Long Way Down, page 12
“Remember,” Contreras said before he popped his door. “We don’t know that this is the same perp, yet.”
“Right.” But she had an unshakeable feeling that it was.
They ducked under the tape and were halfway up the front sidewalk when a man in Dockers and a sweater/collared-shirt combo came hustling down the steps, keys jangling in his grip and duffel clutched tightly in the other hand. His face was strapped tight with stress, brows furrowed and mouth flat. A uniform hurried to catch up to him, going, “Sir, sir.”
He pulled up with obvious effort; he looked like he would have rather shoved between them and kept going. “Are you the detectives?”
“Contreras and Dixon,” Contreras said, pointing to each of them in turn.
“This is the victim’s father,” the uniform said.
The man’s jaw flexed, but he jerked a nod. “Tim Wheatly. My daughter, Lynn–” He made a choked sound and swallowed hard. “My wife rode in the ambulance with her. I’m headed that way now.”
He was wired, aggressively so, and Melissa knew that the wrong word or tone could set him off. The trick was handling the situation correctly.
Contreras said, “Mr. Wheatly, we’re so sorry about your daughter. I’m a father and I know that I wouldn’t be able to function in your place right now.” Melissa doubted that was true, but the words had the desired effect: Wheatly blew out a massive breath and his shoulders drooped a fraction. “I know this is difficult, and that you want to be with your family right now, but Lynn’s in the best hands, and if you can, it’d be really helpful if you could walk us through what happened tonight.”
“Fuck,” Wheatly breathed, eyes squeezing shut a moment. He dropped the bag – it landed on the sidewalk with a soft thump – and massaged at his eyelids a moment, then nodded and dropped his hand. “Yeah, yeah, okay – but quickly. I gotta–” He gestured toward the street.
“Absolutely. We understand.” He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and eased him back around.
“We good to go in?” Melissa asked the uniform, and he nodded and leaped to lead the way.
“My wife and I were at a friend’s house for dinner,” Wheatly explained as they climbed the front steps. “We left here about five, and Lynn wasn’t home yet, but she’d called my wife already and said she was on the way. She had a big project coming up and she couldn’t concentrate at the dorms.”
“Your daughter’s a student?” Melissa asked. She noted heavy glazed pots on the stoop, planted with small firs and a spill of ivy. The wreath on the door was real cut greenery and must have cost a couple hundred bucks, at least.
“At NYU, yeah. Art.”
Ding-ding-ding.
Contreras cast a meaningful look back at her as they passed through the open door into the entryway.
The front hall was floored with black and white tile, and dominated by a massive modern art piece with a mirror stationed across from it, so it appeared in duplicate. Melissa didn’t watch any of those home reno shows, or subscribe to Southern Living, the way her mother did – what good had those glossy multi-page spreads ever done her mother’s house, anyway? So she didn’t know how to categorize the tile, or the side table, or the moldings, or the chandelier overhead, but she knew they were expensive. Everything understatedly elegant in a way that left her feeling scruffy and shabby – and not just because her shower had been a slap-dash washcloth affair standing at the sink and she could still smell Pongo’s cologne on herself each time she moved. She felt ten-years-old and utterly white trash standing in this hallway, scuffed boots on a doormat that probably cost more than her monthly rent.
It was an old insecurity she’d been fighting since she was old enough to realize that having upholstered furniture on the porch was not the done thing in nicer neighborhoods. An insecurity she shoved aside, now, to focus on the task at hand. Rich or not, this family had fallen into a nightmare.
Viewing a house, even one as nice as this, through the lens of a detective investigating a crime always helped to ease her old doubts. She stepped around Wheatly and glanced into a high-ceilinged living room done in creams and grays, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a view of the tiered back yard, landscape lights highlighting gravel paths and brick-work walls on three sides. No sign of anyone there or in the kitchen beyond, though she could hear the murmur of voices and tread of feet somewhere above.
“What time did you and your wife get home, Mr. Wheatly?” Contreras asked.
