ski mask. Pair of black leather gloves. And a knife, a hunting knife with an eight-inch blade stained at the tip … reddish-brown stains … bloodstains.
Naturally the first thing I thought of was the rapes. What else could these things be but what the sicko had used? Why he’d abandoned them here was puzzling, but I didn’t stop to think about it; it wasn’t my business, it was police business. I wrapped up the bundle again, being extra-careful, and half ran to where I’d parked my car.
SUSAN SINCLAIR
I returned to the hospital for another visit with Angela Lowenstein late that afternoon. I wanted to see how she was doing, and I had a few more questions to ask her.
She seemed glad to see me. As though I were a friend and not just another police officer who also happened to be a victims’ advocate. That was good, the way it should be. She’d bonded with me because I am a woman, because I understood what she was going through from a personal as well as a professional perspective—I’d been date-raped when I was nineteen, though I hadn’t told her that—and the compassion I communicated to her was genuine. I’m not always able to establish that kind of bond with a female crime victim, particularly in cases of violent assault and domestic abuse. I’d succeeded with only two of the other victims in the serial rapes, Ione Spivey and Courtney Reeves; the others had withdrawn into themselves, kept the anger and bitterness and shame walled up instead of letting me, among other professionals, try to help ease it.
Victims’ advocate is the most difficult part of my job. Yet it can also be the most rewarding. When Dad accepted that I was serious about following him and Granddad into police work, one of the things he drummed into my head was that faithfully and honestly serving and protecting the public wasn’t enough. That what made you a good cop was the desire and the effort to make a difference, even if it was only a small one, in the lives of the people you dealt with. That credo was the reason I’d volunteered for the VA position. I’ve lived by it my whole career.
Angela looked better than she had earlier, some color in her cheeks, not as much pain clouding her eyes. The
sadness, the emotional turmoil, were still palpable, of course. They would fade in time, but unlike her physical injuries, the psychic wounds would never fully heal; the scar tissue that formed would be thin, breakable under the wrong kind of pressure, like scabs over long-festering sores. Knowing this, confronting it, not only deepened my empathy but made me angry, too. Not just at the perp, not just at all men who abused women, but at men in general. Rape, especially this string of vicious serial rapes, has that effect on me. Thank God I was married to a kind, gentle man like George. Otherwise my perspective might have become permanently warped.
I smiled at Angela. The expression and tone of voice I’d learned to cultivate at times like this were neither solemn nor cheerful, but somewhere in between. Upbeat, but not happy-face.
“How are you feeling?” The standard opener.
“Better. The doctor says I can go home tomorrow.”
“Not back to your apartment?”
“No. My dad’s house. He wants me to stay with him for a while.”
“Good. That’s a wise decision.” I sat on one of the visitors’ chairs. “I’ve been thinking about what you told us this morning and there’s something I’m wondering about. Do you mind a few more questions?”
“No. Not if it’ll help.”
“It concerns your apartment key, the one attached to the dream catcher. You said you kept it in your purse. Is that always the case? Never anywhere else, such as a coat or jacket pocket?”
“No. Only in my purse.”
“Inside, or in a zipper compartment?”
“Zipper compartment, usually. But I must have just dropped it inside the day I lost it.”
“Your purse is always with you, everywhere you go?”
“Yes. Restaurants, clubs, school … everywhere.”
“What about at the Clarion? Ever leave it when you were away from your desk?”
“No. Well … I might have, once in a while, when Daddy called me into his office or I had a sudden need to use the bathroom.”
“Where would you have left it those times? On top of the desk, in a drawer?”
“I’m not sure. In the bottom drawer, probably, that’s where I usually keep it when I’m working.”
“What’s the location of your desk? Do you have a private office?”
“Not really. Just a little alcove at the back of the newsroom, near Daddy’s office.”
“Things must get pretty hectic there sometimes.”
“Sometimes.”
“Hectic enough to keep you away from your desk for several minutes?”
“Now and then, yes.”
“The day the apartment key went missing?”
“I don’t remember … maybe …”
“So someone could have sat down there briefly while you were away without anybody noticing. Opened your purse and taken the key.”
She nodded, then blinked and winced as she shifted position. “You don’t think … One of Clarion staff? A man I work with?”
“You told us the assailant’s voice might have been familiar. And it would explain how he managed to gain access to your apartment without breaking in.”
“Yes, but … my God.”
“Did any of the men ever make advances to you?”
“Advances? No.”
“Ask you for a date, act more than just naturally friendly?”
“No.” Again she paused. “Well, there is one guy, he’s only been at the paper a few months. He never came on to me or anything, but a couple of times I caught him looking at me. A lot of guys look at me, I never thought anything of it …”
“What about him?”
“I overheard him say something once … not to me, about me.”
“What was it?”
“That I was stuck-up—” A look of horror altered her expression, the kind brought on by a sudden memory flash. “He said that just before he raped me. He called me a ‘stuck-up bitch.’”
I was already on my feet. “What’s his name, the guy in the office?”
“Smith. Royce Smith.”
PART FOUR
SATURDAY, APRIL 23–SUNDAY, APRIL 24
GRIFFIN KELLS
We couldn’t question Royce Smith because we couldn’t find him.
