JF Gonzalez - Fetish.wps (39 page)

“Nothing wrong for a guy to talk to a woman, you know,” Daryl said, chuckling slightly. Rachael could picture Daryl smiling.

“I
know
.” Rachael smiled, cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear as she fiddled with the dials on the car radio. “It's just that Mr. Sanchez told me a lot more about this Charley character and I wouldn't think it would be worth anything if I didn't feel so strong about following up on it. I'm just going to go by his place and ask him a few questions. I'll be home by nine-thirty, ten at the latest."

“Okay honey,” Daryl said. There was a screeching whine as feedback cut through the next portion of his sentence. “...get some things, but...”
Whine
. “...I don't think...”

Whine
.

Damnit! “Daryl? I can't hear you?” She moved to the right toward the passenger window to try to get a different angle on the frequency. The whining ceased and Daryl's voice came back through. “...watch a couple of movies on TV?"

“What?"

“I said tomorrow's Saturday. Why don't we stay home and rent a bunch of movies and be bums."

“Sounds like my idea of a perfect Saturday."

“Good.” It sounded like Daryl might be smiling on the other end of the receiver.

“I'll swing by Blockbuster on my way home from the store and pick some stuff up."

“Fine, but nothing gory and involving murder. I think I've had enough of murders for this summer."

“You got it. How about campy violence like a Jackie Chan movie?"

“Great!” Rachael laughed. She loved Jackie Chan flicks.

“Good. I'll see you later then. I love you."

“Love you, too.” She pressed the hang-up button, folded the phone up and pushed the antenna down, replacing it in her purse. A warm feeling coursed through her as she looked out the front windshield of the Camaro, surveying the scene. She felt good that she had a good man to come home to, no matter how stressed things were at work for him, and she felt good that she was gaining so much information on the Butcher case. Part of the reason she felt so good was because she was literally bursting at the scenes to tell Daryl about the information she had come across today; it had taken all of her willpower to keep from spilling the beans to him on the phone. She just had one more stop to make before she headed for home and then she would tell him everything.

She couldn't wait.

She'd had a relatively fine day. After finishing the article she was working on for the paper earlier that morning—this one tracing former homeless people through the job ranks—she left the office shortly after one-thirty and went to the Los Angeles Public Library to do some research on the book, just as she had planned last night. She had spent the next few hours researching medical information; she very well could have gotten some information from Daryl's contacts at the morgue, but she wanted to educate herself on the basics. Then at four-fifteen she had left the library and headed out on the 10

freeway toward East Los Angeles.

Once in East Los Angeles she had driven around, mentally tracing the movements of the killer she had formulated in her mind. Driving around in the daylight wasn't the same as at night, but by cruising to the various dumping locations—or as close to them as she dared go—and the few spots the victims were last seen, she reaffirmed her opinion that the killer either dwelt in the area or spent considerable time there. She had pulled up next to Carver Elementary School and jotted down some notes. She would check her theory later this week, maybe during a weeknight. Next stop was Top's Burger's in Highland Park to talk to the employees.

She had arrived at the burger place at six-thirty and found she was ravenously hungry. She'd ordered a Chinese chicken salad and a large diet coke. She had taken the food on a red plastic tray to a back table and ate slowly, relishing each bite.

As she ate she observed the traffic of customers coming in and out. Most of them were Hispanic lower class families, children in tow. A group of men from the nearby meat packing plant—ironically the same plant that Peter Manuel worked at (now that
is
pretty coincidental, she had thought, making a mental note of it)—and ordered their evening dinner of steak and potatoes and fried chicken and french fries. Rachael had watched them all, observing how they interacted with each other, and saw nothing unusual. For that matter, nothing was out of the ordinary with the employees. She had remained at her table for a good ten minutes after her food was eaten, draining the rest of her coke through the straw. It had been rapidly closing in on seven-fifteen, and the sun was beginning to set. Time to get this show on the road.

