Judgment Calls Read online

  After the fourth try, Nitwit clued in and the frosty lips started moving again. “OK, like, I totally didn’t understand that before? You want to ask about something we had, like, way back in November? I so didn’t work here yet?”

  I finally uttered the magic words that should have been my first. “Is there, like, a manager or something?”

  Sweet lord, a woman in her thirties was never such a relief! Her name tag identified her as JAN, SENIOR SALES ASSOCIATE. All that mattered to me was that she’d worked there for two years and spoke that increasingly endangered language known as grown-up.

  “OK, let’s see … black leather handbag by Esprit. Around November.” I was nodding as she thought out loud. “Yeah, we had a line of leather bags by them last year. They normally do more canvas and novelty bags. What kind of strap did it have? There was one that was more like a backpack, one that had a shorty little handbag strap, and then a couple with shoulder straps.”

  I told her it had a regular shoulder strap and then did my best sketching it on a piece of scrap paper she gave me.

  “Yeah, that looks like one of the shoulder strap ones we had.” She walked around the counter and pulled a bag out that was on display. “Does it look kind of like this one, but with seams on the side and without this little buckle here?”

  “That’s just what it looks like,” I said, surprise in my tone. I couldn’t believe anyone could distinguish among purses in such detail, but I guess others would marvel at my ability to distinguish Grey Goose from Smirnoff.

  “Do most of the people who were here last fall still work with the company?” I asked.

  She looked up in the air like she was thinking and counting. “Yeah, not everyone, but mostly.”

  “And what are the chances one of them might remember selling that particular purse to someone if I get you a picture of the person?” I asked, my smile revealing that I knew it was a long shot.

  “Boy, pretty slim. That was six months ago.” She could see my disappointment register. “Hey, it’s worth a shot, though. Tell you what, you give me the picture and I’ll make sure everyone takes a look at it.”

  “Great.” I thought about the easiest way to get a picture of Andrea to Jan and slipped into thinking aloud myself. “OK, I can get a booking photo of her from January, which should be pretty much how she looked last November.”

  Solid, reliable Jan looked alarmed at the mention of a booking photo, and I laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. She’s not a hardened criminal or anything.” Of course, the truth is that hardened criminals come to the mall and buy regular, boring things from stable, reliable people like Jan every day, but I didn’t see the need to tell her that. “It’s actually kind of a long story. A security guard at Dress You Up excluded her from the store. It was really more of a misunderstanding, but they had her arrested a few months later when she came back.”

  Jan tilted her head. “God, that rings a bell. I sold a purse to a woman, and I remember she was red hot about some security guard at Dress You Up. The guy had accused her of shoplifting, and even though she told them to look through her stuff and they didn’t find anything, he kicked her out of the store. Didn’t apologize or anything. You know, that would’ve been around November.”

  I had to refrain from throwing my arms around solid, reliable Jan. It had to have been Andrea. She must’ve bought the purse the same day she had the run-in with Kerry Richardson at Dress You Up.

  “And this woman bought the Esprit purse we’ve been talking about?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. I just remember the thing about the security guard.”

  “What about the woman who bought the purse? Was she about thirty-five? Brown shoulder-length hair? About my height?” I was doing my best to describe Andrea, whose appearance was most notable for being nondescript.

  Jan shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I said, I just remember that conversation. Maybe if I saw her picture—”

  I dashed back to my car and drove over to Northeast Precinct. It was only a couple of miles, but pesky things like lights, cats, and frolicking children kept getting in the way of my car. The forty minutes it took me to print Andrea’s booking photo from X-imaging and take it back to Jan felt like an eternity.

  Jan looked carefully at Andrea’s picture and said, “Yeah, I think that’s the woman. I remember her now.” It wasn’t the best ID in the world, but it was a hell of lot more than I had a few days ago.

  * * *

  I was too excited to go home to my usual routine, so I picked up Vinnie for a visit to Dad’s. In the car, I checked my cell for messages. There were two from Chuck. I’d been avoiding him since the shit hit the fan in Duncan’s office. Hell, I had to face him eventually. I left a message to meet me at Dad’s if he felt like it.

