The Darker Side (12 page)

This is what California used to be, I think. Clean air, unending sun in the spring and summer, a horizon you could still see. Simi is a fair-sized city, but it lacks the congestion and traffic snarl that has been a staple of Los Angeles for many moons.

Traffic is annoying but not crippling and we arrive at the police station around 7:00 P.M.

“That must be Atkins,” Alan says.

I see a middle-aged man with a receding brunet hairline in the parking lot of the station, leaning up against his car. He’s wearing a charcoal gray suit, not off the rack but not Armani either. He spots us and comes up to greet us as we park.

“You must be Agent Washington,” Atkins says to Alan, putting out his hand with a smile. “No offense, but you’re pretty hard to miss.”

“I get that a lot.”

“I’ll bet.” Atkins turns to me. “And you’re Agent Barrett.”

His eyes dance over my scars, something I’m long used to by now. I don’t mind certain subsets of the population examining my face. Homicide cops like Atkins, for example. His interest is genuine and quizzical. He looks, shrugs inside, and lets it go, no disgust or horror evident. Most physicians do the same. Small children run the gamut from “is that your real face?” to, in the case of nine-year-old boys, “wow, cool!”

“Thanks for meeting us this late,” I say, shaking the hand he’s offered.

“Hey, anything that will help me crack this case.” His eyes go flat, expressionless. “This one bothers me.”

He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t have to. You see a lot of dead people, doing what we do. None of it is good, but some of the corpses become ghosts.

“Tell us about it,” Alan says.

Atkins inclines his head. “I can tell you about her death, and I will, but first I thought I’d take you to see a man who can tell you about her life.”

“Who?” I ask.

“Father Yates. Catholic priest in the Valley who almost literally pulled Rosemary out of the gutter.”

Alan looks at me and raises an inquiring eyebrow.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I quip, using humor to push aside my exhaustion. I gesture to Atkins’s car. “You drive. You can fill us in on the way there.”

IT OCCURS TO ME THAT
American carmakers are unlikely to go out of business as long as police forces exist. The car is a fixed-up Crown Vic, no longer black and white, just black and sleek with a growl under the hood.

It’s dark out now, the moon is up, and we’re headed back down the 118 freeway again. It’s rush-hour light at the moment; there are other cars around us, but the distance and speed are companionable. The sky is cloudless and the moon is full. Silver, not yellow. It makes some of the rocky hills in the distance look like they have snow on top.

I’m in the front seat with Atkins, Alan is in the back.

“Rosemary Sonnenfeld. Single white female, age thirty-four, five-five, approx. one hundred twenty-five pounds, in good physical shape. She was found dead in her apartment with a bag of coke on the nightstand next to her. On first glance the thought was that Rosemary had reverted to type. She was an ex-prostitute, ex-porn girl, ex-coke and sex addict. I thought she’d probably decided to get high and maybe was a little out of practice on her coke usage and overdosed.”

“Makes sense,” Alan says. “What changed your mind?”

“A closer look. Tox screen showed she had enough coke in her system to kill a horse, but she’d also been stabbed in the side.”

“Interesting,” I allow, not yet willing to give up data on Lisa Reid.

“Yeah. Then, of course, there was the cross. Silver cross, about two inches high and one inch wide. Engraved with a skull and crossbones and the number one forty-two on the back. It had been inserted into her.”

The same as Lisa Reid, I think.
And one forty-two? Lisa was one forty-three.

“If all that wasn’t enough to call it a homicide,” Atkins continues, “the icing on the cake is that the cross was inserted postmortem.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty definitive,” Alan says.

“Then there’s Father Yates.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Yates is a priest who does a lot of good, but he’s no fool. He made Rosemary do a piss test once a month at a local clinic.”

“Really?” I ask, surprised. “Sounds like a pretty distrustful priest.”

Atkins smiles. “Father Yates is a realist. He’s a true believer, and he does good work. But he has a three strikes rule. If he takes you in and helps you get clean, you get three relapses and then you’re gone.”

“So I take it Rosemary had stayed clean.”

“For over four years. I checked her record. Nothing during that time. She’d held a steady job, she volunteered at the church every weekend. Everything says that she really had gone on the straight and narrow.”

