“Sure,” said Petra.
“The truth was, Schoelkopf was right. About it being a likely dead end.”
And you didn’t care to test the assumption.
“So Curtis had no family?” she said. Using the vic’s name. Wanting Neil to think about Hoffey as a human being, at least for a moment.
“No one claimed the body. He got bashed up pretty good. If I never see another one like it, I’ll be none the worse off.”
CHAPTER 12
Jewell Blank, the fourteen-year-old girl murdered in Griffith Park, had relatives, but according to Detective Max Stokes’s notes, they hadn’t been helpful.
The mother was Grace Blank, twenty-nine, single, a barmaid, living with her boyfriend, Thomas Crisp, thirty-two, an unemployed trucker and “biker type.” Neither had seen Jewell for over a year, since she’d run away from their double-wide on the outskirts of Bakersfield. Neither, it appeared, had searched for her with any enthusiasm.
Twenty-nine years old meant Grace had given birth to Jewell when she was fifteen and Petra had a good idea of what came with that.
Another kid in Griffith Park. That made Petra’s stomach knot up, as she thought of Billy Straight. Same background, same escape. Billy had lived in the park, like a feral child, scrounging Dumpsters for food and narrowly avoiding death. But for a happier ending, he could’ve been sitting on a cloud next to Jewell Blank.
Petra had rescued Billy. For the first year, after his grandmother took him in, they’d stayed in touch- regular phone calls, occasional outings. Now, Billy was fifteen, nearly six feet tall, and a prep-school junior. On his way to Stanford, Mrs. Adamson confided. She’d already talked to the dean.
It had been months since Petra had heard from him. Which was probably good, at least from his perspective. His life was in order, what use would he have for the police?
She found no record that Jewell Blank’s case had been transferred to another detective.
Max Stokes appeared to have worked the case hard, getting help, as it turned out, from Shirley Lenois. The two veteran detectives had scoured the streets, interviewed scores of other runaways, checked the shelters and the churches and the agencies.
Jewell had squatted, on and off, in some of Hollywood’s last remaining abandoned buildings and was known to her street-kid peers as “stuck-up,” an assertive panhandler, an adroit shoplifter. No one could say if she’d prostituted herself for money, but she had slept with boys for drugs.
Multi-drug user: weed, pills, meth, acid, Ecstasy. Not heroin, though, everyone agreed. Needles scared Jewell. Petra returned to the autopsy report, avoiding the photos of the little girl’s head. No needle tracks. The tox screen revealed significant levels of cannabis, alcohol, and pseudoephedrine, probably from an OTC decongestant.
According to the other kids, Jewell frequented the park when she got in a bad mood and didn’t want to hang with anyone else.
No, she’d never spoken of meeting anyone there.
No, there were no boyfriends or regular johns in her life. At least, not that she’d ever mentioned.
She’d been found fully clothed with no evidence of rape. The coroner’s conclusion was that she’d been sexually active for some time.
A premortem snapshot had been stapled to the file. What looked to be a school photo of a kid around nine. Jewell Blank had been dark-haired, wan, freckled, reluctant to smile.
Grace Blank and Thomas Crisp wanted to know if the city would pay for funeral expenses. Max Stokes’s notes were terse on that subject:
“I informed them that death arrangements etc. were the family’s responsibility. Respondents were displeased by that info., said they’d get back to me.”
Jewell Blank’s body had sat in the morgue for a month before an Inglewood mortuary had picked it up for cremation.
Was there any point talking to Max? Disrupting the poor guy’s retirement by reminding him of one that had gotten away?
She looked around the room. Three detectives hunched over piles of paperwork. That young, good-looking one, Eddie Baker; Ryan Miller, another stud; and Barney Fleischer, gaunt, bald, ancient, nearing retirement himself.
Petra walked over to Barney’s desk. He was filling out a requisition form for office supplies. Demi-glasses perched on his beaklike nose. His handwriting was tiny, pretty, almost calligraphic.
She asked him if he knew where Max Stokes was.
“Corvallis, Washington,” he said, continuing to write. “He’s got a daughter up there, Karen. She’s a doctor, never got married so you can probably find her under Stokes.”
No curiosity about why Petra wanted to know. Petra thanked him and returned to Jewell Blank’s file. Skimming a bit more, she put it aside, called Corvallis, and got office and home numbers for Karen Stokes, M.D.
Max answered the phone.
“Petra Connor,” he said. “We were just sitting down for dinner.”
“Sorry, I’ll call back later.”
“No, it’s fine, just cold cuts. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Picturing Max’s ruddy, mustachioed face, she told him about reviewing the Blank file, gave him the same nosy-intern story.
“You’re thinking of reworking it?” he said.
“Don’t know yet, Max. Depends on what I learn.”
“I hope you decide yes. Maybe you can do better than me.”
“I doubt that.”
“You never know, Petra. New blood and all that.”
“You and Shirley, that’s a lot of detective ability.”
“Poor Shirley. So… what can I tell you?”
“I really don’t know, Max. Seems to me you guys did all you could.”
“I thought we did… I still think about that one from time to time. Poor little girl. Everyone said she was aggressive, had a temper, but looking at her… such a tiny little thing. It was brutal.”
The autopsy report stared up at Petra. Jewell’s stats. Five-one, ninety-four pounds.
Occipital injuries…
What was the point of all this?
Max Stokes was saying, “… with the parents- actually just one parent, the mother. Plus that boyfriend of hers.”
“Solid citizens,” said Petra.
“My gut pegged him, Thomas Crisp, as the bad guy. Your typical trash boyfriend scenario, maybe gets a little too close to the daughter, you know? The coroner said Jewell had been having sex for a few years. I’d bet Crisp abused her, that would be a good reason for running away. I never asked him directly, just hinted around and he got squirrelly. Plus, he had a felony record. Bad checks, attempted welfare fraud. I know it’s not sex crimes or murder, but lowlife is lowlife. His attitude in general was bad- he didn’t even fake caring about Jewell. I checked him out carefully, even drove up to Bakersfield. Guy had an alibi. During the time of the murder, he’d been on a three-day bender with a bunch of other lowlifes. First they bar-crawled, then they bought more booze and went back to the mother and Crisp’s trailer. Neighbors in the trailer park complained and the police paid a call. Crisp was definitely in Bakersfield the whole time, everyone saw him.”
“What about the mother?”
“She was there, too. Borderline retarded, if you ask me. She did seem to care a little, but every time she started to cry Crisp nudged her in the ribs and she shut up. His big concern was who was going to pay for the burial.”
“I read your notes,” said Petra.
Max sighed. “What can I tell you. Sometimes you don’t win.”
“Ain’t that the truth. Enjoying retirement?”
“I dunno. I’ve been thinking of getting a security job. Just to get me out of the house.”
“Sure,” said Petra. “Makes sense.”
“Anyway, good luck on little Jewell.”
“One more thing, Max. I don’t see any transfer.”
“I wanted to transfer it to Shirley and she wanted to take it. Because she’d already started. Actually, it was she who came to me, wanting to partner. Because she’d caught another case, couple of years before, that probably wasn’t the same guy but there were some similarities.”