  Dad was so happy to see me he didn’t even complain about Vinnie tagging along.

  Going to Dad’s is a major treat for Vinnie. Dad’s yard is large enough that there were still some bushes that Vinnie hadn’t managed to pee on yet. Vinnie would sniff around back, seeking out unsoiled ones to violate. Add the Milk Bones that Dad keeps around to control Vinnie’s breath, and Dad’s house was the Vinnie equivalent of a Yankees–Mets game.

  By the time Chuck showed up, Dad and I had fed Vinnie, gone to the market for the “grocks” as Dad called them, and put a dish of baked penne in the oven.

  Dad took great pleasure announcing Chuck’s arrival before he headed back to the kitchen. “Sam, your man’s here and he’s got wine.”

  Chuck was lingering by the door. As I went to kiss his cheek, he grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me close. I couldn’t tell if he noticed that my response was awkward. I let myself be held; it felt good to rest my head against his chest and feel his arms around me. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to return the embrace.

  Maybe he picked up on my reticence. As he finally let go of me, he settled for a kiss on the top of the head. “Hey, you. I brought your favorite.”

  It was an Australian shiraz-cab blend, perfect for someone like me who can’t handle a full-blown cabernet. I forced a smile as we headed back into the kitchen. “Thanks. That was sweet.”

  Dad gave Chuck one of those half handshake, half shoulder-grab things that guys give each other instead of hugs. “Hey, big man, how you holding up?” he asked. I was glad Dad had kicked off the conversation. I was still resisting the urge to pull Chuck outside and grill him until I was absolutely positive, beyond any doubt, that he had fully disclosed everything he knew about Landry’s confession.

  “You know, patrol’s not so bad. It’s kind of a nice break from the heavy stuff.” From some guys, this might’ve sounded like saving face, or maybe just making the best of a bad situation. From Chuck, it sounded sincere.

  Me? I was just trying to make the most of a bad situation. “Same here. Too many of those MCT cases and I would’ve started to lose my faith in humanity. I’d hate to wind up like O’Donnell one of these days,” I said with a shudder.

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Dad said. “Back with the Forest Department, you know, we never really had to do anything like what you were doing at MCT. Just some trespassing, drunks, a few fights. Enough to make life exciting, but the most you ever brought home at night was a funny story.”

  When Dad talked about his career, he tended to leave out his years as an Oregon State Police detective. He joined the Forest Department when I was a toddler. He and Mom decided the hours were more regular, the pension was better, and he was less likely to get shot in the forest than in OSP. Dad liked to say he was grateful for the switch, but I always sensed he missed the excitement of his early career.

  “So, Lucky Chucky, what kind of stories you got for us tonight?” I asked, grateful that Dad had never asked for the etymology of the nickname.

  Chuck shook his head as he poured three glasses of wine. “Nothing, really. Been pretty slow.”

  I could tell there were a few possibilities, though. Maybe not full-out, pee-your-pants knee slappers,
but enough to make him smile. “Oh, c’mon,” I cajoled. “There’s no way you’ve been on patrol all week without something happening. You have a civic responsibility to share your telltale stories with bored retirees and drug deputies.”

  “OK, there was this one guy. He was weaving his BMW all over the place through a school zone, right when kids were starting to come in. Windows tinted nearly black. When I pulled him over and he rolled down his window, I could see he was yapping into his cell phone. Must’ve been what distracted him. I was planning to give him a warning and send him on his way, but he refused to get off the phone. Kept telling me that he billed his time at four hundred dollars an hour and I was keeping him from his work.”

  “So you wrote him a ticket?” Dad asked.

  Chuck smiled. “Better than that. I impounded the BMW.”

  “You did what?” I said.

  “I towed it. Oregon Motor Vehicle Code section 815.222: illegal window tinting, a towable violation. Includes applying any tint that limits light transmittance to less than fifty percent. My best guess is he should be getting it out of the impound lot right around now,” he said, glancing at his watch.

