Burning Proof (18 page)

AS LUKE DROVE TO HIS MEETING
with Brenda Harris, he thought about their conversation when he’d initially found her. She was skeptical about him and about the investigation.

“That was so long ago. How can you still be interested in that tip?”

“The crime has never been solved. The young victim is having a difficult time. I’d like to give her the peace of closure.”

Concern for the victim seemed to allay Harris’s reticence, and they made an appointment to meet.

Luke recognized Brenda right away even though all he had was a driver’s license photo. Brenda Harris could be an older version of Molly Cavanaugh. The petite blonde woman entered Panera a little after eleven thirty.

“Mrs. Harris?” He stepped toward her. “I’m Luke Murphy.” He handed her his ID. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

She looked at the ID, then looked at Luke and shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I don’t drink coffee. I just picked a nice crowded public place to meet you.”

Luke smiled and motioned to a table where they both sat down.

“You’re not an LA County sheriff. Why are you investigating this case?”

He told her about Faye Fallon, her blog, and the cold case.

“If you really think you can solve this, why are you talking to me? I thought Gil was in Iraq at the time of the crime; he couldn’t be your guy.”

“I couldn’t find any record of him serving in Iraq. Who told you he was there?”

Her brows scrunched together. “I don’t remember now where I heard that. It must have been from one of the original investigators.” She looked down and rubbed her forehead. “Yes, I think that’s who told me, a long time ago. I was so sure it was Gil, and he said that it couldn’t be. But it did surprise me that Gil joined the armed forces. He never seemed the type.”

Luke considered that, wondering if this was a waste of time. “Well, we’re starting over from the beginning. There were many tips, but yours was one of the few who left contact information. And you were convinced the composite was Gilbert Barone. I wanted to show it to you again and ask what made you so certain. Do you remember?” He slid the composite across the table.

Brenda took a deep breath and slid it back. “Unfortunately I will never forget. That guy was my personal nightmare. I lived next door to him
 
—rather, his parents
 
—in Northridge.” She shuddered. “It was a wonderful place to live at first. His parents were really nice people. His dad was always helping me out. I’d just moved to California from Utah, got my first engineering job in the valley. His mom was a saint, but she got sick.
That was when Gil moved back in. He was in his twenties, I think, twenty or twenty-one. There was some nasty gossip in the neighborhood that he got kicked out of college for some perverted reason, but that’s just gossip. Anyway, Gil was very good-looking. I noticed him right away. Because his dad had been so nice, I just assumed the son would be the same.” She shook her head.

“Not a chip off the old block?”

“Not at all. One day I saw him out in the yard and engaged him in conversation. I guess he thought I was coming on to him. Next thing I know, he’s knocking on my back door. It scared me half to death because I had a fenced-in yard. I answered the door, and he’s asking me if I want to get high with him. I told him no. I was a working person. I had a job that did drug tests. I didn’t get high. But the way he looked at me was so disturbing, like he was imagining me without my clothes on.”

“I take it he didn’t like being turned down.”

“You got that right. That was when the nightmare started. I swear he stalked me. He prowled around in my backyard at night trying to peep in my windows, he vandalized my car, but the worst . . .” Her voice trailed off and she took a deep breath. “The worst was when he broke into my house. I know it was him. I came home and found all my underwear spread around my bedroom and in the center of the bed some of the most graphic, disgusting pornography. I’d never seen anything like it and I hope I never do again.”

“You’re sure he did all of this? You called the police?”

“Of course I did. But I had no proof it was him. I just knew
 
—I can’t explain how, but I just knew. Anyway, after that, I packed up some things and left. It was a rental, so I just moved
out. When I saw the composite . . . Well, that’s Gil. It’s as if he posed for it.”

“Did you ever talk to Gil’s dad about his son?”

She shook her head. “That poor man. His wife was dying. I didn’t have the heart to say anything.”

“Do you remember what college he went to? Where he was kicked out?”

“I think Long Beach State.” She frowned. “But if Gil was in Iraq when the rape happened, why do you even care about any of this?”

Luke thought about Gil Barone on the drive back to Long Beach. The college was near his home, so he made a stop there to see if the man had been a student. The only information they would give him was whether or not he had been enrolled. Barone had been a student from 2000 to 2001. What classes he took or why he left was information Luke could get only with a subpoena.

When he got home, he did a computer search for Barone and laughed out loud when he found a match. A Gil Barone owned a computer repair shop in Tehachapi. He clicked on the website for the store. There was a head shot of Barone, but this man was bearded and it was impossible to compare the small square image with the composite. But the details fit: Barone would be the right age, and the name was not all that common. Luke felt confident this was the man he was looking for. Even more so when he saw a small paragraph that said Barone had moved from Northridge five years previous. The blurb was from an endorsement page, a customer raving about the service he
got, driving all the way to Tehachapi from Northridge whenever he had a computer problem, being worth the time and money.

