Bleeding Out (36 page)

Walking casually back to her car she surveyed the lot again. No one in sight. She started the Honda and eased back onto the side street, then west on Slauson. At a red light she checked the rearview mirror and caught a fraction of her reflection; the satisfied face looking back at her seemed like a stranger’s. Frank glanced at the time again and noted she was in good shape, barring any setbacks. She stopped at an AM/PM for coffee. A huge black woman flashed three gold teeth at Frank, saying, “You’re lucky. I just made a new pot for myself.”

Frank smiled at the towering woman and asked for the bathroom key. It might be a long morning and she wanted to make sure she had lots of room for the coffee. On her way out, the woman told her to have a good day. Frank answered, “I already am.”

She still was when she slid against the curb in front of the house next to the Delamores’. Frank pushed her seat back from the steering wheel and assumed her slumped position. Pulling the bill down over her face as if dozing, she listened to her engine tick its heat away. No lights came on, no curtains stirred, no doors shut. Frank sat, motionless, for a few minutes. She took a sip of coffee.

Her watch said Clancey’s break was over. Now both of them were waiting for six o’clock. Frank scrunched her neck against her shoulders, easing the knots there. She sighed and stretched her legs, flexed her ass, pumped her arms isometrically, sipped more coffee. As relaxed as it was possible for her to be, Frank reviewed Plans A, B, and C. Then she reviewed them again.

Almost two hours later, a light came on in the Delamores’ living room. Frank waited patiently, hoping Plan A was proceeding. It was, because ten minutes later the garage door opened and Clancey’s mom backed out in a white Fiesta. As soon as it rounded the corner Frank got out. In the brightening darkness, she crossed the small front lawn and quickly tested the lid on a metal garbage can next to the garage. Using it as a springboard, she pulled herself over the high wooden fence, surveying the back yard even as she landed in it. The fence went all around, but there were two-story houses looking down into it on both sides. Although lights were on upstairs to her left, she didn’t see anyone staring back at her. She pressed against a living room window at the rear of the house and it wiggled in its frame. When she and Kennedy had done their fake security check, Frank had jammed the spring latch. Now the window snapped open.

Frank pushed it aside and draped a long leg over the sill. She was in. She stood still for a moment, breathing silently, and listened for sounds in the house. A clock ticked. The refrigerator hummed. Frank padded across the carpet to check the kitchen. Then headed upstairs, making some of the steps creak. She looked in Mrs. Delamore’s room first, verifying that Mrs. D. hadn’t left a lover curled up in the warm sheets. The bed was empty. So was the bathroom and the sewing room down the hall. Only Clancey’s room was left.

What Frank was doing was highly risky, extremely unethical, and completely outside the law. And she was loving every minute of it. Retracing her steps, ears tuned to the subtle sounds of the house and the waking neighborhood, she paused at Clancey’s door, noting the keyhole. She tried the knob. It was locked.

Frank yanked the knife from her jacket pocket. Prying out its longest blade, she slid it between the lock and frame, her shoulder to the door. Her father had shown her how to do this with a credit card when they’d locked themselves out of their apartment. These days, house locks were much more sophisticated. But this was just a simple inside lock, and the door swung open.

Frank quickly took in the room, setting the timer on her watch. Twenty minutes max. Clancey’s room was a welter of chaos, but Frank headed straight for the VCR. Turning the volume off she ran an unlabeled tape already in the machine. Low budget kiddy porn. Nauseating, but encouraging. She tried another unlabeled one. Fast-forwarded. Same stuff. With an eye on the open door she pulled out a tape in a well-worn box.

Lu-Lu’s Love Festival
had obviously been replaced by a homemade video. Looking through a windshield, the camera narrowed on in three young Hispanic girls playing at a picnic table in a park. The shot was too narrow to be certain, but the chaparral in the background was similar to that at Leiderman. Frank didn’t recognize the girls.

She glanced at her watch. Eleven minutes. She stopped the tape and searched for another frayed box.
Delight of Venus
started the same way as
Lu-Lu’s Love Festival,
a far shot of three girls sunbathing taken though a windshield. Frank searched the background, damn sure she was looking at the reservoir near the top of Kenneth Hahn. She fast-forwarded, backing up as the firmer decided on a panoramic shot. Definitely Kenneth Hahn. Frank’s heart was thudding in her ears.

