The Deepest Cut (11 page)

One depicted the upper body of a woman in uniform wearing a round-brimmed Ranger Stetson. On her long-sleeved shirt, a badge and insignia were sketchily outlined. In her left hand, she held two leather straps that disappeared off the edge of the paper. She looked afraid. In the distance, off her right shoulder, was a distinctive, domed mountain. Kissick had said the mountain looked like Morro Rock in the Central California coast city of Morro Bay, a favorite getaway spot for him and his two sons.

One depicted a woman lying on the floor of what appeared to be a storage closet. Her white blouse was covered with dark stains. She looked dead. Around her neck, on top of her blouse, was a pearl necklace with a pendant.

Through Vining’s surreptitious investigation, she’d learned that this drawing portrayed another victim of T B. Mann— Tucson Police detective Johnna Alwin. Only the killer, the cops, and Alwin’s husband knew she’d been given a pearl-and-pendant necklace and was wearing it the day of her murder.

Vining had secretly traveled to Tucson and met with the lead investigator, Lieutenant Owen Donahue. She’d planned on stealing Alwin’s pearl necklace and had succeeded.

Then there was the fourth drawing. It was by far the most gruesome. The setting was a ramshackle barnlike structure. A nude woman was tied by her ankles and hanging from the rafters. A great pool of blood had spilled from a gash across her neck onto the dirt floor. A cloud of fluffy, darkhair obscured most of her face and kept the necklace around her neck from slipping off. The necklace was drawn with loving details. Dozens of tiny circles depicted pearls. From the middle dangled a pendant.

Some at the PPD had made good arguments that Nitro was a crime groupie. The assault upon Vining had been well publicized. The other women in the drawings could be creations from Nitro’s twisted imagination or he could have gleaned inspiration from media reports of real crimes.

While the necklace the silent streaker Nitro was wearing when the PPD had apprehended him had been a source of amusement for the officers involved, Vining knew better. He was not T B. Mann. She detected something eerily reminiscent of T B. Mann in Nitro, but
he was not him.
He was his messenger. To Vining, T B. Mann’s message was this:
My evil acts have a long and complex history, and I’m not finished. Watch what happens next.

Nitro’s necklace— a sorry, beat-up thing— was also in her collection. She’d confiscated it with aplomb. Unfortunately, her other scheme for Nitro had gone to hell. She’d planned to wait for him after his release from the seventy-two-hour psychiatric hold at L.A. County General Hospital, where the PPD had sent him. But Nitro had eluded her. He was gone.

After quickly leafing through the drawings that she knew only too well, she looked from Kissick to Early. “We have new leads?”

Kissick began, “I followed up on my hunch about that one drawing, that the mountain in the background is Morro Rock. The woman in it is wearing a Ranger Stetson and there are a couple of state parks in that area. I sent an inquiry to the California State Park Service headquarters. Last night, they faxed a response.” He took stapled papers from the folder and handed them to Vining.

She silently skimmed them, stopping to reread this line: “In response to your inquiry, the woman in your drawing might be California Park Ranger Marilu Feathers.”

Vining repeated the name.
Marilu Feathers.
It glowed for her. It was as if she’d found a long-lost sister. She continued reading.

“Ranger Feathers was stationed at Montaña de Oro State Park. While patrolling the sandspit on Christmas Eve eight years ago, she exchanged gunfire with an unknown suspect and was shot to death. Her murder is unsolved. After an exhaustive investigation by the California Park Service and the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Department, the case went cold. We would be happy to share our information with you in the hope of bringing the perpetrator to justice, and delivering closure to Ranger Feathers’s family and to her fellow rangers.”

Closure,
Vining thought.
Feel-good bull.

With the letter was a copy of Feathers’s official Park Service photograph, in uniform. In the background were the U.S. flag and the California state flag with the now-extinct California grizzly on a white background. Feathers’s thin lips were closed, the edges barely upturned. Her features were plain and square. Her lank, dark hair, cut in a blunt, utilitarian style that reached her large jaw, looked plastered to her head. Her appearance was severe, yet there was something open, honest, and kind about her face.