  Dad was laughing, but I wasn’t. “I can’t believe you did that. It’s a total abuse of your authority. That’s why people hate cops, Chuck.”

  Dad and Chuck exchanged a glance before Chuck spoke up. “It wasn’t just an attitude problem, Sam. He nearly hit a kid and didn’t even care. I was trying to show him some perspective.”

  “Sounds kind of like something you’d do, Sam,” Dad said, laughing.

  Maybe, but it still bothered me that Chuck thought it was funny.

  He insisted on making sure I got home OK. I had half a bottle of Pinot Gris in my fridge, so I poured a glass for each of us to finish it off.

  He finally raised the subject we’d been avoiding. “One of the guys called me a couple of hours ago. Word is, IA’s got something on the Long Hauler.”

  I looked at him with surprise. “Guy seemed like a pro. First letter had no prints, not even DNA on the stamp or envelope.”

  “I assume the second letter’s the same,” he said. “I didn’t mean they figured out who he is. But the stuff in the letter, it’s for real. They found four unsolved homicide cases that match the other girls this guy says he did.”

  “But is it stuff he could’ve gotten from papers?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. He also said he left something of Jamie’s in the Gorge. IA’s got a bunch of Explorers out there combing through the forest looking for it.”

  Explorers are high school students who want to become police officers. They make for a handy resource during fishing expeditions. They don’t mind hiking around in the mud as long as they get to wear a uniform, they’re a hell of a lot cheaper than police officers on overtime, and they aren’t fat yet, so they can do helpful things like climb hills and fit through small spaces. On the other hand, if you want an idea of how reliable they are in their searches, the DC police used them to search Rock Creek Park for the body of that poor missing intern a few summers ago.

  “Do you know what they’re looking for?” I asked.

  “No. I’m surprised I heard anything. IA’s being quiet about this, and I of all people am not supposed to hear a word. But, you know, the guys look out for each other.”

  It bothered me that he didn’t say who shared the information. Was he actually worried I’d be angry at one of the MCT detectives for leaking information to him? If the gap between cops and DAs seemed that wide to him, maybe he was in a place I would never truly understand. As it stood, I realized I knew little about Chuck Forbes the detective. Perhaps I had been too quick to assume that his hands were squeaky clean.

  I turned on the TV to catch my favorite talking-head show, Hardball. I still don’t know how a guy who looks like a fifty-year-old surfer dude had the balls to think he’d get away with a motto like “Let’s play hardball,” but Chris Matthews seems to have pulled it off. Maybe if Griffith fired me, I could get Matthews to hire me as a talking head. It would be an easy job, and it seemed like an inevitable stop on the road for anyone at the middle of a media frenzy. Yes, the congressmen did it. So did the missing kids’ parents. So did that guy who used to play a detective with a bird on TV. They pretty much always did it.

  Chuck and I didn’t say much during the show. The silence was interrupted occasionally as we vented about the new terrorism warnings that were issued every time the president’s ratings were slipping. But we said that all the time.

  I don’t know when I decided not to tell him about solid reliable Jan, but I took the fact that I didn’t want to as a bad sign, one he apparently picked up on. Once Chris Matthews got through telling us what he really thought, Chuck announced that it was time for him to head home. I didn’t try to stop him, and he kissed me on the top of my head again when I walked him to the door.

  13

  Things started moving forward the next morning.

  The media had gotten wind of the search in the Gorge and were clamoring for more information. That meant I could probe O’Donnell for information about the search without tipping him off that someone on MCT was talking to Chuck about the investigation. I stuck my head into his office door and asked him for an update.

  “I’m beginning to think you suffer from selective deafness, Kincaid. You … are … off … the … case!” O’Donnell pantomimed the words with his hands to mimic sign language. I would definitely not be inviting him to my next Charades party. He sucked.