She had risen from her booth and dumped the trash in the waste barrel near the exit. Then, straightening herself up and reaching for her purse to present her credentials, she had approached the stand.

A young Hispanic man, the same one that had taken her order, looked at her.

Rachael had said, “Is the owner here tonight?"

The young man had nodded and motioned to an older Hispanic man behind the counter supervising the food preparers. He scowled as he came over. “Yes?"

Rachael had introduced herself and presented him with a fake badge that identified herself as a private investigator. “I've been hired by Carmen Aguirre's family to help locate her,” she explained, the ruse coming as effortlessly as yawning. “And I was wondering if I can ask you a couple of questions."

The man had opened his mouth and leaned forward, hand outstretched and finger pointing at her as if to tell her to get the hell off his property, but he paused. He appeared to consider the question and then with a motion of his head replied: “I'll talk to you in the back."

Rachael had gone back in the restaurant and followed the small man around the back of the eating establishment. He'd waited for her at the rear of the kitchen and motioned her into a small, but cramped office that appeared to serve as part office, part storeroom. He had closed the door and moved behind a small makeshift desk, his beady black eyes remaining fixed on her. “You're not a cop?"

“I'm not a cop."

“I tried calling the cops about this before, you know,” he had said, sitting down at a desk piled with invoices, paperwork, and stained food wrappers. “The day Carmen didn't show up for work I got worried and called her home. Her parents say she never came home from work the night before. They called the police but they wouldn't do anything till she had been gone forty-eight hours. That's when I knew. I called the police myself but they refused to talk to me."

“Excuse me, Mister..."

“Sanchez,” the little man had said. “Hector Sanchez."

“Mr. Sanchez,” Rachael had continued, turning her tape recorder on with one swift, subtle movement as her hand dived in her purse briefly. “Why did you feel the need to call the police so soon? Especially after hearing that her parents had already called them?"

“Because I know what happened!” Hector Sanchez's eyes were large, the pupils black pools. He had looked like he knew the inside information of the JFK assassination.

He breathed heavily in excitement. “I know Carmen didn't just disappear or run off from home. She wasn't that kind of girl. She wouldn't worry her parents like that."

“What kind of girl was she, Mr. Sanchez?"

For the next five minutes Hector Sanchez had told her what kind of girl Carmen Aguirre was. She was the kind of girl he would have wanted for a daughter: respectful of her elders, nice to the customers, friendly and outgoing, always willing to give anybody at the restaurant a hand when they needed it. And modest. Physically, Carmen Aguirre was a beautiful girl, but she didn't let it go to her head. She knew she was the subject of attention from the men who worked at the restaurant, and she treated them all with respect and dignity, batting down their advances nicely and politely. Rumor had it that she had a boyfriend who was affiliated with a local gang, but Hector never saw the young man. If it was true, Carmen never behaved like a gang member; she was honest, thrifty, willing to help anybody. She was smart, too; she was going to technical school to be a computer technician and Hector admired that. “Education is an important thing,” he had said, easing back and relaxing. To Rachael he had flowed into the father figure Carmen probably saw him as. He shook his finger at her. “Don't you forget that, young lady. Go to school and you can do whatever you want."

“That's true and I agree,” Rachael had said. “Is what you told me about Carmen why you think she wouldn't have just gotten tired of the way her life was and just left town?"

Hector had shaken his head, his lips set in a thin grimace. He leaned forward over the desk again, his voice lowered. “She was too friendly with some of the customers. One of them, a guy that comes in here every other day for lunch, had it hard for her. I could tell. He looked at her in a way that is not becoming for a man to be looking at a lady. He was doing ... what do you call it?” He had gestured vaguely with his hands.

“Undressing her with his eyes?"

“Yes.” He had said, nodding. “He looked at her the way a man looks at a woman who offers herself for sale, not as a lady like Carmen."

Rachael had nodded, soaking this in. “Who is this guy?"