“I can see why this one got to you,” I say.

Most people think that cops are cynics. There is truth to that stereotype. We see the worst that people can do or be. It makes us…attentive. But we’re people too. Most of those I’ve known in law enforcement, however hardened they may be, still harbor a willingness to believe that someone could—maybe—turn their life around. A bad guy or girl could—maybe—wake up one day and decide to become a good guy or girl. It’s just that—a maybe—but it never really goes away. No one can live with the idea that man is basically evil and stay happy.

“Yeah,” Atkins says. “Anyway. It was a homicide, but everything dead-ended. Forensics came up with nada. We couldn’t find any past known associates that were still alive. Ten days later, no viable suspects.” He shakes his head in frustration. “I’ve been doing this for a while, Agent Barrett. I know when a case is going to go cold. This had that feel to it—until Agent Washington called me.”

“Was there any evidence of sexual violation? Any ejaculate near the body?”

“No.”

“How was her body positioned? Were her legs together or apart?”

“Together. Arms folded over her chest.”

“Interesting,” I murmur.

“What?” Atkins asks.

“Our other victim was a transsexual. Rosemary was an ex-porn actress and sex addict. Based on our victims, I would have expected a sexual component to these crimes, but it’s been absent both times. The only commonality we know of is the cross. Strange.”

“What’s it mean?” Alan asks, prodding me.

I shake my head. “I don’t know yet. Let’s see what the priest can tell us.”

“ROSEMARY WAS ONE OF MY
favorite successes. One Rosemary could make up for ten failures. You understand?”

Father Yates is a very fit fiftyish. He has rough-hewn, handsome features, close-cropped salt and pepper hair, and dark, intelligent eyes. They are what I used to call “priest eyes” to my friends. Too full of kindness to get self-righteous with, too full of an understanding of the ways of sin to hide anything from. I grew up Catholic, though I am long lapsed, and I recognize the type of priest Yates is: hands-on, approachable, devout without being out of touch with the realities of life.

Perhaps if more priests were like him, I wouldn’t have lapsed.

He’s a tall man, about six foot five, thin without being gangly. He wears a short-sleeve shirt with the white collar at the throat. His hands are restless. This is an energetic priest, a man of action. Working for God, to him, means
working
for God.

I like him.

“I do understand, Father. We enjoy similar victories, sometimes, and they make up for the failures. Mostly.”

Those priest eyes fix on mine and I feel the old, familiar flush of guilt. He knows, he knows. He knows I masturbate sometimes with the help of a vibrator. He knows I take a secret pleasure at making a man come with my mouth.

Sweet Jesus—and there’s another one, blasphemy—I thought I was past all this!

I know, at some level, that it’s all in my head. Father Yates is no mind reader. I even recognize the phenomenon; put a civilian in an interrogation room with me, and he’ll feel exactly the same way.

“Yes,” he replies, nodding. “I imagine there are a lot of parallels in what we do.”

“I’ll bet,” I agree. “We both know about the dark side of people. You’ve probably heard about most of the crimes I’ve seen.”

He waves a hand. “I’ve heard everything in confession. Pedophilia. Incest. Rape. Murder. The difference, I suppose, is in our methods.”

“I jail them, you try and set them free.”

It comes out sounding a little bit sarcastic. I hadn’t intended it to.

He gives a faint, amused smile. “And which do you think is more effective?”

I spread my hands. “They can find God in prison too, Father. But at least in prison, they can’t hurt anyone else.”

He chuckles. “Fair enough, Agent Barrett. I won’t press the point. I believe the truth of a person can be found in their actions. It may not be the party line for the church at the moment, but I care more about how you live your life than about how often you receive Communion.” His expression becomes more grave. “I’m familiar with your story, and with some of the men you’ve put away. You’re a force for good, I think.”

I laugh. I don’t take offense at his use of a caveat; I can tell that he’s teasing me.

“I appreciate that, Father.”

Alan and Atkins are sitting a few pews back. They’re keeping quiet, remaining unobtrusive. This is an interview, not an interrogation. Intimacy is all.

“Tell me about Rosemary,” I prod.