  I reminded him that I was still supposed to be coordinating communications with Kendra and her mom. I had prepared a white lie: Andrea Martin was clamoring for answers and he either had to fork over some information or explain it all to her himself before Channel 2 did. A pissed-off victim is every prosecutor’s worst nightmare. A weepy interview on the local news saying they’ve been left out of the loop and victimized again by the system rings true to every viewer who’s ever been ignored by a bureaucrat.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to resort to my bluff, because O’Donnell actually caught himself being an asshole and apologized. “Sorry, you’re right. I snapped because this case is getting to me. Have a seat,” he said, clearing some notebooks from a chair for me.

  He picked up the phone, indicating with his thumb and forefinger that it would be a short call. “Hey, Carl. It’s O’Donnell. Did you double-check with all the crime labs yet?” He gave the frequent “yeahs” and “unh-huhs” that aren’t very helpful when you’re eavesdropping on one side of a conversation. “Well, we gave it a shot. This guy’s one lucky son of a bitch.”

  “Bad news?” I asked as he hung up.

  “Understatement of the century,” he said, rolling his eyes. “C’mon, I gotta go over all this stuff with Duncan. You might as well come.”

  “I thought I was off the case,” I said, imitating his mock sign language. He laughed, and I had to as well.

  “Damn, you can be a pain in the ass. Just come on, OK?” he said, walking out of his office. If O’Donnell kept this up, I might actually start to like him.

  Duncan was on the phone when we walked in. He gestured for us to have a seat. I was doing a lot of this today.

  O’Donnell leaned forward so the two of us could talk quietly while we waited for Duncan to finish his call. “None of this goes to Forbes, right?”

  The request was reasonable under the circumstances. I nodded.

  “OK. We found four unsolved homicides through the Northwest Regional Cold Case Database. One in Idaho, one in Montana, and two in Washington. All of them women, all either prostitutes or promiscuous. So far, the details match the Long Hauler letter to a T. We’re dealing with a grade-A psycho.”

  “What kind of details, public information or concealed?” I asked. In any murder investigation, law enforcement always held back certain details. It kept the bad guy from knowing what investigators had, and it could help down the road if a wanna-be confessor tried to jump into the mix.

&nbs
p; “Stuff no one else could know. Position of the bodies, personal items that were taken, whether specific items of clothes were on or off. I told you, the guy’s for real.”

  “Just on the four new cases? What about Zimmerman and Martin?” I asked. It sounded funny to label Kendra by her last name, but O’Donnell was sharing information. It was better not to remind him of my personal attachment to the victim.

  “Them too. On your case, he gave us the exact intersection they pulled Martin from, everything they did to her, that they threw the purse in the trash. The paper didn’t have those details.”

  “No, but it all came out in trial,” I said. I was playing it cool, removing the lid from my latte and blowing in the cup, like we were talking about running times or stock performances.

  “Are you saying you saw a suspicious serial-killer type sitting in on your trial?”

  He was right. I would have noticed if someone had been watching. “Any possibility that Derringer did it all and then wrote to the paper as the Long Hauler when he got caught on the Martin rape?” Clearly Derringer was benefiting from these letters, and given what he did to Kendra, he certainly had it in him to rape and kill other women.

  But O’Donnell was already shaking his head. “Doesn’t look like it. No way he could’ve sent them himself. The jail reads all outgoing prisoner mail. There’s always the possibility that he could sneak a letter to a visitor or something, but it doesn’t look like he could be the guy. We’ve already got him solid in Oregon during two of the out-of-state murders. He had a parole meeting with Renshaw during one of them and was doing time on the Clackamas County attempted sod for another.”

  It looked like we had a serial killer on our hands. “Any other cases in the Cold Case Database that match?” I asked. The computerized data bank was a partnership among law enforcement agencies in the Pacific Northwest and included details of all unsolved homicides.

  “Nope, nothing obvious,” he said. “Our guy’s MO seems to be street girls, strangled and dumped outside so it takes awhile to find them. Looks like he copped to all of them in his letter.”