The stench of Miller's piss reaches her nose and Frank looks pointedly at the mess on the floor.
'At least Payson didn't piss his pants like a fuckin' baby. Puke like you, your mother should've eaten you at birth.'
Extracting the Beretta, she drops her arm and slams his head once more. Crying and choking, Miller crumples into his pool of piss. Frank stares in profound disgust, directed more at herself than at Miller. Bobby comes up to re-cuff him and Frank steps aside. The Beretta dangles from her hand.
'Come on. Let's go.' Bobby coaxes Miller to his feet. Even after he's led the boy from the room Frank still doesn't move.
Behind her, Darcy asks, 'You all right?'
No, she thinks. Definitely not all right. She turns to face her cop.
'That was stupid,' she says. 'There was no excuse.'
'Whatever. The fucking punk had it coming.'
'No. Not whatever. Never whatever. You excuse it once, you'll excuse it again. Next thing you know, you're the same fucking scum they are. Only with a badge. No excuses, Darcy. We're supposed to protect people from shit-birds like Miller, not become them.'
'Suit yourself.' He shrugs.
'Go help your partner,' she tells him.
The room is empty and Frank takes the edge of the bed. She's got the post-adrenaline shakes, and she's scared. She could have killed Miller. She
'Jesus!'
She paces a short, taut circle, wondering what is wrong with her. When the magpie women enter the room to upbraid her, Frank flees past them. Outside, she is comforted by the relative safety of patrol cars and uniforms. Leaving Darcy and Bobby to process the arrest she heads for the Alibi. She's still shaky by the time she gets there. Taking a stool, she orders, 'Double Chivas, Mac. Make it two.'
'Ice?'
She shakes her head. 'Neat.'
'You got it.'
She swallows the first drink in one shot.
The evening crowd hasn't come in yet and Nancy perches on the stool next to her. 'Hey,' Frank says, relieved at the distraction. 'How you doing?'
'Good. How about you?'
'Peachy-keen,' Frank lies. She finishes the second glass and lifts it for a refill.
Nancy asks, 'Are we drinking dinner?'
'Just the appetizer. I'll get something in a little bit.'
But in a little bit Johnnie comes in. She orders Chivas for them both and when Mac pours his drink, Johnnie gripes, 'Damn it, how come bartenders are all always called Mac?'
'Because we're all Scotch-Irish bastards. MacPeters, MacDougal, MacPhilips. You dumb WASP bastards can't keep us straight so you call all of us Mac.'
'To dumb WASP bastards,' Johnnie toasts.
Mac pours a shot to join in the toast. 'To Scotch-Irish bastards.'
They look at Frank who hasn't raised her glass.
'Got something against the Scotch-Irish?' Mac grins.
'Nope. Just bastards in general.' She changes the subject. 'Mac, if you're such a good Scotch-Irish lad tell me what Chivas means.'
'Oh.' Mac clutches his chin. 'I heard once.'
'Detective Briggs, any guesses?'
'Good times ahead,' Johnnie answers.
Frank shakes her head. 'Guess again.' It's a game she used to play with Noah—three guesses, each sillier than the next, but Johnnie doesn't know the rules.
'I don't know.'
Frank peers at the amber liquor in her glass. 'It's Gaelic. Means the narrow place.'
'So?'
'So nothing.' She sighs. 'Never mind.'
Chapter 13
Every witness pulls Miller out of the six-pack of photos. In the lineup, each one points and says, 'That's him.' He is bound over and pleads not guilty. Frank apologizes to Bobby as she did to Darcy. Nothing is said of it again, for which Frank is grateful. The calculated violence of her attack on Miller scared her and she just wants to forget it, chalk it up to circumstance and move on.
The City of Angels obliges her. After a four-year dip, violent crime stats throughout L.A. are climbing to new highs. It's only May, yet Figueroa already has 58 homicides on the books. It's a tough enough load for a full squad, and Frank's shy a man. Her best man.
Notwithstanding a brutal seventy-hour week, by the end of it Frank sits alone in her office. She has finished combing through the Pryce murder books. She has analyzed crime scene photos, autopsy reports, lab reports completed prior to losing the physical evidence, responding officer and primary detective reports, notes from Noah and canvassing officers, statements from friends, family, neighbors and the woman who found the bodies. Dozens of rap sheets have been read—from Peeping Toms to sadists to child offenders. Everything has been reviewed but the box of interview tapes. They sit in their shoebox, carefully dated and labeled in Noah's hand. She still can't bring herself to listen to them, rationalizing that Noah would have documented anything worth hearing. It's a weak argument but the best she can muster.
Frank's made her own extensive notes. Heedless of her exhaustion, she uses these to flesh out the chart she started at the beginning of her investigation. She fills in the facts to create a physical profile of the perp. Going on the assumption that the man who raped Ladeenia is the same person who killed her makes the perp a male. And he's a fit male, able to carry the bodies to the dumpsite with ease, and to snap Trevor's neck like a twig.
Perpetrators tend to feel more comfortable offending within their own race, so she labels the perp black. For the time being this is supported by the fact that a white or Asian male in a mixed black and Hispanic neighborhood would have been conspicuous and likely noted.
Race and gender are easy, but before she can construct a psychological description of her perp, she has to classify the type of crime it was. Organized or disorganized. It has elements of both, but on the whole it fits the description of an organized offense.
Frank starts with what little she can tell from the abduction. Ladeenia's visit to Cassie's was spontaneous. If the perp had known about it he wouldn't have had much time to plan around it, meaning the abduction itself was relatively spontaneous. Spontaneity is characteristic of disorganized offenders, but the abduction itself seems very well organized, not obviously sloppy or chaotic. The perp was able to plan an abduction and carry it off without calling attention to himself. This tells her the offender's intelligence is at least average, if not higher.
Snatching two kids from the street in broad daylight is a ballsy move. There are a number of ways he could have done it. One would be to lure them into a vehicle and go off with them. Mrs. Pryce said there's no way Ladeenia would get into a car with a strange man. Absolutely no way. Frank knew kids were readily swayed, but for a couple reasons she agreed that the perp probably hadn't used a vehicle.
One, it's not likely that a guy this organized would impulsively snatch not one but two kids in the middle of the afternoon. The risks were huge. He'd have to physically secure them, transport them to a private location, carry the bodies back to the car when he was done, then dump them. All this without anyone's noticing. Risky as hell. It didn't fit with his organizational skills.
Second, if he was just cruising for a likely vie, he wouldn't be cruising in his own neighborhood. The level of planning indicates he'd be smart enough to troll someplace where he wouldn't be recognized. Yet the kids were taken and dumped within a one-mile radius. This would indicate the perp had a reason to be in the area. Because both sites were residential, it seemed likely he lived within the vicinity of either site. Maybe he lived outside the area and had been trolling, but then why bring them back here for the dump? It didn't make sense to return