“I’ve been the pastor here at the Redeemer for twenty years, Agent Barrett. As I think you know, Los Angeles is a temperamental city, full of contrasts. Within the surrounding five blocks you will find upstanding, middle class families, teenage prostitutes, honor roll students, gang members—all sharing the same pavement.”

“Yes.”

“When I was called by God, I always knew that He would want me to be a hands-on priest. My gifts don’t lie in giving a Mass. I do the job, but I’m not a tremendous public speaker. God knew that what I had to offer was an ability to witness the evil in others without losing faith in the possibility of redemption.” He smiles a wry smile. “He knew, of course, that I was also blessed with a big mouth and a questioning mind. Don’t misunderstand, I stand behind my church with all my heart, but I lack political dexterity. If I think an ecclesiastical law should be reviewed, I’ll say so.”

“I understand,” I reply, amused.

It’s interesting to me to find that even within the confines of the church, there is a divide between the “suits” and the men on the ground, between the officers and the sergeants.

“I was relegated to this tiny church because they had to put me somewhere. They knew it would be wrong to cloister me away—the church is not always blind, in spite of what some think—but they didn’t want me in the limelight either.” He grins and I can almost see him twenty years ago, vibrant, a rebel. “I was overjoyed. This was, and has always been, where I wanted to be.”

A question occurs to me. “Father, if I can ask—what did you do before the priesthood?”

He nods in approval. “Very germane, Agent Barrett. Before I was a priest, I was a troubled young man. I spent time in reform school for petty theft, I had careless affairs with women, I drank, and I engaged in casual violence.”

He says it all with such ease, without the slightest hint of shame. Not proud of his past, but not apologizing for it either.

“What changed?” I ask.

“I met a very tough old priest by the name of Father Montgomery. He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and set me straight. He impressed me. Here was a man of God—a profession I’d always considered for suckers—who didn’t blink at the sight of blood, or turn up his nose at a young girl who came in to pray wearing her leather mini skirt and platform shoes. He’d give her Communion even though he knew she was going to walk out the door and sell her body afterward. He had a saying: ‘Leave your knives at the door, and you’re welcome here.’”

“Where was this?”

“Detroit.” He shrugs. “He turned me around. I got the calling, and as I said, I knew that God wanted me to emulate Father Montgomery. Which I have tried to do.”

“Rosemary,” I prod again.

“Rosemary was a very troubled young woman. Her story wasn’t exactly original. A difficult teen, she ended up doing drugs and selling her body. What made Rosemary different, more complex, was the component of addiction. She truly enjoyed the combination of drug use and depraved sex. I don’t mean that she thought it was right or good. But it gave her great pleasure. She sought it out. Rosemary was not the innocent victim of a smooth-talking pimp. She had no family history of abuse.” He shakes his head, remembering something. “She told me once, she was ‘just born bad.’ I was alerted to her arrival in the ER by a nurse who is a member of my congregation. That nurse’s words, essentially: ‘This girl has hit rock bottom, Father. She will either turn around or she will die.’”

“Had she? Hit rock bottom?”

“Oh yes. She had been beaten nearly to death by a john while she was high on cocaine, and she had chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea raging through her—along with a touch of the flu.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. She’d escaped HIV infection, thank God, and the syphilis was recent. The Holy Spirit must have been watching over Rosemary.”

I think this is debatable, but I keep it to myself.

“Go on, please, Father.”

“I was there when she woke up. She couldn’t stop crying. I asked her the question I always ask: Are you ready for my help? Rosemary said that she was. I arranged a place for her to stay, members of the church helped her get clean, we prayed together.” His eyes get sad. “We prayed together a lot.” He looks at me. “This was the thing about Rosemary that you have to understand to really care about her, Agent Barrett. Not every detail of her recovery, not even every detail of her sins. But that somehow, from somewhere, this hopeless girl found inside herself a tremendous strength. It never got easier for her. She told me she still thought about drugs and sex almost every day. The longing grew more distant, but it never disappeared. Still, she held on.” He clenches his hands in frustration. “She had been living in God’s grace for five years. No drugs, no reversions to former behaviors. I hate to use the word, but it applies here—Rosemary had been
saved
.”