more interesting. One's got a forcible rape and sodomy, lives with his
mother about five blocks from the construction site. Name's John
Peltzkelszvich, or however you pronounce that. I mean, buy a freakin'
vowel, for Christ's sake. Anyway, he's on parole, so we should be able
to get access to him through the PO.
'The guy we like best right now, though, is Gregory Banas. He's
farther out, almost two miles from the site. Only prior conviction is
a misdemeanor sex abuse for grabbing a woman's crotch in a mall parking
lot. But, get this: Banas's name comes up twice. Remember the
attempted rape a couple years ago on Taylor's Ferry that Bradley and
Rees from the DA's office broke up?'
We all nodded.
'The woman's name was Vicki Vasquez,' Walker explained.
'No arrest, but Bob Milling from East Precinct called this afternoon.
He was working the case when he was still at Central. Good guy.
Vasquez was never able to make a solid ID, but when she was flipping
through mugs, she pulled out four who could've been the bad guy. Her
favorite?'
'Greg Banas?' Calabrese asked.
'Correctamundo,' Walker said. 'Milling wanted to put him in a lineup,
but Vasquez moved back to California. Said she wanted to put the whole
thing behind her. At the time, Banas lived in one of those big
apartment complexes on Barbur Boulevard.' I knew the location, not far
from the running trail along Taylors Ferry. 'About a year ago, he
moved to one off Highway Twenty-six in Glenville, so we've got
potential familiarity with both the crime scene and the presumed pickup
spot.'
Ray Johnson nodded. 'And location's going to matter on this one. Heidi
Chung called from the crime lab. The paint geek from Home Depot says
that the paint on the dog matches paint going up on the exterior of the
office park. Mocha cream, to be exact.'
'Would the paint have been wet on Sunday?' Walker asked.
Johnson had apparently asked the same question already. 'They were
painting Friday and Saturday; on Sundays the work is shut down. But
they leave the scaffolding and paint out.'
'This doesn't make sense,' Chuck said. 'We've been assuming the bad
guy swiped the victim from the street, leaving the dog and the leash
behind. Now we're saying bad guy takes victim and her big strong dog?
Does the bad guy location to be determined then dump her in Glenville
and drop the dog near home? No way.'
'I'm with you,' Johnson agreed. 'But let's try it this way, going back
to our old-fashioned lust theory. Husband's off at the hospital all
day, so vie meets her phone pal for a day of romance. Maybe he picks
her up for a drive to the coast, and they take the dog with them. They
fight about the things people fight about when they're screwing each
other but married to other people. He hits her in the head a little
too hard. Dumps her in Glenville on the way back Griffey jumps out for
a tinkle, comes back with paint then leaves the dog and the shoe on
Taylor's Ferry to get us thinking abduction.'
Chuck was nodding with every sentence. 'That could be it.'
'Or it could still be an abduction,' Walker added, 'but the paint comes
from the bad guy, not the building. There's Peltzkelszvich and Banas,
but we've also got a couple of site workers with problems. Maybe the
paint goes from the site to them to the dog.'
Johnson thought about it. 'It's possible. I didn't like any of the
work guys for it, though.'
Walker filled the rest of us in. 'We found a bunch of dirtbags working
up there, mostly through one union. There were a couple of rapes, some
robberies, and a mess of DV assaults. But the robberies were all
commercial, and the rapes weren't strangers one was an ex-girlfriend,
one was the guy's stepdaughter. Nothing that seemed in line with our
scenario.'
'I hate to be the party pooper ' The four detectives' shared chuckle
cut me off. 'OK, playing my usual role of party pooper,' I revised,
'maybe it's just paint. Plain, generic taupe-colored paint. I mean,
how precise can the paint geek get it? The stuff's not DNA, right?
Griffey still could've come across it wandering around the
neighborhood.'
It was too soon to begin connecting all the dots. Walker and Johnson
needed to get out there and talk to the men whose names had come up and
see if anything shook out.
'One last thing,' Johnson said. 'I called the husband today about the
condom, and it wasn't his.'
'Did you tell him the ME found spermicide?' I asked.
'No way. I just told him we were still running some tests, and it
would help if we knew the last time they had intercourse and whether
they'd used any kind of barrier method of birth control. Turns out the
doctor had his tubes tied. They hadn't had sex since the Tuesday
before she disappeared, though, which explains why the autopsy didn't
