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FETISH

J.F. Gonzalez

WILDSIDE PRESS

FETISH

Copyright © 2005 by J.F. Gonzalez.

All rights reserved.

Published by

Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

Prologue

August 13, 1982, 10:45 a.m.

Gardena, CA

Alfonso DiMartini was at home washing the breakfast dishes when George Castro knocked on the front door and then let himself in, as was custom at the DiMartini house.

Al was blasting an old Kansas album on the stereo, and George crossed the living room to the stereo to turn the volume down. Alfonso turned around in annoyance. “Hey, what're you doing?"

“I gotta talk to you,” George said. He entered the kitchen, looking around. “Pam at work?"

“Yeah.” Pam was Alfonso's cousin. Al shared a two-bedroom duplex with his older brother, Dominick, and his cousin, Pam. Dominick was a PhD student at UCLA and was one of those esoteric fall-outs from the hippie era. He had dropped so much acid that he could sit in the middle of the room and go into auto-trip just by listening to vintage Pink Floyd or Genesis. Pam, on the other hand, was a working girl. She pulled down a nine-to-five at a local insurance company. Al was bumming it this summer until the fall semester started. Come September, Al and George were freshman at Long Beach State.

“Good,” George said. He went to the refrigerator and got himself a beer. He opened the bottle with an opener and took a deep swig. He sat down at the kitchen table, not knowing how to approach this. Alfonso took a break from the dishes and got himself a beer, too.

“Something's troubling you, my friend,” Al said. He pulled up a chair opposite George and regarded him. Al was short and wiry, with sharp features and high cheekbones; he had nice, Italian features. His black hair was collar length, brushed back from his forehead. His grin was merry, his eyes gleeful; they seemed to say, today is going to be a good day, my friend, no matter what is troubling you. So lay it on me.

That's what friends are for.

“Okay.” George took another swig of beer. He had already killed half the bottle of Michelob. “Yesterday afternoon, Stacy Temple and I went over to visit John Burke. And

... well, after we got back to Stacy's place one thing kind of led to another and—"

“Say no more,” Alfonso said, grinning. “I know just what's troubling you. You're on the rebound from Sara and you fell back into your thing with Stacy and you're afraid that you're going to lead her on."

“No,” George said. “Well, yeah, I guess, but that's not really it.” George shook his head, not really knowing where to begin. Al had it half right. Last year George had fallen into a fling with Stacy Temple, one of their classmates with whom they had just graduated from high school. Stacy was a pretty girl with tan skin and long black hair. She was tall and had a body to die for, but you would never know it to look at her. She didn't wear much make-up, she wore her hair long and straight, and she dressed plainly. George had never really known why such an obviously pretty girl would want to downgrade her appearance until yesterday.

George had known Stacy since the two of them were in the fourth grade. She had been somewhat popular in grade school, but by the time they reached junior high school she had stopped all the extra-curricular activities; no more after-school volunteer or club stuff. She became a nobody like George and the crowd he hung with. He and Stacy had known each other casually for the better part of their childhood, but when they were both juniors in high school their relationship started off with a bang when she had invited him over to her house one afternoon after school to get stoned.

Funny how drastically things changed from one's junior year of high school to graduation. In January of 1981, when George and Al and Stacy and their friends had been juniors, graduation and the future were the furthest thought from their minds. George's hair was shoulder length. Despite an almost daily ingestion of hemp, George still had managed to maintain a B average without trying. Stacy was the opposite. She was on the honor roll and appeared to live the life of the perfect high school student. So he had been pretty surprised when she invited him to her place to get high one afternoon when they were on their way home from school via the public bus system.

They had gotten off at the corner of Van Ness and Compton Boulevard and made their way to the simple three-bedroom home set off from the semi-busy street. George still remembered that day perfectly. School had let out early due to some faculty meeting, and they arrived at Stacy's around one. Her parents had been at work. By one-fifteen they were lounging in her bedroom, her stereo tuned to the local FM rock station, and she retrieved an impressive looking water bong from her closet. That was the second thing that impressed George.

The third had been her choice in pot. She'd had some prime Thai Stick. They were stoned and giggling like a bunch of fools within minutes.

Eventually one thing led to another, and they were making out. George had never thought of Stacy as particularly attractive before, but once her clothes were off he saw that she had a beautiful body; long legs ending in curvy hips, a flat stomach, full breasts with large, dark aereoles. For the first time, George began to wonder why she downgraded her appearance so much at school. But then he stopped dwelling on this thought as they began making love. The weed only helped to heighten the orgasm. It made every sensation, every touch of skin, every kiss, seem electrified.

He had seen her the next day. Got stoned. Had quickie sex. He was out of the house by four.

And the routine had repeated itself. At least three times a week. Depending on how horny she got, sometimes Monday through Friday.

George had melded into the relationship easily. During school their relationship was the same as it had always been, but once inside the privacy of her bedroom the barriers broke down. They became lovers in a way that George had never imagined they would. She had obviously gained valuable experience in the things she showed him, and it didn't strike George until much later that she had a sort of used look about her.

“Remember when I first started seeing Stacy?” he asked Alfonso. “How I felt kind of funny about it?"

“Yeah,” Al said. George had confessed to his friends that while he enjoyed having sex with Stacy, he didn't feel right about the relationship. His friends had urged him to dump her. George had stuck with her for another few months.

“I couldn't express the reason why I felt that way about her because I didn't want to sound like an asshole,” George said. “But what I felt weird about was that she ... well, she seemed to have been around the block quite a few times, if you know what I mean."

Alfonso shrugged. “So she's a closet slut. Big deal."

“That's not it, though,” George said, taking another pull from his beer. One quarter left now.

George had become so immersed in Stacy that the months had flown by. Stacy had guided him from shy, inexperienced lover, to a stallion in just a few short months.

Stacy had always been the aggressor and George liked playing the role of the passive, submitting willingly to her advances and letting her have her way with him. That seemed to have been all she wanted, because she never brought up relationship stuff; no, “are you ever going to take me out on a real date?", or “Do you love me?", shit like that. All she really ever said during their sexual interludes was “I want you to fuck me!” He had been only too happy to oblige.

What broke it off for them was a chance encounter with a cheerleader from North High School he'd met at the Del Amo Mall. He had been there to see a movie with Shane Taylor and Peter Suzuki, and George was smitten with her. Apparently she had been equally smitten, and they had exchanged phone numbers. They had gone out on a date a week later, and within a few short days they were an item. George tried to keep the relationship a secret from Stacy, but he knew he would have to tell her something. She continued to call him during the first month of the fall semester of their senior year, and finally he told her that he was seeing somebody else. At the time, she hadn't seemed to mind. In fact, he was positive she hadn't minded. Stacy had said she understood, she would be busy this upcoming school year trying to make the grades to get into a good university. They had remained friends.

“So what is it?” Alfonso asked.

George finished the beer then retrieved another one. He opened it up and took a long swallow. He sighed, fighting back the memories. Even now, thinking back on it, everything had still seemed so innocent. He recalled hugging Stacy after the graduation ceremony shortly after the entire class of 1982 had flung their caps into the air. He remembered catching a glimpse Stacy's father videotaping them. That sure brought things into focus; especially after seeing the video tape yesterday afternoon that Stacy had goaded him into watching. After the graduation ceremony she'd kissed him and said “Call me in a few weeks."

“So I called her yesterday,” George said, narrating the events that had followed the graduation. “She had called me a few days before, suggesting we visit John, and I said, yeah, sure. So we did it. I had my mom's station wagon, so I picked her up at her place and we went to John's house and had a great time. We just sat there and bullshitted, had a few beers, that was it. We left a few hours later and Stacy suggested we hang out at her place. I had told Stacy that Sara and I had broken up and ... well, I caught strong vibes coming from her. Know what I mean?"

Alfonso nodded. “Sure. She was horny, and so were you."

“Right. Anyway, an hour later we're at Stacy's house, in bed. And we were really into it when she pushed me off her and ... got on her hands and knees. She kind of ...

leered at me, and she ... just looked so different. As if she wasn't the same girl. And she told me to fuck her in the ass. And her voice—"

Alfonso chuckled. “Is that all you're riled up about? Some girl wants you to do it in her backdoor and you got cold feet? Shit, George, that's nothing to be all freaked out over."

“That's not it. It wasn't the act per se. It was the way she demanded it. It was like she became an entirely different person. She wanted me to ... dominate her, hurt her. Even her voice changed. It got ... deeper. That's the only way I can describe it. Her whole facial expression changed. It was like I was looking at a different person."

Al shrugged. “Maybe she's into some weird role playing shit, and figured you would get into it with her."

“Will you let me finish?” George was getting irritated at Alfonso interrupting him.

“All right, sorry. Continue kimosabe."

“Okay. So, I refused to, you know, fuck her that way, and she ... got this look in her face. It was weird. She got up and grabbed me, threw me on the bed. She said she was going to rape me. She was still talking in that weird voice and she sort of wrestled me down. She was holding me down and she started reaching for something on her dresser, and I saw that it was a pair of handcuffs. I don't know how I did it, because she was so fucking strong, but I got out of her grip and pushed her off me. She sort of fell on the floor and I was up, starting to pull my clothes back on when she ... well, she lost it.” He swallowed some more beer. “She said ‘what do you know about making love, you fucking asshole! You never cared about me in the first place'."

“Whoa,” Alfonso said, spellbound by the story.

“Then she seemed to snap out of it,” George said, taking another swig of beer.

“She started crying, and I mean hard. It was as if something inside her had died, or as if some deep buried sense of rage and despair was being let loose. I didn't know what to do, I was just so stunned. Finally I went to her and tried to hold her, comfort her. She fought me off at first, crying even harder, but after awhile I had her calmed down. Finally her crying trickled down and I asked her what was wrong. It was then that she basically ...

showed me ... what was wrong ... and what had been wrong with her for a long time."

George told Alfonso the rest. Stacy had motioned for him to follow her into the den. He had hardly set foot in this part of the house when they'd been seeing each other, and the few times he had travelled back there he had marveled at the array of grown-up toys her parents had. A large screen television flanked one wall, the projection beam holding a VCR. A high-tech stereo system sat on a black oak entertainment center that took up the space of another wall, and the rest of the room was decorated with various plaques and awards from Stacy and her folks’ various achievements. Dad's plaque honoring him for something he had accomplished as a Sr. Technician at ITT. Mom's bowling trophy from JC. Stacy's plaque honoring her as Student Body President, sixth grade. Middle-of-the-road normalcy at its finest. Inserted among the mementos were videotapes with labels denoting feature films and the requisite family stuff. “Sequoia National Park—Summer, 1977". Another section contained albums and cassette tapes of everything from Beethoven's Seventh performed by the London Philharmonic to 70's bands like Fleetwood Mac's Rumors. Popular best selling novels sat binding to binding with literary classics. Maybe they were well rounded.

Stacy had told him to sit down. George had plopped his bare white ass obligingly on the red velvet sofa as she opened a cabinet door set in the entertainment center and began rummaging around inside. It was filled to the brim with more video cassette tapes.

She had extracted a tape and turned on the TV projector. Fuzz filled the screen as she plopped the videocassette in. She told him to watch.

She had sat down beside him as the screen went blank and the footage on the tape commenced.

The den they were seated in came into view on the screen in a wobbly image. It was filled with people milling around talking. There were children in the video. George initially thought it was a family get-together. He had shifted in his seat as Stacy took his hand and squeezed it.

As the tape unwound, George noticed the footage was off kilter. Something about the gathering just wasn't right. George shifted in his seat as a bolt of unease ran through his body. The people in the video, mainly couples, began to slowly kiss and stroke each other. Some of them began to do the same with the children. George's jaw had dropped.

“Watch.” Stacy's voice had been thick, trembling. The people on the screen began disrobing, then disrobing the children.

And in the midst of the frolicking figures engaged in sexual acts, a face stood out.

Young. Pig-tailed. Pretty, with the eagerness and sweetness of a child.

“When I saw a man on that videotape, a man old enough to be Stacy's grandfather, begin...” his voice trembled with the memory of it. Alfonso was listening, his features showing disgust and horror. “Begin ... you know ... I ... I literally got sick. I shot off that couch and stumbled into the living room and dry heaved. Stacy came after me, crying now. She said her parents had made her do it, that they had been making her do stuff like that for as long as she could remember."

Alfsonso said nothing as George stopped and drained the rest of his beer. He got up to get another one. Alfonso asked for another one, too. It was obvious that the story had gotten to him.

George continued after taking a deep drink. “Her parents had been sexually abusing her this way since she was born. They used to bring in other people, pedophiles of both sexes, to abuse her. They continued doing this to her, even up till the time we were seeing each other. She said her parents might seem like upstanding middle-class citizens, but they never gave a shit about her. They used her for their own sick fantasies.

She said that she wasn't the first child they did this to; they had been doing this to children for years before she came along, and that the only reason they had her was to use her and to sell her to other people like themselves.” George paused, looking at Alfonso, who listened as silence. “She told me that I was the first person she had been intimate with that she really loved. I didn't think about that till later. I was so sickened, so frightened by the vibes I felt from being in that house, where they had done those things to her, that all I was thinking about was getting out of that house. I was getting dressed as she was telling me this, crying her heart out as she went on. She went to bed with me because it was her choice, not her parents. She wanted to share the experience of being close to someone the way she knew she was meant to experience it. And I ... just didn't want to hear it."

“You were scared,” Alfonso said, softly.

“Yeah,” George said, running a hand through his hair. “Scared and sickened. I just wanted to be out of there. Stacy kept begging me to hold her, and I had to practically fight her to get out of that house. I feel so ashamed of myself for reacting that way, but.... I was so scared!"

They were silent for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. They drank silently. Finally, Alfonso said, “So what are you going to do?"

“I don't know,” George said. He wasn't even feeling the affects of the alcohol, despite the fact that he had just downed two beers in less than ten minutes. “I ... I've thought of calling the police, but ... I don't know ... I'm just so fucking confused!"

“I think you should,” Alfonso said. He took a drink. “But I think the first thing you need to do is contact Stacy. She needs to know that she has a friend in all of this."

“I know.” George felt like shit for the way he had reacted.

“Are you sure you can prove all this?” Alfonso asked. “I mean, think before you call the police. I think you should call them because shit like what you saw has got to be illegal. But you've got to be sure that this isn't going to come back and bite you on the ass."

“If they're still molesting kids I can't let that happen,” George said. He took another swig of beer.

“Then call them. But first, call Stacy. Try to see her if you can. Tell her you love her, that you're her friend, and that you're standing beside her. She needs you now."

George sighed and nodded. Talking to Al about this made him feel better. “Yeah, I'll do that. I'll call her today."

“Good man."

George took another swig of beer. “Then I'll see what she thinks about me calling the police."

Alfonso shook his head. “No, you don't want to do that. Don't even tell her you're calling the cops. That might make her defensive. She might either deny anything happened, or she'll tip off her parents and they'll hide all that shit. Then you'll be fucked.

Don't tell her. Just call the cops."

“Yeah, you're right.” George said, nodding. Al was usually right about things like this.

Except in this case.

George called Stacy four hours later. He was still at Alfonso's, and he was completely fucked up now. Getting drunk was the only way he could summon the courage to make the call. Alfonso was sitting beside him in the living room, the windows open to let in the August summer afternoon. Al was well on his way to being sloshed, too.

Alfonso nodded encouragingly at George as he picked up the phone and dialed.

The phone was picked up on the fourth ring by Stacy's father. George asked for Stacy. “You just missed her,” Mr. Temple said, no hint of any sinister quality to his voice at all. “She left this morning for college."

“College?” George felt all the hope and enthusiasm deflating. He didn't know what to say. She hadn't said anything about leaving when they were together yesterday.

“I imagine she'll call us to let us know she arrived safely,” Stacy's father said. “It was such a split-second decision. Her mother and I knew she was contemplating several colleges, but—"

“You mean she's gone? She just picked up and left?” George still couldn't believe what was happening.

Mr. Temple suddenly sounded suspicious. “You a friend of hers?"

“Uh ... yeah,” George said, trying to think of what to say. This had really thrown him for a loop. “Um..."

“You might want to try back later,” Mr. Temple said, his voice strong and stern.

“I'm sure she'll call. Is there a message I can leave for her?"

“N-no,” George stammered. “Thanks.” He hung up.

Alfonso was waiting with bated breath. His eyes were wide with excitement.

“What happened?"

George told him. The two friends talked about it. Alfonso produced a bag of Thai Stick and tapped it into the bowl of a clay pipe. The two friends smoked, trading the pipe back and forth until they were both good and stoned. Alfonso put Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell album on the turntable. They contemplated what had happened in stoned silence.

Finally, George broke the silence. “I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do."

“You still thinking of calling the cops?” Alfonso said.

George turned to him. “I don't know."

George never did call the police. And he never heard from, or saw, Stacy Temple ever again. He would talk to John Burke in the weeks ahead, and John would later tell him that Stacy had told him the molestation story, too. John had believed her as well. Had John seen the tape? George would ask. John would nod that, yes, he had. And as the months went by and they started embarking upon their lives in that late fall of 1982 and the spring of 1983, attending college, working jobs, George would think about Stacy and the dark secrets she harbored. And whenever he was alone his thoughts would turn to her and he would beat himself up for not standing up and offering her the love and support she needed when she told him that her parents had used her as a sex toy. And as the months turned to years, other women came into George's life. And as the years went on, some of those women became faded memories.

But Stacy Temple would always remain in his mind.

He always wished he had been man enough to take her in his arms that day and tell her he loved her.

He never forgot her.

And whenever he thought about her, he thought about that day when she had shown him her secret.

And the one thing that George never forgot, the one thing that still stood out in his mind, was the way her voice had changed when she had tried to rape him. How deep it got.

And the expression on her face ... her body language.

As if she were a different person.

Chapter 1

September 10, 1996, 11:33 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA

When Detective Daryl Garcia and his partner Detective Steve Howe entered the shabbily furnished apartment in East Los Angeles off Briar Avenue, he knew that they would find what they were looking for. And find it they did.

The man who opened the door for them was Rudy “Psycho” Montego, a nineteen-year-old member of the Los Compadres Mafia street gang, one of the most feared and notorious gangs in East Los Angeles. Rudy stood at the door shirtless, clad only in a pair of long baggy shorts, a pair of tennis shoes and white tube socks that went up to his knees. If you're going to wear socks all the way to your knees while wearing a pair of shorts that go down to your shins, what was the fucking point?

Rudy nodded as he opened the door. He had called “who is it?” at the sound of their knocks and opened the door immediately after Daryl and Steve identified themselves. Rudy knew better. He may be a gang member, but he wasn't entirely stupid.

“Was’ up, homes?” He asked, assuming a stance of normality. Daryl and Steve had known Rudy for the last three years; the last time they had busted him was for public intoxication and carrying a concealed weapon. Rudy stepped aside as Daryl and Steve walked into the apartment and noticed that he wasn't alone.

Another male gang member was lounging on the worn, tattered sofa in the tiny living room. This gang member was small in stature and physically resembled Rudy; slight build, shaved head, tan skin, wearing nothing but baggy shorts and tennis shoes.

Both men sported numerous tattoos on their arms, chest, and back. The man on the sofa looked younger, probably no older than sixteen. It didn't matter though; at sixteen the kid was already a lost cause.

Steve closed the door behind them and Daryl faced the two men. Rudy had retreated back toward the sofa but hadn't taken a seat. His friend remained seated, a bored look on his face. Daryl nodded at the younger gang member. “What's your name?"

“Flaco,” he answered.

“What's your real name?"

The kid grinned. “Frankie."

“Frankie, I want you to get off the sofa slowly and get on your knees and face the sofa with your hands behind your head."

Frankie threw his hands up in an exasperated manner. “Aw man, what I do now?

Jesus Christ!"

Daryl had his hand on the butt of his gun and he was tense. He felt Steve beside him, just as tense. It was just the two of them in this apartment and they didn't know if there were any other homeboys hiding in the back bedroom. They had to get these two in custody as soon as possible. “It's just for our safety while we talk. Come on now."

Frankie looked at Rudy, as if getting confirmation to comply. Steve motioned at Rudy. “You too, Rudy,” Steve said. “Hands behind your head and on your knees please."

“Man, you can talk to us like this,” Rudy said, arms out at his side, trying to reason with the two officers.

“Rudy...” Daryl warned, putting an inflection of menace in his voice. His hand was on the butt of the gun now, ready to pull his weapon.

The four men stood there, a Mexican standoff. Finally Rudy threw his hands up, placed them behind his head and turned around, getting on his knees. Frankie did the same. Daryl and Steve moved forward, Daryl cuffing Rudy while Steve cuffed Frankie.

Steve helped Frankie up and walked him over to Rudy, motioning for him to get on his knees beside the older gang member. When both gang members were handcuffed and on the floor, Daryl motioned for Steve to check the rear of the apartment. Gun drawn, Steve inched down the short hallway to the rear of the apartment while Daryl covered him and kept an eye on the gang members. A moment later Steve came back. “Clear,” he said.

“Okay.” Daryl didn't reholster his gun. He crossed in front of the gang members, drew the makeshift coffee table over and sat on it, facing them. Steve stood behind the gang members, his gun trained on them. “You know why we're here, don't you Rudy?"

Rudy feigned toughness, his chest thrown out, a snarl on his face. “Why the fuck should I care?"

Daryl backhanded him suddenly and ferociously. The force of the blow rocked Rudy's head back and he almost toppled into Frankie, who was suddenly looking scared.

Before Rudy could gain his senses, Daryl grabbed him by the throat and sat him back up straight. He brought the gun up to Rudy's face, which was rapidly turning deep red. “I'll ask you one more time and I don't want to hear any more smart-assed answers. You know why we're here, don't you Rudy?"

Rudy opened his mouth as if to answer, then closed it. His eyes flicked to Daryl's, then down to the floor as if trying to find an escape route. He mumbled unintelligibly.

“What?” Daryl asked, leaning forward, gun still trained on Rudy's face.

“I said, no,” Rudy said, softly. He glanced up at Daryl then back down at the floor again. The right side of his face, from just below his right eye down to his jawline, was a crimson red from Daryl's blow.

“No,” Daryl repeated, gaze still trained on Rudy. The gang member managed another glance at Daryl's face and averted his eyes again, as if afraid of something. It was the behavior of a guilty man.

“Well let me tell you something, mister macho-fucking gangster,” Daryl whispered, still training the gun on Rudy's face. “I think you know why we're here tonight.

I think you very well know why because you're behaving like a guilty man, señor. A very guilty man."

This seemed to snap Rudy out of his self-incriminating behavior. “But I didn't do anything, man! What the hell—"

“Didn't do anything, huh?” Daryl glanced up at Steve who was standing behind the gangsters with his piece trained on them. “Steve, why don't you tell these two young worthless pieces of shit what brought us into their pathetic lives today."

“Forty minutes ago there was a drive-by shooting off Lancaster Drive and Alameda,” Steve said, his voice a monotone, as if he had recited similar crime statistics before. “Two suspects with descriptions matching yours drove by in an old Camaro and fired at a group of kids playing in the front yard of a house. One of the shots went through the window of one of the houses and killed a five-year old girl instantly. None of the targets of the shooting were hit.” He smiled sickly. “None of the targets were even gang members."

“Yeah...” Rudy exclaimed. Daryl could almost imagine what the gang member was about to say before Rudy thought wisely and shut his trap. Yeah, so fucking what?

Instead his voice trailed off and he lapsed into silence.

“Yeah,” Daryl resumed, picking up where Steve left off. “Strange that none of the targets were gang members. We know that area is not your territory, it's Tortilla Flats turf, but we found it ironic that the border to your territory is only six blocks away. And we found it an odd coincidence that witness descriptions of both the cowards that committed this act, and the vehicle they were in, match you and your friend to a T."

Now Rudy looked nervous. He glanced quickly at Frankie, who was looking like he was going to pass out. Rudy licked his lips and tried to weasel out of it again. “Listen, man, it wasn't me. My brother had my car tonight. He and his friend Carlos were out cruising earlier and—"

“I find that it's an odd coincidence as well that our star witness said that the shooter had a large tattoo of a woman over his right chest,” Daryl said. “A woman with long, flowing black hair. Just like yours.” He motioned toward Rudy's tattooed chest and grinned. “Exactly like yours."

Rudy stammered, as if his mouth was ahead of his brain in coming up with an excuse. Daryl reached into his inner coat pocket and extracted a handgun. He reholstered his own police issue nine-millimeter and held the gun he pulled out of his inner pocket.

He brandished it for the two gangsters. “See this? This is an Interarms Firestar Plus nine millimeter with a thirteen round magazine. A shitty little gun in my opinion, but then a bunch of these were stolen during shipment while on their way to a gun shop in Van Nuys. This is one I acquired a few years ago from a gun dealer. The serial number has been filed away from the barrel and it's untraceable.” He smiled and pulled the slide back on the weapon, chambering a round. “If you don't do what I tell you to do, my fingerprints won't be on this gun at all. But yours will."

Rudy opened his mouth to protest. “Wait, man, you don't know what's happening.

Listen—"

“I'll listen,” Daryl said, leveling the barrel of the gun at Rudy's face. “Tell me where you were forty minutes ago, Rudy."

“Wh-wh-we were here, man!” Rudy exclaimed, his breathing coming fast and heavy. He turned to Frankie, who had lost all the color in his face. “Weren't we, Frankie?

We were here the whole time watching TV and drinking some brews."

Steve spoke up from behind them. “That's really interesting, considering there aren't any empty cans or bottles to be seen in this pig sty."

Rudy began to protest again, and now Daryl brought the barrel of the gun closer to Rudy's face. “Where were you forty minutes ago, Rudy?” His tone was direct and commanding.

“I-I-I—” Rudy stammered.

Daryl pushed the barrel of the gun to Rudy's mouth, gently prodding it open. Rudy made a muffled mmmppphhh sound as Daryl pushed the barrel of the gun deep into Rudy's mouth. “Now we can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. The hard way is going to be a mess, for everyone involved. We'll have to fill out more fucking paperwork and Steve will have to waste a bullet on your friend Frankie. But mostly it's going to be a mess for the crew that will have to come in here and clean your brains off the walls. Your mother might cry over you and I really don't care, but if you have a family that gives a shit about you it'll be harder on them. Please don't make me resort to putting down in my report that I tried to stop you from blowing your brains out and failed, only to have Frankie here lunge at us, resulting in us killing him too. It won't be worth it.” He leaned forward and smiled. “So. What do you say we do this the easy way, Rudy? Tell us where you were forty minutes ago and I promise that if you do it'll be easy on you."

The stench of urine invaded the room, and Daryl glanced to Frankie and grinned.

The young gang member was squirmy on his knees, the crotch of his dark baggy shorts now a darker stain. He chuckled. “Come on, Rudy. Tell us what we want to know before your friend here shits his pants."

Rudy nodded, sweat running down his face. Daryl eased the gun slowly out of Rudy's mouth, letting the barrel kiss his lips. Rudy stammered. “I-I ... w-w-we did it,” he blurted.

“Oh my God,” Frankie murmured, and Daryl smiled. He had cracked these two little sociopaths. As tough as they liked to make themselves out to be, they would die for their homies. When faced with Mr. Death they were pussies.

“Are you saying that you and your friend Frankie were involved in the drive-by shooting I just mentioned?” Daryl asked, an inflection of sarcasm creeping into his voice.

Rudy nodded, his face sweaty and tear stained. He looked like a little bald baby for a minute, crying and shaking. “Y-yes ... I-I—did it,” he said, breathing heavily. “We drove by and did it, me and Frankie, we did it."

“Fuck you, pendejo!” Frankie yelled. “Just shut the fuck up, you shot them, you did it!"

Daryl looked up at Steve and smiled. Frankie yelled at Rudy, telling him that he was a pendejo, a hoto for telling the goddamned pigs and ratting on them like that, that it was T-Flats they had shot at, not some stupid little kids like these pigs said it was and—

Daryl pulled the gun away from Rudy's face and replaced it within his jacket pocket. “Thank you for being honest with us, Rudy. But now there's one more thing we need to get squared away before we head down to the station."

“Okay,” Rudy said, sniffling. His eyes were cast down toward the floor again.

Daryl rose to his feet, standing over the two gangsters with a smug look on his face. He turned to Steve, who had replaced his own firearm, and nodded.

Rudy didn't have time to see the foot Daryl lashed out at him. The kick connected solidly with Rudy's ribs, doubling him forward into the fist Daryl smashed into his face, snapping his head back. Steve grabbed Frankie from behind the neck and hauled him up to his feet as the young gangbanger's legs began kicking wildly. Steve threw Frankie onto the coffee table, splitting it in two. He was on the young gangbanger in an instant, pummeling him with his fists as Daryl hauled Rudy up by the throat and slammed him into the wall. “What happened is that we had to subdue you and Frankie by force because you were resisting arrest. Got me?” And he slammed Rudy back into the wall to emphasize his point. Rudy nodded, crying and spitting up blood.

“Good.” Daryl threw Rudy back down on the floor as Steve hauled Frankie to his feet. Frankie's face was bloody and now he was crying.

“One more thing,” Daryl said, pulling the unregistered nine-millimeter out of his inner coat pocket. He pulled out the magazine, which he placed on the dusty TV, and ejected the lone cartridge from the chamber. Then he wiped it down with a white handkerchief Steve handed him. With the gun encased completely in the handkerchief, he stepped behind Rudy and put the gun in Rudy's hands, which were still handcuffed behind his back. “Here. Grab this and get a good hold of it.” As he did this, Steve stepped in front of him with his gun drawn, barrel sighting down on Rudy's left eye.

This time, Rudy was the one who pissed his pants.

Daryl placed the gun in Rudy's sweaty palms, forcing it into the gangster's grip.

He smiled as the gangster's hands closed around the weapon, palm encasing the grip, fingers wrapped around the trigger guard. “That's my man,” Daryl said softly as he extracted the gun from Rudy's grip. He wrapped the gun in the handkerchief, along with the magazine, and placed both of them in a plastic evidence bag that Steve produced.

With the evidence bag sealed tight and resting in Steve's coat pocket, it was time to call it a night.

They herded the gang members to the front door and before they went out, Daryl turned to Rudy and Frankie. “You two know what you did was wrong. Firing a gun into a crowd of children is an unspeakable act, and you deserve to die a slow, painful death because of it. But thanks to bleeding heart liberal lawyers and judges, the most you'll probably get is twenty-five years in prison and both of your sorry asses will be out in ten years for some bullshit reason. I really don't give a shit what happens to you. What I don't want to hear is any ... deviation from what happened here tonight. We followed up on a lead that the cowards who killed that little girl might be Rudy, the both of you became belligerent during questioning, and Rudy produced a handgun during our arrest and Frankie attacked Steve. That's what happened."

Steve chuckled. “Yeah. And don't tell your fucking lawyer unless you want a size twelve asshole in prison."

Daryl grinned at Rudy. “You have a sister, don't you? A homegirl in Los Compadres?"

Rudy nodded, too afraid to even answer.

“I'd take Steve's advice very seriously,” Daryl mentioned. “You know how I feel about gang members. I hate all you fucking cockroaches. You say anything to anybody that is different than what we just told you and I will personally kill your slut of a sister.

But first I'll give her the best fuck she's ever had. I'll fuck her till she bleeds. And then maybe I'll kill your mother, too. I'd be doing the world a favor."

At the mention of the threat of violence to his family, Rudy's eyes narrowed in hate. His face twisted in a grimace of anger, and he looked ready to unleash with a fury of his own, but he didn't. He simply gave up. He knew what was best for him. All the homeboys knew that Detective Daryl Garcia was nobody to fuck around with. It was Detective Garcia you thought of when you thought about the LAPD; a man who would fuck you up just because he felt like it.

But there was more to it than that.

Daryl Garcia hated gang members with a passion. It was his hate of them that kept him going in his line of work. It was his hate that got him up every morning, ready to face another day. And it was his love of humanity in general, of a good life where one should be entitled to live free from the fear of gang violence and crime that drove him to do his work. For Detective Daryl Garcia, the work of a homicide detective was intensely personal. It pained him to see the broken, bleeding bodies of innocent victims of gang warfare. It pained him more to see the grieving of the families; the mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters of those that had been taken in such senseless violence. But more important, it was the victims of such crimes who were children that kept him going.

Detectives Daryl Garcia and Steve Howe herded Rudy “Psycho” Montego and Frankie a.k.a. “Flaco” past the few tenants who had come out of their apartments to gather along the sparse lawn of the building to gawk. They cast furtive glances at the detectives as they escorted the gang members into the back of the unmarked sedan, and for Daryl it was all in a good days work to know that he had gotten another thug off the streets of L.A.

Chapter 2

September 13, 1996 4:30 P.M.

Los Angeles, CA

“This one makes number seven."

Detectives Daryl Garcia and Steve Howe were at the foot of a section of the Los Angeles River in the City of Commerce, which was just west of East Los Angeles. Two dozen plainclothes detectives and uniformed officers scoured the concrete banks of the river and the sandy bottom for clues, while above dozens of journalists stood poised behind the chain link fence designed to keep trespassers out of the river. Los Angeles was currently in the midst of another late summer heat wave; at four-thirty in the afternoon it was still one hundred degrees at the civic center. Thank God this stiff had washed up now and not next week when it would have been positively reeking.

It was two days after their arrest of Rudy Montego and Frankie Rodriguez for the murder of five-year-old Stephanie Hernandez in a drive-by shooting. Both suspects had been arraigned that morning and had pleaded a big Not Guilty. Daryl and Steve had been in court that morning during arraignment, and Daryl had kept his gaze trained on both gang members as they sat with their court-appointed defense attorneys. When they had been led back to the custody of the Sheriff's Deputy, Rudy had turned to look back at the courtroom and Daryl caught his gaze and held it. I'm on your ass like a fly on shit, homeboy. Fuck with me, and it will be my pleasure to see that you suffer more than you can ever imagine.

It had been a good morning and the arraignment had been only the beginning of it.

After the court appointment, the two partners had gone back to Parker Center to fill out some paperwork pertaining to the case, and Daryl had gone through the motions mechanically. It was the least favorite part of his job, but he liked it anyway. He liked working with Steve, too. When Steve wasn't working he was a grinning goofball of a guy who looked like he'd be at ease renting you a Jet Ski at Lake Havasu or surfing in Newport Beach. He had bleached blonde hair, deeply tanned skin, and his five foot eight frame was toned and muscular. For a thirty-two year old man, Steve looked easily ten years younger. Daryl was envious of the way Steve got the attention from women on the sporadic occasions they went out after their beat to the local watering hole for a few beers. Still, he couldn't complain. Having Steve around only brought the women around to him as well.

Daryl was three years older than Steve and stood two inches taller. His black hair was combed back from his forehead, giving him the suave look of a romantic. His eyes were large and brown, his mouth sensual, a neatly trimmed mustache accenting his chiseled features. He favored neatly tailored clothing, even for undercover work. The guys always told him he looked positively dashing in his normal work attire, which consisted of slacks, a white shirt and tie.

Daryl wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and squinted at his partner. The air was hot and still. “What do you mean by ‘this makes seven'?"

“Don't tell me you don't know?” Steve asked in that incredulous tone he sometimes got. As much as he liked Steve, he could be a little irritating at times.

Daryl turned to the dozens of cops scouring the graffiti-stained concrete banks of the river. “Apparently it appears I'm not the only one who's in the dark since these guys are looking for evidence with us. Now would you please tell me what the hell you're talking about?"

“Okay,” Steve Howe took a step forward and glanced around, as if afraid to be overheard. He cocked his thumb back towards where the initial torso of the victim was found floating in stagnant water. “Look at what we have here; homeless guy scouring the banks of the river for recyclable bottles finds the torso. He hightails it up to call us. We get here. Find one dead, very dismembered human male. So far in addition to the torso, all we've found have been both legs, correct?"

“Right.” Thirty minutes ago an officer reported finding two human legs severed at the knees, presumably from their pal fifty feet away, already covered with a white sheet by the coroner.

“His head is missing too, right?” Steve went on. “Decapitated. Haven't found it yet."

“Right."

“Plus both arms are still missing and the sick fuck who did this cut the guy's cock and balls off for good measure, too. Right?"

Daryl sighed, nodding. He had never seen anything like this in his twelve years as a cop in Los Angeles. His first reaction upon initially viewing the body was one of question: it was very hard to tell that the lump of flesh that sat on the sandy concrete banks of the river was the torso of a human being. It had been even further puzzling, after making out the bloody stumps of where the head and limbs had once been connected, what the raw patch of flesh that lay in the triangle at the bottom portion of the torso signified. He actually had to look at the remains for a few minutes before it finally hit him. He had turned away sickened, then embarrassed. The way the human mind will rebel at such a shocking crime scene was something he thought as a detective of homicide he would never have to experience. He thought he had seen it all—shootings, stabbings, hell, one time he had seen a guy whose head had been split in two with a chainsaw by a guy on a PCP binge—but this beat them all.

Steve Howe continued. “Almost two months ago, Jack Looper over at Foothill Division gets called over to a scene in the San Gabriel Mountains right above La Canada and Pasadena. A couple of hikers found a dead body, naked, badly decomposed and decapitated. They still haven't identified him."

“You think they're related?” Daryl asked, his mind whirling. He hadn't heard about the Foothill incident. Murder was so common in this city that he never gave it much thought anymore whenever he was on the scene of one, whether it was the result of a domestic quarrel, robbery, or gang related. When you saw hundreds of murder cases in any given year, you grew numb to it after awhile.

“There's more,” Steve said. “In May there was that gang member found beneath the Eighty-First Street bridge near downtown. Remember that?"

Daryl made the connection. He remembered it vaguely due to the fact that one of the detectives that worked at Parker Center he was friendly with had been on that case. It had been the first time that he had ever heard of gang bangers decapitating a rival. “That's right. Where was he from?"

“Boyle Heights,” Steve said. “Don't remember what gang he was affiliated with, although I think it might have been Eighteenth Street. The point of it is this: his head was found first in his own pants stashed near some bushes on the side of railroad tracks about a quarter of a mile north. A day later some gang members found his body neatly laid out in some bushes about a quarter of a mile down the line. Not a drop of blood anywhere to be found. The gang members that found him were from another gang, and they claimed they didn't know how he got there. Lie detector tests and circumstantial evidence confirms this, much to their benefit. End of story?"

