TWENTY-NINE
“So I talked to Darlene Wink,” Lt. Gooch said as we drove away. “The gal over in sex crimes? You know her? Anyway, she tells me there was a molestation charge against Vale Pleassance. Lodged and then dropped.”
I raised my eyebrows slightly. For the first time, things seemed like they might make sense in the case. If anybody was in a position to plant DNA, it was Vale Pleassance. “How long you been looking at Pleassance?”
“Not long.”
I sighed loudly. “Is that why you were saying our boy isn't a cop?”
Gooch grunted.
“So, am I gonna keep bitching till I'm blue in the face, or are you gonna finally start trusting me?”
Gooch didn't say anything.
“Take for instance, where are we going right now? Who are we talking to now?”
Lt. Gooch looked at me, pretending he was puzzled. “If you'd listen instead of talking, you'd find out that's what I'm doing. Telling you what we're doing next.”
I sighed a second time. Only louder.
“Kid's name is Kelli Lynn Peters, eight years old. She was in this youth-theater troupeâtype deal that Pleassance runs. Happened back when she was five, six years old. We're going over to Decatur where Kelli Lynn lives. We gonna talk to her mama. That enough information for you?”
“Why did Wink say the charges were dropped?”
“She didn't. She just said, go talk to the woman and the kid yourself, see what you think.”
Â
Â
The Peters family lived in a small brick bungalow in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur between Emory University and the Virginia Highlands neighborhood. The oaks and maples around the house were large and pretty, but the grass was patchy and sunburned and scattered with faded plastic toys.
We knocked on the door, and after a few minutes the door opened, and a woman with large eyes and a bad blond dye job looked at us apprehensively without speaking, the door secured by a chain.
“Mrs. Peters? Detectives Deakes and Gooch,” I said, showing my badge and smiling broadly. “How you getting along today?”
The woman eyed me suspiciously, then reached through the four-inch-wide crack and pulled my badge close to her face, peered at it for a while. Finally she closed the door. There was some scrabbling with the locks, then the door opened again. “I'd rather speak outside,” she side, coming out onto the porch. “The house is a mess.”
“Sure, sure,” I said.
“Besides, my husband doesn't like people in the house.” The woman stepped outside. Her fake blond hair was a mess, held up on her head, more or less, with a random collection of bobby pins and mismatched barrettes. It seemed obvious to me that there was something wrong with her, but I wasn't sure what it was. Something pharmacological, I suspected.
“Mrs. Peters,” I said. “Your daughter Kelli Lynn, she made some allegations regarding a man named Vale Pleassance. Can you tell us about that?”
“That man!” Suddenly she was angry. “That man did not
recognize
the talent of our little girl.”
“Uh-huh. But about these chargesâ”
“Bread-and-Butter Theater is not exactly Actor's Studio or Circle in the Square. This is one step above amateur hour. And Kelli Lynn has a
great
deal of talent. She is a
talented
child.” There was a slight tremor in her hands, her body was rail thin, and her pupils were the size of pinheads. I don't know why it took me so long to figure it out: she was trippingâdiet pills at a minimum, but possibly something stronger.
“I saw a picture of your daughter over at the station,” I lied. “Some kids, the talent practically shines right out of the picture.”
“Right! Right! That's what I'm saying. And this, this, this, this Pleassance person, thisâmy God, he's a guy who cuts up dead people for a living, he's not even an actor, he's not even a real directorâhe has the
gall
to say that Kelli Lynn is not a good fit for the role.” The angry smile went off and on. “Not a good
fit!
Agh! I'd like to
strangle
that man.” She gritted her teeth, her hands balled up into fists, and her whole body trembled under a wave of momentary rage.
“Ma'am,” Lt. Gooch said, “I appreciate this whole picture of artistic differences of opinion you're painting here, but what we need to know about is these charges she made.”
Mrs. Peters chewed on her bottom lip and looked malevolently at the Lieutenant. “Inappropriate. Touching.” She hissed the words out through clenched teeth.
“Inappropriate touching? That's what she alleged?” I said.
“Alleged!” The bitter smile came and stuck this time. “Oh, gosh, I sure do love how you people just bandy those words around. Alleged! Why don't you just come out and say you think she made up a big fat stinker?”
I smiled back pleasantly. “Nah nah nah. It's not like that. We police officers have to use terminology very carefully these days. Due to the legal climate, defamation lawsuits, all that type of thing. When we say alleged, hey, that's just the disposition of the charges. See? We're required by law to say that. Otherwise we'd be in violation of Section 112B.” The head of the narcotics squad once told me that any time I had to explain my behavior to junkies, I should invoke Section 112B. When I asked what Section 112B was, he just laughed. I looked in the statute books later that week and found that the last criminal statute in the book was 112A.
“Oh. Section 112B, I see.” The woman's hand fluttered at her hair. “Well. Anyway. She came to me and said, âMommy, Vale'âhe insists on having the children call him Vale, as though he were just some teenagerââMommy,' she says, âVale inappropriately touched me.' ”
“I see. It was those words exactly?”
The mad smile came and went. “What, you don't think a six-year-old is capable of articulating herself with those kind of words? Oh-ho! Well, you obviously haven't met Kelli Lynn. She's a very,
very
articulate child.”
“Fair enough. So you went to the police?”
“Of course!”
“And what happened?”
