First Offense (33 page)

“They take Sunday nights off,” Ann said, her Beretta pressed against his back. While Chen was as cool as an arctic wind, she was drenched in sweat: her shirt, her pants, her hair, every inch of skin on her body. She was almost afraid the gun was going to slide right out of her hands. Walking around to the front of her prisoner, Ann unbuckled his belt.

“No, Peter,” she whispered right in his face, “I’m not going to give you a blow job.” Then she yanked his belt out of the pants loops, spun him around, and crisscrossed his hands behind his back, securing them tightly with the belt.

Before she left, she turned around and spoke softly to his brother. “What’s your name, guy?”

“Sean,” he said meekly. “You’re taking my brother to jail, aren’t you? You tricked me.”

“Sean, I want you to call your parents and tell them what happened here. Tell them your brother was arrested on a warrant for manufacturing and dispensing narcotics. He’ll be booked into the Ventura County Jail. They can call there or Peter will be able to call them in a few hours. Okay? Can you remember all that?”

“He didn’t really win a scholarship, did he?” the boy said, avoiding his brother’s hard stare.

“Of course not, idiot,” Peter snapped.

Ann kneed the older boy in the back and then turned to his brother. “Sean, listen to me. You’re the one who’s going to get a scholarship one of these days.

Learn something from what happened here tonight. Earn your money the legitimate way, the way I’m sure your parents did. You hear me?”

“Yeah,” he said, his face downcast. A second later, he became excited and animated. “If you go to jail, Peter, do I get your Lexus? That’s so bitching.”

Peter Chen didn’t answer.

“Kids,” Ann said, shoving the older boy out the front door. Never make a sincere speech to a kid. All Peter’s brother was interested in was his car.

On the ride back to the police station, Ann tried to get her prisoner to talk, but he was too smart. He sat there in total silence, his face set in granite. To cover herself, Ann read him his Miranda rights off a little card she kept in her wallet. One of the nice things about being a probation officer, as she saw it, was having full powers of arrest while not having to work shifts or walk around in a tacky uniform.

At stoplights, she measured the man sitting next to her. He had thick dark hair, perfectly cut, every strand falling exactly correct, hooded lids over intelligent and fiercely determined eyes. He was dressed in an expensive silk shirt and slacks, all black except for an intricate hand-embroidered design that covered the buttons and the tips of his collar. In his right ear was at least a two-carat diamond stud. He was an extremely handsome and confident young man, not the type of customer they generally received at the jail.

“How long did you go to Long Beach?” Ann asked, thinking he might not answer questions about the case but might be coaxed into small talk.

His head remained motionless, but his eyes shifted to Ann. She could see his tongue, pink and smooth inside his mouth as it slid across his teeth. Ann shivered in spite of herself. Peter Chen was good-looking and he might be smart, but he had a mean streak a mile long. Ann could sense it, almost smell it. This wasn’t the man who had crapped on the floor in her hall the night she’d started shooting. Ann was convinced she could stick her gun right in his ear and he wouldn’t blink.

Chen could very well be the one, though, who had sliced off some poor girl’s fingers. What had the girl done? Ann wondered, feeling an evil cloud emanating from the young man seated next to her. Had she reached for something she wasn’t supposed to, done something to offend his masculinity? Had he simply sliced off her fingers for the hell of it?

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

Ann didn’t call ahead. She wanted to walk into the Ventura police department with her prisoner. Her father would have been proud of her.

Ann’s grand entrance was not exactly what she had in mind. Detectives Reed and Whittaker were out in the field, Noah Abrams had gone home, and the only uniformed officer in the station was the acting desk sergeant, a motorcycle cop on desk duty with a bum leg. Ann had never seen him before. She handed over Peter Chen, advised him of the status and nature of the warrant, and then walked out of the station without so much as a pat on the back or a solitary word of praise.

The only good aspect about it, Ann told herself, was that she didn’t have to listen to Tommy Reed lecture her about how dangerous and impulsive she was. Besides, she’d delivered the goods. That was the name of the game.

“Alone? You went out there alone?” Glen Hopkins said. He had called her the moment she walked in the house. “He could have killed you.”

