The First Cut (11 page)

“If she thought she was in love, then she was,” countered Vining. “There’s no blood test for love. Moore ended it, and her life went spinning out of control.”

Ruiz grinned. “I think you watched too much of that Lifetime channel for women while you were gone.”

Vining gave him an amiable smile, showing she could take a joke, while thinking,
Just keep pulling the rope, my friend. Eventually, you’ll hang yourself.

Early raised her index finger. “Vining’s got a point.”

Ruiz’s grin stiffened.

“Granted, Moore’s got some agenda he’s working through, but we’re ignoring that little play Frankie and Chauffeur Girl put on at the strip club. Who was the girl? Where was Frankie for the past two weeks? And why the hell was her body dumped in Pasadena?”

“Let’s back up and start at the beginning,” Kissick said.

Schuyler took the lid off the banker’s box. “Frankie Lynde,” the date of her disappearance, and the case number were written on the side in black marker. “I have Lynde’s paper trail for the past two years at the station. Feel free to come down and run our copy machine. I brought copies of my and my partner’s notes, the reports of the interviews we conducted, and the other research we did.”

From the box he took out the flyer that was posted all over L.A. County, that had appeared in all the local newspapers and on the local and national news. The flyer showed Lynde’s official police portrait, in uniform in front of the U.S. flag, and a second photo of her on a sailboat, tanned, windblown, and smiling.

For the next hour, Schuyler summarized what he’d learned.

Frances Susan Lynde was twenty-eight years old. She had been an LAPD officer for seven years, the last three working undercover vice out of Hollywood. She had a reputation as a solid cop. She and her team were awarded medals for their role in busting a group of Thais running a prostitution ring out of a house in East Hollywood, smuggling in women to work as sex slaves. She’d also done important work in busting porno film producers who were hiring underage actors. By all accounts, she was passionate about her job.

She grew up in Azusa, a small city in the San Gabriel Valley about fifteen miles east of Pasadena. She was an only child. Frank and Debby Lynde decided to name their first-born after Frank whether a boy or a girl. Frankie grew up to be a tomboy who loved hanging around with her father. Her childhood turned tragic. When she was eleven, her mother was murdered in a convenience store robbery, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Debby had gone out to get milk. Frank was watching the game and asked her to pick up cigarettes for him. The store’s security camera showed Debby at the counter waiting for the clerk to get the cigarettes from the locked cabinet when the gunmen entered. If she hadn’t stopped for Frank’s cigarettes, she would have already left.

Frank never recovered. He worked all the hours he could, then spent his time off playing pool and drinking at a local bar. His sister and mom took care of Frankie, but her aunt had her own family and her grandmother was in poor health. Frankie was often in trouble. After graduating from high school, she worked in a veterinary clinic. She liked animals but grew bored. She started a degree in criminal justice part-time at Cal State Los Angeles. She dropped it after a year, applied to the LAPD and was accepted.

Frank Lynde was doubly proud that Frankie had pulled her life together and had followed in his footsteps. She was more ambitious than he and earned prime assignments early on. He envisioned good things for her. He’d remarried when Frankie was in high school, to a woman with four young children. He’d recently divorced but still lived in the same tract home in Azusa at the base of the foothills.

Frankie was last seen Friday, May 20, just before midnight at XXX Marks the Spot near the Los Angeles airport. Her body was found Monday, June 6, in Pasadena. She was not reported missing until Wednesday, May 25, when she didn’t show up for work. With the LAPD’s 3/12 workweek, she worked three twelve-hour days and was off Saturday through Tuesday. Her friends said that lately it was not unusual for her to disappear on her days off.

An artist’s rendering of the female in the chauffeur’s outfit who met Frankie at the club had been widely distributed and LAPD cataloged and tracked down thousands of leads, none good.

Witnesses in the parking lot saw Frankie and the chauffeur running from the club into a black limousine that one witness identified as a late-model Lincoln Town Car. The chauffeur climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled onto Century Boulevard heading south. No one noted the license plate.

“They were too busy checking out the females,” Kissick said.

“Women wearing men’s suits…” Caspers let the comment hang.

Early challenged him. “Women wearing men’s suits what? You find that hot, huh?”

Caspers raised a shoulder. “I’m just saying…Chicks don’t play dress-up for each other. Where was the guy? In the back of the limo or someplace else?”

