Shield of Justice, page 4
“Detective Frye,” Catherine began in a reasonable tone, “I am not an expert on the crimes. I am an expert, if you will, on the effects of the crimes. That’s a very big difference.”
“And what about Janet Ryan? Is she a victim of the crime?”
“Don’t ask me questions you know I can’t answer,” Catherine said quietly, her eyes holding Rebecca’s. “Don’t make this a contest.”
Rebecca sighed slightly. “I have to try.”
Catherine leaned forward, her face intent. “Rebecca, I will do anything I possibly can to assist in this case, but I cannot, and I will not, disclose patient confidences. Please try to understand.”
“I do understand.” The use of her first name did not escape Rebecca Frye. She tried to ignore the quickening of her heartbeat, reminding herself she was in the middle of a hospital cafeteria and in the middle of an investigation. “I appreciate your desire to protect your patients, and I respect you for it. I’m just grasping at straws here. I can’t get a handle on this guy, and it’s driving me nuts.” That last was an uncharacteristic outburst. If she had personal feelings about a case, she rarely displayed them, not even to Jeff, and most certainly not to a subject she was in the process of interviewing.
As Catherine watched the torment play across Rebecca’s fine features, she felt every shred of the detective’s frustration and helplessness. “I’m seeing Janet at three this afternoon,” she confided, her voice quiet with compassion. “She requested that I take over from Phil Waters. Perhaps she’ll remember more—something I’ll be able to tell you.”
The concern was evident in the psychiatrist’s voice, and so was her obvious desire to do what she could to assist the investigation. For that, Rebecca met her gaze gratefully. And for an instant, her awareness of the people seated nearby and the sound of many voices echoing in the cavernous space faded, and she surrendered to the comfort offered in those green eyes. It felt like a caress, so tangible her heart pounded almost painfully. Seconds, minutes passed—she didn’t know. Flushing, she finally looked away and forced herself to remember why she was there, willing her pulse to still. When she spoke, her tone was cool and uninflected—a cop’s voice again. “I’d like a report either way.”
Acutely aware of the fleeting connection and the equally sudden distance between them, Catherine accepted Rebecca’s withdrawal reluctantly. She pushed her chair back, replying formally, “Of course. You can call me around six tonight. I should be done here by then.”
“Fine,” Rebecca replied, except it wasn’t. The psychiatrist’s effect on her was almost addictive. Her skin actually tingled just from the memory of the warmth in Catherine’s eyes. Impulsively, she added, “Why don’t I pick you up here? We can talk over dinner. And you won’t have to cook.”
Surprised, Catherine nodded with pleasure. She would like nothing better than to spend more time with this intriguing woman.
Chapter Six
Rebecca caught up with Cruz midafternoon at the station house. He was staring at a computer screen, muttering under his breath, a half-eaten burrito forgotten by his right hand. The soda next to the crumpled fast food bag had sweated through the cardboard container and looked in danger of flooding the desktop any second. She looked over his shoulder and sighed when she saw the list of license plate numbers and drivers’ addresses scrolling down the page.
“Checking the summonses given out on the Drive yesterday?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he snarled. “Talk about long shots.”
“Has to be done,” she remarked, shaking her head in sympathetic agreement. “Remember Son of Sam. We’d look like morons if it turns out our perp parked his car somewhere, got a ticket while he was beating and raping a woman, and we never noticed.”
“There were twenty tickets written in that area in the two hours on either side of the time we figure it went down,” he said, pushing back in the swivel chair and then rubbing his face.
Rebecca whistled softly. “Busy place.”
“It’s the regatta,” Cruz remarked dispiritedly. “People end up parking anywhere to watch the boat races.”
“Well, commandeer some uniforms from traffic and have them cross-check these with the names and numbers on tickets given out on the days of the first two assaults. Give them a general rundown of the working profile—you know—eliminate all women, kids under eighteen, men over fifty. The usual. You and I can screen the rest and maybe get one of the eager beavers from patrol to run down any possibles for us.”
