Dead Wrong Page 11

  Trina didn't think so.

  Her appetite abruptly deserted her, and she put the lid back on the carton and returned it to the freezer, adding the spoon to the rack in the dishwasher.

  No, what made sense to her were two possibilities: that Ricky Mendoza had had a partner, or that Mendoza hadn't killed Gillian Pappas at all. That he'd told the truth: he left her, alive and well, if distressed by what she'd done, in the parking lot in front of the tavern.

  What if Mendoza and a friend did rape Gillian? Maybe they participated equally in her murder as well. Or maybe not. Maybe the friend was the one welling with violent rage. Mendoza might have watched, or maybe he'd left but knew who must have killed her. If he hadn't actually seen her murder, it would make it easier for him to protest his innocence. Maybe to re-shape events in his own mind so that he was innocent.

  She turned pages in the transcript of the trial until she found the place in his testimony where he'd described meeting Gillian in the tavern and then having sex with her. The story was certainly much briefer here than the one he'd told Trina last weekend. He said nothing about his realization that she was trying to hurt someone else, nothing about the way she'd recoiled from him afterward, nothing about his self-repugnance.

  Why? Because his attorney had advised against it for some reason? Because he didn't think it had anything to do with proving his innocence? Because, maybe, he didn't want to admit aloud that she hadn't really wanted him?

  Or was all of that mere revision to the fiction that had him innocent? He'd certainly had plenty of leisure to expand the story, to add some affecting touches of emotion.

  She'd found him convincing. More convincing than she'd expected. But people lied, and some did it very well. Another thing Ricky Mendoza had had was plenty of practice at telling his story. Six years of practice. A man could get good at it.

  She eventually, reluctantly, closed both the transcript and the fat sheaf of copies she'd made of the original police reports. She no longer knew for certain whether she believed Ricky Mendoza.

  What she did believe was that the same man had killed both women. If the pubic hairs combed from the two victims matched, maybe she could convince everybody else of that much.

  The investigation of Gillian Pappas's murder would have to be reopened, of course. How far they'd get after six years, Trina didn't know. People moved, died, forgot what they'd once known or seen. They revised even their own memories.

  She knew one thing: Will Patton would be enraged by Trina's belief that Ricky Mendoza either hadn't acted alone or was actually innocent.

  And that made her wonder: why was Will so angry at even the suggestion that the wrong man might have been convicted? Had he known and detested Mendoza, even though that fact was never mentioned in either the reports or the trial? Or did he just want someone, anyone, declared guilty?

  She felt faintly sick at where her logic was taking her, but made herself frame the last question anyway.

  Had anyone seriously considered Gillian Pappas's boyfriend as a suspect in her murder? The boyfriend who had moved away from Elk Springs for six years and coincidentally come back just in time for another woman to be murdered in the same way?

  The boyfriend whose mother headed this investigation, and whose father was the Butte County sheriff? Or did those relationships mean some gigantic assumptions had been made from the beginning?

  Trina went to bed and turned out the light, but had the bad feeling she wouldn't be sleeping well tonight.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "THEY ACTUALLY FOUND a pubic hair that was never identified?" Lieutenant Patton almost lunged from the chair behind her desk to snatch the copy of the autopsy report in Trina's hand. "How could I miss something like that?"

  "Maybe because it was never mentioned in the trial." Trina sat in one of the chairs facing her superior's desk. "That's the part I don't understand."

  Already reading as she sat back down, the lieutenant bumped an open drawer and swore under her breath without once taking her gaze from the report. "Hair from three different men," she read aloud, incredulously.

  "What I'm hoping is that they've been preserved."

  Lieutenant Patton let out a puff of air. "After that fiasco a couple of years ago, we'd better pray instead of just hoping."

  Trina knew the fiasco she was talking about. Family of a man convicted fifteen years before of murdering his wife had remained steadfastly convinced of his innocence. They'd pushed the sheriff's department to request DNA testing of blood found at the scene that wasn't the victim's but had matched the husband's blood type. The sample, which should have been safely frozen, was nowhere to be found. Embarrassment had been acute and the family distraught.

