First Offense (40 page)

“Estelle Summer,” Melanie said, a smile on her face, waving the report in the air. “It was taken during the rape. It’s right here in black and white. We got him.”

Ann opened her mouth to respond, her fingers closing on the bracelet. Then she saw the smile disappear from Melanie’s face.

“You broke into his house to get that,” she said, shaking her head, her red curls spilling onto her forehead. “Can’t use it. Shouldn’t have taken it, Ann. That’s illegally obtained evidence, inadmissible in court.”

“But—” she protested, opening her hand and staring at the bracelet. “What are we going to do, then?”

Seeing Ann crumbling before her eyes, Melanie grabbed her by the shoulders forcefully. “Look at me, Ann,” she said. “What’s done is done. Can you be strong?”

Ann just stared at her, unable to speak.

“No,” Melanie said, “right now you’re acting like a victim. Stop it. You have to force him to make a move. That’s the only way you’re going to catch Hopkins and get him to court.”

“How?” Ann said, her voice shaking. “He could harm David. I can’t put David in that kind of—”

“Stash the kid,” Melanie said curtly, dropping her hands and pacing back and forth in front of Ann. “Tell Reed everything and have him back you up every second of the day. Act like nothing has happened, like the scene in the garage never occurred. Drive Glen crazy. He’ll have to make a move then. Don’t you see? If you catch him in the act, catch him trying to harm you in some way, you’ll have him cold.”

Ann knew what she was saying. She could possibly get Glen arrested on what she had and what she knew, but she couldn’t keep him behind bars. He’d make bail like all the others, and once he did, they’d never see him again. He certainly had enough money to flee the country. His house was loaded with art and valuables he could sell. Or, even worse, he could make bail, go underground, but continue to stalk Ann until he killed her. If she did what Melanie suggested and refused to back down, it would be Glen on the defensive, Glen who would be forced to risk everything to stop her.

“I can do it.”

“Thatta girl,” the woman said, patting her on the back.

A half hour later, Ann stepped out on the front porch of her house to speak with Oscar Chapa. He was the perfect person to protect her son. He lived alone, was single, and had a trailer somewhere in the mountains in Ojai, not far from Ventura. “Oscar,” she said, “I need your help.” She then proceeded to tell him what was going on, asking if he would take David for a few days.

“I have to work, you know?” he said, a blank look in his eyes. He couldn’t take time off to babysit her kid for her.

“This is work,” Ann answered, her voice louder than she intended. “I’m going to clear it with Reed and the department, Oscar. I just wanted to ask you personally before I did.”

“Sure.” Oscar smiled. “He’s a nice enough kid. I won’t let anything happen to him.”

Ann leaned over and pecked the big man on the cheek. “I know you won’t, Oscar. That’s why I picked you.”

Ann called Reed and gave him a summary of what she’d learned, refusing to spend much time fielding his questions. When he got here, she’d go over what she had step by step.

Once he said he was on the way over, Ann got David out of bed and threw some of his belongings into a duffel bag while he was in the bathroom putting on his clothes. She’d lied and told him that she had to fly to Arizona to identify Hank’s body, that the authorities there wouldn’t release it until she did so.

Next, she insisted that Oscar take the boy to his trailer in Ojai immediately. Ann wasn’t going to wait for daylight. She’d seen the arsenal of high-powered weapons Glen possessed. He could slip past their surveillance and kill them both during the night.

Once David came out in his clothes, sleepy and disoriented, Ann pushed him out the door with Oscar. “Reed will be here any second,” she told the officer, closing the door and shoving the deadbolts into place.

Taking a seat on the sofa, Ann laced her fingers together and placed them in her lap to control the trembling, but her eyes kept straying to the phone. The bastard, she thought, suddenly grabbing it and dialing his number. When he answered, she listened and then hung up. Let him sweat, she decided. Let him see what it was like to have someone calling him all hours of the day and night. How had he imitated Hank’s voice, though? It was the only aspect of the case she couldn’t figure out.