“God.” He scrubbed at the back of his neck and surveyed his own living room as if he’d never seen it before. “Late. I had some wine with dinner, and Elaine thought it would be best if I had some coffee and waited a while before we drove back. Midnight? One, maybe?”
He didn’t sound sure of that.
Contreras nodded, all his attention fixed on Wheatly; behind the man’s back, Melissa jotted notes in her pad. “Did you come in the front door, there?”
“No. The back. There’s a guest house and a garage out back, at the end of the garden. We always come that way if we’re home after dark.” He shot a glance toward the front door now, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides, anxious to leave.
“You came in the back door,” Contreras said, “and then what? Did you walk through here?”
“Yeah – no, wait. Elaine did. I went into the kitchen, first, to get a glass of water. She had to go to the bathroom, so she went through here. I could hear her on the steps: barefoot, and she always skips every other one at the top.” His gaze grew distant as recent memory took over. “I heard the water in the pipes – this house’s plumbing is so damn noisy. And then a few seconds later, she screamed. I went running – dropped my glass. I guess there’s a mess, I haven’t been back in there. I–”
“That’s understandable,” Contreras said, as Wheatly’s chest hitched, his breathing picking up. “You went upstairs?”
“Yeah. Just about broke my neck on the steps. Elaine was in the hall outside of Lynn’s door, hands on her face.” He slapped his own to his cheeks in a McCauley Calkin pose. “Screaming – just, screaming. Lynn was in her room, on the floor. She was – covered in blood. She looked.” He gulped audibly, and sniffed. “She looked dead. Her face was all red and swollen, and her head was bleeding, and her arms, and…
“At first,” he continued, voice unsteady, “I thought she’d hurt herself. That she’d tried to…” He dragged a clumsy finger across his own wrist.
“Hm,” Contreras hummed in sympathy. “You went to her?”
“Elaine was still just screaming. She kept saying, ‘She’s dead, she’s dead.’ So I went in to check for a pulse. She wasn’t dead. God.” A shaky breath. “I – I got a pulse. And that’s when I saw the bruises on her throat. The handprint. Oh, Jesus–” He closed his eyes tight, thumb and forefinger pressing into the inner corners.
“And you called 9-1-1,” Contreras said, still in that low, soothing, apologetic voice. He produced a handkerchief, but Wheatly – eyes open again – shook his head and waved it off. “I know this is difficult. We’ll have more questions to ask, but those can wait for a bit, once you get to the hospital. But, Mr. Wheatly, did you or your wife notice anything out of place? On the stairs or in Lynn’s room? Something missing or something new that shouldn’t have been there?”
Wheatly looked dazed, as if he’d been punched. He shook his head. “No, I – no. There was just blood. Her blood.” His throat clicked as he swallowed. “We’ll have to get the carpet replaced in there,” he said, voice flat now.
It was too much for him. It didn’t matter how old she was: the man’s little girl had been attacked and he could think of nothing besides getting to her side. That irrational, parental fear that one’s presence could keep a child alive, could heal and make whole again.
Melissa caught the uniform’s eye, and managed to read his name from a few feet away. “Officer Sparks, can you make sure Mr. Wheatly makes it to the hospital okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Contreras slipped a card into the man’s hand. “We’ll be in touch. Reach out before that if you think of anything that might help us apprehend her attacker.”
Wheatly nodded, woodenly, and the uniform steered him back toward the front door.
When they were gone, Contreras lifted his brows. “Art school?”
“Yeah,” Melissa said, grimly, tucking her pad away. “I caught that.”
His head titled a fraction, and she could feel his judgement, gentle though it was. Her mind flashed on Tobias, on his concern at the coffeeshop, on the fantasy version that had popped into her head a few hours ago, while Pongo was inside her, and she made a face.
“I’m here, I’m here,” Deming called, puffing a little from exertion as he jogged into the room, clutching his heavy, hardshell case, followed by underlings whose IDs bounced on the lanyards around their necks. “Was that the father?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the door. “He looks awful.”
