Street Dreams (50 page)

She nodded, and for a minute, I thought she might actually relent. Instead, she got up. “I want to see Ella.”

My father’s words rolled through my brain: Molesters are usually
charming.
They often inspire an unbelievable amount of loyalty, enough trust to get a retarded girl to follow the molester into Hollywood
and walk alone in the middle of the night. I still retained my last image of Belinda, crossing the street with her head down,
her demeanor so forlorn. A disconsolate figure mowed down by some evil force. Someone had to bury this child properly!

“Sarah,” I called out.

She turned around.

“How about this?” I suggested. “How about if you tell Louise?” Sarah fixed her eyes on me. She remained stubborn and silent.
My last-ditch effort. “Well, how about if you tell Koby?” Slowly, she began to smile. Then she began to giggle. “Well …
maybe
Koby.”

B
y midmorning,
the sky had turned sooty gray, the sun blazing down on the top of my head. It was only one-and-a-half blocks to the Strip,
but in the heat it felt like a mile in the Sahara. There was a small café at the intersection of Sunset and Willem. Dad and
I settled in at a back table, which was serviced by a red-haired waitress with a crew cut, droopy eyes, and an open mouth.
She got the order wrong: a pretty slick trick because all we had asked for were coffee variations. Then she realized she was
bringing the wrong java to the wrong table. A minute later, she fixed her mistake.

“Who gets the latte?”

“Me,” I told her.

She served me the latte. “Who gets the black coffee?”

My father was the only other one at the table. He looked at me and winked. “Right here, please.”

“Six bucks.”

“I pay now?” Dad said.

“Now or later.”

Decker frowned, then took out a ten. “It’s all yours. Just give us some privacy.”

She stared at the bill. “Okay. Are you a cop or something?”

The Loo took out his badge. “Yes.”

“Wow! Neat!”

“Privacy?” Decker repeated.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“That means you leave.”

“Oh. Right.”

Eventually, she left. Dad turned to me. “I’m reluctant to get Koby involved.”

“Why?” I said. “He’ll do it—”

“I know he’ll do it. That’s not the problem. He’s a nurse; that’s the problem. As a health-care professional, once she tells
him about any kind of molestation, he’s obligated to report it, just like we would be as cops. The difference is, if he reports
it, the case jumps into the system and it’s out of our hands. Yeah, we could get involved, but it would be messy. Someone
would probably call in DSS. Then some social worker starts talking to Sarah and before long the whole thing about Sarah abandoning
the baby comes up. Didn’t you tell me that Louise went through hurdles to get legal custody of Ella?”

“Yes.”

“Who knows? This might jeopardize the custody decision. Once it’s out, we open a big can of worms, Cindy.”

I hadn’t thought of that.

“Furthermore,” Dad continued, “a good lawyer can claim that Koby is biased against Buck or whoever it is, and he’d have a
point. It would look like a setup. And in a way it would be a setup because we dragged Koby into it. I’m not saying we won’t
use him. But if we do it without considering the consequences, the perp could slip away.”

“But if we don’t jump soon, Daddy, Sarah could change her mind about talking to Koby. Then we’re back to square one. Aren’t
you the one who told me to just go for it?”

“Cindy, this isn’t someone who’s pointing a gun at you. This is a crime that happened maybe a year ago—”

“Belinda Syracuse happened only a few months ago.”

“And that’s another thing. Even if Sarah was being molested, you have nothing to tie that to Belinda Syracuse’s hit-and-run.”

“We have DNA on the car. If Buck molested Sarah, we could arrest him and demand a DNA sample.”

“Why would the DA bother with a DNA sample? Sarah’s molestation isn’t a recent rape where there’s evidence. It’s he says,
she says. We have to show a link to connect the molester to the hit-and-run, if there even is a molester. The only thing we
do know is that if Sarah tells Koby about any kind of impropriety, it’s all over. So we’ve got to map out the contingencies
before Sarah makes the confession.”

