“Dope. Drugs.”
She shrugged. “I think she smoked some marijuana occasionally.”
“No, not weed. Something harder. Maybe crank. Probably crack.”
“Crank? Crack? What’s the difference?”
“Crank is methamphetamine. Crack is jacked-up cocaine.”
“No way. She was a good girl.”
“Did she have a boyfriend?”
“She didn’t have a steady boyfriend.”
“Who’s her best friend then?”
Andie thought for a second. “That would be Natalia Romanov.”
“Is she Russian?”
“Yeah.”
“Where can I find Natalia?”
Andie pulled out pen from her purse and wrote the address down on a napkin.
“Are you going to talk to her?”
“Yeah.”
“Want me to call her for you?”
“No.”
She checked her watch and looked up at me.
“I’m good,” I said to her.
Andie slid out of the booth and put her hand on my shoulder. “Thanks,” she whispered in to my ear.
I watched her walk out of the restaurant before turning back to my beer.
“She’s pretty,” Catherine said as she came over to collect Andie’s empty glass.
“Yeah.”
“Your wife?”
“Nah. Old girlfriend.”
“I see,” she said with a smile and walked off to the bar.
I got up and followed her to the counter where I asked her for the tab. She wrote it quickly up and slipped the check to me. From my pocket, I pulled several bills and dropped them on the hardwood counter.
“What are you doing later tonight?” I asked her as she collected the money.
Catherine tilted her head. “Going home to my husband.”
Wednesday, April 14 th 1117 hrs Investigative Division
TOWER
I tapped the pen on my notepad. It was filled with scribbled lines and question marks. I kept staring at the words, waiting for that magic moment when inspiration would leap off the page.
So many dead ends, so early in the case. Fawn Taylor was a poor little rich girl who had ran away from home because her parents had a few rules and they had the guts to stick to them.
No useful forensic evidence whatsoever. The crime scene may have been next to a dumpster, but it was clean of any meaningful evidence. All I got from the M.E. was that she was strangled to death and appeared to be sexually assaulted. No word back on the workup of her clothing.
I reached for the coffee cup and took a sip. The cup was three-quarters full, but the coffee inside was cold. I put it down with disgust.
Usually, after the physical evidence, it was the victimology that helped the most. But in this case, even that wasn’t very helpful.
Who was she? A fourteen-year-old runaway whose parents live in a small mansion.
What did she do? No idea. Once she took off from home, she was no longer a student. What did she do for those two weeks after she ran away?
Who did she know? Her parents, who gave me no indication of being involved. Her friends, all of whom turned out to be little prom princesses in the making. None had any idea where Fawn had been spending her time once she ran away.
Essentially, Fawn Taylor was a ghost for the last two weeks before her murder. My canvass of the East Sprague strip came up empty. No one knew a thing. Big surprise there.
And now I had another ghost to deal with. At least with this latest one, I could hope for an AFIS hit on her fingerprints to give me a jumping off point.
“My Lord, Tower,” Ray Browning boomed from the other side of the cubicle wall. “You’re tapping your pen so hard that it sounds like road construction over there.”
“Sorry.”
Browning peeked around the cubicle, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. I didn’t have to ask what kind it was. Even if I couldn’t smell it, I’d have known. Every day, for the last twenty years, he eats a tuna sandwich for lunch. Mustard, no mayo.
“Case giving you problems?” he asked, taking a bite of his foul concoction and chewing.
I shrugged. “Running low on places to go with it.”
“Little rich girl have a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks?”
“Not as far as I can tell.”
“Diary?”
“Typical teenager crap.”
“Parents?”
“Mom and step-dad.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Step-dad? That sounds promising.”
I knew what he was thinking and shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
“Any signs of it?”
“Some.”
“Like?”
“Like she was an early bloomer. She was probably sexually active at thirteen. Sharp downturn in grades. Marijuana use. Hated her parents.”
Browning nodded, chewing as he listened.
“He just doesn’t seem the type,” I offered.
“What’d you get from Forensics?”
“Very little.”
“Sexual assault, right?”
“Probably.”
“So no fluids?”
I shook my head.
“Hairs?”
“Nope. But I asked Cameron to double-check.”
“I wouldn’t count on getting anything out of that,” Browning said. “He’s pretty thorough.”
“I know. But the M.E. did the comb and comparison.”
“What?” Browning’s eyebrows shot up. “Why?”
“I dunno. But Cameron’s going to double-check the work.”
“That’ll piss off the M.E., no doubt.”
“He’s doing it off the books.”
“That’s fine, as long as he doesn’t find anything.” Brown took a deep breath and let it out. “It’d be nice to have something physical to either eliminate or link the step-dad, wouldn’t it?”
I agreed. “A lot of things would be nice. I’m batting about.037 on this one.”
“Not even good enough for the minors.”
“Not even good enough for little league.”
“Be careful,” he warned with a grin. “Crawford’ll send you back to patrol. Take your detective’s shield away from you.”
“At this point, he’d be doing me a favor.”
Browning chuckled as he tossed the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth and chewed it up. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb. “Keep working it, John,” he said. “Something will break.” Then he disappeared around the corner of the cubicle.
I tossed my pen onto my desk and leaned back in my chair. I put my hands behind my head and stared down at my notepad.
“Damn,” I muttered at the squiggly lines and question marks.
I was still staring at them when the phone rang fifteen minutes later.
The antiseptic odor of the autopsy room hung in the air, though I couldn’t tell if it was drifting down the hall to Cameron’s office or if the stench was coming off of his clothing.
I ignored the smell and leaned forward.
“You’re a hundred percent sure?”
Cameron half-shrugged. “No, not a hundred percent. Say ninety-eight. The fingerprint is definitely a match. I’ll try to locate her dental records eventually to shore it up. If it becomes a sticking point, we’ll have to pull DNA from the parents.”
I looked down at the printout he’d handed me, identifying my unknown victim.
Serena Gonzalez. Nineteen years old. I had her date of birth and a flag for a misdemeanor arrest in California. That was probably where she was printed. That was it, but it was a hell of a lot more than I had before Cameron called.
“Good work, Cam.”
Cameron leaned back in his chair, holding the arm rests and tapping all of his fingers at once in a rolling rhythm.
I watched him for a moment. Then, “What?”
He let out a long breath and looked around quickly, as if anyone else could have been hiding in his tiny office. Then he leaned forward. “I don’t like it, John.”
“Like what?”
“Doing shit behind the M.E.’s back. If he finds out, I could get fired.”
“You’re civil service. They can’t fire you.”
“They can with just cause.”
I gave him a look. “You found something, didn’t you?”
Cameron looked away.
“What is it? What’d you find?”
He looked back at me. “I can’t get fired over this. I mean it. I’ve got a baby coming.” His voice raised in pitch as he spoke. “I’ve got a wife. Responsibilities.”