Authors: Jaden Terrell
“No! No
policía
!” She sidled away, and I held up a hand to stop her.
Khanh came around me and touched Lupita’s shoulder. “No police,” Khanh said. “Only you, me, us. You help me find daughter. Please.”
Lupita bit her lower lip. She looked young and frightened, and I knew she was thinking about green cards, deportation, and a limp, bruised body in a dumpster.
I pointed toward the BMW. “You see the man in the red car? He’s an artist. You tell him what you saw, he’ll draw it. We take it to the police. We keep you out of it.”
“My family,” she said. “I don’t want trouble.”
“No trouble. You just tell him what you saw.”
“You
policía
?”
“No
policía
. That missing girl I told you about? She might be my niece.”
“Might be?”
“Long story. Or maybe just an old one.” I pulled a note pad and a pen from my jacket pocket. “Could we start at the beginning? What were you doing at the office at that hour?”
“I have a . . . date. He needs to get home, so I have him drop me off on West End and think, I’m so close, I walk to the studio and practice my dance routine before I go to work at the diner. I do that sometimes.”
“You have a key?”
“How can I practice if I have no key?”
“So you got there, and it was dark.”
“Pretty dark. Not much moon. But there is light from the front porch.”
“Did you go in?”
“No. I’m almost there, and I see a car. There is a man driving, but I can’t see him so good. It pulls up to the curb, and a woman gets out. She is wearing a . . .” She frowned, searching for the word. “Like a dress, but underwear.”
“A slip.”
“
Sí
.”
“Did you recognize her?”
“I never see her before. She looks Chinese.” She glanced at Khanh. “Like you.”
I said, “Asian, anyway. Go on.”
“She walks like her feet hurt, no shoes. I think maybe somebody beat her.”
“The man in the car?”
“Maybe. He lets her out, and she goes to the front door, but she can’t get in. The door is locked.”
I thought of the new security system, suddenly sick. If she’d gotten in, could she have barricaded herself? Kept her killer out?
I swallowed bile and said, “And then?”
“The car drives away.”
“Did you see the license number?”
“A little.” She rattled off a string of letters and numbers, which I jotted on the note pad.
“And the car?”
“Silver, I think. In the dark, is very hard to tell the color.”
“Two-door or four-door?”
“Two, I think.”
“Anything else you can remember about the car?”
“A sticker on the back. ‘Be nice to nerds. Some day you will be working for one.’ Or something like that. Big letters, shiny in the light. And that’s all.”
“Then he pulled away?”
“
Sí
. And I’m about to go over to the Chinese lady, see what she wants, maybe let her in. Only a man comes out of the shadow, from behind the building.”
Khanh sucked in a sharp breath, pressed her hand to her mouth.
I asked Lupita, “Did you see his face?”
She wiped away tears with the heels of her hands. “
Sí
. He came into the light.”
“Did he see you?”
“I was in the shadow. Behind Señor Freeman’s garage.”
“What happened then?”
“She sees him and tries to run, but her feet are too hurt. He catches her so easy, and he puts his arm around her. Here.” She touched her throat with her fingertips. “I want to say something, but my voice is frozen. She makes a sound like she can’t breathe and he lifts her off the ground. Her feet are kicking and kicking, and he says something. I can’t hear it all. Something about taking his time, making an example for women who run.” She shook her head, all the color drained from her face. “I make a sound, and he looks up. Right at me. I don’t think he can see my face because of the shadows and the darkness, but he knows I’m there. His face is so cold. He gives her neck a hard squeeze, and I hear a snap and she goes limp. I know I should help her, but I am so afraid. I just run.” She covered her face with her hands. “If I had not run . . .”
“You might be dead too. No use second-guessing yourself. Do you remember what he looked like?”
She nodded.
“Could you describe him to my friend? It won’t bring the dead girl back, but it might help us save Tuyet.”
“No
policía
?” she asked again.
“No
policía
.”
“Okay. I will talk to your friend.”
With Khanh at our heels, I led Lupita around to Eric’s BMW and opened the passenger door for her.
She hesitated.
I said, “You’ve known me, what? A couple months, right? Seen me in the hall? I’m one of the good guys.”
