A shiny, black Mercedes pulled up next to the curb and the leggy blonde clicked over to the car. The passenger window rolled down and she leaned into it. The windows on the car were tinted, but the interior was light enough that I could see an older white male behind the wheel. I stopped in the doorway of an antique toy store and watched. It took only a few seconds of negotiation before she nodded her head and stood up from the car. She spun around deftly on her high heels and clicked off around the corner with the car following her.
I took a deep inhale on the Camel and dropped it to the sidewalk. As I got close to the alley’s entrance, a patrol car came around the far corner with its engine gunning. The car whipped into the alley in front of me.
A young black officer was behind the wheel while an older, graying officer was in the passenger seat. They stopped behind the Mercedes and activated their emergency lights. The Mercedes was rocking slightly side to side. I could see the head of the driver, but the prostitute’s head was out of view.
The black officer jumped out of the car and strode quickly and confidently to the driver’s door of the Mercedes. The graying officer took his time getting out of the car and saw me standing at the alley entrance. He ignored me and sauntered up to the passenger side of the car.
“River City Police Department, sir,’ the black officer said after he smacked the top of the roof.
The hooker jumped upright in her seat. The older officer stood next to her window where she never saw him.
“Roll down your window, sir,” the young cop ordered.
A moment later the driver leaned his head partially out of his window. “What’s the problem, Officer?”
“You’re getting oral sex from a known prostitute, that’s the problem.”
“She’s not a hooker, Officer. She’s an old girlfriend.”
“What’s her name then?”
The hooker leaned over and yelled, “Toni.”
The young officer looked frustrated. “Ma’am, please sit back. I’m talking with the driver.”
“Her name’s Toni,” the driver said.
“Yeah, she told me.”
The driver pleaded, “I swear she’s an old girlfriend.”
The young officer crossed his arms and frowned. “Let me see your driver’s license and registration.”
The driver reached over to the glove box and fumbled around. Toni looked to her right and saw the older officer outside the car. She rolled down her window and said, “Why are you standing there?”
“I’m his back-up officer,” he said and watched his partner.
“Do you know Officer Hiero?”
He turned his head to her. “Hiero?”
The hooker nodded.
“Yeah, I know him.”
“I know him, too,” she said.
“He arrest you?”
She shook her head, the blonde hair flopping over her shoulder. “No, we’re friends.”
“Friends?”
She nodded again.
“I doubt it.”
Toni glanced at the black officer and then turned back to the officer standing outside her window. She leaned in and read his name tag. “Officer …. Bates, you’re not his back-up. You’re his training officer. Am I right?”
Bates ignored her and watched his partner.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Rookies arrest everybody.”
A broad smile grew on the older officer’s face. It faded when he glanced over at me. He jerked his head for me to leave the area.
“Can I get out of the car?” Toni asked.
“No.”
“But I need to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Toni whined.
Bates glanced over at me. “What the hell do you want?”
I shrugged.
“Take off.”
I glanced around, shoved my hands in my pockets and started across the street.
“I’ll tell you about the dead girl,” Toni blurted to the older officer.
I spun around and stared at them.
“What dead girl are we talking about?”
“The one in the bingo parking lot.”
Bates stared at his partner and thought for a moment. When he started to turn in my direction, I wandered off to the end of the block over on First Street. I shook a cigarette free, lit it and stood there smoking. When the cigarette was done, I changed my vantage point to make sure the police car was still there.
The rookie was stuffing Toni into the back seat of the patrol car as his training officer dropped back into the passenger seat. The rookie climbed into the car, turned off his emergency lights and backed out of the alley. The tires chirped slightly as they drove away.
Thursday, April 15 th 1019 hrs Investigative Division
TOWER
“Gonzalez, huh? Lots of them down here.”
The voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Salinas Police Sergeant Roger Kraemer.
“Could you run a local check on my victim, Sergeant? I got her identified off fingerprints and the flag on the hit said something about a misdemeanor arrest in California.”
“Gimme her info,” Sergeant Kraemer grunted.
I gave him her name and birth-date and could hear him typing it into his computer. He asked for the address on her driver’s license. I told him.
He stopped typing. “Her address is on Grant Road? Well, that narrows things down.”
“What do you mean?”
Kraemer coughed away from the phone receiver. “What I mean is, we got ourselves a group of Gonzalez pukes that live on Grant Road who are in trouble all the time.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Stolen property, mostly. They run chop shops once in a while, too.”
“Do you recognize Serena’s name?”
“No,” Kraemer answered. “But I wouldn’t recognize many of them..”
“How about a Lucinda?”
“Nope. Here’s the computer return on your vic, though. Serena Gonzalez. Same date of birth. She shows that address on Grant Road. One arrest at age sixteen, three years ago.”
“Prostitution?”
“Nope. Simple Theft. Victim was a store at the mall.”
“She was fingerprinted off of that?”
“I imagine that whoever popped her for the shoplift saw the last name and the address and figured that if we had a chance to get a Grant Road Gonzalez printed and pictured, we’d better do it.”
“Makes sense.”
“Yeah. Listen, I’m going to have Detective Ernie Williams give you a call back in a little bit. He’s in Auto Theft and Burglary right now and I think he’s been working the Gonzalez family for a while.”
“That’d be helpful. Thanks.”
He grunted and hung up.
I reached for my pen and scribbled some notes. Serena belonged to a family of criminals. My experience with people born into a family like that was that they go one of two ways. They either embrace that lifestyle wholeheartedly and join in the fun, or they reject it utterly. Either way, having the same last name is a curse of sorts. It identifies them forever with that group of criminals, which hampers a criminal career and sullies a straight one.
I paged through my case file to the autopsy photos. They were arranged chronologically, so the early pictures showed Serena in an almost peaceful repose, as if she were asleep with an unnatural stiffness. Her arms lay at her sides and the skin tone was too gray. The stab wounds on her chest and the bruising on her throat were like angry punctuation marks.
I picked up her driver’s license photo and examined it. It showed a sixteen-year-old Serena. Her thick, jet-black hair was teased up and she flashed an excited grin. There was a light in her eyes. Her face still had a slight chubbiness to it, almost as if she hadn’t shed all of her baby fat. Glancing back down at the close-up of her face on autopsy table, she was noticeably thinner, though not unhealthy. But her face held the lines and edges of a woman. The picture on the license was of a girl.
Staring at a picture of her dead, naked body, I tried to envision her alive. I thought of what George and Gina had said about her at the Tip Top. How popular she was. It was plain that she had a nice body. Even in death, her breasts were pert and her stomach flat. I imagined her flashing that same smile from her license photo to the customers at the Tip Top. Any one of them would think he’d hit the lottery. Young, built and with a killer smile. And for a five-dollar drink, she’d spent twenty minutes talking to you.