Missing Justice (14 page)

I could tell she was wondering whether she’d lived up to that obligation. “I’m sure she knew you did, Tara.” It was my best effort, but it sounded no better than the shallow things people said to me when my mother died.

“I hope so.”

“What do you mean about Clarissa living up to Susan’s expectations?”

“That’s a bit of an overstatement. I don’t always choose my words very well. I think Clarissa wanted to be more like Susan.

It’s been that way since they met in sixth grade. Some girl threw gum in Clarissa’s hair on the bus, and Clarissa was afraid to stick up for herself. Susan was the new kid in school from California, and everyone else was avoiding her. But when this girl threw gum at Clarissa, Susan without saying a word to Clarissa followed her off the bus and told her she’d kick her butt if she ever messed with Clarissa again. From that point on, they were friends, but Susan was always looking out for Clarissa. I don’t think that dynamic ever went away.”

“But if Susan took care of Clarissa, why wouldn’t Clarissa confide in her about something like leaving Townsend?”

“I don’t think I’m explaining it well. Susan wouldn’t have just listened to Clarissa, which I think is what Clarissa wanted from me. She would’ve gone to Townsend and told him to pay more attention to his marriage or something. Who knows? She might even have tracked this other guy down and told him to shape up and be with Clarissa if that’s what she wanted. That’s the way Susan is.”

I’d just met Susan, but I could already picture it. “I’m sorry, Tara, but I think I need at least to talk to Susan and see if maybe she knew who the other guy was.”

“But I thought she already said there weren’t any problems in the marriage. In fact, I got the impression she was upset that the police even asked about it.”

“If she doesn’t think it has anything to do with her death, she might just be trying to protect Clarissa’s reputation like you were.”

She didn’t say anything.

“If it matters, I don’t see the harm in talking to Susan about your concerns.”

“I’m mostly worried about Townsend. You don’t know him. The way he was Sunday night? He’s usually nothing like that, and things have only gotten worse since then. He’s an absolute wreck. I don’t think he can take any more. My parents and I are having a hard enough time on our own, but now we’re worried about Townsend too. If he finds out, I don’t know what he’d do.”

“I’ll be as discreet as possible,” I promised, “but I can’t ignore what you’ve told me.”

By the time Tara left the office, she understood that she could no longer control what became of the secret her sister had confided in her.

I needed to tell Johnson about Clarissa’s phone call to Jessica Walters and what I’d learned from Tara. And I still needed to follow up on what Duncan had told me this morning: Had Johnson really asked Townsend for a polygraph?

No one picked up at MCT, so I paged him again. He returned the call fifteen minutes later from a crime scene. I could barely hear him over a chorus of angry voices in the background.

“Sorry about the delay, but today’s been a bitch. I got a home invasion gone bad here right now. Two guys dead and a front yard full of gang bangers taking sides. We’re meeting back at Central at four to go over where we are on Easterbrook. Can it wait till then? We can patch you in on speaker.”

“It can wait, but I’ll meet you over there.” I knew from experience that attending a meeting by conference call is a guaranteed way to be confused and ignored, two areas where I didn’t need help.

“Sounds good. We should have the bad guys separated from the less bad guys by then.”

I turned my attention back to the task of reviewing the files I had inherited from Frist. With only a partial caseload, I had thirty-two pending cases and thirteen waiting to be reviewed for prosecution decisions. Far fewer files than in DVD, where I’d celebrate if I fell into the double digits, but homicides, sex offenses, and felony assaults would require more of me than the drug cases I had learned to prosecute on autopilot.

By midafternoon, I had finished compiling a calendar of all scheduled appearances and a list of motions, responses, phone calls, and other follow-up projects that needed to be done. If only I could learn to get the actual work completed as efficiently and neatly as I could list it.

MCT was housed in the downtown Justice Center, just a quick diagonal across the Plaza Blocks from the courthouse. I took the stairs to the fourth floor. When I got to MCT’s large suite of cubicles, Chuck threw me a Diet Coke from the mini fridge and a look from deep down in a naughty place. I missed the soda by a mile, but I definitely caught the look. As usual, Chuck Forbes didn’t miss a thing.

“Nice catch, Kincaid. Something distract you?”

