by Dianne Emley
“At the luncheon, I asked Frankie about her boyfriend. Said that Aunt Barbara had told me she was seeing someone. She said she didn’t want to talk about it. Frankie was never one to cry, but she looked like she might, so I dropped it. I’m thinking maybe Frankie did something stupid, like threatened to tell the guy’s wife. I don’t know.”
Vining listened sympathetically but did not comment.
“Nan, I want to find out what happened to my daughter.”
“We’ll find out, Frank.”
“That was the last time I saw her, that luncheon. I got my award for twenty-five years of service. Twenty-five years of living by my wits and I couldn’t even ask my daughter what was buggin’ her that day. She couldn’t sit still. Wouldn’t tell me what was going on. Why would she? We hadn’t had a meaningful conversation in years. Maybe never, to tell you the truth.”
“There’s always the coulda woulda shouldas, Frank. Everyone has regrets. Frankie cared about you enough to come out that day to celebrate your achievement. Says a lot.”
He gave himself a second’s respite before resuming his penance. “The autopsy was yesterday.”
She knew what he wanted to know. He would find out soon anyway. “She died when her throat was slit.”
“Sexual abuse?”
“Yes.”
He sucked his teeth and looked away.
“Frank, what are you doing?”
He wiped his eyes.
“Frankie knew you loved her,” she said. “And she loved you. Nothing is…Lots of us have family relationships that aren’t perfect.”
“Lots of us could have tried harder, too. Then they’re gone and there’s no more trying.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Go home and get some rest. And I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will. Don’t do anything stupid.”
He raised his hand, telling her to leave. She left him standing there.
In the Detectives Section, Ruiz buttonholed her. “Walked right into it, didn’t ya, Ivy?”
She at first thought he was talking about her conversation with Frank Lynde. He was talking about her run-in with the media.
“A simple ‘No comment’ wasn’t sufficient?”
“I scraped my shoes before I came up.”
“Where you been, anyway? Having a Starbucks?”
She firmly patted his shoulder, the action calling attention to the several inches in height she had over him. She again restrained herself from patting his head.
“Just talked to your buddy Frank Lynde.”
“He’s here?” That sobered him. “Why didn’t he come in?”
“Left him in a meeting room down the hall.” She pressed her lips together, showing the encounter was not good. “No hero’s funeral for Frankie.”
“He told me yesterday. Poor bastard. He’s never getting over this.”
Kissick passed by, making a clicking noise with his teeth. He had a shoe box under his arm. “Quick meeting in the war room. You look nice. That’s pretty.”
“Thank you,” Vining ran her fingers down the necklace. Her death stones. “Had it for years.” That was the truth.
He looked ragged. She suspected he’d had little sleep.
She walked into the conference room on the heels of Lieutenant Beltran and Sergeant Early.
Deputy Chief Dwight Lutz was there, as was Commander Vic Santoro, who was in charge of the Special Operations Division that included the Detectives Section. Caspers, Sproul, and Jones were there. A woman Vining didn’t know was also present.
The presence of brass from upstairs showed the pressure to break the case was running downhill. The strain leaped from Early onto her team like an arc of electricity.
Early thumped the table. “Okay, let’s get started. Like to introduce Deputy D.A. Mireya Dunn from the CAPOS, or Crimes Against Police Officers Section. Officers Ray Campos and Aaron Faraday have joined the team. We’ve logged about three thousand leads so far. Thank you Commander Santoro and Deputy Chief Lutz for getting us the extra help and taking care of the O.T. we’re racking up.”
She bowed in their direction.
They nodded in response.
“It seems like the attention of the world is focused on our city,” Early said. “After we finish here, Lieutenant Beltran will make a statement about the Thorne security DVD that’s all over the media. We were going to release it soon anyway, but not doing it on our terms makes us look like we’ve lost control of the investigation. Any theories about how it got out?”
“My guy uptown who enhanced it for us said it never left his sight,” Kissick said. “I believe him.”
Vining said, “Yesterday, when I picked it up from Iris Thorne, the homeowner, she told me someone from her security company had come out to help her copy the sequence onto DVD. My money’s on that guy.”
“We are where we are,” Early said. “Jim, was your guy able to clean up that DVD enough to make out faces or the make or model of that SUV?”
Kissick said, “He improved it but not enough to see the faces or sex of the two suspects. The view of the vehicle is obscured. It’s possibly an SUV but it could be a van. Judging from the builds of the two suspects, they appear to be male and female. The footprint Vining tracked down supports that. Using the model that Forensics made for me and with the help of the manager of the Lady Footlocker over in the mall, I found a match with an athletic shoe.”
The shoe he took from the box had thick soles with a band of bright pink in the middle that matched the synthetic leather trim on top.
Ruiz was droll. “Isn’t that sweet?”
“New Balance Wind Lass, woman’s size seven. It’s a new style, on the market this year. Manufacturer says about fifty thousand have been shipped since January. Retails for a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Sold in athletic shoe specialty shops, high-end department stores, catalogs, and on the Internet. Comes in three colors: orange crush, purple haze, or power pink.”
“Adorable,” Early said.
“This is potentially our Night Stalkers.”
