JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (11 page)

He heard the click of toenails on the linoleum floor and looked up. A white and tan pit bull terrier was standing in the doorway, wagging its tail so hard that the animal's hindquarters were swishing back and forth. Daryl broke into a grin. “How ya doin', Petey?

Have a nice nap?"

The dog barked happily and trotted over to Daryl. He set the paper aside as the dog practically leaped into his lap and began smothering his face in dog kisses, wagging his tail harder. Daryl laughed, patting and rubbing the dog's back. “Yes, I love you too, you big mutt. Boy, are you happy today."

Petey grabbed Daryl's right hand gently in its jaws and tugged slightly. Daryl knew what the dog wanted. “Okay, but just for a little while. I've still got the paper to read, okay?"

He got to his feet and followed the happily bouncing dog through the living room and out to the back patio. He grinned. The few people he'd had over at the house were always amazed at how he allowed the pit bull to clamp those bone-crunching jaws over his wrist like that. Once most people spent a few minutes with Petey they realized he shattered all stereotypes of the breed.

Once they hit the back patio, Petey took off running. Daryl reached down for a tennis ball that had been sewn to an old rag. He threw the ball and Petey jumped up and caught it. The dog eyed Daryl, tail wagging, backing up towards the fence.
Come get me
, his eyes seemed to say. Daryl laughed and lunged for Petey, who feinted to his right and ran around him. “You little snot!” Petey veered closer, on purpose it always seemed, and Daryl grabbed the rag and pulled. Petey growled and shook his head and the two of them spent the next thirty minutes playing like this. It was Petey's favorite game: the human throws the ball, the dog runs after it, gets it, and runs away with the ball. Oh, but he has to let the human get the ball to make the human feel good about himself. Once the human got the ball, though, the dog had to pretend to be big and tough and engage the human in another game—tug of war. What dog didn't enjoy a game of tug of war with a human over some object?

As Daryl played with Petey, his mind tracked on how the pit bull came into his possession. He had obtained Petey when the dog had been only six weeks old. While performing a raid on a gang house in South Central Los Angeles, they had discovered a make-shift kennel in the backyard and a circular area of the yard that had been used for pit fighting. Three adult female dogs and one male were confiscated, along with twelve younger dogs and puppies. Most of the dogs were in bad shape with obvious wounds from fights. It had sickened Daryl and he remembered being tempted to kick holy hell out of the homeowner, a fifty-one-year-old long-time gang member who freely admitted to breeding the dogs for pit fighting. If it had been up to him, he would have forced a pit fight between the homeowner and one of his loser gang buddies—one to the death the way they forced it on these poor animals.

Among the twelve younger pit bull dogs and puppies was a six week old quivering puppy that Daryl had fallen in love with the minute he laid eyes on the critter.

Animal Control Officers were already on the scene doing their best to round up the animals, and Daryl had picked up the quivering puppy and looked him in the face.

Looking at that little puppy had reminded him of one of his favorite childhood shows
The
Little Rascals
. The dog on that show was a pit bull and its name had been Petey. This puppy looked exactly like a miniature version of the dog that he had grown up with on that childhood show. He had stroked the dog's fur and the puppy licked his fingers, making friends. Daryl had smiled at the dog. “Nobody's ever going to hurt you ever again, little guy. Never."

He had taken Petey home with him that day, gotten him neutered, and invested in a professional dog trainer. And unlike those who breed pit bulls to fight, he had left the Petey's ears uncropped and his tail intact. He had just gotten divorced a few months before from his second wife and he felt that he needed a companion. Petey had become that companion, and as the dog grew up they had become quite close. Petey grew to be a loyal, obedient, gentle, and very intelligent animal. So intelligent, in fact, that Daryl had to spell certain words in the dog's presence lest the animal go into a frenzy if he uttered the words
car
or
ride
. Petey loved riding in the car.

“That's it, boy. I'm beat.” Daryl held the ball up and Petey leaped around the yard, as if begging one more, just one more time.
Pleeeaaassseeee
!

