First Offense (30 page)

She watched and she listened.

Every time one of the boys went out, Sally knew it. Every time one came back, Sally was right there watching through the trees, the windows, peeking through a hole she’d made in the fence. Once she even managed to slip inside the garage when they left it open. She’d run her fingers over the hoods of the fancy cars. Carefully opening the door to one that belonged to her favorite, the blond boy, she had stuck her head inside and inhaled the wonderful aroma of expensive leather. Then she put her hand on the seat, the very seat where he had sat, where that part of his body had been. It was almost like touching him. Sally had shivered in delight.

Then she’d looked over and peered through the windows of the Chinese boy’s car, seeing something in the backseat. Sally preferred the blond, but the Chinese boy was the best lover of the three. She had watched him many times, almost felt what he was doing to those girls. She tried to open the car door and look inside, but it was locked.

Sally smiled. That was just like him, to lock the car in the garage. He was always so particular with his things, so neat and orderly. When she’d gotten up to make the children’s breakfast the night after one of their arguments, never expecting to see anything through the window that early, knowing the boys always slept until noon if not later, she was shocked to see the Chinese boy already awake and in the bedroom cleaning. She stood there and watched while he put new sheets on the bed, carefully folding and tucking in the comers, watched as he scrubbed down the walls, the furniture, almost everything in the room.

“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Sally’s oldest boy said. “When are we going to have dinner?”

“I don’t know,” Sally said, staring at the house next door and the red car, standing on her tiptoes to see over the fence. Then she dropped down to the steps. She didn’t care about the new neighbors.

“Mommy, please make us some dinner,” the boy insisted, tugging on her sleeve. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Stop that,” Sally snapped, jerking her arm away and glaring at her son. “Your father is working late tonight. Eat some crackers and leave me alone.”

“I ate crackers for lunch.”

Sally didn’t answer. She was lost in her thoughts. When the police officer had come to the door the other day, she’d been terrified, certain the boys had reported her spying on them and the police had come to arrest her like a common criminal, some kind of crazy person. She even thought the boys had moved away because of her.

But she was safe now.

The policeman had never come back and the boys were gone. It was over. Henderson would never be the same now, and Sally would never be the same. She didn’t want Earl. She didn’t want a bunch of screaming kids anymore.

Sally Farrar wanted what she had seen through the kitchen window.

As soon as Ann woke up Saturday morning, she called Freddy’s mother, Louise Litsky, and asked if they were still planning to take the boys to Magic Mountain the following day.

“Of course,” the woman said. “That is, if it doesn’t rain.”

Ann explained what had happened two nights before and her fears that David could be in danger. Louise expressed her sympathy and asked if there was anything she could do to help. “Actually, there is,” Ann said. “Would you mind if David slept over there tonight? I just have to get him out of the house, Louise.”

“I’ll have to think about that, Ann,” she answered, reluctant to get involved. “You know I want to help. I just don’t want to put my own family in danger.”

“Forget it,” Ann said quickly. “You’ve done enough all these years. I understand, Louise.”

“Say, I’ve got an idea. Charles and I will take the boys to a hotel over near the amusement park and spend the night tonight. To make certain no one knows where David is, why don’t you drop him off at Charles’s office downtown? I’ll have Charles meet you there. If you meet him in the underground parking lot, no one will be able to follow him. They wouldn’t know what kind of car to look for.”

Ann wasn’t sure all the secretiveness was necessary, but she was relieved anyway. “You don’t know how much I appreciate this, Louise,” she said.

“Ann, why don’t you go with us? Why would you want to stay alone in that house after all this?”

Louise had a point, but Ann didn’t intend to be alone. She was going out with Glen, was going to forget all this insanity for a few hours. “No, Louise, but thanks. Really, thanks for everything. I’ll bring David over to Charles’s office at five o’clock.”

Right before lunch, Reed headed to the records bureau. The case was coming together nicely. He’d talked to Hopkins a short time ago, and the district attorney felt certain they would have a warrant for Peter Chen in a few hours. Even though it was Saturday, Hopkins insisted on handling it at once. Picking up Chen could easily lead them to Sawyer. Not only that, once Chen realized Wilkinson had rolled over, he might spill the beans on all of them, including Sawyer.