Eight minutes. She fast-forwarded until the camera zoomed in on the girls. Barely breathing, Frank rewound the tape. She paused the tape as one of the girls turned her face toward the camera. Frank bent closer to the TV, trying to be certain. Because of the fuzz from the freeze frame and the distance from the camera, she couldn’t swear it, but the girl frozen on the screen looked eerily similar to Jessica Orenthaler. Frank swore silently, wishing she could remember all the details about Orenthaler’s assault.

A car door slammed loudly and Frank started. She ejected the video, slipped it back into the box, and dropped it inside her T-shirt. Straining to hear, she arranged the videos to hide the gap, switched off the recorder and TV, and turned the volume back up.

Three minutes. She’d blown all her time on the videos and she still wanted to get into the green-carpeted room in the garage.

Frank closed Clancey’s door almost all the way and jogged downstairs. She didn’t see the Fiesta in the driveway and doubted she’d have missed the sound of the garage door opening, but she peeked carefully into the dark garage. If she was caught here she was fucked. Her timer went off and she muffled the sound against her stomach, feeling the hard video trapped at her waistband.

Opening her knife again Frank dashed across the concrete floor and tried the door. Of course it was locked. Drops of sweat fell onto her ribs as she worked the knife around, hissing, “Come on, baby, come on.”

This lock was older than the one upstairs, but sturdier. Frank couldn’t press the catch back, and as she pulled her knife out she heard a garage door whir open. She bolted back into the kitchen just as she realized it was the garage next door. Giddy and giggly with adrenaline, she grinned at her mistake.

Minus five minutes.

Frank sprinted up the steps and into Clancey’s room. She searched the nasty contents of the drawer in his nightstand but couldn’t find a key. He probably kept it with his bedroom key, which he’d probably keep with his car keys.

Minus nine minutes.

Frank waded through the wreckage of Clancey’s room across to his closet. The football uniform was where Kennedy had said it was. Number eighty-one. She searched it quickly for blood stains. A number of spots could certainly have been dried blood. Without a test, though, it was impossible to say for sure. Frank turned and froze.

The garage door rumbled again. This time she was sure it was the Delamores’. Frank calmly picked her way out of the room and closed the door behind her. She twisted the knob. It was locked. Frank’s senses were firing at full alert. Her brain fielded the messages coldly and clearly.

Down the stairs. The car in the garage. Across the living room. Car doors slamming. Mrs. Delamore’s voice. Whiny, angry. The drapes. The window. Still open. Her voice in the kitchen now. Was Clancey behind her or ahead? Probably behind. Drapes aside. No faces in windows. One leg out—Frank peeked through a gap in the drapes just as Mrs. Delamore stepped into the living room—easy. Mrs. D. still talking. Next leg. Go!

Frank hurled herself at the fence, knowing they must have heard her slam it. She cleared the six-foot planks easily, amazed as always by the potency of adrenaline. Waiting for someone to shout at her, Frank walked quickly toward her car. Off the curb. No one screaming. No one in sight. Door open. Key in ignition. Motor. Clutch. Outta here.

Frank was sure she hadn’t drawn a breath since she’d heard the Delamores’ garage door open. Two blocks away she breathed down, down, down into her belly, and exhaled with a bellowing roar as she added a fist mark to the Honda’s battered ceiling. She was pleased her plan had gone so well, but she would have liked more time inside, specifically in that room off the garage. It was possible Clancey could have transferred fibers from the room to the girls, but it made better sense that the girls had been in there with him. He had to have kept them somewhere. That seemed the most obvious place.

The morning’s machinations and two large cups of coffee had left Frank wired. She weaved around the growing lines of cars, anxious to get home and watch Clancey’s tape. She felt pretty confident he wouldn’t miss it. He’d probably be watching what she believed were the tapes of Agoura and Peterson, not his older, less exciting tapes. Frank stopped at a deli on Huntington. She ordered a double Black Forest ham sandwich with muenster and mustard on dark rye, and picked out a large bottle of English bitter ale.

Once home, she plopped her food on the coffee table and pushed Clancey’s tape into the VCR. But first she needed a quick shower to get rid of her stale sweat. Then, wrapped in an old, unraveling bathrobe, she hit the rewind button and pried the cap off her beer bottle. She held a sip of the ale in her mouth, its effervescence tingling sharp and clean.

