by Jess Walter
“You don’t want to live with him?”
Caroline looked at Dupree, but only for a second, because eye contact seemed like a particularly bad idea just then. “No,” she said firmly, to herself.
“You’re sure?”
Caroline nodded, then said, “No.”
They each stared out their window. Dupree laughed and then Caroline did too.
“We should’ve done it six years ago and gotten it out of our systems,” she said. “I don’t think it’s possible now.”
“I’m not that old.” There was a silence in the car; Dupree cleared his throat. “Look, I didn’t mean to…”
“You didn’t do anything,” she said. “Fifteen minutes from now I might’ve asked you to take me to a motel.”
“Mind if I wait?”
She reached over and squeezed his arm, opened her car door, and climbed out.
“So I’m going to request that they assign you to the task force.”
Caroline looked serious. “Do you think I’m up to it?”
“I do.”
She stood there in the cool air, thinking. “Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
As he started the car, Caroline raised her eyebrows good-bye and pushed the car door closed. She watched him drive away and then turned back to the house. That night they almost slept together, he made a stupid reference to golf. Nice pillow talk. But it wasn’t even the unromantic idea of a mulligan that got to her. It was the whole idea of what would happen afterward that made her feel so sad, so distant from him. She could imagine the feeling, a cheapness, the flat emptiness of being someone else’s infidelity, existing most strongly in that person’s betrayal to his wife and his better self.
She opened the front door and set her bag down. Someone was breathing in the room. She switched on the light, expecting to see Joel, but found her father asleep on the couch, wearing a suit without the tie, his short gray hair peeking up from a blanket.
“Daddy?”
He started, and it took him a second to recognize her.
“I thought you weren’t getting in until tomorrow,” Caroline said.
He sat up and rubbed his face, more lined than she remembered, silvery whiskers already jutting from his solid jaw. “I had some business in Seattle, so I came a day early. Joel got me at the airport. He let me curl up here. I hope it’s not a problem.”
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Is he—”
“He went to bed.” Her father yawned. “Where have you been, Caroline?”
She sat down next to him and held his big hand, ran her fingers over the veins and the black hairs, squeezed it tight, and leaned against his shoulder. She hadn’t realized how tired she was, but now she felt like sleeping and crying, and the thought of working on this case weighed two tons. Faces ran together—the dead girl in the refrigerator, Burn going over the dam, her mother slipping away—and filled Caroline with a deep loneliness, the panic of a child who realizes she’s alone in bed. The faces and Joel and Dupree and her father’s hand…Caroline buried her head in her father’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” he whispered to her. “Go on and cry, baby. It’s okay.”
And she was still crying ten minutes later when her cell phone rang.
22
The guy was gnawing on his tongue because he didn’t want the hand job to end, and that pissed Jacqueline off. Normally she wouldn’t care one way or another, but a guy can’t pick you up on your way back to your motel and then try to stretch a hand job into a fucking relationship. Forty bucks was incredible for just a hand job, but still…She ought to just quit, but she was alone with him in the front seat of his smelly pickup—she couldn’t put her finger on the smell—and Jacqueline figured she’d be better off if he just finished his business.
The guy’s arms were thick and muscular; his neck was a tree trunk. He closed his eyes and spat some words in a growl that made Jacqueline shiver: “…Nnnn…oh yeah…suck me…” This kind of talk always bothered her, but at least the guy didn’t call out names. More than anything, Jacqueline hated guys who called out names. They could fantasize about their old girlfriends or women at their office or even their sisters; what did she care? But it made her feel bad to hear the names because then she had to think about the poor women who knew these assholes.
When the guy began to grumble more, Jacqueline looked out the truck window because she hated their faces during this part. Risa said it was her favorite part, because even the tough ones get so helpless: She said she could kill twenty guys a week while they got off. But Jacqueline never trusted being stronger than these guys, even for a few seconds. It never lasted. Jacqueline looked over at the guy and he was pinching himself again in the soft, white flesh under his round biceps. She stopped for a moment. Her hand was getting tired, and he was likely to cut off one of his balls to keep from finishing.
