The First Cut (14 page)

She remembered her mother chanting the dismissive slogan “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” whenever she was on the outs with her current flame. Vining embraced it and lived it. Just like that, she turned off the spigot on that part of her existence.

But lately she’d felt familiar and not unwelcome stirrings. Her near-death experience seemed to have reawakened her primal instincts. She hadn’t yet decided what to do about it, and until she did, she would do nothing.

She had to smile at the thought of herself with a high school math teacher. How would he handle her being called out of bed in the middle of the night to go to a homicide scene or tales of wrestling cuffs onto a gang member? The Job eventually wore down the good intentions of dedicated couples. It was stronger than they were. Few professions could co-exist with that of a police officer. The wives of officers were often homemakers who socialized with an insular circle of friends. Many officers dated nurses because they shared crazy work schedules and the atmosphere of never knowing what was going to come down the pike.

What chances did that leave the female officers?

Slim and none.

She thought of Frankie Lynde and wondered if her fatigue with chasing a normal life had led her to accept cash and jewelry. It couldn’t have been about the money or the jewelry. It never is. There was no pretense of love. Lolita being in the picture took care of speculation about that. The three of them knew the score.

Frankie couldn’t have always been so jaded. Vining hadn’t been born jaded. Was there hope for love among the jaded?

She went by Starbucks on Lake and California for a grande low-fat latte. It was an extravagance. Here she was, a person who washed her car at home because she couldn’t see giving someone ten bucks to do it, paying four bucks for a cup of coffee. She cut herself some slack.

She left Starbucks and headed for the Winchell’s doughnut shop next door. She took a short detour around the bus bench on the street corner where she’d seen Dale David in an ad. She wondered if T. B. Mann had found his inspiration from looking at the same ad. Dale David’s smiling face adorned with graffiti was still on the bench back. Someone had drawn a penis near his mouth with a felt marker. Vining had to laugh.

On impulse, she cruised by the bridge, stopping at a small park where South Grand Avenue dead-ended on the east side, across the arroyo from where they’d found Lynde’s body. Magnolia trees there were beginning to bloom as the jacarandas were shedding the last of their blossoms, decorating the ground with lilac-hued confetti.

She carried her coffee from the car. A handful of people in the park were working at easels doing renderings of the bridge, a favorite artists’ subject. A woman observed and commented. It was an early-morning plein air painting lesson. The people looked like retirees. Vining wondered about her sunset years. She couldn’t wrap her mind around it. People her age talked about grandchildren and golf lessons as if they were done deals. Getting through each day was a sufficient challenge for Vining. She wondered if life would ever get easier.

Her conscience, like a Magic 8-Ball in her head, answered:
Don’t count on it.

Across the arroyo near the opposite side of the bridge, she spotted someone standing above where Frankie’s body had been found. Another person who wanted to rub elbows with murder, she figured. She opened the Jeep’s hatchback and unzipped the black, nylon duffel bag that she’d transfer to the Crown Victoria she’d be assigned today. It held a box of latex gloves, waterless antibacterial gel to clean her hands after touching questionable people or objects, sunblock, and other personal equipment she might need in the course of her work. She took out binoculars and brought the individual into focus.

He put down the binoculars through which he’d been watching her so she could see his face.

It was Lieutenant Kendall Moore of the LAPD.

It would have taken Vining ten minutes to loop around to where she could drive across the bridge. She dashed across it in three. Moore had pulled his car off the street, onto the curb where it still impeded morning traffic. Cars swerved around it. Unfazed, he leaned against the hood, smoking a cigarette.

“Morning.” It was already hot and she was perspiring from the brisk walk.

“Morning.” His dress slacks, tie, and shirt looked as if he’d worn them through the night. The smoke he exhaled melted into the morning haze. She could smell alcohol within three feet of him.

She waited for him to begin. He didn’t.

“What brings you here?”

He made a “don’t know” face as if he’d simply awakened with a notion to drive crosstown to stand there after an all-night bender.

“Moore, I don’t have time for cop games. What is it? Love? Guilt? Trying to get close to her in death because you screwed her over in life? All of the above?”