“Apparently not, since you eluded to seven victims."

Steve held up his hand, counting off on his fingers. “This January a prostitute was slaughtered in East LA. She had been dismembered and decapitated, found ten blocks from the Eighty-First Street bridge. We still haven't found the head. She was affiliated with a Boyle Heights gang."

“You think all these killings are gang related?"

“Gangs don't kill this way,” Steve said. “You and I both know that."

That was true. In reality, gang members were cowards who preferred to spray an area with bullets hoping to hit their target. The brave ones actually walked up to their intended victims and shot them point blank. The butchery as evidenced in the cases Steve was talking about was out of character for a gang member's standard operating procedure.

“What about the other three?"

“Last September I assisted a case in which two males were found at the bottom of a gully in Echo Park, only five miles from here. Both men were decapitated and emasculated. Both men had gang ties."

“Jesus!"

“And the year before that, a homeowner in Newport Beach reported a body that washed ashore near his home. A buddy of mine, Rick Mercado, was on that one. The body was that of a young girl, a teenager actually. Dismembered and decapitated. We weren't able to get prints because we never found her hands, but DNA testing matched those of a missing teenager from Echo Park.” Steve's voice lowered as he regarded Daryl with a serious gaze. “The missing teenager in question had ties to another Boyle Heights Gang. The thing to consider is this: the missing teenager hadn't been seen since she left home about three months before the body washed ashore in Newport Beach."

Detective Daryl Garcia turned away from Steve, toward the hub of the investigation. His heart was racing. Steve was telling him the truth; he was damned sharp at connecting things. He might be on to something here.

The reason they were gathered here today was due to the discovery of a dead male who appeared to be in his mid-twenties. At approximately noon a homeless man scavenging for bottles along the concrete bank of the river saw something white floating in the shallow waters in the center of the river. The unusual amount of water at the river's bottom was due to a freak summer storm that had dumped three inches of rain in the Los Angeles area. The flood had since trickled to a steady stream, leaving a good two feet of water running down the center. Surely enough to carry the remains of a dead human being.

The first officers on the scene immediately called for backup, and within the hour the river was swarming with cops. Daryl and Steve arrived two hours ago upon being told by their Sargent that they were to handle this case. On the drive out Daryl wondered to himself what it would be this time; another gang retaliation killing, or maybe a thrill kill committed by some sick teenager? Or maybe a robbery gone awry. Those were the kind of cases Daryl was used to.

Now as he saw the body, inspected the area for clues with his partner, and conferred with a couple of the other officers, Daryl wasn't so inclined to believe this was just another routine murder case. He hadn't been aware of the murders Steve just told him about—with the exception of the Eighty-First Street Bridge victim. Great, he thought.

Just what this city needs in the midst of psycho gang members and car jackers is another serial killer.

He turned to Steve. “Are there files on these cases back at the station?"

“Yeah."

“I'd like to see them,” Daryl said. “Let's not say anything to anybody until we review those files. I don't want to be spilling the beans without some substantial proof to back us up."

“I agree completely.” The two men started heading back up the bank of the river toward their cars.

“What about the FBI?” Daryl asked. The heat was tiring and he wiped his forehead. “Have they been called in on any of these cases?” Standard operating procedure was for the FBI to be called in if it appeared that the murder was sexual or serial related, or if local law enforcement had exhausted all their efforts.

Steve shook his head. “Don't know about that one. I'm fairly certain they were called in on the two guys from last year, and the hooker. I'm not so sure about the others."

It was probably hard to pin a series of murders as a case of serial murder. If the victims had gang ties and associations, it would most likely be chalked up as gang related.

But if this was a bona-fide serial killing case, it might help boost Daryl's career quite a ways. Especially if he went to his superiors with his suspicions and they were found valid.

For the first time in Daryl's career he smiled at the fact that murder, a commodity he dealt with every day in his job, might actually help him get ahead in life.

Daryl Garcia sat at desk, cradling his head in his hands. Before him on his cluttered desk lay a myriad of files and paperwork, all relating to seven different murders in the last day alone. All seven murders occurring in the same five block radius of Boyle Heights and Echo Park.

It was close to seven p.m., two days after the discovery of the LA River stiff.

Steve Howe had gone home for the day, as had all of the day shift detectives. Daryl rubbed his eyes and stared down at the mess of papers on his desk, wondering how what appeared to be a simple open-and-shut case of serial murder-as open-and-shut as serial murder gets-could accelerate into something like this.

Fifteen gang related shootings in the past twenty-four hours resulting in seven fatalities. Daryl and Steve were handling four of them, and with the dismemberment murder that sparked it all on their priority list, it was making work a trifle frustrating.

The coroner hadn't even identified the body when the reverberations of the killing began making their way through gang-infested Los Angeles neighborhoods. The gang that claimed the area the body was found in-Los Compadres Mafia-started the fire by belligerently voicing their opinions to news journalists that the LAPD and the Mayor didn't give a rats ass for the people in the barrio, especially the Hispanic community. The elders of the community echoed this, and a chorus rang through from members of the city council who were of Latin American descent. Daryl Garcia chalked that up to simple minority whining, something he had grown used to in the twelve years he had been a cop in Los Angeles; the LAPD is racist and beats down Mexicans and blacks and women.

Same old bullshit. It pissed him off more when they tried to appeal to him by bringing his own race up in the debate. You're Hispanic, too. You should know how it feels.

Well, he didn't. His basic philosophy was this: if you break the law, it is open season on your ass from law enforcement. He didn't give a shit if you were black, white, brown, purple, pink, or claimed to be from another planet. If you fucked up, you fucked up, and he wasn't playing favorites to gang members just because he happened to share their same ethnic background. To do so was the worst form of racism he could think of.

The evening the body was found two gang shootings were reported in the area, and by the end of the night LAPD had logged down seven additional shootings from four different gang factions in the area. The Los Compadres Mafia initiated the violence when three members of that gang opened fire on a group of men milling around outside a house in Boyle Heights. The targets were Eighteenth Street Gang members. Nobody was killed, but it trickled down that the Los Compadres Mafia believed that the dead man found earlier that day was a member who had been missing the past several days. They believed Eighteenth Street was responsible. Naturally, Eighteenth Street retaliated.

The resounding retaliations, encompassing two additional gangs, led to a tense situation in the East Los Angeles neighborhoods. The city council urged citizens to be calm. Angry residents, reacting to the news coverage of the latest killing, denounced the LAPD from the comfiness of their front porches as news cameras ground on. The LAPD

never protects us, came the same old lament. When something bad happens to one of us, the LAPD doesn't care. When something bad happens to somebody white, or in a good part of the city, they do everything they can to solve the crime. But they don't care about us.

The simple fact of the matter was that with manpower stretched so thin, there weren't enough detectives to cover all the murders in the highest crime infested areas of the city. Most of those crimes were committed by gang members, who were tough to crack in confessions, and usually skipped town to safe houses when the going got rough.

One out of every five murders in LA goes unsolved every year, simply because murder had changed. No longer was murder the result of a lover's triangle, or a simple robbery, or between family members. Most of the murders committed in these rough neighborhoods were by young street thugs protecting streets they didn't even legally own, pronouncing their sentences as indiscriminately as the common cold. Eighty percent of the time the murderer didn't even know the victim.

The four murders Daryl and Steve were assigned to had all been committed between the hours of eleven p.m. and noon today. They decided to split them up between them. The first two involved members of two rival gangs, the Los Compadres Mafia and Eighteenth Street, while the other two involved Eighteenth Street and Boyle Heights Thirteen. There were also scattered shootings involving a fourth gang, the Tortilla Flats.

Daryl Garcia looked down at the files. It was all the same. Young Hispanic men gunning each other down for what? To claim a piece of pavement? Because of the misconception that another man had looked at him with “disrespect"? Because a man from a different neighborhood had strayed into the “wrong one"? For those trivial offences did a man have to lose his life?

And to make matters worse, all four of these killings were built on further misconceptions; that the victim had something to do with the murder of the young man found in the LA River the day before.

They hadn't even positively identified him yet.

Information had come from a pair of detectives from the East Side division that there were thirteen men missing who loosely resembled the scant description of the man found at the river. Six of those men were known gang members, all on parole. Daryl thought about this as he read the report. Most likely they were parole violators; one had served time for grand theft auto, another for rape, another for second degree murder. Four of them had no gang ties, and not much was known about the others. Daryl looked at the list of gang members on the list who were missing. None of them were members of any of the gangs involved in the latest skirmishes in the area.

If gang members could read it might behoove them to take a peak at the newspaper. Especially this morning's edition, which had a large article on the latest murder.

The article, starting on column one, page one of the Los Angeles Times, stated the basic facts of the discovery of the LA River victim, as well as a few tidbits of information the LAPD had released to the public. All one with reasonable intelligence had to glean from the way this latest victim was dismembered was that gang members lack the sophistication to dismember people. They might stab each other in fights, but they didn't decapitate their victims. They didn't sever their arms and legs cleanly at the shoulder and hip joints. And they didn't kill their victims in one place and transport them to another, as the murderer had done in this case.

What the papers didn't report, and what the LAPD didn't release to the press, was that all of the victims were sexually violated post mortem.

What macho homeboy fucked the corpse of his enemy in the ass after he had killed him?

Daryl Garcia opened a file drawer on his right, gathered the four files up and put them in the cabinet. To be truthful, he probably wasn't treating the gang bangers fairly. He was very biased against them, and for good reasons. When he was twenty-two he and his first wife, Shirley, had been driving home from a nice relaxing day at Griffith Park.

Shirley was seven months pregnant with their first child. Daryl had just graduated from Long Beach State with a degree in Psychology. As they sat in traffic on Normandie Avenue waiting to get to Los Feliz, which would take them to the 5 freeway and back towards home, the unthinkable happened.

A robbery in progress at a video store on Normandie spilled out onto the sidewalk as the robbers—members of an East Hollywood Street gang—ran out of the store, one of them shooting the merchant as he went for the phone to call the police. Daryl's car was in the right lane, closest to the action. He was blocked in on all sides by cars, and as the light changed green and traffic started crawling forward, two of the gang members lunged toward his car, tugging at the passenger side door and smashing the window on Shirley's side. “Get the fuck out of the car, motherfucker!” they shouted. Everything after that happened in slow motion.

Daryl had tried to speed off but there was still a car in front of him. In his excitement and fear, he crashed into it.

The gang member at the passenger side of the car smashed the window on Shirley's side, reached in and unlocked the door.

Shirley's screams ... ?

Daryl's screams for help and mad attempt to free himself from the seatbelt so he could get out and help her ... ?

...as the gang member opened the door, grabbed her arm, and tried to pull her out of the car ... ?

...as another gang member grabbed Daryl roughly by the neck and hauled him out, spilling him onto the pavement ... ?

Daryl didn't see what happened next but he didn't have to. Gunshots mean only one thing.

When it was over the gang members were speeding off in his car, leaving Daryl and Shirley bleeding on the street. He remembered crawling over to his wife.

He remembered the vast pool of blood that was gathering underneath her very pregnant body. He remembered her blue eyes as they stared up at him, still alive, knowing that what she had wanted most in her life, to be a mother, a devoted wife, had been cruelly taken away from her forever.

She died in Daryl's arms as the sirens of approaching help arrived.

He was never able to make love to another woman after that without thinking of Shirley. She had been his best friend, his companion, his lover. They had been high school sweethearts, and he had proposed marriage to her only a month before they graduated. They were married at the age of twenty and had shared a small apartment near his parents house in Gardena while they both attended school They had their whole lives ahead of them. When Shirley got pregnant, she dropped out of college and took a job as a secretary at a law firm while Daryl finished up his degree. He had been dedicated to Shirley with body, mind, and soul.

The day she and their baby had been taken away from him changed everything.

Daryl sat at the desk and straightened up the files. Thinking about Shirley was hard. He hadn't thought about her in a long time now, and every time he did it brought back painful memories. That horrible day occurred twelve years ago, but it still felt like it was only yesterday when she was alive and with him.

He had been with other women since Shirley was killed, was even serious with two of them. But the spark wasn't there in those other relationships. If there was such a thing as having a soul mate, one person with whom you shared your life with until death do you part, Shirley Watkins had been that person. And she had been taken away from him. Brutally.

He could feel a headache coming on and he pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, head bowed toward the desk, eyes closed. He always got bad headaches like this when the work was especially grim, or whenever Shirley came to his mind. Despite the fact that the police had caught the men who killed Shirley, and the killers were later convicted and sent to prison, all but one had been released within the last year-and-a-half.

One of them was later killed in a gang shooting, and the other one was currently out there somewhere, working within the criminal system. Not a day went by when Daryl didn't think about the men that did this as he drove his beat or investigated a crime. Not a day went by when he didn't think if it weren't for those scumbags who ruined my life I wouldn't feel like I need to be here trying to stop them and their kind.

He hated gang members. Loathed them. When they killed each other on the streets he was glad. He went about his work in a mindless fashion, going about the routine of asking the same questions, filling out the same paperwork, chasing down suspects. He tried hard to solve the crimes he worked on, but he secretly he applauded the vermin when they killed each other. If it was up to him, he'd put every gang member on a deserted island somewhere, give them an array of machine guns and say there you go, knock yourself out, kill each other, I'd be fucking glad to help you. What drove him to do his work was remembering what happened to him twelve years ago, as well as things that happened every day: children with their heads blown off in drive-by shootings, the elderly victimized in their own homes, the children of the neighborhood who were good kids in their hearts, beaten and intimidated, their dreams crushed. It was this that kept him going.

Thanks to those images, he felt no guilt when he got rough on the gang members.

He had beaten more than his share of gang members, and at one point was getting involved in too many officer-involved shootings (he always kept a spare handgun in his ankle holster that was unregistered; the handgun was later placed in the hand of the dead or dying gang member after they were shot). In the wake of the Rodney King beating and the LA riots, Daryl had to rein in his anger a bit. Luckily, he was never indicted or reprimanded for his handling of the gang members, and it was at this time that he made it to homicide. And it was in homicide that he started to make headway. He made contacts in the neighborhood and used them when needed. He relentlessly pursued leads, doggedly went after evidence, and worked on his temper through the martial arts training he began to study about three years ago and it helped. Now the only time he resorted to violence was in instances like five days ago when he and Steve had beaten the shit out of Rudy Montego and his little scumbag friend for killing that little kid. In cases like that, resorting to violence was a good thing: he got to relieve pent-up aggression on lower forms of life, and in doing so he gained valuable information that was needed to close cases.

All in a day's work.

Daryl gathered up the files and arranged them in a neat order. The office was starting to come alive again as the nightshift officers arrived. Daryl gathered his personal belongings, rose from his chair, and grabbed a leather satchel that was resting under the desk. He put the files in the satchel. He needed to chill out tonight, drink a few beers, clear his mind. He was already thinking about what he would do tomorrow, how he would approach the case. His main concern was the decapitation murder; he felt that if he could help identify the victim it might assure the homeboys that none of their kind had anything to do with it. He hoped it would. With all this crazy speculation fueling the fire, it was eventually bound to get an innocent person killed.

Daryl couldn't have that.

As he was heading out of the office Raymond Skipp, a friend of his from the days when he worked nights four years before, raised a hand in greeting. “How's it going, Daryl?"

“Same old, same old, Ray."

“You working tomorrow?"

“Yeah. You?” He stopped by Ray's desk on his way out the door. Ray was a short, wiry little guy who was nearly bald. He sported a frizzled beard and beady little eyes. He worked undercover narcotics.

“Nope. Catchin’ the last game of the season at Dodger Stadium."

“Well, good for you. What you workin’ on lately?"

“Same old crap,” Ray sighed. “I hear you're working on that latest Butcher case?"

A journalist from the Los Angeles Times had termed the killer the East Side Butcher. Daryl's supervisor, Hank Wilkson, and some of the other guys in the office were calling him LA's Jack the Ripper. Daryl nodded. “Yeah, and the fallout that is happening because of it. I've got four gang murders to handle in addition to it."

Ray shook his head. “I heard about that shit. Nasty."

Daryl felt the smooth taste of Miller Lites calling him at his apartment. “Well, listen, Ray, I gotta—"

“Oh, wait a minute,” Ray said, holding his hand up. “Now I remember why I called you over. I've got something that might help you on this Butcher thing."

“Yeah?” Daryl stopped, looking at Ray curiously.

“One of the drug counselors I work with on the East Side, guy by the name of Danny Hernandez, seems to think he knows who this latest victim is."

“He does, huh?"

“Yeah.” Ray plucked a pad of paper from the clutter on his desk and wrote an address on it. He tore the page off and handed it to Daryl. “Give him a visit tomorrow."

“What does he say?"

Ray shrugged. “He said judging from the description in the paper it sounds like a guy he used to hang out with when he was using. Guy named Javier Perez, member of the Eighteenth Street gang."

Daryl nodded. That was a nice lead. So far Eighteenth Street hadn't been implicated in the crime, and none of the supposed missing persons were from that gang.

“Okay, I'll pay him a visit tomorrow. Thanks for the lead."

“No problem, man,” Ray said. “Oh, listen, one more thing."

“Yeah?"

“This Danny Hernandez guy is a former gang banger. Used to be a heroin addict and a dealer, but he's been clean and sober now for almost ten years. He does a lot of gang and drug interdictions with the kids and works well with the community there. He's very tapped into the community on the East Side. If there's anybody who is clearly from the streets that knows what these people think, and who can communicate with them and work with us, Danny is the man."

Daryl nodded. “He sounds like a good resource. I'll make double sure I see him tomorrow then."

“Good. See you later, man."

Daryl left the office and took a look at the address Ray had scrawled. It was in Boyle Heights, only ten miles out of his way. It was only seven o'clock, still relatively early. Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to look up this Danny Hernandez character on his way home.

He did precisely that. He detoured east on Interstate 10 heading for East Los Angeles.

The confessional booth he was seated in at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic church was growing hot and stifling in the lateness of the day. Father John Glowacz was just about to get up and leave for the day when he heard the outer door of the confessional booth open. A figure stepped in and closed the door. He settled in his seat behind the screen and crossed himself, waiting for the person to sit down and begin the liturgy.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.” The voice that came from behind the screen was spoken in a hoarse whisper. The priest detected an eerie familiarness to it but couldn't quite place it. “It has been one week since my last confession."

“I'm listening, my Son,” Father Glowacz murmured.

There was silence for a moment. It had been unbearably hot all day and at the latter part of the afternoon and early evening the confessional booth had been stuffy and hot. The priest loosened his clerical color, wiping sweat from his neck. He hoped this one would hurry it up.

The silence dragged on for a moment. The priest was just about to urge the poor soul on when there was a strangled gasp from the other side of the screen. “I..."

“Yes, my son?” Father Glowacz urged. It sounded like the poor soul was really struggling with something bad. Andthere was something familiar about that voice. Had he heard this penitent's confessions before?

The whisper was choked and garbled. “I've done some ... bad things, Father."

“God forgives all those who confess their sins, my son,” he said, his stomach suddenly growing leaden.

“Does He?” The whispered voice held a hint of doubt.

“Yes, He does."

“Thank ... Jesus...” the whispered voice cracked.

There was silence for a moment. Father John Glowacz took a deep breath, licked his lips, and urged him on. “Go on, my son."

The figure behind the screen cleared his throat. “Nothing I tell you goes outside of these walls, right Father? It's all between you, me, and God, right?"

“That's right, my son."

“Good.” More clearing of his throat. No matter how much he cleared his throat, the penitent's voice still sounded hoarse and whispery. “Because I've done some bad things."

“Well, let's hear what they are before we decide how bad they are, eh?” Father Glowacz's heart was beating hard. His hands were shaking. It couldn't be, it just couldn't be who he was thinking it was.

“Okay.” The penitent paused again, as if trying to decide which sin to confess first. “I did it again."

“Did what again, my son?” Oh God, no!

“I told myself I wasn't going to do it anymore,” the whispered voice went on, becoming slightly falsetto. “Especially since the one I got over a month ago is still with me. But.... I just couldn't help myself.” His voice squeaked slightly, cracking in its hoarse, deep tone.

“What did you do, my son?” Father Glowacz's stomach felt leaden with dread. It's him, he thought. It's him, oh why God why—

There was a shuffling from behind the screen, as if the person sitting on the other side of the confessional was shifting in his seat. There was a squeak of the bench as if the person was leaning forward.

And then he confessed. And Father John Glowazcz sat on his side of the confessional booth, his mouth gaping open in horror, his hands trembling, his heart racing with fright as the madman confessed his sins once again to him.

Chapter 3

The apartment complex Danny Hernandez lived in was the best looking building on the block. In a neighborhood consisting largely of small, clapboard style houses badly in need of paint, and small apartment complexes looking worse for the wear, the building Danny lived in was a sight for sore eyes. The paint on the building was fairly recent, at least five years old. It was a seven unit complex with a long narrow driveway that wound to the rear of the building where the carport was housed. Danny lived in apartment number seven, at the top of the stairs. Daryl climbed the stairs, noting that in spite of the rambunctious shouts of children from houses and apartment complexes in the neighborhood, the tenants of this building were fairly quiet.

Daryl knocked on the door. A moment later the door was opened and Danny Hernandez was peering out at him through the half-opened door. “Yeah?"

Daryl flashed Danny his shield. “Mr. Hernandez, my name is Detective Daryl Garcia. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Danny opened the door wider and now Daryl got a better look at the man. He was small and wiry, standing five foot five and probably topping the scales at one hundred and twenty pounds. He was shirtless, dressed only in a pair of ratty jeans. His arms and chest were heavily tattooed, a vast myriad of black inked figures: ships at sea, eagles, Indian Gods, Jesus and His Blessed Mother, a bare breasted woman with long flowing hair. It was nice work, better than most of the tattoos most gang members adjourned their bodies with. Daryl stole a quick glance at the living room behind Danny; the television was tuned to the evening news and the room looked nicely furnished and neat. His eyes rested back on Danny and he smiled. “Just a few minutes of your time is all I'm asking."

“Did you talk to Detective Ray Skipp?” Danny asked. His voice was still inflected with that East LA barrio accent, but it retained enough of a tone that lent a semblance of intelligence to the man. His brown eyes danced with eagerness, his features were open, friendly. Daryl could easily picture this amiable young man, who appeared so eager and helpful, as a former die-hard gangbanger. This man was obviously one of the lucky ones; a man who had miraculously turned his life around and was now dedicated to helping others. It was rare to encounter them, but in Daryl's mind he had a high degree of respect for former gang members who had turned their lives around completely and worked to try to help those around them do the same.

“Yes, I did talk to Detective Skipp,” Daryl said. “He suggested I see you since I'm working on the murder case of the ... individual that was found at the river a few days ago."

“Good. Come on in.” Danny stepped away from the threshold, bidding Daryl entry.

Danny motioned to a couch against the wall and the two men sat down. Danny was leaning forward, eager to help. He picked up the remote control of the television and turned the volume down. “What can I help you with?” he asked.

“Ray told me that you might know who our friend at the LA River might be,”

Daryl said. He pulled out a pad of paper and pen from his shirt pocket. “I'm eager to hear who you believe it is."

“Okay, man,” Danny said. He put the remote control down on the cluttered coffee table and faced Daryl. “Now, I'm only going by what the description in the paper said, which was a Hispanic male between twenty-one and thirty, slightly overweight at about one ninety or two hundred pounds, five foot eight, a scar on his right bicep.” Yesterday the man's right arm was fished out of the river two miles downstream. “The story I read said the coroner thinks the body might have been in the river for something like, three days?"

“Right.” Daryl said, nodding.

“And that he might have been dead for a week?"

Daryl nodded affirmative.

“Well, okay here it is then,” Danny leaned forward. “This guy I used to hang with back when I used to gang bang, guy by the name of Javier Ramirez, I still see him around the neighborhood, know what I mean? He still bangs with Eighteenth Street, but we're cool, you know what I mean? I got him through rehab once but he fell off the wagon and got back into using, got back into the gang and shit. But I still try to help him out, you know? Try to get him to come to some meetings, go to church, come to my support group."

“What support group is this?” Daryl asked.

“I lead a support group at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church for young Hispanic men who are caught up in the whole gang trip,” Danny said, making motions with his arms.

“You know, homies that are either in a gang and want to get out, or former gang members that need to talk about the shit they've been through. Kind of like AA, but this is open to guys who are either in a gang or not in one."

“Isn't that a deadly combination?” Daryl asked. “I mean, former gang members and present ones all in the same room?"

“Not with my group,” Danny said proudly. “Shit, I got guys from four different gangs that come to my meetings. These are guys that would normally be killing each other in the street, but in my meetings they embrace each other as brothers. And they carry that brotherhood out in the streets where they're trying to lay a truce.” He nodded.

“It was working real good there for the last four years until this killing shit started."

“Did Mr. Ramirez attend your meetings?"

“Yeah, but he attended very sporadically,” Danny said reflectively, as if he was already speaking of the dead. “He was in and out of jail the last two years or so for drug dealing. He got married, but I don't think that settled him down much. I think he wanted to settle down, you know, but he was still hooked, you know what I'm saying?"

Daryl didn't know what Danny was saying—figuratively, he did, but literally he couldn't understand how the lure of getting fucked up, getting shot at, stabbed, the risk of getting thrown in jail or killed was preferable to settling down with a good woman and your child. “When was the last time you saw Mr. Ramirez?"

“Two weeks ago,” Danny said, and now he looked somber. “He came to the meeting and hung around till it was over. Then he pulled me over, gave me a hug, said he was through with gang banging. You should have heard his voice, man, he sounded like he was going to cry. He was literally thanking me for keeping on his ass all those years. It had finally sunk in.” Danny's voice slipped a notch. “He was through with it, man. And this time I believed him."

“So what happened?” Daryl asked, already knowing the answer.

“He didn't show up last week,” Danny said. “I was concerned, so I called his house. His wife answered the phone. She sounded angry. Said that what Javier told me about quitting the gang and going straight was bullshit. She said she hadn't seen him in a week and that he was probably using again."

“What was he into?” Daryl asked.

“Speed,” Danny said. “And crack."

Daryl jotted this down, as well as a brief version of the story Danny had just spun out. Speed and crack. Nothing worse than a gangbanger on amphetamines. It made them more prone to violence.

“Did you check his former hangouts, talk to any of his buyers?” Despite this first meeting with Danny, he was already recognizing him as an experienced counselor who would be well tapped into the criminal underground for his counseling purposes.

“Yeah,” Danny said. “Nobody had seen him since ... well, right after he showed up at the last meeting, which would have been almost two weeks ago."

“No word of him at all from the street?"

“None."

“What about his former homeboys?"

“They haven't seen him either."

Daryl was writing all this down. “Do you know if Mr. Ramirez's wife called the police to report him missing?"

“No, she didn't,” Danny said, rather disappointed. “She said, ‘fuck him. Javier can go fuck himself. I don't want him around anymore.'” He shrugged helplessly. “I called myself about a week ago, but nobody's come around to talk to me yet. Except for you.

Shit, I had to flag Ray down when I saw him driving down Broadway and tell him about it. I'm glad I did now."

So am I, Daryl thought, jotting down some more notes.

Danny looked restless. He leaned forward on the couch as Daryl jotted his notes.

“The paper said that so far all you found is the body, arms and legs. You haven't found his head yet?"

“That's correct,” Daryl said, clicking his pen and putting it back in his pocket.

“We haven't found his lower arms and hands either."

“Damn,” Danny whistled. “So, you can't like, ID him or anything yet."

“Right now identification will be pretty tough, but with the description you've given me of your friend, we might be able to work with the remains we have in coming up with an ID."

“Yeah?"

“Yep,” Daryl said, putting his notepad away. “We can identify people now a lot of different ways. We can check Mr. Rameriz's criminal record and check his physical description; see if he has any tell-tale scars or tattoos, or if his medical record shows anything like, say, broken bones, We can check our still unidentified man at the morgue and if we got a match, bingo! We can even use DNA to identify him."

Danny nodded, solemn again. “Good. I'm really worried, you know. I don't want it to be Javier, but then I gotta know. You know what I mean?"

“Yes,” Daryl said, rising to his feet. He had gotten some useful information out of Danny about a possible identification and now he was feeling tired. But his mind was still running in overdrive with a thousand questions. He turned to Danny with another thought on his mind. “Mind if I ask you something else?"

“Sure."

“There's some shit going down between four gangs. Eighteenth Street, the Los Compadres Mafia, Boyle Heights Thirteen and another group, can't remember which."

“Tortilla Flats,” Danny said.

“Right. They're killing each other because they think that one of their own is responsible for the killing."

Danny nodded. “I know. I've tried talking to some of the younger homies I know from Eighteenth Street. They're convinced the guy you found is somebody from Eighteenth Street, too, but they don't know what I suspect, that it might be Javier."

“I'd like you to keep that to yourself for now, if you can,” Daryl said.

“Of course."

“Has anybody asked you about Javier?"

Danny shrugged. “Not really. His wife thinks he skipped town. She thinks there's a warrant out on his ass or something. I don't think any of the other homies think it's him.

Javier hadn't been hanging with the younger set lately. They don't know him that well. So they don't know he's even missing."

“Okay, “Daryl said. “Have you tried to tell them to keep the peace?"

“Of course,” Danny said. “But you know them, they're stubborn. They're convinced it's Los Compadres, or Boyle Heights. I even tried to talk sense into them, said,

‘man, those hotos wouldn't know one thing about carving a man up the way this guy was.

He was cut to pieces, literally. Cut his arms, legs and head off and everything.’ But they won't listen."

“Well, rest assured,” Daryl said, heading toward the door as Danny followed him.

“It's not the work of another gang member."

“You think it's like, a serial killer or something? Like Jeffrey Dahmer?"

Like Jeffrey Dahmer. Why was it that today's society equaled serial killers with Jeffrey Dahmer, as if Dahmer was the only one that had ever existed? If mass America knew that worse human monsters than Dahmer had existed, they would be less relaxed about their everyday activities. Ted Bundy was a perfect example. “I'm afraid so,” he said, answering Danny's question. “You read what the LA Times has called this guy, right?"

“The East Side Butcher or some shit like that."

“That's right."

Danny appeared to shiver. His skinny, tattooed chest glistened in the slowly cooling evening. “I hope you guys catch this nut quick."

Daryl opened the front door and looked out at the rapidly fading daylight. “So do I, Danny."

Chapter 4

Ten days after a big meeting at Parker Center, in which a special task force was formed to work exclusively on the Butcher case, Detective Daryl Garcia was sitting at his desk taking a break from filling out some paperwork when his phone rang. It was a transfer call from the receptionist. He picked it up on the third ring. “Garcia here."

“Detective Garcia, it's Rachael Pearce from the Times again,” the female receptionist announced.

“Damn!” Rachael Pearce had been pestering him the past four days for an interview. She was doing a retrospective piece on the Butcher murders for the LA Times, and was becoming more persistent in her attempts to gain an interview with him when it was announced last week that he had been appointed to head the Butcher investigation.

The appointment had come as a surprise to Daryl. It had come the day after the big meeting at Parker Center when the detectives on the case, along with the brass and the FBI, brainstormed tactics. The meeting had been beneficial to both organizations, and Daryl's work on the murder of Javier Ramirez had gained the attention of one of the lead FBI Agents, a man by the name of Bernie Haskins. He felt both proud and honored to have been recognized for his work. He had accepted the task force position readily, but the fanfare faded a few hours later when he realized what the job would entail: supervising over twenty detectives, coordinating their efforts, assisting in tracking down leads, interviewing suspects, overseeing all the paperwork, and reporting everything to Bernie Haskins, who was officially leading the investigation. He was stuck in the middle of a bureaucracy sandwich; God help him if the egos took control and politics were thrown into the fray. If that happened nothing would get done.

“Should I put her through, Detective Garcia?” The receptionist asked calmly.

He sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.” Might as well get this over with.

There was a click and then Rachael was on the line. “Detective Garcia, so glad I could talk to you."

“I've only got a few minutes, Miss..."

“Pearce,” Rachael said. He could picture her sitting in front of her desk, a mass of notes piled in front of her. He had never met Rachael Pearce, but he was already picturing her as being a pushy, overweight, middle aged woman married to her job. “But you can call me Rachael."

“Well, Rachael Pearce, I am a very busy man. I've got a shit load of things to do today so I can't talk long. What can I do for you?"

“All I want is a bit of your time,” Rachael said. “If you aren't too busy, perhaps after work we could meet someplace—"

“I'm afraid not,” he said, cutting her off. “I've got plans."

“Well, I can come to the station,” she blurted.

“Won't do much good,” he said.

“Really?” There was a weird tone in the sound of her voice, coupled with a tinny whine in the background. He winced. This was the third time he'd talked to her this week and she was proving to be a real pest. He had tried pawning her off to Paul Johnson in Public Relations, but she had sailed over his head and back into his turf. He'd tried sending her back again, even tried getting Steve Howe to tell her to fuck off. That hadn't budged her, and now she was on his ass again.

“Yes, really,” he said, now growing a little more annoyed with her. “Unlike you, Miss Pearce, I've got work to do. I don't have time to waste talking to you or any other member of the press."

“You don't look so busy to me,” she said, and now he was hearing her voice from two different perspectives; from the earpiece of the phone, and from directly in front of him. “In the last few minutes you've been hunched over your desk staring at the piles of paperwork stacked on it. Surely you can spare five minutes for a quick interview if you can sit at your desk for several minutes doing nothing."

He looked up at the source of the voice and felt a twinge of embarrassment. A tall, woman with a caramel complexion and shoulder length black hair stood in front of his desk holding a cellular phone to her ear. She was wearing a tasteful, but alluring, navy blue business suit, black high heel shoes, and a white blouse, the top three buttons undone. Gold earrings dangled from her ears. Her skirt was cut at mid thigh, showing off a pair of long shapely legs that ended at hips that could only be described as seductively curvy. Her body was shapely in all the right spots. Her face was regal looking with high cheekbones, makeup tastefully and artfully applied accenting her green eyes and red lips.

Her was black and lushly thick. Her features were exotic, lending her a sense of mystery.

She was gorgeous, and Daryl felt a flush of embarrassment rise in him. She smiled at him as she spoke. “I see it's close to lunch time. What do you say? I'm buying."

Daryl Garcia hung up the phone, blushing. “I told you I—"

“—was busy, I know,” Rachael said. She closed her cellular phone and leaned over the desk in front of him, giving him a view of her cleavage. “But it's still lunchtime and you must be hungry. Come on. I'm serious about buying."

Daryl caught a quick eye-view of her cleavage and averted his gaze. He fumbled at his desk, his mind racing for a quick escape. There was nothing he could think of; he was hungry, he did need to escape from the office, and Rachael Pearce was damned attractive!

She stood up to her full height. Her eyes locked with his. He couldn't tear his gaze away.

“I suppose I could take forty-five minutes off for lunch,” he said automatically.

“Good.” She smiled, her green eyes twinkling. “I know a good burger joint on Grand and Central."

“Phil's Burger's and Sandwiches?"

“Yep."

“Great.” Daryl rose from behind his desk and threw his jacket on. “I love a woman who recommends a good old fashioned healthy dose of cholesterol and fat in her diet."

As he left the station in the accompaniment of Rachael Pearce, who was a good three inches taller than his five foot eight frame, he felt the envious eyes of his co-workers on his back. Eat your heart out, guys!

Daryl knew that he was being led by his carnal desires for Rachael Pearce, but he didn't care. As they sat in a corner booth of Phil's Burgers, the bustle of the noon time lunch crowd from downtown's business district just beginning to filter in, he couldn't help but kick himself mentally for allowing himself to be so led. But then he couldn't help that.

Rachael was a goddess. Everything about her radiated pure sexual tension; the way she walked, the way she looked at him, the way she sat, her style of dress. She was alluring, and her exotic looks, which appeared to go beyond the normal WASP/Caucasian gene pool, gave her an air of mysteriousness. Therefore he didn't feel too forward in asking her nationality.

“Actually my mother is of Spanish and Italian extraction and my father's family hails from the Middle East; he's also part black,” she said, sipping at her coke. Both of them had trays with French fries and identical double cheeseburgers in front of them. She ran a hand through her thick black hair. “My hair and complexion usually gives people the impression that I'm Hispanic, but I can't speak a word of Spanish.” She smiled.

“Either way, I've never really thought much about it. It doesn't get in the way of who I am."

“What about when you were growing up?” Daryl asked.

Rachael sipped her coke and looked up, pursing her lips. “It was tough in some respects. I was never really accepted as being white, to tell you the truth. I don't have the typical WASPish looks. I'm not exactly white, I'm not exactly Arab, and I'm not really black, so I've sort of been fucked since day one when it comes to racial profiling.” She laughed. “But I've also benefited from it.” She raised a French fry to her mouth and bit it in half, grinning. “I took advantage of the affirmative action programs in high school and got a scholarship to UCLA. It felt like I was giving my critics a great big ‘fuck you'."

Daryl laughed, digging into his food. He liked Rachael already, and not because he was entranced by her beauty. She was willful, headstrong, and sharp. He had read her features in the paper and was familiar with her journalism. Meeting her put the icing on the cake.

“I bet your.... ah, muli-cultural background gives you more of an edge in your work,” he said.

She chewed her food thoughtfully before answering. “It does. I covered the LA Riots and was able to write about it from both sides. Won an award for it, too."

“I read that article. Nice work."

“Thanks.” She smiled, her eyes meeting his.

“Do you normally cover crime stories?” Daryl asked.

She shook her head, dipped her fries in a paper cup of ketchup. “In the early part of my career I wrote everything. I covered the normal crime beats, police reports, neighborhood and community activities. But then I did a piece on East Los Angeles Street Gangs in 1990; it was a four part series. My piece got some attention from my editor, and he gave me a few human-interest stories to cover. My breakthrough was my coverage of the riots. Most of my material made it into a book about the riots that was published."

Daryl was nodding, growing more impressed as she rattled off her achievements.

“That sounds very impressive."

“After the riots my editor made me the human interest editor.” She took another bite of her burger and chewed, chasing it down with coke. Daryl plowed into his food, paying attention to her as he ate. “I've been covering human interest stories ever since; people affected by the recession, the Malibu fires and floods, the Northridge Earthquake, victims of police brutality, gang warfare, city life in general. I've also covered stories about people overcoming impossible odds, succeeding in their dreams, in their lives.” She smiled. “It isn't always human misery and death."