  "I'll request a comparison." Her superior studied Trina. "You believe this substantiates Ricky Mendoza's story."

  "Maybe. But not necessarily." Trina told her what she'd been thinking.

  "A second rapist." The lieutenant rolled a pencil between her fingers as she mulled over the idea. "That's good. It gives us an opening for looking at old evidence."

  "I guess it would be awkward if it got out that we were reopening a case that already resulted in a conviction." Boy, wouldn't Sandy Kilts jump on that one!

  "To put it mildly. We'd better be damn sure before even a whisper floats out."

  Trina nodded.

  Lieutenant Patton asked, "How the heck would you find a partner for something like that? 'Say, how do you feel about willing versus unwilling women?'"

  "Look how common gang rape is." She'd been first responding officer a couple of years back when a hysterical mother called after her nineteen-year-old daughter got home from a drunken party. Three guys had raped her, and nobody else at the party had bothered to protest or call the cops despite her cries for help. The memory still gave Trina the creeps. "Men must somehow get around to discussing their fantasies."

  "God knows women do."

  Trina didn't share hers with anyone. Never had. Never would. She was too embarrassed to have wasted years fantasizing about the same guy. The very idea that the lieutenant should somehow find out about her pitiful dreams about Will was enough to give Trina the shudders.

  Speaking of Will—and as delicately as she could—Trina asked, "Were any of the hairs ever compared to Will's? Since they had a relationship?"

  The lieutenant responded with virtually no inflection. "Yes. He…found the experience distressing. Some did match his, not surprisingly."

  "Strange," Trina mused. "I didn't find any note to that effect in the file."

  Sounding impatient, Lieutenant Patton said, "You know as well as I do that some things never make it into files."

  Trina cleared her throat. She'd rehearsed the most tactful way she could think of to phrase what was really a question. "As upset as he was, he must have hated being considered a suspect, even briefly."

  The lieutenant's brows rose, and her tone cooled further. "I don't think he was a suspect." She hesitated, then made a face. "That's a stupid thing to say. Of course the investigating officers would have had to consider him."

  Trina crossed her fingers that she didn't get demoted for being so pushy, but she had to ask. "Then he was eliminated right away?"

  "Yes. Thank God he didn't go storming out of the house that evening after Gillian took off! He was staying with his father, also a good thing as it turned out, because Stephanie had a couple of friends spending the night. With the house so busy, he had a more than adequate alibi. He apparently got quietly, disgustingly drunk while the girls watched movies, then snored away in his bedroom down the hall. It seems Steph's friends had a crush on her stepbrother and giggled like mad every time he staggered down the hall to use the bathroom. Jack said he finally got up to shut Will's bedroom door because his snoring was keeping him awake. No, Will couldn't have left the house without someone noticing."

  Thank God for small favors. It was bad enough to have nursed a huge crush on some guy who would never notice dark-haired, sallow-skinned Trina Gi
allombardo. But at least she wanted to believe he was worthy of her youthful adoration. She'd hated even having to consider the possibility that he could have murdered his girlfriend and then let some other poor schmuck go to prison for the crime.

  Now Trina nodded. "I'll bet you were relieved."

  "You know, it's funny. At the time, it didn't even cross my mind that anyone would think Will could have done it. Now I realize…" She stopped. "Getting sloppy drunk is rarely the best treatment for heartache. This was an exception, as it turned out."

  "You must have known her well." It belatedly occurred to Trina.

  "Gilly? That's what Will called her, you know." Meg Patton's eyes lost focus. "She was a sweetheart. Always nice to the kids—Jack's two stepdaughters adored her. She was one of those people who seem to glow with some inner serenity. They were such a good pair, both determined to change the world. In those days, Will intended to defend the indigent, battle evil landlords and take on corporate America." Her voice was gentle, tinged with a parent's amusement and pride that blurred into grief. "Gilly wanted to go into the Peace Corps. She'd volunteered for a summer in Nigeria, and she wanted so much to go back." She fell silent for a moment. "Will's never really said what they fought about. Maybe because in retrospect it didn't matter, or maybe he felt he'd behaved badly. I don't know. Whatever they argued about, he kept believing in her. I suppose that's a large part of why he can't let himself consider the possibility Ricky didn't rape her and kill her."

