Chasing Darkness (11 page)

MY BODY
felt brittle the next morning, but my face was as tender as an heirloom tomato. Stretching and a hot shower helped with the stiffness, but they didn't do much for my face. I tried to eat, but was too anxious about meeting the Repkos.

I reread the materials I had about Debra. Though I did not have the police report, the CI report Chen gave me listed the original investigating detectives as Robert Darcy and David Maddux. I wondered if they had been included on the task force and returned when Chen was sent to collect the second set of samples.

Though the medical examiner's protocol showed a minimal blood alcohol level, no mention was made of Debra Repko's activities that night or in the days preceding her death. These were things I wanted to know. As I reread the newspaper accounts, I was struck again by the similarities between Repko and the first victim, Sondra Frostokovich. Both were white, educated, and had worked downtown in a capacity related to city government. This might be relevant, but I had no way to know.

I reread the reports until I realized I was stalling. I did not want to face the Repkos, but then nothing was left except for the drive to Pasadena. I gathered my things and left.

The Repko family shared a lovely ranch-style home in an upper-middle-class neighborhood east of the Rose Bowl. I left my car on the street, walked up a long, used-brick drive, and rang their bell. It was a difficult walk to make, going to see a family who believed I was responsible for their daughter's death. I was queasy and tried breathing deep, but the breathing didn't help. Maybe I would puke on their floor.

Michael answered as if he had been waiting. His eyes widened when he saw me, and the two of us studied each other. An angry red mark creased his right cheek and his upper lip was thick and mottled.

He said, “You're pretty dinged up.”

“You, too.”

The smell of lilacs was strong. Their home felt like a funeral parlor, which, I guess, it was. Michael lowered his voice as he let me in.

“Go easy with my mom.”

“I'm not going to kneecap anyone.”

Michael led me into a spacious living room where Dennis and Gordon were waiting with their parents. Gordon's eye was purple and Dennis's left arm hung in a sling. Family photographs were dotted around the room, but an enormous photo of Debra hung above the fireplace. More pictures of Debra crowded the mantel and hearth, along with stuffed animals and yearbooks and keepsakes. Her family had created a shrine.

Michael's head drooped when we faced his parents. He no longer looked like the hardened troop who had tried to beat me to death with his brothers.

Michael said, “This is him.”

Him.

Mrs. Repko, propped in a wing chair as if she were made of marble, stared at me with open loathing. She was in her late fifties, with the stocky, large-bone build of her sons. Mr. Repko was ten years older than his wife; a thin man with the rheumy eyes of someone who had been drinking too much every night without regretting it the next morning. He had a high forehead and glasses, and looked nothing like his sons. Debra had gotten his looks. He frowned at the marks on my face, and glanced at his sons as if he wanted to say something, but didn't.

I said, “Thank you for seeing me. I know this is difficult.”

“Michael tells us you believe the police have it wrong.”

“I have some questions, is all. I'll try to make this quick.”

“Get to it then. Let's try to make this as pleasant as possible.”

I took out my notepad. Hiding behind a 3x5 pad was an easy way to avoid the condemnation in their eyes.

“I need some background information about Debra, but I also want to know what the police did and what they asked you about.”

Mrs. Repko crossed her arms.

“It sounds like he's trying to blame the police for something.”

Mr. Repko glanced at his wife, then studied me as if he thought I was setting him up.

“The police have been good to us. They've been very kind. We won't say anything bad about them.”

“I'm asking so I'll know how the police framed their investigation. If I know what they did, it will save time by suggesting a direction. You see?”

Michael said, “Mom. C'mon.”

Gordon said, “Can we just do this, please?”

Mr. Repko adjusted his pants. He still wasn't comfortable, but he had let his sons talk him into seeing me and now he was stuck.

“All right, then. What?”

I glanced at the pad again. The three hundred Spartans would not have approved.

“I understand the police sent a criminalist to your home last week.”

“That's right. He looked through Debra's things.”

“Did they tell you what they were looking for?”

“The criminalist didn't say much. He was a very odd man.”

“Not the criminalist. The police. Was that Darcy and Maddux?”

Michael said, “Darcy and Maddux are gone. These were new cops—Bastilla and Munson. A detective named Crimmens was here, but he left. We haven't seen Darcy and Maddux in a while.”

