'What's the latest on 'em? Anything?'
Mel slipped Frank's hamburger onto the bar, and she ordered another stout.
'Let's get a table,' she said, picking up the plate.
Johnnie followed, and when Frank had finished her first bite she answered his question.
'I got an interesting string of rapes from around that area and a stack of case folders two feet high. So I'm plowing through them this morning—'
'Don't you ever do anything fun?' Johnnie interrupted.
'—and at least three of them so far are similar to what we know about our guy. He was big, maybe left- handed, restrained them with a towel around the throat.'
'Kinda grasping at straws, aren't you?'
'Got a better idea? We know there's at least one rapist in that area, our guy's into rape, we know the girls were in that area. Weak lead's better than no lead.'
Johnnie shrugged again, a typical gesture for him. 'Hey, Mel,' he held up his empty mug, 'I'm dying over here.'
After Mel brought another shot and chaser, Johnnie asked if the whitecoats had revealed anything useful.
'For the DA, but not much right now.'
Frank told him the rest of the details from the case folders, then settled up her tab, throwing Johnnie's in, too. She slapped his back and dodged through the raindrops to her Honda. She cruised easily along the slick, gray highway, grateful for the weather keeping everyone home. Upstairs at the station, she started a pot of coffee and slid Beethoven's Fourth Symphony into her little boom box. She closed her eyes while she waited for the coffee and let the Adagio swell over her.
Besides chasing bad guys, music was the greatest passion Frank allowed herself. The singular exception to her general denial of sentiment, she allowed Mozart and Bach to sweep her off her feet like lovers, Sinatra and Fitzgerald to soothe her. She used AC/DC and Led Zepplin to amp herself up, Getz and Jobim to calm down.
During the pause between movements she lowered the volume, poured her coffee, and got back to the stack of cases. The felicity of the Fourth Symphony gave way to the more stately Seventh, then the tape reversed and started all over again. By the time Frank sighed loudly and stretched against the hard chairback, the somber Allegreto of the Seventh was playing for the third time.
Frank turned it up, regretting she hadn't paid attention to the beginning. She allowed the strength of the movement to divert her from the ugly dossier she'd been culling, and as she relaxed it occurred to her that she was tired—deeply, achingly tired.
The Presto began and Frank snapped the player off, determined to concentrate on the lists in front of her. They might pan out to nothing, but at least they offered a glimmer of hope on an otherwise darkened trail. The clock over her door read 6:24. She hefted the phone receiver, debating, then dialed.
'Hey, Trace, it's Frank.'
'Frank! You humma-humma, how the
Tracey Jantzen had a mouth like a sailor in a shipwreck, and it was amusing to hear her curb it around the kids. She was an outgoing, gregarious woman, with a heart as big as the South Pacific, and just as warm.
Frank smiled.
'I've been fine,' she replied. 'How's the most beautiful woman in L.A. been?'
Tracey came back with the standard reply. 'Well, if I knew her Frank, I'd ask her. When are you coming over for dinner? I haven't seen you since forever. Noah says you're working too hard. Why don't you come over next Saturday? We'll drug the kids and play strip poker all night, what do you say? Or at least Noah could barbecue some steaks and I could make a pitcher of margaritas. How's that sound?'
Frank interpreted the slight pause as her chance to answer and she said it sounded real good.
'Go-o-od! Now that I've gone and invited you over, let me go check the calendar and see what we're doing Saturday. Hang on, I'll get No for you.'
'Bye, Tracey.' But the words just echoed onto a tabletop. After a minute Noah greeted, 'Whassup?'
'Hey. You busy?'
'Yeah, I'm playing cowboys and Indians with Markie.'
'Who's winning?'
'Man, he is. I'm dead meat, 'cause he's a fierce hombre.'
She could tell he was still playing with him.
'Do you have a sec?'
'You bet.'
It wasn't unusual for Noah's weekends or evenings to be interrupted by work, but it was unusual for Frank to call. He asked if they'd had a break on Agoura or Peterson.
'No such luck. But I combed through the MI list you ran for me and I've found some spooky shit here.'
'Speak to me.'
She gave him a synopsis of the information extracted from the rape cases.
'The first one happened on December 8, 1996, at the Culver City Park. It's not far from Kenneth Hahn, and it's a lot like it: both places are surrounded by oil companies. There's a lot of brush back in there where anything could happen. Anyway, a ten-year-old Hispanic female wandered away from her brother who was playing baseball. No one noticed she was gone until she came running back screaming. She was hysterical, and the brother took her home. Turns out she'd been assaulted, anally, but by the time they brought her to the hospital the next day, there was no evidence at all.
'When they finally got her to talk, seems a man had grabbed her from behind and choked her with his arm around her neck. Then he'd pulled her shorts down, rubbed something wet on her with his hand, and penetrated her. She tried to scream even though she could barely breathe, and from the way she described how everything was looking gray she was close to passing out. Then he dropped her and she got her breath back. She looked behind her but no one was there and she ran to find her brother.
Caucasian, had rolled up his sleeve and said, 'Like my skin?' To which she replied, 'Yes, but not so much hair.''
Frank continued reading excerpts from each report.
'The second case was about six weeks later, January 22nd, again at the park. This girl was older—thirteen, Hispanic again. A man, a tall man, abducted her on her way to the restroom, choking her with a towel. He dragged her into the surrounding shrubs, pressed her down onto her stomach, fell onto her, and masturbated against her fully clothed. He did that for a while, then eventually lifted himself off and she could breathe better. Then he proceeded to rape her exactly as the first girl had been raped, with the exception that he kept banging his head into her shoulder blades. This time the girl went straight to the ER and somebody was thinking. They did fingernail scrapes and semen swabs, and CCPD determined the assailant was a white male, A-type blood. Collected pubic hairs were light brown.'
Noah interrupted, 'Okay, so far we've got two prepubescent Hispanic girls who've gotten raped in Culver City. Before Markie graduates from high school, is this going to somehow be connected to two white girls murdered in South Central or am I missing something?'
'Hold on. It gets better. March 25th, a white, twelve-year-old brunette is attacked at Kenneth Hahn. Same MO, on her way out of the restroom, but this case had a witness. A man entering the men's side noticed a tall, slightly overweight man, maybe late twenties, early thirties, peering into the women's restroom. He assumed the guy was waiting for his wife or girlfriend. The wit said this guy was big, broad-shouldered. He was wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt. Straight brown hair. No facial hair or obvious tattoos. No glasses.
'Three weeks later, on Texaco property just southeast of the CC park, a fourteen-year-old white female was smoking dope and drinking tequila with her friends. The girl became nauseous and went into the bushes to vomit. She crawled out later—bruised, scratched, sodomized.
'May 12th, fifteen-year-old white female, sunbathing with her sister and two friends at Kenneth Hahn. The girl was sent back to the car for sunscreen. She was grabbed at the edge of the parking lot, raped. Her left shoulder was dislocated. Not even two weeks later, another girl, fourteen, brunette, was raped outside of Kenneth Hahn, again on oil property, followed by two more in June. But get this, the June girls are fifteen and sixteen, Hispanic and white, a blonde, respectively, but the Hispanic girl is assaulted near Crenshaw High and the white girl's done near
