JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (35 page)

Chapter 22

Father Ramirez was paralyzed with fear as he sat in the closed box of the confessional booth at Out Lady of Guadalupe. His limbs shook, his skin was sweaty as he breathed heavily, trying to calm down his beating heart. If he'd to listen to another ten seconds of the filth that had poured out from the other side of the confessional booth he would have screamed. It was a wonder he hadn't already. As it was, when the penitent left the confession booth Father Ramirez remained on his side of the screen, cowering in fear, praying to the Virgin for guidance.
Mother of God, this man, whoever he is, even if he
wasn't telling the truth, is sick. He needs help, blessed Lady.

And if what he told me is true, God have mercy on his soul
.

It had been at least five minutes since the penitent left, and Father Ramirez thought it would be safe enough to exit now. For a moment after he heard the door to the confessional booth open on the other side and heard the footsteps walk up the aisle of the church toward the front door, he had been strongly tempted to open his own door a crack and take a peak at the man. But he had resisted the urge; it wasn't up to him to know the face of the sinner, just be told the sin

But the sin ... oh God, the
sin
.

Sin that spoke of blood and murder, lust of the most unholy kind, the most depraved. And as he'd confessed it, Father Ramirez could have sworn that the penitent bore a faint hint of something in his voice, as if he were reliving those evil, vile acts over again as he spilled them out. And that he had not only enjoyed them, but that he was looking forward to doing them again.

When the penitent finished there had been a long silence. Finally the penitent had broken the silence by asking with an almost leering air: “Aren't you going to give me my penance now, Father?"

Father Ramirez had given the man five Our Fathers and Ten Hail Mary's, to make a good act of contrition and to go and sin no more. He automatically blessed the screened barrier before him, casting up a silent prayer for the man as he heard the outer door open and close. He'd wanted to give the penitent a more severe penance, like perhaps turning himself in to the authorities as part of his penance, but he had been too scared to even try.

His brain had frozen during the confession, and when the penitent'd asked for his penance Father Ramirez had bestowed it automatically. Then he'd sat in the confessional booth and tried to calm the shaking in his legs as he fought down a rising wave of fear and sickness.

He still sat in the confessional booth, calmed down slightly, but scared and nervous. He felt like a squirrel must feel when it has burrowed down its hole after being chased by a bobcat, squeezing itself into the far wall of its den as the cat tried to squeeze its bulk down the narrow hole and then getting a reprieve as the predator finally gave up and sauntered off in search of easier prey. He felt that the shadow of death had passed over and spared him.

But there was one thing he would not forget during the whole ordeal ... the sound of the penitent's voice after he went through the beginning words of the ritual, how his voice had cracked with glee, rose and fell with a falsetto that hinted at something psychotic and dangerous. He would remember those words for the rest of his life. “Father

... I've got blood on my hands, Father ... I've ... oh God, Father, her head ... her body, her legs, I cut them all up, cut her all up and got rid of her quickly this time and ... oh Father

... I've gone out and done it
again
..."

April 8, 1998, 1:03 p.m.

For the first time in the almost two years they had been together, Daryl and Rachael took lunch together during working hours. They were sequestered in a corner booth of a Hamburger Hamlet in Studio City. It had been Daryl's idea to go to lunch; there was a lot going on in the Butcher case that he needed to talk about, and Rachael was the best sounding board he had. Luckily she had the day free from deadlines and was able to meet him while following up a lead on the latest murder in Studio City.

“Basically we think she had friends who lived out here,” Daryl said as Rachael started in on her salad. “Some of her old friends, the ones she knew before she got into prostitution, told me they hadn't seen her in nine months. Another one told me that he knew she had become a street prostitute but that there was nothing he could do about it.

Those friends of hers are a fucking bunch of losers. Their best friend gets into drugs, crack cocaine specifically, helped along by these good buddies of hers and she not only gets a nasty habit, she starts selling herself to pay for it. They couldn't have cared less about this girl."