Frank perched on the couch, hitting the VCR’s remote play button. The tape was dark for a moment, then opened with the reservoir scene. She unwrapped the sandwich and tore into it ravenously, never taking her eyes from the tape. Occasionally she paused or rewound it, sure she was watching Jessica Orenthaler sunbathing innocently at the top of the Kenneth Hahn Rec Area. Frank chewed around the thick sandwich as the girl spoke with her companions. When she got off her beach towel and started walking toward the parking lot, the tape went blank. Frank let it roll, wondering if she could get Jessica to confirm the tape for her.

Unexpectedly, the tape came back on. Frank glanced at it and stopped chewing. The scene was dimly lit, taken inside what looked like a small room. The angle indicated that a tall person was holding the camera, pointing it down toward a terrified young woman bound to an easy chair.

Swallowing hard, Frank put the sandwich down. The girl was unmistakably Melissa Agoura. She was wearing a red-and-white football jersey, number eighty-one, over bell-bottom jeans. Her feet were bare and strapped to the legs of the chair with what looked like duct tape. Her hands were taped together in her lap, her torso tied firmly against the chair with repeated lengths of rope. Frank thought it looked like clothesline. Fat strips of tape covered Agoura’s mouth. Above it, her eyes were wide and dark and terrified.

Frank assumed Clancey was holding the camera. She could hear his breathing, choppy and heavy. He must have been shaking, because the filming was jiggly. Agoura whimpered faintly against the backdrop of his heavy breath. Frank paused the video, uncertain she wanted to see more. She stood up and paced for a moment, unconsciously rubbing the back of her neck. When she stopped, she stared at the scene frozen on her TV.

“Jesus,” she breathed, suddenly overwhelmed. Dropping into a chair next to the TV, she carefully sifted though her ideas. A defense attorney would try to dismiss the tape; there was no proof Clancey was holding the camera, no proof he’d murdered her. Yet. Frank wondered what else was on the tape. Regardless, what there was made a strong link. The defense would have a hard time wiggling out of the connection. For Frank, however, there was no doubt.

“Gotcha,” she whispered. She was surprised that the word sounded hollow. She’d expected a sense of triumph but felt deflated instead. She finally had him, just like she wanted, but her victory was empty: the cost of all the lives he’d ruined greatly outweighed her own small success. Frank mashed her eyebrows together for a minute, thinking. At last she sighed. Clearing her half-eaten sandwich off the table and walking into the kitchen, she poured the suddenly nauseating ale down the drain.

She dreaded looking at the rest of the tape but knew she had to. She should make a copy, too. She could do that at HQ tomorrow. The copy would go to RHD along with an anonymous note. But Frank couldn’t let them sit on it. She had an idea of how to handle that, too. Tomorrow.

Acutely aware that she was shoving aside her feelings by thinking like a cop, Frank returned woodenly to the living room, where Melissa Agoura was frozen on her television screen.

“Well, well, Lieutenant. I must say I was surprised to get your call. I didn’t think you’d keep your end of the bargain without a battle.”

Sally Eisley flashed scary white teeth at Frank, who pressed what she hoped was convincing affability through her layers of fatigue. Immaculately made-up and dressed to the tits, Sally blended well with the rest of the clientele. In the background, the Italian boy singers alternated with big band songs. The distinctive clicks of crystal and china filled the restaurant as naturally as the sound of cars humming home on the freeway.

Frank’s antipasto sat untouched, and she caught herself twirling her wine glass. She stopped. It had been a long day after a long night. The red wine reminded Frank of her restless sleep, interrupted by glimpses of Mag, then Agoura, wrapped in Clancey’s chair. Tunnel was there, too, in the dark room, and then he was Clancey and coming at Frank, who was tied into the chair. Instead of a broom he had a broken wine bottle. Blood kept spilling out of its jagged neck. Frank was amazed how one bottle could hold so much blood.

Sally carefully arranged her skirt. Frank blinked slowly against the dream. She restrained herself from swallowing her wine in one long draft and, instead, held the bottle over Sally’s glass. “May I?”

“Certainly.” Satisfied with her pose, the reporter casually draped an elbow on the linen tablecloth and inquired, “To what do I owe the honor?”