Standing at the counter, he checked heads. “Angle,” he called to a pretty brunette, “come here a minute. I’ve got something for you.”

Angle Reynolds was quiet socially, but on the job she was as aggressive as any officer on the force. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a red sweater, a black short skirt, and tennis shoes. In fact, Angle looked like a high school kid, but Tommy knew she had four small children at home.

“Here’s what we have,” he said. “We think we may have a possible homicide, but as yet we have no body and no ID. What I want you to do is get a printout of all the missing persons in the last ninety days. I know you gave me a whole stack of stuff yesterday, but we have to narrow it down. Let’s start with females in their late teens or early twenties. Get the actual reports faxed to us, with any photographs. Also, did you find out anything from the morgues?”

“No,” she said, smiling at him fondly. Tommy Reed was at the top of her list of good guys. “There’s a few Jane Doe bodies in Los Angeles, but they have all their fingers. I’m going to send out a query letter all over the state. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go to neighboring states.”

He handed her a piece of paper with the license number of the red Honda Jimmy Sawyer had traded his Porsche for when Rodriguez had lost him at the mall. The owner of the Honda was a young woman in her late teens named Jennifer Daniels. She’d known Sawyer for some time but had no idea where he was now. All he’d done was walk into the clothing store where she worked and asked to trade cars for a few days. A Porsche for a Honda, the girl had said, her eyes gleaming. Too good to pass up.

“Make certain you note that Sawyer and Chen may be armed and dangerous. Also, be sure to cross-reference the warrant with the Honda, and get Peter Chen in the system ASAP.”

Reed had started walking off down the hall when she called out, “Hey, knucklehead, get back here. I need a full description on these people.”

Reed turned around and headed back. “You want everything, don’t you?”

“You bet,” Angle said, reaching over to adjust his tie while she was talking. “See, I can get a lot from their DMV records, but without their date of birth I don’t even have that. Then I’ll need the license plate on this Chen guy’s car. Besides, Reed, they enter the warrants at the courthouse.” She eyed his tie, cocking her head to see if it was centered.

“Look,” Reed said, “it sometimes takes thirty days or longer for the court to get warrants in the system. I want them in now. I’ll get you all the information, Angle, even the warrant numbers. I have everything you need in my office.”

“These are the suspects in the Carlisle case, aren’t they?” she said, seeing the strain on his face. “How is Ann holding up?”

“You know,” Reed said, making a wavy motion with his hand. “Fair.”

As Reed walked off, she thought of Ann Carlisle and all the horrid things the woman had been through. Not long after her husband had vanished, Angle had seen her walking down the road late at night. Thinking her car had broken down, Angle had offered her a ride. But Ann had said she just couldn’t stay in the house any longer and wait, so she had taken up the habit of walking at all hours of the night. They had gone for coffee, and Angle had tried her best to console her. Then she’d given her the phone number of a psychic they’d used once at the police station, thinking the woman might be able to help. What a mess that had been, Angle thought. She’d certainly never thought Ann would get so carried away that she’d let the woman move into her house. Tommy Reed had been hopping mad.

When Reed got back to his desk, he couldn’t find Sawyer’s file. He knew he had it, unless Abrams had taken it. Abrams was the department’s hostage negotiator, and the captain had called him out to try to talk down a psycho. The lunatic was holding three nurses and a doctor hostage at the local hospital, claiming they had given his wife the wrong baby.

In his search his eyes fell on the inventory list he had pulled out of Hank Carlisle’s file, and he studied it again. A missing link—what could it be? The one item they had felt certain would eventually show up was Hank’s revolver. It was doubtful that the person or persons who had killed him had buried the gun with the body. Guns were interesting that way. They always surfaced somewhere. Weapons used in one homicide would turn up in another, sometimes years later. Police officers had a rule of thumb for this: the kind of person who used a gun seldom destroyed it, even when the gun might be the only link to the crime.