She squeezed her lower lip between a thumb and forefinger. After a moment, she let out a sigh and sank into Eric’s passenger seat. I closed the door behind her, and Khanh and I climbed into the back.
Eric sat in the driver’s seat, sketchbook propped against the wheel. He gave the girl a reassuring smile, pencil poised above the paper, and said, “
Yo sé que estás asustado. Pero mi amigo se encargará de ustedes
.”
I said, “Since when do you speak Spanish?”
“I learned it in college. Spent two summers with a beautiful boy I met backpacking in Paraguay, hardly spoke a word of English. Not that he needed to.” He turned back to the girl. “
Qué usted ve la noche que murió la niña
?”
He drew her out with questions and reassurances delivered in a sonorous tone. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I knew he was leading her through it, focusing her memories on the killer’s features. I’d seen him do it before, coaxing out information in a way that was almost like hypnotism. Her answers were hesitant at first. Then, as she watched the features come to life on the page, she grew more animated, pointing to a curve of the chin or the slope of an eyelid.
“
Sí!
” She tapped a finger on the finished picture. “This is the man I saw.”
The man in the picture had dark hair and heavy eyebrows that met in a “v” at the bridge of a bulbous nose. Unkempt mustache. Broad jaw. Thick neck dark with stubble. Heavy eyelids over hooded eyes. Eric shaded in the irises lightly. It had been too dark for her to see the color.
A tattooed manticore framed the right side of the man’s face, one claw arcing across his eyebrows, its scorpion tail curling along the edge of his jaw.
He’d come out of the shadows, Lupita had said. On foot. He must have parked some distance away and chosen the dumpster on impulse, because if he’d had a car behind the building, it would have been easier to stash the girl in the trunk and dispose of her more efficiently later.
He’d mentioned taking his time, which meant the crash of Pat Freeman’s garbage can had sealed the girl’s fate. The crash meant a witness, which meant no time for fun. But the scars and bruises said he’d already had plenty of fun before she ran.
“You catch this man?” she asked, a quiver in her voice.
“We’ll catch him.” Or the police would, once I gave them Eric’s drawing, but given her obvious fear of the police, I kept that part to myself. “Could I get a phone number? In case I need to talk to you again?”
“You don’t need to talk to me again.”
“Probably not. But if I do . . .”
She grimaced. “You know where I work. Here and Señora Ina’s. Where else am I going to go?”
She climbed out of the BMW. Khanh followed, and together they walked to the door of the diner, speaking quietly, heads close together.
Eric watched them leave, then flipped the sketchbook closed and handed it to me. “You think she’ll be okay? Lupita, I mean.”
“Are you talking about trauma, or about the guy maybe seeing her?”
“The guy.”
“Hard to say. Unless he got a good look at her and can figure out who she is, she’s probably fine.”
“What are the odds of that?”
“Fifty-fifty. Either way, I think it would be riskier to come after her than to let it lie. But that only matters if he isn’t crazy.”
“He murdered a woman and threw her in a dumpster. Of course he’s crazy.”
“If he’s crazy, he’ll screw up. The police will catch him pretty quick, with or without this picture. But this guy . . . He may be twisted, but I don’t think he’s crazy.”
“I’m not seeing the difference.”
“Crazy, he’s out of his head. Maybe hallucinating, maybe hearing voices. He might’ve thought she was possessed or trying to kill him with her mind, or like that guy in California back in the seventies who thought his blood was turning into powder and the only way to save himself was to drink other people’s blood. Killed a bunch of people, and they caught him wandering around drenched in gore. Horrific stuff, but in his mind, it was self-preservation.”
“My God.”
“It’s the guys who aren’t crazy that get away with it for a long time. BTK. Bundy. Those guys who do it for fun—or the ones who do it because it’s just a job. Twisted, maybe. Evil for sure. But they know what they’re doing.”
“Then he’ll do it again?”
“If he’s a serial killer, yeah. If he’s something else . . . probably. Guys like this . . . they always do it again.”
“Tuyet?”
“Sooner or later, if he hasn’t already. If he’s the guy, he’s had her a long time.”
“Does Khanh know?”
“Here,” I said, touching my finger to my temple. Then, palm over my heart. “Not here.”
