The First Cut (15 page)

“Ruiz, it takes a real man to wear something like that,” Caspers said.

The reading glasses were pink and speckled with multicolors.

“My wife got them at a two-for-one sale at the drugstore.”

“Hey, can’t beat a twofer,” Vining said.

Irritated, Ruiz resumed reading the document, leaving the cheaters in place.

Trying not to smile too much, Kissick went on. “The only other e-mail of interest was one sent from Lieutenant Kendall Moore on Friday, May twenty. He wrote: ‘That was your decision. Don’t try to hang that one on me.’ No salutation. No sincerely or kiss my ass. Just the message.”

“Hostile,” Vining commented.

“What decision?” Caspers asked.

“Good question,” Kissick said. “Clearly a response to a message from Frankie. His computer wasn’t set to quote the original message.”

“Could still be on his computer,” Caspers said. “Did he send it from home or his office?”

Kissick said, “Can’t tell. He used Hotmail, a Web-based service. Shows he didn’t want it going through his LAPD e-mail.”

Vining stayed in the background during this conversation. She had no love for computers and barely managed the basics.

“If Moore didn’t delete her message at the time, I’m sure he got rid of it since,” Ruiz said.

“I know Hotmail,” Caspers said. “It automatically purges the trash file every few days. Depending on his computer setup, it could still be in his recycle bin. It’s possible Frankie sent her e-mail to his LAPD or home address and he used Hotmail to respond. Maybe that’s not a response to an e-mail from her. He sent it fresh.”

“Try to get a search warrant for his computer?” Kissick suggested.

“Good luck,” Ruiz said. “He admitted having a relationship with Frankie. That isn’t enough for a search warrant.”

“Could be enough,” Kissick said. “Depending on the judge.”

“That message proves their relationship got ugly at the end,” said Vining. “Moore was never off my radar and I’ll tell you why.”

She described her encounter with Moore by the bridge.

She had barely finished when Ruiz cut in. “Because you happened to see him by the bridge, mourning his murdered girlfriend, he’s a suspect.”

Vining kept her composure. “I’m saying we haven’t eliminated him as a suspect. At minimum, he has information he hasn’t revealed.”

“What about the cash and earrings Frankie hid in the wall?” Ruiz wagged his index finger as he talked. “What about Lolita locking up Frankie’s condo with Frankie’s keys? Where did he keep Frankie the sixteen days she was missing? Don’t get me wrong. I think Moore’s a jerk. I’m old-fashioned. I don’t have any respect for a guy who cheats on his wife, especially with the daughter of a good friend of mine. I realize we’ve gotta keep an open mind, but Moore’s not our guy. Think about it. He’s a homicide cop. On LAPD’s elite team. If he wanted to eliminate a troublesome girlfriend, wouldn’t he know the best way to do it?”

“He does know the best way,” Vining said. “A kills B and C gets blamed for it. Maybe he knew Frankie was into something rotten with Lolita and her partner and took advantage of it.”

“To do it right, you don’t leave a body.” Ruiz was worked up, gesturing with his hands. “Frankie had already disappeared. She could have stayed disappeared. Why dump her on our doorstep in the same city where her dad works? But hey, you should know. You’re the seasoned homicide detective. I’ve only been at the desk a year, even though I’ve got nineteen years on.”

“We get the point, Ruiz,” Kissick said.

He wouldn’t back down. “You want to know what I think?”

Vining sat stone-faced.
Tell us what you really think, Ruiz.

“I think Vining’s after the guy because he embarrassed her in front of everyone.”

Keep pulling out the rope, Ruiz.

The outburst caught Caspers off guard. He watched wide-eyed.

“Anthony, ease up.” Kissick held out his hands as if to arrest the flow of venom.

“Am I right?” Ruiz asked.

“Nobody’s right or wrong at this point,” Kissick said. “We’re throwing ideas against a wall and seeing what sticks. We’ve had a late night and an early morning and we’re all feeling ragged.”

Vining hadn’t moved her eyes from Ruiz nor had her expression changed.

Caspers wasn’t about to say a thing.

Detective Sergeant Early knocked on the doorjamb and stuck her head inside the room. “Morning, gang. Good news.” One look at their faces and she stopped smiling. “What’s going on?”