Still musing, Reed dropped the paper and finally located Sawyer’s file on Abrams’s desk. As he started to leave the detective bay, though, a light flashed in his mind and he backtracked. On an impulse he picked up the piece of paper with the serial number of Hank’s Smith & Wesson service revolver.

“Here you go, Angie,” Reed said, handing her the information she needed on Sawyer and Chen. “And could you run this serial number for me? I’ll wait.”

She sat down at a computer terminal and punched in the numbers. “It’s clear,” she reported seconds later.

“It can’t be clear,” Reed exclaimed. “That gun belonged to Hank Carlisle. Every flag in the world should pop up with that serial number.”

“Maybe I made a mistake,” she said quickly. “I’ll run it again.”

Reed hurried around the counter and pulled up a chair right next to the woman.

She tapped the screen. “See, it’s clear. There’s nothing at all. Maybe someone accidentally deleted it. It’s been four years, right?”

“Right,” Reed said sourly. This was the exact reason he had decided to run it. Sometimes even cops forgot that items entered into the system could be removed or deleted by error, and no one ever checked. “Call the highway patrol and tell them about this. Have them get that gun back in the system. It’s the only hope we have of ever catching his killer.”

“Wait, there is a flag,” Angle said, staring at the screen. “It’s not entered into the system as stolen, but it looks like it might have been pawned. Hold on while I pull up that file.” She started tapping the keys, and another screen appeared.

“Where was it pawned?” Reed said eagerly, “This might be it.”

“See the AZ in that little box?” she said, pointing. “That’s the code for Arizona. I’m sorry, but we just got a national hookup on this system. No one really knows how to use it yet, or I would have caught it the first time.” Angle took out a thick manual and started flipping through the pages while she spoke. “See, in the past we kept records on pawned items, but only locally, and it was really sporadic. Every computer entry had to be backed up with a hard copy from the pawnshop. You know, copies of the original receipts. For that reason the pawnshop guys purposely stalled as long as they could.” She stopped and looked in his eyes. “Now we do it all by modem, or if they don’t have a computer, all they have to do is fax it. When the kinks are out of the system, it should be great. Think of all the stolen property we’re going to recover. Shit, I can’t find the section.” She threw the book down and started playing with the computer.

“The reason we finally got funding for this,” she mumbled, fingers flying over the keys, “is we have to move fast. The pawnshops can sell the stuff after a certain amount of time if we don’t advise them it’s stolen.”

“What are you doing?” Reed said anxiously. “Can’t you figure it out?”

Angle finished punching a series of numbers and letters in the computer, and the screen filled with data. “Hot damn,” she said. “Isn’t this neat? See, here’s the person who pawned it, the date it was pawned, the address and store where it was pawned, and the subject’s driver’s license number. Now wait, there’s another page.” She tapped a command. “It should be the subject’s photo ID.”

Reed was amazed by what appeared next. The picture was not photo-quality, but it was in color and pretty dam good. This could be the actual killer. Then he looked again, shocked. The man in the computer-generated photo bore an uncanny resemblance to Hank Carlisle. Reed almost nudged Angle out of the way so he could get a better look at the screen. Was it his imagination? Was he as crazy as Ann? No, he thought, staring at the image. Although the man had dark skin, it could be only a deep tan. He had an abundance of facial hair which obscured the lower half of his face, a full beard and bushy mustache, but the nose could easily be Carlisle’s, and the bone structure was similar, rather broad across the midsection of the face. For the photo the man had worn tinted glasses. That was a bad break, since it eliminated one of the most accurate means of visual identification: the eyes.

But whoever it was, Reed was excited. If they recovered the gun, they were on the way to finding out what had happened to Hank Carlisle. This was the first major break in the case after four years.

Seeing that Angie was waiting for him to tell her what to do next, he said, “Can you print it?”

“Sure,” she said, springing back into action. “I’ll print the whole thing. This gun was pawned six weeks ago. If you don’t want the shop to sell it to someone else, you’d better call right away.”

“You better believe I’ll call,” Reed said, grabbing the papers as they spilled out of the printer one at a time.

“Okay, while you do that, I’ll get on the horn to the highway patrol and tell them what we found.” Angie picked up the phone and started dialing the number from memory.