“Oh, come on, buddy.”
Then it all went crazy: his arm shooting around her head, a hand on the back of her neck, squeezing, pulling her head toward his lap. Jesus, he was strong, stronger than he looked. She figured out what his truck smelled like—bleach—as the hand tightened almost all the way around her neck and then the other hand found her throat and—
The fingers twisted into her windpipe and Jacqueline realized something that normally would’ve scared her off a guy: He was wearing gloves, suede driving gloves. He squeezed even harder, and it dawned on her that he was not trying to choke her; he was trying to break her neck. Risa always said you had to look out for the short, strong ones, because they’re pissed off at the world.
Then he growled again, like a dog, and Jacqueline knew she was going to die in this truck and she gave up to something she’d always understood—that they are stronger than she is, that when they are done with her, this is the way it has to turn out. She knew that first when she was six, that look in a man’s eyes—excited and repulsed and…angry, all shadows and dark rooms. She’d never known a man who wasn’t angry and that was the thing girls never talked about, the thing that was so screwed up about hooking. To a lot of these guys, sex was just the other side of a good beating.
The guy was harder now; didn’t that figure? Almost without thinking, Jacqueline reached into his lap and twisted—not to save herself, but just because she felt so angry. The man’s hands loosened a bit and then she scratched him in the groin, so hard she felt a nail break off in his skin. He tried to turn his lower body away from her, but she was lying across his lap, pinning him.
Frantic, she brought her right hand in, punching him as hard as she could in his Adam’s apple, the way Michael had taught her. His hands fell away, and it took a couple of his wheezing breaths before she realized she could go. She opened the truck door and was on her feet, running across the blacktop, arms swimming, and still she heard him moaning behind her, louder even than the slap of her bare feet. She ran along a row of grocery carts padlocked to a rail on the side of the store parking lot and threw herself into a line of shrubs. Over her shoulder, the pickup fired, shifted, and squealed, all at once.
She should peek around the side of the shrub to get the license plate of the truck, but she was frozen, huddled on the ground next to an empty jug that smelled like sour milk. Her neck was so tender, she felt like crying.
The truck made a few more passes as the driver searched the neighborhood for her. Once, she even saw the headlights against the wall behind her. She swallowed a few times, but otherwise was still. The truck drove off and Jacqueline stayed where she was. A few minutes later it rumbled through the parking lot again.
This time, when it seemed to be gone for good, she stood and ran through the lot, along the front of the grocery store—“Huggies Rebate, Ranier 12-Pak $4.99”—then back toward Michael’s hotel room. It was probably a mile and she was in bad shape and began coughing immediately. Her throat felt like raw meat. She didn’t think of Michael as protection—and hated whores who mistook pimps for boyfriends—but right now he was the
safest thing she could imagine. They had been partying earlier, when Risa and Jacqueline had decided to go out and make some money, and shit if he hadn’t told them to be careful, calling her by her real name and everything. That blew her fucking mind, Michael telling them to be careful. But no. She climbs in the first car that stops for her. And on a night when they found another dead girl. It was too much. Jacqueline ran along cracked sidewalks and dead lawns, her shadow thrown by the occasional porch light, ducking under trees and around cars, staying off the busy streets and away from bright intersections. She seemed to run forever.
The motel was down a hill, just off Third, in the shadow of East Sprague. A lot of hookers took their dates here, although Jacqueline preferred to work in cars. The sign simply read “Motel.” Jacqueline waited until there were no headlights, then ran across the street to the two-story stack of rooms. She relaxed a little, but her neck was really beginning to ache. She passed the motel office and looked up to the second floor room, where Michael and Risa had probably smoked everything themselves. She wondered why she’d even agreed to give that guy a hand job when the dope was on the way. She was halfway up the landing when she saw the maroon truck with its white and maroon canopy, eighty feet across the parking lot, parked alone under a streetlight.
