"Was she like into that at all with you? You know, you being the older man. Girls like that, huh?"
"Naw, nothing like that ever happened, but I'll tell you it was hard to not stare when she walked around in her nightie or in some of those shirts."
"So'd you ever get any? A little feel? Brush up against her in the hallway kinda thing?"
Wyche was motioning no, but he was blushing. Noah whispered lewdly, "But you wanted to, didn't you?"
"Crossed my mind a time or two," he agreed.
Noah was folded over the table toward Wyche, leering at him. "Did you get any?"
"Naw, man, nothing like that. She's my wife's daughter."
"Man, you didn't even try for a little? Who'd have known?"
Wyche was shaking his head. "Nah. It ain't right, you know? How'd you feel if some guy was poking your girl?"
"That'd be different," Noah conceded. "But she wasn't your girl."
Noah's line of attack was slipping away so Frank bluntly took over.
"Mr. Wyche, who's to say that nothing happened between you and Jennifer. You certainly wouldn't tell your wife about this and the only other person who'd know is dead. Why should we believe you didn't have a sexual relationship with Jennifer?"
Ticking off points on her fingers, Frank continued, "You've already told us you were attracted to her. You've already told us you hit her in anger. You've said you have a temper. You said you didn't like her—"
Now Noah interrupted. "Aw, man, I totally feel for you. It'd be so easy to lose your temper and what starts off as a slap turns into something else. And man, if I had a hunk of her in my hands...I don't know. I mean, one thing leads to another sometimes. I've been there."
Wyche adamantly protested to Frank, "Nothing like that happened. I know I lost my temper a couple times, but I never hurt Jennie. Not like that."
"Then how?" Frank asked.
"Like I told you."
"Tell us again," Noah soothed, and that's how it went for hours. Wyche's accounts never varied. The detectives didn't catch him in a lie or break his composure. He was earnest, insistent, and paced around the table during a five-minute break. It was Frank's observation, after thousands of interrogations, that guilty people tended to nod off. Sometimes they were so deeply asleep they'd fall out of the chair. Other times they'd curl up in the corner and be cutting Z's. But Wyche was worried, as well an innocent man should be with two homicide detectives grilling him like a cheese sandwich.
They let him go home after midnight. He was simultaneously relieved, exhausted, and furious. The detectives both apologized for the work-over but insisted they had to know, that Jennifer deserved the truth. The apology served a number of purposes: one, if Wyche really was innocent, it was a genuine apology to a citizen they were paid to protect. Two, lawsuits against the department were routine. Innocent or not, they didn't want Wyche going home pissed off. But most importantly, if Wyche was involved with the murder of either girl, he'd think he had the cops fooled and sooner or later he'd start bragging about it.
The squad room hummed with activity, but in her office Frank quietly sipped coffee while she reviewed Peterson's preliminary autopsy report. The bruising was nearly identical to Agoura's and of indeterminate origin. Peterson's nose, left clavicle, and the second and third fingers of her right hand were fractured. She'd been anally assaulted with no other evidence of sexual assault. This time, instead of an elderberry branch, the perp had used something resembling a yellow broom or mop handle.
Along the path of insertion, Crocetti's eyes had found minuscule fragments of yellow paint that had been sent to the lab for analysis. The trajectory of the path was similar to Agoura's, indicating a left-handed assaulter. Like Agoura, Peterson had bled to death slowly enough to know she was dying. Several major organs had been shredded, and again the perp had rammed his victim hard enough to pierce a lung. The coroner's team had found fibers similar to Agoura's, as well as what appeared to be blue nylon fibers and additional short brown hairs. They were on their way to the lab with the paint frags and tox samples.
The prints from the shooting gallery had come back with a lot of partials and unknowns, offering only two solid leads. Later in the day, Frank and Noah found one of them at a corner mart a block away from the high school. She was a nineteen-year-old black female, a strawberry. She was chain-smoking Kools, searching for someone to blow for a hit off a crack pipe. They worked her for about an hour, but she was useless and barely able to stay in her skin. Next they chased down a seventeen-year-old black male. Noah knew him. He had a crook in his nose and hustled ass, so everyone called him Hooker. He insisted he hadn't been in the gallery the night Jennifer Peterson died. Noah assured him they didn't want anyone in the shooting gallery for criminal charges.
"We're just looking for witnesses, and it ain't a gang thing. In fact, it's probably a white guy dumpin' his shit in your 'hood, makin' it look like somebody inside's doin' it. You'd like to see that mother caught, wouldn't you?"
"Be alright wit me," Hooker answered noncommittally.
"Besides, if you cooperate now, maybe we could cut you some slack later on down the line."
"Right," he said, disbelief written all over his face.
"I'm straight up with you, my man, I ain't lyin'."
"Ain't yo man."
"Look," Frank broke in, "even if you weren't there, just give us some names, tell us who shoots there regularly."
Through the GREAT sheet that the LAPD gang details generated, they'd already made a list of Hooker's homies. Noah spat them out.
"Does Dr. Dread hang there, or Little-Kool or maybe T-Square?"
At first Hooker looked surprised, then confused, and finally resigned.
"Sometime," he said, and supplied the detectives with the names of over a dozen junkies and crackheads.
It would take weeks for Frank and Noah to contact all the leads, but so far no one would admit to seeing anything the night Peterson's body had been dumped at Carver. And no sound of crowing from Randy Wyche, either.
Using the major incident list Noah had compiled from in and around the rec area, Frank had found some two dozen rapes and eight murders that might match their perp's MO and time frame. She spent Saturday morning poring through four of the thick rape folders. She discounted the first case because the rape victim was older, knew her attacker, and hadn't been raped anally. The second case was a woman who hadn't seen her assailant even though he'd talked to her, growling obscenities and directions while holding a gun to her neck. After careful consideration Frank put the folder in the reject pile in spite of the fact that the victim had been anally raped.
The next two cases had a lot of similarities. Both victims had been young teenagers, neither had seen their assailants, but they reported he was "strong" and "big" and hadn't said a word to either girl. After examining photographs, diagrams, victim statements, police reports, and hospital reports, Frank put the two folders in a "keeper" pile.
Pleased, she tipped back on the rear legs of the dining room chair and ran her fingers roughly through her hair. She watched the rain pissing down furiously on the other side of the sliding glass doors; it was the first good storm of the season. Gough'd be happy. So would Ike and Diego. They were on call, and good weather lent itself more readily to homicides than bad, so hopefully they'd have a quiet weekend. She thought about calling Noah but hated bugging him at home. Instead, she changed out of her sweats and headed down to the Alibi. Maybe Johnnie'd be around, and if not, at least Nancy could serve her a brew and a burger. But to Frank's surprise, neither of them were there. She straddled a seat at the bar, quickly dousing a tiny flicker of disappointment, and asked Mel where Nancy was.