“But the story you're working on now obviously is,” Daryl said.

Rachael ate a few more French fries. “Unfortunately duty calls,” she said. She took a sip of coke then pushed her tray back; she had finished her burger and only a dozen fries remained on her tray. “The reaction of the gangs in the area the killer is striking is what affected me about doing this story. Especially the reaction of those unfortunate enough to live in the area. I did some research, checked with my editor, and he gave the green light for a feature. I've already talked to some of the locals in the area, friends and relatives of the last few victims that were found, talked to a couple of people who knew the victims, a few beat cops that regularly patrol the area, and now I want to talk to you to get your perspective on the case."

“That's all you want?” He asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Just my perspective?"

“Well,” she said, breaking into a smile. She leaned forward and Daryl noticed for the first time that despite the fact that she had the body of a fashion model and was very feminine, she was also surprisingly muscular. Her biceps were well defined, but not overly buff; she looked like she could take care of herself if push came to shove. “I was hoping you could set me up with a drive-through in the area. You know, take me into the jungle, the hub of the barrio where the victims actually lived and hung out. Maybe even to the Eighty-First Street bridge where one of the victims was found."

Damn, but this chick had balls. She obviously knew that the Eighty-First Street bridge was a place that no sane person dared venture. The place was inhabited by hardcore gang members who would kill you if you weren't a familiar face. Usually the gang members that hung out there sold drugs, and it was pretty much in a day's work when a couple of squad cars were called there to quell a disturbance or cart away a body.

Rachael had obviously heard the stories through the grapevine. “You sure you want to go there?” he asked. “Shit, even I hate going there, and the only time I've been there I've had a dozen cops with me. And it still scared the shit out of me."

Her eyes were blazing with excitement. “That would be my number one priority, Daryl. To go there with my photographer, perhaps talk to a couple of the gang members in person, get their perspective on the killings."

The woman was obviously serious. Daryl admired this. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I'll see if I can set something up. It might be tough, though. A normal ride-along in a squad car is a lot different than what you're asking me to do. It's risky."

“I don't want you to lose your job,” Rachael said. “But if there's a way it could be done, I'm sure you could do it. If you could pull it off for me I'll owe you one.” She smiled at him and he averted his gaze from that regal face.

I'll owe you one. She's either using her sexuality to get what she wants or she is really interested, he thought. Either way, even if she wasn't interested in him sexually there were some women willing to trade a few favors for some taste of their forbidden fruit. The way this woman carried herself suggested that she might be one of them. Daryl wasn't interested in a long-term relationship, and Rachael certainly didn't have to agree to a little rolling in the hay as payback to his putting his ass on the line for her. As a journalist she was certainly privy to the consequences of such situations. And as a journalist she had to be crafty and know how to barter to gain access to people, places, and events that most normal folks, much less the journalists on the lower tiers of the newspaper, were privy to.

“Tell you what I'll do,” he said, his mind whirring into action. “The Eighty-First Street bridge is not the best place to go to, especially at night, even if I were to accompany you. I'll talk to a couple close buddies at the station and see if they'll cover me for this one, see if I can get a squad car or two to escort us over. At the same time I'll talk to somebody I know who knows the gangs in the area to sort of pave the way for us.

Prepare the locals that we're coming. How's that sound?"

Rachael's smile was enough to make his heart melt. It shined through his soul, melting him in a rubbery sense of excitement that he hadn't felt since he was a school kid.

“Great!” She said. She reached out and squeezed his hand in thanks, and at the touch of her skin he felt a bolt of electricity shoot through his body. His flesh tingled and he tried to hide the flush that was threatening to rise through his face.

“I'll have to make some phone calls", he said, squeezing her hand back, trying to ignore the fact that touching her was sending bolts of electricity through his system. “I don't know if I'll be able to speak to everybody today or not. Why don't you give me your number and I'll call you when I get things set up?"

“No problem.” She reached into her purse, took out a pad of paper and a pen, and scribbled on it. She tore the sheet off and handed it to him. “There's my home number, my cell phone number, and my number at the office. You can reach me easier through my cell phone and at home, though."

“Great,” Daryl said, folding the paper and pocketing it. “I should have things set up by tonight."

They talked a little bit more, Daryl trying to steer the conversation back to her work just to keep the momentum of conversation going. After a few minutes he glanced at his watch. “Well look, I've gotta get back to the office as I'm sure you do too."

They took their trays to the waste bin, threw their trash away, then walked out of the restaurant. As they walked back Daryl noticed that Rachael's body language was still very sensual, still speaking loud and clear that he was moving in the right direction. She stayed at his side as they walked to Broadway and Main, making small talk as they headed back to Parker Center. When they got to the building they paused in front of it, oblivious to the traffic around them. “I'll give you a call,” Daryl said.

“Good,” Rachael said, holding out her hand. “And thank you, Detective Garcia.

This means a lot to me."

“No problem.” They shook hands and Rachael smiled at him, her remarkable green eyes finding his and holding them. Daryl didn't back down from their gaze. “As to paying me back for the favor, let's just worry about getting this set up. Hell, if we pull this off it will be cause for celebration anyway."

“I agree,” she said. “I think dinner at one of the city's finest restaurants would be in order."

They said their good byes and parted. Daryl strolled leisurely to the office, his mind playing over the lunch, the conversation with Rachael. He couldn't help but be smitten by her sensuality, her beauty, the way she reacted to him. It had been over a year since a woman had shown any kind of interest in him, and Rachael was definitely showing interest. Whether her motivation was out of her desire to get this story, or that she was attracted to him didn't matter right now to Daryl. What mattered was that she had looked at him with obvious desire in her eyes and that's all Daryl needed. He was going to do everything he could to pull this assignment through and do it safely.

When Daryl got back to his desk, Steve Howe was leaning back in his chair eating a subway sandwich. He swallowed a piece of sandwich and eyed Daryl curiously. “What the fuck are you so happy about?"

“Nothing,” Daryl said, smiling wider now as he sat at his desk and turned his attention to the myriad of paperwork that awaited him. “Nothing at all."

Chapter 5

He was sitting naked on the living room sofa with the TV turned to some magazine show- Dateline, 20/20, they were all the same-when he noticed that the woman that he had propped up next to him was leaking some kind of noxious fluid.

He sniffed the air, turning to examine her closer. The living room window shades were drawn, the only light coming from the television. He poked his finger into her flesh and felt a tingle of excitement as the digit sank into cold, rotting meat. A waft of odor erupted from the woman and he smiled, suddenly feeling warm and flushed with excitement. This one was lasting longer than he thought. It had been three months since he had brought her to the dungeon and she was still pretty much intact.

Well, except for her head of course.

She had been fairly easy to obtain. He had found her in a Los Angeles paper called Los Angeles X press, which was in reality a paper that catered to the city's sexual underground. Amid pages of advertisements for phone sex, massage parlors, strip joints, and escort services were hundreds of personal ads from people, mostly women, advertising their wares. A good half of the advertisements had photographs. All fetishes were included: gay, S&M, B&D, cross-dressing, transvestites, as well as the regular in-and-out. He had particular tastes: he didn't care about a particular woman or man's age or race, but there were some basic ingredients that he liked in both sexes: in women, the sluttier they looked, the better. In men he didn't care. As long as they were into hardcore S&M, and bondage he was fine. The tough part was finding somebody who liked to bottom rather than top. His true fetish was sadism. He could care less if his partners got off or not. Why pay five hundred dollars and up to be whipped, tied up, and spanked when it was much more fun to be the abuser?

He had found this one in the pages of the Los Angeles Xpress as he had the last woman he had done earlier this year. The photo that had caught his attention showed a slim black woman with large breasts and a nice ass staring seductively at the camera, her eyes blocked out by a black bar that made it appear that she was in some sort of witness protection program. The ad stated that she specialized in most everything, but that she especially loved to be fucked in the ass while spanked. Her phone number looked local, so he had called her up and spoken with her.

It turned out she was local, downtown Los Angeles to be exact, and she had been free on the night he called. He'd agreed to her price, and she had come over shortly before midnight. She'd turned out to be a little older than she looked in the photo, mid-thirties perhaps, but her body was exactly what he was looking for. She had come dressed in a black leather miniskirt, black hose, a white halter-top and a black leather jacket. She also wore black spiked-heeled pumps. Her lipstick was cherry red, her make-up tastefully applied, just as slutty as he liked them. When he opened the door for her she strode in, tight ass sashaying under the black miniskirt, full breasts bouncing underneath the white, low cut halter-top. She was wearing no bra. He liked that even more.

He had the money ready, five hundred dollars in cash, and he had handed it to her.

She had taken it wordlessly and put it in her purse. She asked where the bedroom was. He told her that he preferred the living room. She peered at the living room, noting the drawn shades, and agreed. He directed her to the couch and sat down. She removed her jacket and halter-top, her breasts swinging free. Then she had gotten on her knees, unzipped his pants, and went down on him.

He had leaned back and closed his eyes as she labored noisily, her tongue and mouth bringing shivers of pleasure through him. His mind had conjured up an image of her tied up, spread eagle on his rack in the dungeon while he went at her with a knife and thinking about this had excited him. He looked down at her, smiling. “From our conversation earlier, you said that you wouldn't mind a little S&M?"

She had looked up at him, smiling. “What you have in mind, baby?"

He'd told her what he wanted. He wanted to handcuff her to a bondage rack he had in his dungeon and fuck her in the ass. She had agreed to this, told him it would be a hundred dollars extra. No problem. He'd led her to the dungeon he had set up in the next room and switched on the light.

The dungeon was neat and orderly. It was roughly thirty by forty feet in size, the biggest room in the house. The walls and ceiling were painted black. The windows were closed, the blinds drawn. The bondage rack, painted blood red, was against the far wall, a low wooden table with a rubber mattress and a makeshift wooden frame at the end. The frame was scarred. There was a bucket directly behind the frame, out of direct eye view.

He took off his clothes and reached over to a small bureau, opening a drawer. Inside was a mixture of bondage gear; leather harnesses, handcuffs, cat-o-nine tails, ball gags, nipple clamps, ben-wa balls, ankle and wrist straps. The woman had eyed them as she shrugged out of her miniskirt. “You want me to keep my hose and heels on?"

“Sure.” He directed her to the table.

For the first time that night she looked hesitant. She had eyed the black rubber mattress, the handcuffs that he fondled gingerly. She'd looked back at him. “How do you want me handcuffed?"

He had motioned to the wooden frame at the foot of the makeshift rack. “See those posts? I'll handcuff each wrist to either side of the frame. You'll be able to lean against it with your hands."

“And you want to fuck me like that?” She had looked apprehensive.

“You said you were into this,” he'd said, sounding disappointed.

“I am,” she said. “But ... I ain't too keen on being on the receiving end."

“It's the only way I can get off,” he'd said, his voice smooth. “I won't be too rough.

When I'm done, if you want to get off you can strap me down."

She'd eyed him, then eyed the bondage toys on the open drawer. This had seemed to change her mind. “I want to whip your ass with that cat-o-nine tails."

“Mmmmm, yes, I like that,” he'd said, smiling, brandishing the handcuffs. “That's really about the only thing I like when I'm in the submissive role."

“Good.” She had climbed on the rack, got on her hands and knees. “You want to be my slave?"

“Sure,” he'd said. “But only after you let me fuck you, master."

“Beg me, slave,” she'd purred, red lips pursed. “Beg me to let you fuck me."

He had played the role of the submissive slave begging his mistress to savor her delights. She'd played the role well, and the fantasy fueled his lust. When she got down on her hands and knees and demanded that she cuff him to the headboard, he had complied eagerly, clasping the cuffs to the worn wood of the frame. She gripped the frame, body arched, ass sticking out demurely, legs spread slightly. He had climbed on the rack behind her and parted her ass cheeks, tongue lapping at her womanly folds.

The woman had moaned, eyes closed, head bowed down as she rode through her orgasm.

He had taken her quickly.

Moving behind her, he had brought his arm up around her throat in a headlock and squeezed. She'd struggled hard, her breath catching in her throat, stifling a scream. He applied pressure and she dropped like a sack of potatoes, unconscious. His breath had quickened as he released his grip from her throat and regarded her helpless form on the rack. Worked every time; apply enough pressure to the right spot in the throat and the oxygen supply is cut off from the brain in seconds. He had been fully aroused by then, ready for the coup de grace.

He had reached for the heavy butcher knife that he kept hidden behind a row of bottles. He grabbed the back of her head by her hair and pulled, exposing her throat. He moved her body forward slightly, her head and throat positioned above the bucket at the foot of the rack. With one fell swoop, he'd drawn the long heavy blade of the knife across her throat in a savage cut. Blood sprayed against the faded paint of the wall and a fountain splashed into the metal bucket as a small hiss escaped from her lips. His lust carried the blade through the flesh of her neck in one swoop, cutting through her larynx. Her body convulsed, spurning him on. He cut through the spine with a second cut, separating her head from her neck. Her body had contorted and convulsed wildly, blood gushing from her neck like a geyser, landing in the bucket. He had watched, breathed heavily, chest rising and falling with his excitement. He had lifted her head up, smiling amid his heavy breathing at the wide-eyed look of surprise and fear on her face. It appeared that she had regained consciousness just as he had drawn the blade across her throat. Her eyes had lighted on him, the pupils contracting as if in fear, her mouth opening as if in a scream and then the features froze. And remained that way.

He had placed the head on the table and turned his attention to the body, which was still rocking and rolling with death spasms. He had lost himself in it for the next hour.

Now as he sat with the headless corpse in his living room he realized that the chloride of lime he was using, and the refrigeration, was doing little to retard decomposition. It might be time to cut her up and dispose of her; the first woman had lasted quite a bit when he had dismembered her and stored the individual pieces in the refrigerator. Maybe this one would last longer if he did the same thing.

He stood up and picked up the heavy wet form and carried it to the dungeon.

Once there, he set the body on the rubber-covered rack. His breathing was slow and heavy now as he rummaged on the small table for the butcher knife. He gazed down lovingly at what remained of the woman that had come to call on him three months ago, ignoring the heavy rot of decay that wafted up to him. Then he set to work, brow furrowed in concentration as he separated her, everything he had been taught coming to him effortlessly.

For the first time in over a month, her name came to his mind. “Rosie,” he said, breath coming in heavy pants.

As euphoria set in he gathered her up, wrapped her up in the butcher paper that he kept in the room behind the dungeon, and put her in the refrigerator that he kept there. He arranged the pieces nicely, then paused to admire his handiwork. He smiled. She should last another few months. If he got more lime, she might even last another year.

He closed the door, feeling light-headed and sleepy, and went to the living room.

Chapter 6

Rachael Pearce sat in the front seat of Daryl Garcia's unmarked sedan as they cruised the area east of Downtown Los Angeles. In the backseat, a photographer from the Los Angeles Times, a bespectacled man in his mid-thirties named Lance Benatar, clutched his Nikon in his hands. She was glad Lance was with her. She had worked with him for the last five years, and he could get the best shots on spur-of-the-moment or threatening situations. He covered the 1992 riots with her, and the 1993 Malibu firestorms. He had an eye for detail, a great sense of timing, and he blended in well with the background of whatever scene they were at.

Rachael glanced in her sideview mirror. They were being tailed by a black and white patrol car. When Daryl called her last night—two days after she had cornered him at Parker Center and taken him out to lunch—to tell her the news, he told her that they would be escorted to the Eighty-first Street bridge by four patrol cars and two unmarked cars. He was only able to get this amount of backup between the times of 12:45 and 2:00

p.m. the following day. Knowing it was the only window of opportunity she had, she took it.

She had called Lance that night at his home, told him the plans, then agreed to meet him in front of Parker Center at 12:15. Lance showed up, and fifteen minutes later they were in Daryl's car on their way.

For the last ten minutes they had been driving through the crumbling streets of Los Angeles, past dilapidated apartment buildings, rows of shops and liquor stores, rows of industrial buildings and gas stations. The buildings were all sooty looking, muli-colored graffiti covering them. The sidewalks were filled with pedestrians of mostly Hispanic and Asian background. “Chinatown and East LA are pretty close together,”

Daryl Garcia explained as he drove. “You don't get many of the black gangs up in this area."

Daryl had been making idle chatter ever since they began their journey. She had cut their conversation short last night when, after he told her the good news and what the plans would be, he started nattering about how the rest of his day went. She could tell he was attracted to her, that her flirting earlier that day had worked in gaining his cooperation. She smiled to herself as he rattled on, recognizing that he was buttering her up, trying to ease her into something. He was kind of attractive, and she had entertained the thought last night of letting him sleep with her at some point. But she drew the line at letting anything progress beyond that. She had had enough of men worming their way into her life. At least for now.

After ten minutes of idle chatter she had finally cut the conversation short and told him she'd see him tomorrow. And she thanked him. He mumbled that it was his pleasure, and then they hung up.

Now they seemed to pick things up right where they had left them last night. With Lance in the car things weren't destined to go beyond idle chatter. Flirting was out of the question, although Rachael knew she could tease Daryl if she wanted to if something came up where she needed his help again. Lance knew she used her sexuality to get what she wanted, to manipulate men into doing things for her, getting her into places that she could later write about. They joked about it sometimes. “You know, if I had a pair of tits and an ass like yours I'd have it made,” he always quipped.

Until now she'd never had to use sex to get what she wanted. Using the right body language was always enough to gain access to an area that was normally off limits. She sometimes suggested that she would trade sexual favors for certain things, but she never delivered. After getting what she wanted she was on to the next story, the next sucker.

She had heard through the grapevine that some city officials, detectives, and other men referred to her as a cock-teasing bitch, but then she had a career she loved and a couple of awards, too. She had gotten what she wanted, which was enough for her.

She played up to Daryl the same way. And he had taken the bait hook, line, and sinker. Only this time, as she sat in the front seat of his sedan, chatting with him about the weather and whether the Angels would make the playoffs next year, she thought that if she would ever fuck anybody as payback for opening certain doors in getting a good story, it would be Daryl. He was attractive: black hair and eyes, mustache, tall and lanky, but muscular. Plus, the way he carried himself suggested that he was a man who knew where he was going, a man who was confident in himself and his abilities. True, two days ago she had been able to chisel away at the stone of his veneer, but he managed to keep himself under control. By now most men would have been on their third or fourth try in asking her for a date.

Daryl motioned ahead. “That's the Eight-First Street bridge up ahead."

Lance rose up from the backseat, peering ahead. “Into the Lions Den we go."

Rachael checked her mini-cassette recorder, which she had slung over her shoulder like a portable camera. She clutched her note pad in her hand, her mind already going over what questions she was going to ask the gang members that were down there.

“Now remember,” Daryl was saying. “Danny Hernandez talked to the guys who claim that area as their territory, and he assured them that everything was cool. The guys that I have tailing us are on their lunch hour and they're doing this as a favor to me. We only have thirty minutes or so to talk to these guys, then we get the hell out of there."

“And the cops that are with us aren't supposed to do anything, right?” Lance asked from the backseat. “I mean, they aren't going to be assholes and try to bust somebody or something."

“No,” Daryl said. He gripped the wheel tightly. “I hand picked these guys myself.

I know them all very well, and ... well, some of them owe me favors. I'll owe some of them favors when this is over. I explained the situation to them, and they know that if Rachael gets this story it may be a way to bring whoever is responsible for these murders out in the open. They also know that we have an agreement not to talk to anybody else in the press. Rachael is the only one they talk to, and even then, after this is over and they go on their own ways, they are to forget this ever happened."

Rachael and Lance let this sink in as Daryl steered the car down a side street toward the Eight-First Street bridge. Rachael checked her gear. In the backseat, Lance checked his equipment. Rachael stared out ahead through the dirty windshield of the sedan as they approached the arches of the bridge. The area they were entering was almost barren, desolate. The dirt floor was dry, small tufts of weeds sticking out here and there, small buildings and factories standing like lonely sentries in the desert. Daryl steered the car down another side street, down an alley where crackerbox houses were piled one on top of the other, white faded picket fences kept in children and animals ranging from dogs to chickens. It was an area that fostered fear, bred despair, and harbored criminals. Rachael clutched the strap that held her tape recorder to her hip, her stomach rumbling with a nervous twinge. Today she was venturing where most normal folks would never dare enter.

Here there be Tygers.

She glanced in the rearview mirror as they drew up to the bridge, noting two of the patrol cars following them. She turned to Daryl as he stopped the car and let it idle, noticing for the first time half a dozen men dressed in gang attire; baggy tan slacks, baggy white t-shirts and plaid shirts, shaved heads, attitude turned up to eleven. “Where are the other patrol cars?"

“They're approaching the scene from a different route,” Daryl said, his hands tapping the steering wheel, watching the gang members approach the car cautiously. “I've also got a couple of plainclothes cops nearby and a few more salted in the area keeping watch. Everything's cool."

“If you say so, man,” Lance said, his voice squeaking like a pre-pubescent boy.

Rachael had never heard him sound so nervous before in all the years they'd worked together.

The gang members were drawing up to the car and two of them broke away from the others and approached them. One of them, tall, good looking, wearing a white tank top that exposed his muscular tattooed arms nodded. “Officer Garcia, que paso?"

“How are you doing, Victor?” Daryl said. He held his hand out and Victor grasped it in a power shake.

“Okay, man.” He motioned toward Rachael. “That her?"

“Yep.” Daryl turned toward Rachael. “You ready?"

Rachael took a deep breath, her heart pounding in her chest. She had thought Daryl and some of the backup officers would frisk the gang members for weapons, but they made no attempt to do that. Surely they knew the gang members were armed! She supposed with the eight cops that had come along as backup, and the plainclothes detectives watching the area they were pretty safe, but she didn't feel it. She felt both scared and excited; she could feel the adrenaline pouring through her veins. She took a deep breath. “Ready as I'll ever be."

Daryl turned to Victor. “Everything cool?"

“Everything's cool, homes,” Victor said. He stepped away from the car. His partner remained at sentry duty, chest thrown forward, head tilted back, macho tough.

Daryl opened the driver's side door and got out. Rachael got out on her side, barely aware of Lance scrambling out of the backseat behind her or the officers that had been assigned to follow them getting out of their squad cars. Her only aim now was to get her interview, do it quickly, and get the hell out of here. She sought eye contact with Victor, got it, and smiled. “Hi! You're Victor?” She stepped forward, holding out her hand. Time to turn on the charm.

Daryl made the introductions. Rachael and Lance greeted Victor amicably, and met his sidekick, Gomez Mendoza. As the introductions were being made, the remaining gang members that had been lounging against the graffiti stained concrete columns that supported the bridge moved forward. Victor introduced them all by their nicknames.

Rachael acknowledged them all and connecting their names with their physical appearances: Midget was the little guy with the shaved head; Gordo was the chunky man with the knee length baggy shorts; Joker was the medium built man with slightly slanted eyes that suggested Indian or Philippine background; and Rascal was the only guy with hair, a greasy explosion of it corkscrewing out of his head like the rap star Coolio.

Rachael turned the tape recorder on and reached for her notes. She didn't really need them-she had already memorized what she wanted to ask them-but she had them on hand to assure them that she was the real thing. She smiled at them, spoke to them softly, respectfully, drawing them out, inserting herself in as one of them. Despite the joking sexual innuendo of Joker as he lightly teased her-"Damn, you're beautiful, baby. You married?” Laughter broke out from the others after each attempt from Joker at cutting through to her defenses. She merely smiled and attempted to go on. For the most part she had them at ease right away.

“You guys hang out here all the time, right?” Rachael began after the light banter had run its course. By now they were all standing around in a rough semi-circle; gang members on one side, cops standing off about twenty feet away observing; her, Lance and Daryl about five feet from Victor, Joker and Midget. “I mean, this is your territory and you do business here all the time."

“Can't admit that, man,” Midget said, chuckling, motioning to Daryl. “Shit, if we admit that he'll bust us."

Joker laughed. “Bullshit. Hey, Daryl, you ain't gonna bust us if we talk about that shit, are you?"

Daryl said, “With God as my witness, you guys can talk to this lady about anything and you will not go to jail."

There was more laughter about this, about how they were “one up on the man,”

and that this sudden change of balance indicated that they really were in control of this area of the Eight-First Street bridge. Daryl merely smiled at them and joked along with them. Rachael smiled, waiting patiently. It appeared that Daryl was trying his hardest to be civil with them. The feeling she got from Daryl now was that if he had the chance he would shoot all five gang members on general principles if she and Lance weren't around.

Victor finally answered her question. “Yeah, we're here all the time. Somebody from Los Compadres always is. And none of us saw anything."

“You mean none of you saw when Rick Perez's body was dumped in this area?”

Rachael reiterated.

They all shook their heads. Gordo said, “None of us did. He was just there one morning when we came down here."

“Who do you think killed him?” She asked.

“Shit, man,” Midget said, throwing up his hands in the Los Compadres gang sign.

“We know Tortilla Flats did it. They fucked him up, they been into us forever."

The gang members murmured general agreement on this. Joker piped in a: “But they ain't gonna get you, baby. Not with me here to look after you they won't!"

She flashed him a smile, all the while thinking Jesus, I haven't seen so much fucking macho bullshit since high school. “But suppose it wasn't Tortilla Flats? What do you think about the FBI's idea that it might be a serial killer?"

“A serial killer?” Victor intoned. “You mean like Jeffrey Dahmer? Eatin’ people and shit?"

“Not all serial killers practice cannibalism, Victor,” Daryl explained. “But, yes, Jeffrey Dahmer would be a good example."

The gang members traded glances with each other and instantly broke out with

“no, man, it ain't no serial killer,” laughter following, along with sexual jokes aimed at homosexuals and women's private parts. A few Jeffrey Dahmer jokes flew around: what did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbit? You gonna eat that? Hardee har har. What did Jeffrey Dahmer tell his mother when he had her over to his apartment for dinner and she said, ‘Jeffrey, I don't like any of your friends?’ That's okay, ma, just eat the vegetables.

Hardee har har. Daryl and Lance laughed along with them. Rachael laughed too, noticing that Lance was shaking in his shoes despite his good natured features. He had good reason; Los Compadres Mafia was one of the deadliest, most homicidal street gangs in Los Angeles. She had to reel this thing in and get this interview over with.

“Suppose it is a serial killer,” she put forth, on a roll now. “Let's just suppose.

How do you think somebody could just ... kill Rick and dump him down here without any of you seeing him?"

Scattered “I don't knows.” Rascal spoke up: “Anybody we see that we don't know, they get their ass kicked."

“Or killed!” This from Midget. He cocked his middle and index finger like a gun and pointed it to his head. Bang.

“Yeah, we fuck ‘em up,” Gordo emphasized, pounding his meaty fist into his meaty palm.

“What usually goes on here on a normal day?” Rachael asked. Halfway finished now.

“What do we do here?” Victor asked, as if trying to get some clarification on the question.

“Not just what do you do here, but what goes on here on a normal day even when you guys aren't around?"

“Shit, nothing much,” Victor motioned toward the vast graffiti wasteland with his tattooed arms. “What usually goes on here is us and our homies kickin’ back, partying, messing with our ladies. That sort of thing."

Rachael traded a glance with Daryl, who nodded at her to continue. She had gone over the questions she intended to ask them and this next one was potentially self-incriminating. But Daryl had assured her that he had told the gang members that no matter what they told her—whether it self incriminated them in crimes or not-that they would not be arrested. She had come up with several different versions of the question and decided on the least self-incriminating one. “Do you suppose the guy that killed Rick could have been somebody that buys drugs from any of you guys?"

Victor and Midget traded a glance. The back of Rachael's neck tensed, as if expecting a blow. The other gang members shifted visibly, as if expecting Daryl and the officers to rush them in a swarm. Daryl nodded at Victor, emphasizing that it was okay to speak freely. Victor caught the gesture and relaxed and Rachael felt the weight lift off her shoulders. Be cool, she thought. Everybody just be cool.

“It's possible,” Victor said, looking and speaking to Rachael directly now. Of the six gang members here, Victor was clearly the leader of this particular set and the most articulate. “I mean, you should see the kind of people that come down here looking for junk or crack. Businessmen, celebrities—all kinds of people, man. Rock stars, movie stars, people like that. Even lawyers, man.” Victor looked more disgusted at the professional level of his clients than his role in the drug trade. “It's not just other ‘bangers that come down here buying shit from us."

“But if you want to buy from us,” Rascal piped in from the rear of the circle, “you got to have somebody who knows us introduce you.” He stepped forward, his wild shock of hair bobbing in the slight breeze. “Like, say you and me know each other, and I'm tight with Victor here. And say you want to score some Black Tar or something. Some real good stuff. You might ask me where you could get some primo stuff, in a place where the cops don't hardly go and where it's pretty safe. And since I know Victor and his crew hang here, and that the cops don't come here, I say, ‘yeah, I know the perfect dealer for you. I'll set you up'. Then I call Victor, arrange a buy, and I take you down here. You make your deal and if he likes you he gives you the okay that it's cool for you to come down. And he tells the other homeboys that you're cool, y'know what I'm sayin'?"

Rachael knew what he was saying and she got it loud and clear. She glanced around the area, noting the multi-colored graffiti staining the concrete columns that supported the bridge, the abandoned sofa resting against a graffiti stained wall, the trash that littered the ground, and the six gang members who stood grouped around them. She pictured what this place must be like at night, when the lights of the city barely penetrated the area, leaving it dark, ominous, the only sound the constant hum of traffic from the bridge. The only lights would come from the gang members who either brought flashlights to the scene, or the occasional bonfires that were built by homeless people on cold winter nights. No wonder the cops stayed away from this area.

Speaking of the homeless: “What about the homeless people?” Rachael asked.

“Do they come around here?"

Midget shrugged. “Sometimes. They don't bother us, though. They're cool."

Gordo was shaking his head. “Not many of them come down here.” He slammed his meaty fist into his palm again. “It gets boring down here sometimes."

The other gang members laughed at this and Rachael got the message loud and clear. She supposed the scariest thing about being homeless would be trying to seek shelter from the rain under this particular bridge and then having the daylights stomped out of you and whatever spare change you might have stolen, all just to amuse the local hoods.

“So I guess we can safely rule a homeless person out as being the murderer.”

Rachael meant the comment to be taken as a joke. Half of the gang members—Victor included—got it; the other half stared at her dumbfoundedly.

“Let's get back to what goes on down here on an average day,” she coaxed them back down that track and, with some encouraging and prodding, got them to paint a picture of what a typical day under the Eight-first Street bridge was like. Admittingly, nobody actually showed up at the spot until around ten in the morning. The first four hours of the day were spent shooting the shit, playing craps, gossiping, drinking beer, getting high. Occasionally a customer would cruise down in search of drugs. As the afternoon drew to a close the older gang members would stop by for a beer, a toot, a toke.

There was always much laughter and festivities. By the early evening most of the gang members were tanked and ready to go for a night on the town. Some of them hit the streets in search of cheap thrills-a car to jack, an enemy to kill, a girl to fuck. But their places under the bridge were always filled with other homies. As the night wore on, young gang members who hadn't been initiated into the gang life, and who were ready to take the plunge were jumped in. More drug deals went down. And as the night wore into the early morning, the area began to thin out as gang members began to go home or head off to brighter pastures.

All six of the Los Compadres gang members took turns telling her varying versions of this narrative, often from many different perspectives of the day. But she got the gist of it. And the bottom line was that between two and eight a.m., this area was largely uninhabited.

Which was roughly around the same time frame it was estimated that Rick Perez's decapitated body was left under the bridge.

She glanced at Daryl Garcia who returned her look. She was sure Daryl was thinking the same thing: whoever dumped Rick's body was either damned lucky that he had gotten into this area undetected, or he knew the area and the people who inhabited it very well. And if that was the case, he would have known that between the hours of two and eight a.m. would have been the best times to dump a body.

No wonder they think a rival gang member was responsible, she thought. While the idea was tantalizing, theoretically it was impossible. After all, with one exception, all the victims were from different gangs. She brought this up to Victor.

The gang member appeared to think this over. “Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. Whoever killed Rick wasn't the same dude that killed those other hotos."

“But the murders are all the work of the same person,” Rachael said, reading from her list of notes. “The FBI determined that they're not separate random acts. One person is responsible for them all."

“So?” Victor eyed her, full of macho bravado.

“So what that means is that it's impossible that another gang killed Rick,” Rachael said.

“Why couldn't it be somebody from like Boyle Heights or Tortilla Flats if one of theirs was killed?” Midget asked, defiantly. “Maybe they killed Rick because they thought we killed one of their hotos. Since Rick was from Eighteenth Street, maybe Tortilla Flats killed him and dumped him here on our turf to make it look bad on us. Shit, we wouldn't kill a hoto from another gang and leave him in somebody else's turf."

“You wouldn't?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop it.

Victor glowered at her menacingly. The other gang members took a step forward.

Rachael felt herself taking two big steps back as Victor bore down on her. “You accusing us of killing the putos from those other gangs that way? Cutting them up and shit?"

Rachael searched for a quick solution to the misunderstanding. “No, I'm not. I'm just trying to make you see a point. You see, if you didn't kill one of their homeboys in that manner-which I know nobody from Los Compadres is responsible for-than how could one of them have taken Rick out that way?"

This seemed to calm them down. They relaxed. Victor backed down, his face still darkened with the anger that any of his homies could have killed rivals in that fashion.

She smiled at them, hoping that would break the ice, trying to make eye contact with them. Only Joker, who seemed to see himself as the gangster Don Juan, would return her glance and smile.

“The bottom line to all this I suppose is that shit goes down here all the time, right?” Rachael asked.

Gordo nodded. “Shit goes down here all the time. Rick ain't the first dude to die down here."

“And he won't be the last,” Midget said, his scowl still etched on his little face.

Rachael glanced at Daryl, who nodded twice. Time to go. She turned back to Victor and held out her hand. “Thank you for your help. All of you. I really appreciate it."

She shook hands with all of them as they asked if she was going to use their names in the newspaper. She said that she would if they wanted her to. They laughed about their new-found fame, whooping it up. Lance stepped up, his cue to begin his work.

Rachael took the lead. “Now if we could maybe get some pictures of you guys just sort of hanging out."

The gang members were only too happy to comply. They pulled red and blue bandanas over their noses and mouths like bandits of the old west, squatted on their haunches, flashed gang signs amid the backdrop of graffiti covered walls and columns while Lance snapped away. During the quick photo session she managed a few words with Daryl. “That went over better than I thought it would,” she whispered.

“Yes, it did,” he said softly, looking on as Lance directed Victor, Gordo, Joker, and Midget for another shot. “Thank God for Danny Hernandez. He was really instrumental in pulling this off."

“I'll have to meet him sometime to thank him personally,” Rachael said.

“I'll introduce you,” Daryl said.

“He's involved at the church, right?” Rachael asked, watching as Lance seemed to ease into the quick photo session. The laughter of the gang members echoed in the dusty hangout. “The gang counselor?"

“That's right,” Daryl turned to her and smiled. “He's a good guy. He's in tight with these kids here in the streets. Used to be one of them. He runs a youth ministry at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in East Los Angeles."

“Maybe I can talk to him next,” Rachael said. She put her notes in her jacket pocket. Lance was finishing up the shoot.

“I'll give him a call,” Daryl said.

They bade the gang members goodbye, climbed in their cars, and turned around, heading out from under the bridge. As they drove down the dusty road out of the squalid neighborhood, Rachael couldn't help but ask Lance how he felt.

“Better now that we're out of there,” he said. He looked at her from the rearview mirror, his brown eyes showing relief. She smiled at him, then turned her attention back to Daryl.

“Thank you,” she said. “For everything."

“Don't mention it,” Daryl said, watching the road ahead. “You just write yourself one hell of an article. If you need to talk to Danny Hernandez, let me know."

“I'll call you tonight,” she said. He nodded, a little smile on his face. She smiled back. I can't string him along anymore, she thought. I think he's hooked a little too deep.

Maybe we can do lunch or something. That might ease the pressure.

She settled in the front seat, thinking about the article she was going to write as Daryl and Lance talked about the Dodgers.

Chapter 7

Daryl Garcia finished the evening edition of the Los Angeles Times with Rachael Pearce's two-part retrospective story of the Eastside Butcher and folded it up, placing it on the coffee table. He leaned back on the worn sofa in his living room. It was a damn good piece of investigative journalism. He had been worried that her exposé on the murder series and how the LAPD was handling it would be a blow to the department and hinder the investigation somehow. If anything, the article had helped them. Since publication of Part One yesterday, the department had been flooded with calls by people with tips. By this afternoon Parker Center had received almost four hundred tips from citizens ranging from people voicing suspicion of a neighbor or loved one, to people calling to voice concern over strange goings-on in their neighborhood. A few crackpots even called to confess to the murders but were quickly eliminated when they couldn't provide intimate details of the emasculations and post mortem sexual abuse performed on the corpses. They would probably be getting more false confessions in the weeks and months to come. Daryl reached for a glass of beer he had poured for himself upon returning home and drained the glass dry. He sighed again. It had been a long day and he was very tired.

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.

What if we go out and really hit it off? What if we wind up back at my place or hers and in bed and it happens?

What he was afraid of letting happen was falling in love with Rachael. When he had fallen in love with Diane Sterling, his second wife, he had the same problem. He was never able to let go of the past hurt he had experienced when Shirley and their unborn baby had been killed. Of course he didn't know this at the time; when he met, dated, and married Diane, he was practically married to his work as a cop. Diving into the police academy and then his work as a law enforcement officer had been part of his method of dealing with the loss of Shirley and their unborn child.

Dealing with the aftermath of Shirley's death had been very hard. For one, her personal effects were all over the two-bedroom apartment they'd shared. Shirley had been the decorator, and she had had a ton of clothes in the closet that he had not been able to bring himself to touch for close to two years. For the first year and a half he was numb to the fact that she was really gone. He would sit in the apartment after getting home from work, drink a beer, and look around the apartment, remembering every piece of furniture, every knick-knack that she had picked out. It all brought back memories of her. Clearing the apartment of her stuff would feel like getting rid of her and he couldn't do that, not so soon after the funeral. But the days stretched into weeks, the weeks into months, and before he knew it almost two years had passed and he found himself in their bedroom going through her side of the closet, pulling dresses out and putting them in plastic green garbage bags to take to her parents. He had worked in a blind stupor that day, packing her clothes from the closets and dressers, boxing up her books and the knick-knacks she liked to decorate the entertainment center with. He had collected her high school yearbooks and put them in a box. Then he had driven them over to her parents and told them that they could have the items if they wanted them. They hadn't questioned his reasons. They had simply accepted them.