Munson was new. I scratched his name onto the pad.

Mr. Repko nodded along with his son.

“Detectives Bastilla and Munson are on this special task force they have. We don't know what happened to Darcy and Maddux.”

“Uh-huh. And what did Bastilla and Munson tell you they were looking for?”

“Some kind of samples. That's all they said, really, that they needed to collect samples from Debra's things. They asked if we'd had them laundered or whatnot, but other than that they didn't get into specifics.”

“Uh-huh. And did they ask you questions about anything or anyone in particular?”

Mrs. Repko squinted and grew even more strained, like a violin string tightened to the breaking point.

She said, “They told us about her murderer with those sick, twisted pictures. They wanted to warn us because it was going to be on TV. They wouldn't show us the pictures, but they warned us. I asked to see her. I wanted to see the picture he took, but they wouldn't let me—”

Her eyes reddened and blinked. Gordon touched her arm and whispered, “Mom.”

She blinked harder, but Gordon's touch settled her. I wanted to ask more about Bastilla and Munson, but changed the subject to Darcy and Maddux.

Mr. Repko explained that Darcy and Maddox had come to Pasadena on the morning Debra's body was found. At that time, the detectives believed Debra resided in Pasadena because her parents' address was still on her driver's license. When they were told Debra had taken an apartment, Darcy and Maddux asked to see it, so Dennis and Mr. Repko drove into the city to let the detectives into her apartment. Michael and Gordon had stayed with their mother.

I said, “I'd like to talk to her neighbors about visitors she might have had, or if men had come around. That type of thing. I'm sure the police did the same, but I want to hear it for myself.”

Mr. Repko nodded.

“All right.”

“Was she seeing anyone?”

Dennis said, “Not since Berkeley. She dated a few guys at grad school, but they were more like friends, not boyfriend-girlfriend.”

“How about the men at work? Did she mention anyone she might have liked at work?”

Mrs. Repko had relaxed when her husband was doing the talking, but now she visibly tensed again.

“Once she went to work she didn't have time to date. They work them like slaves at that place.”

“Leverage Associates?”

Michael nodded.

“Yeah. Debra worked hard, but she loved it. She was a politics wonk. It was her dream job.”

Mrs. Repko pulled her arms into her sides.

“It was an awful job, the hours she worked.”

Gordon said, “Mom, she loved it.”

“I don't care.”

I cleared my throat to bring their focus back to me.

“Did she see someone on the night it happened?”

Mrs. Repko said, “We have no idea. She worked that night. All she did was work.”

“The medical examiner's report indicates she had a drink earlier that evening.”

Mrs. Repko leaned forward, her face softening for the first time since I entered the room.

“It did?”

“Yes, ma'am. A drink or a glass of wine. The level was very low.”

Mrs. Repko blinked. The blinking grew faster, and her eyes turned red.

“Well, I just don't know. How could we know? When she was here, we knew, but not after. I never saw why she had to have that apartment, working right downtown like she did. If she hadn't taken that damned place none of this would have happened.”

Gordon spoke softly.

“She was twenty-six years old, Mom.”

“Oh, you shut up. Just…please.”

She squinched her eyes and waved her hand as if trying to brush away something that could not be brushed. It was easy to see her making that same move a hundred times a day in a terrible endless loop. Her daughter's death came down to the apartment, to growing up and moving away because if she had stayed home her parents could have protected her.

Mr. Repko suddenly blurted out Debra's apartment address and the name of the manager, a man named Toler Agazzi, but Mrs. Repko's pain filled the room and everyone in it like radiant heat. The sons all stared at the floor. Mr. Repko couldn't look at his wife. I stared at Debra's portrait. The picture had probably been taken when she was a senior in high school. She was an attractive girl with clean features and smart eyes.

I cleared my throat and shifted. I wanted Mrs. Repko to see me looking at her daughter. I wanted her to know that her daughter was real to me. When I knew she was staring at me, I looked at her.

“What about her girlfriends, Mrs. Repko? I'll bet Debra had a lot of close friends. She probably has friends she's been friends with all the way back to grade school.”

Mrs. Repko glanced at the picture, then me. She wet her lips, then we were both looking at the picture. Here they were, the Repkos, upscale and educated, as close as you could come to a Norman Rockwell family portrait except that one of them had been murdered. Scratch Debra from the painting. Draw Xs over her eyes.