Luke read every comment on the endorsement page. Customers loved Barone. But then he certainly wouldn’t put negative comments on his website. He couldn’t wait to tell Woody. They’d add visiting Barone to the list and, he hoped, hit pay dirt.

Luke was sure he was at least Brenda’s old neighbor and quite possibly a vicious rapist. And maybe even a serial killer.

“IT’S NO PROBLEM AT ALL,
Mrs. Gentry. It was an easy problem to fix.” Gil Barone smiled his best smile. Gil knew it was pleasant and disarming no matter what was going on in his mind.

“Oh, but you had to take time out of your day. Please let me pay you.”

He shook his head. “Nonsense. It was my pleasure.”

“Well, I’ll be baking this weekend. Maybe I can bring by a pie?”

Gil grinned. “Now
that
I would never refuse.”

The woman nodded and picked up her laptop. Gil had reformatted the drive and added security software after the woman had picked up a virus and crashed her system. While he thought the woman was an idiot, she was the wife of the mayor, and Gil knew it paid to have friends in high places.

“I’ll see you on Saturday then.”

The phone began to ring. Gil wheeled himself over to answer it.

“Gil?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Who is this?” Gil did not recognize the voice.

“It’s me, Jerry G.”

Gil recognized the man now. He was an acquaintance of his father’s, not really a friend because his dad had never liked him. Jerry G. had issues. He was into kiddie porn. Gil had erased a hard drive for him once when Jerry came to him terrified that the police were going to seize his computer.

“Sure, I remember you, Jerry.” Wary now, Gil wondered what the creep was up to. “What can I do for you?”

“I know that I owe you, and I may have something that will go a long way toward clearing that debt. I have a little work to throw your way, if you’re interested.”

“Computer work? Sure.”

“Not computer work. This is easier. I just need you to keep tabs on some people who are going to be in your neck of the woods.”

“That’s not my line of work.”
How is this paying the debt?
Gil wondered.

“I’ll make it worth your while. Ever heard of that blogger, Faye Fallon?”

Gil made a rude noise. “Who hasn’t? She’s easy on the eyes.”

Jerry told Gil about some private investigators coming to Tehachapi at the request of Fallon.

“My employer just wants to know where they are and what they do. I’ll send you a brief description of everything, and like I said, there’s money here, a lot for little work.”

“Give me a minute to think about it.” Gil set the phone down on the counter and scratched his beard. His legitimate computer business did well, and so did his illegitimate business. He wasn’t wanting for money. He’d also branched out into
security systems, camera systems, and any miscellaneous technology problems he could solve. He wanted his adopted hometown of Tehachapi safe and sound.

If this was just surveillance on out-of-towners, he wouldn’t be fouling anything. And it sounded as if the job wouldn’t take much energy. It might even be entertaining if it involved the looker Faye Fallon. The man on the other end of the phone had been a cop, a crooked one. Growing up, Gil had hated cops because he’d hated his father. He’d always worked to avoid them. But now he saw them as a new challenge to manipulate. Sometimes they were smarter than the average guy, but not often. And Gil loved to pull one over on a cop. He knew firsthand that Jerry wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but the fact that he wanted someone watched and it involved an adult skirt made Gil curious.

Yeah, it might be worth his time to find out what this little job was all about. He picked up the phone.

“Sure, Jerry. I’ll help you out. E-mail me the specifics.” Gil gave him an untraceable e-mail address and disconnected.

He turned to his laptop and looked for the Fallon blog. What was it called? He tried to think. He knew the woman was a Holy Roller. The title of her blog was like a Bible saying. He gave up and just punched in her name.

The blog popped up right away, and he scowled.

Justice, a Joy to the Righteous
 
—A Blog for Safety-Minded High Desert Dwellers

What a stupid name. But he knew she had a lot of readers, even here in Tehachapi, though she wrote primarily for the
Antelope Valley. People were always talking about her blogs on the state of crime in the area.

“Cold Case Warriors Set to Visit the Valley” was the title of her latest entry. He read the piece through, and for the first time in a long time, he felt fear bite.

Closing the laptop and pushing his chair back from the counter, Gil stroked his beard and took a calming breath. He was smarter than they were. Even with the DNA there was no way they’d ever connect him to that crime. No way.

“I’VE GOT A FRIEND
who works for Cal State Long Beach police,” Woody told Luke after being updated on what Brenda Harris had said. “He’s been there for thirty years. He’d know if there was a complaint filed against this guy, Barone, through the campus PD.”