  "Because that would mean admitting that Mendoza's story was true." Trina could understand how he felt. "That she'd do something like that."

  "Exactly."

  This silence quickly felt awkward to Trina. She cleared her throat and stood. "Um, would you like me to request a comparison of the hairs found on the two victims?"

  "I'll take care of it. What do you intend to do next?"

  "Well, I already put in a call to Union Gap, up in Washington, and talked to an officer who actually knows Mendoza's family. He confirms that they're all there and haven't made any quick trips. Which doesn't sound very practical. The dad drives some rattletrap pickup, and neither mom nor the sister drive at all." You're rambling, she told herself. "Anyway, I thought next I'd try to track down Mendoza's former bosses and landlord. Maybe neighbors, if they weren't too transient. Find out if he had any friends who hung out a lot." She heard herself sounding more and more tentative. "That is," she concluded, "if you think it's a good idea. I could keep interviewing people who knew Amy…."

  "No. The two murders are linked, no question. We've got to figure out how. You've been using your head. I'm glad one of us is." The lieutenant nodded dismissal.

  Trina left the office feeling ridiculously like a first-grader whose teacher had just told her she was the smartest girl in the class.

  Half the desks in the detectives' unit were unoccupied. Phones rang, unanswered. Berkshire was interviewing a sullen teenager in the baggiest pants Trina had ever seen. Carlton was on the phone as she approached his desk, his face flushed red.

  "You're suggesting I coached him?"

  She slowed her steps, suspecting she knew who was on the other end of the line.

  His voice rose to bellow. "You interviewed him without notifying me? What the hell was that about?"

  The answer made his color deepen to plum. As he slammed down the phone, she wondered if he'd had an EKG lately.

  "Who does he think he is?" Carlton asked the room at large. "Doesn't know shit about the victim or perp, and he's telling me what happened!"

  None of them had heard the office door open. Lieutenant Patton asked, "Problem?"

  He spun in his chair, mouth opening, but despite the swelling capillaries in his head, he still possessed some sense of self-preservation. "No. Nothing I can't handle."

  "Good," she said coolly, before her gaze found Trina. "You're still here?"

  Her pleasant little glow dimmed. "On my way," she said, snatching for notes and her parka and making a hasty escape.

  * * *

  LIKE MOST DAYS in any investigation, this one was unproductive.

  Trina started with the Quik Lube where Ricky Mendoza had worked before he was arrested. The first guy in a dark coverall who asked if he could help her shook his head. "I've only worked here for three months. I don't think anybody's been here even a year. Try the boss."

  The boss, when he emerged from a tiny inner office, frowned. "Yeah, sure, I remember that guy getting arrested. Mostly I remember hoping the papers wouldn't mention where he worked. And that he didn't follow that woman home after she got the oil in her car changed here."

  Aware of the three young guys loitering in the garage in the absence of business, all undoubtedly eavesdropping, Trina asked, "Is there someplace we can talk?"

  "We've got a waiting room." The boss, perhaps forty, with frown lines embedded in his forehead, a pen tucked behind his ear, and coveralls that were marginally cleaner than his employees', held open the door for her.

  The waiting room was just big enough for four plastic chairs, a pop machine and a coffee table covered with tattered magazines.

  "I got to tell you, I hardly remember the guy," he said. "I don't know what I can tell you."

  When pressed, he produced a personnel record, which consisted entirely of a brief, scrawled application and a date of termination. Both application and the file folder were spotted with greasy fingerprints.

  Asked if Ricky Mendoza had had friends who dropped by when he was working, the boss said, "Unless the friend is paying for an oil change, he's got no business here."

  "Did he get along well with other employees?"