The girl Daryl was referring to was twenty-three-year-old Amanda Young. At first the FBI had been reluctant to include her in the Butcher murder series. True, she was a prostitute, but unlike the other prostitutes the Butcher sometimes snared, Amanda Young had no gang ties. And like the still-unidentified victim from nearly two summers ago—

the homeless man found in the San Gabriel Mountains—Amanda Young was Caucasian.

She had been reported missing by her pimp March 29th, two days after she was reportedly last seen in Highland Park. Her left leg, severed at the ankle and knee, was the first to surface on April 1, the night Daryl had turned off his beeper and he and Rachael spent a well deserved evening together. Despite a thorough search of the drainage ditch and the surrounding sewer system, no other trace of the girl's body had been found.

They had made the identification two days ago through DNA testing. Daryl had been able to get her medical records and the size of the leg supported the DNA findings, which were a perfect match with what was on file: Angela had been a pretty blonde woman of five foot seven, with a weight of one hundred and twenty-seven pounds.

Testing on the blood in the leg revealed that she had crack cocaine in her system, but it was still unknown how she had died. The coroner had determined, however, that the knife wounds exhibited on the leg convinced him without a doubt that this was the Butcher's handiwork. “The cuts are clean and precise,” he had told Daryl that night as the two men sat in the coroner's office going over the files and drinking coffee. “The joints are cut expertly, as if he was knew exactly what he was doing. There are no hesitation marks, and the degree of cuts tend to suggest the same kind of weapon, which is a large, heavy butcher knife."

Once identification was made and Angela's occupation was brought to light, and the circumstances of the night she was last seen were brought into the open, it was obvious to Daryl that she was Butcher victim number sixteen. Angela had been working the Highland Park area around Highland Avenue and Main street, near Ken's Adult Books and Video Emporium and several bars and pool halls. She had been working with another prostitute, and her partner for the night said that they had been working steadily from about eight p.m. till eleven-thirty or so. They had wandered down by Ken's and were hanging around by the side of the building near the parking lot, making sure to stray away every few minutes and stroll down the street casually so as not to attract the unwanted attention of undercover vice. The girl Angela was working with, a black prostitute named Barbara Peters, dashed across the street to get them both Snapples and when she came back Angela was gone. Figuring a john had picked up Angela when she was in the liquor store, Barbara had waited. But then thirty minutes passed and then an hour, and then an hour and a half, and she got worried. She turned down propositions from twelve johns in that space of time, growing more worried as time went on. Finally around one fifteen a.m., she had walked over to a phone booth and called Henry Scott, their pimp, and told him something had happened to Angela.

Daryl had spilled this all out to Rachael a few nights ago, and now as they sat amid the lunch time crowd of Hamburger Hamlet in Studio City amid film studio movers and shakers and trendy mall rats, he told her what had been going on this morning.

“Danny Hernandez was released this morning.” He spoke softly, feeling embarrassed by the fact. “There is just no evidence to hold him. None whatsoever. God, I feel so fucked up over that, but Christ, there was nothing I could do."

“No, there wasn't,” Rachael said, her eyes on his, warm and liquid brown. They had been able to hold Danny Hernandez on the marijuana possession charge while they checked up on him. Daryl had bluffed on the smack charge until their investigation on Danny's suspicious behavior came back clean. “When the tip came down he seemed like a very good suspect. I mean, he had the means and the methods to commit these murders.

And it turned out that he had been selling marijuana recently, right?"

“Yeah,” Daryl said, nodding. “That sure explains why he looked as guilty as shit when we picked him up. He thought we were nailing him on the trafficking charge."

“I still think the tip you got was a good one,” Rachael said. “It surely seemed to have all the right elements."

“That's what we all thought,” Daryl said. He took a sip of his iced tea. “But the fact of the matter is we went on a lousy hunch supplied to us by a kid who had a personal vendetta against Danny, and when we caught him ... I mean, Christ, I don't like to think of myself as homophobic, but catching him in a homosexual act just brought the bisexual overtones of this case to a head. The forensic psychiatrists all agree the Butcher is probably bisexual, and we nailed Danny because of that.” The boy who had initially supplied Father Glowacz with the tip had been the brother of a gang member that Danny Hernandez had helped put in jail when that gang member shot and killed another gang member. The gang member had attended Danny's youth group and Bible study at Our Lady of Guadalupe.