They were in a rental car office waiting for their ride to be brought up from the lot. They had decided to make the trip to Tehachapi in a rental, figuring a full-size sedan would look more official than Luke’s pickup truck or Woody’s beat-up Saturn.

“Can you get ahold of him?”

“I’ll call him right now.” Woody activated his phone. “He might have to research it a bit. I’m not sure how long it took campus police to get everything computerized. In 2001 LBPD was still lagging behind in that area.”

Woody phoned his friend and left a detailed voice mail message. “Sheldon is a good guy. He’ll come through.” He put the phone back on his belt as the rental car guy waved them out to a vehicle.

Luke and Woody started their trip to the Antelope Valley
with a plan. They wanted to be familiar with the area in which the crime occurred, and they wanted an idea about the timing involved. Luke wasn’t sure he liked that he was getting used to the drive along the 14, the Antelope Valley freeway, through Canyon Country, Acton, and assorted dry, high desert communities. The Antelope Valley, or AV, specifically the Palmdale/Lancaster area, was considered high desert. It was actually part of the Mojave Desert. He knew from his research that the Tehachapi and the San Gabriel mountain ranges bounded in part the western end of the Mojave Desert. The Tehachapi range was ahead of them and the San Gabriel behind. The desert itself was huge and ranged between three thousand and six thousand feet in elevation. It generally received less than six inches of rain a year. That made sense to Luke. It was just desert, barren and kind of ugly.

Known chiefly for Edwards Air Force Base, the area had had its share of housing booms and busts over the years. Affordable housing boomed in the eighties and nineties, then crashed with the housing market. The commute from Palmdale/Lancaster to LA was a long nightmare, and when the job market crashed in LA, thousands of houses went into foreclosure in the Antelope Valley. Luke remembered reading conflicting accounts about whether the community had fully recovered from the 2008 crash. He knew the valley primarily from driving through it on the way to fishing and skiing in Mammoth Lakes. All along the 14 freeway, they passed through brown canyons sparsely dotted with homes, and he wondered how anyone could consider this a great place to live.

“Makes me thirsty just to look at all this dryness,” Woody said as if reading Luke’s mind.

“Me too. It reminds me a bit of Iraq, just no sheep or shepherds. Or bombs.”

“I worked with a kid for a little while who liked it out here. Said his money would buy him a much nicer house than he could get in Long Beach. He ended up quitting the PD and getting a job out here somewhere.”

“Hope he’s happy.” Luke knew that if he lived out here, he’d miss the ocean and the beaches he was close to now.

They’d been on the road for two hours when they dropped down across the LA aqueduct and into Palmdale. The mall was on the west side of the freeway, and they exited on Rancho Vista. Ten years ago Molly and her family had lived on the other side of the Antelope Valley freeway, off Pear Blossom Highway, about fifteen minutes from the mall. They moved to Tehachapi after the crime, not only because of the incident, but also because Molly’s father got a job at a school there.

After circling the mall, checking out the bus stop, and getting their bearings, they started out for the area where Molly was assaulted. Woody drove as Luke timed the trip from the Antelope Valley Mall to where the sexual assault would have occurred, a location close to Highway 138. They knew that the defunct mall was gone, replaced a few years ago by a big-box store.

“Molly said that before the assault, after they left the mall, the man was nice and polite.” Luke held a copy of the police report in his hands. “She and the suspect were talking about a band. Molly was wearing a Switchfoot T-shirt; the suspect said he’d seen them in concert. It was a few minutes before she realized he wasn’t following her directions. He wasn’t taking her home; he was traveling the wrong way.”

He turned the page, looking up and noting that it took
fifteen minutes for Woody to reach the spot where the strip mall would have been.

“He apologized and pulled into the parking lot as if he was going to turn around. But once he was around back, his entire demeanor changed. Molly said it was like he yanked on an evil mask. He produced a knife, forced her into the backseat.” Luke bit back his anger and skimmed this part. “She begged him to let her go. He slapped her several times, saying, ‘You can’t stop me. I’m the top of the food chain and you’re just an afternoon snack.’”

“Definitely a sick groundhog who needs to be stopped,” Woody said, turning to Luke with a frown. He’d pulled over to the side in order to be certain about what direction to travel next.

Luke shook his head and continued. “Once he was finished, he bound her hands and feet and tossed her into the trunk. He told her that where they were going, no one would hear her scream, so stay quiet and save her strength.” He looked up. “From here, she was pretty sure he turned left. And that makes sense if we are to reach the spot where she was rescued after escaping from the trunk.” Luke pointed to the map. It was out in the general direction of Rosamond.

Woody nodded and headed that way, traveling on Highway 138 for a few miles before turning onto 140th Street West.