“No more, guy. Really, I'm tired okay?” Daryl put the saliva soaked ball in the basket he had set by the patio and opened the sliding glass door. Petey stopped leaping in the air and trotted over, content that he had still gotten a good game out of his master.

Daryl let them back in the house, closed and locked the patio door. Petey padded into the kitchen and Daryl heard the animal slurp water out of his bowl. Daryl sat back down on the sofa, feeling tired. Not much else on the agenda tonight except read the paper and kick back. He picked up the paper, found his place, and continued reading.

Rachael Pearce's two part story had started with a detailed history of the murder series, beginning with the discovery of Lorenzo Cardena and Louis “Goofy” Hernandez in September of last year. She delved into all the theories of both murders and drew a strong parallel that they were related to the murder of an unidentified woman washed ashore in Newport Beach a year previously, which Daryl had told her privately was no doubt the work of the same killer. Then she quickly went through the rest of the murders, to Gloria Aldrete, Rick Perez, the unidentified man found in the San Gabriel Mountains, and the most recent victim found in the LA River. She also drew a strong correlation to a lone African American victim killed in 1989 and an unidentified victim, whose nude decapitated body was found in a railroad boxcar in Riverside County this past June. Nine bodies all together. In addition, she also interviewed the parents and loved ones of the murder victims, getting their reaction to the murders, their feelings about losing a loved one to such a heinous crime. As usual, many of them expressed the same sentiments against the Los Angeles Police Department: “The police don't do enough to protect us,”

or “the police don't care about the people who live in these neighborhoods.” She noted all their reactions, positive and negative, then continued on. And as part one of the article wound down, she was able to get the investigators reaction to the murder series. One of the detectives, a guy named Tony Butler, who was assisting in the investigation, was quoted as saying: “Serial killers are the worst because you never know when they will strike, much less who they could be. Thankfully the FBI is able to profile them, which gives us some help. But for the most part they're very difficult to catch."

She had quoted Daryl as well. Daryl read his quotes three times as he scanned both parts of the article. He had been quoted once before in the
LA Times
during his investigation into a spate of gang killings, and hadn't given the coverage much attention.

But this piece of journalism was different. It was written by Rachael Pearce, a journalist he not only admired, but was finding difficult to stop thinking about on a personal level.

Part two of her story delved on a deeper level. It was this piece that focused more on the social background of the murder series. The fact that all but two of the victims were believed to have ties to the same geographical area, and had ties to street gangs, was a thread that deserved exploring. The article started at the hub of the East Los Angeles barrio, the recreation center where many of the area kids hung out and played basketball or football. One of the kids she spoke to, when asked if the Eastside Butcher scared him, shrugged and said: “Nah. He only cuts up the gang bangers and their homies."

It was this quote which she used as a focal point of her piece: why was it that the area gang bangers and their associates were targets of this serial killer? To get the answer she had talked not only to the gang members under the Eight-first Street bridge, who were represented accordingly with three color photos that Lance had taken that day, but also to the gang counselor at Our Lady of Guadalupe, Danny Hernandez. She had also talked to a couple of probation officers and beat cops. And most of what she got as quotes was always the same: some felt that the murders were the work of several different people, perhaps different gangs; others felt that maybe the killer lived in the area, a sentiment shared by members of law enforcement. In exploring this issue, she had pointed out that it was very feasible that the killer resided in the area. After all, how else could he manage to gain access to hardcore gang members and their associates and roam the area for victims and dumping sites without being noticed? Therefore it had to be somebody who wouldn't look out of place in the area.

One thing that hadn't made it into the article, that Rachael mentioned to Daryl casually the night after their adventure under the bridge, was the question of whether the killer might harbor some personal grudge against those he killed. “How do you mean?”

Daryl had asked.

