reason he was no more acquainted with Yolanda than he was her house and her address.'
'That's been my thinking,' agreed Lucas.
'You go down there, you look at the houses on these two streets, and you find they are like clones all of 'em. All right then, you have to know the area well to be on the right street. All the streets in that area begin with the same letter, Denton, Denby, Densmore, Denlow. So the guy is nervous, turns down Denby instead of Denton, pulls up before 1214-the right address on the wrong street-at three or four in the morning. He then quickly carries the girl's body from his car or van and dumps it on the doorstep, not out of any grief or concern for the child's remains or the family's closure, Detective Stonecoat, but out of malice, to get even with her uncle, who inadvertently brought this horrible tragedy down on his niece, but the man is so broken up, he can't accept this truth.'
'The uncle was dealing drugs? This was because he owed somebody? What?'
'The killer wants to shock and dismay someone at that address. He wants to rub it in the uncle's face. And he gives not one thought to the child's siblings or parents.'
'What was it, drugs? Numbers? Gang-related turf war?'
'None of the above.'
'What was the beef with the uncle then?'
'Love.'
'Lovers? They were lovers?'
'Love kills…we see it all the time.'
'A highly personal motive then.''
Remo stood and paced. 'The little girl was used to get back at her uncle by the man he abandoned.'
'So the guy's boyfriend killed her with no remorse?'
'None, not this mole.'
'Does he have a name?' asked Lucas.
Remo rubbed the white stubble at his chin, not answering Lucas, slowly allowing the thread of his thoughts to unravel, like a magician unfolding a trick handkerchief. Lucas patiently awaited the old detective's sleight-of- hand. Remo continued to pace to the eye-level window that looked out on the sidewalk here in the basement offices of the Cold Case file room. Finally, he said, 'An outbreak of child abduction-murders occurred that year, and at first I suspected that Yolanda's murder was only the first in this string of killings.'
'First because?'
'First because he was sloppy and careless in Yolanda's case, and because it seemed he had a conscience, that he tried to do one right thing.'
'Bring the kid's body back home,' said Lucas.
'But he failed miserably to do so, and possibly was seen in the act and frightened off. After this, the others, he didn't take such chances with; he never brought another kid back to where he had abducted her from. Instead, he discarded them in city Dumpsters.'
'You mean this guy who they called the Dumpster Killer, Paul Mick Ryan, electrocuted in…'
'Sixty-three.'
'But you never really believed Yolanda's killing was related, despite prevailing winds?'
'No. Fact is, I got over the notion fairly quickly.'
'Why not Ryan?'
'The Dumpster victims were not beaten to death, burned, or tortured; not a bruise on them except the single deadly black-and-blue throat where the stranglehold was so intense they lifted whole thumb and finger images off the victims' throats, all a match to Ryan's prints. Yolanda was not strangled to death.'
'And there was no sexual molestation in the Ryan killings.'
'Neither before nor after, none. Shrinks questioned Ryan and learned he could only get off sexually by strangling his young victims, primarily little girls, but two boys as well. He masturbated over the bodies after death, but never penetrated any of them.'
Lucas considered the disparity between the victims of Ryan and the Sims girl. 'Autopsy showed that Yolanda died of internal bleeding from the beating her killer inflicted on her, and she was sexually molested using a blunt alien instrument.'
'Yolanda had been tortured horribly…made to suffer the pain and fires of hell.'
'Cigarette burns, yes.' Lucas pictured the photos he'd seen of her battered body.
'Whoever did her, he was vicious, and while the DA wanted to make out that Paul Ryan was vicious, I made the M.E. explain to me every bruise on his victims. Most of the bruising other than at the throats came from their time in the Dumpsters, the jostling and falling debris while the body was in the Dumpster and emptied out into a dump truck. The M.E. was clear on this; the head and body bruises came long after death.'
'And Ryan, did he ever confess to Yolanda's murder?'
'All his victims were white. He swore he never killed the Sims girl. No DNA typing then, so no way to know for certain, but he went to the chair claiming he only did the seven white children found in city Dumpsters.'
'How was he captured?'
'Captured on a tip by a gray-haired woman with insomnia, taking out her trash. The old lady was smart enough to get a license-plate number. The ID happened when she saw him discarding his last body, a little boy. When detectives showed up at his house, Ryan lost it at the door, said something to the effect, 'Why didn't you guys form a task force sooner to stop me? Why'd it take you so long? Why didn't you stop me sooner? I ought to sue your asses.''
'He didn't know the gay uncle and had never worked the area, right?'
'None of his victims were dumped anywhere near the Sims murder site. And try as they might to make correlations, they could not find any real connection, no.'
'And you suspected someone connected to the uncle.'
'Yeah, there was one guy stuck in my craw, the uncle's boyfriend.'
'He got a name?'
'Gay Uncle Bobbie and his lover, Lyle Eaton, had a nasty breakup that same evening of the abduction. There'd been a scene, a car chase in which Eaton caught up to Uncle Bob where he was holed up.'
'At Yolanda's house?'
'Using it for a hideout. Eaton got violent, breaking a window, beating on the door. A squad car was called out to the address to evict Eaton from the front porch.'
'Any arrests?'
'Should have been, but no, and so no paper trail.'
'How'd you learn about the fight? Interviews?'
'Yeah, the hard way. He was waving a crowbar when the cops cooled him down and sent him off. Had there been an arrest report, maybe so many years would not have gone by before anyone learned the truth, years during which Ryan appealed and awaited execution for the Dumpster deaths.'
'And no subsequent confrontations at that address between the men?'
'I know. It sounds fishy, doesn't it?' Remo asked.
'I agree, doesn't sound like a typical breakup, either gay or straight. Most relationship breakups happen over a series of engagements, retreats, and further battles.'
'Only one encounter after Uncle Bobbie moves out on a seven-year 'marriage' to Eaton, and it's without a word, according to Bobbie Sims. Then suddenly the man's niece disappears, is killed in horrific fashion, and suddenly poof- Eaton disappears from the city immediately after being cleared by virtue of a questionable alibi. Then a year goes by before I catch the case when the file sorta fell into my possession, and I confirm that Eaton laid carpets as well as tile, as well as doing odd jobs as a carpenter, and that he conveyed his own tools to the job sites in his cream-colored van. People spotted a white van sitting at the end of the street that night. You ever look at a beige van under orange street lamps? It's white!'
'Hoffman and Blake got none of these connections?'
'These were my leads, uncovered years later when no one wanted to hear the truth or be proven incompetent. I was a rookie in charge of filing down here in the dungeon. I prove I'm right, I also prove they're nincompoops, and they had seniority big-time in those days.'
'You ever get the chance to interview Eaton?'
'Once. He choked on a weak alibi that ought to've been proven a lie. Eaton's grandparents also swore to
