First Offense (34 page)

Opening the relevant manual, Angie tried to figure out how to compare the images. She had to superimpose one image over the other, and she’d never been trained in this particular program. The only person who used it was the department’s composite artist. Finally she found the right page and scanned it quickly, moving her finger down each line. Then she followed the directions, and poof, there it was: one face on top of the other. She clapped her hands softly and then brought up a grid. Separating the face into sections, she transferred one of the sections to a clean screen. Now all she had to do was move the image from the pawnshop on top of this one and repeat the same procedure until she had superimposed both images.

Picking up her stylus, Angie outlined the combined images on her pad. Then she used her mouse to eliminate the hair. As best she could tell, the man who had pawned the gun had a thinner face than Hank Carlisle’s, but Angle knew a different hairstyle could make a face appear thinner. So far so good, she thought.

She now transferred the lower half of the grid. The facial hair was a problem, but she could fix that too. She erased the beard and bushy mustache, then went back to the composite board and tried a dozen or more faces on for size. The lower lip was visible in the pawnshop photo, but the upper lip was partially covered by the mustache, so in this area of the face she had to speculate. She knew the image would be her creation and not actual, but it was as close as she could get. Soon her handiwork was finished.

“What are you doing here this early?” the other records clerk asked, leaning over her shoulder.

“Just playing,” Angie said.

“Man, don’t you get enough of this stuff?” the man said, walking away. “I sure don’t consider this place fun. Get a life, Angie.”

She ignored him, her eyes riveted to the computer screen. How close was the match? Was it close enough to call the highway patrol? Not really. After making a few more adjustments and comparisons, Angie went back to the pawnshop records. Now she had to think like an investigator.

The identification the man had given was an Arizona driver’s license. Storing and saving her other work, Angie entered the DMV records in the Arizona system.

Turning the pages slowly, she jotted down all the particulars: the man’s name, date of birth, place of birth. The date of issuance was six months after Carlisle had vanished, and the name listed was Bill Collins. If ever there was a generic name, this was it. Suddenly she saw something that caught her eye. In the box where applicants were asked to list their previous driver’s license number, Collins had marked none. According to the man’s date of birth, he would be fifty-two years old. Angie felt her heart do a little jump. He was fifty-two and had never had a driver’s license? “I bet, buster,” she said out loud, smiling. “Sure, tell me more. If you’re fifty-two, I’m eighty.”

They saw fake identification all the time. People with one too many drunk-driving convictions, criminals with convictions to hide. All they had to do was go to the DMV and take the driver’s test, provide a phony birth certificate, and bingo, their checkered past disappeared. Police often arrested people with five, even ten different driver’s licenses in their wallets. Paper hangers, people who wrote bad checks, were notorious for this. Their MO was to get a fresh ID, open a new checking account with a lousy hundred bucks, and end up walking away with thousands of dollars in merchandise before anyone was the wiser.

Angie took the man’s name and date of birth just to be certain and ran it through the national system. This would take some time, she knew. Some less sophisticated states didn’t have access to the national system, or if they did, their people were not trained to check the computer. Sometimes the computer was down, overwhelmed with the sheer number of queries.

She waited. The computer answered after a five-minute search. There were 2,453 people named Bill Collins in the national system who had valid driver’s licenses. Of those, forty-eight had the same date of birth. Now she had to input the physical description to try to narrow it down. The task was impossible, though. The name and age were just too common for the computer to make an accurate sort. Whoever had come up with this new identity knew the system all too well. The largest section of the driving public fell right in this age bracket.

Frustrated, Angie decided to cross-check Carlisle’s actual driving records against those of Bill Collins. She knew human nature. People were smart, but they were also lazy. Many criminals gave themselves new names and still used other legitimate identifying factors, such as place of birth, middle names, the same numbers on an address connected to a different street. They’d use their actual day of birth and then switch the month or year. Sometimes their reason was more caution than laziness. When asked to rattle off details by a police officer, they found it a lot easier to put on a credible performance when a portion of the data was legitimate.

