The First Cut (12 page)

A tear dropped down her cheek.

He put his arms around her and playfully jostled her. “Baby, I know you’re upset over Frankie, but you’ve got to put it behind you. It was one of those things.”

“It wasn’t supposed to end like that. You promised.”

“You gotta go with the flow. Expect the unexpected.”

“I meet my sister for lunch and come home and see what you did to Frankie…” She brushed tears away.

“That’s right. Listen to what you just said.”

“I had to see my sister. She was wondering what was up with me.”

“Baby, you don’t think. You’re not practical. I needed you there. Frankie went crazy and I didn’t have any choice. I told you not to go, didn’t I? If you’d been there for me, things might have been different.”

“What are you saying? It’s my fault?”

She scrunched her face and the tears flowed.

“Knock it off,” he said meanly. “I hate you moping around.”

“It’s bullshit. You were going to do what you did to Frankie anyway. She kept asking me and I kept telling her no, but I knew in my heart. I knew when you sent me to take the stuff from her place. I knew. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie. It happened like I told you. You weren’t there, were you? So you can’t say.”

He pulled the bottle of Cristal from the ice bucket and topped off their champagne flutes. He pressed a flute into her trembling hand. He held her hand to steady it and clicked her glass with his.

“Besides, sweetmeat, why do you want to spend time with anyone but me? It hurts my feelings.” He pressed out his lower lip.

She set down the glass after taking a tiny sip. “I can’t live this way.”

He fished his hand inside his pocket and took out a tiny Baggie containing high-grade methamphetamine. It looked like shards of glass.

“You’re crashing, that’s why you’re depressed.” He tried to push the bag into her hand. “Do a bump.”

“No.” She shoved his hand away. “I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s gotten out of control.”

He set the Baggie on the table in front of her. “Baby, who are you kidding? Just wait until you come crying to me because you need your Miss Tina.”

“You turned me into an addict.”

“Yeah, right.”

“When I met you, I only took it when I had to lose weight or work a long shift.”

“Now you’re on the Jenny Crank diet.” He started laughing.

“That’s not funny.” She dabbed her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “I hate my life.”

“Hate it later. Do a bump now.” He nudged the Baggie closer to her.

She sobbed, “Stop making fun of me. I’m a human being, you know. I have feelings, too.”

He again put his arms around her. “I’m just playin’ with ya. Come on.”

She wasn’t consoled.

He slugged down his champagne and threw himself against the couch, his arms draped across the back. “Baby, enough of this crap, okay? We’re here to have fun.”

“But why did you do that to Frankie?
Why?
”

“Poor, sweet Pussycat. You’ve gotta understand. A woman like Frankie is a wild animal. If we turned our backs on her for a second, if we made one mistake, she’d have killed us or gotten away and put the cops onto us. The three of us went too far. And she went willingly, believe me. She knew what she was doing. She marched right down to that place called the point of no return.”

“Never again. No more.”

He shrugged. “I can’t see the future.”

“What are you saying? There’s going to be more? Have there been others?”

“Baby, don’t ask questions that you don’t want to know the answers to. And knock off the woe-is-me bit. Playing Little Miss Innocent. You got your jollies with Frankie.”

He slid his hand up her skirt and laughed when she pushed it away.

He leaned to look through the window at the action on the club floor beneath them. “Look at that redhead standing by the bar, acting like she’s bulletproof. I’d like to put a hurt on her.”

“No way. They just found Frankie today.”

“Don’t worry.” He smoothed the furrows from her forehead with his thumb. “We’re not going to get caught. I know all about the police. How they think. How they work. They’re not that smart. We’ll stay a step ahead of them. I always have.”

“It’s not right.”

“Who are you to talk to me about what’s right, huh? You think you’re better than me?”

She hugged herself.

“Well, do you?”

She whispered, “No.”

“Who the hell were you before I took you off the street? Nobody. I made you. I took you from dirt and put you on a golden pedestal. I can take you down off that pedestal and put you back in the dirt, too, and I mean underground. I’ll do it. I don’t want to, but I will.”

She blinked back tears and said nothing.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking.”