“Just your piss-poor aim. Mike, don’t ever rely on your partner in a gunfight.”

Chuck’s partner, Mike Calabrese, was finishing off the second and, for him, final bite of a Krispy Kreme glazed. Licking his fingers, he said, “That boy there doesn’t need his gun. He disarms the world with his rapier wit.”

He disguised the New York accent, giving the impression he was mimicking something Chuck said recently, most likely after their annual shooting re-quals. Seven times out of ten, I could outshoot Chuck at the range.

Johnson took control of the meeting once everyone was settled around the table. “Thanks for coming back in. As it turns out, the LT OK’d us for overtime on this, but I appreciate that everyone was willing to show anyway. I know it was a bad day out there today. Before I let you in on what Walker and I have been working, where are you guys on the paperwork?”

Chuck and Mike knew the question was aimed at them. Chuck took charge.

“We got everything we were asking for. Nothing on the credit cards other than corroboration for what the wits have been telling us. We got charges at Nordstrom on Saturday for the clothes she was wearing and the stuff the sister found in the shopping bag. Then Sunday we’ve got the lunch at the Pasta Company. We checked the bills for the last twelve months, and nothing’s jumping out. Same with the bank records.

“The vies cell phone gets a little more interesting. The general pattern is slow: a few calls to the house, office voice mail, that sort of thing. Very few incoming calls. The last two calls were one Sunday afternoon to the Pasta Company and one Saturday afternoon to her house. I figured I’d let one of you guys check that one out with the family, since you’re the contacts.”

I saw Johnson jot it down in his notebook. “That it?” he asked.

Chuck and Mike exchanged glances. “My partner here has been saving the best for last,” Mike said. “We get a break in the pattern about three months ago. Suddenly our victim starts using all those minutes she’s prepaid for, and it’s almost all calls back and forth between her phone and one belonging to Metro Council member Terrence James Caffrey.”

T. J. Caffrey was a well-known liberal lawmaker. He had previously been a member of the county legislature but recently ran for and won a seat on the Metro Council, whose sole purpose was to enforce Oregon’s unique restrictions against urban sprawl. In the 1970s, the legislature essentially drew a big circle around the Portland area’s existing development and established that line as a boundary between urban and rural land. Since then, as the region’s population had grown, the urban center had exploded with new development. The result was a much denser metropolitan area, but the open space beyond it had remained just that. Only the Metro Council had the authority to redraw the line that separated urban from rural.

Johnson reached his hands toward Calabrese like he wanted to squeeze his cheeks and kiss the top of his head. “Now that is what I’m talking about. Feels like we’re swimming through maple syrup and suddenly something breaks. Too many phone calls to a married man; it might boil down to old-fashioned lust after all.”

“That fits in with something I got this afternoon,” I said. I told them about my visit from Tara. T. J. Caffrey s own marriage would explain why Clarissa thought that leaving Townsend wouldn’t be enough to make her happy.

The guys were predictably ticked.

“Happens in every case, don’t it?” Calabrese spoke for them all. “These people don’t tell us what they know; then they bitch and moan when we can’t find the bad guy fast enough.”

Before I had a chance to voice Tara’s reservations, Johnson was back on track. “It’s all right. Now we got some pieces coming together. I’ve got something that might fit in with the Caffrey angle too, but let’s hold off on that for now. You got anything else?”

“Only a one-minute phone call on Friday to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office. We figured Kincaid could track down the details.”

“I’ve already got them. Jessica Walters paid me a visit this morning.” I explained to them that Jessica had been in trial last week, only made the connection today between the voice mail and our case, and had no idea why our victim had been calling her.

“Raises some interesting questions, doesn’t it?” Walker asked. “We’ve got an assertive, good-looking woman calling Nail ‘em to the Wall Walters. Maybe she was a closet muncher and got involved in something over her head.”

Walker was a good man, so I tried to write off his deduction” as generational. As for his choice of words, it was nothing I hadn’t heard before in the DA’s office.

“Seems unlikely. I talked to Jessica about it today, and Clarissa Easterbrook’s name meant nothing to her until Monday.”

Johnson jumped in. “Right now, it’s just a phone call; nothing we can do with it. Mike and Chuck gave us Councilman T. J. Caffrey to follow up on; Kincaid got us Melvin Jackson to talk to. And Jack and I have a couple guys we’re going to be picking up when we break. Can you run it down for them, Jack? My voice is toast.”