The hardest part was cleaning out the second bedroom. He did that two months after Shirley's murder. Daryl had been slowly converting it into a nursery in the months prior to Shirley's death. Dismantling the crib, taking down the baby things Shirley had put up, had been emotionally draining. But he'd done it. It had been the first thing he'd done because seeing the baby stuff in there just made him more angry and grief stricken.

Daryl sat back in his chair and mused on the past twelve years. As much as he'd tried to erase the physical remnants of Shirley from his life, he still stumbled over some of her belongings. Occasionally he came across a favorite record album of hers that had been salted into their collection, or a favorite book. One time he had found a notebook of hers in a desk drawer that she used to keep notes in. Some of the picture frames he still had were those that she originally bought. The sofa he had was the one she picked out when they had first gotten married. The dishes he used had been given to them by Shirley's parents. He supposed he would never be totally rid of the physical memory of her, but that was okay. He didn't want her to be totally absent from his life; he needed to hold on to a few things to keep her close to his memory and his heart.

He finally moved out of the apartment three years after she died. He moved to a bigger apartment in Torrance. When he and Diana got married, they rented a house in Silverlake. By the time they got divorced, Daryl had saved up a pretty healthy nest egg.

Thankfully divorce proceedings had been civil; neither side had gone for the throat, and Daryl got to keep his retirement package and his savings. Diana kept the house they were renting and Daryl moved into an apartment in Studio City. Two years later he bought a home in Burbank.

He didn't date for a long time after Shirley was killed. He didn't want to see other women: Shirley had been his life. He had loved her more than life itself. After the tragedy, he pushed back returning to school to complete his Master's degree. He took a job in a warehouse and immersed himself in the physically exhausting work. Because it was physical work, it allowed him time to think. And the only thing he could think about during his work day was how Shirley and their unborn child had been murdered. And the more he thought about it, the angrier he got.

The gang members responsible for Shirley's murder had criminal records a mile long. One of them had served time for second degree murder and been released after having served five years of a fifteen year sentence. Five years. What a joke.

It was this anger that fueled his decision to enter the police academy. It took him six months to muster up the nerve and prepare for it. He passed the written examinations with flying colors and he aced the psychological exams—hell, he lied on a lot of questions just so he could get his foot in the door. He knew that if he related that he had once been the victim of a violent crime that he would be denied. So he hadn't even mentioned it.

By the time he graduated from the police academy a year later, it had been two years since he had been with a woman. His first sexual experience after Shirley's murder had been with a graduate student in her apartment one drunken summer night. He'd met her at a nightclub and they wound up at her place. If he hadn't been intoxicated he probably wouldn't have gone through with the act. But because he was drunk he was able to put the image of Shirley out of his mind as he and the woman screwed with lustful abandon. What ruined it was afterward, when she told him she loved him.

She had been a very nice girl; he still remembered her name. Rita Something. Rita had been very nice, very sweet, but he couldn't deal with her being in love with him. He avoided her in the days following their sexual encounter, didn't return her phone calls, and she got the message. Word floated back to him through a mutual acquaintance that she thought he was the worst asshole she had ever met. The barb hadn't even stung. He was sorry he had avoided her following their one-night stand, but when she had told him she loved him that brought him back to his relationship with Shirley and the vows they'd made to each other: that they would always love and cherish each other, that they would never leave each other, that they would never cheat on each other. Daryl had still felt committed to Shirley even though by this time she was two years in her grave. To him, they had never broken up. Going out with another woman, having another woman tell him she loved him, felt like he was throwing everything he'd ever felt for Shirley into the toilet.

Daryl sipped his beer, randomly scanning channels. He watched the History channel: this evening's segment was on Theodore Roosevelt. He watched the various segments on Roosevelt's life in a blind stupor, drinking sullenly as the past fast-forwarded quickly to the present.

He didn't start steadily dating until he was actually on the force. By this time he had already entered therapy at the suggestion of a priest he knew at the church he attended, St. Mary's in Pasadena. With the help of counseling, he was able to put his life with Shirley in perspective; it was better to have loved than to not have loved at all; in the brief time Shirley was alive he had provided joy in her life, the best gift a loved one can give to another human being; and that old standby—you will love again.

And he had. In the next three years, before he met Diana, he dated a succession of women. He had enjoyed their company, was able to perform sexually with them with only a minimum of thinking about Shirley. He found that he had to completely forget about Shirley if he was to resume a normal life. And for awhile he had. When he was seeing those other women Shirley never once entered his thoughts. It wasn't until the eve of his wedding to Diana that he was sitting alone in his apartment, the nervous jitters of the following day's wedding mass fluttering through his stomach, that Shirley's face came to him as his mind played a quick movie of his life with her. He lost it. He buried his face in his hands and cried until the tears ran dry.

After that, he couldn't help but think of his long lost love and the child they had created together whenever he made love to Diana. Diana noticed the sudden change, asked him what was bothering him, and he made the mistake of telling her. She almost left him then, but she could clearly see that this was troubling him. Of course he had told her about the tragic incident with his wife and she had appeared sympathetic. Now she was just getting irritated at his inability to get over it.

By this time he was well into his career as a law enforcement officer. He had quickly climbed the ranks to detective, and was assigned to the anti-gang CRASH unit.

And when he was able to, when he knew he could get away with it, Daryl poured his frustrations and hatred out on the gang members he arrested. He did whatever he could to keep the vermin off the streets; even if it meant planting evidence and lying on the witness stand to do it.

A year after the marriage Diana suggested he seek counseling, which he probably should have sought after Shirley's death but never did. He followed Diana's advice and sought therapy. The problems between them got worse.

To escape from the pressures his problems were causing, he buried himself more in his work. Diana, likewise, became more embroiled in her job as a financial auditor.

She also started an affair with a co-worker that Daryl didn't find out about until they separated. Surprisingly, he wasn't angry with her over it. He didn't blame her. He had abandoned her emotionally.

Before their marriage ended Daryl renounced his Catholic faith. In the years since he was married his belief in the Catholic structure of salvation, heaven and hell, God and Satan, were waning. And in the last year of his marriage they crumbled completely. Part of it had to do with the reading material he dived into the more he got into his job as a homicide detective. He began to read a lot of psychology: Freud, Jung, as well as the major philosophers. He had grown especially fond of Nietchze. He slowly began to suspect that everything he had been taught by the Catholic Church, everything he had been led to believe in, was all a delusional lie. He had been duped. Because if there was a God, He wouldn't have taken Shirley away from him so cruelly. If there was a God there wouldn't be so much human suffering. There wouldn't be so much hunger, so much poverty, so much hopelessness. He saw it himself on the streets when he went to work his beat. When he saw the viciousness of human nature—the drunks that drove and killed, the gang members that fired indiscriminately into a crowd, killing innocent people; the father who beat his six-month-old baby to death because its crying bothered him—he thought that if mankind was truly God's crowning achievement than He must be seriously flawed. And because He had seen fit to take Shirley and their child away from him was only the icing on the cake.

So he had renounced his Catholic faith. He had trashed the idol of the Virgin Mary he had received after taking First Communion and likewise disposed of an old wooden crucifix with a striking life-like image of Christ pinned to it. He had ripped the pages of the only Bible in the house and burned them in the kitchen sink. Then he had gone through the house and destroyed everything relating to his Catholic upbringing—the nativity scene his parents had given him when he was eighteen; the painting of the Blessed Mother, hands clasped together in prayer, that Diana's aunt had given them as a wedding present.

But the damage was too far gone. Diana divorced him. He tried to reconcile with her, but she wouldn't even attempt it. She had tried to help him, tried to work with him for three years. She had had enough.

Daryl glanced at the clock that sat on the bookshelf on his right. It was only eight-thirty. The night was still young.

He walked to the kitchen and poured himself another beer.

And spent the rest of the evening drinking, watching TV, and thinking about Rachael Pearce and wondering if he'd ever find love again.

Rachael Pearce was peddling at a steady forty-five miles per hour on the lifecycle when Daryl Garcia came into her mind without warning.

Her evening until then had been spent in virtual “routine mode"—out of the office at 5:00, home by 6:00, a quick dinner of pasta and chicken and then up in her office by 7:00 to work on her notes for the book she had thought of a few days before. The Eastside Butcher piece she had written for the Los Angeles Times had inspired her to begin keeping a working diary of the case for a possible book. She had always wanted to write a true-crime book but had never found a particular case that interested her despite all her years of journalism. She had come close a few times; five years ago she had an idea to do a book on the plight of child sex offenders after running a two-part story in the paper, but after three days of research the subject had depressed the hell out of her. The thought of delving further into the minds of ten-year-old boys who took perverse pleasure in raping four-year-old girls had been so alien, so horrifying, that she had abandoned the project. It was simply too disturbing for her.

And the Eastside Butcher case isn't? She thought to herself as she pedaled away.

After all, you're dealing with the same kind of sickness, only the perpetrators and victims are adults. For all you know our anonymous butcher might have been very much like that lost, sick, nine-year-old boy you interviewed for that aborted book that got his jollies by sticking pins in little girls.

She shuddered at the thought. And made a note to mention that correlation in this evening's writings.

After she had written for an hour or so, she headed straight to the third bedroom of the two-story condo where she kept her workout equipment. In this room, the smallest of the three bedrooms, she kept a stair master, a lifecycle, and a multi-purpose weight machine. A small stereo system was erected in the corner of the room. She liked to work out a minimum of forty-five minutes every evening, minus weekends.

Iron Maiden's Killers was blasting out of the CD player. She loved working out to heavy metal music. The fast beat, the heavy drumming and bass lines, the loud guitar riffs, all seemed to lend an energy which created the perfect atmosphere for working out.

It was muscle music, providing perfect adrenaline spurts for her evening work-outs. And to think she thought she would grow out of listening to the stuff when she graduated from high school. As it turned out she wound up buying the latest Metallica CD's the week they were released.

The CD's title track was beginning its thunderous assault. The song's lyrics, which were ironically about a serial killer stalking the London tubes, made her think about the Butcher case, and then Daryl. She had called him the night after the interview with the gang members under the Eight-first Street bridge and they had wound up talking for twenty minutes. They had talked about the case for awhile, trading their different theories, and Rachael found that she really liked Daryl. He had wit, a sharp intellect, and a genuine, caring personality. And he had a great sense of humor. Their conversation on the Eastside Butcher led to comparing him to other serial killers, and before she knew it he was cracking jokes in the same vein Victor and Joker from Los Compadres had a few days ago under the bridge. “Why wouldn't you want to play poker with Jeffrey Dahmer?

He might come up with a good hand.” Despite the crude nature of the joke, she found herself laughing.

There were other things she was beginning to like about Daryl as the days went by. In addition to being very handsome he was nice and he listened to her. She could tell he was attracted to her, but unlike most men, when he talked to her he talked to her; his eyes remained focused on hers, never straying to other parts of her body. Most men kept their eyes glued to her breasts during conversations. Not Daryl. Both times they had been together he had paid attention to her as a person, not as a pair of tits. Another thing that was nice about Daryl was that he was closer to her own height of six feet tall. Daryl was a tad shorter, but that was okay. With the exception of her ex-husband, all the men she had ever dated or slept with had been shorter than she, in one case by a full eleven inches.

The thought of her ex-husband created a black cloud and she quickly banished it.

It was no good to dwell on that crap. She had been young and stupid when she married Bernie Jackson, who had been an up-and-coming basketball player for the UCLA Bruins when she was a student. She married him upon completing her Master's degree. The man that she dated—who was kind, considerate, sweet, incredibly sexy and a great lover—

turned from Dr. Jekyl to Mr. Hyde shortly after they said “I do". No sooner had they returned home from their honeymoon in the Caribbean than he was chasing other women, running up their credit cards on expensive toys, sticking most of the salary he made as an assistant sportscaster on a small television station up his nose, and using her as a verbal punching bag for his frequent and unpredictable outbursts.

She filed for divorce the day after he graduated from using her as a verbal punching bag to a physical one.

But through it all, she stayed with him. For two years. She killed herself over it the two years following the divorce, continually asking herself why she could have been so stupid to have stayed with him for so long. But the simple truth of the matter was that she loved him. Or thought she'd loved him. She had loved him, and by loving him she had hoped that staying with him through whatever hard times he was going through would see him—would see them—through this terrible, rocky time.

It hadn't worked. The Mr. Hyde part of Bernie Jackson had been a part of his personality. He had merely kept it well hidden during their initial courtship.

Either that or I was too enamoured to notice, she thought, pedaling furiously. The sweat that had built up like a sheen over her shoulder blades and down the small of her back spread to her arm pits, her forearms, her neck and throat, built up further like a second skin. It dripped down her forehead. She had another quarter of a mile by the lifecycle's odometer. There was no reason to beat herself up for past mistakes now. She had gone past them. She had survived. And perhaps that was really the best revenge of all.

Because let's face it, she thought. No sooner did our relationship start hitting the rocks then I dived into my work at the paper to escape the pressures. And it was when I put myself into my work that I started succeeding at what I really wanted to do, which is investigative journalism. So my marriage fucked up my credit rating and knocked me down a few levels on the ladder of love. Big deal. I got something out of it. My self esteem. And professional recognition.

She gladly kissed a healthy good riddance to Bernie Jackson and her marriage. It had been six years since they split up. She hadn't seen him since. Nor did she care or wonder about him.

For a long time she didn't date. She felt she had to heal from the destructive nature of her marriage and repair the wounds, and the only way she knew how to do that was to get back into the martial arts training she had studied briefly when she was in college.

That, and her usual workout, was what brought her back into shape, and once she achieved brown belt status in Kung Fu, her attitude began to change. She took on a healthy attitude at work and dived into it with a new found zeal. Two years later when she was recognized as a major journalist on the Time's staff, she found herself at a nightclub one night after work with a couple of old friends. They had promised to get together for Friday night happy hour drinks and she had obliged them. It wasn't until she was on the dance floor moving to the beat of Gloria Estefan with an incredibly handsome Latino man who had asked her to dance, that she realize that she was completely over the hurt and anger of her broken marriage. And that she was ready to date again.

She had taken the Latino man home with her that night and it had been one of the best fucks she'd ever had. When he found out she wasn't interested in jumping into a relationship, he seemed more than eager to continue the relationship on a purely carnal level. They saw each other sexually off and on over the next several months. It was what she felt she needed.

Rachael slowed down her pedaling, nearing completion of her mileage. Since her affair with Robert Sanchez, she had dated a few other guys, bedding exactly three. She felt no incredible spark of attraction from these men other than the purely physical. She had nothing in common with any of them. In conversation she found most of them downright dull.

But Daryl Garcia was different. She found him both intellectually stimulating, attractive, kind-hearted and good-natured. She tried to remember the last time she had ever met a man who possessed those qualities whom she had gone completely ga-ga over, and found that she hadn't. She had thought that Bernie Jackson had been intelligent, but he had merely used his wit and charm to create the illusion that he was. His true nature had showed itself when they got married. Rachael got the impression that Daryl Garcia wasn't like that; what she saw now in Daryl was exactly the kind of man he was. He was a very straightforward, no bullshit kind of guy.

She stopped pedaling and climbed off the lifecycle, rubbing a sweaty forearm over her brow. She reached for a towel draped over the weight machine and wiped the sweat from her face. She sat down on the weight machine bench and took her shoes and socks off slowly. A plan was formulating in her mind; she could sense that Daryl was interested in her, and she would have thought by now that he would have asked her out. She was used to men asking her out who displayed even half the interest Daryl showed her. Maybe he was shy. If that was the case it could take him forever to muster the nerve. The next time they spoke she was going to ask him out.

She thought about that for a moment, her breathing slowing down. She smiled to herself. She liked that idea just fine. What could it hurt in asking him out? A night on the town in each other's company would give her the opportunity to get to know him better.

And if a romantic relationship didn't blossom from it, maybe they would wind up friends.

That surely wasn't too much to ask for.

After showering and putting on a nightgown, she crawled into bed thinking of Daryl Garcia.

Chapter 8

The neighborhood they were staking out was a relatively lower, middle-class one in Alhambra. Five blocks ahead of them the hum of Huntington Boulevard could be heard as Detectives Daryl Garcia and Steve Howe sat in their unmarked sedan at the edge of the curb. The neighborhood consisted mostly of apartment complexes ranging from small six unit buildings to two massive ones that sported security systems, swimming pools and weight rooms, and underground parking. Both of these large apartment complexes were across the street from each other, both with signs staked in the front advertising that units were available to rent. Must be some competition.

“Are you sure he's coming down here?” Steve asked Daryl, bored. It had been three weeks since he'd escorted Rachael Pearce to the Eighty-first Street bridge, and the amount of leads pouring into Parker Center hadn't slowed down.

“I'm sure,” Daryl said. He glanced at his watch, annoyed at Steve, who was growing less interested in the case as the weeks went by. “Judy Butler over at Florentine Gardens said that he comes here every Friday evening around this time. He has a standing appointment."

Steve chuckled. “A standing appointment? Shit, you make it sound like what these girls perform is a legitimate medical service."

Daryl ignored the comment. “These girls take their work seriously. They make good money at it, and they have to treat it as a legitimate business if they want to avoid trouble with the law."

“So why isn't somebody from sex crimes vice down here with us? I mean, even if the guy who's supposed to show up here tonight isn't the Butcher, we can at least make some arrests."

Daryl wanted to respond with a smart-assed remark, but he held his emotions in check. Frankly, he wasn't interested in busting chicks that gave over-priced massages to their male clients and capped them off with hand jobs afterward. He gestured at the apartment complex, the larger of the two big ones that sported a tan coat of paint and a better topography. “Our only objective is to nab this guy when we see him. He should be arriving any minute. You got that?"

Steve looked at him with the beginnings of a spoiled brat pout on his face, then turned toward the apartment complex and sighed. “Yeah, whatever."

“Good.” Daryl resumed his stance, silently wishing Steve would be taken off this case. He liked the guy fine, but he was so law-and-order that sometimes it really got on his nerves.

“What is it about this guy that has you so worked up anyway?” Steve asked. “I mean, we've got hundreds of tips about suspects in the last few weeks and we've checked out quite a few of them, but of all the others that I think are good solid leads, why this freak?"

Freak was an accurate description for George Van Patten, the man they were waiting to take in for questioning. Daryl had gotten a tip on George while investigating a tip on another suspect, an older Hispanic man that kept a home in the East L.A area who was an alcoholic and a paranoid. The Hispanic man had an arrest record, mostly of public drunkenness and DUI, but had once been arrested for carrying a knife and for misdemeanor assault. When he drank too much he liked to harass the neighborhood kids with a big butcher knife and threaten to cut them up. The fact that he had gotten into a recent tiff with members of the Los Compadres Mafia over graffiti they had painted on his garage door and that his most recent arrest had been for soliciting the services of a prostitute (one of those streetwalkers that was actually male rather than the females they were impersonating), he had come across as a good suspect. And it was through questioning the people who knew the Hispanic man they had arrested—neighbors, gang members, family, and the whore he had been caught with—that they learned about George Van Patten. In fact, they had learned about George from the whore.

Apparently George's fetish was to solicit the services of a prostitute, either from a massage parlor or from one of the many whores that advertised their services in the many sex papers in Los Angeles. He would show up at their place of business carrying a chicken in a bag and a very large butcher knife. After stripping nude, he would instruct the hooker to strip. Then he would instruct her to decapitate the chicken with the knife.

He would masturbate while she performed this act, which usually took no more than five minutes. If this failed to bring him to climax, he would instruct the girl to rub the bloody blade along his neck until he achieved orgasm. Due to the extremity of his fetish, few prostitutes were willing to accommodate him, but there were some that were willing to do anything for money.

They were at one of those places tonight. The transvestite that had given them the tip told them she used to work as a masseuse at this massage parlor, which was run out of a luxury apartment in Alhambra. George Van Patten had been one of the clients and none of the girls would work with him except for one, a middle-aged Hispanic woman named Maria Perez. The other girls were afraid of him.

Why? Daryl had asked the transvestite.

The transvestite nervously crossed her legs in the interrogation room and took a hit off the cigarette she had been allowed to smoke. Her Adam's apple bobbed when she spoke. He's a big guy. Weird. I don't know how to describe it. All the girls have that feeling about him.

The fact that all the girls had an uneasy feeling about him was enough for Daryl to check this character out. Daryl was a firm believer in a sixth sense, and his told him that this George Van Patten guy was a likely suspect. If these women had an eerie feeling about this man, then there was probably something wrong with him. Jacking off to decapitated chickens notwithstanding.

“I agree that he certainly shows the potential to have committed these murders,”

Steve said. “I mean, you gotta be warped to yank your crank as a hooker cuts off a chicken's head. Jesus."

Daryl said nothing, focusing instead on looking out for their man. They had obtained a driver's license photograph from the DMV—since he lacked a criminal record—and sized him up. George Van Patten appeared to be in his early forties with brown hair turning gray that flopped over his ears and forehead. He had a chubby face, a pug nose, and beady little eyes. He looked like he could be a truck driver or a longshoreman. His driver's license stated that he was six foot seven and weighed two hundred and seventy five pounds. Judging from the photo not all of it had to be fat.

Daryl felt Steve tap him on the shoulder and he looked to see Steve motioning down the street. “There's our man."

Fifty yards ahead of them a large man had just emerged from a battered Chevrolet pick-up truck and was trudging to the apartment complex where the massage parlor operated. He cradled a large burlap sack beneath his right arm. He was dressed in a blue ski jacket, a plaid shirt, and blue jeans. He headed for the stairs of the apartment complex and punched the massage parlor's phone number on the gate keypad to be let in.

“Let's go.” Daryl opened the door and got out of the car, Steve following suit.

They headed down the street toward the complex, not wanting to rush their suspect and scare him off, but not wanting him to slip away from them either. By the time they reached the top of the steps that led to the lobby, the massage parlor had activated the buzzer and George was opening the double glass doors, heading inside. Daryl and Steve trotted up the stairs after him and caught the doors just shy of shutting them out. Daryl paused for a moment and nodded at Steve. “What apartment is it again?"

“Two forty-one,” Steve said.

“Okay"

They walked toward the elevators and Steve hit the UP button. When the elevator opened they got in, and Steve pressed the button for the second floor. The doors whisked shut.

The elevator deposited them on the second floor. They emerged, checking out the apartment numbers around them, and saw apartment two-fifteen. Daryl motioned along the north side of the building. “Up this way,” he murmured.

They headed along the upper hallway of the complex. The apartments looked out over a wide open courtyard, the edges well kept up with the appropriate topiary and shrubbery; there were areas set apart for outdoor barbecues, complete with large gas grills, tables and chairs. Beyond the concrete walkways that meandered between the barbecue areas and the grassy areas was a large swimming pool and Jacuzzi. It was a classy building. Daryl and Steve walked along the hallway, reaching their destination, which turned out to be at the end of the building.

Each apartment had a small patio that was situated beside the front door; the patios were fenced off by a four foot brick wall, leading into what was presumably the living room of the apartment. Beside each complex was a small walkway that led to each respective apartment. Daryl and Steve stepped into the walkway and knocked on the door to Two Forty-one.

There was silence for a moment; they knew they weren't expected and they had worked this plan out well in advance. Judging from the apartment complex this particular massage parlor was set up in, and the sophisticated system of setting up an appointment, these people would be on their guard. There would be at least one girl, possibly two, in the front part of the apartment. And she would most likely be wary when she opened the door, might even have ready access to a weapon. If there was a second woman (or man, Daryl reasoned) that person would most likely be hiding within easy earshot ready to call the police or come out blazing with a gun should their unexpected visitors be troublesome. Daryl knew they would open the door. They would have to. Unfamiliar people at your doorstep when you weren't expecting them usually meant one thing to these people: the police.

The door opened a crack and an attractive Hispanic girl peered out at them with big brown eyes. Her smile was wide and false. “Can I help you?"

Daryl and Steve had their shields out before the door opened. “LAPD, ma'am,”

Daryl said. “Can we come in?"

Feigning puzzlement, the woman opened the door and stepped aside to let them enter the apartment. “What's the trouble, officer?"

Ignoring her, giving the dimly-lit living room a quick survey, Daryl answered:

“We're looking for George Van Patten, ma'am. Which room is he in?"

The girl closed the door behind them and stood barefoot on the clean burgundy rug. She stood about five foot two, had shoulder length black frizzy hair, was dressed in blue jeans and a red sweater. She had a great body, wide hips, full breasts, a very pretty face that would have looked pretty even without the make-up she wore: blue eye shadow, red lipstick, rouged cheeks. She was smiling in wide-eyed innocence, the damsel playing the ignorant Barbie-doll. The living room they had stepped into was completely bare of furniture, the drapes over the windows drawn. “I don't understand,” she said, “I don't know any George—"

Steve interrupted her. “You're not in any kind of trouble, ma'am. But if you don't tell us which room he's in, we will bust you and the other girls working here tonight."

“In fact,” Daryl said, quick to add, “we'll have this place shut down before your boyfriend is able to bail you out of jail."

Steve smiled softly at the girl, his voice smooth and diplomatic. “We really don't want to bust you or your girls, miss."

“What's your name, ma'am?” Daryl asked. He was still checking the apartment out and was convinced that the attractive Hispanic woman who let them in was the only girl working the “lobby” tonight. There would be at least two other girls working in the bedrooms.

The girl's smile faded; she looked worried. “Sylvia,” she said, apprehensively.

From the kitchen, just around the corner of the living room, came the faint sounds of a small television where Sylvia probably camped out while the other girls earned their living.

“Sylvia, we aren't here to bust you or your girls,” Daryl said, addressing her directly. Still holding onto his shield, he stood before her, hands on hips, trying to look more like a fatherly figure than authoritative. Sylvia looked no older than eighteen. “In fact, if you tell us which room George is in, I'll guarantee that this establishment will never be targeted for a raid by LAPD. Never. You won't have to worry about a bust as long as you operate at this location. I won't be able to guarantee that same protection if you decide to move your operations to another facility, but you can operate here free and clear. Okay?"

That seemed to settle it for her. She nodded down the hall. “He's in the bathroom at the end of the hall with Maria,” she said, her voice a throaty whisper.

Daryl smiled warmly at her. “Thank you, Sylvia."

They headed down the hall toward the bathroom, which was visible at the end of the hall. The door was closed.

The two bedrooms along the hall and the one off the bedroom were closed, the faint sound of music emanated from behind the closed doors. With the additional job going on in the bathroom, it appeared that Sylvia and her girls did a brisk business.

Daryl and Steve positioned themselves on either side of the bathroom door. Steve pulled his gun and held it up. Daryl had his badge ready; his hand reached for the doorknob. He looked at Steve. “On three,” he whispered.

From within the bathroom came the muffled sound of rustling and the squawk of a chicken. A man's voice followed it. “Oh yeah, that's it, Maria. Do it!"

Daryl nodded on three, turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, Steve bursting in ahead of him, gun held out. Daryl held his shield up. “LAPD, stay where you are!"

The chicken that had made the squawking sound fell from Maria's lap where she had been sitting in the bathtub. It fluttered on the floor, short wings flapping. She held her hands up, her heavy breasts falling to her stomach like two pendulous udders. George Van Patten had been sitting naked on the toilet seat, his right hand already stroking his limp member when Daryl and Steve burst in, and now he jumped back in surprise. Daryl flashed the shield so that both of them could see it, then motioned to George. “Put your clothes on. We're going for a ride."

“Why, what did I do?” George protested, his voice stammering. Despite his size, his voice was soft, almost effeminate.

“That's what we're going to find out,” Daryl said. “Now let's go."

“We weren't doing anything,” Maria said, standing up in the tub now. She looked like she had once been a beautiful woman but had let her looks go in favor of high fat foods and beer. She had a fat ass and a flabby belly. “He's my boyfriend, we were just—"

Steve had replaced his service revolver in its holster and had already produced a pair of handcuffs. He turned to her curtly: “If you don't shut up we'll haul you in for not only prostitution but cruelty to animals."

“Cruelty to—” Maria stuttered.

Daryl brought out the butcher knife used for George's chicken fetish out of the folds of his clothes. He held it up to George, a faint smile playing on his face. “Cruelty to animals,” he said, echoing Steve's statement. “You know damn well, Maria, that you'll be off this evening if we bust you for prostitution. With animal cruelty you're looking at a minimum two years in jail. Hell, the law protects animals more than it does human beings, Maria. I thought you knew that?"

Maria stopped protesting.

Once George got his clothes on they escorted him out of the massage parlor and into Parker Center for questioning.

It had taken her almost two weeks to get a date with him, but when she finally did Daryl Garcia proved to be every much the gentleman that she thought he was. Once they connected via telephone the last weekend of October and she asked him if he'd be interested in going out for dinner, he was completely agreeable. In fact, he was almost too agreeable. But then so was she. Because for the last three weeks she had been thinking about Daryl Garcia almost constantly.

It surprised her; thinking about Daryl Garcia at all hours of the day, all these thoughts coming suddenly and without warning. It was like being back in high school again when you became infatuated with the cutest boy in school and spent all of your downtime fantasizing about what it would be like if he just noticed you. Back then her heart would melt at the mere thought of such a thing happening. Now that she was older and much wiser she simply wondered what it would be like to spend an evening with Daryl Garcia immersed in intelligent conversation. With the hopes to see where it would lead.

Therefore, when she finally talked to Daryl after a week of playing phone tag, he was more than agreeable to a date. The problem was getting their schedules to match: he had a meeting Wednesday evening on the 7th, she had a session with her personal trainer on Friday evening. He was driving up to Cambria over the weekend to visit his father, who owned a house up there-Daryl's mother succumbed to breast cancer, and Dad had retired up to the small coastal town. The following Monday through Thursday were no good for her due to a looming deadline; likewise for him, since he was flying to Indiana to check out a lead in the Butcher case; Friday night wasn't good for him as well because he had a prior engagement of dinner with a friend from the department. But they both had the following Saturday evening open.

So Saturday it was.

Rachael wasn't comfortable playing the traditional submissive female who waited at her place while her date picked her up. She told Daryl that she would pick him up at his place. He said that was perfectly fine. She asked him what kind of food he liked. He said he liked pretty much anything, but he loved Italian. That worked fine with her because she knew of a good Italian Restaurant called Dominicos that was right in Daryl's neighborhood. She made reservations for seven p.m. on Saturday evening and requested a booth in the back of the restaurant.

On the Saturday of their date, Rachael rose late in the morning and spent the early part of the afternoon reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. When she felt fully alert and awake, she worked out for about an hour to the brutal assault of Slayer pumping through the stereo. Then she took a shower. When she was finished showering she sat in front of her computer in nothing but a pair of panties for an hour and a half working on her book—she had just started her piece on the Eastside Butcher and was already on the first chapter. Then she went into the bathroom and spent the next hour and a half getting ready for the evening. She spent twenty minutes agonizing over what to wear, and changed outfits four times. Finally she settled on something she felt comfortable with; a pair of loose fitting black pants, black heels, a white low-cut blouse, and a black blazer.

She left her condo at six-fifteen to pick up Daryl.

Rachael lived in South Pasadena, so it would take her only a few minutes to reach Daryl's place in Pasadena. As she turned down his street and began searching for the street address she noted that most of the cops she knew that worked for the LAPD lived either in the Valley or in the outer conclaves of Los Angeles—Santa Barbara or Simi Valley. No wonder some of them felt such a sense of despair at times, leaving the peaceful tranquility of the suburbs and driving into the jungle every day to soothe the savage beasts.

Daryl met her at the front door of his home, which was a nice three bedroom tract home in a middle class neighborhood. He looked stunning in dark khaki's, a loose black shirt, and black shoes. His hair was combed back nicely, his mustache neatly trimmed. He smiled warmly at her. “My don't you look nice. Hope you didn't get lost.".

“Not at all,” Rachael said, blushing from the compliment. “Finding my way around places is second nature to me. It comes with my journalism training."

They made small talk on the drive to Dominicos. Once seated and with drinks served—white Chablis—they seemed to settle into conversation easier. Rachael had gotten over her initial nervousness that had befallen her earlier on the drive to Dominicos.

For a moment she felt tongue-tied, as if she had nothing to say and was facing a long night that would only end in disaster. What should she say to get conversation going?

What could she do to make herself sound like she wasn't such a fumbling idiot?

Best of all, how could she make it appear that she was attracted to Daryl without coming off like a slutty tramp?

Thankfully there was an easy answer to the third question. The twinkle in Daryl's eye, the smile on his face, the way he paid attention to her every word, told her that Daryl was interested in her. This put Rachael at ease. From there, conversation went easy.

They began dinner conversation with Daryl telling Rachael the latest developments in the Butcher case. “...so after six hours of interrogation it was obvious to me that George Van Patten wasn't the Butcher. We did a thorough check on the guy.

Checked his house, his car, place of employment. Hell, we even checked his parent's house. He isn't the killer, even though he seemed like a very likely suspect. You would think that anybody capable of ... well, doing what he liked to have these prostitutes do for him would surely be capable of some of the things the killer did to his victims. But when we showed George morgue photos of the Butcher's victims he actually became visibly ill."

Rachael bristled. “Hell, I think even I'd become visibly ill at the sight of those photos."

“Well, trust me, they're not pretty. And George's visible illness at the sight of them, and the opinion of our police psychologist who observed the interrogation, assured me that George isn't the Butcher."

“Anything new come up since you've ruled him out?” Rachael asked, sipping a glass of wine.

Daryl shrugged. “Not much.” He sipped at his wine and picked up a piece of bread from the basket that had been placed at their table. He broke the bread in half before taking a bite. “We have a special hot line set up with four detectives checking out the tips that come from calls. Most of the calls coming in are from a paranoid public.

Neighbors suspecting neighbors, women suspecting their husbands, that sort of thing.

People are also suddenly finding bones all over the city."

Rachael perked up. “Bones?"

“Yeah, bones,” Daryl said, a slight grin cracking his rugged features. “Damnedest thing. People will call and say that they've found a pile of bones in a field or in a parking lot or garbage dumpster and claim that they're human, usually coming up with some story about suspicious activity being seen in the area shortly before the bones turned up. In every case the bones turn out to be the remains of animals—usually chicken bones. A hobo's meal or something. In one case we found the bones of what turned out to be a St.

Bernard. In another, a Chimpanzee."

“A Chimp?” Rachael exclaimed.

“Yeah. Don't ask me how, or why, but it's true."

“What about your trip back to Indiana?” Rachael said.

“Ah yes, that,” Daryl said. “That has proved most interesting.” His dialogue was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter.

They ordered their meals—chicken marsala over pasta for Daryl, vegetarian lasagna for Rachael. When the waiter left Daryl took another bite of bread and resumed.

“That's the strangest thing about this case, the four murders that don't exactly fit the profile we have."

“And what's that?"

“Here we have seven people, nine if you count that black kid who was killed in

‘89, and the Riverside county victim, and all of them but the Riverside victim and the still unidentified number six have gang ties. They're all decapitated, and in some cases dismembered. Furthermore, all of them had pretty much resided within a ten or fifteen mile square area of each other. All of them showed some signs of being sexually violated post mortem—sorry, I didn't mean to get so graphic."

“No problem,” Rachael said. At the mention of sexually violated she had spilled wine in her lap. She grabbed a cloth napkin and dabbed at the front of her blouse and slacks, chastising herself silently for being so clumsy. Thank God the slacks were dark.

“I'm just naturally clumsy."

Daryl smiled. It was enough to melt the anxiety right out of her. “The basic thing is that all eight murders within the last two years are related. There's also a possibility that our unknown killer may have actually started this series back in ‘89 with the murder of our lone black victim. With me so far?"

“Yep,” Rachael said. She dabbed at the last of the wine on her blouse, folded the napkin up and replaced it on the table. She smiled at Daryl to show him that everything was all right.

“The FBI has linked the Riverside victim killed in June to our man, as well as three unsolved murders in South Bend, Indiana. These killings occurred in 1985, maybe 1984. A hiker found the first body, partially buried beneath some bushes in a wooded area about one hundred yards from the main road. The victim was male, naked and decapitated. He had been dead for about a month. A search was launched for the head but guess what they found instead?"

“Another body?"

Daryl shook his head. “A head, but not the head of their victim. What they found was the head of a pretty blonde girl who had gone missing three days before. She had been a prostitute. She had been dead about three days. They never have found her body, or the head of the first victim."

“Did they identify the first victim?” Rachael asked, breaking off a piece of bread and taking a bite.

“He turned out to be a male hustler. Can't remember his name now, but his story was familiar. Was kicked out of his home when he was a teenager because he told his parents he was gay. He tried making a living at legitimate jobs for awhile, but dipped into male prostitution. Got involved with drugs. He had a minor police record. Nothing much else distinguished him from other murder victims like him who often fall prey to serial killers. The homeless and the destitute, as well as prostitutes, are always a serial killer's favorite victims."

“I know,” Rachael said, slowly chewing her bread. “It's so sad."

“Six months later another body was found,” Daryl continued. He finished his wine and set the glass down on the table. “This was found by some Girl Scouts who were scouring the area on a field trip. The remains were found about half a mile from where the first two victims were found."

“My God, Girl Scouts found it?” Rachael was horrified; she had once been a Girl Scout, and the thought that a pack of them on an innocent afternoon of botany studies or some such could come across such a gruesome find was disturbing.

Daryl nodded grimly. “Unfortunately, yes. Fortunately for them though, the victim was already reduced to bones, which was all they found. Almost the complete skeleton, which was lying in scattered pieces along a fifty-yard area, some partially buried. A group of detectives aided by park rangers spent the next two weeks sifting through the field to find evidence and clues. They never did recover the skull."

“And it was the work of the same killer?” Rachael asked.

“That seems to be the opinion of the coroner,” Daryl said. “According to the South Bend medical examiner's findings, all three victims had been decapitated with crude efficiency by somebody who had a knowledge of anatomy. Although it was hard to tell how the last victim had died, the first two victims were killed the same way. And this is the strange part about this whole case."

“Which is...?"

Daryl poured himself another glass of wine from the carafe. “The woman was strangled to death—lack of oxygen in the blood and brain cells pointed to that, as well as slight bruising on the remaining neck area and lower chin. The first victim found had been stabbed to death."

