Last Call (12 page)

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.”

“Whatever.” Frank shrugs. “It happens. It was more frustrating for Noah than me. It drove him hard. I wish I’d have helped him with it before he—” And again Frank cuts herself off. “I never had the time,” she says out the window.

“And now it’s a one-woman crusade.”

Frank slings the doc a glance. “I don’t know that I’d say that.”

Gail doesn’t comment, asking only where Frank wants to eat.

“Ladies’ choice,” Frank answers. Her thoughts flee to the Pryce case. While Gail chats about her mother, Frank tries to figure when she can finagle interviews of Noah’s suspects into her schedule.

“World owes me a living,” Frank says to her glass. Her ass may be planted on her couch but her head isn’t. Idly going over the Pryce photographs, hoping a clue might kick loose, she’s drifted into the perp’s head. She imagines him different places just before he sees the kids.

It’s Ladeenia he sees first. Something about her pulls at him. Her smallness and vulnerability. He feels strong just watching her. The boy walks beside his sister. The children approach him, unsuspecting. This feeds his ego. An idea pops into his head and he looks around the neighborhood. No one sits outside; it’s too cold. Shades are pulled and windows are rain-spotted. The kids come closer, still not alarmed, and he hides his excitement. Their thin voices are muted by the damp air. He focuses on the girl. He likes to watch her walk. She’s so little. So fine. The boy has almost disappeared from his vision. He watches them approach and his idea blossoms like a flower from hell.

The unnamable longing that’s never as far from him as his shadow evaporates in a rush of excitement. His brain is on fire, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him. The children don’t sense it. They’re closer now. Closer. Here. Looking at him. Maybe they know him, maybe they’ve seen him before. None of that matters now. Nothing matters. Just getting her into the house, that’s all that matters. Quiet. No fuss. Oh, please just come with me. Yes, and they do.

Frank’s voice is spidery. “How do I do it? Come see my puppy? Come in? Hurry, rain’s coming. Want a cookie, a cupcake? Would you like to meet my little girl? She’s sick, she inside. Come on in.”

And then they’re in, and he locks the door and the adrenaline’s shooting through him like he’s doing eightballs. He wants to get the boy out of the way. He’s a distraction. All he can think about is the girl. He’s got her. He’s in control and his cock leaps like a rabbit. It gets harder as he holds the boy so he can’t scream. In a quiet voice he warns her not to scream either or he’ll hurt the boy. He’s smart. He knows the girl’s older than the boy and responsible for him. She won’t want to get a whipping, so she watches silently as he gropes in a drawer and binds the boy in tape.

Now he’s so hard he can’t stand it. He thinks he’s gonna rupture if he doesn’t get inside her so he takes her right there. Right against the table. Doesn’t realize he’s imbedding food grains into her bared bottom and the backs of her hands and he’s barely in her before he comes and comes and comes. The climax leaves him spent, and while he gets his breath back he contemplates his find. No way he’s turning her loose. Uh-uh. Not yet. He breathes heavily. He doesn’t talk to either child, except for an occasional command. He eyes the girl crumpled under the table. She cries with muted sobs, too terrified to make noise. The boy’s eyes bulge over his taped mouth. He doesn’t know what’s going on.

Frank’s left hand pats for the fifth on the floor. Her fingers can’t find it. Annoyed, she pins the folder on her chest with her right hand and rolls onto her shoulder to retrieve the bottle. She pours at an awkward angle and drops of Scotch spill onto the carpet. She frowns more at the waste than the mess, even though she’s taken to bringing Mr. Walker home by the case. She fluffs the booze into the carpet pile and settles back.

“Where were we?” she asks the books lining the wall. “Oh, yeah.”

Watching the girl. He smokes while he watches and is sated for a moment. But the more he revels in his pleasure, the more he wants to relive it. His cock thickens as he finishes his cigarette. Does he touch her? Does the fresh skin excite him?

“No,” Frank says against her glass. He’s not tripping on sex with a little girl. He’s tripping on the power, the command. Totally dominating the situation. Even the little boy he barely notices fuels his desire. He is in complete and total control and it’s like being God. So he takes her again. Rougher this time, longer. And from behind.

Ladeenia’s anal trauma was extensive, leading Frank to think this was the second, less impulsive assault. He maintained his erection longer and did more damage. He takes her against the stove this time, or the counter, and maybe this is where she burns her thumb, on a burner or coffeepot. Again he doesn’t notice. Or care. She means nothing to him. Nothing. All he knows is that when he’s inside her it’s quiet in his head. For a moment that seems to stretch into infinity, the squirming in his brain is stilled.

Frank’s mouth twists humorlessly. She understands the longing for surcease. Her glass is empty and she pours again, meticulously. Photographs from the Pryce case drop from the folder on her chest. They surround her like leaves from a wintry oak. Except for the two she clutches in her hand, as if in cadaveric spasm.

One is a long-shot of the street where the Pryce kids were found. Cars line both sides of the road, houses opposite the curbs. The other picture is a shot of the west end of the street. More cars, a truck with a camper, a couple work trucks, more houses. Nothing significant. Nothing that jumps out shouting, “Hey, look at me!”

Frank’s hand drops as she passes out. It is finally quiet in her head.

Until she bolts from the couch, immediately aware of her surroundings and the sick whomping in her head. The fifth that was full last night is almost empty at her feet.