Kissick was referring to the nickname law enforcement had given to the Avia brand athletic shoes that serial killer Richard Ramirez had worn while committing murders in the mid-1980s, leaving behind distinctive footprints.
“We’d be lucky if it is,” Santoro said. “Footprint could belong to someone drinking beer in the arroyo.”
“That’s a possibility.” Kissick returned the shoe to the box. He was struggling to claim a win. “Still, it doesn’t leave this room. We don’t want Lolita getting rid of her shoes like the Night Stalker did. After the media got word, Ramirez threw his shoes off the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“We can state with a fair degree of confidence that we’re looking for a male and a female,” Beltran said. “What else does our suspect profile look like as of today?”
Kissick took it. “The female’s is based on the woman Frankie was seen with at the strip club. Caucasian. Approximately five feet five inches tall. One hundred ten pounds. Eye color unknown. Hair color unknown. Twenty-five to thirty years old. Our male suspect is easily six feet, judging from how he measures up to Lolita in the security DVD. Medium build. One hundred eighty pounds. Race unknown. Hair and eye color unknown. Making an educated guess, I’d say he’s anywhere from twenty-five to fifty. He has plenty of money. And he recently lost a crown off a molar.”
Early turned to Ruiz. “Tony, any progress on the dental crown?”
“It’s another needle in a haystack scenario, like the strip club limo. The crown may be as unique as a fingerprint but there’s no dental crown registry to run it through.”
“That’s what you can’t do,” Early said. “What can you do?”
Vining was glad she wasn’t the target of Early’s testiness.
“I took it to a dental lab here in Pasadena,” Ruiz said. “It’s first-rate work. Porcelain overlay. Close to a grand to have it made and set. We’re not dealing with someone on public assistance, which we already knew. Whoever lost t
hat crown has probably gone to the dentist to be fitted for a new one and had a temporary put in. Having a jagged crater in your mouth is no picnic. I need a warrant to access dental records. I need a suspect before I even know what dentist to search. Unless someone has a brilliant idea, I don’t know where else I can go with this.”
He seemed to challenge Early to confront him again.
“Speaking of suspects, what about the good Lieutenant Moore?” Early asked. “Our profile doesn’t exclude him. The crown is a way to clinch it or take him off the table for good. Do we have enough for a warrant?”
“What’s your fact pattern?” Dunn asked.
Kissick gave her an overview of their history with Kendall Moore.
“It’s circumstantial,” Dunn said. “Even the most generous judge would have a problem issuing a warrant for dental records.”
“What if we just ask Moore?” Caspers suggested. “Hey L.T., how ya chewin’ lately?”
There was scattered laughter.
Kissick said, “If Moore is our guy and we start asking questions about his teeth, he’ll have a sinking feeling about where he might have left that crown and make his dental records disappear.”
“His wife would know,” Vining said.
They all looked at her.
Early raised an eyebrow. “Nan’s right. The wife always knows. She probably made the dental appointment.”
“How do we finesse that out of her?” Kissick asked.
“Bet I can do it,” Vining said. “A little woman-to-woman chat.”
Kissick raised his chin. “You’re on.”
“What else?” the deputy chief asked.
“We’re fielding leads,” Early said. “Tracking down each one that seems legitimate.”
She was spreading sunshine, Vining thought. People had called from all over the country and even from foreign cities with Lolita sightings. Lolita could be in there somewhere, among the calls about runaway wives, hitchhikers on the highway, and clerks in Rite Aid drugstores. It sometimes happened like that. The most mundane lead rocked the case open. Or maybe they’d merely collected refuse from the public’s overactive imagination.
Early said, “Caspers. Sproul. You make any progress with Randall Mattea or Dustin Lamb?”
Mattea and Lamb were men Frankie had recently arrested who had long and violent criminal histories.
Caspers jumped to respond, grabbing the opportunity to be in the spotlight in front of the brass. “Sproul and I brought them in for questioning. Both have alibis for the early morning of June six. We followed up and the alibis check out.”
“We think they’re telling the truth,” Sproul added.
Lutz distractedly tapped a pencil against the table. “We’ve got shoes, we’ve got dental crowns, we’ve got shadowy security tapes. What we don’t got is names. When are you going to produce some names?”
“Nan’s working an angle at the Huntington Hotel,” Kissick said. “The Police and Citizens Awards Luncheon that was on April fourteenth. Frankie was there to see her dad get his twenty-five-year award.”
“What are you saying? She met the couple who killed her at our heroes’ luncheon?” Santoro snorted. “That’s great for P.R.”
Vining defended her theory. “She might have. Frankie’s paper trail shows her life took a turn around then. Jones was running down the guest list.”
Jones spoke up. “I ran the names that Vining highlighted through NCIC, NCIS, and DMV. Several had criminal records but they were either from years ago or the guys are too old for our profile.”
Ruiz said, “That luncheon angle is a dead end. Just because Frankie was text messaging Moore from there, so what?”
Early agreed with him, to Vining’s dismay. “We don’t need to spend more time on it.”
Vining tried to keep it alive. “It’ll take me ten minutes to talk to the catering manager today, then it’s done.”