Rachael saw the connection right away. “They didn't die as a result of decapitation as the victims here had."

“Exactly!"

“But the FBI still thinks they're connected?"

“They have a reason to.” Daryl took a sip of wine. “Whenever a crime like a murder occurs that could possibly be a serial killing, the FBI puts the information down in the VICAP computer database. You know what the acronym VICAP stands for?"

Rachael shook her head.

“Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,” Daryl said. “It's a large database that police departments all over the country enter data into when they input information about violent crimes committed in their cities. This program matches up certain ordinarily undetected similarities between different crimes. They note every single characteristic about the murder: who the victim was, what kind of sociological background they came from, their age and gender, physical appearance, that sort of thing. They note how the victim was killed, what kind of weapon the killer used, whether the victim was raped or sexually mutilated before death or after, whether the victim was tortured, and if so, how and with what instruments ... if this is too much for you, please—"

“No, no, it's okay,” Rachael said. She smiled, raising her glass of wine to her lips.

“I'm fine. This is interesting.” And it was. Morbid maybe, but she could handle morbid.

She'd handled it before hundreds of times during her tenure as a journalist. Daryl was just trying to be a gentleman.

Daryl continued, slowly, as if unsure of whether to remain on such a grisly subject. “They note all this stuff, as well as other things that may seem minor. Like whether the victim was killed indoors or at the spot they were found. They note the spot the victim was discovered in. Many serial killers dump their victims in certain locations after killing them, and some stick to a definite pattern. So they note the patterns and enter all this in the VICAP's computers. And when another murder gets entered into the computer with some of the same characteristics as another, the program flags it. The Indiana murders were all flagged for several reasons. One, the beheading of all the victims. Two, the evidence that the same type of weapon was used in the decapitations.

Three, the dumping site the victims were left in, and four, the class of victims the FBI characterized the victims as, being the lower strata—prostitutes and the homeless—two of which lived within the same general vicinity of each other. The unidentified victim was placed in that category as well, being that he was most likely homeless."

“What makes the FBI think these murders are related to what we have going out here?"

“Promise not to write about this in the paper?"

“Cross my heart.” Rachael traced an X over her chest and leaned forward over the table, listening eagerly.

Daryl held his fingers up, counting the reasons off. “The decapitations are one, as well as the social status of the victims. Those are the most obvious choices. The choice of murder weapon is another. The fact that the Indiana killer murdered his victims elsewhere and dumped them in a wooded area outside the city limits is another strong factor."

“But our killer isn't doing that,” Rachael protested. “He's disposing them in burlap bags and placing them in alleys, and leaving them in gullies."

“Which the South Bend killer would have done if South Bend was the same geographical size as Los Angeles,” Daryl said, sipping his wine. “Think about it. L.A.'s a big place. If our killer disposed his victims in a wooded area outside the city limits as the South Bend killer had, he would have to drive at least two hours to reach it."

“Okay, I can buy that,” Rachael said. She finished her wine and reached for the carafe to pour herself a second glass. “But why the long gap between killings? Surely the FBI would have been able to find other killings between ‘85 and ‘94 if other murders had been committed that fit the same profile."

“Correct,” Daryl said. “Only none have been found. There was a series of decapitation murders in Texas in the late eighties, but they don't fit the profile at all. The next time our killer makes another appearance with the same MO is the murder of Leroy Brown, the black victim killed in ‘89. The one after that was the victim from ‘94, the young woman from the East LA area, that seemed to be the beginning of his current spree here in Los Angeles."

Rachael took a sip of her wine, her mind whirring with a thousand thoughts. “I've read that serial killers often start out slowly, sometimes retreating into their ... oh, what do you call it? ... their self-deluded world of fantasy for years after their first killing, reliving it over and over in their minds. Sometimes they try to battle with the urges that makes them kill, and it's only when these urges grow larger that they finally succumb to them again. When they finally get on a roll and the police catch on that they've dealing with a serial killer, he's already been killing longer than they've thought."

“Exactly,” Daryl said, his eyes fixing on hers with a look that she thought was one of admiration. “Many times the authorities don't find out about the earlier murders until after the killer has been caught and he's confessed to them. And even with our latest techniques, we're still unsure of when a serial killer begins to murder people. The FBI estimates that there are at least two serial killers operating in every major city in this country today. Think about that; that's a lot of mayhem. A lot of bloodshed."

Rachael sipped at her wine. It was a very scary thought. Frightening.

“A perfect example of this is the Green River case in Seattle,” Daryl said, picking at another piece of bread. “I have a friend who worked for the Seattle PD when that case was all the rage. He told me that during the FBI's preliminary investigation into all murders that resembled those of the Green River killer, they came up with something like sixty-three unsolved murders between 1973 and 1982. These murders resembled the MO

of the Green River killer. Sixty-three! The Green River killer case file officially begins with murder victims being killed in the summer of ‘82—at least that's when Seattle PD

began making connections between all the murdered prostitutes showing up around the city. Think about that—if the FBI was correct in these findings, and if we assume that most serial killers begin killing well before the police even know they have one on their hands, this maniac could have already been killing for almost a decade before anyone even caught wind of him."

Rachael sipped at her wine, listening to Daryl. The implications of what he was saying scared her. “Assuming the Indiana murders are the work of the same killer,”

Rachael proposed, “do you think it's possible that he's from that area?"

Daryl sipped his wine, pondering the question. He was silent for a moment.

Finally, he answered. “If we go on the theory that serial killers start close to home, yes, I believe he might be from the South Bend area. As to why the four year gap between those murders and the murder of Leroy Brown in ‘89, I don't know. But if you think about it, it still makes sense. Here you've got a killer who has maybe started killing people in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana. He's horrified about what he's done, but he can't help it. He fantasizes about what he's done, which fuels his obsession. After the third murder, which would have been the prostitute, he stops for awhile in an attempt to control his urges. And he's successful at it for four years. He thinks he has it beat. He lives a normal life. In time, he moves out to Los Angeles. And sometime in the months before he moves out here and when he actually arrives, those long buried urges began surfacing again. He acts on them with the murder of Leroy Brown. How does he get Leroy? Who knows. We know Leroy Brown was a known drug dealer, as were several of the gang members and ex-gang members that have fallen under the Butcher's knife. Maybe our killer is a drug user. In either event, he kills Leroy Brown and is again shocked and horrified at what he's done. He tries to suppress those urges again, and this time manages to control them for the next five years. Then he kills the woman, the victim we've come to refer as The Lady of the Ocean. Maybe she was a prostitute or a runaway. Who knows? In either case the urges were probably coming on strong again, and he was trying to suppress them. He came upon this victim at the right time and acted on them."

“Only this time he kept her,” Rachael said softly.

“Right.” Daryl looked at her, his gaze intense. “He kept her for at least three months. This helped him relive the fantasy of the hunt again. It may have also helped to satiate the urge to go out and get another victim for awhile. Because no sooner than a few months after he dumps her, actually a year or so later, he acts on those urges again and kills Lorenzo Cardena. The urges are coming more frequently now and his loss of control is apparent. He can't control himself."

Daryl was interrupted by the arrival of the waiter with their salads. He looked away for a moment while the waiter set the salads down, and they placed napkins on their laps and prepared to eat. Rachael felt her heart pounding; Daryl was really into this guy's mind. It was a little scary, but it showed that he was really dedicated to apprehending this killer. It was both a scary and an admirable thing to do.

They started eating their salads, which were delicious. Silence reigned for a minute while they ate until Rachael broke it. “So how do you think you're going to catch this guy?"

Daryl didn't answer for a long time. For a moment she was afraid that their conversation on the Butcher case had been the wrong thing to talk about; he was less focused on her and their date and was more focused now on the topic at hand, which was his job. His eyes had that intense look one gets when concentrating on an extremely difficult task. Finally he looked up from his salad and shook his head. “Hard work and a lot of luck. A lot of luck."

The rest of the evening went well. At first Rachael thought it was turning into a disaster. During the entire time they ate their salads, Daryl didn't speak. She silently cursed herself for using the Butcher case as a springboard to start conversation. She should have known that this was a big deal to him, and that his career depended on it.

Daryl was silent and introspective as he ate, pausing momentarily to smile at her and trade pleasantries on how good the salad was. By the time they were finished, the main courses were being served and they found themselves making small talk over how fast it arrived. This led into another track of dialogue—favorite restaurants, followed shortly by hobbies and family life. They ate slowly, and Rachael was relieved to discover that this new train of conversation was drawing Daryl out of his shell more. Halfway through the meal, he was his old self again. She relaxed. No more asking about the case, she told herself. Besides, he may think you're just using him to get info on the case so you can write about it in the paper.

The fact that the original reason she had flirted with him was to gain inside information and help on the Butcher case didn't bother her. That was then, this is now.

Now I'm really interested in him as a person, as a man who I am interested in seeing on a social level. I am not going to let our professional lives mix with our personal ones. I will not use our relationship to advance my career as a journalist.

For the next hour Rachael learned a lot about Daryl that she rather liked; he had graduated Magna Cum Laude from Long Beach State as a Psychology Major. He had an avid interest in history, particularly the Civil War and the Western Expansion. He loved the films of Sam Peckinpah, and had a soft spot for the old Gunsmoke Television show.

He was three years older than she was, having graduated from high school in 1979. He had been a fan of the rock band Styx in high school. Now he liked to listen to jazz fusion and classical music mostly, but he still loved classic rock and roll. He had a pit bull named Petey that he had rescued from a breeder who was planning on training the animal for dog fights—Rachael was especially touched by Petey's story. He loved to read biographies, history, or mystery novels. Blame that on the sleuth in him.

Rachael matched each bit of personal data with some of her own; she touched on her achievements at the Times; she made a brief mention of her first marriage to Bernie Jackson, skimming over the details. Daryl nodded, and something in his eyes told her that perhaps he had once gone through a similar experience. She told him she had a strong interest in films, mostly the arty kind that showed at art houses, but she did enjoy the latest blockbusters. She liked to read as well, mostly biographies of actors and actresses, but she enjoyed an occasional suspense novel or two. She claimed to be a fitness buff, confessed to her martial arts training. She also admitted her vice of listening to heavy metal while working out—Daryl got a good laugh out of that one—but the music she most enjoyed nowadays were the singer-songwriter musicians like Tori Amos, Sheryl Crow and John Mellencamp. When she had the time, she loved to cook. She had a pet, although it was a rather unconventional one: she was the proud owner of Nanka, a six foot ball python.

Daryl grinned at her over his half-eaten dish of pasta. “Somehow I can picture that,” he said. “Beautiful woman and snake. Very striking image."

Rachael felt herself blushing. “Thanks. I like Nanka because she's the only animal I've had as a pet that hasn't been selective-bred for the past two thousand years for the sole purpose of sucking up to us humans."

Daryl laughed. Rachael joined him, surprised at the spontaneity of her remark.

“Where did you grow up?” Daryl asked.

“In the south bay section,” Rachael said, picking up a piece of bread. “What about you?"

“Torrance,” Daryl said, grinning. “Small world, huh?"

“Yeah, really."

“What high school did you go to?"

“What high school did you go to?"

Daryl regarded her, grinning as he dug into his food. “North High School."

Rachael smiled. “You're right. It is a small world. But then again, you are three years older than me."

At that, Daryl tried to pump her for more information on her childhood. Rachael's comments were to the point and sparse. “I pretty much had an unremarkable childhood. I grew up there, hung out at Del Amo mall and Manhattan Beach when I was a kid, all the usual things. I left home after I graduated from high school to go to college and I really haven't been back since. When I moved back to LA, I settled first near South Pasadena, then I moved to Studio City. Been there ever since."

The rest of the evening went by quickly. After dinner, they paid their bill (Daryl had insisted on paying but Rachael refused, saying it was on her—she owed him one, remember?) and wandered down to San Fernando Road where they walked slowly up and down both sides of the busy thoroughfare, talking earnestly, window-shopping, pausing now and then to stray into some of the local shops. San Fernando Road in Burbank, south of the mall, was the latest hot spot for those seeking entertainment, especially on weekends when movie goers attended the Mann's multi-plex, and restaurants along the street had an overflowing capacity of patrons. Record and bookstores lined the boulevard along with art galleries, coffee shops, nightclubs, bars, tattoo parlors, and clothing stores.

It was a nice middle-class crowd, less trendy than Melrose or Sunset Boulevard, and definitely more relaxing.

They spent the better part of an hour wandering the ten blocks of San Fernando Road, eventually heading to the other side of the mall where the Superstores were; Barnes and Noble Bookstore, Ikea, Virgin Record Store. They spent thirty minutes at Virgin Records, browsing.

It was almost ten o'clock when they pulled up in front of Daryl's home. Daryl noted this with a laugh. “My, look at the hour! So late!"

Rachael grinned. “I never thought the day would come when ten o'clock feels late."

“You tired?"

“Not in the least."

“You in the mood for some coffee?"

“Of course."

“Good.” He led her to the house, which she liked quite a bit. The entryway opened to a modest living room, furnished with earthy sofas and chairs. The walls were cream colored, decorated with framed pieces of artwork and photos. The furniture was all neatly arranged and clean. Rachael set her purse down on the black sofa as Daryl went into the kitchen and began rummaging through the cupboards. “Cappuccino okay?"

“I love cappuccino."

“Great."

Rachael noted movement on the patio, and approached the den. A large pit bull was on the back porch looking at her through the glass door, his entire hindquarters swishing back and forth in happiness. The dog whined. Rachael turned to the kitchen.

“Your pit bull must think he's another breed or something."

“What do you mean?"

“He's not leaping at the door trying to kill me.” She laughed, bending down to be eye level with the dog, who started licking the glass door where her face was. She laughed again. “I'm afraid that if you open this door he's gonna slobber all over me."

“You're correct about that,” Daryl said, emerging from the kitchen with two mugs of coffee. “Petey is actually a typical American Pit Bull Terrier because he's been raised and trained properly. Pit Bulls are really loyal, dependable, loving animals. Unfortunately their loyalty has been destroyed by people who have exploited their physical strength and endurance, which is why they've been bred as fighting dogs. They are so loyal to their owners that they'll fight to the death, all to please their masters.” He sat down on the couch and motioned for Rachael to have a seat. Petey stopped wiggling and lay down on the patio, looking inside the house smiling a doggy smile. “If I hadn't rescued Petey when I had, he would have been brought up aggressively, and even if he had been rescued at some point and later adopted out to a family, that tendency would have remained with him. That's why so many of these dogs wind up mauling children; they've been hardwired through breeding and training to attack and kill other animals, and a small child appears as another animal to these dogs. If you encourage that part of their psyche during training, or if you don't work at keeping that part of it down, you wind up with a potentially dangerous animal.” Daryl sipped his coffee and looked out the sliding glass door at Petey, who cocked his head at him questionably. “The kids next door love playing with Petey.

He loves playing with them as well."

“I'm sure they're supervised when Petey is playing with them, though,” Rachael surmised.

Daryl laughed. “Of course. That's where being a responsible dog owner comes in.

I keep Petey in the backyard during the day, and I play with him everyday after work, or we'll go for walks. He gets plenty of exercise and physical interaction with me. Pit Bulls need that kind of activity or they quickly grow bored, and with boredom comes aggression. A pit bull chained up in the backyard all day with nothing to amuse itself with becomes a very dangerous animal."

“Is it true about their jaw power?” Rachael asked, looking out at the backyard at Petey. “That they can really crush bones?"

Daryl nodded. “They're noted for the incredible strength of their biting power.

Once they grab on, nothing can make them let go. They also have an extremely high tolerance for pain. An officer I know had to pry one off of a guy in the Wilmington area and he actually shot it twice at point blank range with a shotgun before it let go of the guy's arm. The poor guys arm was so badly mangled it had to be amputated."

“Jesus!"

“Now that you know that, you'll probably have a heart attack when you see Petey grab my hand in his mouth and pull me outside when it's play time."

They spent the next hour and a half sitting on his sofa sipping coffee and talking more, mainly about the books that were crammed in his bookshelves. Rachael had noticed them while Daryl made the coffee: books on the civil war, various aspects of world and American history, archeology, genealogy, sociology and psychology. There were a few books on crime and serial murder which were resting on the coffee table that she assumed were brand new—probably bought as a result of the case he was currently working on.

There were also several books on street gangs on his bookshelf.

But the book they spent the evening talking about was Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, a hefty volume that Rachael at first mistook for a book on ancient mythology. As she picked it up and began leafing through it, she saw that it was actually about lost civilizations. Daryl noticed the volume, and the topic of conversation centered on the book. The subject of the book sounded fascinating: using data from archeology, astronomy, and the lore of ancient writings and religions, the author hypothesized that prior to modern civilization, there was a previous, more advanced civilization that was wiped out by a catastrophic natural disaster, and that our present civilization was headed toward another one very soon. It was a fascinating subject, and Rachael found herself lost in it as she leafed through the book as Daryl pointed out various aspects of the theory to her.

And it was a mighty long discussion, too; by the time Rachael thought to check her watch it was closing in on midnight. “Well, I've really had a wonderful time, Daryl."

“So have I,” Daryl said.

“We need to do this again."

“Absolutely."

Rachael felt awkwardness coming, and rose from the sofa. She picked up her cup and Daryl rose to his feet, following suit. She put the cup on the cupboard by the sink, smiled at Daryl as she walked past him to the living room. “Mind if I use your bathroom?"

“Go right ahead,” Daryl said, beginning the task of rinsing the cups in the sink.

“Just down the hall and around the corner."

Rachael peed, then washed her hands. She felt a trifle nervous and with good reason. She really liked Daryl, and the nervousness she was feeling was that good old fashioned one she got when she was a young school girl; that feeling of being tongue-tied around whomever she had a crush on. She felt that way with Daryl and she did enjoy the feeling.

She forgot to bring her purse in the bathroom, so she grabbed a tube of toothpaste resting on the sink. She squeezed a dollop of it out on her index finger and rubbed it in her mouth, rubbing it in her teeth to freshen her breath. She replaced the toothpaste where she found it, rinsed her mouth out, then dried her hands on the towel. Then she inspected herself in the mirror one last time—she looked fine. Nervous, but fine.

When she came out of the bathroom Daryl was starting the dishwasher. Rachael picked her purse up off the couch and smiled. “Well, I don't mean to be so forward, but would you like to go out again sometime?"

“You bet I would,” Daryl grinned.

“Great!” She slung her purse over her right shoulder and together they walked to the front door. “You're in the office all next week?"

“I am so far,” Daryl said. She could detect a hint of nervousness in him as well.

“I'll give you a call."

“I can call you,” Daryl said.

She stopped at the door and turned to him. He stood there, looking rather cute, like a little boy expecting a piece of candy. She smiled at him. “I'd like that."

Daryl smiled back, and she went to him and lightly kissed his mouth. He returned the kiss, and she put her arms on his chest and kissed him again. This time he met her kiss with an equal level of passion and they moved with the kiss, his arms around her waist, her body pressed lightly into his. His mouth tasted like coffee, and she nibbled at his lips with light, playful kisses. She nuzzled his neck and hugged him. He felt strong and warm.

“I'm really glad we went out,” she said.

“Me too,” he murmured.

She felt a sense of warmth rush through her, a tingling along her arms and legs.

She drew back and looked at him . “I'll talk to you during the week?"

“You'll talk to me during the week,” he said, a dog-eared grin on his face.

“'Kay.” She smiled and they kissed again, once, but just as passionately. Then she was saying goodbye, he was opening the door for her, and she was heading outside.

She was almost halfway down the walkway to the driveway when he called out after her. “Wait a minute! How dumb of me."

She stopped. “What?"

He emerged a moment later and closed the door to his house, a sheepish grin on his face. “Let me walk you to your car."

She smiled. She hadn't even thought that he would offer to walk her to her car—

both of them had been so wrapped up in their passion for each other that such things like romantic trivialities almost went forgotten.

He walked her to her car, which was parked at the curb. The street was relatively quiet as they walked to the driver's side door of her car, a black Camaro. She unlocked it, opened the door, and threw her purse on the passenger seat. Then she turned to Daryl again. “Well, goodbye again,” she smiled.

“Goodbye,” he said.

They hugged again and kissed, and this time it felt as if this was the most significant kiss in her life. This moment was the singular, most important one of her life.

It was grand. Exquisite.

“I'll talk to you next week,” she said.

“Okay. You drive carefully,” he said.

She got into the driver's seat and he closed the door for her.

She started the car, let it warm up, and looked up to see Daryl standing on the sidewalk watching her with a boyish smile on his face. Rachael waved at him. Daryl waved back. Then she put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb. Feeling more content than she had in a long time.

That feeling of contentment followed her and stayed with her throughout the weekend.

Chapter 9

When he finally got home from work he knew he would find his mother in the living room parked on the sofa watching Entertainment Tonight or Hard Copy as she did every night. He bundled the package inside his blue ski jacket and zipped it up before he entered the house. It was one thing to try sneaking in something legitimate into the house when his mother was in the living room, but to try bringing in what Charley had bundled into his jacket would only serve to set mother off. The trick was to enter the house, close the door quickly, bid mother a quick hello-how-are-you while heading toward the hallway. It was a routine they went through at least a once a week.

Charley entered the house just as he did nearly ten thousand other times in his life.

Mother was seated on the living room sofa, the TV tuned to the Channel 2 News. She looked up at him as he closed the door behind him. “Hello, Charley,” she said. “How was your day today?"

“Fine, mother,” Charley said, already heading toward the hall that led toward his bedroom. “How was yours?"

“Humph!” She sniffed, drawing into her robe. Her gray hair was tied in a bun, long wisps sticking out of her head as if it was unbrushed. “Same as always. That damned When Fan Fong, or whatever the hell that gook's name is that lives next door, is up to his old tricks again."

“Really?” Charley had reached the entrance to the hallway and stood there to engage in this bit of conversation with his mother. That way she wouldn't feel he was brushing her off totally. “How so?” Nyguen Phan Houng was a Vietnamese immigrant who had been living in the neighborhood for over twenty years. He was retired and his favorite hobby was repairing electronic equipment; everything from stereos, to transistor radios. “Up to his old tricks again” probably meant he was working on an old radio and mother couldn't stand the sound of the static coming out of it as Nyguen fiddled with it.

“He's screwing around with those radios again,” mother complained. “Making an awful racket. Damn near kept me awake from my afternoon nap."

“Well, I'm sure he won't do it anymore."

“I've heard that before,” she huffed.

Now it was time to beat a hasty retreat. “Well, I'm going to go to my room and change. Is there anything you need before I turn in for the day?"

Mother appeared to think it over, then waved a hand at him. She picked up the remote control of the TV and began flipping through the channels. “No. Go do whatever the hell it is you do in there. I don't even want to know anymore.” She turned to the TV, her attention fixed glassy-eyed on it. Charley was dismissed.

Charley turned and headed toward the room at the end of the hallway. He opened the door with a key and went in, closing it softly behind him. He was hot beneath the ski jacket and his blood pounded in his veins. Go do whatever the hell it is you do in there. I don't even want to know anymore. Like you always wanted to know what I was doing every goddamned day of my life. Like you know that statement is bullshit because whenever I do try to live my life as an adult, you give me the third degree. You've always disapproved of everything I did anyway. What makes you think you'll stop now?

He unzipped his jacket and set the package from the liquor store down on the end table by the couch. His living quarters were fairly large, resembling a small apartment consisting of the back three rooms of the small house he shared with his mother. His living space was essentially two bedrooms that connected with a common bathroom. The first bedroom he had converted into his main living area; it was about five hundred square feet, one side consisting of a makeshift living room, the other as his bedroom. Beyond the bathroom lay another room that he used mainly as a work-room. In the far corner of the main living area he had a small refrigerator. The wall closest to the door was lined with bookshelves and an entertainment center of which the main feature was the wide screen TV. A small futon sofa sat against the wall across from the TV, along with a small end table. A single bed flanked one wall, while at the other end of the room there was a slight dip to the right, which led to a walk-in closet and the bathroom. The room was more home to Charley than the rest of the house was.

He hung his jacket up in the closet, took his tennis shoes off, and went into the bathroom to wash his hands. When he was done he dried them with a white towel and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked the same as he did ten years ago; he was of above-average height, about six foot one. His brown hair was wavy, slightly balding along the top, and cut short along the back and sides. He had a narrow, pinched face; the kids at school used to call him sphincter face. He wore glasses with very thick lenses and wide frames, which actually improved his looks. His body was typical of a lot of guys in his age group—at forty years old, Charley had a healthy spare tire around his mid-section, and he definitely had a second chin but he hadn't gained much fat in other areas of his body. He supposed a regular regimen of exercise would trim inches off the spare tire and the chin, but he had neither the time, nor the patience, for such mentally unstimulating tasks. He'd much rather be at home reading a book or watching a movie.

Charley moved to the bedroom and began to undress. He threw his shirt, a red and blue plaid long sleeve, on the sofa, then pulled the white T-shirt he wore beneath it over his head. He slipped his jeans down his legs and stepped out of them, shucking his boxers as well. Wearing only a pair of white gym socks, he stepped toward the end table where he had set the package on the TV and took out his purchase.

It was two video-tapes and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. He opened the Dr. Pepper and took a healthy swig. He belched. That hit the spot. Looking forward to the evening's activities, he turned his attention to the video-tapes.

Both videos were geared toward his particular fetish: the first was called Big Boob Bonanza, and claimed to feature over two hours of women with Double D breasts or over engaged in all manner of physically challenging activities. The second was called Tie Me Down, and the title was enough to clue the potential viewer as to the activities chronicled within. He picked the latter box up and began stroking his member, which had retreated into his groin during his brief confrontation with mother. The cover showed a brunette with large breasts—they always had to have large breasts because that's what he liked in a woman—with her hands tied behind her back, lying on her stomach, ass sticking daintily in the air. She was dressed in black leather bondage gear and a black studded collar. She was gagged and blindfolded. A faceless man was drilling her from behind, and from the expression on her face her male partner was quite large. This looked like one of the good ones.

He turned the TV and VCR on with a few clicks of the remote control.

Inserted the tape in the VCR.

Sat down on the sofa, Dr. Pepper within easy reach, along with the small box of Kleenex and a squeeze bottle of lotion.

The tape started.

Charley's breathing quickened.

He squirted lotion into his palm.

And delved into his fantasy.

Charley was just on the verge of reaching orgasm when his mother began to call for him, shattering the illusion.

“Charley!” Faint, but insistent.

He stopped stroking himself, reached for the remote control, and turned the tape off. He pressed the mute button on the remote control and listened, irritated that his reverie had been shattered.

“Charley! Where are you?” He recognized the tone of voice. She was using her Sick Voice. Mother was taking pills for a wide variety of ailments and it never failed her to lapse into a semblance of illness whenever she wanted attention. Charley, would you please put my legs up on the sofa? Charley, will you get me my magazine? Charley, will you get me glass of ginger-ale? She always claimed that she was getting one of her sick spells, which was why she couldn't do these simple tasks herself. In reality she was really fine. Charley knew women who were twenty years older than mother who were in better health than he was. Mother wasn't sick at all; years ago, her doctor told him that mother's ailments were all in her head. “Humor her,” he'd told Charley one time when he had taken her to the doctor. “She's perfectly healthy but she just wants attention."

He had humored her for awhile, still did at times. But his patience with her when it came to her resorting to her “sick voice” was beginning to wear thin on him. When she first started pulling this on him he would oblige her, getting her drinks of ginger-ale, making runs to the store, whatever she wanted. What she really wanted was to nag at him, ask him the same questions: what are you doing with your life, Charley? Why haven't you met a nice girl that you could bring home? Have you been going to Church like you're supposed to? What kind of friends do you have? What do you do when you go out with them? You know I don't like you going out with people I don't approve of. Yadda yadda yadda.

The answers to the questions were simple. I'm working a stupid, boring fucking job at a giant conglomerate corporation to supplement your social security so we can pay the bills. The reason I haven't met a nice girl to bring home is because women think I'm repulsive, no thanks to you and the way you raised me. The only reason I go to church is to take you and when you don't ask to go, I don't go. I have nice friends, and what I do with them when I go out with them is none of your fucking business.

Oh, and as for that last comment, that's the reason why I stopped bringing my friends to the house. If I brought Mother Theresa home for lunch you wouldn't approve of her. You bitch.

The truth was, his mother had controlled Charley's life for as long as he remembered. Telling him what to wear, what to eat, what to watch on TV, what to think.

While on the one hand she would encourage him to meet new people, make friends, bring them home anytime he wanted, the reality was that when he did she always disapproved of them. He had four or five friends from work who were all movie buffs and book worms like himself; they got together every other Friday evening at somebody's house to watch old movies and shoot the shit. Sometimes they went on book hunting expeditions.

Most of the guys were bachelors, save for one. The few times the guys had come to the house to watch movies, mother had carped and complained about them for two weeks straight. “I don't like them,” she had muttered. “One of them has hair down to his ass and is covered with tattoos and looks like a devil-worshipping biker, the other two are fat slobs, one is so skinny he looks like he's going to keel over dead any minute. He must either have AIDS or is on drugs. And the other one wouldn't talk to me at all, that wavy-haired fellow with the glasses. I knew he was laughing at me the whole time you were watching that godawful movie; I could tell by that smirk of his. He must be a pervert because he's the one that brought that filth into the house for you to watch. I don't like them, Charley. I think you could pick much better company for you to—"

And it had gone on until he stopped inviting the group to his house for Friday Night movies. Now he went to their homes, but mother knew he was still socializing with them. She still disapproved.

“Charley!” her voice whined again from the living room. Charley raised the remote control and turned the channel to MTV. Billy Corgan screamed that he was just a rat in a cage. He turned the volume up just as mother let loose another pleading

“Chaaarrrllleeeyyy!"

Shut the fuck up!

He couldn't even live a normal adult life around his mother. At forty years old and self-sufficient, he not only made enough money to pay the mortgage on the house and the utilities and groceries, but he had more than enough left over to splurge on gifts for himself and mother. It hadn't always been like that. For awhile, he had to work two jobs to help out. His brother, John, helped out financially when he was able. Two years ago he and John had refurbished the detached guest house that had been built onto the garage that fed into the alley. John had found a tenant to rent the place, all under the table money, and that had really helped a lot. Mother hadn't seemed to mind—after all, it was extra money, and besides, they hardly ever saw the tenant, a young woman that John assured mother he'd met at church. Charley rarely saw her, but the monthly rent money was always there, on time, in an envelope tucked behind the screen door that led to the rear of the property. It was extra money that went a long way, especially when Charley got that promotion at work.

Now that he was making better money, he spent it on gifts for he and mother.

Mother usually offered no resistance when he came home with something for her—a new book, a bouquet of flowers, one time a new TV to replace the twenty-four inch Minolta that had finally burnt out. But when it came to buying items for himself that he wanted, she gave him the third degree. “Why do you need a TV that's so big? That's too big. You don't need a TV like that! Who has TV's that big? You surely don't need one,” or “why are you buying a computer? You don't need a computer. You're just wasting your money, throwing it down the drain,” or “why did you buy a pickup truck with a campershell in the back? Why not just buy a little economy car like an Escort or something? That's a lot of money for a young man like you to spend on a car."

It's my fucking money, mother!

He turned the volume back down and listened. Nothing from the living room.

Maybe she had gotten tired. He pressed the PLAY button on the VCR and the movie started back up again, stimulating him back into lust. He was just getting back into working himself back into hardness when she started again.

“Charley! Charley, what are you doing in there?"

Trying to jack off in peace, mother, since I can't get laid like normal guys. You want to know why I haven't met a nice girl, mom? Because you've made me afraid of them! First always carping at me to never think impure thoughts or I would go to hell, or to never masturbate because I'll go to hell, or to stay away from the tramps at school because they would lead me to sin—and your definition of tramps fit pretty much every woman of child bearing age—to asking why I'm not dating, or how come I don't have girlfriends. Why the fuck do you think I don't have any? The images you gave me about sex when I was growing up, and women in general, weren't very good to begin with despite my interest in members of the opposite sex, and combined with my nerdish appearance and shyness made me not very attractive to women. I wish I could be like other guys and have a girlfriend, but frankly it's not going to happen. If you hadn't been such an overprotective, overbearing bitch when you were raising me, I could have been happy with a nice woman. I know I will never be able to have that. And that's why I have to relieve myself this way, with the tapes. Because it's the closest I can come to being with a real woman.

Oh, but there were other ways ... there were always other ways.

“Chaaarrrllleeeyyyyy!"

“Shut up,” he muttered. He turned the volume up on the television, the panting sounds of passion rising from the speakers. “Just shut up, shut up, shut up."

She called out to him a few more times, punctuating her cries of “Charley!” with

“What are you doing in there? Why don't you answer me? Are you playing with yourself again? I thought I told you that you were to never do that to yourself, your body's a temple of the Lord and—"

He drowned out her litany by turning the volume up louder. Now the sounds of the pornographic tape drowned out her voice, cradling him back in the cocoon of his fantasy. He got up off the couch and crossed over to the door of his bedroom to double-check that it was locked; it was. Then he went back to the couch and knelt in front of it.

He squirted another dollop of lotion into the palm of his right hand, and ignoring the fact that his mother might very well now be calling out to him louder, transported himself back into the fantasy unfolding on the screen.

...in his mind ... ?

His cock plunging into the woman on the screen.

The orgiastic cries of their passion fueling him on ... ?

As he reached climax with a shuddering moan.

He leaned back against the sofa, letting the tingles of his orgasm spread through his body, the scenario moving over to another scene, another couple, another position.

Charley smiled, feeling spent. He had all night to indulge in his fantasies.

Even in the ones that didn't involve the scenarios on the tapes.

And as Charley delved into his night of fulfilling his fantasy, he kept the sound of the television up to drown out the muffled sounds of his mother crying in the living room.

Chapter 10

February 14, 1997

12:30 p.m.

The eleven o'clock mass had concluded fifteen minutes ago, and Father John Glowacz was standing outside the church in the main courtyard talking to Anna and Del Stewart and their son and daughter-in-law who had just moved to California from Tempe, Arizona. The two couples had approached Father Glowacz after services to seek advice on parochial school for the Stewart's grandchild, a seven-year-old girl named Melissa.

After greeting the Stewart's son and daughter-in-law, a striking couple named Mark and Julie Stewart, John had engaged them in small talk on what he thought were the best parochial schools in Los Angeles. He was just getting started on what the parochial high school system offered when a young man Father Glowacz had never seen before approached him. Danny Hernandez was with him. Despite the young man's physical appearance—long black hair, beard stubble, tattered denim jeans, white t-shirt with a Harley Davidson insignia, studded black leather belt, cowboy boots, heavily tattooed arms, looking more like a biker than a gangbanger, the young man looked troubled and worried. They stood off to the side waiting as John talked to the Stewarts.

He glanced back and met their gaze, nodding. Danny nodded back, the message in his eyes clear. Something bad has happened, those eyes said. Father John Glowacz grasped the elder Stewart's hand. “I'm sorry, but would you excuse me for a moment?

Something extremely urgent has just come up."

“No problem, Father,” the elder male Stewart said, shaking his hand. “Thank you for your time."

Bidding the family farewell, Father John Glowacz excused himself and brushed past the small circle of other parishioners that had gathered around in a loose circle in the hopes of having a word with the priest. Danny and the younger man he was with stepped forward. Danny was direct and to the point. “We need to talk in private, Father."

“Let's go to the administrative offices,” John Glowacz said, waving his hand toward the administrative building that stood next to the church. The three of them walked toward the building and through the double glass doors that led past the receptionist desk and down the hall. It was fairly busy inside with church volunteers and employees of Our Lady of Guadalupe busy with a variety of tasks; arranging Bingo games, Bible studies, group meetings. John Glowacz's office was at the end of the hall on the first floor, and he led Danny and his young friend to it where he closed the door and motioned for them to have a seat. His office was neat and tidy; the window overlooked the playground of the parochial elementary school that was on the church grounds. There was a large oak desk and two chairs for guests, and a small bookshelf filled with volumes on Catholic living, back issues of Reader's Digest, and a book by Billy Graham. A Creeping Charley sprouted from a pot hung by a hook from the ceiling, its tendrils drooping down to the floor. He had no idea what was on Danny's mind, but judging from the young man's expression it was serious. He hoped it wasn't bad.

“So what seems to be the trouble, Danny?” John Glowacz said, putting on his best smile to dispel the feeling of gloom that was emanating from the younger man. At first he thought that the subject of Danny's visit was to help bring the young man he was with to Christ, but now that John got a good look at Danny's eyes he saw that the problem was more severe. More grave. As in deadly grave.

Danny motioned to the young man he was with, who was sitting in one of the two chairs that were crammed into Father Glowacz's office space. “This is Rick Medina. He grew up down the street from me and rides with a biker group. He and his girlfriend have been spending the last month at the girl's mother's house in Echo Park, and last week him and Chrissy both came by to my Bible study."

“So you're not in a gang then, Rick?” Father Glowacz asked softly, but not threatening or accusatory.

Rick shrugged. “I ride with a group called the Devil's Army. I guess we're like a gang. We surely do the same shit.” He looked embarrassed. “Oops! Sorry."

Father Glowacz smiled. “That's alright."

“I'm trying to get out,” Rick Medina continued. “That's why Chrissy and I came by Danny's Bible study last week.” He chuckled. “He bugged the hell out of me."

John Glowacz smiled at Rick and turned back to Danny, preparing himself for what he was about to hear. Danny took a deep breath and then let it all out. “Yeah, well he says he's been trying to get out of riding with the Devil's Army, and I believe him.

Motorcycle gangs are different than the kind of gangs we're used to here. They're not tied to any geographical location, but the lure is the same. Easy drugs, easy money, plenty of ladies. Isn't that right, Rick?"

Rick nodded, crossing his tattooed arms in front of his chest. “You got that right."

“The good news is that if Rick leaves the gang, he won't be killed. He isn't in that deep yet, but he does have problems. He owes money to a drug runner over a botched deal, and that can get him killed. But if we can get this guy behind bars, Rick will be fine."

John Glowacz exhaled a small sigh of relief. He was expecting this to be something worse, like perhaps another gang killing or something, but it didn't even compare to that. The young man was simply having some trouble coming to Jesus. “Well, Rick,” John began. “When we come to the Lord, our walk with him can be rocky at first—"

“I'm sorry, Father, I haven't finished yet,” Danny said, looking concerned and troubled. His brown eyes were serious. “Rick and Chrissy both confided in me three, four days ago at my last meeting that they were getting tired of being in the gang and wanted to get out, get back into going to church and everything. And yeah, they're both still involved with The Devil's Army, but it's not like that. You see..."