“But Sarah is the case,” I said.

Decker said, “No, Sarah
isn’t
the case, Cindy. The DNA from the blood smear on the license plate is the case. Our first priority is to see if we can get
a matchup.
If
we do get a match and
if
it is Buck, then we have Buck associated with the car. Now that
still
doesn’t place him at the crime. But it will be enough to get us a search warrant for his house and start a file on him. From
there, we can probably get his phone records, go through his papers, start asking around town for witnesses who may have seen
Buck and Belinda together the night of the murder.
That’s
our best bet. And even if people did see them together, Buck can always say that he was just trying to be a nice guy to Belinda,
much in the way Koby was just being nice to Sarah.”

“Yeah, I was wondering where you were going with that line of questioning.”

“I know I made you nervous. I brought up Koby for a couple of reasons. One, to get rapport with Sarah. She obviously likes
Koby and I knew I could build on that. But also, I wanted to show you how easy it is to screw up a molestation case, how easy
it is to get the facts wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing. You start saying things like he took her away from home
to get her alone. Then he lifted her up to the basketball hoop ostensibly to make a shot, but really he wanted to touch her
or look up her dress. Then he held her hand—”

“He was helping her across the
street,
for God’s sake!”

Decker said, “Cynthia, I’m aware that Koby’s not a child molester. And the mere fact that I can get you rattled so easily
shows how simple it is to throw out false allegations. Koby knew exactly what he was doing with Sarah. Why? Because he’s a
male who works almost exclusively with kids and women, and has probably been trained in how to respond to sexual overtures.
His answer to Sarah’s request to get tickled was a good one. He refused to engage in any kind of dubious physical contact
with her, even if it meant hurting Sarah’s feelings. When you question witnesses, you’ve got to go in without a bias. Which
is why I don’t want Sarah talking to him. We’ve got a bias.”

I was frustrated. “So what do we do?”

Decker furrowed his brow. “You really hate this guy Buck, don’t you?”

“Dad, I don’t know him well enough to truly hate him.” I sipped my latte. “But I would like to remind you that there were
other deaths that resulted from the hit-and-run, including a baby. Whoever killed Belinda is responsible for multiple deaths.”

“You’ve exchanged angry words with him?”

“Yeah, I kind of browbeat him, but then I apologized.”

Dad’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“Actually, yes. Afterward, we began to talk. He knows I’m suspicious of him.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I asked him where he was the night Belinda was murdered. It was a throwaway comment at the time. I wish I had taken
him more seriously.”

“Where was he?”

“Home with his dog, watching a movie.” I shrugged. “He actually seemed to be enjoying the questions. I think they made him
feel like a big shot instead of the bug that he is.”

“Interesting.” Decker smoothed his mustache. “So this is what you do, Cindy. You call him up and ask him out for coffee to
go over the night again with him.”

I was confused. “Warn him that we still consider him a suspect?”

“Then be smart about it. Be casual. Whose case is the hit-and-run?”

“Brill’s.”

“Great. I’ll talk to him and we’ll get the details nailed down. But it’ll go like this. You ask him to meet you anywhere they
serve coffee exclusively in paper cups. Run a few questions by him. Generic questions. Keep it light. Even flirt a little.
Then when you’re done, offer to throw away his cup for him. Don’t wait for an answer, just pick it up and head for the garbage.
Brill will arrange to have a team near the trash with a hidden video camera on you as backup so no one can say that you planted
evidence. You throw
your
cup away, but drop his cup in an evidence bag that’ll be placed right near the garbage can. If the cup’s still partially
full, make sure it doesn’t spill over the rim. And whatever you do, don’t get your cups mixed up.”

I sat up. “His saliva will be on the cup. We get his DNA.”

“Depends on the residue … how much he drools when he drinks. Wouldn’t hurt if you wore something sexy.”