“Glen,” Ann said, “what’s done is done. With what’s been happening lately, I had to immerse myself in work. Besides, I’ve survived everything else. I decided I could survive Peter Chen.”

“Did he talk?”

“I wish,” Ann said. “Maybe you could make some headway with him if you’re willing to bargain. This guy’s cold. Glen. If I were to place my bets on the most violent member of the threesome, I’d go for Chen. If anyone sliced off a woman’s fingers, it was probably him.”

Glen fell silent. “I want to see you, Ann,” he finally said. “I was very concerned last night, the way you ran out of the house.”

“I can’t,” Ann said. “David should be home from Magic Mountain any minute.”

“Are you angry at me for some reason? Did I do something last night to upset you?”

“No, no,” Ann said quickly. “I just didn’t feel well. And listen. Glen, you really helped me. I mean it. What you said about Sawyer resembling Hank could be true,”

“Have you told anyone else?” he said, his voice low. “I’ve been thinking about it, and you should inform the officers working the case, even let the highway patrol know what has been happening.”

Ann took a seat on the sofa. “It’s nothing. Glen,” she said. “Things are coming together on the Sawyer case, so…” Then her thoughts turned to Delvecchio, to the envelope he’d given her. She’d completely forgotten about it. “What’s happening with the trial? You know, Delvecchio.”

“Looks good,” he said confidently. “The defense concluded their case. Monday the jury will begin deliberations. Why do you ask?”

“He called me the other day, asking to see me.”

“Oh, really? Why would he want to see you?” Glen said, contempt in his voice.

“I guess I gave him the impression that I was his pal or something.” Ann laughed. “Pretty funny, huh?”

“Don’t go over there again,” Glen said angrily. “I’m telling you. Delvecchio is devious. He’s a fucking animal, a killer, for God’s sake.”

“Hey, calm down,” she said. She started to tell him about Delvecchio’s proclamation of innocence, but decided it would just annoy him further. “He’s in jail, remember?”

“Just stay away from him,” he snapped.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Ann said. “I think I hear David at the door.”

Monday morning at the office, Ann was grabbing a file to go to court for a sentencing hearing when she spied the envelope given to her by Randy Delvecchio. She’d promised the man she would check the dates on his time sheet against the dates of the crimes, but she’d forgotten to do so. Out of idle curiosity she opened the envelope and compared the dates. “Oh, my God…” There it was, in black and white. On the day Estelle Summer had been raped. Randy Delvecchio had been working. It was a mistake, she told herself. Ann glanced at her watch. She had only fifteen minutes, but she had to find out. She called the company’s number and got a disconnect. Then she checked the address on the envelope and saw it was from an accounting firm. Ann got the firm’s number from information, and when she reached it, she quickly explained her position and why the information was so crucial.

“Well, we’re only an accounting firm,” an older woman’s voice said. “Video Vendors filed bankruptcy some time ago.”

Ann assumed this was the reason Delvecchio had not been able to contact the company previously. “But you evidently have the employee records. Listen, it’s absolutely imperative that I confirm if this man was working on a specific day.”

The woman put Ann on hold and came back a few minutes later. “According to the time sheets he was at work that day.”

“It has to be a mistake,” Ann said. “Maybe he came to work and left, but no one clocked him out.”

“Doubt that,” the woman laughed. “The owners of this business were very tight with their money. I mean, they were going under, but even before they got in trouble, they were sticklers for certain things. Let me tell you, no one got paid if he didn’t do the work. They didn’t even pay for lunch breaks or give their employees mandatory coffee breaks.”

“Great,” Ann said, irritated by this new development. Glen was killing himself to get the man convicted. She should have left well enough alone.

“They’re being investigated by the Labor Department right now, because a number of employees filed complaints,” the woman continued. “In any case, they used time clocks. Mr. Delvecchio clocked in at eight in the morning and clocked out at five that evening. He was a temporary employee, more along the lines of piecework.”

Still Ann couldn’t believe it. Then she recalled that Estelle had been raped at three o’clock in the afternoon. “How about lunch? He could have taken a long lunch hour.”