Rachael had called to thank him once again for pulling strings to get that interview with the gang members. Daryl had been so taken with her phone call that her question at first didn't register. “I mean,” Rachael had continued. “It's no surprise that most people could really care less that most of the victims of this particular serial killer are gang members. People hate them; they could care less if they die. Suppose whoever is doing this is sort of playing God. Ridding the world of what he sees as a cancer to society."

Daryl had mulled it over, but deep down he knew she had nailed it on the head.

He didn't want to admit it to Rachael, or any of the other cops in the department, but part of him secretly admired this guy. If it wasn't for his fear that innocent people might get killed in a retaliation shooting sparked by the Butcher's work, Daryl would be all for letting the killer behead gang members for as long as possible. “You may be on to something."

“Of course the fact that one of the victims was a prostitute and the other two had no ties to gangs blows that theory out of the water,” she had said. “But I just can't help thinking that even if you add those elements in it make sense. The prostitute had ties to one of the gangs in the area, and it's believed that the woman found at Newport Beach resembled a missing person from the area who also had ties with the Los Compadres gang."

“Let's just suppose this theory is correct,” Daryl had said, letting the idea run with him. “What could it mean to the killer? Obviously this person is of reasonable intelligence, since most serial killers are. There are over one hundred thousand gang members in Los Angeles County alone; what makes whoever is doing this think that killing a few here and there is going to make a big difference?"

“It makes a big difference to
him
,” Rachael had said. “In his mind it makes a
huge
difference. Maybe something happened to him that was traumatic, something involving gangs in general. Maybe his motivations are religious and he sees himself as the Judgmental Hand of God. A lot of serial killers work on their own paranoid delusions that are very similar. What may not make sense to most of us regarding their crimes makes perfect sense to them."

Daryl had winced inwardly when she mentioned that perhaps something traumatic happened to the killer that involved gangs. His mind tracked briefly on what he had gone through with Shirley being killed, and then he quickly turned it off. He couldn't go down that road now. Time to get back to the problem at hand, and the fact of the matter was Daryl knew Rachael was right. Ted Bundy's victims were overwhelmingly Caucasian women with brunette hair parted in the middle and worn long. It turned out that Bundy had a personal fetish for women with that particular hair-style and color. Jeffrey Dahmer's victims were overwhelmingly African-American for a particular reason as well. Dahmer also chose African-American males over Caucasians because he guessed that law enforcement wouldn't be so quick to investigate when black males from the inner city disappeared. Could it be that the Eastside Butcher was choosing his victims for the same reason?

Daryl had mentioned this to Rachael. “This guy could be choosing gang members and people associated with them because he thinks that the investigations into their deaths won't be taken so far. And it's true; gang murders usually aren't investigated very thoroughly. It's only when the murder involves a victim that had no gang ties, say a person caught in gang crossfire or something, that the investigation is taken more seriously. But in reality? For the most part we simply don't have the time to thoroughly investigate every gang-related murder. Oh, and another thing, Rachael?"

“Yes?"

“That was off the record."

Now as he sat in his living room, the remnants of the conversation casting a warm glow, he folded the newspaper back up and filed it into the wooden magazine rack beside the sofa. He was going to keep this particular edition of the
Los Angeles Times
. Not only because Rachael wrote the feature story, but because of his own burgeoning interest in the case at hand.

He noticed the now empty mug of beer on the arm of the sofa. Rising, he picked up the mug and headed for the kitchen for a refill. Petey was lying on his favorite spot on the kitchen floor—near the refrigerator—and he lifted his head and smiled a doggy smile at Daryl. “Hey dog face,” Daryl said. Petey's tail wriggled in happiness. Daryl searched the pantry for a bag of tortilla chips—he had had a big lunch earlier and wasn't very hungry for dinner, but nonetheless he had the urge to nibble—and returned to the sofa with the chips and a fresh mug of beer. He turned on the Minolta wide screen TV with the remote and settled in for an hour of channel surfing, letting his mind drift.

Mostly he thought of the case. And Rachael. He wanted to go out with her badly.

But he was afraid.