Jacqueline backed up against the stairwell. At first she thought someone was getting out of the truck, but then realized someone was getting in. Risa.
Jacqueline opened her mouth to scream, but no noise came out. Risa climbed inside, the truck door closed, and for a moment the truck didn’t move. Jacqueline took a step down the stairs and then another. Then the truck pulled away.
She ran back up the steps and beat on the door to their room, but no one answered. She opened the unlocked door. A couple of empty forties sat on the table. Nothing else. Her purse was spilled out on the bed, and there was no sign of Michael. It freaked her out that the truck would show up back at her motel, almost as if the guy knew where to find her. Poor Risa. Jacqueline needed to get out of there as quickly as possible, to get as far from the man in the red truck as she could get, back home if she had to. She felt a twinge of guilt, but told herself there was nothing she could do to help Risa.
But there was one thing. She reached in her pocket and took out the lady cop’s business card. There was no phone in the room, so Jacqueline ran down to the pay phone on the corner. Her hand shook as she balanced the cop’s business card on the top of the phone. She tapped out the number, her arms twitching. She had to cover her mouth to keep from throwing up.
After three rings, a lady answered, and it sounded like she’d been crying.
“Is this”—she barely recognized her own voice, rushed and breathless—“the lady cop?”
“Who’s this?”
Her words streamed together. “I can’t tell you this fucker tried to strangle me but I got away and I just saw him leave with Risa Jesus you gotta help her!”
“Slow down,” the lady cop said. “Is this Jacqueline?”
It took a moment for the new name to register. “Yeah,” she said. “You gotta do something it’s red goin’ east on Sprague!”
“Slow down. Tell me where you are.”
But Jacqueline slammed the phone into the cradle and just stood there, breathing and staring at the phone. Fuck it. She pulled her hands into tight fists in front of her face and began crying. She had to go. Now. She backed out of the phone booth, then stopped, reached back in, and grabbed Caroline Mabry’s business card.
PART III
JUNE
The Fire Sermon
23
Special Investigative Summary
Supplemental Report
Confidential
Date: 4 June
Case Number(s): 01-10643, 01-20054; 01-20154-A, 01-20159, 01-20161, 01-20179, 01-22390, 01-24911, 01-25212, 01-26055.
Suspect: Leonard M. Ryan and/or Unknown Persons
Offense: Homicide (multiple)
Officer: Sgt. Alan Dupree
Unit: Serial Murder Task Force
Facts: On 21 May at approximately 1100 hours, SIU Det. Caroline Mabry observed a WM subject she believed to be Leonard Miller Ryan, DOB 7-20-63. At that time, Ryan was a suspect in at least two active homicide investigations and an attempted murder/robbery (see attached case files). On 21 May, Det. Mabry observed Ryan watching and possibly stalking a young prostitute that Mabry had recently interviewed, a white female subject, approx. age 20, who gave her name as “Jacqueline.” Acting on this information, Det. Mabry returned to where she had observed “Jacqueline” and the subject she believed to be Ryan but was unable to locate them or to determine conclusively whether the man she had seen was Leonard Ryan.
Later on 21 May, at approximately 2300 hours, following a prostitution sting on East Sprague, Det. Mabry observed a WM subject she conclusively determined to be Ryan. Detective Mabry followed the subject into an alley between Sprague and First Avenues, at Magnolia Street, where she discovered the body of a deceased WF in a refrigerator. Subsequent investigation by myself and the task force determined that the deceased female was Andrea Jean McCrea, DOB 2-13-81. Cause of death was determined to be homicide by strangulation. Victim suffered fractures to the windpipe and larynx. Victim sustained a .38 caliber GSW to the chest, apparently postmortem. Ligature marks were observed around the victim’s wrists but there were no signs of sexual assault. As with other victims, a number of the victim’s fingernails were broken indicating possible defensive wounds, yet no tissue samples were recovered from the remaining fingernails. The victim’s hands had been washed with a bleach solution and two twenty-dollar bills were attached by rubber band to her hand. The victim McCrea had a history of drugs and prostitution and a “high-risk” lifestyle. Autopsy placed the date of death as approx. 14 May, seven days prior to the discovery of the body. Two latent fingerprints were removed from the refrigerator door and/or handle and were matched to Cal. State Corr. Fac. Lompoc prints of Leonard M. Ryan.