He's embarrassed about something, John Glowacz thought. I've never seen Danny embarrassed about anything before.

Rick looked embarrassed as well as scared. It was he who finally spilled the beans. “Two nights ago I sent Chrissy out to help me earn some money,” he said, his voice low with shame. “She never came back."

John Glowacz sat back waiting for the punch line. His mind kept trying to find the right track to correlate with what Rick was saying. As if he read his mind, Danny clarified it for him, breaking through his embarrassment. “Chrissy used to be a hooker,” he said, now sounding scared. “It's that drug runner guy I mentioned to you; Rick owes him big money. Rick had less than a day to come up with it. Chrissy agreed to turn some tricks to help him out. She hasn't been seen since."

The first thing that came to John Glowacz's mind was the Eastside Butcher strikes again, but he batted that thought down. Maybe there was more to the relationship than they're letting me know, he thought. Maybe they had a fight and Chrissy simply left him.

But then if she had, they would have tracked her down by now or at least assured themselves that she was okay, otherwise they wouldn't be here. Because if she left, she would have most likely have gone to her house first, maybe packed some things. Maybe her parents or a relative saw her leave and knew why, or a friend. And naturally Rick would have tried contacting her at her house when she failed to turn up, and if she left town her family and friends would have told him. But they didn't tell him because they don't know where she went. And that's why they look so scared.

Take a deep breath and be calm, he told himself. They came to you because they're seeking guidance and they're scared. Don't show them that you're afraid that the worst might have happened to Chrissy.

“First things first,” he said, quietly. “Are you absolutely sure she's missing? Have you checked with her family to see if she's maybe skipped town or something?"

Rick answered immediately. “I checked with them, Father. She didn't come home and they're worried, too. They've already called the police."

That was going to be John's next question. “Have the police spoken to you yet?"

Rick hung his head in shame. “I been trying to stay away from the police."

“Why?"

Danny answered for him. “Rick's afraid the police will think he had something to do with it. He was arrested a few weeks ago for selling drugs, and he has a record for other things, most notably assault with a deadly weapon."

Rick glanced at Danny. John recognized the look: Rick was still unwilling to let go of his secrets and let people help him. He wanted to keep it all to himself, deal with it on his own terms. He was a brave young man, but very foolish.

John Glowacz directed his next question at Rick. “So, you're afraid the police will think you might have had something to do with Chrissy's disappearance, correct?"

Rick nodded fearfully.

“All they will want to do is question you, Rick,” Father John Glowacz said. “You wouldn't be a suspect in anything because in standard police protocol, there wouldn't be a case yet. How old was Chrissy?"

“Sixteen."

“Sixteen.” John rubbed his jaw, thinking. “How long has she been gone?"

Rick thought about it. “Since early Friday night."

“Today's Sunday, so she's been gone a little under forty hours,” John said. “If she were an adult the police wouldn't do anything until forty-eight hours had elapsed, but because she's a minor they'll make more of an effort to look for her. The first thing they are going to think is that she's a runaway, Rick. Because that is the number one reason why kids disappear suddenly: they run away from home. Do you understand that?"

Rick nodded. He was shaking.

“They would have no reason to suspect you in having anything to do with her disappearance if you tell them the exact truth,” John Glowacz went on. “Because if you tell them everything and are honest with them, they won't see any reason to try to put anything on you. Heck, they wouldn't have anything to put on you if you lay all your cards on the table with them.” He turned to Danny. “Do the police know if Chrissy was a prostitute?"

Danny nodded. “Yeah."

“Okay.” John turned back to Rick. “Do you know what particular area Chrissy was working in?"

Rick was silent for a moment, his shaking calmed down somewhat. When he answered it was in a quiet, shaky voice that told John that he was still scared. Not so much for him, but for Chrissy. “She wasn't working the streets,” he said. “I hooked her up with a ... place I know of. An ... escort service I guess you'd call it."

“Okay."

“...it ... ah, shit man, if I tell the cops about that, they'll bust my friend Maria. She doesn't deserve to be dragged into this shit."

“No, she doesn't,” John said. “But if you want to help Chrissy, I think you have to tell them about Maria and this escort service. Chrissy's life may depend on it."

Rick closed his mouth and leaned forward in the chair. John let him think about it, then turned to Danny. The gang counselor met his gaze. It was obvious that Danny had a bad feeling about this, and John's stomach sunk to the bottom of his abdomen. Danny had a good sixth sense about things and if Danny felt bad about this, most likely it was. He had had that feeling about that friend of his who attended his bible study, that young gang member who had been killed by the Butcher; that prediction had turned out to be true.

John hoped to God this one wouldn't be.

“I want to help Chrissy,” Rick said, sitting up straight in his chair, regaining his composure. “I ... I have to tell them everything."

“That's my man,” Danny said, patting the youth on the back.

“I'm just so scared, man,” Rick said, the hint of tears in his voice. “I called Maria when Chrissy didn't come back, and she told me Chrissy had left around nine for two outcalls. The last one was around eleven, which meant she should have been home by one at the latest. But when she didn't come back by three, I got worried. It took me until ten o'clock Saturday morning to track Maria down, and when I talked to her she didn't know where Chrissy was. I called Chrissy's house and her brother and sister hadn't seen her. I drove around trying to find her. I checked with her folks a few times, and the last time I drove by yesterday afternoon the police were already there. I called from a pay phone and her brother said the police were looking to question me and I got scared. By then I knew that Sanchez would be looking for me to get his money, so I took off."

“Sanchez?” John looked at Danny in puzzlement for clarification.

“He's the guy Rick was supposed to pay back,” Danny said. “Chrissy was working to pay back the debt for Rick."

“He said if I didn't paid him by Saturday morning he'd kill me,” Rick said, his voice rising hysterically. “And he will, too. If he finds me."

“He ain't going to find you, homey,” Danny said, putting an arm around the younger man's shoulders.

“I still think you should go to the police, Rick,” John Glowacz said. “At this point they are on the assumption that Chrissy is a runaway. They don't know anything about her activities Friday night, most likely. If they knew this, that would narrow their search. If they are able to talk to this Maria, she may be able to provide some clues as to some of the ... er, customers she may have seen.” He didn't want to proceed too much farther down that train of thought. He didn't want to scare Rick. “If on the off chance they did place blame on you, if you tell them this it would take that suspicion off."

Rick nodded, as if he was seeing the light. “You're right, Father Glowacz."

But I pray that I'm not, John Glowacz thought. Nevertheless, he picked up the phone on his desk and handed the receiver to Rick, who took it wordlessly. He glanced at Danny briefly, who nodded. Rick looked calm, more in control of himself. “If you want we can go to the police together. The three of us. We'll do anything we can do to help, Rick."

“I'd like that,” Rick said. He motioned to the phone on the desk. “Go ahead. Call them."

Trading one last glance with Danny, John Glowacz consulted the yellow pages on his desk for the phone number of the Los Angeles Police Department, then dialed the number.

Chapter 11

Late February in Newport Beach is often cold and windy and today was no exception. Detective Daryl Garcia stood about fifteen feet from where the ocean swelled onto the sandy beach. Detective Steve Howe stood beside him, both men dressed in long, black trenchcoats, holding umbrellas over their heads to shield themselves from the light drizzle. An hour before it had been pouring rain and the weather forecast called for this particular rainfall to be the last for at least a week. Hopefully it will begin to clear soon.

Dredging in sandy soil looking for corpses wasn't Daryl's idea of a fun time.

The beach had been roped off and about a dozen people stood behind the yellow crime scene tape watching the detectives work. Daryl and Steve were the only two from LAPD Homicide on the scene. When Daryl took a peek under the plastic tarp that covered the body and saw what they were dealing with, he hightailed it back to the car and called the Butcher Task force members. That had been fifteen minutes ago. It would be another forty minutes or so before the first of them started arriving.

They had been called to the scene by Newport Beach P.D., who had been alerted to report to the Butcher Task force any murder they came across that involved decapitation or dismemberment. All police departments from San Diego to Santa Barbara had been asked to notify the Butcher Task force if they came across such a crime, and since December Daryl and Steve had been called out to no fewer than half a dozen such crimes. In all cases the murders were the result of lover's triangles or drug deals gone bad in which the killers, in their fury, hacked the victim apart with an axe or cut them up with a knife. Gruesome, but it happened. It was the nature of the human beast.

Daryl and Steve took one look at the lump of flesh beneath the tarp Newport Beach P.D. had covered the body up with and knew that this was the work of the Butcher.

Daryl could only think back to the first body in the Butcher murder series, the still unidentified Lady of the Ocean who was found a mere half mile from this very spot, and wondered if this maniac had struck again.

Now as they stood in the gloom of the drizzly afternoon Daryl motioned for Steve to follow him up the beach. They walked away from the circle of police officers and detectives and stopped. The look on Steve's face told Daryl that he was certain this was the Butcher's latest victim. “He's done it again,” Daryl said.

As in the case of the first murder back in ‘94, this latest victim had been found by a homeowner, a record company executive who owned a beachfront house almost directly across from where the body now rested. The homeowner had gone out to jog along the beach before it rained again when he noticed something strange that the tide appeared to have washed ashore. Thinking it to be the body of a large animal, or perhaps a beached porpoise, the man had trotted onto the beach to investigate, then had run back to his house to call the police.

The object turned out to be the lower portion of a female torso, minus both legs.

The torso was bisected at the mid-section, the legs at the hips. Looking at the remains, Daryl couldn't help but think that despite the fact that the skin was bleached white from being immersed in the cold water, this unnamed victim was probably from the East Los Angeles area as well. In fact, his mind was already rushing to conclusions: she was young, probably Hispanic, was either involved in a gang or hung out with gang members, and she was recently reported missing. He was going on this assumption due to the fact that he had asked the East Los Angeles division to keep him updated on any missing persons from the area, and a few days ago they had informed him that a teenage prostitute, with ties to a motorcycle gang, was reported missing by her boyfriend and the girl's parents. The missing girl in question had a small tattoo of a butterfly on her left buttock; the corpse under the tarp bore a similar tattoo.

“I'd lay odds that this is our missing girl,” Daryl said, jerking his thumb back at the scene.

“I was just going to say the same thing,” Steve said.

“When the task force gets here we'll split into four teams,” Daryl said. “The first two will explore north of this area up to the Huntington Beach Pier. The next two will explore south down to Laguna Beach, maybe San Clemente. We'll coordinate with the Orange County Sheriff to have them drag the canal that feeds into this beach. Also contact the Coast Guard and have them conduct a search from San Pedro to say, oh, San Diego."

“That far south?” Steve asked.

Daryl shrugged, looking out at the rolling waves. “Why not? If he dumped the remains in the canal that runs off into the Long Beach Harbor, the remains could have drifted down that far in the last few days. We'll know more how long she's been in the water after the coroner looks at her, but I'd be willing to bet she's our missing girl, and if she is, she hasn't been in the water that long."

“What about the press?” Steve was looking back toward the strand where a news van had parked.

“The FBI will know how to deal with them,” Daryl said.

Steve opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it. Daryl noticed it but paid no heed. He knew what Steve was going to say. For the last two months the two detectives had been at odds with each other over Rachael Pearce. While Steve wouldn't come right out and spit it out, he gave Daryl the impression that the other detectives, especially those on the Butcher task force, didn't approve of Daryl's relationship with the reporter. While nobody had actually voiced their disapproval, it was said through body language, tone of voice, and the vibes floating around. Plus, Daryl knew from experience what the other detectives felt about the relationship. Journalists were at times both a panacea and a cancer to the police. Many times they could be helpful in assisting in investigations; in keeping the public informed, and in showing them what the department did to solve cases like this to help foster a better understanding of public safety to the general public. They were a good forum for getting information out to the public. On the other hand, when it came to delicate cases they could hinder it, sometimes with disastrous results. One only had to look at the O.J. Simpson case to see how the media could destroy a case before it ever got to court. Because the Butcher case was a sensitive case for the department, it was imperative that the only information the press received was that released by LAPD's Media Relations. The minute Daryl Garcia made the mistake of casually mentioning to Steve Howe one morning before work that he was dating a new woman in his life and that her name was Rachael Pearce, he had cast himself in a new light in the eyes of his peers.

On hindsight, he probably shouldn't have said anything to Steve, but it was too late for that now. Most guys on the force would have quickly aborted a burgeoning relationship with a female newspaper reporter, but not Daryl; in the last four months he had become really attached to her. He had known that she was something special after their first date, and he had to resist the urge to rush into the relationship. After a few weeks of casually seeing each other, they had talked about the future of their relationship one night in December. Rachael had wanted to take things slow, too, and Daryl couldn't have agreed more. When Daryl had asked Rachael if she thought they might have a future together she had smiled. “I think so. I really like you, Daryl. A lot. But ... my heart's been broken before. I have a feeling yours has, too. Let's continue to see each other, but take it slow. Okay?"

How she had sensed that he had been hurt by past loves was something that Daryl found remarkable. It was evidence of Rachael Pearce's ability to observe other people, listen carefully to what they said, analyze them, and come to logical conclusions. It was then that he had told her about his first marriage and how it had ended. She had listened sympathetically, and while he had wanted to tell her more, specifically about Shirley, he didn't feel that had been the right time. Rachael hadn't pressed the issue, and Daryl was thankful for it.

But when Daryl tried learning a little bit more about Rachael's past—specifically her childhood, since they had practically grown up within the same general area—she had given him only a general background. “There's not really much to tell,” she had said one morning at a coffee shop in Pasadena. She had spent the night at his house, and they had walked to Peet's Coffee on Lake and California and were enjoying an early morning stroll and had decided to stop for a morning coffee. “I never knew who my real parents were; I was given up at birth and placed in foster care. I was shuttled to different foster homes throughout my childhood and never really grew close to any of my foster parents. Other than that, I did things normal kids did. I lived in a middle-class neighborhood and had a middle-class lifestyle like everybody else in that area. Besides, I don't like to live in the past; I live in the present. I guess that's where my independent streak comes from. I've always felt that I was on my own, that I've always had to take care of myself, that I could never rely on family for help because I felt that I never really had a family."

It was a stunning confession, but it wasn't too surprising. Daryl found himself drawn to Rachael even more. She had come from a shattered past that he could relate to very much, and she had triumphed. That's one of the things Daryl liked about Rachael.

She was always looking forward: to the next story, the next feature, to what might be coming up on the wires. She had seen the potential for a book on the Butcher murder series and had started compiling notes. Rachael Pearce was looking ahead to the future while Daryl was still stuck in the past, clinging to a job he had sought out of frustration due to the murder of his first wife, a job he used to vent his frustration at the gang members that he hated and despised.

And as 1997 dawned Daryl realized one other thing: he was slowly falling in love with Rachael Pearce.

“Let's get back to the scene,” Daryl said, dismissing the thought from his mind.

Steve followed him, and as they headed back to the crime scene he knew that he was being scrutinized by his peers for his relationship with Rachael Pearce. He knew that seeing her was considered a big no-no, but he thought he had done pretty well in distancing his work from his personal life. He had already made it clear to Rachael that he wouldn't talk about the Butcher case to her and she hadn't pressed the issue. In fact, she had been a dream when it came to respecting his wishes of not talking about the case.

“This case is important to you and I don't want to jeopardize it by you divulging information,” she had said when he brought up the hands off policy in their relationship.

Daryl not only respected her a lot more as a journalist, it helped push him over the edge of liking the hell out of her, to possibly falling in love with her.

But business was business, and ever since he had spilled the beans about the relationship to Steve Howe, he had kept silent on the issue. He didn't talk about his weekends anymore, nor did he care to talk about Rachael when she was brought up in conversation. He wanted to keep his private life separate from his professional life, and his reluctance to divulge some of his dirty laundry had earned him some behind-the-back snickers from his colleagues. He knew they talked about him when he wasn't around but he didn't care. Fuck ‘em.

Quickly shifting his mental gears from his personal life to his professional one, Daryl got back into the business of overseeing the preliminary investigation into the discovery of the partial remains of what he felt was the latest victim of the Eastside Butcher.

Some dopey variety show was on MTV as they sat up in her big queen size bed, but Daryl wasn't paying much attention to it. He was reading the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times, which had devoted a tiny portion of page three to the latest victim. The paper reported what he already knew: the remains had been that of Chrissy Melendez, a sixteen-year-old known prostitute and associate of the Devil's Army, a biker gang. She had been reported missing around February 13 by her parents.

Daryl closed the paper and turned to Rachael, who was leaning back against a mountain of pillows looking at the program with a hint of disdain on her pretty features.

The show was a cross between the Dating Game and the Tonight Show, and its cast and host were all under twenty-five. What the hell was wrong with MTV nowadays? Did kids really like watching this shit?

“Crap,” Rachael said, flipping the channel to VH-1. David Bowie was gyrating in a leisure suit to “Cracked Actor."

“At least this is better,” Daryl said.

“I love David Bowie,” Rachael said, setting the remote down in her lap to watch it.

“More than you love me?"

Rachael giggled and kissed him.

It was Friday evening and he had gone to her place immediately after getting off of work. They had gone out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant they had discovered a month ago, and afterward gone straight to her place. Once there, they had changed to swimming trunks for him and a bikini for her, and gone to the complex's sauna to bask in steam for a good thirty minutes. The sauna had relaxed him, taking out all the frustration that had been building up. They had gone back to her condo, showered together, then made love. Now between brief interludes of foreplay they were watching whatever was on the tube and making conversation. Winding down from their busy week.

“Did you still want to go up to Big Bear next weekend?” he asked. He had a friend from high school whose family owned a cabin in the mountain retreat who often let Daryl borrow it for a weekend whenever the mood struck, provided it wasn't occupied.

Next weekend it was free and clear.

“I'd like that.” Rachael said.

“Good.” Daryl said.

Daryl had been turning over the idea of talking to Rachael about the case this past week. While their relationship had started off slowly, it had blossomed into something really nice, so nice that Daryl began to think of Rachael as somebody he could confide in and trust with anything. She was certainly doing her best in being open and honest with him in everything, from telling him her story about her marriage and her slow rise through the journalistic ranks of the LA Times, to the various anecdotes of her week. She finally revealed a little slice-of-life picture of herself during her formative years growing up. She admitted that in high school she had been pretty much a ‘nobody'. Despite a short stint as a Girl Scout, and some extra-curricular activities she had volunteered in, she hadn't been that outgoing or popular in school. She must have been painfully shy as a child and teenager and was just now starting to blossom as an adult. Sometimes that happened.

He tried being honest with her about his life as well, but some parts were just too tough, the Butcher Case notwithstanding. There was still the issue of his first wife Shirley to deal with. He wanted to tell her about that, but he couldn't right now. He had the feeling that if he did, the same old problems would creep up again, affecting his relationship with Rachael and she would leave him just like all the other women had. He had told her about his second marriage to Diane, just enough to satisfy her curiosity, but not enough to get into the nitty gritty. And she hadn't dug too deep either, which was how he liked it.

But he wanted to tell her all this stuff, wanted to bare his soul, wanted her to know him completely. The only problem was that he didn't know how.

The Butcher case might be the first step down that long, rocky road. If he could tell her about the case, his frustrations dealing with it, the daily anecdotes that involved his day, which always involved the Butcher case, then he could feel more at ease with opening up to her. Because he would have to tell her all this stuff on the condition that she not use any of the information he told her for any newspaper piece. He felt that if he asked her this that she would be agreeable to it; after all, she had agreed that they not even talk about the case and that had been fine up till now. Daryl wanted to talk about the case now; he just didn't want her to construe their private conversations as carte blanche material for something she could write about.

“Rachael, can I ask you something?"

“Sure, love,” Rachael murmured.

He asked her. It was awkward, but he spit it out. And while his stomach was fluttering with butterflies as he asked her, afraid that she would be mad at him, she hadn't been in the least bit. She had been more than agreeable. “Oh, Daryl, of course! I can never do that to you! Never! It's against my ethics as a journalist to write about something that I know is off the record. And besides,” she added, turning his face towards hers with her fingers. “I not only respect the hell out of you, but I am crazy about you and don't want to do something that would hurt you."

Heart swelling, Daryl took her into his arms and kissed her.

They remained in each other's embrace for a moment. Then, Rachael got out of bed. “Want a drink?"

“Yeah. I could use a beer."

“Me, too. Be right back."

He watched as she strode naked out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen.

When she came back with two bottles of Corona he started telling her about his latest frustrations with the Butcher case. Rachael remained silent, listening to the story, letting him vent. It was just what Daryl felt he needed. Somebody to talk to, somebody who would listen.

Chrissy Melendez had been positively identified seven days ago, but the coroner hadn't released the information to the press until yesterday. The identification was pretty positive, despite the fact that all that they were able to find was the lower portion of the torso at Newport Beach. The Butcher Task force, in conjunction with the Newport Beach P.D. and the Orange County Sheriff, had combed the beach from Long Beach to San Diego to find the rest of the murdered girl, but no trace of her was found. Daryl and Steve, along with five other investigators had searched the area along the beach, as well as a canal in Long Beach that fed into the ocean. Daryl had even crawled through a small portion of the canal that Steve had been unable to venture into—Steve was extremely claustrophobic—and while the adventure had left Daryl muddy and scratched up, it hadn't turned up any further clues.

Likewise, his investigation into the whereabouts of Chrissy Melendez prior to her disappearance had run into a dead end. He had questioned the parents of the girl, who pointed the finger at the girl's boyfriend, twenty-year-old Rick Medina, a known drug dealer and Devil's Army Motorcycle gang member. Rick, they said, had a history of violence against Chrissy; he had something to do with her death. But Rick's story had checked out. He had an airtight alibi. Daryl and Steve had not only questioned the gang associates Rick had hung out with that day in Hollywood, but they had also interviewed the merchants at various shops they had visited on Hollywood Boulevard, all who vouched that Rick had been on Hollywood Boulevard the night Chrissy disappeared.

They had paid a visit to Maria Chavez, who ran the escort service, and despite the fact that Hollywood Vice had busted her and her girls on various prostitution charges, Maria had been more than willing to cooperate. She had provided Daryl and Steve with a list of the clients that had visited her escort service that day and they had interviewed all of them. They had even managed to question the first out-call client Chrissy had visited, but gained no further clues as to where she was going after she finished with him. All they heard was the same story: she had taken a phone call at the massage parlor of a customer requesting out-call service and Chrissy had not only volunteered to do the job, she had taken the address with her when she left. Phone records had failed to pinpoint where the call had been made from.

They got a break three days ago when Rick's car was found in San Pedro, near the shipping docks. Rick told investigating officers that he had given Chrissy his car for the day while he'd hung out with friends that day in Hollywood. It had been found parked in an alley nestled between two garbage cans, and judging from the evidence it had most likely been dropped off there not long after Chrissy disappeared. The coroner was certain that Chrissy had been killed the night she disappeared and dumped in the canal the following night after dismemberment. If that was the case, was it possible that her killer transported her remains in her boyfriend's car and that after disposing of her the killer had disposed of the car as well? It seemed likely. Working within that twenty-four hour period, the killer would know that there wouldn't be that big an effort yet in attempting to find her, but he was still taking an incredible risk in driving the car. For all he knew, the car could have been stolen. It demonstrated many things about the killer's psyche, which was beginning to intrigue Daryl.

“I've had some pretty interesting conversations with one of the FBI profilers,”

Daryl went on. “A guy named Rexer, who makes his living profiling serial cases for the FBI, looked at what we have on the Butcher and has concluded that our perpetrator is a white male, between twenty-five and forty years old. He is employed, in what kind of profession we don't know yet, but he thinks the perpetrator may have a job that gives him a lot of down time. He probably also lives alone. He would need to in order to dismember some of the bodies."

“I should think so,” Rachael quipped. “Imagine if he had a roommate. ‘Oh, don't worry, Bubba, wait until I finish cutting this girl's head off and then I'll clean the kitchen and you can cook your dinner.'” She laughed at her own little joke. Daryl chuckled along with her.

“It would prove awkward, but Rexer has told me that there have been cases in which serial killers like the Butcher have had roommates and killed people right under their noses. In some cases the roommates had knowledge of the crimes and did nothing to report it."

“What did they do?” Rachael asked, obviously stunned and sickened by the fact.

“Go along as if nothing was happening? Christ, how could you when you know your roomy is a sicko cutting people up in your own living room?

“I don't know, Rachael,” Daryl said, shaking his head. “But it has happened.

Rexer is pretty sure this guy lives alone. The fact that four of the heads haven't been found makes Rexer believe he may be keeping them as souvenirs. Plus, there's the evidence that he kept the remains of some of the victims for a considerable amount of time before discarding them. He kept the Lady of the Ocean for three months, and he kept one of the other victims for a few weeks. I think a roommate would have complained about the smell after awhile."

Rachael made a face. “I would think so."

“Rexer also thinks this guy is smart,” Daryl said. “And not just your average serial killer smarts—Rexer said most serial killers possess above average IQ's—but genuine, honest to goodness smarts."

“Like a college education?” Rachael asked.

“Like that,” Daryl said. “Or maybe Medical School."

Rachael raised an eyebrow. “This sounds interesting. The Butcher of East LA as a mad doctor."

“Or an ex-doctor,” Daryl said. “Or veterinarian, or a medical student, or a chiropractor. Here's why: the anatomical evidence clearly points to a person who had a definite knowledge of human anatomy. The decapitations are a perfect example. In all cases the head was removed cleanly, with as little as a single-stroke through the fourth and fifth central cervical vertebrae. One stroke! Think about that for a moment: a person unacquainted with basic anatomy, which includes most of us, would spend considerable time hacking away at the bones of the spinal column before the blade slipped between the discs and completed the job. But in all instances there were no nicks or cuts in the bone. It was as if the killer approached the victim from a clinical point of view."

Rachael shuddered. “That's pretty creepy."

“Of course we could be wrong,” Daryl continued. He took a swig of beer. “In fact, Rexer doesn't think the killer is a doctor, but he admits it is a possibility. A strong one. He seems to think the killer's knowledge of anatomy comes from one who has perhaps been a hunter or a butcher, one who has dressed animals out for slaughter. Or that perhaps he had committed similar murders elsewhere before coming to Los Angeles."

“Like in Indiana,” Rachael said.

“Exactly.” They sat in bed and drank silently. Daryl's thoughts were now running a mile a minute. There were so many possibilities, so many things to consider, that it was hard to pigeon-hole this killer into one category.

“Assuming everything you've told me about the psychological profile is correct,”

Rachael said, “what does Rexer think is the killer's motivation? Why gang members and their associates? Does he have a God complex, ridding society of what he feels to be vermin?"

“It's possible,” Daryl murmured. “People think Jack the Ripper may have killed prostitutes to rid London of the whores that were responsible for spreading syphilis. Other serial killers have certainly chosen victims on the basis of their own prejudices and hatred. It could very well be the case with this guy."

“Either way, the fact that he is killing gang members and is doing it so well leads me to believe something,” Rachael said.

“And what's that?"

“He lives in the area. He's very familiar with it. So familiar with it that he feels totally at ease."

Daryl nodded, sipping his beer. “I agree, and so does Rexer. His disposal of Javier Perez is a perfect example. He would have to have known that the area he dumped Perez in would have been uninhabited between the hours of two am and seven or so. Which means he is not only familiar with the area, he is well tapped into the criminal community. He could be a drug dealer or buyer, a gang member, hell he could even be a—"

“A cop?” Rachael asked.

A pit of ice dropped in Daryl's stomach. He looked at Rachael and her eyes grew wide at the sight of his face. “I didn't mean it that way,” she blurted, looking as if she was ashamed of saying the wrong thing. “It's just that..."

“What's the matter?” He asked, his heart starting to beat faster at the look on her face.

“Nothing.” She turned away from him and took a swig of beer.

“No, really.” He grabbed her arm gently, trying to get her to look at him. “What's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost."

She took a deep breath, then turned back to him. Her features were more composed now, and she attempted a smile. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I guess I just spooked myself out."

“About what?"

“By thinking out loud that the Butcher might be a cop."

The observation had scared Daryl as well. What scared him more now was her reaction to her comment shortly after she made it; how she had looked alarmed at him, as if she were looking at the devil himself rather than the man she had been dating for the past three months. “You don't think I—” he began.

She laughed. It was a half-hearted attempt at breaking the ice and relieving some of the tension that had built up. “Don't be silly,” she said, grasping his hand and locking his fingers in hers. “I don't think you're the Eastside Butcher."

“But for a moment you did,” he said, staring directly into her eyes.

She smiled at him, as if to say that the thought hadn't even entered her pretty head.

But her eyes strayed from his, riveting back to his by sheer force of will. “Not once,” she said, softly.

Daryl set his Corona down on the end table on his side of the bed, and put his arms around her. “Oh, baby, you don't have to fib to me."

“I'm not fibbing!"

“It's okay to be scared."

“But I'm not scared..."

“Rachael!” He looked at her, sternly.

Her gaze met his and this time she did a better job of meeting his. “Okay, well maybe a little."

“A little?"

She nodded, her features darkening. “God, I know it sounds awful, but..."

“But what?"

“Please don't be mad at me."

He laughed. “What could I possibly be mad at you about?"

She put her bottle down on the end table on her side of the bed. “For thinking that you could be capable of killing those people."

Daryl looked down at her, feeling such a strong emotion of love surge through him that he didn't know what to do. Part of him wanted to sweep her up in his arms and hug her, kiss her, tell her that everything would be okay. Another part of him wanted to shake her for even being so foolish. But the rational part of him told him that she wasn't being foolish. She's only known you for three months, this voice whispered in the back of his mind. Give the woman a break. She's just reacting to her strongest gut instinct. She shouldn't be ridiculed for it.

“I'm not mad at you,” he murmured.

“Are you sure?"

“God, of course, Rachael,” he said, drawing her into his arms. She went to him, head resting against his chest as he held her. He stroked her head, her shoulders. “I don't blame you for thinking what you did; it's natural. It's human to cast such suspicion. It illustrates what we're dealing with here; that the person responsible for these murders is as outwardly normal as you or I and not some slobbering, insane looking Charles Manson look-a-like. He could be the guy next door, the guy who bags your groceries or who does the tune-up on your car.” He looked out past her, over her head and into the wall. “Or like you said, even a cop."

“I only said it because I was trying to come up with the kind of people who could feel at ease in those neighborhoods,” she said against his chest. “And I thought, why not a cop? They would have a reason to do it—they think gang members and criminals like them are scum—and they could move around in those areas undetected. And they would know the daily routine of those neighborhoods. They would know that the area under the Eighty-first Street bridge is empty after two in the morning."

Rachael was right. As they sat on the bed holding each other, Daryl was suddenly aware of this one important fact: whoever killed these people had not only done what most serial killers have done in the past, but he had accomplished this with some very street savvy people. Granted, prostitutes were almost always easy prey, even the most street-wise of them, but gang members had a reputation for being killers themselves.

Most people, even other criminals, normally gave gang members or people that dressed in the baggy clothes they preferred, a wide berth when they came across them. The fact that the Eastside Butcher was targeting a group of people often hated and feared in the community gave Daryl a new insight on the psyche of this killer. It had to be somebody who was very familiar with the community. A cop would be the perfect person. Or a probation officer. Somebody the gang members trusted and saw all the time.

Daryl thought about the last time he had fucked up a gang member just for the sheer pleasure of it and winced.

“I'm sorry if I scared you,” Rachael said.

“It's okay,” Daryl said. “You got me thinking."

“About what?"

“About the kind of people who could be capable of being the Butcher.” He reached for his beer and took a sip. For the first time in his career as a detective, he was having misgivings about the way he had treated some of the gang members in the area he worked. “It would be almost poetic justice for our killer to act as a vigilante, ridding the world of society's vermin. Maybe some people think this killer is hearing the voice of God. It's certainly a thought that has come up with some of the detectives we're working with on this case. Every single victim has either been a gang member or has ties with the gangs. All with the exception of our unidentified victim from last July, and the Riverside victim whose criminal record came up filled with petty crimes. But I'll tell you one thing: he's much smarter than that. He's not targeting these people to rid the streets of crime like some vigilante.” His voice trailed as he took another sip of beer, staring out into the hall.

“He's just like all other serial killers."

“How?"

“The killings are all sexually motivated. We're dealing with a man who is possibly bisexual, according to Rexer. And he could care less about ridding the streets of the lower strata of society as so many of us would like to think. You've seen some of the recent newspaper stories? The one's that reported that over seventy percent of the population of the city thinks the police should just let this guy keep at it because he's killing the gang members and their associates?"

Rachael nodded. “I did read that. It was disgusting.” And it was. The poll created controversy among the Latino and African American population who claimed that it was another racist attempt by the city, and the press, to cast Latinos and African Americans as a bad element. More racist bullshit.

“But accurate,” Daryl said. “Face it, Rachael, to many people this guy is doing the city a favor. Hell, even most of the cops I work with are secretly applauding this guy.

They almost resent the fact that they have to track his ass down."

“And you?” She asked, her gaze more direct and demanding now. “Do you feel the same way?"

Daryl hesitated for a moment, images of putting a loaded gun to Rudy Montego's temple and forcing a murder confession out of him flitting briefly through his mind. “In a way, I do. I have my reasons for hating gang members as much as I do,” He struggled with what he wanted to say; part of him was now angry at Rachael for bringing this up.

“But I also see the internal conflicts this guy is creating in the neighborhood. That is the reason why I want to stop him. It's the reason why I am so drawn to this case. Ever since this guy started killing, the gangs have been more tense. Gang homicides have shot up by almost thirty percent. The residents of the neighborhoods are more jumpy, have become more prone to violence themselves. Just last week a homeowner in Echo Park shot and killed a teenager because he thought the kid was the Butcher. The kid had slipped into the backyard and was hiding out from a rival gang. In the dark the homeowner just...” His voice trailed slightly and he took another sip of beer. “He just couldn't tell in the dark if it was a man or not. He was scared. He fired first, asked questions later.” He turned to Rachael, feeling more tired now than he had ever felt in his career. “In a way, the aftershocks the Butcher's murders have created are worse than the actual crimes themselves.

Rachael reached out and grasped his hand.

Daryl drained the bottle dry. “But the other thing that keeps me going is knowing that he isn't simply killing to rid the city gangs. He's not on some vigilante crusade. He's a sexual sadist. He kills because he feels a tremendous desire to do so. If he wasn't killing gang members in East L.A., he'd be killing homeless men and women on skid row. I think you're right that he lives in the East Los Angeles and Echo Park areas. He's simply motivated by the same thing that motivates all serial killers: to fulfill a twisted sexual desire, to have complete control over people, to experience their deaths. This is what gets him off. He chooses his victims because they are easily accessible to him. And the reason they are so easily accessible to him is because he is literally surrounded by them because he lives within their territories."

They were silent for a moment, each one of them engaged in their own thoughts.

Rachael finished her beer. After a few minutes she got off the bed, picked up her empty bottle and took his. She went downstairs to return them to the kitchen. When she came back up she went to the bathroom. Then she returned to the bed and she slid under the covers and cuddled up next to Daryl. “Hold me,” she said. “Just hold me, Daryl."

He held her. And in time he felt sleep come over him. He reached over to the lamp on his side of the bed and turned it off. When he slid under the covers to take Rachael into his arms again, she went to him readily. They lay awake in the dark, holding each other, listening to the silence of the night broken occasionally by the sound of a car passing outside.

It took Daryl twenty minutes to fall asleep. Normally he drifted off as soon as his head hit the pillow. This time the topic of their conversation kept him awake. But he did get to sleep.

It took Rachael much longer.

Chapter 12

June 13, 1997, 11:58 am

He was hoping she was working today, and as Charley approached the window of Top's Charbroiled Hamburgers in Pico Rivera he was rewarded with his wish. The young Hispanic woman behind the window smiled as he approached the window, and Charley felt his stomach flutter as her eyes lit upon him. “How ya doing today?” she asked, chewing a wad of gum.

“Great,” he said, trying not to make it so obvious that he was blushing. Jesus Christ, he was a grown man! Why did he still find himself so tongue-tied around beautiful women? “How about yourself?"

“Same ol’ same ‘ol,” she answered. She had a pronounced barrio accent. “You know how it is."

“You got that right."

“So whatcha gonna have today? The usual?"

“I think I'll forgo the usual and order one of your Caesar salads with a large coke."

The girl raised an eyebrow and appeared to appraise him from behind the counter.

“Gee, honey, you trying to go on a diet or somethin'? Our burgers ain't good enough for you?"

Charley felt himself blush again, but came to his senses as she laughed heartily.

He smiled, the nervous twinge that had started to rise at her answer evaporating. She was just joking. Carmen Aguirre was always kidding around with him.

He had been eating at Top's Charbroiled Burgers for the past three months now, ever since Carmen Aguirre started working behind the counter as a cashier. She was simply the most gorgeous woman Charley had ever met: she stood about five foot four, had a curvy figure, and a buxom chest. She favored tasteful clothing that was sexy and tasteful. Today she was dressed in faded Levi's blue jeans that clung to her legs and thighs and a red long sleeved shirt pulled up and tied at the waist showing off her tan belly, the neckline showing a swell of bosom. Carmen's hair was dark brown and shoulder length, her eyes brown, her nose small, cheekbones high. Her mouth was complimented by full lips. In short, Carmen Aguirre was a goddess.

He got the impression at times that Carmen knew he had a crush on her. He could tell by the way she talked to him, the way she would flirt with him a little as he ate at one of the tables—sometimes she would join him on a break while he ate—or the way she joked around with him. Women in general didn't joke around with him. He didn't know why. He supposed he might be a turn-off for many women. It was painful to admit, but he could see why some women would find him repulsive: he was quiet, kept to himself, did his work quickly and thoroughly, and didn't draw much attention to himself. There was his physical appearance, too, which probably didn't help much. But the clincher was most likely his sense of humor and personality, which he always tried to rein in. When conversation at work turned to personal things, Charley was always more than eager to pipe in his opinions or share his interest in reading and films. In fact, it was probably his vast knowledge of various film and literary trivia that turned a lot of women off, as well as finding out that he still lived at home with his mother. Most people referred to people like Charley as a Mama's boy.

