Bleeding Out

Culver City High. Same MO on all of them. A towel was pulled over their heads and twisted under their throats. Their assailant was big, strong. All were forced into the surrounding shrubbery and subdued by strangulation.

'Here's the kicker. During these last four attacks, the perp repeatedly rammed each girl with his head and shoulders while he was raping them. The second girl was lucky and passed out from the force of a blow to her diaphragm, the third girl suffered a concussion, and the fourth girl had two broken ribs.'

Frank paused.

'Gotta be the same guy, No. Where he attacks them, how he attacks them...it's pretty consistent throughout all these cases.'

Noah interrupted. 'How do you make the jump from these last rapes to murder?'

'Look at his style. He's evolving through each attack, becoming more and more aggressive. We can expect that as he gets more practice and more confidence. The earlier victims were mauled and handled pretty roughly, but as he learned he could get away with that much, he graduated to battery. This battery is as clear as a calling card. It's his signature, and even though his MO might vary according to circumstance, this battering's going to remain consistent.'

'If it's so consistent, why wasn't he more aggressive earlier?'

'Probably not enough time. If he'd never done this before, he was probably nervous, didn't know how much he could get away with. By the time he gets to the fifth girl he's got things worked out. He's experienced, more secure, knows what he's doing and how much time he's got.'

Noah could hear the excitement in Frank's voice, but skepticism forced him to play devil's advocate.

'Isn't it a broad jump from raping girls in parks to kidnapping and killing them?'

'Remember we haven't had a reported rape in that area since...,' she quickly scanned her notes, '...June. And Agoura showed up in late October. Maybe he's gone underground for some reason. Maybe he got arrested for something else. I'm going to run a query on arrests for that time frame, see what we get.'

'Well, it's something,' Noah conceded. 'Are you gonna talk to these girls?'

'Going to have to. The witness, too.'

'That oughta be fun.'

'I know, but something might shake loose.'

The line was silent until Noah finally sighed, 'I hate this guy.'

There was a long silence between them, then he said, 'Why don't you rent a video and go home. Get some rest.'

He heard the long intake of breath, then the lie on the other end.

'Yeah. Maybe I'll do that.'

His father liked hanging out at Gil's Pub. It was a sports bar, with a wide-screen TV and two smaller sets perched over either end of the bar. It wasn't uncommon for him to bring his son to the bar and brag to the other patrons about what a great football player he was while the boy ducked his red face down to his Coke. What was uncommon was the night he got really drunk just before the boy's fourteenth birthday and paid a woman at the end of the bar for a little action in the hotel a few blocks away.

She was drunk and willing enough. A little kinky, she thought, but hell, the boy was big enough and he was pretty cute. Everything was amiable until the father slammed her down on the bed and ripped her skirt up over her ass. She tried to protest, but he yanked her head back by a handful of hair and told her to keep her mouth shut unless she wanted to get hurt worse.

The boy watched his father, curious about this shift in power. His body was starting to harden into a man's, and though the father hadn't done that to him for a while, he was still wary. But now it was almost as if he were being treated as an equal. When the father finished, he growled, 'Get on,' and the boy did. The woman tried to talk to him, but he jerked her head back like his father had and told her to shut up. The boy didn't want to hear her, see her, smell her. He just wanted to hurt her. And he did. His father leered approvingly. The boy had never been happier.

9

She lay still for a moment, grateful she couldn't remember any dreams. In the soft cradle between sleep and wakefulness, Frank was peaceful. Before anything could ruin that she jumped out of bed, pulling on baggy sweats and a T-shirt so old she could read through it. She interchanged Sticky Fingers and Abbey Road on the CD player, and rocked and sweated and pumped cool steel for two hours. After that she filled the Mr. Coffee with water and French roast and left it dripping while she showered. Frozen croissants baked in the oven as she spread an arrest printout on the dining room table. The Stones and the Beatles had been replaced by Delibes' Lakme, and wedges of apple and Brie waited on a glazed ceramic plate for the croissants.

Frank's painstaking attention to detail checked any intrusion of discord, and she was almost happy. An hour later she rolled south on the Harbor Freeway, whistling the 'Flower Song' and looking forward to the Chiefs' game. By the time she got to the Alibi, Johnnie and Ike were already at a table in front of the large-screen TV. Lifting a hand toward Mel, she noticed Deirdre McCall filling in for Nancy and Johnnie already on at least his second beer. It wasn't even ten o'clock. She ordered coffee as Boy-red joined them, joking with the boys and excluding Frank from the banter. Around noon they started ordering pitchers, and Frank helped with a couple more as the Niners trounced the Panthers. After the late game she drove carefully home through the November dusk.

Frank made a chicken sandwich and took the arrest printout into the living room. Listening absently to the news, she scribbled notes in the margins, brushing crumbs away while she worked. A handful of records fit the time frame she was looking for, and three of the perps had priors for assault and/or rape. Between the rape victims, the murder books she'd yet to read, and this list of possible suspects, she had wiggled out a few more leads. Frank yawned widely. She and Noah could start on them in the morning. She hoped like hell they wouldn't fizzle on her.

But Frank's plans to follow up on the Agoura/Peterson leads got shelved, and she spent all the next day working a drowning with Diego. By six that evening, they had a suspect in the locker downtown. Frank celebrated, leaving the office in time to catch all of the Monday night game. She even managed another good night's sleep. Tuesday she was in meetings and at court, but late in the afternoon she finally was able to dig into the rec area murder books. They were cold cases, and Frank had borrowed them from the Culver City PD and LASD without anyone breathing down her neck to get them back. In fact, both agencies had been surprisingly cooperative.

She picked up the first binder and pulled out the pictures and the coroner's report. A handful of scene sketches corresponded to the photos, and Frank spread those in front of her. They were the next best thing to being on scene. She studied them, formulating her own ideas before she was prejudiced by the investigating detective's report.

Jane Doe, fifteen or sixteen years old, Hispanic. Her body was on its stomach in a ditch. She was missing footwear, pants, and underwear. She still had on a white bra and T-shirt, but they'd been pushed up around her collarbone. She showed bruises, too, but they seemed more evenly distributed around her body, especially around the arms and breasts where the perp had grabbed her. The coroner's report indicated anal as well as vaginal rape. She was asphyxiated, but manually. The bruising was obvious on her neck.

Frank closed the file. It was too inconsistent with the profile she was expecting. The same for the second report, a sixteen-year-old Korean girl who'd been found off the 405 near Huntley. The third case was Cassandra Nichols.

A twelve-year-old black girl. The first picture caught her spread-eagled near a dumpster in an empty parking lot. Pink skirt bunched up around her waist, underwear around her knees, blood stains and bruises on her legs. Her bra was pushed above tiny breasts.

Frank's first impression was that this case was also unrelated, but she kept circling around, making notes on a legal pad. The coroner's photos showed consistent bruising. Ligature marks around the neck indicated asphyxiation. Frank held one of the pictures up, squinting into it. It was a morgue shot emphasizing scattered posterior bruising. She searched it carefully, then restudied the photo of Nichols in the lot. Frank unconsciously stroked the empty spot on her ring finger.

The coroner's report told her that Nichols was found shortly after she'd died, roughly 7:00 p.m. The autopsy revealed anal assault and significant contusion of the dorsal region. Cause of death was asphyxiation; the manner was strangulation by ligature with an object similar to a leather belt. The internal exam discovered nothing unusual.