CHAPTER
2
Monday, 5 a.m.
When the call came into Hollywood Division, Petra Connor was well into overtime but up for more action.
Sunday, she’d enjoyed unusually peaceful sleep from 8 A.M. to 4 P.M., no gnawing dreams, thoughts of ravaged brain tissue, empty wombs, things that would never be. Waking to a nice, warm afternoon, she took advantage of the light and spent an hour at her easel. Then, half a pastrami sandwich and a Coke, a hot shower, and off to the station to finalize the stakeout.
She and Stu Bishop rolled out just after dark, cruising alleys and ignoring minor felonies; they had more important things on their minds. Selecting a spot, they sat watching the apartment building on Cherokee, not talking.
Usually they chatted, managed to turn the boredom into semi-fun. But Stu had been acting weird lately. Remote, tight-lipped, as if the job no longer interested him.
Maybe it was five days on graveyard.
Petra was bugged, but what could she do-he was the senior partner. She put it aside, thought about Flemish pictures at the Getty. Amazing pigments, superb use of light.
Two hours of butt-numbing stasis. Their patience paid off just after 2 A.M. and another imbecilic but elusive killer hooked up.
Now she sat at a scabrous metal desk opposite Stu, completing the paperwork, thinking about going back to her apartment, maybe doing some sketching. The five days had energized her. Stu looked half-dead as he talked to his wife.
It was a warm June, well before daybreak, and the fact that the two of them were still there at the tail end of a severely understaffed graveyard shift was a fluke.
Petra had been a detective for exactly three years, the first twenty-eight months in Auto Theft, the remaining eight in daytime Homicide with Stu.
Her partner was a nine-year vet and a family man. Day shift suited his lifestyle and his biorhythms. Petra had been a nighthawk from childhood, before the deep blue midnights of her artist days, when lying awake at night had been inspirational.
Well before her marriage, when listening to Nick’s breathing had lulled her to sleep.
She lived alone now, loved the black of night more than ever. Black was her favorite color; as a teenager she’d worn nothing but. So wasn’t it odd that she’d never asked for nighttime assignments since graduating the academy?
It was adherence to duty that brought about the temporary switch.
Wayne Carlos Freshwater crawled out at night, scoring weed and crack and pills on Hollywood side streets, killing prostitutes. No way was he going to be found when the sun shone.
Over a six-month period, he’d strangled four streetgirls that Petra and Stu knew about, the last one a sixteen-year-old runaway from Idaho who he’d tossed in an alley Dumpster near Selma and Franklin. No cutting, but a pocketknife found at the scene yielded prints and led to a search for Freshwater.
Incredibly stupid, dropping the blade, but no big surprise. Freshwater’s file said his IQ had been tested twice by the state: 83 and 91. Not that it had stopped him from eluding them.
Male black, thirty-six years old, five-foot-seven, 140, multiple arrests and convictions over the last twenty years, the last for an ag assault/attempted rape that sent him to Soledad for ten years-cut down, of course, to four.
The usual sullen mug shot; bored with the process.
Even when they caught him, he looked bored. No sudden moves, no attempt at escape, just standing there in a rancid hallway, pupils dilated, faking cool. But after the cuffs went on, he switched to wide-eyed surprise.
Whud I do, Officer?
The funny thing was, he looked innocent. Knowing his size, Petra had expected some Napoleon full of testosterone, but here was this dainty little twerp with a dainty little Michael Jackson voice. Neatly dressed, too. Preppy, brand-new Gap stuff, probably boosted. Later, the jailer told her Freshwater’d been wearing women’s underwear under the pressed khakis.
The ten-year Soledad invitation had been for choking a sixty-year-old grandmother in Watts. Freshwater was released angrier than ever and took a week to get going again, ratcheting up the violence level.
Great system. Petra used the memory of Freshwater’s moronic surprise to get herself smiling as she completed the report.
Whud I do?
You were a bad, bad boy.
Stu was still on the phone with Kathy: Home soon, honey; kiss the kids for me.
Six kids, lots of kissing. Petra had watched them line up for Stu before dinner, platinum heads, sparkling hands and nails.
It had taken her a long time to be able to look at other people’s kids without thinking of her own useless ovaries.
Stu loosened his tie. She caught his eye, but he looked away. Going back on days would be good for him.
He was thirty-seven, eight years Petra’s senior, looked closer to thirty, a slim, nice-looking man with wavy blond hair and gold-hazel eyes. The two of them had been quickly labeled Ken and Barbie, even though Petra had the dark tresses. Stu had a taste for expensive traditional suits, white French-cuffed shirts, braided leather suspenders, and striped silk ties, carried the most frequently oiled 9mm in the department, and a Screen Actors Guild card from doing bit parts in TV cop shows. Last year he’d made Detective-III.
Smart, ambitious, a devout Mormon; he and pretty Kathy and the half-dozen tykettes lived on a one-acre spread in La Crescenta. He’d been a great teacher for Petra-no sexism or personal garbage, a good listener. Like Petra, a work fiend, driven to achieve maximal arrests. Match made in heaven. Till a week ago. What was wrong?
Something political? The first day they partnered he informed her he was thinking about shifting to the paper track eventually, going for lieutenant.
Preparing her for good-bye, but he hadn’t mentioned it since.
Petra wondered if he was aiming even higher. His father was a successful ophthalmologist, and Stu had grown up in a huge house in Flintridge, surfed in Hawaii, skied in Utah; was used to good things.
Captain Bishop. Deputy Chief Bishop. She could imagine him in a few years with graying temples, Cary Grant crinkles, charming the press, playing the game. But doing a solid job, because he was substance as well as style.
Freshwater was a major bust. So why didn’t it matter to him?
Especially because he was the one who’d really solved it. The old-fashioned way. Despite the Joe Clean demeanor, nine years had made him an expert on streetlife, and he’d collected a stable of low-life confidential informants.
Two separate C.I.’s had come through on Freshwater, each reporting that the hooker killer had a heavy crack habit, was selling stolen goods on the Boulevard at night and scoring rock at a flop apartment on Cherokee. Two gift-wraps: precise address, down to the apartment number, and exactly where the dealers’ lookouts hung out.
Stu and Petra staked out for three nights. On the third, they grabbed Freshwater as he entered the building from the back, and Petra got to clamp the cuffs.
Delicate wrists. Whud I do, Officer? She chuckled out loud and filled the arrest form’s inadequate spaces with her elegant draftsman’s hand.
Just as Stu hung up his phone, Petra’s jangled. She picked up and the sergeant downstairs said, “Guess what,