She pointedly looked at his plain gold wedding band. “I suspect your wife knows.” She was playing the female intuition card, though she knew firsthand that even with the clues splayed out, the wife could be so caught up in her own la-la land that she’d miss them all. She had with Wes.

“Why ask me? You already know everything.”

“I don’t know what went on between you and Frankie. You could help us out.”

“I showed up at your office yesterday trying to do that as a favor to the PPD.”

“Right. We’re just a little backwoods police department out here in Pasadena. We’ll roll over for the important lieutenant from the big-city police.”

“Seems to be a sensitive issue for the PPD. Lack of training seems to be an issue, too.” He tipped his chin in the direction of her scar.

She felt herself blush, as she’d responded yesterday. He relished it. He was cruel. And Frankie loved him even though he was cruel to her, too. Frankie couldn’t stop punishing herself for her mother’s murder and her father’s alienation. She had nothing to do with any of it, but kids always blame themselves.

“What exactly happened when you got stabbed?” he asked. “I never heard the whole story.”

He looked at her and she looked back, both with a practiced, cool detachment that both knew was phony.

“Were you as nice to Frankie? What did you do to her that sent her spinning out of control?”

He dragged on his cigarette. “She made her own decisions. What happened between me and Frankie has nothing to do with why she ended up here.”

“Sure. That’s why you’re here and not home with your wife and kids.”

“Leave them out of it.”

“I bet you used them in your talks with Frankie. First it’s the old ‘My wife doesn’t understand me’ bit. Then, when she wanted to get serious, it’s ‘I could never abandon my wife and kids.’ She was useful to you as long as she played by your rules.”

He was looking at her mouth as she spoke. Men often did. She was lucky to have naturally white teeth, but she had a slight overbite that pushed out her top lip and there was a small gap between her two front teeth. Men had told her that her teeth were sexy. She’d always hated her teeth and hated when people looked at them. If she had the money to have them straightened, she would. That was one good thing about the scar. People didn’t notice her teeth as much.

“You think you’re something, don’t you?” he said. “You get your picture in the paper enough. Seems like you’re always finding trouble.”

“Trouble is my business.” She smiled crookedly.

He threw his cigarette butt on the ground and mashed it out. “You gonna cite me for littering?”

“I’d like to cite you for being an asshole, but unfortunately they haven’t passed that law yet.”

He got into his car. “Stay out of trouble, Officer Vining.”

He pulled a U-turn with a screech of tires and drove off.

The way he’d said her name stayed with her, like an ice cube melting in her belly.

T H I R T E E N

V
INING CARRIED THE BOX OF HER PERSONAL ITEMS WITH A BOX OF
Winchell’s doughnuts on top into the Detectives Section.

The doughnuts immediately caught the attention of a detective who was passing by.

“Take it,” she told him. “Breakfast of champions.”

He slid off the Winchell’s box and opened it. “Doughnuts for the cops. Isn’t that a cliché?”

“I am a cliché.”

He dove for a jelly-filled. “This is for you, Quick Draw. I know you won’t eat one.”

“You can have the indigestion they give me, too.”

“That’s more information than I need.”

“Would you put them over by the coffeemaker, please? Thanks.” She carried the other box to her cubicle. On her desk were several accordion folders all labeled with her name, the date of her assault, and a case number: her case files. There was also a three-ring binder, inches thick with paper, the spine similarly labeled. It was Kissick’s personal file of salient details from her case. His take-home file.

She set the box on the desk, shoving everything over. Without touching the case files, she opened the box from home and set the mug that Emily had given her one Mother’s Day on the desk. It was decorated with a photo of her and Emily and said “I love you, Mom.” She set out framed snapshots of Emily as an infant and toddler, her current school portrait, and photographs of her sister and her family, her mother and grandmother. On the other corner went the pottery pencil holder and business card display that Emily had decorated in one of those paint-it-yourself shops.