Cruz grinned up at her. “I suppose you were never one of them?” When Rebecca cocked a questioning eyebrow, he clarified, “Eager beaver, dying for the gold shield?”
“Yeah, maybe,” she said, her eyes shadowed for an instant. “Once.”
He studied her, surprised that after almost five years he still didn’t know what secrets she kept. He shrugged the thought away. It wasn’t his business what ghosts haunted her, not unless it affected the job, and it never did. Not anymore. “Want to go start a fire under the crime team people?”
Rebecca shook her head. “Later. Let’s walk the scene again first.”
He didn’t see what good that would do, but on the other hand, they didn’t have anything else to do except wait for a break from the lab. And Frye had an uncanny way of piecing the scene together and coming up with a lead for them to follow. He’d seen it before—that cop sense that let her see or feel or somehow sense what had gone down. She had the instinct, and he hoped somehow it would rub off on him.
“Right,” he said, as he scooped up the remains of his lunch and dumped it in the trash.
Twenty minutes later, they stood surveying the spot where the third assault had occurred. The site was a copse of trees that edged the riverbank, no different than a dozen other spots along River Drive. Thirty feet from the water’s edge, running parallel to the river for miles, was a narrow, unpaved path bordered by trees and water on one side and a thicket of low shrubs and grass on the other. The road, which followed both the river and the path, was easily fifty yards away. Although the park and its many trails were frequented day and night by bicyclists, runners, and dog-walkers, this section of the trail was poorly maintained and densely overgrown, which tended to discourage all but the most serious joggers. The isolated location was similar to that of the previous two rapes, a fact that helped them not at all.
The most recent victim—Darla Myers, age twenty-two, a business graduate student—had been found by a middle-aged man chasing his errant golden retriever. He’d almost stumbled over her in the brush just off the path, and it was probably a chance encounter that saved her life. Had she lain on the ground unconscious all night, or longer, she probably would have died.
“So,” Jeff Cruz said as they walked slowly under clear blue skies surveying the detritus left by the crime scene analysts the night before. Bits of yellow police tape, an occasional splatter of plaster of paris used to cast the few footprints left on the rocky ground after the rain, and one curled paper backing from a Polaroid print littered the area. “He pulls them off the trail, rapes them, and then beats them half to death. Then he waltzes away and nobody notices. Prick bastard.”
“Yeah, he is,” Rebecca said quietly, looking at the broken branches and trampled shrubbery in the spot where Darla Myers’s body had been found. “But I don’t think that’s quite how it goes down. He beats them first, into unconsciousness, then he rapes them. The first two didn’t fight back, remember—probably because they couldn’t.”
Cruz followed her gaze, looking at the obvious evidence of a struggle. “This one did.”
“Yeah,” Rebecca said softly, “someone did. And that’s a change.”
She walked a few feet off the trail; Jeff followed silently. She stood in the thickets, looking back up the path the way Darla Myers had probably come, judging from where her car had finally been found. She couldn’t see more than ten feet.
“It doesn’t quite work,” she said almost to herself. “Even if he was hidden back here, invisible, he would have had to step out into plain view to get close enough to subdue her—and the others. They should have had some warning, a chance to run or to scream—something.”
“Maybe he just looks innocent,” Jeff offered. “Or maybe he’s doing the Bundy thing. Pretending he’s injured and asking for help like Bundy did when he faked having a broken arm.”
“No weapon’s been found,” Rebecca countered. “The injuries sustained by the victims only indicate that some kind of blunt object was used. Damn. We need a witness. If Myers doesn’t wake up, then the only chance we have to learn what really happened here is if Janet Ryan really was here, and that she remembers what she saw.” Soon, make it soon.
The details of the crime continued to elude her, and she knew in her heart that the key to finding the attacker was in the specifics of what he did. She forced herself to imagine it all in slow motion, like reviewing a movie frame by frame. She tried to distance herself from the mental images she constructed. If she allowed herself to hear the victims’ cries, feel their fear, experience their helplessness, her own anger and revulsion and pity would paralyze her. She would never be able to do her job, and she would never be able to help them. It was a lesson she had learned early in her career, and the emotional detachment came naturally to her now.
