“Be advised,” dispatch said. “Suspect fled. No description.”
Ben listened with his elbows on the table, his knees bouncing; dispatch was calling in a crime-scene unit. He stuck a red pin on the map of the address: 19745 Buttonwood Street, Westminster, a quarter mile from the 22 Freeway, off-ramps and on-ramps just two right turns from the victim’s house. The killer was using the freeways, turning off when the urge hit. The house was just fifteen miles away from where he sat. In the hollowed-out silence of the night, he heard the rush of the 5 Freeway, the Santa Ana, slicing the length of the basin from Bakersfield to the Mexican border. It was a fifteen-minute drive if the highway was clear, and by the sound of it—a smooth-flowing river rush—it was wide open.
—
HE MADE IT there in eighteen minutes, parked next to an Eyewitness News van, and pushed his way through the crowd. At the perimeter he flashed his badge at one of the uniforms.
“Wondering if I can take a look?” Ben said. “Got a body cooling in county. Might be related to this.”
“It’s out of control in there,” the uniform said. He lit a cigarette, the wind blowing it back across his face. “Mackensie’s the IO, and he’s shutting it down. You’re not in there right now, you’re not getting in.”
Ben walked the perimeter, watching the faces of the crowd. Some killers returned to the scene, got off watching the police work—crime porn, they used to call it up in L.A. No one stuck out here, though, just neighbors, their faces dumb with fear, a couple of teenagers stupid with excitement. Shit, dude, she’s dead. Like, someone killed her.
There was an elementary school behind the house, a sweep of grass and handball courts, a greenbelt with a trail weaving beyond the playground. Ben drove the cruiser two blocks over, coming around the front of the school—a pair of classroom windows lit from within, papier-maché art hanging on the sun-yellow walls. A couple of black-and-whites spun lights at either end of the property. Ben pulled up beside the first one and flashed his badge at the uniform.
“Mackensie wants me combing the school grounds,” Ben said, and a few minutes later he was in the lightless field, a black square of grass surrounded by the glowing windows of Tuscan-style homes. There was a half fence, three feet high, separating the backyard from the school yard. From here, thirty yards away, Ben could see the detectives working the kitchen. He flashed his penlight across the ground—stomped-down grass that thinned to dried mud. Zigzag prints, kids’ shoes. Handprint, Tonka truck tracks, a soccer-ball pentagon. He inched toward the fence that separated the yard from the playground and found it: Vans skate shoes—at least three footprints in the dirt, trailing toward the fence.
“Get Mackensie on the horn,” Ben said when he got back to the uniform.
The cop did. Ten minutes later, investigators were in the field, snapping photos.
—
BY THE 6:30 Wednesday-morning newscasts, the L.A. and Orange County sheriffs’ offices had declared the obvious. Before most people had finished their first cup of coffee, the L.A. news stations had christened the killer the Night Prowler. Goddamned news. And by 7:45 Ben was sitting in a briefing room with Lieutenant Hernandez and two other detectives, chewing NoDoz and gulping coffee.
“We’ve got a BOLO for a serial,” Hernandez said, his coat still on, which meant business, the jacket still buttoned, which meant real-deal business. “LAPD and both counties made it official. Random strikes, all after eight P.M., all entering through open first-floor windows or doors. So far, no discernible motive.”
“The joy of strangling people?” Marco Giraldi said. Marco had recently been promoted to detective, primarily on the merits of breaking up a teenage marijuana ring while working patrol. Barely twenty-eight, he looked like a teenager himself; above his top lip was a wispy line of peach fuzz he seemed to think was a mustache.
Lieutenant Hernandez nodded. “Most likely sociopath,” he said, as he passed a stack of folders around the table. “None of the victims seem connected.”
“Except by the killer,” Marco said. The more a man shot off his mouth, the more vulnerable he was. In L.A., Ben knew a vice cop who always bitched about “faggots on the make,” how they disgusted him, how they were disease magnets. He was busted three months later with a “faggot on the make” in a Santa Monica motel room. Then there was that homicide detective, twenty-year veteran, big tough guy always cracking jokes over dead bodies, broke down one night in the precinct after a murder/suicide, just turned to water at his desk and spent the next three months hardening up in a facility in the valley. Maybe it was rookie nerves, but Ben suspected the serial had Marco spooked.
“Multiple races,” Hernandez said, ignoring Marco. “Multiple sexes. Likes to tip the cops after the deed is done.”
“Jesus,” Carolina McGrath said when she opened the file.
Ben took a file from Carolina, a shot of acid in his stomach when he saw the crime-scene photos. A woman’s white knees, her torso twisted on the carpet, stacks of magazines spread across the floor, a broken vase, water soaking the carpet near her left foot.
“Sexual assault?” Carolina said, standing up with her file to pace the room. She was nearly six feet tall, a former University of California volleyball player who could never sit still. Some of the uniforms who didn’t make detective resented her, thought her getting promoted three years ago was some affirmative action BS, but she was a good detective—a real eye for detail.
“No,” the lieutenant said. “At least, no evidence to that effect.”
“Suspect wears Vans skate shoes,” Ben said, noticing it wasn’t written down in the description of the perp. “Eight and a half? Nine?”
“Heard about your extracurricular activity, Detective,” Hernandez said, his reading glasses slid down his nose to look at Ben.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Read a book,” Hernandez said. “It works for me.”
“Try a romance novel,” Carolina said, raising an eyebrow at him. “They’ll put you to sleep immediately.”
“ID on that boy’s body yet?” Hernandez said to Ben.
“Waiting on the science geeks,” Ben said. “Bullet in ballistics. No fingerprint matches.”
“Keep it quiet,” Hernandez said. “The mayor’s in my ear about this one.”
“Too late for that,” Ben said. “For keeping it quiet.”
Ben slid the morning’s paper across the table. HISPANIC FOUND SHOT IN STRAWBERRY FIELD. He’d picked it up at the Rancho Market on his way to the station early that morning, along with a cup of coffee and a microwaved breakfast burrito. He’d glanced through the article and found the line: Detectives offered no comment on the connection between this killing and the Night Prowler. When Reza Salehi, the owner of the market, rang Ben up, he set aside the paper.
“Was this boy killed by the Night Prowler?” He was frightened, and he wanted Ben to assure him that Santa Elena was still a safe little bubble.