JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (34 page)

April 1, 1998, 9:48 am

Los Angeles, CA

Rachael was reading the morning edition of the
LA Times
when she spied the article on page two. She nearly choked on her orange juice and coughed, doubling over in her chair as juice and spittle flew out of her mouth. Daryl, who was sitting across from her, reading the sports page, looked at her with alarm. “Jesus, you all right, Rachael?"

Still coughing, Rachael sputtered. “I'm fine. Just took this juice down the wrong pipe. I'll be okay."

She got herself calmed down, then held the paper out for Daryl to see. “I saw this just as I was taking a sip of my juice and that's what caused me to lose it. Hope you're not drinking coffee right now."

“What is it?” He took the paper from her curiously and his eyes lighted on the section she was pointing to.
SEVERED LEG FOUND IN HIGHLAND PARK

screamed the headline. Daryl's eyes grew wide and he looked at Rachael over the paper.

“Christ, you can't be serious!"

“This is the first you've heard of it?” she asked, amazed that he wouldn't have been alerted to the discovery the moment it was made.

“Yes,” he said, reading the article with rapt fascination.

Rachael had returned to Los Angeles seven nights ago last Thursday, tired and excited about the leads she had picked up. She had yammered to Daryl on the drive home from the airport about what she had found and he was impressed. They had gone to bed after making quick love and had woken up the next morning to get to their respective jobs; Rachael had to work on a new feature story for the paper and was due in the office at eight a.m. for a conference call. She'd stayed late at the office that first day, and then had come down sick later that night with a stomach flu that was so bad that Daryl had insisted she see a doctor. Her skin had been flush, her fever high, and she had thrown up almost continuously late into the morning, bent over the toilet dry-heaving until Daryl had gotten scared and headed to the phone to call 911. Miraculously, that had seemed to be the end of it; Rachael had stood up and come into the kitchen where Daryl was at the phone, finger poised over the ‘one’ button when Rachael said she felt better. She seemed to have gotten it out of her system. What she needed now was some water and to get into bed. So Daryl had helped her drink some water and then had put her to bed where she had fallen to sleep almost immediately. He had stayed home that morning; she had been tired, weak, still a little feverish, but felt a lot better. He went into the office that afternoon while Rachael stayed home and replenished her fluids. The next day marked a drastic improvement and she had gone back to work and that was pretty much the routine for the week until today.

They had been slow to wake up and finally Rachael had trudged outside to pick up the paper. Last night Daryl had turned off his beeper and the two of them finally got together and spent some quality time with each other, the first time they had been able to do so since Rachael arrived home from South Bend.

“They found this thing yesterday and nobody fucking
called me
?” he cried loudly, his voice tense. Rachael shrugged and tried to muster a reassuring smile. It didn't sit well with Daryl, who was quite pissed. “What the fuck is wrong with those asswipes?"

Rachael was going to suggest that perhaps they had tried to get a hold of him last night but weren't able to due to his turning the pager off. She didn't want to make him more upset, so she kept her mouth shut. Instead, she said: “They found it late last night.

We weren't home last night, Daryl. They might have tried calling here, but we weren't home."

“Yeah, and I had the goddamn pager turned off,” Daryl said, ruffling the paper so that the article was clearly exposed. “Just my fucking luck. I'm sure this really threw them for a loop so hard that it knocked them on their asses."

“This” was the discovery yesterday morning of a woman's severed leg found along the banks of a gulley in Highland Park. The leg, severed at the knee, was well preserved from the cold weather and rain El Nino was still bringing to the region. A search had been launched for the rest of the victim but as of the writing of the article, nothing had been found. Daryl rose from the table and went to the phone. “I've got to call in and see what's going on with this."

“Oh, Daryl,” Rachael exclaimed, now clearly wishing she hadn't showed the article to him. “Today was supposed to be our day off. Just the two of us, remember? We have reservations at the Getty Museum today. Or did you forget?"

“I remember,” he said, holding his hand up to her as if admonishing her to hold her tongue for now while he dealt with this issue. “I just want to call the station and see what they know about this."

“Okay.” Fair enough. She just hoped he didn't cave in to what she feared he would do—namely go into the station today, thus forgetting about their planned day off together after being apart for over a week.

He had been extremely happy to see her when he picked her up at the airport and suggested that today and the following day be vacation days from their respective jobs—it would give them both a long weekend. He had gotten reservations for the Getty weeks before, and he thought a visit to the museum and dinner in town might be the ticket. She agreed, and had immediately started looking forward to it. But then she told him about what she'd found in South Bend—she simply
had
to tell him, it was bursting at the seams—and that was when his demeanor started crumbling. Suddenly, it became less important for him to spend the weekend with his girlfriend, the love of his life, than to forfeit those plans and spend the weekend working. Hence, his diving into work in the days following her arrival home. She should have known better that any new information she found in South Bend would have to be followed up and analyzed by him. Now there was this new murder in the Highland Park area.
Just great
!

Rachael rose from the table and went upstairs, trying to block out Daryl's voice as he began asking whoever he was talking to what the hell was going on and why the hell hadn't anybody called him. She went into their bedroom and tried to bury the feelings of inadequacy she suddenly felt—why was it that when she met a man that she fell absolutely in love with there was always something that threatened to destroy the relationship? With her marriage, her husband had been prone to violence; with Daryl it was his workaholic nature and his obsession with this goddamn Butcher case. Sometimes it felt like Daryl didn't see her as a girlfriend anymore, but as a source for information and somebody to fuck whenever he got horny.

She took her t-shirt and panties off and headed toward the bathroom for a shower.

Don't think like this
, she told herself.
Daryl's the best thing that's ever happened to you.

He just needs to get through this case and then it'll be over. You know how much his
career is riding on this
.