Vining silently asked her:
What did you do to attract his attention?

Kissick said, “I’ve had a telephone conversation with the assistant director. He says a park ranger, named Zeke Denver, who was stationed at Montaña de Oro at the time of Feathers’s murder and who participated in the investigation, is still there. I’m driving up to meet him as soon as we’re finished here.”

Vining wondered why Early said that it would take Kissick a week to work the new leads. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two at most. He’d found Marilu Feathers. Good for him. She desperately wanted to go to Montaña de Oro. Kissick was a great investigator, but this case was different. She knew the right rocks to turn over. She knew the right questions to ask, such as: Had Feathers been involved in an incident on duty that had propelled her into the limelight? Had she subsequently been given a pearl necklace with a gemstone pendant that foretold the month of her murder?

Of course, Kissick could ask these same questions if she turned over all the information she’d gathered. She’d have to someday. Maybe
that day was here. Her dilemma was how to do it while omitting the companion piece to the tale, that she had lied, cheated, and stolen to get the evidence. Still, only she could bring her unique perspective to the investigation. Only she and T. B. Mann had breathed the same air, charged with violence and sex.

She set the fax on her lap, on top of the drawings, not daring to hand the materials back to Kissick lest he see her trembling hands. She folded her hands on top of the papers.

Kissick continued. “Since I got a hit on my hunch about Morro Rock, Sarge and I decided to examine the last two drawings for clues about who the women might be.”

He held out his hand for the papers that Vining held.

She quickly passed them on, again clasping her hands in her lap as the trembling hadn’t completely subsided.

He found the drawing of the woman hanging by her ankles and held it up. “Sarge remembered a murder like this.”

Early spoke up. “After we’d dismissed Nitro as a nutcase, I didn’t give those drawings another thought and hadn’t looked at them too closely to begin with. Our star investigator here, with his tremendous instincts, felt there was more than what met the eye. He wouldn’t let it go and thank goodness, because we finally have some new leads.”

Vining knew that Kissick was embarrassed by Sarge’s praise. He allowed himself a modest smile. Meanwhile, she, who had taken great personal and professional risks in pursuing T. B. Mann and had collected critical evidence, was forced to suck in her pride and sit quietly.

Early held out her hand for the drawing of the dangling woman, which Kissick gave her. “So while Jim and I were looking at this sketch, a murder that happened in Colina Vista popped into my head.”

Colina Vista was one among the string of what locals called the foothill cities. They numbered about a dozen, and the northern border of each abutted Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains. Pasadena was one of the largest. Several of the foothill cities were little more than villages, throwbacks to a gentler era tucked away from the hustle-bustle of their larger neighbors and blissfully free of most of their big-city problems. Their well-heeled, well-educated, and mostly Caucasian residents shared other traits— disdain of urban
sprawl and chain retailers, fear of wildfires, and a fierce protectiveness of their lifestyle.

The twin cities of Colina Vista and its neighbor, Sierra Madre, the jewels in the crown, had both been mountain resort towns in the late 1800s. Both shared a deep connection with the Pasadena P.D. Each had a female police chief who had come up through the ranks of the PPD. Colina Vista was the smaller of the two towns, with a population of barely 7,500 and a police department of eleven sworn officers, plus the chief.

“I called the Colina Vista P.D. earlier this morning,” the sergeant said. “Of course, my friend Betsy Gilroy was already at her desk. Do you know Chief Gilroy, Nan?”

“Not personally,” Vining replied. “I’m familiar with her reputation.”

“She was deputy chief at the time of the murder I was recalling. It happened ten years ago. The victim was a young female police officer named Clarissa Silva. Her nickname was Cookie.”

Cookie Silva,
Vining thought.
My sister.

“Chief Gilroy was the lead investigator. She’s more than happy to discuss the case with Jim, though she says they got their man. He’s on death row in San Quentin.”

That information meant nothing to Vining. The lieutenant in Tucson had also been certain they’d nailed Johnna Alwin’s murderer. He was wrong.

Early said, “We’ve tentatively identified with some confidence the women in three of the four drawings. One is you, Nan. One is Ranger Marilu Feathers, and one is Officer Cookie Silva.”