Roughly five hours later, at 0450 hours on 22 May, Det. Mabry received a cellular telephone call from a woman she believed to be “Jacqueline,” who said that a WM subject in a red vehicle had attempted to strangle her. “Jacqueline” then observed another prostitute, whose street name is “Risa,” climbing into the red vehicle. After alerting patrol units, Det. Mabry proceeded to the Uptowner Motel in the 1200 block of East Sprague but was unable to locate “Jacqueline” or “Risa.” Subsequent efforts to identify or locate “Jacqueline” or “Risa” or to locate the subject Leonard Ryan have been unsuccessful.
During the ensuing two weeks, the task force focused on the viability of Ryan as a suspect in the unsolved homicides of at least four prostitutes and the possible disappearance of two others. After an article in the local newspaper (see attached article from 28 May, “Streets of Fear: Police Doing Little to Solve Serial Murders”), I was asked to prepare this status report detailing the task force’s work and to explain my apparent delay in securing an FBI profile of our suspect. To that end, I have requested assistance from the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and have sent Det. Caroline Mabry to interview a retired FBI agent and expert on criminal profiling in New Orleans, LA.
Background: Lenny Ryan is the primary suspect in the homicide of Kevin Hatch, AKA “Burn,” 28 April. Hatch and the subject were involved in an apparent narcotics deal when they attempted to flee an SIU surveillance team. During subsequent chase, Ryan was observed pushing Hatch into the Spokane River. Hatch’s body was never recovered and he is presumed dead. Ryan escaped. (See attached case file 01-10643.)
Also on 28 April, Det. Pollard and I responded to a homicide in the 900 block of South Stone. Cause of death was determined to be blunt trauma to the head, the weapon being a pipe wrench found at the scene. Victim was Albert Stanhouse, DOB 7-1-37, and subsequent investigation indicated that he was the uncle of Leonard Ryan. Neighbors described a younger man arguing with Stanhouse and later identified a photo of Ryan as the man they saw leave in Stanhouse’s car. The car
was later recovered at the Chattaroy Farm and Truck Stop on Highway 395. (See case file 01-20159.)
On 29 April, a pawnshop owner, Daniel C. Melling, DOB 9-4-62, sustained a GSW to the face during robbery of his business in the North 900 block of Division. Melling identified a photo of Ryan as the man who shot him and reported that Ryan had a pawn ticket for a bracelet belonging to a deceased prostitute.
Independent investigation by myself and Det. Pollard identified that prostitute as Shelly Nordling (see case file 01-20161) and revealed Leonard Ryan’s relationship with Nordling, DOB 9-16-72, a prostitute who was arrested with him in Richmond, Calif., in 1996 for possession of narcotics with intent to deliver. Nordling testified against Ryan in that case. In late 1999, Nordling moved back to Spokane to work as a prostitute and was a homicide victim on 8 February, her body found less than a block from the 21 May crime scene. Ryan is not a suspect in Nordling’s death; at the time he was incarcerated at the State Correctional Facility at Lompoc, Calif.
Ryan was released 5 March and immediately violated his probation. His whereabouts since then are unknown. Forensic evidence and witness interviews (see attached documents) place the death of the first victim (Rebecca Bennett) at about 1 or 2 April, within the time frame of Ryan’s release.
Sometime between 16 March and 18 March, according to the victim’s foster father, David Nordling, a man fitting Ryan’s description visited the Nordling house in Richmond, Calif., posing as a police officer. At that time, Mr. Nordling gave him a shoe box containing Shelly Nordling’s personal effects, delivered to Mr. Nordling by Spokane police. That box was later discovered near the refrigerator in which Andrea McCrea’s body was found on 21 May.