Angie was getting tired. It was almost lunchtime, and her regular shift started at three. She began inputting all comparable data into the computer as fast as she could: Hank and Ann’s home address, Ann’s birthday, David’s birthday, their Social Security numbers. Hank’s badge number at the highway patrol, any and all number sequences she could find that he might have memorized.

She finally finished at two-thirty. Leaning back in her chair and rubbing her eyes, she stretched her arms over her head. With a swan-dive finger she reached forward and pushed the enter button, hearing the computer hum as it gobbled up the data.

“Do your stuff, baby,” she said, patting the beige metal box as if it were human.

When Ann came rushing out of the courtroom, she ran right into Tommy Reed. “We have to talk,” he said, a stem look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Ann said, tagging along behind him. “Where are we going?”

“Outside.”

Ann stopped short, trying to figure out why the detective was so peeved. Was he annoyed that she hadn’t called him back Friday night after he spoke to David? “You’re angry, right? Because I didn’t call you back.”

Reed turned around and scowled. “Among other things.”

Ann was confused. “What other things?” Try Peter Chen.”

Oh, that,” she said, smiling, thinking his ego was just bruised. “Aren’t you pleased I got him?”

“Yeah,” Reed said, his anger subsiding as they continued down the corridor. “The captain reamed Noah’s asshole out this morning. You found Peter Chen when we had half the city looking for him.” He turned to her. “Want to explain how you accomplished this little feat?”

Ann shook her head and winked. “Trade secret. Look and you find things. Have you interviewed him?”

“Fuck, are you kidding? This guy hasn’t said a word since you picked him up. He just sits in his cell and stares at the wall like he’s in a coma.”

Once outside in the sunshine, they took a seat on the concrete ledge around the fountain. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you back,” she said. “I just didn’t want David to hear me talking about the phone calls and Hank.”

“That’s why rooms have doors,” he retorted, his annoyance at her flaring again.

Ann continued, undaunted, “The same person called again Friday night at the house, and then again yesterday. The last time he called, I hung up on him.”

“And you’re certain it was Hank?”

Ann stared out over the courtyard, watching as several unsavory-looking characters passed on their way to the jail. “No, Tommy, I’m not certain.”

He was surprised. “That’s not what you told Claudette.”

“That woman,” Ann said, angry that Claudette was talking to Tommy behind her back. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know who it is, but it does sound like Hank.” Then she voiced a worry that had been nagging at her ever since that last call. “What if David picks up the phone the next time this person calls? It would destroy him, Tommy. I could never convince him it wasn’t his father. The voice is just like Hank’s.”

Remembering how confident the boy had been that his father was coming back, Reed felt a similar alarm. “I suppose we could try a tap.”

“Yes,” Ann said eagerly, seeing where this could take them. “Then if it is Sawyer, we can trace the call and pick him up.” She slapped her forehead, feeling like a fool. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Well, I did,” Reed said, standing, a smug expression on his face. “I even drove over to your house Saturday night, but you were out. Anyway, give me your key and I’ll get a crew over there now.”

Ann fished her key out of her purse and handed it to him. As her gaze drifted past the windows of the jail, she was reminded of Delvecchio. She proceeded to tell the detective the new developments in the case. When she was finished, he just shrugged, as if to say the rape case was out of his hands.

“Wait,” Ann said, stopping him before he walked away. “Did they ever check that dog bite?”

“It wasn’t a dog bite,” he said, giving her a surly look. “We’re not incompetent, Ann. We checked that mark on his leg when he was first booked.”

Ann watched the detective as he headed across the parking lot, mired in confusion. Delvecchio had told her it was a dog bite. Why would he lie about something like that?

“Ray Hernandez,” Ann said to a pretty blond receptionist. “Tell him Ann Carlisle is here to see him.”

Adjacent to the D.A.‘s office, the investigative unit was set up like the probation department. The investigators didn’t have actual offices, they had partitioned cubicles like Ann’s. Once the receptionist called Hernandez, she nodded, and Ann made her way to his desk.

“Ray,” she said, flopping in a chair and meeting his gaze, “you know I’ll be preparing the presentence report on Randy Delvecchio. I have a few questions for you.” Ann paused, thinking through the facts. She knew the first lead to Delvecchio had come from an anonymous phone call, but she also knew it could have been a police informant. “The person that fingered him—was he a snitch?”