  "You know, I don't remember a problem, but, like I said, he was just another kid until the news broke. He was here, what, three months?" He shrugged. "These guys, they come and go."

  Trina noted Mendoza's then address and the names he'd given as references on his application, the most influential of which presumably was Detective Meg Patton.

  The boss did look up the names of a couple of other employees who'd worked at Quik Lube at the same time as Mendoza and gave her their last known addresses and phone numbers. "Good luck finding 'em."

  The building where Ricky Mendoza had lived was actually an old house broken up into six apartments, two in the basement. Nobody home in any of the apartments had ever even heard of him. Two spoke no English, and Trina's Spanish was rudimentary. Still, both the woman who came to the door at one of the upstairs apartments with toddlers clinging to her legs and the old man downstairs shook their heads at the name.

  "No sé nadie con este nombre."

  The owner of the auto body shop where he'd stolen the car remembered him without fondness.

  "I don't know why he got off so goddamn easy. He didn't just steal the car, he wrecked it! He wasn't any prize anyway. Bad attitude." In response to her question, he said, "Friends? He didn't have any." His eyes narrowed. "What do you care about him, anyway? Isn't he in jail?"

  "I'm actually looking for a man Mendoza hung out with back then," Trina lied. "Unfortunately, we don't know his name."

  "Yeah?" He shrugged. "Good luck."

  What she needed, Trina decided, was to send one of the department's two Latino officers out to talk to guys in Mendoza's age range. He had to have had friends. Everyone did.

  She gave up for the day, deciding to stock up on groceries. The morning news had promised a snowstorm. Unpacking them at home, she listened to phone messages. The first was from her sister, drunk as always.

  Voice slurred, she said, "I could use a little help. You know. Just enough to cover the rent this month. I got a job. I mean, I know he's going to call me. Once I start, I can pay you back." A moment of silence. "I always say that, don't I? But someday I will. I promise, Trina. So, what do you say?" Beep.

  "Hey." This was Sandy Kilts. "Want to have dinner or something? I'm working on a story about why the state has dragged its feet about widening the highway between Elk Springs and Bend. Bo-ring. Save me."

&
nbsp; Trina liked Sandy and was pretty sure the friendship was genuine. Nonetheless, she had noticed that Sandy was calling way more often since Amy Owen's murder. She guessed it was natural for Sandy to hope that being good friends with the investigating officer would earn her an exclusive. Since Trina didn't intend to give one anytime soon, she deleted that message and ignored the phone when it rang later in the evening.

  She made herself watch TV for an hour while she ate a microwaved dinner. Normal people didn't look at autopsy photos while they dined. She occasionally appalled even herself when she did stuff like that.

  But after she cleaned up her few dishes, she sat down at the table and spread out Gillian Pappas's autopsy report and the photos taken by the pathologist's assistant. After straining her eyes for too long, she admitted defeat—there really wasn't a clear impression of teeth. The killer had ripped her breast. Bruises around the perimeter were too diffuse.

  In contrast, they did have one really good cast of a bite on Amy Owen's breast. If only they could have compared a bite impression from both victims. Or, better yet, had a suspect to match it to…

  She sighed and replaced photos and report in her bag. She fell asleep that night with macabre images of rended flesh floating before her closed eyes.

  * * *

  SHE WOKE ABRUPTLY in the dark. Disoriented, she stared at the amber numbers on her clock, trying to make sense of them—5:54.

  The phone rang, and she realized that's what had awakened her. Fumbling on the bedside stand, she found it by the fourth ring.

  "Hello?"

  "This Trina?"

  The voice was male and familiar. Her head had begun to clear. Dave Berman and she had partnered on patrol for a year.

  "Dave?"

  "Yeah. Listen. You're on that Amy Owen murder, right?" He didn't wait for agreement. "I've got something here you'd better see."

  Her stomach clenched. "A body?"

  "Yeah. A blonde, strangled with a jockstrap."

  She turned on her bedside lamp and put her feet on the floor. "Where?"