“Like fishnets?”

“A little more subtle for professionalism.”

“You really think you can get his DNA from a coffee cup?”

“It’s worth a shot.” Decker sat back in his chair. “Let me have a minute to clear my thoughts.”

“Take your time.”

He did. A few minutes later, he straightened. “Okay. This is the approach. We have two independent investigations going on.
One is Sarah Sanders and her dark secret. We suspect molestation, but we don’t know for sure and we don’t know who’s involved.
She won’t talk to us, but she’ll talk to Koby. When the timing’s right, you or Brill will talk to Koby and explain that we
suspect something’s amiss and would he mind talking to Sarah about it. You don’t mention, hint at, or imply that this has
anything to do with Belinda Syracuse, okay? Because as of right now, it doesn’t.”

“Got it.”

“In the meantime,” Decker said, “you, Cindy, have not forgotten about poor Belinda. You witnessed the accident, and it still
haunts you.”

“Actually, that’s the truth.”

“Then you don’t have to fake anything to convince Brill of your sincerity. You know you have DNA and a partial print as evidence
but no one to connect it to. You remember Belinda’s brother saying that someone from the center was supposed to pick up Belinda
and give her a ride back. Now, you checked out the center’s phone records, but of course nothing popped, nothing fit. And
you know you can’t check personal phone records because that’s trampling on Fifth Amendment rights. But you’re slowly going
down the list of people who might have had contact with her, starting with Klinghoffner.”

“Are you serious?”

“I know you don’t think it’s him, but start with him. Do the exact thing with Klinghoffner that you’re going to do with Buck.”

“Take him out for coffee.”

“Exactly. That way, you don’t show prejudice. Then do Buck; then do anyone else who works there—start from the top dog, down
to the lowly maintenance man, and you include the women because you haven’t any idea if this is a molestation or not. You
can collect paper cups and use them as evidence without asking permission from the suspects because they gave you permission
to throw them away, ceding the right of private ownership. The cups are now public property.”

“Is the Department going to pay for all this DNA testing?”

“A very valid question. The hit-and-run was gruesome and a baby died, so maybe.”

Decker held up a finger. “The main thing is we have to set it up without bias. This way, Koby doesn’t know what you’re doing,
and you don’t know what Sarah Sanders told him. It’s all timing— like an orchestra. Strings can’t come in too early, oboes
can’t miss the beat, or you have a mess instead of music. They don’t call it conducting an investigation for nothing.”

“You’re a genius.”

“Be thankful that brains are inherited.”

They had decided on an afternoon tea because tea was more casual than dinner.

This was the menu.

Tray one: assorted finger sandwiches—egg salad, lox, tuna, cucumber with tomatoes, and cheese.

Tray two: finger food, including dainty bite-size potato knishes, miniature spinach quiches, vegetarian egg rolls, and fried
pot stickers. Accompanying these edibles would be a soy sauce, a sweet-and-sour sauce, and ketchup.

Trays three and four: assorted breads, including but not limited to croissants, brioches, seed rolls, minibagels, olive and
basil bread, and a caraway-seed rye. There was also butter, margarine, clotted cream, and strawberry jam for sides.

Trays five and six: the baked goods. Mini pecan pies, assorted mini fruit tarts, éclairs, petits fours, napoleons, cookies,
muffins, scones, and cupcakes.

Tray seven: fresh fruit dipped in white and dark chocolate.

Tray eight was just plain fresh fruit.

Somewhere in Magda’s dining room, there was also tea, coffee, and mineral water.

Rina’s father was taking a nap, and the women were puttering around trying not to get on each other’s nerves. Decker had made
himself comfortable in an armchair in the living room. He had dressed in a blue button-down shirt and tan slacks—no jacket—
and loafers without socks. It was hot even in the city. He said, “I thought this was supposed to be informal.”

“Just a little something.” Magda paced. “I don’t know why you do this to me, Ginny.”