It was the typical news report. The field reporter, Dinah Ortiz, stood in the foreground and cops worked the crime scene in the distance, while a crowd of onlookers gawked and jockeyed for fifteen nanoseconds of on-air time. She relayed the scant facts: that the body of an unidentified female had been discovered naked and hanging from her wrists at the development site. She also intimated that the victim had been brutalized. Sadly for Ms. Ortiz, she had failed to secure a statement from the police.
The three-minute report told him little. That was good. It confirmed his feeling that the investigation wasn’t leading the SFPD to his door.
He replayed the clip. His attention drifted from the reporter to the scene itself. There was an intensity surrounding the event, with the reporter’s shot-in-the-dark speculation and the fervor radiating off the onlookers. This reaction to his handiwork took him by surprise. He’d always striven to keep his actions hidden from the public and police. Seeing this interest in what he’d done stunned him—and intrigued him.
Privacy had always been his watchword, but should it be? He did what he did for one reason—to punish those whose behavior was unacceptable. Until now, his message had been confined to those he taught a lesson to. That was small time. Media interest in Laurie Hernandez’s death would change that. It would provoke discussion, speculation, debate. It could affect real change.
He smiled. He’d seen tonight as a screwup, but it was turning out to be serendipitous. From now on, he wouldn’t attempt to hide his work. He would broadcast it and let it be a warning to others that their bad conduct would not be accepted.
He leaned forward on his chair and checked out the video reports from the other local affiliates. He was rewarded with different talking heads with the same backdrop. He absorbed the sights with pride.
The ABC affiliate had an updated report, and he clicked on that. The video started with an intro from the in-studio anchors.
“There was an interesting turn of events at the scene of a brutal murder of a woman at Pier 25 tonight when an onlooker charged through the police cordon. Our news crew was there to catch what happened,” Mick Tolley said. “We go back to our own Dinah Ortiz for a firsthand account.”
Dinah Ortiz stood in a different spot than in her earlier newscast, although the onlookers didn’t seem to have changed. “Yes, Mick. While we were between reports, a verbal encounter between a bystander and police officers led to this.”
Her segment cut to a video. A whip pan zeroed in on a young blonde woman in a skintight minidress breaking through the police cordon. The camera followed the blonde as she yelled and charged at a pair of men, no doubt detectives, who were leaving the construction site. She was too far away from the camera crew for the mic to pick up the details of what she was yelling. The out-of-control woman didn’t get far before a uniformed cop tackled her to the ground. The camera focused on her as the cop brought her to her feet and the detectives moved in.
She looked familiar to Beck.
The camera captured a muffled confrontation with the detectives. Just as it looked as if the blonde was heading to the drunk tank, she unzipped her dress and pointed furiously at her lower hip just above her panty line.
A tingle of recognition crackled throughout Beck’s body.
At a sickening speed, the camera zoomed in on what the woman was pointing to.
He knew what the lens would capture—his mark.
He fell back in his chair, tuning out the remainder of Dinah Ortiz’s report. It wasn’t important. Something amazing had just happened. It’s her—the Vegas girl, he thought, the one that got away.
CHAPTER SIX
When the cops didn’t cuff her, Zo? took it as a good sign. It meant they believed her or at least took her claim seriously. The inspectors simply put her in the back of their car and drove her to the Hall of Justice. They didn’t talk on the short drive, not to her and not to each other. She guessed they wanted anything she had to say to be on the record.
They whisked her through the building and dumped her in an interview room. They took her driver’s license, snapped a photo of the scar on her hip, and gave her a bottle of water. She knew the routine. They were checking up on her. Good. She wanted them to. Then they’d get past the bullshit and could focus on the case.
Of course, checking her out came with its own problems. They would confirm that she’d been abducted, but they’d also see she’d been drugged and drunk at the time. Credibility was everything, and hers was a little shaky. Maybe they were just taking their time to let her cool off. She had crashed a crime scene, after all. That was fine with her. She took long, cleansing breaths as Jarocki had taught her and felt her body calm down as she waited.
It was close to an hour before the younger of the two inspectors entered the interview room.
“Hello, Ms. Sutton. I’m Inspector Ryan Greening. Sorry to have kept you waiting. I hope you’re up for answering some questions.”
“Yes, and I have some of my own.”
Greening took the seat opposite her. “And I’ll answer them if I can.”