Molly told police officers at the time that it felt as if the man drove for an hour before she managed to free her hands. There was no way to know the exact route the rapist took. Woody followed the path that the sheriff had indicated to travel. He drove the speed limit, angling for the spot on the map where Molly was rescued. While Palmdale and the area around the
mall had been dense with development, it was not so out here. Palmdale gave way to a part of Lancaster, full of tumbleweeds and scrub brush. Luke remembered reading that the Air Force personnel who found Molly were driving around looking for a safe place to do some target practice. There would be few other reasons for anyone to be out here. Woody had spoken to them on the phone, but neither was able to shed any more light on that day in the desert.

Luke settled back in his seat. For the entire time the suspect drove, Molly worked to free her hands. Luke glanced down at the pictures taken of her when she was in the hospital. She sported a black eye, and both wrists were bloody and rope-burned. The deputies who responded said that if it did take a whole hour to get to where Molly was found, the suspect was taking his time. Luke wasn’t surprised by the discrepancy. He imagined that for Molly, brutalized and tied up in the dark trunk of a predator’s car, any amount of time probably felt like an eternity.

He watched the scenery go by as development thinned out into empty spaces. From the map he could see several small airfields out here and a whole lot of nothing. One of the responding deputies had thought perhaps the suspect was heading to Tylerhorse Canyon, a canyon actually located on the Pacific Coast Trail, and considered to be in Rosamond, which was in Kern County, not LA County. But that was pure conjecture; there was no way to be certain. Luke couldn’t imagine what Molly went through on this hot and dusty drive, and he thanked God she’d survived.

At least it was cool today, Luke thought, not desert hot. Fall temperatures reigned; he guessed it was about seventy. Woody crept along, and Luke read weathered signs that advertised a
new housing subdivision. Letters were missing but Luke guessed the place was to be called “Quiet Oasis” with homes priced from the low $200,000s. Obviously the project never materialized. They eventually reached vague dirt roads and pads for the houses, but too many years had passed since anyone had done anything with them, and they were fading like sand structures under the onslaught of the waves.

Luke cringed at the thought of sixteen-year-old Molly, barefoot, half-clothed, and scared to death, running out here looking for someone to save her. Thank God the Air Force guys had been here. The landscape was desolate.

Woody stopped the car, and he and Luke climbed out to look around, more to stretch than expecting to find anything.

“He could have been planning to dump her anywhere. Probably had a shovel in the car,” Woody said, hands on hips, surveying the area.

Luke nodded. “Yep. Deputies looked, but this is the middle of nowhere.” He turned at the sound of an approaching vehicle. “I guess not quite nowhere. I wonder where they’re going.”

A large SUV was headed for them and slowed to a stop when it reached them.

The driver’s window rolled down, and a bemused woman poked her head out. “What are you guys doing? Is the housing project going to be restarted?”

“Nope, not by us,” Woody said. “We’re conducting an investigation into an old crime.”

“Oh, okay. Did something happen that I should be aware of?”

“It happened ten years ago.” Luke gave her a brief recap and one of his cards. “Are you familiar with the area? Ever seen anything strange?”

“I vaguely remember that case. I’ve lived here all my life. But now the only strange and sad thing I see are dumped animals. People lose their house and can’t take their dog to an apartment, so they find a remote spot and leave them. That’s about the only reason people drive to this area. I’m with the local dog rescue. Maybe if the housing project was revived, dumping animals would happen less in this spot.”

“You find a lot of dogs?” Woody asked.

The woman rolled her eyes. “Too many.”

“What happens to them when you find them?”

“We evaluate them, get them medical attention if they need it. Find them foster homes and place them with new families if we can.”

“I love dogs. Just had to put one of the best dogs ever down. He was a seventeen-year-old Lab.”

“Oh, I’m sorry for your loss. Here’s a card.” The woman held out her hand with a business card in it. “I’m Carol. We have a website. If you’re looking for another dog, consider rescuing one. I’m sure we’d find one that would be perfect for you.”

“Thanks.” Woody took the card.

“I’m looking for a pregnant Lab mix. Have you seen any dogs?”

Both Woody and Luke said no.

“We’ve seen no signs of life so far,” Luke said.

“We’ll keep our eyes open,” Woody said as he put the card in his wallet.

“I hope you solve the case,” Carol said before she rolled the window back up and drove off over the dirt road.

“I guess we’ve done all we can do here.” Luke looked at Woody.

“Agreed. Let’s get going to the next stop.”

As they climbed back into the car, Luke’s thoughts went to the next stop, lunch with Faye. He looked out the passenger window and smiled with anticipation, truly looking forward to spending time with the beautiful, compassionate blogger.