“His name is Charley. I don't know his last name, but he works at the Acme Insurance building down the street. He's an older guy, late thirties, early forties maybe. A white man, slightly balding, pudgy, wears glasses. He looks like a fairy."

“A fairy?"

“I don't know how else to explain it,” Hector had said, lowering his voice in a whisper, as if afraid they would be overheard. “He looks soft, like he's.... I don't know ...

not strong. Like a man should be. He looks like he's always thinking about something else, like he has something dirty on his mind.” His grimace had set deep in his face.

“Especially when Carmen was working. She was too nice to him. Paid too much attention to him. I used to tell her, ‘don't lead him on like that. He'll just want to get into your pants and you're too nice a girl to let a piece of dogshit like that even think of you in that way'.

But she would just laugh at me and tell me that she was only trying to be nice to the guy.

She said that he was really a nice guy but that he was shy. Shy my ass!"

This Charley character was intriguing. “How well did she know him?"

Hector had shrugged. “It's hard to say. He came in for the entire year she worked here, and at first he just used to watch her. I noticed right away and thought something was wrong. See, the guys are always looking at Carmen because she is so beautiful, but they don't stare at her. You know what I mean? But this guy! He was like a thirsty dog in front of an oasis he couldn't get to. His tongue practically dragged on the ground every time he walked in here when Carmen was working. Within a month or so she would make small talk with him when she took his order, and pretty soon they were on first name basis. The next six months they would sometimes talk a little bit. The last few months she was here she would actually join him at one of the booths. A few weeks before she disappeared, he asked her out on a date!"

“What happened?"

“She turned him down,” Hector explained. “But she did it nicely. She told me about it later that day. She told him that she was busy that night, but that maybe they could do something some other time. I got on her case again, told her that by doing that she was leading him on. She said that she didn't have the heart to tell him that she wasn't interested in him. She figured that if she let him down this way and kept evading his advances that maybe he would get the hint. She couldn't be mean to him."

“Did this Charley character continue to come into the restaurant after this happened?"

Hector had nodded. “Oh yes. But not as much. A month later Carmen disappeared."

Rachael remained silent upon hearing this, gathering her thoughts. She had a sixth sense when it came to her investigative journalism that told her she needed to pursue this.

There wasn't any mention anywhere in the Butcher case files that a man fitting Charley's description had been questioned—how could there be when Carmen wasn't even considered a victim? And this intuition was telling her that this Charley person needed to be investigated further.

“What makes you think Charley had anything to do with her disappearance?”

Rachael had asked.

Hector had fidgeted behind the desk. He brushed his greasy hair back from his forehead and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I can't explain it,” he'd said, shrugging his shoulders. “It's just a feeling I have. It's just something I know."

Kind of like how you know that Carmen has fallen victim to the Butcher but
nobody but you and Daryl know it yet
. Rachael had nodded solemnly at the fast food restaurant owner. “I understand."

“He didn't show his face in here for almost three months after she went missing. I told the police that he had something to do with it. They went to the place he worked and questioned him. They said he denied knowing where she was, or having anything to do with her disappearance. Liar!"

“Has he been back to the restaurant since?"

Hector nodded. “Bastard came in two, three months later, skulking around like a cur dog. He was jumpy, like he kept expecting me to leap over the counter and strangle him. And God knows I wanted to."

“And now?"

Hector sighed. “He comes in pretty regularly still. No matter how much I tell the police that they need to question him more, they never listen. I think Charley knows I'm the one who thinks he had something to do with her disappearance, but he hasn't said anything to me about it. In fact, he won't even look at me when he comes in. The coward."

“Where does he work again?"

“Carmen told me he works at Acme Insurance. On Fifth and Main."

“He still works there?"

“Yes,” Hector had nodded. “And I know where he lives, too."

This had piqued Rachael's interest. Hector Sanchez really had it in for this Charley character. She had pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil. Hector gave her an address and when she was finished writing it down, she put it back in her purse. She had been just about to rise to her feet and thank him for the information when Hector commented dryly.