Kissick held up the drawing that depicted Johnna Alwin on the floor of the storage closet. “This is the only one we haven’t identified. Still, we have nothing to link these women to your attacker.”

Two of them are wearing identical pearl necklaces,
Vining thought.
It’s right in front of you.

She just nodded. She knew that Early’s assigning Kissick to work the leads full-time was a boon to the investigation, especially now. T B. Mann was stirring in his hole, darting out, taking risks. It was a good time to ramp up the chase, yet she again had her hands tied with a new homicide investigation. Kissick could spend all the time he
needed and openly travel to follow up leads, whereas she’d had to sneak around and pay expenses out of her own pocket. But without giving him the information she had, she could see these new leads being squandered, turning into dead ends or worse.

Get too close, too soon and everything could disappear. Revealing the evidence she had could keep the investigation on course, but how could she tell all without hanging herself?

Kissick had found out about one of her infractions. He knew she’d stolen Nitro’s necklace. He’d kept her secret. She didn’t want to risk revealing more to him. If he told her secrets, her career would be dust. If he kept them, he’d put his career at risk. She cared about him too much to do that. Her motives were not completely altruistic. She also didn’t want him to learn about the dark part of herself that she’d discovered. How she’d found herself capable of things that she would have never dreamed possible
before.
She used to feel that she knew the lengths she would go to to solve a case, the boundaries she absolutely would not cross. That was before one particular homicide case had landed in her lap: hers.

He fixed her with a look that made her wonder if he suspected what she’d been thinking. “Nan, I know you have theories about the man who attacked you. You told me that while you were on leave, you’d done research on murders of female police officers.”

Vining felt a slow flush starting beneath her breastbone and moving up her neck. She had never told him that. He was guessing, and guessing correctly. He had inadvertently found out that she had stolen Nitro’s necklace. He’d been shocked by her audacity. She’d demonstrated the brio of a practiced thief and liar, which suggested there was more where that had come from.

His eyes on hers didn’t waver. “Before I get started, I’d like you to give me any information you’ve found, even if it’s speculation. How about over a cup of coffee?”

Vining knew her neck was pink and hoped it hadn’t traveled into her cheeks. “Okay. Great. We can do that right now.” She rose to leave.

“Nan.” Early stopped her. “I’ve called a briefing on the Scrappy Espinoza murder at four o’clock. Lieutenant Beltran will be there.”

“Four o’clock. I’ll be ready, Sarge.”

On her way to get her purse, she stuck her head into Caspers’s cubicle. On his desk was a DMV report on Pearl Zhang. Caspers was leaning on both elbows, his head propped up by his hands, looking as if he were reading it. Vining could tell by his deep breathing that he was asleep.

She knocked one of his arms out from under him.

His head nearly hit the desk before he recovered. He glared at her. “Wha the … ?”

His annoyance was no match for her seething anger. She snarled into his ear. “You’re working the Espinoza case with me. Kissick’s been assigned to a special project. Ruiz isn’t working on this floor anymore. I’m going to be gone for an hour. Take a nap in the sleep room. Have another coffee or a Red Bull. I’ll cover for you this time, but next time, I’m nailing your ass to the wall.”

For a minute, he didn’t know what to say. Finally, he got out, “Yes, ma’am.”

She grabbed the DMV report. Beneath Pearl Zhang’s was the report for her son, Lincoln Kennedy.

She stomped after Kissick

Before they had left the floor, Sergeant Early came out after them. “Pearl Zhang’s in the lobby with her attorney. She wants the crime scene released so her crew can start working. You two finish your business. I’ll handle her.”

Early turned to head toward the lobby staircase. Vining and Kissick went out the back.

ELEVEN

K
ISSICK GOT IN THE PASSENGER SIDE OF THE CROWN VIC AFTER
tossing his suit jacket across the backseat. Vining had left her jacket at her desk, since she’d be returning to the office while he’d be taking off.

While she drove, he read Pearl Zhang’s DMV report. “She’s forty-five years old. She mentioned being around during the Cultural Revolution. She would have been a child. What a nightmare that must have been.”