But I'm not a Mama's boy, he thought. I'm not, and I'll show them.

“Well?"

Carmen's voice snapped Charley back to the present and he looked at her, noting that she was waiting for him with hands on hips. Her big brown eyes had that well, what are you waiting for? look. Charley tried to laugh it off. “Yeah, I guess I am on a diet,” he said.

“That's better."

“Why do you want to know?"

“Why wouldn't I?” she asked, writing his order down on a pad and tearing it off.

She handed it to one of the cooks and turned back to him. “After all, you're one of my favorite customers. Here at Top's we show concern for our customers."

“That's nice to know,” Charley said, smiling. He was feeling better now.

Carmen handed him a ticket stub. “You're number eighty-four. I'll get your coke."

Charley moved aside as Carmen went to the coke machine to get his drink. The main lunch rush had already put in their orders and most of them were seated at the dozen tables inside the fast food restaurant. Charley knew that another bigger rush would probably be descending on the little eating establishment in the next fifteen minutes when the workforce of Donnelly, which was across the street, took their lunch break. He turned back to the counter just as Carmen approached with his coke. She smiled. “You eating here?"

“Yeah,” he said.

“Have anything planned for the weekend?” She asked. “Going to party?"

“Oh, I don't know,” he said. “We'll see. What about you?"

“Don't know yet. Try to see what's going down, I guess."

“What do you normally like to do on weekends?"

She shrugged. “The usual. Hang out with my girlfriends, go to parties, go dancing.

Sometimes go to movies."

“Ah, you like movies.” Say the word “movies” and Charley's interest piqued.

“What kind of movies do you like?"

Carmen laughed. “You're gonna laugh, but the kind of movies I like are not the kind of movies girls usually like."

“I won't laugh,” Charley said, grinning wide. “Promise."

She seemed to consider this, her brown eyes searching his for the truth to this answer. He held her gaze, his heart beating. “Okay,” she said. “I'll tell you. But you're not going to believe it."

“If you tell me the kind of movies you like, I'll tell you the kind of movies I like,”

Charley said, smiling.

“Okay.” Carmen smiled, leaning over the counter. “I like the shoot-em-up kind of movies. The kind where there are a lot of car chases that end in explosions and a lot of car crashes and a lot of high powered gun-fire happening throughout the movie where bullets tear everything apart, and where people get killed left and right. I like the kind of movies that pick up fast and don't let up, the kind where the action goes faster and faster until the end. I like movies that are filled with suspense, that keep me on the edge of my seat, but that are also funny and make me laugh, as well as cringe in fear and suspense. I like movies where the bad guys are going to do something really horrible, like blow up the world or kill a lot of people or ... something really bad, you know? And then the good guy, somebody like Bruce Willis or Arnold Shwarzenegger, comes in and saves the day but in the meantime the movie is filled with everything I just described."

“And no love scenes?” Charley asked, grinning.

Carmen laughed. “Well, maybe one. There has to be a beautiful girl in the movie who is the hero's love interest. Isn't that the recipe for successful movies nowadays? Sex and violence?"

“I suppose it is,” Charley said.

“So what kind of movies do you like?” Carmen asked. She was still leaning over the counter, eager to engage him in conversation.

“The same kinds as you,” Charley said. “And other kinds."

“Oh, other kinds!” She raised her eyebrows, her tone of voice flirtatious. Charley almost blushed again. “What other kinds of movies?"

Charley shifted his feet and was about to answer when his number was called.

Carmen got his order and set it in front of him. She smiled at him, her big brown eyes hinting that she was eager to perhaps keep the conversation going. “Well, here's your order. I should get back to work. Maybe you can tell me what kind of movies you like next time."

“Sure,” Charley said, taking the tray from her. Then before he could stop himself, he said it: “Maybe we can go to a movie together someday."

There. He had said it. It had come out so naturally that he didn't even have time to stop it, but now that it was out he couldn't very well reel it in. He bit his tongue, trying hard not to wince as he managed a weak smile. Carmen's facial expressions didn't change, but the chuckle that welled from her sounded like it was tinged with a sense of superiority, as if to say me go out with you? Not on your life, pal.

Instead, all she said was “Maybe. It might be fun."

But the tone of her voice suggested otherwise.

Charley smiled weakly and took his tray to one of the rear tables. His hands were shaking so badly by the time he reached the table that he almost dropped his tray. He sank down into the booth and forced himself to look down at his food. His hands were shaking and he could feel himself growing flush with embarrassment. Why did I ask her out like that? Why don't I ever think before opening my big, fat mouth? He hadn't meant to blurt that out the way he had, and now that it had happened he wished he could just crawl into a hole and die. To think that her seemingly kind attitude toward him bespoke genuine interest in him was absurd. She was too good for him—she was beautiful, young, probably had scores of attention of many young men who were more sure of themselves and knew how to handle themselves around women. Charley wouldn't stand up to a normal man by a long shot. So why did he suddenly think he had a shot at going out with such a beautiful woman as Carmen?

He opened the plastic container that held his salad and started eating. He avoided looking at the front counter. Already the sounds of voices and motion from the front was telling him that more people had arrived to have lunch at Top's, and Carmen was probably taking orders. The more he tried to put Carmen out of his mind and concentrate on his lunch, the more her laughter rose in his mind; the way she had responded when he asked her to a movie had cut into him like a knife. The tone of voice she had used when she answered him was like all the others: she no doubt saw him as a sad, pathetic little man who was beneath her. And that made him angry. It was always this way. Women always found him repulsive, no matter how nice he was or how much he tried to be helpful and respectful. It just wasn't fair. What did he ever do to deserve this?

As he ate the scenarios crept into his mind. He pictured himself in his room with Carmen. She was naked and he was fucking her as she screamed and begged for mercy.

The fantasy unwound in his mind as he ate silently.

Carmen trembling before him as he advanced toward her. Begging for mercy.

Charley shifted in his seat as he ate. He had a raging hard-on.

As much as he hated himself for harboring these feelings towards women, despite deep-down only wanting Carmen to like him and want him as a real man, Charley went home that night harboring dark thoughts.

Chapter 13

July 17, 1997, 2:43 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA

They had just made a raid on a residence in Echo Park in search of a suspect. They had burst into the house, warrants in hand, a dozen officers and FBI agents participating, and they had taken the occupants by surprise. Daryl had orchestrated the raid himself, and now as the officers and FBI agents worked on herding everybody in the house into the living room to take a head count, Daryl quickly saw that they were missing a person.

Chiefly, a member of Tortilla Flats who lived here with the man they had a warrant for.

Daryl pulled his service revolver and caught Steve Howe's attention. He motioned toward the rear of the house. “Cover me,” he said.

Steve pulled his weapon, and together the two men worked their way to the back of the house, quickly inspecting rooms they had already checked out. When they had first burst in they'd quickly gone through these rooms and rousted everybody out, but in all the confusion they thought they had everybody. Apparently that wasn't the case.

There were two bedrooms in the back. They checked the north bedroom and as Steve covered him, Daryl went to the closet and opened the door suddenly, gun out and ready. The closet was empty. He checked the window; it was closed.

They moved to the next bedroom. Checked it out. Moved to the closet.

With Steve covering him, Daryl flung the door open.

Furtive movement in the closet almost made Steve squeeze his trigger finger.

Daryl barked at the man inside: “Stop moving and put your hands on your head.” The figure inside stopped moving but made no move to put his hands on his head. Now Daryl could make out the figure in the closet. It was the Tortilla Flats gang member he was hoping would be in here. Rodrigo Arroyo, age thirty-eight. Released on parole almost two years ago after having served twelve years of a fifteen years to life sentence for second degree murder and armed robbery. Daryl knew Arroyo's record well.

He had memorized it.

Rodrigo's face had been imprinted on his face ever since that fateful day when Shirley was taken from him.

The face that turned to peer up at him was older than the one he remembered from fourteen years ago, the one that had leered at him as he was pulled from his car in that nightmare, but it was still the same face. It had more scars on it, more worn and weather-beaten from the hard life lived. But the same face nonetheless. A face that didn't deserve to remain intact anymore.

“Hold still, motherfucker,” Daryl muttered, aiming his weapon at Rodrigo Arroyo's face. His finger closed over the trigger and for a moment time stood still as he stood over the cowering man who had hidden in the closet during the mid-afternoon raid.

The last fourteen years flashed before him; the crime that had created the undying hate for Rodrigo's kind—gang members that murdered innocent people; the crime that had taken his wife and unborn baby, the anguish he had felt for months, years on end, the pain he had lived with, the pain others had experienced because of this man and others like him.

He had waited so long for this moment.

The room grew tense. Daryl felt as if he was in a vacuum. His mind focused on the man cowering before him, staring at him with eyes that showed no signs of recognition. The bastard doesn't even recognize me!

Daryl's finger tightened on the trigger.

Steve Howe's voice burned in his mind as he spoke behind him. “I wouldn't shoot him if I were you, pal. We got a dozen FBI agents here and we don't want them involved.

Get the motherfucker out now and we'll deal with his ass later. Let's not fuck things up now, okay?"

It was that which cut through Daryl's system and snapped him out of his haze. He blinked back the fantasy of Rodrigo Arroyo's splattered brains on the back wall of the closet and took a deep breath, composing himself. Steve was beside him a moment later, gun trained on Arroyo. “Get your fucking wetback ass out of that closet now! Put your hands out and over your head and crawl out of that closet on your knees, motherfucker.

Do it now!"

Rodrigo Arroyo was shaking in fear. He complied, his limbs trembling. Daryl took another deep breath, refocusing his attention: place Arroyo in custody with the rest of the home's occupants in the living room and let the FBI handle the processing. He walked toward the wall quickly and turned back as Rodrigo finally made his way out of the closet. He lay flat on his stomach at Steve's instruction, and Daryl kept his piece trained on him as Steve quickly slapped the cuffs on and hauled him to his feet.

“Remember me?” Daryl said, approaching Arroyo. The suspect only looked at Daryl as he shook his head mutely.

“Then remember this,” Daryl said, driving a fist hard into Rodrigo's groin, crushing his testicles. Rodrigo doubled over in pain, gasping for breath. Steve cast a warning glance at him and Daryl met his gaze. Don't fuck with me on this. Steve looked away and led Rodrigo out of the room, who was doubled over gasping for breath, paralyzed with pain.

Leaving Daryl in the back bedroom. Alone.

And seething with rage.

God, he had wanted to pump all twelve rounds of his magazine into that pathetic piece of shit. How he had wanted to drag that bastard out of the closet and personally beat his skull in with his bare hands. He felt such immense rage and hatred now, that he wanted to go somewhere and vent. The pressure was building. With the Butcher case going nowhere, with everybody chasing their own goddamned tails, his relationship with Rachael all fucked up—she had recently told him she thought they needed a break from each other, can you fucking believe that?—and now finally seeing that long ago hated face of Rodrigo Arroyo, Daryl had to vent. He couldn't go back out on the streets and pick on some puny gang banger like he used to. The department was really starting to crack down on cops who abused civilians, and Daryl had already come close to being investigated once. He had to be careful now, but goddamn, he had to let all the rage and pain and hate out somehow—

“Daryl, you still back there?” Steve's voice, calling back to him. Daryl bristled at the sound of it, but deep down he knew Steve was simply looking out for him. He took a deep breath to compose himself, replaced his piece in his holster and headed out the room to join the rest of the Task Force in the living room.

Detective Daryl Garcia had just gotten back to Parker Center and was just about to sit down at his desk when Sergeant Dickinson called him. “Garcia! I need to see you please."

The tone of voice that Sergeant Dickinson used told Daryl that he meant business.

He wanted to see Daryl right now.

His mind still on the raid and his confrontation with Rodrigo Arroyo, Daryl headed toward Dickinson's office. The Sergeant looked up from his desk as Daryl entered. “Close the door, please."

Daryl closed the door, a small sliver of worry in his gut. He crossed over to a chair and sat down in front of Dickinson's desk. The hairs along the back of his neck crept up; it felt that everybody was watching them through the glass walls of Dickinson's office.

Private meetings behind closed doors with Sergeant Dickinson usually meant only one thing: you were fucked.

Sergeant Dickinson looked across his paper littered desk with red rimmed eyes.

He was a big man, with a barrel chest, a square jaw, and a crew cut that was rapidly turning gray. Prior to joining the LAPD, he had served in the Army and had done two tours of duty in Vietnam. He had brought his military expertise to the LAPD and he ran his division like a drill sergeant as well. Some of the other guys in the department thought Dickinson was a hard ass, but he wasn't any more strict than other supervisors Daryl had had in the past. It took a hard ass to do the job well.

“Do the names Rudy Montego and Frankie Rodriguez mean anything to you, Daryl?” Dickinson looked at him with cold, gray eyes.

Daryl felt his stomach sink. He tried to keep his composure strong in Dickinson's presence, but his heart was hammering hard in his chest. “Of course,” he said slowly.

“Steve and I busted them last year for the murder of that little girl in Echo Park. It was a drive-by thing, they—"

“I already know the case, Garcia, spare me the explanation.” Dickinson leaned back with a scowl. He looked pissed off. “What I don't seem to understand is why these two young men would suddenly level charges of police brutality against you and your partner? And furthermore, that you had planted evidence which implicates them in this crime!"

Daryl felt his blood boil and he fought to control himself. He felt that everything was falling apart around him. He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the uphill battle.

He managed a smile. “I'm surprised at you, Dickinson. You actually believe a couple of twice convicted felons?"

“In this case, I don't know what to believe,” Dickinson said, his voice gritty. “All I know is that after sitting in the LA County Jail for almost a year, the DA has decided that they can't prosecute this case because they feel there is not enough evidence to convict.

Furthermore, defense attorneys for both defendants have brought it to our attention that the only reason they were singled out for the crime was because they bore a slight resemblance to the actual killer, that you—"

“There's more than that, Dickinson, and you know it,” Garcia said, feeling his blood boil. “They were picked out of line-ups by three witnesses to the shooting, the spent casings matched the gun found in their apartment, physical evidence in the vehicle they used to commit the shooting matches the crime, and—"

“They say you beat a confession out of them and that you planted a gun on them,”

Dickinson said, his square jaw set in anger.

Daryl sighed. “Look, they came at us, Dickinson. Yeah we might have roughed them up a little bit, but they resisted arrest, one of them actually assaulted Steve, and yeah, we bashed them a bit to get them under control. What the hell did you expect us to do?"

“I expect you to follow department procedure and give people the respect they deserve when they are being placed in custody!” Dickinson thundered. “I do not need a bunch of rogue cops in my department!"

“Rogue cops, huh? You think I like kicking ass on gang members because I ain't got nothing better to do?"

“I don't know what to believe,” Dickinson said, his face turning red. “But I do know that in the last year-and-a-half, I've received more complaints about you abusing people in your charge than any other officer in the field."

“Really? Why is this the first I've heard of this?” In reality, Daryl was only aware of one complaint against him, but that was three years ago and Dickinson had told him privately that the charges in question were bogus and that they weren't being pursued.

Daryl believed, however, that Dickinson knew he got medieval on some gang members asses at times, but looked the other way. Why he was suddenly confronting Daryl with this now was beyond him.

Dickinson leaned over the desk, his voice lowered. “The reason I haven't slapped your ass with charges before this is because I like you, Garcia. You're a hell of a detective. I respect the hell out of you, and the work you've done for the department has been exceptional. I've done all I can to cover your ass, but I can't do it anymore. I've got the DA breathing down my neck to have you brought up on charges of criminal abuse and—"

“You can't be serious?” Daryl suddenly felt sick.

“You bet your ass I'm serious!” Dickinson hissed. He jabbed a finger at Daryl.

“They're royally pissed at you and Steve, and for good reason, too. You and I both know that you kicked the shit out of those two punks to get them to confess to the crime. I know you planted that gun on Rudy, too. Despite the fact that the evidence you presented is a clear match to the crime, the fact is that the tactics you used in apprehending them is a clear violation of their rights as—"

Daryl felt himself growing angrier by the minute. “What about the rights of that little girl who got her head blown off while she was sitting in her fucking living room!"

“I understand how you feel about the victim, Daryl,” Dickinson said, less intense now then before. “Believe me, I'd like to see nothing more to have those two little bastards locked away to rot forever. But there is protocol we have to follow, or the DA can't do a thing about it. When they started looking at the evidence, they found that they could probably convict. But when it came to their testimony on how they were apprehended, it differed vastly from your deposition. At first they didn't say anything, but later after some encouragement they told us what really happened back at Rudy's apartment. Then it all fit."

Daryl felt himself sinking. First Rachael telling him she wanted to take a break in their relationship a few weeks ago, then almost blowing up at that raid when he finally saw Rodrigo Arroyo for the first time in God knew how long, and now this. He felt that his entire world was collapsing around him. “What happens now?"

Dickinson regarded him from behind the massive desk. “I don't know. Technically I should put you on administrative leave, but with this Butcher thing going on I can't lose you. We're short on men as it is, and you're one of my best detectives. I just wish to God you had used better judgement last year in following up on the Montego lead."

“What's done is done,” Daryl said, his voice hollow and empty. Time to face the music. “If you want me to turn in my badge now, I will."

“You know I don't want that,” Dickinson said, leaning forward again, his face serious. “What I do want is for you to lay low. Let me talk to the DA. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to tell them, but I'll think of something. I can't have you taken off the Butcher case—you guys are doing a great job on that, and I can't even begin to think of who I'd replace you with. The FBI guys really like you, and I want to keep that working relationship between the Feds and us open. Is that clear?"

Daryl nodded.

“For now, lay low. Rudy and Frankie just got released three days ago, and the DA is dropping charges against them. I've got to try to convince them not to press charges against you and Steve. In the meantime, there is the possibility of a civil suit against you and Steve for this little stunt."

Daryl raised his eyebrows. “I didn't know street hoodlums retained high-priced lawyers."

“Can the bullshit, Garcia. Their defense attorneys will only be too happy to refer them to some ambulance chaser that will sue you at the drop of a hat. Frankly, I'm surprised you haven't been sued before."

“Just my luck I guess,” Daryl mumbled.

“And just your luck that I'm stepping up to bat for you again,” Dickinson said. He leaned back in his chair. “Lay low, Garcia. Not a word of this to anybody. I'm keeping you on this Butcher thing until it's over, and when that happens we'll talk."

Daryl stood up and headed for the door. “Thanks."

“Oh, and Daryl?"

“Yeah?"

“Send Steve in here, please."

With a heavy feeling in his chest, Daryl exited Dickinson's office and headed toward his desk, feeling lucky that he wasn't being fired, but at the same time feeling a huge sense of despair.

Chapter 14

Night.

With the smell of blood in the air, he took a deep breath, willing the trembling in his body to calm down.

The trembling in his limbs was of both excitement and fear.

He had gone and done it again.

Stretched out on the floor of the bathtub before him was the body of a male Hispanic with dark black tattoos along his chest and arms. He had engaged the man in conversation earlier that evening—had used the same technique in getting this man to feel comfortable enough to come to his home in fact—and when the man had been good and intoxicated, he had struck. In fact, he had struck when the man was in a very prone position; on his knees in the bathroom, vomiting in the toilet.

They had both been drinking. That much was evident. He had tried holding back on the drinking, but his victim had insisted they keep drinking up, and persisted in pouring shots of Tequila for the both of them. He had complied and now he was reeling from the affects. It was a wonder he had been coordinated enough to carry out his plans.

As it stood, he almost didn't get his chance. He kept waiting for a chance to emerge, but none came until his host became ill and stumbled toward the bathroom. That was when he knew he had to act.

He had followed his guest in the bathroom with the butcher knife behind his back.

Bent over the porcelain toilet bowl heaving his guts out, his victim didn't have a chance. He stepped behind him as he was vomiting into the toilet. With a quick motion he grabbed the man's head with his left hand, pulling it toward him to expose the throat, and with the right hand drew the knife across the tight skin, spilling blood into the toilet bowl and down the front of the man's white t-shirt. The man immediately began to flay in pain.

He tried to scream, but the first cut had been precise, severing the carotid artery, jugular vein, and the larynx. He had leaned into him, holding him in position over the toilet as he flayed weakly beneath him, his lifeblood running out of him and into the toilet. A minute later he stopped moving.

After the man was dead he went into the kitchen and brewed a strong pot of coffee. He was almost falling down drunk, but thankfully he didn't feel sick or dizzy. Just off kilter, his equilibrium shot to hell. He had to sober up if he wanted to continue without the smell of blood making him sick.

So he had sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and thinking back on the man in the bathroom he had just killed.

He had been doing some grocery shopping when he saw him. His victim had made eye contact with him and smiled, and that smile was recognizable. It was a smile of flirtation. He had smiled back and engaged the man in conversation. After they had made their purchases and were standing outside the grocery store he had made his pitch: come on over to the house. We'll party. It was the perfect opportunity and his victim had taken it.

The minute they had gotten to the house, his victim had made a fumbling advance to him. He had engaged the man in light foreplay, rubbing his crotch as they kissed. The man's beard stubble rubbed against his cheek, feeling rough and grainy on his skin. When the man tried to remove his shirt he had backed off, suggesting they drink a little first.

The man had been only too eager to comply.

Between drinks they had paused for more light foreplay. They had given each other oral pleasure. They had kissed some more. And they had drank some more. And the more they drank, the easier it became to control his victim.

Except for the two hours it had taken to get his victim intoxicated enough to let down his guard, the evening had gone perfectly. All he had to do now was sober up and continue.

He drank two cups of coffee before attempting to go back into the bathroom and deal with what he had started. When he rose to his feet he did so with a steady gait. He didn't wobble or lurch drunkenly, although he still felt drunk. He felt strong enough to continue, so he walked back into the bathroom and started to work.

Now with the body stripped in the bathtub, he paused to survey his handiwork. He had stripped down himself and had already cut his victim's head off, which rested in the sink. Most of the man's blood had splashed into the toilet, which he flushed away.

Therefore, when he began cutting there wasn't much blood to deal with.

The need to take some more drinks while he engaged in his fantasy hit him and he indulged. He brought the almost empty bottle of Tequila in the bathroom and took swigs from it as he worked. It helped tip him back into drunkenness as his mind and body swam with lust.

His vision blurred from the effects of alcohol, he nonetheless began to get aroused.

He continued to be fully aroused as he bent down over the bathtub and immersed himself in his fantasy.

Daryl Garcia sat in front of his desk with two big files in front of him. It had been a long day, but his work was far from over.

It was two days after the Echo Park raid and his talk with Sergeant Dickinson. He and Steve Howe had just wrapped up their preliminary investigation into the latest discovery of the Eastside Butcher case, which was already making headlines on the local news broadcasts. The raid from two days ago and the evidence taken from it, had amounted to nothing except jailing three of the individuals rounded up on various parole violation charges, including Rodrigo Arroyo. Reporters from all over the country were now calling Parker Center begging for information on the latest murder. Public Relations held them off for as long as possible; all they released was that another body was found near the vicinity of the Los Angeles River and that it was still too early to tell if it was the work of the Butcher. Daryl, of course, knew differently.

The body that they found was no doubt the work of the Butcher. He was sure of that, despite the curious mutilation that had been performed on the corpse.

A little before seven o'clock this morning, a warehouse worker had called the police to say that he saw two burlap bags resting along the runoff of the LA River. The river, which cut a wide swath through the middle of Los Angeles and ended at the harbor in San Pedro, was dissected by numerous smaller flood channels that cut through various parts of the city. Most of the water ran through underground pipes and currents, but some were constructed deep into the floor of the Los Angeles basin, their concrete walls high and running wide. Most of the time the bottom was barren in the summer, but on occasion there was enough water running down to allow for it to run along at a brisk pace. The water was at this level when the warehouse worker, suspicious of two burlap bags at the bottom of the river, phoned the police.

Upon arriving at the scene, officers fished the bags out of the drainage ditch with the help of two employees from the Department of Sanitation. When they opened the bags they called Parker Center to have somebody from the Butcher Task Force be sent out pronto.

Daryl had been driving to the office when the call came through. Hank Wilkson called Daryl on his cellular phone and told him to get his ass over to Seventy-first and Avalon immediately. Daryl was the first detective from the Butcher Task Force on the scene.

What the officers had pulled out of the drainage ditch was the remains of a man in two burlap bags. Each bag contained one half of the man's torso, minus the arms, legs and head. One of the torso halves was wrapped in pages from the Los Angeles Times from two weeks ago.

When Steve Howe joined them thirty minutes later, the area was already being scoured by other members of the Task Force and other police officers. A search was launched immediately for the missing body parts, and when the drainage ditch was found to contain no further remains, orders were issued to begin searching the drainage ditches that fed into the one on Eighty-First and Avalon. A search of the LA River was launched as well, since it was initially surmised that the killer might have dumped the remains into the river where they would have drifted downstream and eventually into one of the drainage ditches. Or so the theory went.

The press descended on the scene like vultures to a kill made by a lion. Daryl found himself scouring the faces of reporters and television news people for Rachael, but he didn't see her. She was probably at her office. No doubt she had heard about the discovery on the police scanner but she was staying away. He hoped it was still out of respect for him and their relationship and not because she was slipping away from him as he feared.

He knew that he was slipping back into a quagmire of self-defeat. It was a familiar pattern whenever he became romantically involved with a woman; he began thinking about his life with Shirley and he would start missing her something incredible. Then inevitably, his mind would start tracking on the current relationship he was in: suppose she is taken from me the way Shirley was? Suppose I fall wholly and completely in love with this woman and she leaves me, or betrays me somehow? Suppose I get hurt again? It was these fears of being hurt which was what made him retreat from the intimacy in the relationships until they eventually burned themselves out. He thought he had the problem fixed from the therapy he endured and the lessons learned from his marriage to Diana, but apparently that wasn't the case.

He had started feeling them again with Rachael. Almost two months ago.

He had finally told Rachael about what had happened with Shirley because she sensed there was something he was hanging onto. And she had come up with a suggestion: why don't they cool off from each other for a few weeks? Not cut each other off completely, just stop seeing each other for awhile. The suggestion came as a total surprise to Daryl, and he immediately thought that Rachael was ending their relationship.

She had assured him that she wasn't, but it took him a while before he realized that not all was lost. He had reluctantly agreed, and the more he thought about it, the better he felt.

He needed to get his shit together. He loved Rachael very much and he had to deal with the problems that continued to drag him down. He had to get help. Somehow.

For the first week of the separation he was a nervous wreak. All he could think about was Rachael. Paranoid thoughts crept into his brain: she was seeing another man, she hated him, she was planning on leaving him. But the thing that blew those theories out of the water was her efforts at staying in touch with him. She called him every other day just to say hello. And a week into their self-imposed separation she had sent him a bouquet of flowers and a card. The card was in her handwriting. It read I miss you and think of you every day. That simple sentence made his heart swell, and he knew that he had really found love again. He wasn't going to let anything destroy it.

He was more confident now that maybe their little separation was helping their relationship after all. In the last week he wasn't as stressed out as he had been.

Daryl smiled. Things were looking bright indeed.

“Detective Garcia?"

The sound of his name being called snapped him back to the present and the case at hand. He turned toward the sound of the voice. It was FBI Agent Bernie Haskins, one of the Butcher Task Force members. He had been back at the FBI Headquarters in Virginia for the past week and had been due back in Los Angeles sometime that week.

Guess today was that day.

“Haskins, how's it hanging?” Daryl asked, straightening up in his chair.

“Not bad.” Haskins found an empty chair, pulled it out and sat down, facing the back of the chair, arms over the top of it. He looked at Daryl wearily. “Heard you found another one today."

“Yeah,” Daryl said, motioning to the stack of paperwork on his desk. “Steve is helping me with this paperwork. I swear, the thing that gets to me the most about this goddamn thing is the paperwork involved."

“It's an annoying part of the job,” Haskins said, sighing. “So what's the scoop? All I heard was that it's pretty much the same ol’ same ‘ol. That the guy was pretty much found scattered in pieces along a drainage ditch."

“Well it's not that cut and dried,” Daryl said. He gave him a brief re-cap of his day, Haskins nodding along at all the appropriate parts. “As of now no word has come in if the rest of him has been found."

Haskins whistled. “Damn. Any I.D. on the body yet?"

“None. But he looks like a gang member. His chest and torso sport gang tattoos."

Haskins nodded. “Yep, he's really following his pattern. We pretty much thought he'd strike again after the body of that woman was found last week."

Daryl's mind flashed back to last week. On the warm Sunday morning of July 6, a fourteen-year-old boy walking to his grandmother's house in Echo Park stumbled over a skull in the middle of a well worn path in the field. The boy had run to his grandmother's house and told her of his find. The woman phoned the police. When officers arrived they found the skull exactly where the boy said it was. Approximately twenty yards from the skull, partially hidden in some bushes, was the rotting remains of a burlap bag and the skeletal remains of a woman inside it. Pages from the Los Angeles Times dated June 5, 1996 and the LA XPress were wrapped around portions of the corpse (rotted flesh still clung to some of the body parts, causing more than a few officers to lose their lunch when they found her). Fragments of a black leather mini-skirt and black fishnet stockings were found twenty feet away, along with tangled strands of black hair.

The remains had turned out to be that of an African American woman named Rosie Williams who had disappeared a year earlier around July 19. She had been a call girl who advertised in the LA X-Press. A check with the advertising department of the paper discovered that Rosie had been a client for over a year. At the time of her disappearance, investigators attempting to trace her whereabouts had gone through her normal client list and interviewed them about a dozen times, also going through the list of friends and acquaintances and fellow call girls. Every lead had turned into a dead end.

Her friends and relatives hinted that she might have skipped town; at the time of her disappearance, she had been the subject of harassment from several johns who were stalking her and she had spoken about dropping out of sight for awhile and relocating.

But even if she had done that she would have let her close family and friends know where she had gone. After awhile they had begun to suspect foul play on the part of these intimidating johns, but a thorough investigation of her client list exonerated all the men she had done business with. Attempts to trace her the night she was last seen went nowhere. A neighbor recalled seeing her leave her apartment around 9:30 on the evening of July 17, dressed in a tight black mini-skirt and black fishnet stockings, black high heel pumps and a white halter top, hair and make-up done up for business. The neighbor knew what Rosie did for a living and figured she was simply on her way out to earn some money. Nobody saw where she went.

Nobody saw her come back.

Cause of death was uncertain, but it had been determined that Rosie had been neatly dismembered. Traces of lime were also detected that might have hastened the corpse's deterioration. The bones of the legs and arms were missing, but the rest were present except for a single rib. None of Rosie Williams’ other remains were found.

When the remains were initially identified, the hierarchies of the LAPD refused to include Rosie Williams in the murder cycle. Daryl and Bernie Haskins demurred and insisted she be included in the murder cycle. Rosie Williams had no ties to street gangs, which differed from the MO thus far, but the rest of the evidence was overwhelmingly that she had been a victim of the Butcher. Plus, Rosie Williams’ remains were disposed of in a vacant lot in Echo Park, within the same twenty block radius of the other murders and discovery sites.

“Remember when Rosie Williams was found how some of your pals here thought she wasn't part of the series?” Bernie Haskins continued, an inflection of contempt in his voice at his mention of the LAPD. “You and I were smarter than that. We knew this guy had killed her. And remember our talk that night at dinner?"

“Right,” Daryl was nodding now. They had gone out to eat at a Chili's Bar and Grill and had talked all night about the recent discovery. “You thought that our man had hung on to Rosie for as long as he could and that disposing her signaled that he was tiring of her and getting ready for another. In essence, he was going through the cycle again, reaching the low point of his psychosis and gearing up for the high point."

“Right.” That night they had talked about the “cooling off” periods exhibited by serial killers when they were calm and in control after a kill, using the high from the murder and the memories preserved from it to live it over and over, sometimes helped by something personal they had taken from the victim. In this case, the actual victim. They had also talked about the “upswing,” when the killer started warming up for the next kill, getting antsy, anxious to begin anew. It was much like a junkie yearning for his next fix.

“I told you, ‘you watch,'” Bernie said, jabbing a finger at Daryl behind the desk.

“'He just dumped this one and he's obviously had her for a while. Maybe he wanted a little variety with this one, found her in the LA XPress, called her up and she came over.

Women like her are easy prey for predators like our guy. So he kills her. Jacks off to her dismembered corpse, gets his jollies off, whatever. Something about her appeals to him very strongly and he decides to keep this one to relive the fantasy over and over again.

Why, I have no fucking idea. Maybe she gives head just as good dead as she did when she was alive. And then a few months later he kills Charley Ramirez. Only he doesn't hang onto him for no more than a day or two. He does that with all the men he's killed with the exception of that first one—what's his name?"

“Lorenzo Cardenia,” Daryl said.

“Right,” Bernie Haskins said. “He kept the body of the Lady of the Ocean for three months, and she was most likely the first kill that he felt very comfortable with.

Then he kills Lorenzo and keeps him for a few weeks. Shortly before he dumps Lorenzo, he bags Louis Hernandez. He dumps Louis and Lorenzo at the same time. Why he didn't keep Louis around longer, I don't know. Louis was a good looking kid."

Daryl nodded. Louis’ mug shots had showed an incredibly handsome Latino, one that certainly would cause many female hearts to swoon.

“Then in January he kills Gloria Aldrette,” Bernie continued. “And while he didn't keep her for as long as the Lady of the Ocean, he dismembered her in the exact same manner. Then he kills Javier Perez and dumps him a day later, then he kills that other still-unidentified man that was found in the San Gabriel Mountains. Then there is the remains of Phillip Parker, who was found decapitated in that boxcar in Riverside in June of last year. All the men up to this time, I might add, have only been decapitated, not dismembered. Two of them were further emasculated."

“Then he kills Rosie,” Daryl said, his mind tracking down the murder series.

“Right,” Bernie said, emphasizing the point by slapping his hand against the back of the chair lightly. “He kills Rosie Williams and instead of dumping her a day later like he's done since Gloria Aldrette, he keeps her. Then he gets a taste for male flesh and kills Charley Ramirez. But the point is this: around February he starts growing a little tired of her, starts to yearn for something more familiar. Up till now, all his victims have been local Hispanics, with the exception of our still-unidentified San Gabriel man who was most likely Caucasian, and Rosie, and quite possibly the black victim from ‘89. Anyway, he plucks this Chrissy girl off the street. That's a little more to his taste. It satiates him enough so that he's able to relive that fantasy with Rosie, who is probably by now a bag of bones and putrefying flesh."

Daryl made a face. Picturing how it was for this guy was only too revolting.

“He's been slowing down because he's had Rosie to help him re-live the fantasy for awhile. But now she's gone, no use to him anymore. He dumps her remains, and begins working on planning his next. He hasn't had a man in nine months, at least as far as we can tell. So he kills this guy a few nights ago."

Daryl was nodding to Bernie's analysis and now he had a thing to add himself.

“And because he hasn't had a man in almost nine months, and hasn't made a kill in almost five months, he's excited. The lust is too strong for him. He can't control himself, he is immersed in the lust of his perversity."

Bernie was nodding, getting into it. “Yeah."

“He's so into this sick, twisted fantasy of his that it boils over,” Daryl said, regarding Bernie, waiting for the reaction. “And this time he gives in to the impulse.

After decapitating this victim, he not only disembowels him and removes all his internal organs, but he cuts through the victim's rib cage with one single, decisive stroke and rips out the victim's heart with his bare hands."

Bernie's mouth dropped open, his eyes wide with shock. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered, the color draining from his face. “Are you fucking serious?"

Daryl nodded. His features were grim. “I'm not joking. He gutted that man before he bisected the torso. I took a look inside both bags when I got there, and my initial thought was one of puzzlement—they really struck me as odd. I didn't give it much thought for the first few hours, since we were trying to find the rest of the victim and whatever clues we could find. But then as I drove over to the coroner's office behind the rescue unit that was transporting the remains and walked in with the ME as he carried both pieces in a basket it started to hit me. The coroner took both pieces of the torso out of the bags and gave them to Steve for us to deliver to the lab for analysis, but first he gave both pieces a quick look-over. And that's when we noticed it. The Butcher had gutted him, slit him open from about here,” he motioned to just slightly above his groin,

“to about here,” and he traced his fingers up his stomach and chest ending at the breastbone. “Dr. Ulrich was just beside himself. This was the third Torso victim he had personally worked on, but he had read enough of the previous six from his predecessor that he was probably expecting the same old same old.” In November 1996, Dr. Samuel Ulrich had been elected to the office of Los Angeles County Coroner, defeating Dr.

Albert Howison by a narrow margin.

“He actually disemboweled him?” Bernie asked. His face had a hollow, shocked look. He looked the way people look when something weird happens, like witnessing a dog speak French or an infant recite Shakespeare.

“Dr. Ulrich is ninety-nine percent sure,” Daryl said. “He didn't have time right then to do a complete autopsy. But he did a preliminary check and found that he had been pretty thoroughly gutted. Stomach, intestines, gall bladder, spleen, all that shit."

“And the heart?” Bernie asked.

“Ripped right out. Dr. Ulrich said that judging from the wounds, it looks like the Butcher disemboweled him from the bottom up.” Again, Daryl traced his finger from his groin to slightly below his sternum. “After he cleared his insides out he stabbed him in the chest and cut downward.” He made as if he was stabbing himself, his fist tracing from his breastbone down to his sternum. “He cut right through the ribs and the breastbone and just reached in and ripped the heart out. He was pretty precise, too."

“Like he knew what the hell he was doing."

Daryl nodded. “Yeah."

They were silent for a moment, both of them staring at each other. Daryl knew what Bernie was thinking. This act of mutilation was a departure from the norm for the Butcher. Up until now he had shown restraint in mad mutilations of this type, preferring instead to be neat and articulate in his carving of his victims. Disemboweling suggested that their killer was slipping further over the edge of insanity. A sexual sadist who disemboweled his victim was a very sick individual indeed.

Bernie finally broke the silence. “Has Peter Murphy or the Chief had anything to say yet?"

“Nothing yet,” Daryl said. “I imagine both are making statements to the press tonight. I was waiting for you to get back into town to see how you wanted to handle it."

“We need to have a meeting,” Bernie said. He stood up and put the chair back behind the desk in front of Daryl's where he had found it. “All Butcher Task Force members. We need to regroup and brainstorm on how we're going to handle this one. Has all this information been entered into the computers?"

“It's being done now."