“No,” Hernandez said. “What made you think that?”

Another dead end, Ann thought in disappointment. Even if the informant had refused to testify, she’d hoped to obtain more explicit information. “Can you tell me exactly how this all went down?”

Hernandez put his hands behind his back as he recited the facts. “An unknown person called and informed us that Delvecchio was bragging on the street about raping several old women. The informant proceeded to tell us what he looked like and where he lived. We then requested a search warrant.” He stopped, finished with the part he had memorized for the trial. “Hopkins didn’t want to simply pick him up for questioning,” he added, his admiration for the attorney obvious. “He wanted to do it up right.”

Ann was thinking that to obtain a warrant on the basis of such flimsy evidence was a credit to Glen’s expertise, but it was precisely the manner in which Delvecchio was apprehended that troubled her the most. “Ray, do you really believe that anyone in his right mind would boast about raping old women?”

“Hey,” he said defensively, “assholes like Delvecchio love to shoot off their mouths. Happens all the time.”

Ann made a wry face. “Just how many cases have you handled where a rapist targeting older women bragged about it?”

“Aw shucks, there’s got to be—” He abruptly stopped, trying to search his memory.

“Did I hear you say none?” Ann said sarcastically.

“I can’t think of anything right now, but—”

“Rapists aren’t the most popular people in the neighborhood,” Ann continued, “even if the neighborhood is San Quentin. And raping old women is almost as bad as raping little kids. Everyone has a mother. Are you following me?”

“I see your point,” he said slowly.

Ann wanted everything clear in her mind. “So, you got the warrant and went directly to his house. Who made the actual arrest?”

“I did. Well, I wasn’t alone, if that’s what you mean. Hopkins went along and…let me think here a second. Oh, Martin Gathers was there too.” Gathers was another D.A.‘s investigator. “He’s the one who found the ring.”

“Gathers?”

“No, Hopkins. He found it in Delvecchio’s bedroom, in his drawer. There were other things taken during the rapes as well, but Delvecchio must have already sold them.” He pushed his chair up to the desk and started shuffling through his phone messages, trying to give Ann a hint that he needed to get back to work.

“The overcoat?” she asked.

“Sucker was wearing the overcoat.” Hernandez looked up and smiled, letting Ann know that for him, this had been the clincher. “Actually came to the door in it. Guess he was so proud of that coat he even wore the damn thing in the house.”

“And this was the whole case? There was never a positive identification by any of the victims? I recall Glen alluding to this, but it never occurred, right?”

Ray Hernandez frowned, annoyed by Ann’s implication. “We put Delvecchio in a lineup and made all the men wear stocking masks. The Summer woman and the Alderson woman made an ID based on his size and build, his voice, things like that. That’s an identification, you know,” he said, defending Hopkins for taking it a few steps forward in the courtroom. Then he laughed. “We must have done something right. They just convicted him about thirty minutes ago.”

Ann gasped. “You’re certain?”

“Yep,” he said with pride. “We do good work around here. Glen called me himself from the courtroom. Says we might file homicide charges now that the Summer woman is dead. If he can substantiate that her death was a direct result of the crime, this guy’s headed to the gas chamber.”

Ann could almost hear the clock ticking inside her head. Delvecchio had several strikes against him, including race and inadequate representation. That meant things could move fast. Her intervention was critical. “What about fingerprints?”

“No prints, Ann. Lab determined the rapist wore gloves. There wasn’t a lot of physical evidence left at the scenes. This man’s clever. There’s no telling how many other crimes he’s committed.”

Ann thanked him for his time and headed back to her office. Clever, he had said. Delvecchio wasn’t clever at all. In fact, she suspected that he was borderline retarded or learning-disabled. He’d even told Ann that he’d dropped out of school because he’d had no shoes to wear. No wonder he was so attached to that overcoat, she thought, thinking he was more childish than cunning. And gloves? Ann couldn’t see it. Delvecchio had been convicted on circumstantial evidence, primarily the victims’ possessions.