“Jeff,” she mused, “how about this? Our guy waits in the trees until a lone jogger comes along. He steps out and strikes her…a rock, or a club of some kind.”
“We didn’t find any kind of weapon,” Jeff pointed out.
“He must take it with him. I guess a guy with a baseball bat wouldn’t seem that unusual. Still, he needs to get to his car. Or maybe he has a bicycle. That would make it very easy for him to come and go.”
Cruz nodded, clearly frustrated. “God, though, you’d think someone would have seen something! It’s been in all the papers. No one has even come forward with a bad tip.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to believe that no one has seen or heard anything. But then, perhaps someone finally has.” She looked at her partner as they followed a progressively narrower path through the trees toward the water. “It keeps coming back to Janet Ryan. Did you get a report yet on the tissue under her fingernails?”
“Due later today,” Jeff replied, pushing aside the shrubs that leaned out over the water on the edge of the riverbank. There was a narrow strip of sand a few feet below them and then the bottom fell steeply away. He could make out the shapes of the boathouses a few hundred yards down the river. There was nothing unusual about the place.
Rebecca led the way back toward their car. “I bet you find that the tissue type matches the semen analysis we have. Janet Ryan must have seen the rape in progress, or she heard something and went to investigate. My guess is that she tried to fight the guy off, not Darla Myers. Janet has scratches on her arms and legs as if she got tangled up in the brush. He probably beats her, too, then leaves her for dead, or just panics and runs.”
“Could have gone down like that,” Jeff agreed. “That makes Ryan one gutsy lady, or a crazy one. Most people would have run for help, don’t you think?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she didn’t even think about it. She sees what’s happening and just reacts.”
“Then we really need to know what Janet Ryan saw,” Jeff said with finality.
*
Rebecca pulled into the no-parking zone in front of University Central Hospital at 5:45 p.m. She took out the notes she had made at the crime scene that afternoon and was soon absorbed in trying to find some angle that she hadn’t considered.
Catherine felt a surge of pleasure when she spied Rebecca waiting in the car across the street, frowning over her notebook. The convertible top was down, and the detective looked attractively windblown. She was jacketless, and the thin leather strap that circled her shoulders, holding her holster against her side, was apparent as Catherine approached. She had no particular feelings about firearms, and she appreciated the necessity of them in Rebecca’s line of work, but the sight of the gun under the detective’s arm reminded her forcefully of the kind of life Rebecca led.
She admired her and yet, at the same time, wondered what the steady onslaught of danger and violence must do to her. The previous night at dinner, Detective Sergeant Rebecca Frye’s capability and strength had been obvious, but it was the fleeting glimpse of compassion and vulnerability that had captivated Catherine. The complexity of the contrasts made the detective all the more appealing.
As she walked up to the passenger side of the car, Catherine tried not to think about how much she had enjoyed their few hours together, reminding herself firmly that this woman had been there on business. Still, she couldn’t quite dismiss the excitement Rebecca’s presence evoked. “Hi,” she said.
Rebecca looked up, and in a rare unguarded moment, welcomed Catherine with a blazing smile. “Hi.”
The doctor stood motionless, transfixed. Lord, she’s breathtaking.
“You’re very prompt.” Rebecca leaned over to push the passenger door open.
“Don’t be fooled. It doesn’t happen often.” Catherine laughed, settling into the contoured leather seat, and ignored the quick racing of her heart. She wasn’t used to being so susceptible to a woman’s mere smile. She waited until Rebecca maneuvered into the dense traffic crowding the street in front of the hospital before speaking. “Have you made any progress with the case?”
“Not much,” Rebecca replied, frowning. “Everything points to what we first thought. Your patient interrupted him, probably physically intervened. That means she saw him. She might be able to give us a description.” She gave Catherine a questioning, hopeful look.