Her mother said, “Yes. Yes, she did. The sweetest girls.”

“Could you give me their names and numbers? I might like to talk to them.”

“All right. Of course I could.”

And this time Mrs. Repko didn't tense in that horrible way when she answered.

I said, “When it first happened, did Darcy and Maddux take anything from her apartment?”

Mr. Repko adjusted his pants again, thinking, then nodded.

“They took her computer and her phone, I think, and a few other things.”

“They took her hard line or a cell?”

“Well, the cell was in her purse, so they already had it. She wasn't robbed, you know; everything was still in her purse, even her money. But she had a cordless in the apartment. They gave me a receipt. I have it, if you want.”

“That would help. Also, if you have Debra's phone bills I'd like to see them.”

“We have them. I kept everything in a file.”

Mr. Repko left to get the file, so I turned back to Mrs. Repko.

“Did the police return the items they took from her apartment?”

Mrs. Repko nodded.

“Detective Maddux brought back some things.”

“He bring back her phone, too?”

Mrs. Repko suddenly stood, with her sons straightening as if she might suddenly tip over.

“Here, I'll show you,” she said. “You probably want to see, so let me show you. I want you to see what you've done.”

Michael glanced at Gordon, then lowered his voice again.

“Go get Dad.”

MRS. REPKO
didn't wait for her sons or her husband. She pulled me through the house to a girly room with frills and collages Debra had probably made during high school. I went in with her, but Michael and Dennis stopped at the door.

The room was immaculate; the bed tightly made, the pillows fluffed, the desk neat and waiting to be used. The room was small, but neatly decorated with a teenage girl's furniture and bright curtains. The only items that seemed out of place were a large cardboard box against the wall and an overstuffed chair covered with a zebra fabric.

Mrs. Repko went to the chair.

“Most of the furniture at her apartment was rented, so it went back to the company. But she bought this chair, god knows why, this ugly thing, so we kept it.”

Mrs. Repko ran her hand over the fabric, then gripped it hard, digging her fingers in as if she was hanging on for her life. She heaved once as her eyes filled, and Michael and Dennis almost knocked me over as they went to her. They took her arms as she shuddered, and gently led her from the room, Michael's soft voice in her ear.

“C'mon, Mama. You have to make that list for Mr. Cole. Let's make his list.”

Mr. Repko appeared with an envelope as they helped her away. He said something after them I didn't hear, then gave me the envelope.

“The last month, like you wanted. Got the cell in here and the one from the apartment. This is what I gave the police. The receipt they gave me when they took her things is in here, too.”

He had made copies of the bills for the police. He had gone through the numbers, noting those he recognized and which were personal or job related, and then he had called each number to ask who it was and how they knew his daughter. He had made handwritten notes in the margins. The police had asked him to do this, and I would have asked the same. The receipt showed that the police had taken—

The papers would have been bank statements, phone bills, and any notes or scribbles they found. The receipt was signed
Det. R. Darcy
.

I gestured at the desk and the boxes.

“These are the things Darcy and Maddux returned?”

“Some of it, yes. They returned whatever they took, those items there on the receipt. Most of these things we packed up ourselves.”

“How about Bastilla and Munson? Did they take anything?”

Mr. Repko thought for a moment.

“No. The criminalist was back here, but the detectives mostly stayed out in the front with us. The boys were back here, keeping an eye on things.”

“This is when Bastilla and Munson were telling you about Byrd.”

“That's right.”

“So it was an informational visit. They didn't ask any questions.”

“A few, I guess. They wanted to know the same things you and the other detectives asked about. I think they were making conversation until the criminalist finished.”

“That's probably it.”

The box held a few assorted paperbacks and magazines, and some pots and pans Debra had probably bought for when she wanted to cook. Her computer was back on her desk here at home just where it had been before she moved out, and her cell phone was in the little change dish where she had probably always kept it. Mrs. Repko had hung Debra's clothes and returned her toiletries and makeup to her bathroom. They had put everything back in its place as if she had never left. It was so sad I wanted to cry.

I searched the box and desk, then went to the closet and studied the clothes. She hadn't been wearing any of these things when she was murdered. Everything in the closet had been safely back at her apartment, so it made no sense to search for fibers unless Bastilla and Munson believed someone else was involved.