Onto the carpeted wall she tacked artwork done by her nephews and an eerie photograph that Emily had taken of rows of gravestones at night in an old section of Evergreen Cemetery in East Los Angeles. A couple of the gravestones were tilted and some had fallen over. Vining thought the shot was first-rate. Each gravestone had a story. It reminded her of the importance of her work. Beside it, she hung a calendar with photos of kittens and puppies that her grandmother had given her for Christmas. It was sentimental, even for Granny, but it had been an emotional holiday season for the entire family. She took out an inexpensive, crystal bud vase and a yellow rose she’d clipped from bushes along the driveway of her house that persisted in blooming in spite of years of neglect. She gave the rose a drink from a bottle of water she’d brought from home.

She picked up the accordion files, set them inside the box, and put the box on the floor in the corner. The notebook was still on her desk. Kissick’s personal file of her case. She grabbed the edge as if to open it. Didn’t. She drummed her fingertips on its cover, then left her cubicle.

Kissick was in the conference room–turned–war room, surrounded by piles of documents relating to Lynde’s case. Two whiteboards were covered with time and events schedules of the final months of Lynde’s life sketched out in red and black marker. Another whiteboard listed the leads to be followed: Lincoln Continental limo, the money trail, aquamarine earrings, Lolita, strip club witnesses, Frank and Frankie arrests. On the table were copies of that morning’s
Los Angeles Times
and
Pasadena Star News,
the pages turned to articles about the case.

“Morning.” Kissick barely looked up from scribbling on a yellow pad.

“Hi. I brought doughnuts.”

He patted his middle. “Afraid they’re not on my diet for a while. Maybe never.”

“Mine either.” Vining sat in the chair she’d occupied most of the previous day. The pile of phone bills she’d been reviewing was still there.

“What a sport, buying treats for the others.”

“A sport. That’s me all over. Did you spend the night here?”

“Came in early. Couldn’t sleep anyway.”

“I know the feeling.”

Vining looked up as Ruiz and Caspers filed into the conference room. Ruiz was holding a half-eaten glazed doughnut and Caspers had a patch of powdered sugar on his face. She didn’t draw his attention to it.

Ruiz made a small noise when he sat.

“Good morning.” Kissick grabbed a manila file folder crammed with papers. “Jones and Sproul logged fifty-seven telephone leads yesterday. Another thirty-one were e-mailed in and twelve were left on voice mail overnight.”

“We’re superstars,” Caspers said.

“They didn’t get hot over anything from the phone calls they took. Mostly crackpots who want to rub elbows with the big case. Let’s hope there’s a pony in there someplace.” Kissick placed the file on the table in front of Ruiz. “I’d like you and Caspers to work the leads, rank them, follow up on the best ones, take note of trends…You know what to do.”

Ruiz looked at the folder as if Kissick had presented him with his dirty laundry. “Me and Caspers?”

“You and Caspers. Show him how it’s done.”

“Ohh-kay. Where are Jones and Sproul?”

“Already on the road. Working through Frankie’s recent arrests. A couple of guys spent time in jail for rape and sexual assault. Jones used to work sex crimes. He knows how to play these jerks. Personally, my money’s on someone on that list.”

“I hope he’s on one of our lists,” Caspers said.

Kissick picked up another sheath of papers. “Earthlink gave me access to Frankie’s e-mail account. She last downloaded messages Thursday night, May nineteenth, the day before she was seen at the strip club. Earthlink doesn’t store e-mails after they’re downloaded, so those are gone unless we can locate her computer. The more than two weeks of messages we did get, from May twentieth on, are mostly spam and e-mails from her friends wondering where she is. Couple of jerks got her e-mail address. One of them sent a love note. ‘Hope you got what you deserve, bitch.’”

It reminded Vining of the cheery get-well Hallmark card she’d been sent with the note “You should have died, bitch,” scrawled inside. The b-word. They loved the b-word.

Kissick continued. “Last night Josh down in Community Services, my computer guy, tracked the e-mail address through the sender’s ISP. It belongs to a guy Frankie arrested earlier this year for solicitation.”

He handed a sheet of paper to Ruiz. “Add that to your list of leads to work.”

From his breast pocket, Ruiz took out a pair of cheaters and set them on his nose before beginning to read. He looked up at the other three who had started snickering, their laughter growing louder at the sight of him full-face.