Yeah, I know. But what about mine?

She turned on the shower and adjusted the knobs until the water was warm, but not too hot to scorch her skin. She stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain closed, immersing herself in the warm, wet spray. She was just as excited about the information she had found in South Bend, and considered herself to be just as embroiled in the case as Daryl was. After all, she was one of the first reporters for the
Times
who started doing regular stories on the Butcher's killing spree. There was her own interest in the case from a journalist's point of view—the continuing pieces for the
Times,
and the book-in-progress. She had just as much at stake, and was just as excited about new events in the case or leads that looked promising. Which was why she had immediately brought up what she had found to Daryl on the drive home last night.

She had told Daryl everything; how she had grilled the detectives in South Bend and visited the dump sights the victims had been found at. She told him about the burst of inspiration that led her to conduct her experiment; how she discovered it was only a thirty minute drive from the general downtown area where both identified victims were abducted, to the dump sights where they were found. She told him what the area was like at that particular time of night, and then she told him about her sudden brainstorm: the fact that the Red Light district was easy access to two major universities in the area: the University of Indiana, and Notre Dame University.

“College kids basically take over that area between five p.m. and the wee hours of the morning,” she'd told Daryl. “They frequent the bars, pool halls, the strip joints, some of them frequent the adult video stores. They don't live in the area—the area is so bad, you wouldn't believe it. But some of them do keep apartments in the area, and it's all within walking distance of the red light district."

“So you think the Butcher was a college kid when he started?” Daryl responded.

“Jeez, Rachael, from the way you described it he could have been a business man who worked in the downtown area."

“I know,” Rachael had said. She had thought about that as well, but her gut instinct told her that it was a college kid. “And I've thought about that, but I really think he was in college when he started."

“Why do you think that?"

“For one, he wouldn't look so out of place in the area. Anybody over forty hanging out in that area after nightfall looks suspicious, Daryl. If you're over forty and wearing a business suit you're automatically assumed to be a pervert or a john, which in most cases is true. For the most part, the college kids don't procure the services of street prostitutes unless they're unruly frat boys out for a night of partying. And if we assume these were his first kills we have to look at the patterns of other serial killers—a whopping ninety-five percent of them commit their first murders before they are twenty-six."

Daryl had started to nod and stroke his chin. “Hmmm. Interesting. What's the make-up of prostitution arrests in the area?"

“Most of the arrests are of businessmen in the area and businessmen in town from other cities,” she said. “Another good percentage come from day laborers. College students make up a small percentage, but still—"

“It's an interesting link,” Daryl said. “A very interesting link."

He had stopped asking her about it then, retreating into his thoughts on the subject as they drove home, but he brought it up again after they had made love. They'd been lying in bed, buried beneath the blankets, drifting off to sleep when he broke the silence.

“Did you talk to any college kids back there?"

“A few,” she'd answered. “Not many."

“Which school is closer?"

“Notre Dame, actually. The University of Indiana is another five miles south of the downtown area, but I still saw a few college kids with University of Indiana sweatshirts and jackets in the area."

“Where was the main residential area in the downtown area where the college kids lived?"

“A few blocks to the south. Mostly apartments and row houses, but some of the neighborhoods had some rather cute homes. I'm sure it's quite feasible for a couple of kids away from home to chip in on rent and live in a two- or three-bedroom home."

“True. Especially one with an attachable garage."

“It would make it easier for him to carry the bodies to his car."

“Right."

They'd turned to each other in the darkness. Rachael had smiled. “God, we're telepathically connected."

“You're right on that,” Daryl had said, kissing her.

Rachael turned off the shower. She opened the shower curtain and grabbed her towel off the rack and began to dry herself off. Daryl was totally convinced now that the Butcher had been a college student, or associated with college students when the Indiana murders occurred. He revealed this to her today during breakfast, after which all conversation was cut off by her discovery of the story on the Highland Park murder. Now her day was probably shot to hell as well.

She was standing in front of the sink brushing her teeth when Daryl walked in. He stepped behind her and put his arms around her waist, kissing the back of her neck. “All done,” he said.

“And?"

“Everything's under control. Steve tried paging me last night, but I had the pager turned off. He was able to handle it by himself, though. He tried calling me last night to give me a head's up but never got around to it. They tried to keep as much as they could from the press, but somebody at the paper heard the broadcast over the police scanners.

I'm going out there tomorrow."

“Are you going in to the office?"

“No,” he said. She turned around and put her arms around his neck, their bodies touching lightly. He looked into her eyes. “Today is our day off and we're going to relax. I promise. I know this thing is going to eat at me, and I know I'll probably bring it up in conversation seven thousand times today—"

Rachael laughed and kissed him. “And I'll just calmly tell you to can it and focus on more fun things."

“I was hoping you would say that.” He looked at her, smiling. “We're going to have a murder free day today. No Eastside Butcher, no talk about your trip, no talk about work. Just the two of us talking art at the museum and whatever else. Anything
but
work."

“Great!” They kissed, embracing. Rachael felt a surge of warmth flood through her, tingling her nerves. If they could just get through this day without talking about the Eastside Butcher or this latest murder, they would be making another big stride in their relationship. It would mean that Daryl was finally distancing himself from the case during its most active moments. An act that was sure to strengthen their relationship.

And strengthen their relationship it did. They spent the day wandering through the Getty museum,
oohing
and
aahing
at the paintings and sculptures, enraptured by the architecture. They had dinner at a nice Italian sidewalk café on Santa Monica Boulevard and browsed through a bookstore after dinner. By the time they arrived home that evening around nine p.m., neither Daryl nor Rachael had brought up the Eastside Butcher or the latest murder. And after making love Rachael drifted off to sleep with thoughts of their future on her mind while Daryl dropped off like a log.