Kissick was tactful. “Just having a spirited exchange of ideas.”

“I see. If you start throwing punches, I’m calling the cops. Hey, we’re offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward for bona fide information that leads to an arrest.”

The news broke the tension in the room.

“LAPD’s kicking in bucks. We are, too, as is Frankie’s family,” Early said. “Hopefully it will flush out someone who knows something.”

“Or encourage another million goofballs out there to call in,” Ruiz said.

“That comes with the territory,” Early said. “Kissick, can I talk to you for five minutes?”

Ruiz stood at the same time, picking up the file of leads. “C’mon, Caspers. Let’s try to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

Alone in the war room, Vining tried to shake off Ruiz’s verbal assault. Bastard thought Kissick was favoring her in handing out assignments. She had been Kissick’s partner for two years. It felt natural for him to work with her. Ruiz had never been one for subtlety, which was part of the reason he’d not advanced through the ranks as quickly as she had.

She again focused on the case and reread Moore’s e-mail to Frankie. “That was your decision. Don’t try to hang that one on me.”

She riffled through Frankie’s cell and landline phone bills and her bank statements. She arranged the documents on the table by month, picked up a yellow marker and started going through them again.

Her back was to the door as she annotated the whiteboard. Kissick startled her when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him watching her. Her hand flew instinctively to her neck.

“Sorry. What are you working on?”

“I think Frankie had an abortion. It was Moore’s baby. Could have been an accident on her part, but I’m leaning toward an act of desperation to force him into a decision. He convinced her to get rid of it. After she did, he dumped her. That’s when her life went haywire. Something happened to make her start having sex for money. She could have got that money selling drugs, but I don’t think so. She got into kinky sex games with high rollers and came across someone bad. It’s possible this Lolita is dead, too. She could be a runaway teenager or a junkie streetwalker and no one’s noticed she’s missing yet.”

He frowned, processing what she’d said.

She pointed to a column on the whiteboard. “I think she had the abortion the first week of April. Wednesday, April sixth, she withdrew six hundred dollars from her savings account, taking the balance down to fifty-one dollars. She also wrote a check to herself for cash for four hundred dollars. She needed a grand in cash for something.

“You can track her and Moore’s relationship through her phone bills. She always called his cell phone, never his home or office number. Appears they first got together a year ago March. Her phone bills show these long, bonding, spilling your guts, getting to know you conversations with him. Some a couple of hours long, late at night, after her free cell phone minutes kicked in. After a month or so of that, they’d settled into a routine. Her calls lasted a minute or two, like she was leaving a message, or fifteen minutes to half an hour for chitchat. They talked maybe three or four times a week and sent an occasional text message.

“Then late March, early April this year, we return to hour-long phone conversations. Something’s changed in their relationship. Lots of calls from her to him. Text messages. He’s not returning them. After April fourteenth, she gives it up. No telephone contact.”

“She met somebody new.”

“That’s when we start seeing calls to her cell phone made by someone using a calling card—someone who didn’t want to leave any traces. She also covered her tracks to him. Maybe she didn’t know how to contact him or she didn’t want anyone following the money trail, which starts right away. She made her first thousand-dollar-cash bank deposit on Monday, April eighteen.”

On the whiteboard, Vining circled Thursday, April 14. “Here, there’s a flurry of text messages between Frankie and Moore. She sent one at eleven-forty. He responded at eleven forty-three. She shot back at twelve-twenty. He responded at twelve thirty-seven. That’s the last record of any communication between them until Moore’s e-mail on May twenty.”

Vining chewed her lip as they looked at the timeline. “Had to be some reason they didn’t just call each other on April fourteen. Maybe one of them was in a meeting. Wonder what was so darn important?”

Kissick joined Vining in looking at the whiteboards. “Could have been the day they broke up. As you said before, somebody always ends it.”

She shot him a glance, her face dark. “That’s what I said. Guess I should know.”

He seemed to regret the comment as he changed the subject. “Personally, I can’t deal with text messaging. Typing on that tiny keypad. My sons live for it. They do it when they’re sitting next to each other.”

Vining let the prickly moment pass. “Wish we had Frankie’s datebook.” She walked to the conference room door and called, “Hey, Caspers.”

His head popped over the top of the cubicle. “Yo.”