“Good. Don’t think. You especially shouldn’t think about going behind my back and talking about our life to anyone, especially that sister of yours, or I’ll fix it so you won’t be talking to her or anyone again.”

“I’m not. I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, right. Baby, one thing I know is women, better than they know themselves.” He looked at the gyrating bodies on the dance floor. “Last night was a long one, but I feel energetic.” He gave her a look that suggested she should be impressed.

“Don’t worry, Pussycat. We’ll just catch and release tonight. I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”

E L E V E N

A
FTER THE TEAM MEETING BROKE LATE THAT AFTERNOON, KISSICK
sent Caspers to Hollywood to photocopy the rest of Schuyler’s records. Lieutenant Beltran held a news conference on the police station steps and released a tip-line number. Sproul and Jones began logging and evaluating tips that started coming in as soon as the phone number was announced. Vining, Ruiz, and Kissick poured over Frankie’s paper trail and built upon Schuyler’s timeline of Frankie’s activities for the past year. When Caspers returned, Kissick started him on scrutinizing the arrests both Frank Lynde and Frankie had made over the past several years, running suspects through NCIC and other databases, researching criminal histories to see if anyone was worth a closer look. Kissick contacted Frankie’s Internet service provider to gain access to her e-mail messages. He and Ruiz then drove out to Frank Lynde’s house for a dreaded face-to-face interview.

At 9:00 p.m., Vining was still working at her desk and Caspers was at his in the adjoining cubicle. The comments he shot to her through the fabric wall grew farther apart and less energetic. He clearly wanted to leave, but wasn’t going to be the first to say it. Vining was ready, too. She was drained. But there was a lot of work to do and she enjoyed giving Caspers a hint of what it meant to run with the big dogs. Someone needed to give this guy a lesson in humility.

His cell phone rang relentlessly. His hopped-up chatter laced with street jargon was to her like nails on a blackboard. Her cell rang once.

“Hi, Mom,” said Emily. “Still there, huh? I’m ready. Are you coming home?”

Vining remembered her foolish promise to take Emily to the crime scene, enabling her daughter’s dark hobby.

“Em, it’s nine o’clock. You have school tomorrow. Don’t you have homework?”

Vining answered her own question aloud, in harmony with her daughter, “I finished it hours ago.”

Emily was a more serious student than Vining had ever been. Sitting down and attacking homework right after arriving home from school was still beyond Vining’s comprehension, but it was second nature to Em.

“I don’t go to bed until eleven, Mom. We’ll be home by then.”

Vining told Emily she would wait at the bridge for Granny to drop her off there. Vining was ready to leave but didn’t actually mind not going straight home. She was feeling restless. The bridge was a good place to go. She’d seen it a million times, at all hours of the day and night, but was drawn to see it again, to see it as it was now. The energies of Frankie Lynde, Lolita, and her partner were now fused to the place where so many desperate souls had said a prayer—or not—and taken a free fall into the arroyo. The plunge from the top had lured them. Vining felt its allure, too.

T
HE PPD HAD OPENED THE BRIDGE TO TRAFFIC LATE THAT AFTERNOON, BUT
crime scene tape still surrounded the area off the west end where Frankie’s body had been found. Vining rounded the curve of the bridge and her anger flared when she saw cars parked everywhere and people standing around, some past the yellow tape. She did a tight U-turn in her old Jeep Cherokee—tomorrow she’d take home one of the Crown Vics—parked haphazardly, and punched on her hazard lights. With her shield in one hand and a lit flashlight in the other, she confronted the ghoulish sightseers.

“Folks, you’ve got to clear out of here. This is an active crime scene.”

They were young and old, male and female, some with children in tow. A young man climbed up and over the steep slope, a camera dangling from his neck. Crime makes the most mundane locales fascinating.

“Come on, people. Time to go home.”

They gave her that disoriented look that annoyed her; they were not processing the sight of this lanky female with a badge interrupting their fun. Vining was tired enough to be tempted to go off on them. Instead, she was taciturn as they muttered half-hearted apologies and a few sarcasms while taking their time walking to their illegally parked cars. She let the parking violations go, although she could have wreaked havoc. She just wanted the people gone.