Frank wonders how this has happened again. She’d sworn herself to two drinks, max. How the fuck did she down most of a bottle? She remembers carrying it in here and pouring a generous nightcap, putting some CDs in, and that’s about it. The effort of plumbing her lost evening is curtailed by a lurch in her gut. Frank barely makes it to the kitchen sink. She pukes until she’s empty, but her stomach still contracts reflexively. Frank gulps for air in between the huge, choking spasms. When she’s finally able to straighten up she looks at her watch. 5:25. She has barely half an hour to get to work. Her stomach folds in on itself, forcing Frank back over the sink. She brings up nothing but hard air.

Forty-five minutes later—pale, sore and shaky—Frank starts the morning brief. Johnnie doesn’t look much better and Frank is disgusted. She
swears
she will cut back.

Using existing information, Frank has constructed a victimology of the Pryce kids. She’s going over it again in her office, trying to find something she may have missed the first time. Noah had talked to the parents, surviving siblings, neighbors, friends and teachers, even their bus driver. He’d cross-checked each kid’s personality, habits, hobbies, friends and routines. His notes on them alone took up half a binder.

The victims are not prostitutes, bangers or drug dealers, but they did live in a fairly high-crime area. They didn’t frequent rough bars or rock houses, but both places abound in the area. The vies were young and alone. That alone put them at risk for being victims. Frank puts her pad down and considers the shoebox on her desk. She still hasn’t listened to the interview tapes. She’ll have to sometime but is still willing to settle for Noah’s written notes. She parses his initial interview with Mr. and Mrs. Pryce. It’s bare facts, nothing not in the reports.

Curiosity harps at Frank and she fingers through the tapes. Some are starred. She pulls one of these, reading a label marked
Sharon Ferris.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She almost knocks her chair over as she jumps up. “Just get it the fuck over with.”

She puts the tape in her boom box, stabbing the play button. After the introductory hiss, Noah’s voice announces he’s investigating the death of two children that lived on Raymond Street. Frank cuts it off. Noah’s voice slices like a sword fresh from the forge. Her pain morphs into rage and she wants to break something. The boom box. Just pick it up and slam it down until it’s in two-inch pieces. She imagines the satisfaction of slamming the box over and over on the edge of her desk, the noise and splintering and the shock of it in her hands. She thinks about this instead of Noah and the rage ebbs.

Frank stands straight over the stereo. She stares at the box and drags in a leveling breath. After a moment she says, “Okay. Let’s try again.”

“What were you doing that afternoon?”

“I can’t say for sure.
”

“Take your time. I know it was a while ago. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night.
” Noah’s standard line. She can see the big, friendly grin attached to it.

“I
don’t know nothing about that afternoon. Just like any other I guess.
”

“What do you usually do in the afternoon?”

Frank hears the shrug in her voice as the woman answers,
“Watch Oprah, I guess. Get dinner ready.”

“For the record, who else lives here with you?”

“My two boys and my husband.
”

Noah asks for everyone’s names and she tells him.

“How old are your boys?”

“James is nineteen, Levon’s seventeen.
”

“Must take a while to make dinner.”
Again Noah’s grin comes through the tape recorder and Frank almost turns it off. ”
Who was home with you that afternoon?”

The tape hisses, picks up shuffling noises.

“Kevin ‘d be working and the boys wasn’t home yet. I don’t know where they was at, but they wasn’t with me.”

“Where does your husband work?”

Frank pauses the tape to hunt through the interview folders. That Noah doesn’t follow up on the boy’s whereabouts tells her he’s already placed them during the critical time frame. His notes on Levon indicate he and James were doing blunts and videos at a friend’s house. Satisfied, she continues the tape.

“Over to Grand Tire, off ‘n Hoover.”

She hears more shifting, then Noah asks,
“Can you recall anything unusual about that day?”
There’s no answer and Noah prompts,
“Did you notice anyone unfamiliar outside or hear any funny noises you couldn’t place?”

“No. Nothing I recollect.
”

“Mrs. Ferris, are you sure there wasn’t anyone else home with you that day?”

More shifting, then over-bright, the woman says,
“I forgot. My brother was visitin’.”

Consulting the notes, Frank reads that the interview was done as a follow-up to identifying the vehicles photographed within the vicinity of the dumpsite. Noah’s disembodied voice asks where the brother was visiting from.

“From up north. Up to Bakersfield, where our folks live.”

“Where was he that afternoon?”

“Right here with me. He ain’t never far from the kitchen when Fm in it. He’s always pestering me something awful about when’s the next meal and what’s it gonna be. Lord, that man is worse than both my boys. You’d think he had a worm the way he eats.”

“How much of the day did he spend here with you?”

“All of it, as I recollect. We went to the Ralph’s in the morning and I made him bring the groceries in, then I fixed him lunch and we watched TV and played Mexican Train until suppertime.”

“What’s Mexican Train?”

“Dominoes. I recollect it was rainy and I made a stew. I thought it would last Kevin for lunch next day, but didn’t Antoine eat it right up!”

“Dang! You must be a pretty fair cook.”

“I know my way aroun
‘
a kitchen.
”

“I’m jealous, Mrs. Ferris.
”

Frank hears the grin again and recalls Noah’s prodigious appetite. He was always hungry, always noshing on something and never gaining a pound. He got written up in his rookie year because he waited for his order at the drive-through before responding to a Code 2 burglary.