somehow and bam—you're in the house. I like that.'
She nurses the liquor, eyes closed, still for a moment. Not a family man, she thinks, so not a passenger vehicle. Sports cars take money and they're temperamental. They're flashy and compact. If this guy is a serious rapist, then he's going to spend a lot of time cruising around in his vehicle. He'll need space to spread out and feel comfortable. Nor would he appreciate a sports car's high visibility. And if he is a skilled laborer, he might have his own tools and need space for hauling them.
'Okay, boy and girl, here's my final answer. The tried-and-true criminal vehicle of choice, your average van. Or,' Frank qualifies, 'something roomy like a work truck with a shell. Maybe a used Blazer or Bronco. Something easy to fix. Plenty of space for parts, tools and the occasional unwitting victim. Not a conspicuous vehicle.'
The alarm on Frank's wrist goes off.
'Nothing flashy or customized. Too expensive.'
She tosses off the rest of the Black Label and jots a few notes.
'Love to stay,' she says to the paper children, 'but duty calls.'
Chapter 20
After a peaceful enough night together, Gail calls Frank at work. 'Guess what I've got?'
Frank almost says she hopes it's not an STD, but knows Gail wouldn't appreciate the crude humor. 'The most beautiful legs in L.A.?'
'Just LA?'
'The planet,' Frank allows.
'Tickets to
'Great. When?'
'Tonight! I won them on the radio driving in to work. Can you believe it?'
No, Frank thinks, she can't.
'Tonight?'
'Yeah, but don't worry. It's not opening night. You don't have to get dressed up. Your work clothes will be fine.'
That's not what Frank's worried about, but the excitement in Gail's voice keeps her from admitting she'd rather cavity search a hope-to-the crackhead tonight than sit through two hours of Italian opera. Frank sighs without sound, asking where she should meet Gail and when.
The doc picks her up close to 5:30, the mandatory ten minutes late. She bursts radiantly through Frank's front door and for a shining second Frank loves her again. She warns herself not to be an asshole tonight.
Holding Gail close to her, Frank praises, 'The most beautiful woman on the planet.'
Gail beams and kisses her, but Frank's sincerity drains away like the tide around the pilings of the Santa Monica pier. She feels the suck of it leaving and tries to hold on, but she's left with only air. Gail picks this of all times to tell Frank, 'I love you.'
Even as she tells herself to just repeat the words, Frank is nodding, 'I know. We better get going.'
Later, Frank tells herself, in the bedroom's concealing darkness she'll tell Gail she loves her. Maybe then she'll feel the words. If she doesn't, maybe the night will hide her lie. They chat amiably during the return to downtown. Frank studies Gail's animated profile. She knows without reserve that Gail is playful, fun, sexy, bright—dozens of good adjectives—hence Frank's frustration at feeling nothing in kind but a low-level aversion.
The talk turns to their respective days. Frank returns the dutiful questions. When Gail asks if she got a chance to work on the Pryce case, Frank hesitates. It's a touchy subject.
'You still don't have any suspects?'
'Well, I didn't when I thought I was looking for a couple, but now that I'm back to a single perp again ... I don't know. Probably not. There's a handful Noah kept looking at, but I haven't talked to them yet. They're not ringing any bells for me. One of them pimps really young girls.' Ignoring Gail's shudder, Frank continues, 'His grandmother lives on the same block where the bodies were found and she was gone all afternoon. The house was empty and the grandson had a key. Came and went as he pleased. He's got weak alibis for the time period, but there's no hard evidence against him. Ladeenia's personal effects—'
'Ladeenia?'
'Yeah. She's the girl. Her—'
'Since when are you on a first-name basis with your victims?'
Frank checks a sigh. 'Is there a point to this line of questioning?'
'You don't usually refer to your victims by their first names. It sounds so personal.'
Not willing to follow where she thinks Gail is going, Frank slogs on, 'So all the physical evidence got lost somewhere at SID.'
'You don't say.'
Lost evidence is not uncommon in a bureaucracy the size of the LAPD, but Gail's sarcasm still rankles. Frank jabs back, 'There's no DNA to match to these guys because the sperm was too degraded by the time the coroner got around to autopsying her. Second guy's down in Calipatria, violent sexual predator. Same for him. Weak alibi, no evidence, tight story. The best of the three raped a thirteen-year-old at knifepoint but was apparently up north when the kid—' Frank catches herself. 'When the case went down. There's a handful of guys in the area with priors, but they've never developed into viable suspects.'
'Let me see if I've got this straight. You're working a—how old is this case?'
'Six years.'
'Okay. You're working a six-year-old case, with no physical evidence, no suspects and no witnesses. And you expect to clear this how?'
'Through dint of my superior investigative acumen.'
Gail shoots an eyebrow up. 'Wow. I think you've been hanging around me too long.'
'Maybe so, Shakespeare.'
Frank used to call Gail that when they first started dating, when Gail hid her nervousness behind big words and formal speech. Now the name softens her and Gail asks, 'So what do you drink happened to all your evidence?'
'No clue.'
Frank explains that the blanket the kids were found under, their clothing and the tape on their bodies all were collected by the coroner investigator, as they should have been. Detectives don't usually handle the transfer of evidence from the coroner's office to the SID facility but in this case Noah had signed out the physical evidence and personally delivered it to William Kastanaphoulas at Piper Tech. Because of SID's backlog and the Pryce case's low priority, it took four months, with constant nagging on Noah's part, for Kastanaphoulas to analyze the material.
When Noah finally got the message from SID that the evidence had been processed he'd raced to Ramirez Street, only to be told that Kastanaphoulas had gone to Oklahoma for two weeks. Noah talked to the Trace Evidence supervisor who authorized another criminalist to sign out Noah's package. Noah waited while she went to get it, only to be horrified when she couldn't find the evidence. She found copies of the lab reports and turned those over to him, but the blanket, clothing and tape weren't anywhere. Noah had looked with her. They checked every log and record. They talked to each person associated with the case. They searched Kastanaphoulas's work area. But the evidence had vanished.
Frank had managed to calm Noah by reasoning that at least he had the lab reports to work with and that Kastanaphoulas would probably be able to lay his hands on the material as soon as he got back from Oklahoma. Noah had consoled himself with the slim laboratory findings, fruitlessly tracking trace fibers back to the Pryce home. The fibers he couldn't track were so common as to be useless.
On the morning of Kastanaphoulas's return, Noah had cornered the criminalist before he could pour his first cup of coffee. Kastanaphoulas explained that he'd packaged the material and left Noah the message to pick it up. That was a week before he'd left town. He remembered being surprised, and a little pissed, that for all his hurry Noah still hadn't collected the evidence by the time he'd left for Oklahoma. Because the evidence was labeled with Noah's name and the Figueroa address, Kastanaphoulas's best guess was that the evidence had been mistakenly delivered to the station. Noah had ransacked Figueroa's Property Room and then gone on a tear through the Property Division's warehouse, but all for naught. The evidence never materialized.
'How frustrating.'