Then she thought of the voice analysis and Melanie’s statement that it was Hank’s voice. She’d mentioned technical noise. Ann herself distinctly remembered hearing a strange noise during the calls: a clicking sound or something. Of course, she thought, a light coming on in her head. It sounded like Hank’s voice because it was Hank’s voice. Racing to David’s room, she dug in the bottom of his closet for the old videotapes. Then she recalled that he had kept them in a shoe box on top of his desk. Ann found the box, but it was empty. Glancing at the window, she knew now what had occurred. Glen had broken into the house looking for something he could use to make her crazy, make her think she was losing her mind. If her credibility was destroyed, no one would believe her if she ever suspected the truth and tried to point a finger at him. All he had done was steal the videotapes and then play them back over the phone. She’d thought the phrases the voice had uttered had sounded familiar. After Hank had disappeared, David had played those tapes dozens of times. Ann had finally insisted that he put them away.

“Where’s David?” the hostile voice had said. “Go get David.” Yes, she realized, her thoughts racing. One of the tapes had been made at a park. Hank had suddenly been called in to work that day, spoiling their picnic, and he’d promptly flown into a rage. Ann remembered him screaming at her to get David, even knocking her to the grass. David had asked her many times why the tape just stopped, why there were images of nothing but lopsided scenery. The child had been on the other side of the park, playing on the swing set. He hadn’t seen his father blow up, thank God.

Maybe Glen had thought he could push her over the edge, Ann thought, that she would end up in a mental institution. Everyone knew how crazy she had acted when Hank had vanished, all the foolish things she had done. As Melanie had said. Glen Hopkins had selected her for these very reasons. Victim. Victim. Victim. Like an animal, the predator he was, he had caught the scent of prey.

Hearing Reed pounding on the front door and yelling, Ann dropped the shoe box and headed to the door, her courage fueled by utter hatred. She would never back down, never let him frighten her again. If it was the last thing she ever did, she was going to make Glen Hopkins pay.

Both Reed and Noah Abrams remained at Ann’s house all night, taking turns sleeping while the other one maintained surveillance. Ann didn’t sleep more than an hour. She maintained a post in the back of the house, letting the detectives cover the front from the living room. At first Reed had been skeptical, refusing to believe Ann’s suspicions. But his dislike of Hopkins, coupled with the evidence Ann had provided, caused him eventually to come around.

Just as the sun was rising, Abrams came into the kitchen and pulled up a chair next to Ann. “You should sleep some more,” he said softly. “You’ve hardly slept all night. Reed’s awake and I’m here. Go on. It’s almost daylight. He’s not going to make a move now.”

“I can’t,” Ann said weakly, her hands locked on her gun, her face haggard and her eyes bloodshot. Right next to her on the kitchen table was the portable phone. Unknown to the detectives, Ann had hit the auto dial all night, every fifteen minutes or so, always hanging up the minute Glen picked up. The payback wasn’t much, but it gave her a certain sense of satisfaction.

Noah and Ann sat silently in the kitchen, watching through the windows as the sky turned gray, then orange. Outside in the trees, the birds were chirping and lights were coming on in some of the houses as people prepared to go to work, mothers made breakfast for their children and got them ready for school.

“Even without all this,” Noah said thoughtfully, “he wasn’t good enough for you, Ann.”

Ann met his gaze, the kindness she saw there deeply touching. She hadn’t seen Noah this serious in years, not since they had been cadets. Back then they used to have long talks about their hopes and dreams for the future. Bathed in the morning light, his hair looked almost red, and Ann smiled at the freckles covering his face, thinking how innocent they made him look. Normally, he was dressed in a suit and one of his eye-catching ties, but this morning he looked just as he had all those years ago. In his jeans and T-shirt, he looked guileless and youthful.

“We didn’t do very well, did we, Noah?” she said in a melancholy voice.

“What do you mean?” he said self-consciously.

“Remember how we were both going to marry someone wonderful and live happily ever after with a houseful of kids?”

Noah’s eyes dropped to his lap. “Yeah,” he said. “I always thought Hank was your Mr. Wonderful, Ann. I thought he had what I never found.”

“Well, he wasn’t Mr. Wonderful,” Ann said, sighing with regret. “He was a confused and bitter man, Noah.” She wondered how much he knew about her relationship with Hank, how much Reed had told him.