As soon as Sergeant Sinclair phoned in her report last night, Robert and Al Bennett had gone to Smith’s apartment on Alvarado Street. He wasn’t there, and his neighbors had no idea where he might be. The building was staked out, but Smith didn’t return during the night or this morning. I contacted Tyler James at the Clarion; Smith wasn’t there, either. Hadn’t been in or phoned in, James said, for the past two days. No one on the staff had been close to him. Kept mostly to himself—a quiet loner. James was full of questions, but I was not about to divulge why we were interested in Smith because I didn’t want it to get back to Ted Lowenstein. There was no point in raising both his hopes and his ire at this preliminary stage.
I asked James for some background information on Smith, which he supplied. Born in Chico, had a journalism degree from Chico State, but aside from sports reporting for the college paper, hardly any practical experience until Lowenstein hired him a few months ago. His father and mother still lived in Chico. We ran his name through NICS and the California justice system. One hit, an arrest in Butte County for marijuana possession. A call to his parents’ home bought us nothing; his mother claimed he hadn’t been in touch with the family in over a year, and she didn’t seem particularly unhappy about it. She didn’t know the names of any of his friends there or in Santa Rita. If he had any friends, she said. The DMV provided the license number of Smith’s vehicle, a beige 2008 Hyundai Elantra SE, and we put out a BOLO alert on it and on him. We didn’t have enough on him to make it an APB.
If he was the man who had criminally assaulted Angela Lowenstein, was he also the rapist in the other four cases? Robert didn’t think so—as focused as ever on Martin Torrey—but I still held out a small hope that all five assaults were the work of the same man. If that was the case and we could prove it, it would relieve the heaviest of the pressure weighing us down. Then we could devote all our efforts to the Torrey homicide.
Now we had another complication to deal with—the bundle the real estate agent, Harold Ingersoll, had found at North Park Marina and brought in last night. Rapist’s tools, undoubtedly, but whose? Smith’s, if he was guilty of at least the Lowenstein assault? That seemed the most likely explanation for their having been abandoned—a one-and-done perp getting rid of the evidence. But why leave the bundle in plain sight in such a public spot? Why not bury it somewhere or weight it down and pitch it into the river? It was as though the bundle was meant to be found.
Robert put forth another theory: that the tools belonged to the serial, to Martin Torrey; that one of his relatives had found them and dumped them to prevent the truth from coming out. A stretch, as far as I was concerned. If Torrey was the serial, he’d have had the tools secreted somewhere nobody would be likely to stumble across them. Robert had an answer for that, too. The missing key with the red dot. Torrey’s wife could have known or suspected he was guilty, removed the key from his ring not long before he was killed because she knew what it opened, and retrieved the bundle. Again, a stretch. And what it didn’t explain was the careless abandonment at the marina. You don’t try to protect a loved one by leaving incriminating evidence in a place where it’s likely to be found.
We’d know more when the contents of the bundle were forensically examined. Even if the knife had been washed with soap or soaked in solvent, microscopic blood traces would be on the blade. In which case a DNA match would determine whether it had been used on one or more of the victims. But tests of that sort were beyond Joe Bloom’s and our lab equipment’s capabilities; it was the weekend again and Ed Braverman and his crew wouldn’t be able to make the blood-sample tests until next week, and it takes time, often a long time, to get DNA results.
What Joe could do here was run tests on the ski mask and gloves and the cloth t
owel. There was some sort of oily residue on the towel that he thought he might be able to identify. Part of his state P.O.S.T. technician’s certification included knowledge of forensic chemistry.
I spent what was left of the morning avoiding unnecessary phone calls and media requests and attending to other departmental matters. At twelve thirty I sent out for a sandwich I didn’t want. I was nibbling on it, washing it down with coffee loaded with milk and sugar to cut down on the caffeine, when more bad news came in.
One of the rape victims, the unmarried schoolteacher, Eileen Jordan, had been found deceased in her cottage. Overdose of prescription medications. Suicide.
A friend, Barbara Jacobs, had tried phoning her this morning because Miss Jordan had seemed depressed when they last talked and she was worried about her. When she got no answer, she drove to the cottage to check and found the front door unlocked, the woman lying dead on her bed. Deceased since sometime yesterday, apparently, according to the coroner’s estimate. Mostly empty pill bottles on a nightstand in the bedroom. No note found as yet.
The food soured in my stomach. I threw the rest of the sandwich into the wastebasket.
Poor battered, shattered Eileen Jordan. Fifty years old. Lived alone, suffered alone, died alone.
A self-administered drug overdose would go down as the official cause of death. But rape—brutal, inhuman rape—was the real cause.
If it were up to me, her exit from this world would go into the record as a homicide.
SHERRY WILDER
Neal spent the night in the guest room or on the couch in the living room, I don’t know or care which, and he came into the bedroom and woke me up at eight thirty. He was dressed like it was a weekday. He even had his briefcase in one hand.
“I’m going to see Mel Vincent this morning,” he said. His lawyer and golf buddy. “I’m sure it won’t come as any surprise to you that I’m filing for divorce.”
“Fast worker. Beat me to it.”
“I can’t live with you anymore, Sherry.”
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