"Back to business," she said. "What do we have so far?"
Giallombardo barely blinked. "We have bite impressions when we have a suspect to match them to."
"But nothing so distinctive about it, we could spot the guy because one front tooth overlaps the other. We should be so lucky. No response yet on the pubic hair from the Pappas murder."
"Olmos left me a message yesterday." Rafael Olmos was the young Hispanic officer who was cruising for former acquaintances of Mendoza. "He found a guy who says they were friends. But not good ones. He said no one was. He insists Mendoza was a loner. This guy says Mendoza didn't party much when he got out of the joint. He said, quote, 'Man, I want to get a good job and be able to send money to my sister.'"
"That jibes with the Ricky I remember. Smart, volatile, but…" Meg hesitated, trying to wrap words around her impression of the defiant young man she'd had such a gut feeling about. "Ready to grow up," she finished, dissatisfied but thinking that was good enough.
Their lunches arrived, and after smiling at the waitress, Giallombardo picked up her spoon. "Was he a special case for you?"
"Yes and no. Obviously, I stuck my neck out and talked Louis into offering a good plea."
"And you got him a job."
"I put in a word." She shrugged. "I've done the same for maybe a dozen kids I arrested. Ones I thought would go bad if they were in prison too long. They needed a scare, not to learn the culture."
Giallombardo nodded between bites. "There was this girl last year. She got caught shoplifting with a bunch of friends. They were all seventeen. She'd just had her eighteenth birthday. She was scared to death. She was just a kid, you know? It hadn't occurred to her that she was any different from her friends just because one more birthday had passed. I put in a word for her."
"Good for you." Meg looked down at her sandwich. "Will's gotten so hard," she said unhappily. "He doesn't want to see the possibility for redemption in anyone."
Rather awkwardly, and avoiding Meg's gaze, Giallombardo said, "Give him time."
Meg regarded her. Maybe they'd talked more than Trina had wanted to admit. Meg would give a great deal to know why Will had decided to come home to Elk Springs, but she could be patient.
"Well," Meg said, as if dusting off her hands. "Ideas?"
"We could talk to Mendoza again," Giallombardo suggested. "And the bartender who remembers seeing Amy that last night. So far, they're the closest thing to witnesses we have. How did this guy pick the women if he didn't see them in the bar?"
"Saw them arrive. Followed them there because he'd been stalking them."
"Possible with Amy. Not likely with Gillian Pappas, whose decision to go to the bar was impulsive and who hadn't been in town that long anyway. Would a killer spot her driving and follow her? Chances are any woman driving by is heading home, to the grocery store, someplace where an abduction isn't going to happen. No, I believe this guy was in the bar. Maybe even tried to talk to her."
"Maybe," Meg said, straightening in her chair, "was rejected by her."
They stared at each other.
Giallombardo said slowly, "If the killer is the guy Mendoza chased away, think how nicely the evening played out from his point of view. He not only vented his rage on the woman, the guy who humiliated him took the fall for the murder."
It sounded plausible. As did a dozen theories. Meg pointed out, "Even if the guy was in the bar, he might have approached her earlier. Didn't Ricky say a couple different guys hit on her? Or maybe the killer tried to hold her gaze across the room and she deliberately averted her eyes. Heck, maybe he just couldn't work up the guts to make a move at all, and he got mad because she was such an intimidating bitch. Somebody like this tends to suffer from such a feeling of inadequacy, he can magnify anything into a rejection."
Giallombardo leaned forward, her voice quickening. "We're back to the connection between victims. If he perceived that all three women rejected him, he'd had contact with them before."
Hating to be the wet blanket, Meg said, "Unfortunately, it's equally possible that none of them rejected him. They may look like someone who did, once upon a time. It could be a mother, a teacher, his first crush, a wife who left him…"
"Or he picked them just because they'd dated Will."
Meg hated the idea. "We could still be jumping to conclusions. Maybe he's part of that social circle and chose them because of their looks."