Noah had gone through three failed marriages, and Ann had fallen for a maniac like Glen. How had they gone so far off course? she thought. When she was young, she’d been infatuated with Noah, even fantasized that they would get together one day. “Why didn’t you ever ask me out?” she asked him, curious now.

“Oh,” he said, keeping his eyes averted, “I didn’t think you liked me. I mean, not that way. You were so pretty and confident, Ann. I was just a skinny little nerd.”

She’d been a handful back then, all right. A spoiled brat was more like it. Her father had been a captain, and that had given her special privileges around the station. All the men knew her and made way for her, giving in to her all the time, letting her get away with things the other cadets would be disciplined for.

“But I liked you,” Ann told him, watching as his eyes lit up. “I mean it, Noah. I would have gone out with you in a second if you’d only asked.”

“Really?” he said, smiling broadly, his right shoulder twitching with excitement.

All at once they both burst out laughing. Ann kept looking at Noah and starting up again. She kept laughing until tears were streaming down her face, the tension balled up inside finally finding an outlet. “You know, Noah,” she said, swiping at her eyes with her hands, “we could have saved each other a lot of heartache if you’d just had the balls to ask me out.”

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling nervously. “I guess so. I really fucked up, didn’t I?” He rose to go into the other room, hearing Reed calling, but instead stood directly over Ann’s chair. “Can I do something I’ve wanted to do for years?” he said haltingly.

Ann looked up, uncertain what he meant. He didn’t wait for her to answer. Bending down, he pressed his lips to hers in an awkward kiss. It lasted only a second, but Ann felt a jolt of recognition, a rush of warmth, and the intervening years seemed to vanish. The world around them had changed and they’d both seen their share of shattered dreams, but Noah hadn’t really changed at all, and inside, Ann knew she was still the same girl from years past.

Goodness endured, she thought, her heart swelling with affection for this man, watching as he headed to the living room to see what Reed wanted. Evil, by its very nature, was constantly changing, shifting, darting in and out of the shadows, like Glen, but the basic goodness that Noah possessed remained constant.

Fortified with renewed strength and hope, Ann returned to her vigil.

At nine o’clock, Noah parked in front of the jail. “I should come in with you,” he said.

“No,” Ann insisted. “Just cover me until I’m inside. Nothing can happen once I’m inside the jail. If we want Glen to make a move, he can’t know you’re on to him. He’s got to think I’m still compiling evidence, afraid that without it, no one will believe me. That’s how he planned it all along. Let’s let him think he’s still in control a little longer. It can only work to our advantage.”

“You’re right,” Noah said, picking up her hand and squeezing it. “It’s just, now that we’ve—”

Ann shot him a stem look. Whatever had passed between them this morning had to wait. An innocent man was in jail, and a very dangerous man was free. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes, Noah.”

He reluctantly released her hand, and Ann walked rapidly to the jail entrance, her eyes darting up to the windows of the D.A.‘s office.

If she could plant enough doubt, she thought, the court might be able to declare a mistrial in Delvecchio’s case. And she had to do something to help him right now. Her conscience wouldn’t allow her to let an innocent man remain in custody a moment longer. Not only had Glen framed him, but the man’s attorney had failed to defend him. Ann thought that even without Glen’s involvement, she could get the case overturned on appeal, but that would take time, and during that time Delvecchio would remain in prison.

There were two ways to look at it, however, and blaming the public defender at this point was premature. He had filed the appropriate discovery motions to obtain all the information the prosecution possessed against his client. Since Glen was behind these atrocities, he could easily have eliminated some of the lab findings when responding to the discovery. As to the employment records, Ann knew how that went. Every man that walked into the courtroom had something he swore would prove his innocence if he could just find it. The public defender, like so many others in the system, had simply become jaded.

A ting rang out when Ann plunked her county identification in the metal bin to pass to the jailer. “Face to face,” she said flatly. She was punchy and scattered, barely able to go through the motions. So much had happened in such a short time.

As Ann walked down the corridor past the open quads, a man teased and whistled, yelling out, “Come here, baby. Show me your fucking tits.”

Ann flipped the prisoner the finger, unable to control herself. “Go fuck yourself.”