Early flicked her hand. “Fine.”
Jones started sniggering. “You know Officer John Chase?”
Early scowled at him. Her fuse was short. She was in no mood.
Vining knew Chase well. He was the rookie who was with her when she’d shot Lonny Velcro.
Jones continued. “In my background search, I found out that Chase pulled over one of our citizen heroes who got an award that day. Gave him a fix-it ticket because his car windows were tinted too dark.”
Caspers broke out laughing. “The Chaser. Gotta love him.”
Others who’d worked with Chase, including Vining, laughed along. The young officer had a reputation for aggressive policing, writing citations, and making arrests for minor violations that more seasoned officers would let go. He wanted to show he was tough and working hard as his goal was to move into the street gangs unit.
“Who did Chase cite?” Lutz asked.
“Last name Lesley,” Jones said. “Jerry? John?”
“No way,” Lieutenant Beltran exclaimed. “Not John Lesley?”
Vining repeated the name to herself.
Beltran indignantly went on. “I sat at the table with him and his wife. He’s a great guy. He was the one who saw the elderly couple being robbed in a minimall on Altadena Drive and Orange Grove. Was driving back from a meeting, took a wrong turn looking for the freeway, and encountered this robbery in progress. He jumped out of his car, engaged the suspect in a foot pursuit, tackled him, and held him down until we got there. His wife is as cute as a button.” He turned to Lutz. “You remember them, Dwight. You were at our table.”
“Right,” Lutz said. “Nice guy. Owns a nightclub in West Hollywood.”
“I don’t know where you’re headed with this banquet business, Vining,” Beltran said. “Investigating our citizen heroes. I mean, John Lesley. You’ve got to be kidding. That means his wife is this Lolita you’re looking for. Ridiculous, in my humble opinion.”
Ruiz hid his smile.
“Lesley fits the broad profile.” Kissick defended Vining’s pursuit of a lead that he never thought viable in the first place. “We’ll wrap it up today.”
“You ought to drop it today,” Beltran said. “There is no way the Lesleys are involved in this.”
Early said, “Vining, tie up your loose ends with that and move on. Okay. Jones and Sproul have been pulled to work the robberies last night at Dinah’s Diner and Mack’s Chicken. To bring the rest of you up to date, at about twenty-two fifteen last night, six masked and armed gunmen entered Dinah’s Diner on Foothill near Sierra Madre, ordered the patrons to the ground, made off with cash and jewelry. Twenty minutes later, the same group, apparently, did the same thing at Mack’s Chicken on Mountain near Lake. Thank you for your contributions, Louis and Doug.”
The restaurant robberies were horrific crimes and difficult to process because of the number of witnesses and victims, but pulling investigators off to work them signaled that the brass thought the Lynde case was going cold. Inevitably, new homicides would occur, stealing more resources, each one pushing Frankie Lynde’s file back even further. In time, Kissick would get to it when he could, following trails that had grown dusty or evaporated altogether, reluctantly putting his faith in luck.
Vining glanced at him. His game face was inscrutable, as always, but he looked weary.
Early stood. “Be safe.”
Outside, Early stopped Vining and Ruiz. “I’m going to need you to put in extra hours tracking down leads tonight and tomorrow. They should start to peter out after that.”
“I’ll make arrangements at home,” Vining said.
Ruiz uttered an abrupt, “Oh-kay.”
Early didn’t give him a second look but headed to her office.
At her desk, Vining called her grandmother. She didn’t like Emily staying home alone again. She realized it bothered her more than it did her daughter.
Ruiz sidled up to her as she was shoving papers into a portfolio.
“What’s Early got a bug up her butt about?”
There was nothing like having a difficult supe
rvisor in common to ameliorate hostilities between coworkers.
“She’s got a lot of pressure on her from upstairs.”
“Because of Ms. Attitude, I’m going to miss my son’s athletic awards banquet tonight. I told her about it yesterday. He’s a senior. This is his last banquet in high school, he’s getting an award, and I’m going to miss it. She could bring in two patrol officers on their regular shift. No overtime. Shows she’s not thinking. She’s in over her head with this thing.”
“It’s a tough case.” Ruiz had annoyed Vining so much lately, she had a hard time feeling sympathy for him. She didn’t know how long ago he’d tripped the odometer and became a jaded cop, but she suspected he could no longer see that milestone in his rearview mirror.
Ruiz hadn’t expended his venom. “And Kissick…He’s milking this for all it’s worth. He’s building his legacy on this case.”
Vining showed no response.
He cussed and retreated to his cubicle. Within a minute, he was bitching on the phone to his wife.
Vining made a promise that she would quit the Job before she turned into Ruiz. She did wonder why Lieutenant Beltran spoke so well of John Lesley. Everyone’s a suspect until it’s proved they’re not. She knew Beltran liked to rub up against celebrities. Whenever Pasadena was used as a location for a movie or TV show, Beltran liked to hang out at the scene. He often spoke of the screenplay he’d written. Everyone knew he’d had his teeth whitened. It wouldn’t surprise Vining at all if Beltran had extracted an invitation to John Lesley’s club that day at the luncheon.