Jack Walker flipped through various computer printouts as he spoke. “We cross-referenced prior sex arrests with address records from the surrounding area. Based on that, we got twenty-seven guys within a couple of miles.”

If the public had any clue what was walking around out there with the rest of us, they’d lose any remaining faith in the criminal justice system’s sentencing priorities.

“But that includes any sex offense,” Walker explained, “even the wienie wavers and step dads Of the twenty-seven, we’ve got a couple who are more interesting. One’s got a forcible rape and sodomy, lives with his mother about five blocks from the construction site. Name’s John Peltzkelszvich, or however you pronounce that. I mean, buy a freakin’ vowel, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, he’s on parole, so we should be able to get access to him through the PO.

“The guy we like best right now, though, is Gregory Banas. He’s farther out, almost two miles from the site. Only prior conviction is a misdemeanor sex abuse for grabbing a woman’s crotch in a mall parking lot. But, get this: Banas’s name comes up twice. Remember the attempted rape a couple years ago on Taylor’s Ferry that Bradley and Rees from the DA’s office broke up?”

We all nodded.

“The woman’s name was Vicki Vasquez,” Walker explained.

“No arrest, but Bob Milling from East Precinct called this afternoon. He was working the case when he was still at Central. Good guy. Vasquez was never able to make a solid ID, but when she was flipping through mugs, she pulled out four who could’ve been the bad guy. Her favorite?”

“Greg Banas?” Calabrese asked.

“Correctamundo,” Walker said. “Milling wanted to put him in a lineup, but Vasquez moved back to California. Said she wanted to put the whole thing behind her. At the time, Banas lived in one of those big apartment complexes on Barbur Boulevard.” I knew the location, not far from the running trail along Taylors Ferry. “About a year ago, he moved to one off Highway Twenty-six in Glenville, so we’ve got potential familiarity with both the crime scene and the presumed pickup spot.”

Ray Johnson nodded. “And location’s going to matter on this one. Heidi Chung called from the crime lab. The paint geek from Home Depot says that the paint on the dog matches paint going up on the exterior of the office park. Mocha cream, to be exact.”

“Would the paint have been wet on Sunday?” Walker asked.

Johnson had apparently asked the same question already. “They were painting Friday and Saturday; on Sundays the work is shut down. But they leave the scaffolding and paint out.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Chuck said. “We’ve been assuming the bad guy swiped the victim from the street, leaving the dog and the leash behind. Now we’re saying bad guy takes victim and her big strong dog? Does the bad guy location to be determined then dump her in Glenville and drop the dog near home? No way.”

“I’m with you,” Johnson agreed. “But let’s try it this way, going back to our old-fashioned lust theory. Husband’s off at the hospital all day, so vie meets her phone pal for a day of romance. Maybe he picks her up for a drive to the coast, and they take the dog with them. They fight about the things people fight about when they’re screwing each other but married to other people. He hits her in the head a little too hard. Dumps her in Glenville on the way back Griffey jumps out for a tinkle, comes back with paint then leaves the dog and the shoe on Taylor’s Ferry to get us thinking abduction.”

Chuck was nodding with every sentence. “That could be it.”

“Or it could still be an abduction,” Walker added, “but the paint comes from the bad guy, not the building. There’s Peltzkelszvich and Banas, but we’ve also got a couple of site workers with problems. Maybe the paint goes from the site to them to the dog.”

Johnson thought about it. “It’s possible. I didn’t like any of the work guys for it, though.”

Walker filled the rest of us in. “We found a bunch of dirtbags working up there, mostly through one union. There were a couple of rapes, some robberies, and a mess of DV assaults. But the robberies were all commercial, and the rapes weren’t strangers one was an ex-girlfriend, one was the guy’s stepdaughter. Nothing that seemed in line with our scenario.”

“I hate to be the party pooper ” The four detectives’ shared chuckle cut me off. “OK, playing my usual role of party pooper,” I revised, “maybe it’s just paint. Plain, generic taupe-colored paint. I mean, how precise can the paint geek get it? The stuff’s not DNA, right? Griffey still could’ve come across it wandering around the neighborhood.”