Kissick pulled over the photograph of a Lincoln Town Car. “He sends her out while he stays in the shadows.”

Schuyler had done a perfunctory search of limo rental companies who employed female drivers and had turned up nothing. In Southern California on a warm Friday night, hundreds of limos are likely on the streets.

A search of Lynde’s condominium in Studio City turned up $10,000 in hundreds hidden in the wall behind her bedroom dresser. Also hidden there was a pair of diamond-and-aquamarine earrings that retailed for about $7,000. What wasn’t there was her laptop computer or datebook.

Frank Lynde didn’t recognize the earrings or know where Frankie might have obtained the money. Prior to the past two months, her financial records showed she had trouble meeting her monthly bills.

Schuyler told about Frankie’s neighbor Mrs. Bodek encountering a woman leaving Frankie’s condominium the Sunday before Frankie was reported missing. Mrs. Bodek found a resemblance between the woman and the drawing of Chauffeur Girl. The woman Mrs. Bodek had seen with Frankie’s keys was similarly disguised, wearing a wig and oversized sunglasses.

Frankie’s car was stolen from the XXX Marks the Spot parking lot sometime Monday, May 23, or Tuesday, May 24. The manager noticed the black Honda Accord parked there Sunday. When he returned to the club the following Tuesday afternoon, it was gone. The car body was found, completely stripped, on a street in the Pico/Union district west of downtown Los Angeles.

“He knew he was going to kill her.” Early dumped the earrings from the evidence bag into her palm. “Kept her for sixteen days, knowing all the time he was going to kill her. He took care of the evidence before she was on the radar. Got everything except what Frankie hid.”

“Guess he ensured Chauffeur Girl’s cooperation by threatening to kill her.” Caspers rocked back in his chair, pleased with his insight.

Kissick shook his head, disagreeing. “There’s a line that people will not cross regardless, with two exceptions. One, she’s psycho. Given that Frankie’s neighbor saw her crying, I don’t think so. Shows she has a conscience.”

Caspers’s bluster faded and he righted his chair.

Kissick continued. “Or two, she’s a drug addict and will do anything for drugs.”

Early held up one of the pricey earrings. “I doubt Frankie was on drugs though, given she had this and ten large hidden in her wall.”

“She did blow through twenty-five grand over several weeks,” Schuyler said. “But she spent it on clothes, shoes, cosmetics—you name it—at the best shops in Beverly Hills.”

“All an addict wants is more drugs, not pretty clothes,” Kissick said.

“Twenty-five grand is a lot for someone making maybe fifty a year to go through in a short time,” Vining said. “She was trying to fill the hole in her life with stuff. The deeper in she got, the more she spent.”

Schuyler added, “Frankie spent, but she saved some, too. Every Monday during the two months prior to her disappearance, she made thousand-dollar cash deposits into her checking account. The sums were too small to attract the bank’s attention. She also started paying her bills with money orders purchased with cash.”

“Someone had the dough to keep Frankie in cash and jewelry and Chauffeur Girl in drugs.” Ruiz tipped his head at the sketch of the chauffeur. “Maybe this one is a prostitute. Frankie could have met her working undercover. Did you check that angle?”

Schuyler said, “Frankie could have met her on the street, but she looks high-end for that kind of action. You can throw a stone and hit twenty girls who look like her in L.A. Here’s a sample of local porn movie and escort agency talent.”

He tossed a stack of professional photos of nude and nearly nude women onto the table. They all had long, blond, rumpled hair; button noses; too-full lips; and overdone breasts.

Vining took a cursory glance. For the men, this was the best part of the afternoon so far.

The banker’s box was empty, the contents strewn from one end of the conference table to the other. Schuyler finished his summary. He shook hands and left the station, his missing person investigation closed.

Kissick began. “I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will. Everything about this case stays here. Even if the chief asks you a specific question, tell him to talk to me, Sergeant Early, or Lieutenant Beltran. I want to keep tabs on who knows what. No chitchat in the gym. No having too many beers with your buddies and next I’m hearing about ten grand found in Lynde’s apartment. This goes double for conversations with Frank Lynde. Emotions about this case are running high all through the department. I don’t want any freelancers working this. Got it?”