I said, “Lots of clothes. It must have taken the criminalist a long time.”

“He was back here for a long time.”

“You were talking with the detectives all that time?”

“That's right. It was very emotional for us.”

“I'm sure. I'm curious, Mr. Repko—did Bastilla and Munson ask about anything, other than informing you about Byrd?”

“You mean about Debra?”

“Yes, sir. About Debra. All that time you were talking, I'm sure they had questions.”

He thought some more.

“Men. Boyfriends. That kind of thing. They asked about her job.”

“At Leverage?”

“Who she liked, who her friends were, if she mentioned anyone. That kind of thing. I don't think we were very much help. I didn't see what it had to do with this man, Byrd.”

“So they were interested in Leverage?”

“I guess you could say that, but like I said, I think they were making conversation—”

Then he frowned as a thought occurred to him.

“Well, there was the one thing, but I don't know if this is what you mean—”

“What's that?”

“Detective Bastilla wanted the guest registry from the burial service. They wanted to make a copy of it.”

“Was she suggesting Byrd might have come to Debra's burial?”

“It seems unlikely, don't you think, considering?”

I didn't tell him I thought the idea of Lionel Byrd attending her funeral was absurd.

“That's an interesting notion, Mr. Repko. Could I see it?”

“They haven't returned it yet. When she returns it, would you still like to see it?”

“Yes, sir. That would be good.”

He walked me back to the living room. The brothers looked up as if they thought I was going to announce the big breakthrough, but all I could do was tell them I would call with any developments. Mrs. Repko was not with them, but Michael handed me a short list of names and numbers. When Mr. Repko showed me to the door, Michael started to follow, but Mr. Repko stopped him.

“I'll walk Mr. Cole to the door. I'd like a word with him alone.”

Michael met my eyes, and I followed his father out. When we reached the entry, Mr. Repko hesitated before he opened the door.

He said, “I really don't know what to say to you.”

“There's nothing to say.”

He stared at the floor, then straightened as if it took an enormous effort. He studied my face. His boys had marked me up pretty good.

“Michael told me what happened. I guess you could have had them arrested. I imagine you can still sue us.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

He looked away again, as if the weight of maintaining the contact added to his burden and he had to drop it before continuing.

“Those first few weeks, all I thought about was what I would do when the police found him. All those terrible fantasies you have, shooting him at his trial, hiring a mobster to kill him if they sent him to prison.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then, when they didn't, I was so scared he would get away with it, and then they did, but now—”

He trailed off, and I could see the weight of his pain crushing him—his face sagged, his shoulders slumped, his back bent. It was awful to see, but I had seen worse and would see worse again.

“I'm sorry for what the boys did, Mr. Cole. I would not have allowed it. Please let me pay for any damages.”

“I'd better get going, Mr. Repko.”

I left him without looking at him or saying anything more. I walked down his lovely drive and into the lovely street, and stood by my car, wondering why Connie Bastilla would want the funeral registry. Murderers often attended their victim's funerals, and sometimes left flowers or cards. It was possible Bastilla checked the registry for Byrd's name as a pro forma part of her investigation, like dotting an
i
or crossing a
t
, but it was also possible she was checking for a different signature—someone whose DNA was currently an unidentified blind sample in anonymous tests.

I was still thinking about it when a grey Crown Victoria eased up the street and took forever to reach me. It idled to a stop, and two men in sunglasses stared at me. The passenger and the driver were both in their early thirties with short dark hair and ties but no jackets. They wore short-sleeved shirts and the flat, empty faces that came with having to wear bad clothes while riding around in a bad car. The passenger's window rolled down.

I said, “You're either cops or the Men in Black. Which is it?”

The passenger held up his badge, then tipped it toward the backseat.

“I'm Darcy. He's Maddux. Let's talk about Debra Repko.”

I didn't want to get in their car.

“So talk. I can hear you.”

Darcy glanced in his side-view like someone might be behind him. Maddux leaned across his partner to see me.

“You're Cole, right? The dude who got off Lionel Byrd?”

“Tell you what, Maddux—how about you kiss my ass?”

“We don't think Byrd killed her. Now get in, and let's talk about it.”

I got in, and we talked.