The street grew quiet. Few cars passed. The 210 to the north hummed with traffic, but it blurred into white noise. The songs of crickets enriched it.

Vining took it in. She loved this time of year. The longer days, warm nights, and crickets brought back the simple pleasures of her troubled youth and the occasional happiness she’d found then. She’d been so focused on getting back to work, anxious about what it would be like, she hadn’t noticed that the endless, rainy winter and spring had passed and it was almost summer. She and the world had somehow made it to another season. The crickets’ sawing sounded like the air was breathing. It made her feel alive. She was alive. In this place that resonated with death, decades old and brand-new, Nan Vining felt alive.

She stepped over the yellow tape, turning the flashlight beam on weeds mashed down by tires. The slick straw held no distinctive marks, protecting the tires’ identity. No evidence had been found in the area other than small blood drops that probably came from Frankie.

She looked across the Arroyo Seco. Few lights shone from the federal courthouse on the other side, a quarter mile away, or the grand mansions flanking it. A crescent moon was high. It was a waxing moon, open toward the east—a good time to plant vegetables, according to her grandmother’s folklore.

She heard rustling in nearby bushes. Her flashlight beam reflected off two shiny coins that were the eyes of a raccoon. They stared at each other for a second, both motionless. She turned off the flashlight and heard the animal continue on its way.

“Lolita,” Vining whispered, her voice as soft as the other night sounds. “Talk to us. You’ll never find peace until you talk to us.”

She shone her flashlight down the slope where Frankie Lynde’s body had lain. For the moment, it still belonged to them, to the PPD. Soon they’d release it and it would be as if nothing had happened there.

“We’ll find you, Lolita. And when we do, you’ll rat him out faster than you can say ‘plea bargain.’”

A car crossed the bridge and stopped in the street near Vining.

“Hey.” Kissick leaned out the window. “Thought you were going home.”

“I am. What are you doing?”

“Going over to Stoney Point. Meet Ruiz and Sproul for a drink. Care to join us?”

Stoney Point was a locals’ place just beyond the bridge with a lively bar and a piano player who knew the words and music to every request. It was tempting, but she was waiting for Emily. She was glad she had a reason to turn down his invitation. She needed to keep her distance from him. She was feeling vulnerable. She had not forgotten what it felt like to be in his arms. Mostly, she didn’t think about it. It was a diet of the mind, tough at first, but easier as time passed. And lots of time had passed.

“That sounds great, but I’m waiting for my grandmother to drop off Emily. I promised to take her for an ice cream. But another time, huh?”

“Sure.” His tone suggested that he didn’t believe her.

She didn’t mind his company, though. “Why don’t you stay and say hi to Emily.”

“I’d like that.” He pulled his car onto the curb, out of traffic, and came over to her.

They naturally turned to face the bridge and the moon.

“Beautiful night,” he said.

“Hmm.”

“Strange.”

“What’s that?”

“Looking at that bridge. Why are people drawn to jump off a bridge? A gun is plenty effective.”

“If you aim it right,” she said.

“Messy business any way you look at it, taking a human life.”

She blew out air in a half laugh. “Yeah. They should do a study.”

“I’m sure they have. That’s how the term ‘lethal injection’ entered our vernacular.”

Kissick occasionally used words that Vining didn’t understand. It reminded her that he was a college graduate and spent much of his free time reading. She had barely made it out of high school and had never been much for reading. Her lack of formal education bothered her, especially around people who talked about their blah blah degree from blah blah school. She had street smarts, she told herself. That would always get you further in life than a degree any day. She didn’t mind Kissick being more educated than she. She liked it. Made him bigger in her mind. And he never threw it up to her that she was just a high school graduate.

He said, “Coming up to a year since you were attacked.”

“Hard to believe.”

“Were you thinking that maybe the same guy murdered Frankie Lynde?”

She thought of Frankie Lynde’s message:
I am you. I am not you.

Hallucination maybe, but it was right on. She understood and accepted it, but not without a pang of loss. It was her hopeful wish that T. B. Mann had abducted and murdered Lynde. It kept him close to her. Continued their macabre dance. Her business with him was not over. He was still out there. Their next dance was yet to come.