“Finding out your kid got assaulted in her own bedroom’ll do that to you,” Melissa said.
“Responding officers told Dispatch that she was partially undressed, and that fresh bruises and blood on her legs made them think sex trauma,” Contreras told Deming. “We’ve not been up to the room yet or spoken with the vic, so we don’t know anything yet. When you get up there, see if you notice anything that lines up with Lana Preston’s rape.”
“Whoa. You thinking serial?”
Contreras shrugged. “Never rule anything out. Apparently, Lynn Wheatly was studying art at NYU, same as Lana.”
“L-names, too,” Deming said, tongue poking out his cheek in thought a moment.
Melissa hadn’t considered that – though she doubted that was the connection they were after.
“Alright. Let us get started. I’ll send someone down for you in a while.”
“Thanks, Jeff.”
Which left them twisting in the wind for a half-hour, at least.
Tired and sore though she was, Melissa didn’t relish the idea of cooling her heels for any length of time, and they wouldn’t be able to speak to Lynn until after she’d been examined and cleaned up.
She said, “Wanna go see if any of those neighbors are still outside gawking, and if they saw anything?”
He agreed with a pointed finger aimed her way. “I like the way you think.”
~*~
By the time they got back outside, some of the houses across the street had shut out their lights. The neighbors on either side of the Wheatlys were still on their porches, though. Melissa and Contreras split up to talk to them, and reconvened in the front yard, after.
Mrs. Sandoval had fallen asleep in front of the TV sometime after ten, she said, and been awakened by the sirens next door. No, she didn’t remember seeing anyone suspicious on the sidewalk. She did remember Lynn Wheatly’s light going on just after dark, when she’d taken her dog – a chihuahua she held now tucked under one arm – out around that time and noted Lynn’s window, and movement behind the curtains. “If I’d known anything was wrong, I would have called the police right away!” She seemed thoroughly rattled, and admitted as much, saying she’d been jumpy ever since her husband passed.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Mrs. Sandoval,” Melissa said, the lie sour on her tongue. She didn’t have anything to worry about from this rapist…but they were in New York, after all. A horrible fate lurked around every corner.
As if it’s perfectly safe back home, a traitorous voice that sounded far too much like her father whispered in the back of her mind.
Contreras hadn’t had much luck at the other house, either. The husband and wife who lived there were going through, in their own words, “relationship difficulties,” and had been watching a movie together per their therapist’s suggestion.
“He can’t hear a damn thing so the volume was all the way up,” the wife complained when Contreras asked if they’d seen or heard anything out of place.
“I think I would’ve heard someone getting attacked, Charlene!” the husband had bit back.
“Right,” Melissa drawled when Contreras relayed the story. “Through at least two walls. Sure.”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “But neither of them noticed an unfamiliar or suspicious person or car on the street. They both claimed they would have.”
“If the person even was suspicious. Maybe he lives on the street.”
“And went all the way over to Lana’s place stalking her?” he countered. “We’ve got two vics, and one thing links them: art.”
“Yeah.” Her stomach gave a lurch when she remembered what Pongo had said last night – the reason she’d gotten so angry, and then gotten so heated; the reason they’d wound up naked on her kitchen floor. “Wait,” she said, and then winced, because she wasn’t sure if she could share what he’d told her.
Contreras snapped to alertness immediately. “What?”
“If this is the same guy – and I mean if…”
He tipped his head as if to say of course.
“There…might be a third vic.”
“A third? Who?”
She held up a staying hand. “Might. Just might. I, uh – have an acquaintance.” She made a face.
“An acquaintance,” he said, tone very flat in a way that meant he was interested, and trying to be patient.