“No,” the woman said, “he didn’t clock out for lunch. Most of the low-end workers never took a lunch break. They ate a sandwich off the truck outside or something. Like I told you, they didn’t get paid for lunch breaks.”

There had to be a logical explanation, Ann thought. “Did he work alone somewhere? Like possibly in the back storeroom where he could have slipped out and no one knew about it?”

The woman dismissed this idea. “According to the file, Mr. Delvecchio worked in the warehouse with all the other employees. The company brokered used video movies. They used day laborers to unpack the movies, clean them up, and stack them on the shelves. That’s what Mr. Delvecchio was hired to do.”

Once Ann had thanked the woman for her help, she hurried around the partition to Claudette’s office. “I have something incredible to tell you, but I have to be in court right now. Will you be available around lunch?”

“Tell me now,” Claudette said, her curiosity piqued.

“I can’t,” Ann said, darting out of the office and sprinting down the hall to court.

Because Ann was late, the case she was appearing on had been shuffled to the end of the afternoon calendar by the time she arrived. Judge Hillstorm glared at her, along with opposing counsel, when Ann walked in after they were already in progress. Because she had no idea how fast the other matters would be resolved, she had to remain in the courtroom. If she left and they called the case and again she wasn’t present, all hell would break loose.

Taking a seat next to the public defender, Ann turned her thoughts to Randy Delvecchio. Were they about to convict an innocent man? She wasn’t aware of anything else about the case that would support such an assumption. But she hadn’t had time to read every document. She’d spent more time concentrating on Delvecchio’s criminal record, his psychological profile, and ways she could aggravate his sentence by linking him to the homicides.

There was no positive ID, even though Glen had tried to convince the jury otherwise. Ann knew the rapist had worn a stocking mask over his face, and the victims had made only a general ID based on height and body weight. He’d also worn a condom, so there were no seminal fluids available. As more sophisticated police technology was implemented, criminals were becoming smarter. The crimes against persons unit was seeing more rapists with condoms, men who knew that ejaculating inside their victims could be the very act that could convict them. Semen was one of the bodily fluids they could use for genetic fingerprinting.

The state’s entire case, as she understood it, rested on the fact that Delvecchio had property in his possession that belonged to the victims. Ann shook her head in puzzlement, oblivious to what was going on in the courtroom, asking herself if Randy Delvecchio was a burglar and had simply stolen the items. Or possibly the real rapist had discarded the property and Delvecchio had simply found it.

“Ms. Carlisle,” the judge said, “would you like to state your agency’s position regarding sentencing?”

Ann looked up and started flipping wildly through her notes. She had been so deep in her thoughts she had not even heard them call the case.

Chapter
18

A
ngie Reynolds dropped her children off at her mother’s house in Simi Valley on her way to the records bureau on Monday morning.

“Why are you going to work now?” her mother asked as the children streaked past her into the house. “I thought you were working the three-to-midnight shift this month.”

“I need to check on some things, so I thought I’d go in early. You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, of course I don’t mind. But I worry about you, honey. You work too hard.”

Angie kissed her mother on the cheek and took off. All night long she had thought of Ann Carlisle and the disappearance of her husband. Angie knew what it was like to lose your husband, although she knew exactly where hers was—shacked up in Thousand Oaks with an ugly fat blonde. He had just walked out one day three years ago and never returned, leaving Angie with the full responsibility for the children and a pile of unpaid bills.

As soon as Angie got to the records bureau, she booted up the computer, tapped in a series of codes on die keyboard, and pulled up the program they used to generate computer composites of suspects. Scanning all the stored files next, she found the one she was looking for, the image of Hank Carlisle the highway patrol had transmitted via computer to every law enforcement agency in the country. Then she blanked the screen and pulled up the data from the day before, the photo identification of the man who had pawned the Smith & Wesson revolver in Arizona. Although she had never met Hank Carlisle, Angie had read all the newspaper articles and bulletins relating to his disappearance. The moment the pawnshop record had popped up, she had seen the similarities in the two men’s appearances, even though she’d kept her mouth shut Reed was the detective, and she didn’t want to appear disrespectful. But Angie felt an affinity with Ann Carlisle. If Angle’s husband could desert his family with no advance warning, Hank Carlisle could have done the same.