"Or maybe," Giallombardo had started to lift her spoon to her mouth, but now she set it back in the soup, "he wishes he was in that circle. We should talk to Will. Back before Gillian Pappas's murder, did someone try to join the group?"
"Will and Gillian were over in Salem at Willamette," Meg reminded her.
"Did she come home with him often for breaks?"
"She spent part of most breaks here. He'd spend the other part with her in Beaverton." Meg shook her head, remembering. "The miles he put on his car. The two of them were virtually inseparable."
"Then she must have gotten to know his friends here in Elk Springs. How long had she been here that spring break before she was killed?"
Meg thought back. "Most of the week, I think. They stayed with Jack that time—you knew that. I don't know how much socializing they did. Jack said they spent most of the time taking walks or sitting outside having intense conversations. Something was obviously up between them. The fight the night of her murder wasn't out of the blue."
"It's tempting to see Will as the tie," Giallombardo said, "but you're right. Whatever we said to him last night, we'd be jumping the gun to make that assumption."
Tempting? Meg held her temper only by reminding herself that her subordinate hadn't meant that the way it sounded.
"Then what triggered the first murder? Why the six-year gap, then two murders with victims who were friends and in the same social circle as the first one?" Tasting acrid frustration, she shook her head. "We're going in circles. Why, why, why? What we need to do is focus. Which theory seems likeliest? Then let's bring in some more officers and pursue it hard."
Without hesitation, Giallombardo said, "It's somebody in their circle who feels slighted—or someone who wants to be in their circle and feels rejected."
Meg nodded. "I agree. Let's interview every single friend or acquaintance again. But this time, we want to find out what everybody thinks about everybody else."
Giallombardo finally took a bite. "Who shall I start with?"
"Will. I can't interview him without bias. At least you can be up-front with him. Get his impressions on everyone. Get him thinking."
"He may be busy this afternoon."
Meg shook her head as she picked up her own spoon. "Unless he's in court, he'll make time for you. Count on it."
CHAPTER TWELVE
"THANKS FOR TAKING the time for this." Trina Giallombardo sat in one of the two chairs that faced Will's overflowing desk, setting down a bag beside her.
He closed his office door and retreated behind his desk. "If I can do anything to help, you know I will."
She looked as thrilled to see him as he was to see her. He was coming to think he didn't much like himself, but he hadn't planned to announce his more distasteful motives to anyone, far less her. Will suspected she'd been ordered to interview him. Who else would do it? This was one time when his relationship to the senior investigating officer was awkward as hell.
Well, they had to do this. Keep it businesslike, he told himself.
"What do you want to know?"
She had opened her ubiquitous notebook on her lap, but she didn't look at it. "We're hoping you've had time to think."
It was as if she'd touched a raw wound without warning. He all but snarled, "You're asking me to imagine that one of my friends is not just a killer, but a madman who rips women's flesh with his teeth."
Her big brown eyes gazed warily back. "Not necessarily a friend. You've seen profiles of this kind of serial killer. Typically, they're…"
"Yeah, yeah! Caucasian, between the a
ges of twenty and forty, have low self-esteem and tend to fail at pretty much everything they try. The profiles all sound alike."
"That's for a good reason. Most of us have had enough successes, enough pats on the back, to balance the failures and the sneaking feeling we're inadequate. A killer like this doesn't have that balance. The only way he can feel good about himself is by dominating and destroying the symbol of his failure."
He'd heard all this before and knew profiles, even a generalized one like this, had their basis in fact. He also knew these guys could be tough to pick out of a crowd. Some were married, although their marriages tended to fail eventually. Some held jobs, although they also tended to lose those on a regular basis. They mowed their lawns. Neighbors were surprised when the guy was arrested.
Friends were surprised.
Shocked.