“Didn’t you say that you saw Frankie at the service awards luncheon at the Huntington Hotel?”

“Yeah. She was there with her dad. He got an award for twenty-five years on the force.”

“When was that?”

“Month or more ago. Sometime in April, I think.”

Kissick was already on the phone in the conference room. He hung up. “Community Services says the banquet was on April fourteenth. Someone’s bringing up the guest list. Frank Lynde said that was the last time he saw Frankie.”

“Frankie had a text message fight with Moore, flirted with someone at the banquet and left with him.”

Kissick dubiously arched an eyebrow. “Maybe she did flirt with somebody, but you can’t mean that she met
the
guy and maybe Lolita, too, at an event that was rotten with cops.”

“Why not? She met him or them somewhere. Her life took a turn around then.”

He considered her comment. “The assholes who got Frankie could be cop groupies.”

“It is a Pasadena connection.”

“That’s the part that doesn’t gel for me. They didn’t like the rubber chicken lunch, so they found a way to get back at the city?”

An officer from Community Services found them in the conference room. She handed Kissick the banquet guest list arranged by table and a layout of the room with a numbered grid of the table rounds. Table seating had been assigned to those receiving awards, their guests, and other luminaries. It was open seating for everyone else.

Kissick looked over the materials. “Here’s Frank Lynde’s table. Number five. Frankie likely sat beside him. I know all these people who were at their table. Find out if they remember anything. Wish we had more to go on than just a hunch. It’s all yours.”

He gave the materials to Vining and went to Ruiz’s desk. “Tony, see what Frank Lynde remembers from this luncheon. Then talk up this buddy of Frankie’s. Sharon Hernandez. If Frankie had an abortion, I find it hard to believe that she didn’t talk about it with her best friend.”

“I agree.” Ruiz grabbed his jacket. “Schuyler didn’t get the juice from her.”

Unless it was too big and too bad a secret to tell.
Vining picked up the banquet lists.
I know that place.

“The autopsy’s in an hour, right?” Vining asked.

“Why? You want to come?” Kissick was kidding, already knowing she did.

“If Frankie did have an abortion two months ago, wonder if the autopsy will detect it,” Vining said.

Caspers was sticking out his tongue with disgust.

Kissick looked at him. “Alex, you’ve never been to an autopsy.”

He cringed. “Nope.”

Grinning, Kissick said to Vining, “Caspers is starting to think he’s not cut out for Homicide.”

Caspers exhaled noisily. “This is crazy-making, what you guys do. I’d rather take my chances on the street.”

F O U R T E E N

O
N THE DRIVE TO THE COUNTY MORGUE, VINING AND KISSICK KEPT
the conversation light, talking about small family dramas and current events. He didn’t ask her if she was nervous about the autopsy. She’d attended several before her attack and it was tough getting through them, but she wasn’t nervous about this one. Truth be told, she couldn’t wait. They had little evidence. Frankie Lynde’s body could hold the key to identifying her murderer.

Kissick did not bring up their truncated romance and she was grateful.

They arrived at the morgue to see Frankie’s corpse on her back with her legs spread open. Medical Examiner Ron Takeda was sitting on a stool at the end of the table, examining her genitalia. X-rays of Lynde were hanging on a light box.

“Good morning, Detective Kissick and Detective Vining, is it?” Takeda raised his gloved right hand that held a swab. He was in his mid-fifties. He smiled and amiably raised his eyebrows, deepening the lines in his face. He looked like the pastor of a neighborhood church greeting his congregation.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve seen each other, Detective Kissick, but in our circumstances, that’s a happy absence.”

“Yes, it is, Doctor.” Kissick looked over the body, not spending a second more than necessary.

Vining had acted tough about not being bothered by the autopsy, but she couldn’t be certain she could handle it until she was actually there. Before the arroyo incident, she’d also thought she’d mastered her panic attacks.

Lynde’s eyes were half-open, milky and unfocused as they had been on the hillside. Vining remained calm. What had happened the day before would not be repeated here. Lynde was somewhere, but this flesh was no longer her home.

The blood, dirt, and weeds that had covered Lynde had been washed off. The slash in her neck gaped open like a jack-o’-lantern’s grin. It was a clean cut from ear to ear, without hesitation marks. The bruises on her face and torso were garish under the unforgiving lights.