Catherine shook her head. “Not yet. She’s heavily sedated and still has only slim recall of last night’s events. It could be a few days, perhaps a week even, before she has any clear recollections.”
“Can I speak to her?”
“She already spoke with the officer who brought her to the hospital.”
“I know that,” Rebecca responded curtly, no longer smiling. “But that was just a preliminary interview, and she was incoherent then. I need to go over things in detail, and I know what to ask.”
Catherine thought about Janet’s fragile emotional state and tried not to consider her own ever-increasing desire to assist Rebecca Frye. Janet must remain her primary concern. “I have an hour scheduled with her tomorrow afternoon. If she’s ready, I’ll let you know. I’d like to be present when you question her. Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” Rebecca said quickly, turning off the main city arterial onto a twisting two-lane road that led to one of the affluent suburbs. “In fact, I’d prefer it.”
“Well, then, it would seem we don’t have much to discuss over dinner,” Catherine remarked with regret. She realized then just how much she had been looking forward to their time together. More, she had to admit, than she had looked forward to an evening with a woman in a very long time. This is business, Catherine. That’s all it is to her and all it should be for you.
“Good,” Rebecca replied, turning her eyes from the road to glance at Catherine expectantly. “I still want to take you to dinner.” She didn’t want to think about what it meant; she only knew she didn’t want to say good night to Catherine Rawlings quite so soon.
“Good,” Catherine answered softly, immediately forgetting her cautionary thoughts of an instant before. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
Chapter Seven
Rebecca pulled into a tiny, tree-shaded parking lot behind a three-story, hundred-year-old mansion with a wide pillared porch, French doors, and leaded glass windows that looked as if it were someone’s home. It was. Catherine glanced at Rebecca in surprise when she recognized the restaurant. DeCarlo’s was exclusive, expensive, and renowned for its world-class chef and quiet, intimate décor.
“Do you happen to have a reservation?” Catherine asked as they walked up the flagstone path. She couldn’t imagine they would be seated without one.
“No,” Rebecca answered, apparently unconcerned.
Less than a minute after Rebecca gave her name to the maître d’, who smiled at her with obvious pleasure, the owner, Anthony DeCarlo, approached.
“Ah, Rebecca,” he said by way of greeting, taking her hand in both of his. “You stay away too long.”
“Anthony,” Rebecca responded quietly. “How are you?”
“I am fine. We are all fine.”
“Good.”
“Come. I have a nice little spot just for you.” He showed them to a secluded table that afforded a view of the sweeping lawns and luxurious gardens. He left them to ponder the eclectic selections artistically displayed on fine parchment menus, promising to send the sommelier immediately.
“Do you come here often?” Catherine asked, more than curious about the special service they were receiving. They had been seated without delay, despite several parties waiting ahead of them.
Rebecca shrugged uncomfortably. “Not for a long time. But whenever I do, Anthony insists on waiting on me himself.”
She’s embarrassed, Catherine thought, intrigued. She waited, knowing there was more.
“His daughter disappeared a few years ago,” Rebecca continued in a low voice, remembering the run-down rooming house and the frightened teenage girls inside. When she looked at Catherine, she couldn’t quite disguise the pain of the memory. After so many girls in so many squalid squats, the sorrow had become a dark ache in her eyes. “She was fifteen years old, working on her back for a pimp who had promised her the excitement a girl her age longs for. What he gave her was a needle in the arm and a beating if she didn’t earn enough.”
She hesitated, wondering how to describe the rest. She didn’t know how to explain what she felt when she found Anthony’s youngest daughter strung out on smack and turning tricks for twenty dollars a pop—anger so intense that she forgot she was a cop. Her overwhelming need to stop the waste and the abuse blinded her to the consequences of what she was doing. She’d been on the verge of beating the young pimp with her bare hands and, if Jeff hadn’t interceded, she probably would have done serious damage. She was grateful now that Jeff had stopped her, but the rage still seethed, fueled by her daily witness of the devastation of lives and the destruction of dreams.