9
T
he kid at the front desk of the West Precinct was a guy I’d seen before. Red hair, bored expression, dog-eared paperback propped in his left hand, frosted Pop-Tart in his right. Crumbs dotted the front of his shirt.
“Malone,” I said. “Tell her it’s Jared McKean.”
He picked up the phone and punched in a number. Told the person on the other end we were there, then grunted and punched the button that unlocked the door to the detectives’ offices. I waved a thanks and headed that way, Khanh following in my wake.
Malone was behind her desk, pecking at her computer keyboard and scowling at the screen. She didn’t look up when Khanh and I came in, but gave a quick nod toward the chair across from her. I gestured to Khanh, and after a brief hesitation, she reluctantly sat.
I said to Malone, “I found something.”
A few more taps, and she punched
Enter
with a flourish. Looked up with a smile that couldn’t hide her impatience. “That was quick.”
I handed her a copy of Eric’s composite.
“Who’s this?”
“The guy who strangled your Jane Doe.”
She stared at the picture. “Where did you get this?”
“There was a witness. Don’t ask me who she is. I can’t tell you.”
The skin around her eyes tightened, and she swung around, tipped back in her chair. “Can’t?”
“She only talked to me because I promised her no cops.”
“
You
promised.” She looked from me to Khanh, then back again. “You don’t get to decide that.”
“Talk to Pat Freeman, the next-door neighbor. I didn’t promise
him
anything.”
“I’m not Frank, McKean. You can’t pull that cowboy shit on me.”
“What cowboy shit? You knew I was going to investigate this. I’m bringing you what I found.”
“I need the witness.”
“I’m not giving you the witness. I’m giving you this.” I gestured toward the drawing.
She blew out an exasperated breath. Looked at the picture again. “Tough guy. Pretty distinctive tat.”
“There’s something else too. Partial plate.” I gave her the numbers and a description of the car.
“Your phantom witness saw all this but didn’t come forward?”
I shrugged.
“I appreciate your help, McKean. I really do.” Her tone suggested that, whatever she was feeling, it wasn’t appreciation. “But I want everything you have, everything you find, and that includes witnesses. If you can’t handle that, then now that you’ve done your part as a good citizen, butt out of my investigation. Note I said citizen. You haven’t been a cop in a long time.”
“Not that long. But that’s beside the point. Do you know who she was? The dead girl?”
The furrow between her eyebrows deepened.
I said, “That’s what I thought. This picture, that partial plate. That’s all you have.”
She glanced at Khanh again, cheeks reddening. “Freeman’s on our call-back list. We’d have gotten this in a day or two. You want to investigate this, I can’t stop you. But if you mess up so much as a fingerprint, I’ll have you in jail so fast your head will spin.”
“I gave you everything I have.”
“Everything except the witness. If you’d given her to me first, I’d have her in protective custody by now, and when we find this guy, we could use her for the lineup. As it is . . .” She held up her hands, palms up. “Fifty-fifty, we can make it stick. Face it, McKean. You fucked it up.”
I glanced at Khanh, who sat perched on the edge of the chair. Spine rigid, lips pressed tight, nostrils flaring.
“You gonna run that or not?” I said.
“I’m gonna run it.” She turned back to her computer screen, dismissing us. “And if anything turns up, you better hope we find a lot of evidence, since you may have lost our fucking witness.”
10
B
ack in the Silverado, Khanh rubbed at her stump with the fingers of her other hand and said, “You fuck up?”
“No.”
“Malone think yes.”
I looked out the window, saw a sky filled with clouds the color of bruised plums. “Malone is a jerk. If I’d gone to her with this first, Ms. Ina would have warned Lupita, and she’d be on her way back to Mexico before morning.”
Khanh gave a slow nod. “Maybe yes. But . . .”
“Malone is pissed because she’s embarrassed. It’s not her fault or Frank’s that Pat was out of town all weekend, but she doesn’t like it that I got there first.”
Khanh lowered her eyes, picked at the zipper of her duffel bag.
I said, “Right, wrong, it’s done. Nothing to do now but roll with it.”
We spent the afternoon canvassing the rest of the neighborhood, though for all the good it did, we might as well have spent the afternoon working jigsaw puzzles on the kitchen table. Nobody else knew anything.