Detective Wade Jackson Mystery - 02 - Secrets to Die For (9 page)

Evans made a line down the middle of the board and started listing the rape victims’ profiles on the right. Jackson still thought Gorman had likely killed Raina, but if there was a connection between these cases, this was the best way to see it. Maybe Gorman was also their rapist.

The door pushed open and Victor Slonecker, the district attorney, strode in, late as usual but perfectly groomed. He flashed a sincere smile. “Sorry to be late. Don’t backtrack for me. I’ll catch up.”

Jackson knew how this would go. He turned to Quince. “What else?”

Quince shifted and frowned at his notes. “When I typed it all up, I was surprised by how little I knew about each woman.” He shook his head. “But here’s what I have. Williams is African American and lives alone in a condo off Timberline in southwest Eugene. She works as a dental assistant for Bailey Hill Family Dental, which is not far from her house. The rapist came into her home through an unlocked back door and attacked her in the kitchen. She was listening to her iPod and didn’t hear him.”

“You’re talking about the unsolved rape cases? Was the homicide victim raped?” This was how Slonecker got caught up. “I thought you had a suspect in custody.”

“We do have a suspect,” Jackson said, “but all we have that ties him to the victim, so far, is association and proximity. Raina was also raped, so we’re exploring the possibility that her homicide was committed by the serial rapist.”

Slonecker nodded, then caught Jackson with his intense dark eyes. “Any surprises? Is the suspect anyone I should care about?” The DA was on a career path toward state attorney general and didn’t intend to let anyone else’s mistakes derail him. Last fall’s murdered schoolgirls case and its high-profile killer were still generating political fallout, so Slonecker was a little paranoid now.

“No, sir. Gorman is just another loser meth addict,” Jackson said. He turned to Quince. “Tell us about Amy Hastings.”

Quince gave them a brief run-down. “She’s twenty-two and lives near the University of Oregon in a house she shares with two other women. She works nights as a bartender at the Black Forest and spends her days writing. She was attacked on the Amazon jogging path on a Monday evening, three weeks after Williams was raped.”

The pizza arrived, so they took a break and ate the thick slices without benefit of a table or plates. It wasn’t pretty. Between bites, Jackson outlined for Slonecker everything they’d found at the scene where Raina’s body had been left. The DA asked a few cursory questions, then hurried out on his way to another meeting. Jackson felt uncomfortably full, so he put down his third piece of pizza and decided to wrap up.

“Evans, find out everything you can about Raina. Talk to her grandmother and her friends. Find out if she ever saw a counselor. I’ll interview the rape victims, then we’ll compare notes.” He turned to Schak. “Check in with the evidence techs. I want to know about the flat tire, when and why it happened. See if they found anything interesting in the car.”

“Anything for me?” Quince wanted to know.

“Pull together your list of rape suspects with a brief profile for each and e-mail it to me.”

“Will do.”

When Jackson stood, his chest tightened in a painful squeeze. The sensation passed as quickly as it came. This was becoming a pattern with stressful cases when he consumed too much caffeine and didn’t get enough sleep. He’d been working on lowering his cholesterol, but clearly that wasn’t enough.

“Are you okay?” Evans asked

“Peachy.”

Jackson went back to his desk, thinking he would call Stevens in the Portland FBI office again, then head over to the jail and interrogate Gorman one more time. As he dialed, he saw Quince making his way through the roomful of cluttered desks toward him. He hung up and waited.

“Amy Hastings called back,” Quince announced. “She says if you want to talk to her, you have to do it now because she’s leaving in the morning. She’s going to Seattle to stay with her sister for a while.” Quince’s brow furrowed. “I feel like I failed her.”

“It’s not over yet. We’ll get him.” Jackson stood and grabbed his coat. “What’s the address?”

The hundred-year-old house near 19th and Patterson looked much like all the other student dwellings in the neighborhood: bicycles chained to the front porch, empty beer bottles under the bushes, and a PEACE sign in the front window.

When Jackson opened the screen door, it came loose from the hinges. Before he could knock on the wooden door, it flew open and a young woman looked at him, then turned and yelled, “The cop is here.” She spun back around and grinned. “Hi, I’m Tara.” He guessed her age at about twenty, but it was hard to tell with her boyishly short hair and no makeup.

Another young woman came down the stairs and stood timidly in the middle of the living room, shoulders hunched forward as if she were cold. The shadow of a bruise darkened one side of her face. “Amy Hastings?”

“Yes, come in.” She didn’t move.

Jackson stepped in and recoiled from the smell of incense. He looked around for the right place to have this painful conversation.

“Let’s go to the kitchen,” Amy suggested. She moved suddenly and Jackson followed. Amy waited and pulled the sliding pocket door closed behind him before they sat down at a cluttered table. She chewed on a fingernail as she waited for Jackson to speak. The girl was frail, five foot five and about a hundred pounds with the boots. Her ash-blond hair was chin length and her blue eyes were weary and awash with pain. Jackson reminded himself not to think of her as a girl. She was twenty-two, an adult.

“Amy, I know this is hard to talk about, so I’m going to focus on two things.” Jackson unconsciously held out two fingers as he talked. “First I want you to tell me everything you remember about your attacker. Then I want to know everything about your daily routine. Where you go and what you do.”