The speech wasn’t directed to the seasoned detectives but the wake-up call didn’t hurt.

Kissick continued. “The knock-and-talks haven’t turned up anyone who saw anything around the arroyo last night. Disappointing but not surprising. Hopefully, after we get some publicity out there, the tips will come in. So, thoughts anyone?”

Ruiz picked up the diamond-and-aquamarine earrings. “Frank has no clue that his daughter was into something like this. Finding out she crossed over to the dark side will destroy him as much as finding out she was dead.”

“Three years is a long time to work vice prostitution,” Early said. “For a man or woman. It’s a shitty job. You do your year and rotate out.”

“Vice prostitution is harder for females,” Vining said. “A male cop gets a massage and hopes the girl offers him a happy ending so he can arrest her. The female struts her stuff on the street. You have to dress like a whore. Act like a whore. Talk like a whore. Describe the sexual favors you’ll do. A lot of the johns are well-dressed guys with good jobs. Somebody’s husband. Somebody’s father. It’s tough to see their depraved side. Sometimes the johns want the females to show them their breasts before they’ll offer money. It’s degrading. We all compartmentalize in this job, but working undercover prostitution can get real personal.”

Caspers chewed a sliver from the tip of a bitten-down fingernail and spit it out. “Looks like she only got really into the life about two months ago.”

“About the same time she and Moore hit the skids.” Early picked up the drawing of the chauffeur. “That act at the strip club was not a one-night fantasy. Chauffeur Girl and Frankie had been having play dates for a while. When and where did Frankie meet Chauffeur Girl and her partner?”

“Lolita,” Kissick said.

Early gave him a sideways glance. “Excuse me?”

“Lolita,” he repeated. “You know. Like the old movie. A sexy young girl who wore heart-shaped glasses. An old man who lusted after her.”

Early turned the drawing of the chauffeur to face the group. “Find her and we’ll get to him. Find our Lolita.”

Ruiz set down the earrings and Vining picked them up. Holding one by the stem, she rolled it between her fingers. The large, square aquamarine was the same impossibly blue hue of the waters off a Caribbean island. As she rolled the stone back and forth, the color drew her in. So blue. So beautiful. Refreshing, like looking at a swimming pool on a hot day and imagining the coolness of the water. She saw something at the bottom of the gem. Something dark. Was it an occlusion or something else? She turned the earring, trying to catch another glimpse. She saw it. It looked like a man’s face, rising up from the bottom of the pool, the sun and water casting him in a jacquard patchwork.

She turned the earring a different way and the image disappeared.

You’re losing it, Nan,
she chided herself.

She returned the earrings to the evidence bag.

T E N

W
HAT’S NEW, PUSSYCAT? WHOA—OH-OH-OH-OH-OH…”

John Lesley sang the old Tom Jones song to his wife, trying to make her smile. It usually worked. Not tonight.

A bass downbeat pounded through the glass wall of the nightclub’s private suite. In an aquarium that lined a wall of the club, women wearing air tanks, scuba masks, and nearly transparent swimsuits frolicked with one another underwater. It was early for scenesters, but there was already a crowd. A popular D.J. held court on Monday nights. The dance floor pulsated, a sea of bodies in frantic motion, like an anthill disturbed by a stick.

“It’s good to be king, Pussycat. And you’re my queen. Isn’t it good to be queen? Say it. Say, ‘It’s good to be queen.’”

“It’s good to be queen.”

“Say it like you mean it. It’s
good
to be queen.”

“It’s
good
to be queen.”

“Poor itty-bitty Puddycat with the sad little face.”

She turned away from his gaze.

“Not even a twenty-five-thousand-dollar watch can cheer you up.” He fussed with the gold-and-diamond Patek Philippe watch on her wrist.

“You took it off Frankie. Took off her earrings, too.”

“I bought all that jewelry for you. Frankie was just borrowing it. You’d have those aquamarine earrings, too, if you’d found them in her condo. Wonder what she did with them. I thought they were very attractive. Nice, but not too flashy. F-ing police probably have them now.”

Pussycat stared straight ahead and shook her head.

“Hey, baby, if you don’t want this jewelry, there are plenty of poor deprived women out there going to bed without Patek Philippe watches in their jewelry boxes. Just hardly able to sleep night after night.”