“Oh, they had some little person talk to her. A woman detective, an
alleged
detective, named . . .” She snapped her fingers rapidly, thinking.
“Wink? Detective Wink?”
“No. No, it was Detective
Link
.”
“Wink. I think her name's Wink.”
“No. Absolutely not. Link, with an
L.
Anyway, this Link person takes Kelli Lynnâwho is a very special and sensitive childâinto some terrible little room and absolutely gives her the third degree. It was shocking.”
“You watched the questioning?” I said.
“Well, naturally! From behind a mirror. I couldn't let her go through that without somebody watching.
Somebody
had to protect her interests!”
I nodded. “Of course. Of course. So what happened in the interview?”
“Well, this
alleged
detective, this Link woman, she grilled my baby girl like she was some sort of criminal, you know, waving one of these disgusting little anatomically correct dolls in her face, you know, and she kept saying, âDid Vale touch you here?', âDid he show you his pee-pee?', âDid he make you touch his pee-pee?' ” She let out a strangled noise, and ground her teeth together. “It was the most sickening, perverted, horrible, outrageous, disgusting, gross, reprehensibleâ”
I cut her off. “Okay. But what was the upshot?”
The Peters woman looked around her yard vaguely, then shrugged as though she'd suddenly lost interest in the conversation. “Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
Suddenly the switch went back on, and she snarled at me. “That Link woman said I'd
put her up to it!
That's the upshot.”
My eyes met Lt. Gooch's briefly. “Ma'am,” he said, “you mind if we talk with your little girl?”
“She's not back from school.”
As soon as she'd spoken, however, a yellow school bus swung around the corner, pulled to a stop in front of the house. The doors opened, and a little girl came out. She was carrying a large bag of books, grunting and swaying with theatrical effort, across the yard. Her tongue hung out the side of her mouth and a small yellow bead of snot bobbed at the edge of her left nostril. The little girl stopped, looked up at me. I don't like speaking ill of children, but she was surely one of the dumbest-looking kids I've ever seen, with a blank, cowlike expression in her protuberant eyes.
“Who are y'all?” she said.
“I'm a policeman,” I said.
She kept staring, then finally grinned at me. “I talked to a police lady once. She was fuuuuuunny!” She screwed up her face in a way that was probably intended to be cute, and a high, idiotic laugh came out of her mouth.
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. We played undress with the dollies.” She wrinkled her nose and whispered mischievously. “One dolly had a hairy pee-pee on it. Like my daddy.” She made the idiotic laugh again.
“Is that right?”
She nodded. “Do you like dollies?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “My favorite dolly when I was a kid was named Lady Blacula. She had this cool black suit, and superpowers that came out of her head, and a cape and everything.”
Kelli Lynn stared at me for a while, then her tongue came out and felt around for the snot bead on her lip. She sucked loudly on it, and then her mother slapped her hard on the side of the head.
“Kelli
Lynn!
Cut that out.”
“Can I ask you a question, Kelli Lynn?”
“Wahhhnnn!” Kelli Lynn said. She was not really crying, just pretending.
“Kelli Lynn! Go inside.”
I put my hand on Kelli Lynn's shoulder. “Hey, sweetie, it's okay.” She stopped her fake crying and stared at me again with her dull eyes. I continued, “Do you remember the things you told that police lady? About Vale.”
She brightened suddenly. “Vale! Vale!”
“Did Vale touch you?”
She nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah, he touched me ina-ina-ina. . .” She looked at her mother for help.”
“Ina
ppro
priately.”
“Yeah. She touch me in my podlia.” The little girl's tongue came back out, explored her lip again. “Mommy, can I have a Ding Dong?”
“Yes, honey. Go inside. Go get a Ding Dong.”
The little girl ran up the stairs and into the house.
“I will
not
put her through that again,” Kelli Lynn's mother said loudly. “I
will not
.”
“Okay, butâ”
“No buts.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is this about some kind of lawsuit? Is the city going to sue me? Just because some incompetent person fails to see what's right in front of her, with all her Gestapo methods and brutal . . . Well, I can see this picture. You're trying to dig something up you can use against us, aren't you?”
“No, no. Even if we were, that's just not possible. The city can't sue you for falsely accusing somebody, even if that was what happened.”
“It wasn't
false
. He put his finger...” She glared at Gooch and lowered her voice, moved closer to me. “That man put his finger in her . . . in her . . . pardon me . . .” Her voice went all the way down to a whisper. “In her
patootie
.”
“Her patootie.”
She nodded soberly, her eyes getting very wide. “Right smack in her patootie.”
“And she told this to the police officer. Detective Wink.”
“Link. Her name was
Link
. Yes. She told this to Detective Link, and that woman just ignored her. The whole interrogation, it was like something right out of the KGB. Right out of the Nazi Germany. Right out of, out of, out ofâ” She flailed the air with her hand.
“Midnight Express?” Lt. Gooch said.
“Exactly! Right out of Midnight Express.”
“Buchenwald?” I said. “The Cultural Revolution? Stalag 13?”
She stabbed her finger at me. “Yes! Yes! Precisely. Yes!”
Â
Â
“Well?” I said as we drove away.
“Crazy as a shithouse rat.”
“Yeah, but do you think she put that little girl up to it?”
Gooch shook his head. “Ain't no way to know.”
“We got enough for a warrant on his hunting shack?”