“I don’t have a routine. Not anymore.” Her voice was more adult than her appearance.

“Let’s start with the guy who attacked you. Did you see him at all?”

She blinked and her eyes started to water. “I don’t want to talk about him. I told the other cop everything I know.”

Jackson decided to move on before she shut down completely. “Okay, let’s talk about your routine instead. I know that you work as a bartender at the Black Forest. Any customers there who have shown a special interest or maybe threatened you in some way?”

She shrugged. “It’s a bar full of drunk men. They all creep me out.”

Jackson felt a flicker of irritation. “He’s attacked two women, maybe three, and he’ll likely rape another. He’s probably scoping her out right now. If we can figure out how he chooses his targets, we have a chance of stopping him.”

Amy closed her eyes, gathered some courage, then said, “Nobody at the bar comes to mind. What else do you want to know?”

“What do you do when you’re not at work?”

“I write. You know, short stories, poems, essays.” She brightened a little. “I have an idea for a novel, but I need to get myself in a better space before I can start writing it.”

“Do you belong to a writer’s group?” Jackson jotted down
short stories
,
poems
.

“No.”

“Any clubs? Or other hobbies?”

“I go to the Women for Women meetings on Saturday sometimes.”

“Do any men attend?”

Amy rolled her eyes. “It’s called Women for Women for a reason.”

Now Jackson understood. Amy was a lesbian. He felt a little stupid and a little charged at the same time. “Do you know Keesha Williams?”

Another eye rolling from Amy. “No. And I don’t know if she’s into chicks. You’ll have to ask her.”

Jackson would have called Keesha that instant if he’d had her number handy.

“Where does the women’s group meet?”

“Over on Agate, in the community building.”

“Have you ever noticed a guy hanging around there? Across the street, watching maybe?”

“No.”

“Did your attacker say anything, I mean, about your being a lesbian?” Jackson didn’t know if the term was offensive or not. This was new and unpaved territory.

“He called me a dyke bitch. He said I needed to know what a cock felt like.”

“Did you tell any of this to Detective Quince?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t ask.” Amy shook her head. “And I was traumatized and didn’t want to talk about it.”

Jackson asked her a few more questions, extracted her cell phone number in case he needed to talk to her again, and excused himself. In the car, he called Quince.

“Jackson here. Funny question for you. Is Keesha Williams a lesbian?”

Silence. Then from Quince, “I don’t know. I didn’t ask her.”

“What about Amy Hastings? Did you know that she was a lesbian?” Jackson started the cruiser, plugged his ear-bud into his cell phone, and pulled out into the street.

Quince cleared his throat. “I suspected so, but I didn’t specifically ask her.”

“Why not?”

More silence.

Then Jackson said, “It’s not a criticism. I just want to know what your thought process was.”

“It didn’t really come up. The one girl in the house looked kinda butch, so I wondered. Then the butch girl seemed a little protective of Amy. But nothing Amy said implied her sexual orientation, and I didn’t ask. It seemed, uh”—Quince struggled for the right expression—”politically incorrect.”

“Give me Keesha’s phone number and address. Politically correct or not, I need to know. I think these might be hate crimes.” Jackson turned left on 18th and headed west, remembering that Keesha lived near Bailey Hill somewhere.

“I never thought about that. Jesus.” Quince’s distress was palpable. “She lives in those apartments on Wilshire. Let me find her exact information and I’ll call you back.”

Jackson waited in Keesha’s driveway for fifty minutes. He’d spoken to her briefly at work and she agreed to meet him at her apartment on a break. The huge complex of condos had been built recently, and the creamy yellow paint still looked new, even in the shade of the giant fir and oak trees. Give it a few years, Jackson thought. They’ll be fighting the mold and moss like everyone else on the south hills.

A RAV4 pulled in beside him and a young woman wearing lavender scrubs climbed out. Jackson could see why Quince had said the victims were not chosen for a physical type. Unlike Amy, Keesha was sturdy and had long black hair pulled back into a ponytail. As Jackson followed her into the condo, he wondered how a young dental assistant could afford the place. Keesha perched on the edge of her brown velour couch and clenched her hands tightly together. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

No introductions, no small talk. Okay. Jackson smiled at her. “Are you a lesbian?”

She recoiled for a second, then straightened her shoulders. “Yes. Why does it matter?”

“The second woman who was attacked is also a lesbian. Now that we have that information, it might help us track and apprehend the rapist.”

“He’s attacking gay women?” She didn’t want to believe it.

“It’s a new working theory. Can you help me with it?” Jackson kept his voice soft. “Do you attend any lesbian meetings?”

“What meetings?” Keesha’s sharp head shake and annoyed expression told him she couldn’t believe he’d asked her something so stupid. “Do you think all lesbian women belong to the same club?”

“The other victim went to meetings called Women for Women. I’m trying to figure out how he identified both of you.”

Keesha’s composure crumpled a bit. “I’m not involved in any groups, political or social. But the truth is, that’s why I’m in Eugene. Because of the lesbian community. Because of the acceptance.” She pressed her hands to her face. “Now I find out I was raped because I’m gay. I knew there were homophobic assholes here, I’ve just never had a serious confrontation before this.” Keesha started to cry. “If it isn’t safe for lesbians in Eugene, where in God’s name can I live?”