“I hope Danny is okay,” Rachael said, moving her fork around in her salad. “It must not only have been embarrassing for him to be arrested, but if word gets back to the neighborhood—"

“I don't even want to
think
about that,” Daryl said, holding a hand up and shaking his head. Daryl had already spoken to Father Glowacz, who told him that Danny's position was going to be brought up at the church's next meeting. Privately, Father Glowacz told Daryl that he bore no hard feelings toward Danny and that he still thought of him as a friend and a brother in Christ. “It's not my job to judge Danny for whatever sins he may have committed,” he had told Daryl. “All I am called on is to love Danny like a brother and to help him when he stumbles. And that's what I'm going to do. I am going to give Danny all the help, support, and prayers he needs."

Daryl knew that spending the last thirteen days in jail could have an adverse affect on Danny: his employment at the shipping docks in San Pedro could be in jeopardy, his status at the church as a counselor could be severed; worst, his reputation among the homeboys he helped could very well be over. Latino gang members frowned on homosexuality. If they found out Danny had been involved in a homosexual tryst there was no telling what could happen. He could be shunned, attacked, perhaps killed. And then there was the matter of how this was affecting Danny's personal life. The added stress could cause him to seek solace in heroin to escape the pain.

Rachael grasped Daryl's hands in both of hers. She looked across the table at him, her features concerned. “I don't want you to blame yourself for what happened with Danny. It wasn't your fault. You were simply following up on a lead and you had to cover all tracks in the investigation in order to clear him."

Daryl nodded. “I know. I just ... I don't know. I can't help but put a little blame on myself for what happened. If I had only thought it through before I ordered that Danny be brought in I might have not only spared him the embarrassment, but I could have ordered something more stringent, like surveillance or something."

“But it was a good tip,” Rachael said. “Or at least it seemed to be at the time. You had to get him off the street."

Daryl sighed. “Yeah, I guess you're right."

Rachael smiled at him, then brought his hands up to her lips and kissed them. Her smile was wide and radiant. “I love you."

Daryl smiled. Hearing that made him feel like he wasn't a total fuck up. “I love you, too."

“Now why don't you tell me about that other development you've got going before I tell you where I am with my book."

“Your book?” Daryl looked like this was the first he had ever heard that Rachael was actually working on a book. “Are you finished with it?"

“No,” Rachael said, brushing the subject aside with a swipe of her hand over his own. She started back on her salad. “Just some news. I'll tell you about it in a minute. Tell me about what happened today."

“Well, we did jail another suspect today on parole violation.” He spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. He didn't want to get too excited about this prospect. He had been investigating this guy quietly for the last three weeks, and had gotten most of his information on him from Sylvia, the masseuse at the massage parlor in Echo Park. “This is a guy that Steve found out about from a guy named Louis Melendez, a member of the Los Compadres Gang. It seems this guy, who I'll call Peter, is an older Hispanic man who lives with his two aunts in Highland Park. Peter is bi-sexual, and an ex-gang member with a long criminal record. He was arrested for murder in 1972 and served ten years.

When he was released, he apparently went clean and moved in with these two aunts.

Anyway, Louis told Steve that Peter knew “Goofy” Hernandez and Gloria Aldrette, and that rumor had it that he had tried to help Goofy get into modeling. He shot some photos of Goofy and promised to help him get a portfolio together, that sort of thing. Anyway, the more Steve talked to this guy, the more it seemed he knew a lot of these gang members—Los Compadres, Tortilla Flats, 18th Street, the whole bunch. He had a passing acquaintance with Javier Perez, the gang member found on Los Compadres turf, and Steve figured he might know enough of the Los Compadres gang well enough to have snuck down to the Eight-First street bridge and dump his body there. So we paid him a visit this morning and got him as he was leaving for work.” Daryl grinned. “He's sitting in a cell now."