He rocked back in his chair. Had he done any thinking? Was she kidding? That's all he'd done. His eyes burned from lack of sleep and his gut churned from staring into the darkness thinking, Dirk. He got seriously pissed when Amy went to a Homecoming Dance with me after lying to him and saying she already had a date. Or, God, Gavin. He didn't get the dates. He bad-mouthed girls all the time. Vince. Jeez, didn't Vince and Amy go out for a while, maybe sophomore year? She broke up with him. How mad was he?
Oh, yeah, it had been a fun night.
"The killer may not be a friend of yours," she continued, in the absence of comment from him, "or of the victims." She sounded like someone tentatively offering a favor. "He may be someone who wanted to be. Someone on the fringes. Maybe he came to big parties but never got invited to the smaller ones. The pretty girls in your crowd ignored him."
"You seriously think we're looking for someone from as far back as high school."
Now her eyes held compassion. "Not necessarily. Think about the Christmas break and the week right before Gillian was killed. But the fact is, most of your friends here in town are from longer ago than that. Yes, I know Karin and Gillian weren't part of your group in high school, but they may have been chosen because they were representative, not because either of them rejected our guy. Maybe the pretty girls always rejected him."
He felt as if he were standing next to the road looking at the twisted remains of a car accident he didn't remember being in. Those days seemed so long ago. He'd been a kid. A goddamn, cocky kid.
"We were the popular kids, the jocks. Jody, Marcie, Amy…they were the cheerleaders. Amy was Homecoming Queen. Marcie was one of the princesses. Damn near every guy in school would have liked to date any of them."
Why did saying, We were the popular kids, make him so uncomfortable? Because Trina Giallombardo wasn't one of them, as far as he knew? Or because he'd begun to wonder when he'd started to be so goddamn sure of himself, he knew everyone else would genuflect?
"I remember all of you. Like ninety percent of the kids in the school, I wished I was one of your crowd." She gave a funny little laugh. "See, I know where our killer is coming from."
His jaw flexed. "Are you angry because Travis or I or one of the other guys didn't ask you out? So angry you've spent the last ten years seething?"
"No. Of course not. But I do think envy is the first step down the road toward hating everyone who didn't somehow magically make you someone you aren't."
Will didn't get it. She was pretty. Maybe not beautiful—she wouldn't make a Hollywood starlet—but her face had character. In fact, she was a more interesting woman than Karin Kristensen, who'd been nice and rather ordinary aside from her looks. So why did Trina Giallombardo have such an inferiority complex?
"Who did you want to be?"
Her gaze shied from his and color ran up her cheeks. "We aren't talking about me."
"I thought we were."
"You were wrong." She bent and lifted a book from the bag at her feet.
The moment she held it out, he recognized the burgundy cover imprinted in gold with the seal of Elk Springs High School. The yearbook from his senior year.
"Mine's in storage." He took it from her, turned it around and opened the cover. "My God, we were young," Will murmured.
For the front page photo, the student body officers had posed in a tree. He was standing on a high branch, clutching the trunk in mock terror. Vince Baker hung upside-down by his knees. Christine sat on a broad branch in a yoga pose. Dirk—dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks Dirk—appeared to be in the act of swinging up. Travis lounged at the base of the trunk, ankles crossed, as suave as the rest of them were juvenile.
They were all gawky, fresh-faced and skinny. Christine was a pretty girl, interchangeable with a thousand pretty girls. Back then, every guy in the high school had thought she was smokin'. He shook his head in amazement.
Even then, Dirk's neck had dwarfed his head. Will had uncomfortable memories of the ways they'd kidded him about how dumb he was. He'd been an anomaly in their group, a barely more than failing student in a group of guys who talked about applying to Stanford, popular because of his athletic prowess and brawny muscles rather than personality. Gavin had been an anomaly, too, but Gavin had had the smarts, they'd all believed, if he'd just done the work and shut his mouth.