“Yeah. He’s, um…well, he heard about this other – potential – vic from a…friend.” God, the man she was sleeping with was friends with pimps, wasn’t he? Definitely dealers. Probably hitmen if that crew from Tennessee was anything to go by. She had a sudden, vivid memory of Devin Green trying to hit on her while he was bleeding out in the back of a Suburban. “Someone who” – she sighed; there was no sense beating around the bush about it – “she’s a prostitute, and she got jumped on the sidewalk one night, and the guy choked her out, raped her, and carved ‘This one’s for you, Davey’ in her back.”
He blinked. “In her back?”
“I made that same face when Pon – when I was told.”
“Whew.” He shook his head. “You see a lotta shit on this job, and you think you’ve seen it all…but damn.”
“Yeah.”
“A prostitute?”
“Yeah. And my acquaintance–”
“Pon?” He asked, smirk teasing at one corner of his mouth.
Damn it. She’d hoped he hadn’t picked up on her slip. She felt her face heat, but thought she managed to keep her expression neutral when she said, “It’s a nickname. Anyway,” she pressed on, when he opened his mouth to ask for further details, “he says the girl doesn’t want to talk to the police, that she didn’t even like talking to him about it.”
He frowned. “Then why was she talking to him about it? Dixon,” he said, “are you friends with a pimp?”
“No!” She was too loud and checked herself, hating his soft snort of amusement. “No. I know – not friends with, know – someone who might be friends with one.”
“What sorta friends are–” His eyes widened. “Wait. Hold on.”
“Shit,” she muttered.
“That Waverly thing.”
She sighed. They hadn’t discussed it; he was too tactful and too genuinely nice of a guy to gossip. But her involvement with the raid on the Beaumont building was official record; she’d given her badge number when she called it in, and everyone in Manhattan knew she’d been involved, however tangentially. They didn’t know she’d sent a man with a GSW to her best friend at the ER, or that she was still sleeping with a man who’d come out of the building in riot gear with a rifle strapped to his chest, but they knew she’d been tipped off when none of the rest of them had been, and that meant something. Contreras had given her a few curious glances, but he’d never given to voice to whatever suspicions churned in his head.
Now, he let that curiosity bleed to the forefront…but it was only curiosity, she noted through her spike of panic. No judgement, no contempt. Nothing but an almost-boyish desire to know the dirty details.
And they were dirty, weren’t they?
He said, “Some seriously bad dudes took out Waverly, his son, and a whole pack of thugs dressed up like SWAT that night. It’s gonna take months for the feds to sort it all out. And you know something about who did it.” A statement of fact, rather than an accusation, but it needled her all the same.
She folded her arms. “I can’t talk about it.”
Generally, that statement earned her some wheedling, or sneering, or a muttering of insults. With Contreras, it earned a nod.
“Alright. I get that. But this girl. You talk to her?”
“No. I wanted to. I tried to get an in, but so far I don’t even know her name.”
Another nod. “Fair enough. I know how it is. But your acquaintance – Pon, yeah? You’ve gotta stress to him that if she doesn’t come forward, we can’t investigate, and this guy will hit somebody else, next.”
“I told him to pass the message along. But that’s all I’ve got right now.”
He turned reflective. “Shit. If this is the same guy–”
“The message, those words exactly, are too big a coincidence.”
“I agree. When did this happen?”
“Days ago. He said the wounds were scabbed over. So it was before Lana.”
“Practicing on someone he didn’t think would come talk to us, maybe.”
“Yeah. But if it’s him, he de-escalated. From mutilation to leaving notes. Why the shift?”
“That’s a question for the shrink,” Contreras said. “I don’t mess around with that stuff. We’ve gotta make sure it’s the same dude, and then let the pros deal with all the up here BS.” He tapped his own temple.
“That’s very wise of you.”
“Isn’t it? Saves me a lot of heartburn that way.”
Footsteps creaked on the stairs beside them. “Detectives?” It was one of the techs. “Dr. Deming has something to show you.”
Though the scene had been hopelessly contaminated by the parents and first responders, Melissa and Contreras donned over-shoe booties and gloves for the trek up the stairs and into Lynn Wheatly’s bedroom.