Vince Baker had been a math whiz-kid and was now a CPA. Justin Hill may have turned out to be an ass, but, man, he'd talked them all through AP English. Travis was a good student, but his gift had been in his ability to draw. Most of the teachers didn't mind that he sketched constantly. Anyone else doodling in the middle of a lecture or class discussion, they'd have come down on. With Travis, they'd wander by to see what he'd drawn and often find a caricature of themselves. More than once, teachers had asked if they could keep what he'd drawn.
Will realized that Trina had been saying something. Wrenching his gaze from the photo, he said, "What?"
"I'm hoping we can go through the yearbook. Student by student, with you telling me a little about everyone you remember."
"There must have been nine hundred students!"
"We can probably skip the freshmen. Maybe the sophomores."
"That's what you were."
Her gaze flicked to the yearbook as if it were a snake. She didn't, he diagnosed, want him to look at her class photo. "Uh…yeah."
"If you were jealous, maybe someone else was."
"Different kind of jealousy. We were younger. We didn't expect to be part of your crowd. We wanted to be like you when we were the upperclassmen. That's different."
"Maybe," he conceded. "Okay. If I shove some of this crap aside, you can bring your chair around here and sit next to me."
He moved the television and VCR on their wheeled stand and cleared the top of his desk by piling books and manila folders on the floor. Trina pulled her chair around to his side, hesitated, then sat. They were so close their shoulders touched when he sat again, too. He glanced sidelong, his gaze caught by the tiny gold studs in her ear lobes. A delicate whorl decorated so simply, her ears had something of the purity of her face, that Madonna quality. He wondered about her sexual experience, then stamped down on the speculation.
Concentrate, he told himself, irritated.
"Let's start with the juniors," she said. "We can back up later if…"
"Whoa." He lifted her hand off the yearbook. "I want to see your picture."
"It's horrible!"
"So what? We're talking ten years ago." He flipped to the sophomores. First spread was A through F. He turned the page and there she was. Wearing braces that made her look self-conscious and even more absurdly young than he and his friends did. Her dark hair was loose and glossy smooth, her eyes panicky-aware that how she looked today, this minute, was going to be printed for immortality. Only the most beautiful girls, he saw, scanning the page, looked smug. The others had undoubtedly been brushing their hair and wiping lip gloss on and examining zits in the mirror and moaning, "I hate picture day!" until the moment they heard their name.
Trina made a choked sound. "I hated those braces."
"Most kids get it out of the way earlier."
"So what's the verdict?"
She actually did laugh. "I'm glad my two front teeth don't overlap. Okay? And, yes, plenty of other kids had braces, too. I still felt like mine glowed in the dark or something."
"Ah, adolescence."
He flipped quickly through the sophomore pages and found faces that looked vaguely familiar, as hers had done, but not much more. He knew the guys who'd played on sports teams with him and a few girls who'd dated friends, but that was all. None stood out in his memory.
Trina asked him to comment on the girls, too, when he turned to the junior class. "Maybe one of them will trigger something."
He talked his way through the juniors, surprised by how readily the past welled from some storehouse in his mind. There were so many people he'd known well but hadn't given a thought to in years, but a mere glance at a tiny black-and-white photo would send him tumbling back.
"Damn," he murmured. "Sean Kavanagh. What an arm! But he was stoned all the time. We all knew it. Remember when the administration brought dogs in to sniff the lockers? The dog went crazy at Sean's. He got expelled. I wonder what happened to him?"
Trina made notes, but Will had already moved on. "Michelle King. She and Justin Hill went out for a while. He dropped her for…someone. Nita, maybe, after she and I broke up? Michelle went around telling anyone who'd listen that Justin was a daredevil on the ski hill to make up for his lack of sexual expertise."
"I suspect she was a little cruder than that."
He grinned. "Oh, yeah." He looked at the next picture. "Billy Landon. Now, there's a guy who tried way too hard. He was kind of like Jimmy McCartin. Only Billy at least made the team. But he was always second-string. That didn't stop him from swaggering and talking like he kicked ass."
"Girlfriends?"
"Uh…" He drew a blank. "He must have had them. But nobody I knew well."
Dead Wrong Page 17