“Good. I'll call the FBI tomorrow and speak with Rexer. He might have some insights."

“Bernie?"

“Yes?"

“It's going to get worse."

“Christ, Daryl, don't say that. We'll get him. The psychologists back in Virginia are going to have a field day with this new information. It should take only a day or two for them to get a handle on where his mind is at now and it might give us something new to go on."

“No, I don't mean the case itself,” Daryl said. “I mean the way the killings are affecting the community."

Bernie paused. “Is there trouble?"

The pit of unease that had settled in his stomach earlier that afternoon now blossomed. “Some. The local news stations had stories about this latest killing all over the airwaves within an hour of the discovery of the body. We hadn't even ID'd it yet as a Butcher killing, and the news stations were already broadcasting that the latest Butcher victim had been found and that it looked like another gang member. As you can imagine, these remains were found in gang territory—Tortilla Flats, this time—and the response was predictable. As of now there is a tactical alert in all of Los Angeles County and officers in riot gear have been dispatched to the East Los Angeles area."

“Jesus!"

“There've been a few skirmishes,” Daryl said. “Nothing major. A few people have been arrested for disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, that sort of thing. The officers are mainly in there to calm down the public and keep people from getting out of hand."

“I see what you mean though,” Bernie said, stroking his chin in thought. “It could get worse. Dammit, we need to catch this guy."

“I know,” Daryl said. He felt the need to catch the Butcher grow stronger. It felt like a personal vendetta now. He felt that he had a responsibility to catch the Butcher. It weighed on him heavily, more so than a few days ago when he was just starting to put everything regarding his relationship with Rachael into perspective. It especially weighed on him more since his talk with Dickinson. As of today, Dickinson had told him that the DA was investigating whether they should press charges against Daryl and Steve.

Nothing was official yet, and Dickinson had reluctantly allowed Daryl to remain on the case. And then this latest victim turns up.

He looked over at Daryl. Both men were thinking the same thing: if we don't get a break in this case soon and this psycho continues cutting up his chosen prey, we are going to have a full-on war in Los Angeles.

One hundred thousand gang members in Los Angeles alone.

Twenty-five thousand police officers. Another five to ten thousand SWAT Team members.

There was the National Guard, maybe the local Marines, which might push the numbers up past fifty thousand. But after that, what then?

The tensions were reaching boiling points. Gang members weren't sophisticated enough to wage a rampage against civilized society, were they? But get the emotions boiling, get the people that live in those areas worked up enough, and they would have more than they could handle. It would be worse than the LA riots of five years before.

God help them if that happened.

Chapter 15

July 23, 1997, 6:00 p.m.

Excerpts from the Channel 2, 4, and 7 News at 6:00 p.m:

“I am standing in a neighborhood bordering Echo Park and Boyle Heights,” the pretty young Asian woman was broadcasting as the late afternoon sun cast rays of gold from behind the frayed houses behind her. “This is a neighborhood that has seen much fear and unrest in the past few weeks. All at the hands of a faceless serial killer that police are calling the Eastside Butcher."

A pre-taped segment appeared showing a pan of the gully in Echo Park where the first two victims were found. Yellow police tape and police officers could be seen at the bottom of the gully. “Ever since the discovery of two murdered gang members in September of 1995, residents have been up in arms over the police reaction to the killings, which occur randomly and without warning."

Channel Four was showing a close up of a young Hispanic man, the subject of a news interview in another neighborhood that could have been an exact carbon copy of the rival channel. The young man was gesturing with his hands as he spoke. “This guy that is doing this, killing all the homeboys and homegirls, the cops don't care about finding him.

Because this guy is only killing Mexicans and stuff, they don't care. If he was killing white people he would have been caught by now."

A voice-over as a male newscaster feeds into the broadcast. “This is the most common reaction when the residents are asked to describe their feelings about the serial killings that have plagued this area for almost two years. While most of the gang members we spoke to insisted that the killings were the work of rival gangs, we spoke to one young gang member who had a different opinion. He would only go on camera with his face obscured by a bandana."

The camera cut to a young Hispanic gang member crouching in an alley. Behind him, the wall was stained with graffiti. The gang member was wearing baggy shorts, black shoes, and a white baggy t-shirt. He had a blue bandana pulled over his mouth and nose like a bandit from the old west. His face was conveniently blurred for the broadcast.

“It ain't a gang thing,” he said, his voice muffled. “At least I don't think so. The homey's that are sayin’ it's a rival gang doin’ it are like, jumping to conclusions. Because it's different gangs that are getting killed, you know what I'm saying?"

The voice over of the newscaster came back on. “When we asked him who he thought was responsible, he had this to say."

Focus back on the gang member. “It's probably the cops. They're doing it to like, make us fight each other more. It's their way of BLEEP with us. We're poor, we're Hispanic and BLEEP and they're white and cops and they're just doing it to BLEEP with us."

Channel 7: A voice-over of yet another male newscaster as the camera zeroed in on yet another Los Angeles neighborhood. A middle-aged Hispanic couple was standing on the porch of a small home. “...the residents of this predominately Hispanic community are afraid, and they are up in arms."

The man was a little on the portly-side with graying hair. He spoke with a thick Mexican accent. “We have gang activity down here all the time and the police will come in and not do anything. Then when they do come in, they'll come in to harass the young men, anybody that looks like they might be a gang member. They promise that they'll protect us, but when the gangs start shooting and bullets are flying in your windows, they don't do anything!” He threw up his hands in exasperation.

His wife, equally portly, her black hair with strands of gray pulled back in a bun echoed her husband's sentiments. “And then when these murders start happening, they don't do anything. They just come and knock on the doors and ask us a lot of questions and take people in who haven't even done anything."

The newscaster cut in with a voice-over: “One neighbor, who didn't want to go on camera, said he was taken to Parker Center and almost arrested for the crimes until he was able to prove he had an alibi."

Focus on a dark silhouette of a slim man. The man's voice had a thick barrio accent. “The police took me in and were like going, ‘come on man, we know you did it'.

Because I got a record for assault and other BLEEP. And I said, ‘no, man, I didn't do it'.

But they kept, you know, at me, and they had me there for like twelve hours."

The voice over of the newscaster came back on: “It wasn't until the man placed a call to his wife that he was able to provide an alibi and clear his name. But the affect hasn't been lost on the residents in the East Los Angeles area."

The camera panned a busy neighborhood, cut over to a strip mall and once again focused on a lower class neighborhood. It finally came to rest at the middle of the street where the newscaster was surrounded by the residents of the street, many of them children. “The residents of this neighborhood, and others in the East Los Angeles area where the killer has struck, are on a heightened edge these days. Feeling the fear of the gangs that control these neighborhoods, to the scrutinizing of the police who they feel look on them with suspicion, to the unknown killer himself who preys on their ranks, the citizens of these neighborhoods often feel that the police aren't doing enough to catch the man responsible for these horrible killings. It has turned into an uneasy wheel of distrust and suspicion that feeds on itself as the weeks go by and the killer goes uncaught. From East Los Angeles, this is Joel Petraca, Channel 7 News."

Daryl Garcia sat on his living room sofa, remote control in hand, TV turned to the news. The last of the coverage from the streets of East Los Angeles on the local communities’ reaction to the Butcher case had just ended, and it made Daryl sick. Fuck them, he thought, turning the TV off with a click. They don't trust us, don't want to help us catch this psycho, they can sit there like sitting ducks until this guy decides he's bored with gangsters and decides to try crawling through windows and slaughtering entire families. I've fucking had it! This guy's doing the city a goddamned favor, if that's the way they're going to react.

He was too upset and angry about the newscast, and the case, to call Rachael that night.

Five miles away, Rachael Pearce was watching the news, eating a fresh garden salad she had just prepared. She had gotten off work early, had just come home from a martial arts session, and was still sweaty. She watched the newscast, feeling worse about it as it went on. No wonder this case was eating at Daryl. She would be upset if she got this kind of treatment from the people she was trying to help as well. It only made her more determined to stay by Daryl's side during this especially rough time in his life.

In East Los Angeles several people turned in to the news. One of them was Danny Hernandez, who sat on his sofa, fidgeting. The minute the newscast came on he started getting nervous. He kept looking out the windows, toward his front door, as if he was expecting the cops to come busting in anytime. He turned back to the television just as a gang member was offering his opinion on what the killings were all about. Danny changed the channel.

In his spacious West Side apartment, Bernie Haskins watched the news with a growing sense of despair and anguish. This case was getting to be like the Green River case in Seattle, which he worked on over a decade ago. Like that one, the local news media raised the hysteria level among the community, feeding a never-ending cycle of distrust and suspicion to the police. It also didn't help to have a killer who was always one step ahead of those who were trying to catch him. Bernie turned off the TV in disgust with a flick of the remote. His job, as well as that of the local FBI agents on the case and the LAPD Homicide detectives, had just become harder.

Father John Glowacz caught the segment on the Eastside Butcher halfway through. He was just returning home after spending the latter part of the afternoon hearing confessions and meeting with a few of the local community leaders to discuss ways on how they might help curb the gang related violence that had risen since the arrival of the Butcher. They had to do something; the situation was getting more out of hand as the killer claimed more victims. Father Glowacz paused in front of the television as a Hispanic couple railed against the police for not taking action in protecting them. He shook his head in dismay. It was such a pathetic statement to make, and as Father John Glowacz articulated those thoughts he regretted it and felt a tinge of guilt. After all, he was supposed to help the people in his community overcome those feelings. Seeing the news made him realize he had his work cut out for him. He sat down on the sofa in front of the TV, feeling a growing sense of despair.

In another part of the city, Charley sat on the sofa in his room, the wide screen TV

turned to the news. He usually liked to watch the news in the evening. He liked to be well informed. In fact, he caught the Butcher coverage on all three stations. It didn't hurt to be informed.

While elsewhere, in a darkened living room, the subject of the feature stories that were being run watched the local communities reactions to his work, and he smiled.

Chapter 16

After not having slept together in three months, it was a welcome reprise for Rachael to finally be able to surrender herself to Daryl Garcia.

They had been slowly building up to this for the last two weeks. As the investigation into the murder of Felipe Picano, the Butcher victim killed two months ago, hit its customary dead end of leads, Daryl started to contact Rachael more. Before long they were both suggesting a date. Tonight that date had come.

Rachael sighed, rolled over on the king-sized bed in Daryl's bedroom and kissed him. His arms went around her back as he kissed her back, their tongues darting, doing their own dance. Rachael broke the kiss and looked down at Daryl, smiling. “I've been waiting all summer for this."

Daryl smiled. “Me, too."

“I need a drink,” Rachael said, sliding off the bed and standing barefoot on the floor. “Want a beer?"

“I'd love one.” Daryl propped himself up against the headboard as Rachael walked naked through the house to the kitchen to fetch the beers.

Rachael had come to Daryl's place after work around 6:30. After not seeing each other in nearly three months, Daryl had reacted like a man dying of thirst when he met her at the door to his home. He had taken her into his arms and held her, just held her tightly.

Rachael had been surprised at the level of emotions he displayed, but she welcomed it.

She had reacted pretty much the same way. When they finally kissed it was softly, tenderly. The passion in their ardor had been so great that they missed their 7:00 p.m.

reservation at Dominico's; they wound up making love on the floor of Daryl's living room.

Rachael opened the refrigerator and took out two bottles of Rolling Rock. She opened them with the bottle opener Daryl had clipped to the cupboard, and headed back to the bedroom, still smiling from the evening's events; dressing hurriedly for a later dinner appointment at Dominico's, a long, languid dinner followed by a stroll through Burbank hand-in-hand, cappuccino's at a small sidewalk café, then back to Daryl's house where they had made love again. The only thing that had stopped their passion was the draining of their energy.

Handing Daryl his beer, Rachael returned to her side of the bed, sitting up, back propped up against the headboard. They took long, slow pulls from their drinks. The night outside was warm, the windows closed against the seasonally warm night air. The central air conditioning was activated and now it kicked in, creating a calm, relaxed feeling in both of them.

Rachael had been both surprised and pleased by Daryl's lovemaking. Every kiss, every caress, had been passionate, baring his soul completely. Rachael secretly applauded Daryl for letting go so much during their lovemaking—several times he had come so hard that it felt like he might pass out from the sheer emotion of it. It was a milestone for both of them, and Rachael felt that Daryl knew it.

He voiced it a moment latter after draining half his bottle of Rolling Rock. “I think this is it, babe."

“Think this is what?"

He looked at her. “I'm finally free. I feel more free from my ... from the past problems I told you about. I feel ... complete again."

Rachael smiled, then reached out and hugged him clumsily, still holding her beer.

“Oh baby, I know. I feel it, too."

She felt Daryl sigh heavily into her bare shoulder, then shudder, as if he was trying to hold back his emotions. She stroked the back of his head with her fingers and kissed the nape of his neck. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I love you, too,” he said.

They remained that way for quite some time.

They made love again, slowly, languidly.

They fell asleep in each other's arms with the cool air of the air conditioner drying the sweat off their bodies.

They slept soundlessly.

And for longer then either of them had known ... ?

...peacefully.

A week later, it was almost the same scenario. Only this time, they were at her place.

Daryl liked that.

He liked the fact that after cooling off of each other for nearly three months they were able to get back together as if nothing had ever happened. Nothing had, really. The time spent apart had worked wonders. Last week when they had made love finally, he had done so like a man possessed. He had wallowed in his lust for her and held nothing back.

And God, it had felt great.

They had spent the weekend together, and it had been the first weekend in almost a year when he hadn't worked. He hadn't thought about the case once.

It was a welcome break.

Now, sitting up in Rachael Pearce's bed, the euphoria from their lovemaking still creating a warm feeling through his limbs, he looked at her and smiled. Rachael smiled back. “This is starting to get habit forming,” she said.

“If it is, it's a habit I don't want to break."

She smiled and kissed him.

For the first time in three months they talked about how their week had gone. Last weekend it had been like they had just started dating: they had talked about food, politics, movies, books, places they had been. Anything other than their jobs and most importantly, the Butcher case. It was almost as if they were rediscovering each other again.

This time, it was different.

They started off talking about how things had been when they both staggered into work on Monday. Rachael had stayed at his place all last weekend, had woke up in his arms Monday morning. When the clock radio by his bed sounded its alarm, they both realized that it was going to be a whirl-wind morning if they were to shower and dress before work. All of Rachael's work clothes were still at her home.

Rachael chuckled at the memories of that morning. She had finally arrived at the office at ten-thirty, and after work had run a bunch of errands she hadn't been able to do that weekend—grocery shopping, feed Nanka, clean the house, do the laundry. She didn't start to fully recover until Thursday.

It had been the same for Daryl.

He started talking about the case, telling her about the latest murder. He stopped midway through and cocked a questioning glance at her. “I'm sorry. Is it okay to talk about this?"

“Of course."

Daryl relaxed and went on. It felt better talking about the case now, more so than before. For one, he no longer had that claustrophobic feeling he had when he was dealing with the stress and trying to sort out his feelings about Rachael and the old feelings about Shirley. The time spent apart had really helped; it had helped him put things in perspective. For once, he felt ready to live in the present rather than mourn the past. For another, Dickinson had informed he and Steve two weeks ago that the DA was not going to press charges against them for the police brutality charge. “But I'm gonna be watching your ass from now on, Garcia,” Dickinson had said. “I'm keeping you on this Butcher case indefinitely so you'll stay out of trouble. If you can stay out of trouble for a year or so and I don't hear any complaints about you in that time, that will be a good thing."

That had taken a lot of the weight off his shoulders. Now that Rachael was back in his life he felt more relaxed, more positive about the way things were going.

“We've run into the same dead end as before,” Daryl said, sipping a beer, his right hand holding hers. “Felipe Picano was a Tortilla Flats gang member, a gang veteran. In fact, he used to be buddies with Danny Hernandez, that counselor at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Danny is pretty torn up about it. It's that classic case of one friend making it out of the barrio and the other remaining a bad boy, finally succumbing to the lifestyle.

Only this time Felipe hadn't just succumbed to the lifestyle, he had been waylaid by something far more evil."

“The Butcher,” Rachael said.

“That's right,” Daryl said. He took a sip of beer. “Danny saw Felipe that night, an hour or so before he disappeared. Some younger gang members saw him as well around the same time. He had apparently been on his way to the grocery store. He went out and never came back."

“So he was taken by surprise,” Rachael said.

“Maybe.” Daryl paused, collecting his thoughts. It was such a complex issue. “By all the accounts from our investigation, Felipe left his home around ten-thirty. While the gang members we interviewed wouldn't admit it, there is a strong chance Felipe left the house to score some heroin. The coroner found traces of it in Felipe's remains. Danny didn't know much either, although I did find it a bit odd that he was hanging out with a hard user and a hard-core gang member."

Rachael shrugged her shoulders. “What's so odd about it? He works with gang members at the church, doesn't he?"

“Yes, but that's different. He works with them, counsels them, acts as a big brother to the younger ones. But he doesn't associate his off-hours with them. At least not in the way he normally does. The young gang members we interviewed stated that Danny actually paid a visit to Felipe earlier in the evening. He actually stayed at the house and socialized for an hour or so. Then he left about fifteen minutes before Felipe took off for wherever it was he went."

“You don't think Danny has anything to do with this, do you?” Rachael asked, concerned.

Daryl shrugged. “No ... but the coincidence is odd. Danny knew three of the victims, two of them rather personally. The others all came from the area with the exception of two. And Danny has a car, which theoretically makes it possible for him to have driven to Riverside and the San Gabriel Mountains to make those other two killings.

As for the local ones, he surely knows the area like the back of his hand. The only thing missing is that he doesn't fit the profile at all."

Rachael took a sip of beer. “I was just thinking the same thing."

“Danny is bright, and I'm sure if he were capable of it he very well could have carried out these crimes. But the forensic evidence clearly shows that the perpetrator has a definite knowledge of human anatomy, maybe even some medical training, which Danny surely doesn't have."

“Could he qualify as an accomplice?"

Daryl shook his head. It was an intriguing possibility. “Much as I'd hate to admit it, I'd say yes."

“But you have reservations?"

Daryl sighed and took another swig off his bottle. “Maybe I do. I don't know how else to explain it, but the best way would be that it's a gut feeling. And it tells me that Danny Hernandez has nothing to do with the Butcher murders."

“You think the person responsible might also have killed those people in Indiana?” Rachael asked.

Daryl nodded. “Yeah. I think so. So far not much has been done in checking that angle out. Me, Bernie Haskins and another FBI agent flew out to South Bend a year ago to check out that angle and basically came to the conclusion that there is a possibility that our killer started there. But since then the focus has been on Los Angeles."

“Nobody has tried doing more work in Indiana?"

“Nope.” Daryl shook his head. “Haskins and the rest of the agents heading the case feel we need to concentrate on LA. He's operating here now and the trail is fresher.

Besides, the budget is stretched so tight that I don't think it'll allow for anymore poking around in Indiana."

“How about if I did some?” Rachael brought this up with a trace of apprehension.

Daryl looked at her. “You?"

Rachael touched Daryl's arm. “I could do it off the record from my job. They won't need to know anything and I can use my press credentials to get information. It can just be to help you. Kind of like an independent investigator."

Daryl nodded. He liked the idea but he had concerns. He told her so. “But I'm behind you on it. In fact, I can even help. I can give you copies of the reports in the case files that might help."

“I would like that.” She placed her beer on the nightstand on her side of the bed and faced him. She looked excited and eager. “I can fly back to Indiana myself at some point using your files as a reference point. There's got to be something I can find back there that relates to all this."

“Like when?"

“You said yourself that two of the murders here don't fit in many ways. The Riverside victim and the unidentified man found in San Gabriel. And what about the black male from ‘89?"

Daryl nodded. He knew what Rachael was getting at, but wasn't sure if she could link them all together. “But the only thing that ties them all together is MO. And even then, the San Gabriel victim doesn't fit. He was killed where he was found."

“That's right,” Rachael said. She reached for her beer. “Damn, I forgot about that."

“I don't want to stay so narrowly focused in LA, which the FBI wants to do right now,” Daryl said. “I want to keep an open mind to this case. If he's killing in other jurisdictions we need to know about it."

“I agree. And I think if I were to go to Indiana and at least investigate those murders, I might find something."

“Like what?"

Rachael shrugged. “Anything. Background on the victims always helps. Weren't two of them prostitutes?"

Daryl nodded.

“And the local police investigations didn't get very far?"

Daryl sighed and drained the rest of his beer. “I'm afraid not. It's a sad fact of life in cases like this."

“I'd like to see those autopsy reports and the original crime reports. I would bet the answer lies there."

“But honey, the FBI has already opened those cases up again."

“And?"

“And what?"

“Where has it gotten them?"

“Well...” Daryl didn't really know. He remembered making the trip out to South Bend himself and being positive that those three unsolved homicides were related to what was currently going on in Los Angeles. But the beaucracy of the case bogged down any further investigation in that avenue. He had left it to the FBI to find some answers. And so far none had been found.

“Nowhere, right?” Rachael asked.

Goddamn but Rachael could be a persistent woman. That's what spelled a good reporter. And a good detective. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to have her poke around.

“Listen,” he said, speaking carefully. “I would love for you to help. But only if you want to."

“I do."

He looked at her, trying to convey the seriousness and caring he felt in his tone and gaze. “I want you to know that I appreciate it. I really do. But I want you to not only be extremely careful, which I know you will, but extremely discreet. More discreet than you would normally be. Because if somebody finds out about you and me and sees you poking around, it might mean trouble. I could not only get fired, but my career might be at stake."

Rachael's features deflated a little. “Damn, you're right. Christ, why does everything have to be so goddamned political?"

“I don't know.” He took Rachael in his arms and they held each other for awhile, content to bask in the peacefulness of their embrace.

After a moment Daryl broke the silence. “I do think if you find something on the Indiana angle that it might help."

“I think so, too."

“The victims in Indiana were two prostitutes and a vagrant,” Daryl said, softly rubbing Rachael's shoulders. “If we believe the common thread, he didn't strike again until 1989 when he killed Leroy Brown in LA, a black gang member. Then a five year gap before the Lady of the Ocean turns up. Since then it's been a pretty steady stream of bodies, most springing from the same geographical location and sociological background.

The question is, why the long gaps in the early years? And he's established such a strong pattern with gang members here in LA, why a vagrant and two whores in Indiana?"

“Maybe they don't have gangs in South Bend,” Rachael said.

Daryl chuckled. Rachael laughed with him.

“I think he made his first kill in Indiana,” Daryl said. “I think his first kill was one of the hookers, and he did the other two soon after. I think he was ashamed at what he did and buried the bodies so they wouldn't be discovered."

“I think he's from Indiana,” Rachael said. “Quite possibly South Bend itself."

“I think that's a possibility."

“Why would he come here, though?"

“Why does anybody come to LA?"

“To be a movie star."

Daryl laughed. “I can see it now. Headline: ‘Eastside Butcher captured. Is found to be a burgeoning actor in Hollywood'!"

“Or a major actor,” Rachael laughed, getting in on the joke. “'Extra! Brad Pitt is the Eastside Butcher'."

They burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

When the laughter died down, Daryl resumed his hypothesis. “Whatever the reason, he's here now. The question is, why did he settle in East LA?"

“Maybe he didn't. Maybe he works in East LA and lives somewhere else."

Daryl nodded. “That's possible."

“We know he's very smart and that he has a car to transport the victims,” Rachael continued. “And that he probably lives alone. Do you think he has his own home?"

“I don't know.” That was a tough call.

“He might have been in his late teens or early twenties when he killed those people in South Bend. Most serial killers start at that age. That would make him in his mid-to-late thirties now."

“Right."

“Hookers, transients and gang members."

“Yes."

“Two of which are very easy to procure."

“True."

“But why gang members? That's what gets me. Is this a personal crusade? A mission of his to root out gangs and the problems they cause by killing them?"

“I don't know,” Daryl shook his head. “Believe me, you're right when you say that most people could care less if we catch this guy. And while I hate to admit it, I harbored those same feelings myself. Part of me still does. I hate gangs and the destruction and pain they cause more than anything. Gangs and gang violence have cost me plenty.” He paused, reigning his emotions in. Now was not the time to go careening back into the world of self-pity and yearning for Shirley again. He had put that all behind him. Besides, the more he got going down that track, the more he thought Rachael was beginning to have second thoughts about him. The first time the subject had come up where they had mused that a cop could be responsible for the murders was only the tip of the iceberg. “He does more then just kill them.” Daryl resumed, starting at the wall in front of him. “He does much more."

They were quiet, each thinking their own thoughts of the madness that lurked in the mind of somebody out there in the city.

“You're right,” she said. “He isn't killing gang members out of some personal crusade for society."

“No."

“He's attracted to victims of both sexes."

“Yes."

“He's most likely bisexual."

“Yes."

“He gets a supreme thrill out of doing what he's doing."

“I would think he does."

“And he kills gang members because they are just as easy for him to get as transients and prostitutes."

Daryl nodded.

“Which means he must live somewhere in the East LA area."

“Right.” Daryl lifted the empty bottle of Rolling Rock and wished for another beer. “The problem now is, how do we find him?"

Chapter 17

January 20, 1998, 5:30 p.m.

The much heralded El Nino had begun doing what weather forecasters had promised several months ago. Southern California was in the midst of a ferocious storm.

It had already rained all day, with many areas of Los Angeles and Orange County receiving an inch of rain. Temperatures were in the mid fifties, dropping down to the low thirties at night. The lower foothills of San Gabriel and San Bernadino were getting snow.

Charley shivered as he drove home from work, the windshield wipers whisking the rain away. The heater in his pickup truck had blown out several weeks before and he hadn't fixed it yet. Hopefully if this weather let up he could take it in to the dealer and have them look at it.

At least the floor heater at home was working. His mother would have raised holy hell if it was broken. She raised holy hell anyway, and he sighed as he drove home.

Another night with mother. Another night of repression and frustration. And rage.

She had been worse the last few days. She had become both more clinging and over protective of him in the last few months. She was even this way when his older brother was at home to visit. But never to him. Oh, his brother complained about her just as much as he did, but in reality it was Charley she doted and fussed over more. That was because she saw his brother more as a man, and Charley more of a thing, a freak of nature. Charley scowled as he thought about his brother. He had every reason to not refer to him by name. Mother always preferred his brother over Charley anyway, so why acknowledge him? Screw him.

Charley's scowl set into a frown as he drove, paying close attention to his driving as he piloted his truck through the rainy streets of Los Angeles. People couldn't drive worth a tin shit in L.A. when it rained. Instead of being cautious, they drove like maniacs.

No wonder why they skidded all over the goddamn roads like they were in the Indy 500.

Charley hated driving in the rain. He felt he wasn't in control. He knew that at the whim of some idiot who didn't know what they were doing that he could be reduced to scrap metal and mush in an instant.

He knew what he needed to relax him—a few videos in the privacy of his room should do the trick. He was thinking about what to watch, what fantasies he wanted to play out, when he approached a bus stop on his right and saw a familiar figure huddled inside from the rain.

He approached the intersection and stopped at the red light. He looked toward his right at the bus stop and saw that the familiar figure was Carmen Aguirre, from Top's Burgers.

Without thinking, he honked his horn.

Carmen turned toward him and he leaned toward the passenger's side and waved.

She approached the truck cautiously and when she saw that it was him, her face brightened. She approached the passenger's side door and he unlocked it on his side for her. “Need a ride?"

“Do I ever!” Carmen got in and shut the door. “I'm glad you came when you did. I missed my bus and have to wait for the six-fifteen bus to Echo Park."

“I can take you home,” Charley said.

“Thank you.” She smiled sweetly, white teeth flashing, pink lipstick sparkling invitingly. Her big brown eyes twinkled. “I really appreciate it."

The light turned green. Charley stepped on the gas.

“I hope I'm not putting you out of your way,” Carmen said. She brushed her wet hair back from her face

“I just live in Highland Park, a few blocks down,” Charley said. “But I don't mind giving you a lift home."

“Are you sure?"

“Yeah, no problem. I did kinda want to swing by the house first for something, but it can wait."

“I wouldn't mind if we did,” she said, fidgeting in her seat. “I gotta pee."

“Okay. It's settled then. We'll swing by my place first and then I'll take you home."

“Great!"

With a flutter in his stomach, Charley smiled in anticipation as he cruised slowly home with Carmen Aguirre in the front seat of his truck.

The bedroom was dark. On the widescreen TV a woman was being disemboweled with a pair of garden shears. She screamed shrilly during the re-enactment, and a moment later the woman's body was gutted like a deer, the flesh pale white.

Charley sat on the sofa nude, gripping his penis in his right hand and picturing the woman on the screen as Carmen. It had been four hours since he had picked Carmen Aguirre up from the bus stop. Four hours after everything turned to shit.

He pressed the off button and stopped the tape, the need building in him again.

When they had pulled up to the house he was sure his mother wouldn't be home.

Wednesdays she usually went to church with his brother, who picked her up. But she had been home.

And she hadn't been too pleased to see Carmen.

The minute Carmen disappeared into the bathroom mother started in on him.

What did he think he was doing bringing that slut into the house? Did he see the way she was dressed? That tight sweater and those tight jeans and that make-up, and she wasn't going to let her boy be corrupted by that whore of Babylon and—

And then Charley had lost it. He saw red and flew into a blind rage. He didn't remember what he said, but he remembered yelling and screaming at her, not even aware that he was crying, and then Carmen had come out of the bathroom looking embarrassed, saying, look, why don't we go? I don't want to cause any trouble with you and your family, and Charley had spun around and began herding her into his room. “No, you're a guest in my house and if I want to have guests over I can. Come on.” And he had escorted her to his room and slammed the door behind him, trembling with rage at the scene his mother had caused.

And Carmen, that bitch, had started to whine that she didn't want to be the cause of any trouble with his mother, she just wanted to go home.

And Charley saw what she really meant, what her true intentions were. She was laughing at him inside. She had seen the secret part of him, had seen that he lived with his mother, who ruled his life, wouldn't let him bring girls home, saw that he was less then a man. She laughed at him because she knew he had a crush on her, and had still been flirting with her even when she had given him a few not so subtle signals that she wasn't interested in dating him. She had seen all that, and now had seen this and saw him for what he really was—a pathetic excuse for a man, a momma's boy, a geek and probably a virgin who was scared of girls because he knew he would never have one because mother said he couldn't. Mother said it was naughty and he always minded her.

Charley had told Carmen to ignore his fucking mother. It was his house, too, and that's when things got fuzzy. He had been angry at his mother, and was growing more angry at Carmen as the scenario escalated. But the gist of it was this: Carmen had said that she didn't want to intrude on anything at the house, and then she had opened his bedroom door and walked out. Her last words to him were “Thanks for the ride, Charley, but I'll manage on my own.” Then she was gone.

Charley had sat in his chair in his room, his vision clouding black. He hadn't felt so enraged in ... well, since mother had laughed at him four years ago when he had finally gotten up the courage and asked Shelly Plant out on a date. He and mother had met Shelly at church one Sunday morning, and she had talked to them after the service. She had been a nice woman, around Charley's age, and he had taken to her quickly. They saw each other at Mass for the next few weeks, and then one Sunday while mother was talking to a couple of ladies that she always talked to (easily distinguishable by their under five foot one height, their stooped shoulders, their gray hair pulled into a tight bun or cut short, and the matronly dresses they wore) Charley asked Shelly if she would like to go out to dinner or the movies. Shelly had smiled and said she'd like that very much. They had traded phone numbers and Charley had been giddy with excitement on the way home. He had been so excited that he had told mother; it had just slipped out nonchalantly. He had been expecting mother to either ignore the news or perhaps greet it with some exclamation of

“well that's nice, dear,” but instead the news had been greeted with laughter. “I can't believe it,” she had cackled. “She agreed to go out with you! That girl needs glasses."

Charley had shut up, his enthusiasm zapped away with that simple comment.

Mother had continued to laugh and poke fun at him all the way home. Did little Charley ask a girl out on a date? Why how cute? Did Charley like this girl? Oh, that was just so cute! Charley was silent on the drive home, but inside he was seething with rage. He just wanted to reach out and rip her goddamn fucking throat out and silence her taunting voice forever.

But he hadn't. And he hadn't called Shelly Plant, either. The next week in church she had sought he and mother out and Charley, while not overly friendly and talkative as he had been in the previous weeks, wasn't making any obvious attempt at conversation.

On the other hand, mother was more talkative with the girl, smiling at her and sneaking teasing glances at Charley as if to say well, come on boy! Talk to her! Now's your chance!

But Charley didn't, and the next week had been the same and after that it was over. Shelly Plant merely nodded and smiled pleasant greetings and didn't stay for idle chatter.

He didn't remember Carmen leaving the house. He remembered hearing the dim sound of the side door opening and closing and that was it. His mind just went black. The next thing he remembered was sitting on the sofa in his underwear yanking his crank to a video he had picked up, one of those simulated films of torture and S&M. His orgasm had shuddered hard and he came awake with a wonderful sensation that everything with Carmen was taken care of. He didn't have to worry about her. As long as she was on his mind he could visualize her in any scenario he wanted. She was every bit as real to him when he conjured her in his mind as she was in the flesh. Why be concerned about the flesh and blood Carmen when the one he could conjure up in his mind was so much more desirable? The one in his mind could be made to cavort around in lingerie, or black leather and spiked heels. She wouldn't whine and complain. She would beg for any fetish or desire he wanted to do to her. Anything.

Charley pressed the stop button on the VCR. He rose to his feet and ejected the tape. His penis bobbed like a divining rod between the thick thatch of pubic hair. He put the tape on top of a stack of others and rummaged in the entertainment center for another, the one his body screamed for. He found it, put it in the VCR and went back to the couch.

He settled his naked rear end on the plush sofa, a smile creaking his ruddy features. He pressed the play button as the tape started, and as the new fetish video sprang to life his mind drifted back to Carmen Aguirre.

1:34 a.m.

He was in the bathtub with Carmen amid a pool of water and blood. The water was deep red, and as he lifted himself out of the tub he felt a warm elation wash over him.

This had simply been the best one. She had come to him easy and then before she knew it she was his. And all she had done was ask to use his bathroom! It was much easier to take them in the bathroom. When he knew she was finished he had simply opened the door, catching her with her pants down, literally, struggling to rise from the toilet seat. Oh, I'm sorry, he had said. There's a real bad leak in this room and I just came in here to check it and I forgot you were in here. She was just starting to smile embarrassingly when he brought the knife out from behind his back and lunged at her, shoving her towards the bathtub. His left hand was on her throat, his body pinning her down. She had already been off balance due to her jeans being around her knees, and she went down easily. He drew the blade of the knife across her throat before she had a chance to scream, and as she gasped for air he shoved her face-first into the tub, letting her life blood spill. He kept her pinned down until her body started going limp. Then, with the knife still embedded in her throat, he completed the procedure and separated her head from her neck.

Then they had had some fun together. Just the two of them.

Now seven hours later he was spent. He must have came four times during the course of the night, once during the actual act of beheading, the second time when he had fucked the headless corpse on the bathroom floor; he had used newly made orifices as well. He had settled back against the tub, a contented smile on his face. He was in ecstasy.

Between the bouts of sex, he had gone into his living room area and slipped in a tape on the VCR. That got him aroused in no time, and for his second orgasm he mounted the camcorder on a tripod and recorded the event. He had watched it an hour later in the living room with Carmen's headless and limbless trunk perched on his cock. His thrusts matched those of his alternate self on the screen and he came with a shudder. Then he dozed for awhile.

But now it was time to clean up.

He rose from the tub, his body covered in watery blood; it caked into his hair, his nostrils, his teeth. He was immersed in the coppery scent of it. He reached down and pulled the plug and stood up while the water-and-blood mixture drained from the tub.

When it had drained, leaving a red film at the bottom, he turned the shower on and, using the detachable nozzle, he hosed down the tub, turning up the spray on Carmen's dismembered remains. He picked up each limb and washed it down thoroughly. He spent more time on her head, holding the nozzle a hair's length from the top of her head, washing her hair down as thoroughly as he could, washing all traces of blood away. She needed to be clean for him now. For the future.

When he was finished with the body, he pushed the dismembered pieces against the edge of the tub and turned the nozzle on himself. He scrubbed himself down, working the nozzle all over his body; his legs, arms, back, chest and stomach, his pubic area, up the crack of his ass, his neck, his armpits, his face. He opened his mouth and let the water jet into his mouth; he gargled and spit it out, washing that down the drain. Then he moved the nozzle over his scalp, using his fingers to run the water through his hair. He massaged his scalp under the strong pressure for ten minutes. When he felt clean and refreshed he replaced the detachable nozzle, stood under the spray for a final rinsing, then turned the water off. He reached out for a towel and dried himself off. Then he stepped carefully out of the tub, being careful not to step in the small puddles of blood that had pooled on the floor, the result of the first sweep of the knife at Carmen's throat. He toweled himself off quickly, then padded naked to the workshop and returned armed with paper towels and disinfectant. He spent the next ten minutes mopping up the puddles of blood, throwing the paper towels in the toilet and flushing them down every so often. When the tiled floor looked relatively clean, he sprayed disinfectant on it and used another ten or so paper towels, scrubbing the tiles and grout as clean as he could get them.

He flushed the remaining paper towels down the toilet, took the leftover roll and the disinfectant back to the workroom, and returned with a roll of butcher paper.

Humming an aria from Mozart's The Magic Flute, he picked up each body part and carefully wrapped it in the butcher's paper in the tub. When he was finished he carried the pieces—the limbs first, cradled to his naked chest like a man carrying logs to a fireplace—to the large refrigerator-sized freezer and put them in the bottom shelf. He put Carmen's trunk on the middle shelf, and he put her head on the top shelf with the others.

He smiled at the little collection of seven heads and another body, this one another stupid gang member that he had brought home around Christmas, and closed the door. These should last quite a while. He knew he just had to sample Carmen. He had tried portions of that gang member and his meat had been well beyond ripe and stringy. Still, it was mighty good eating, and he was sure he had a few good portions left. But Carmen ... ahh, Carmen was going to prove to be just delicious!

He sighed and closed his eyes, feeling a strange sense of euphoria. He was beginning to salivate.

Chapter 18

March 24, 1998, 6:30 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA

Charley was seated at the kitchen table eating a plate of beef tortellini in spaghetti sauce. Mother was picking at the food wistfully but Charley ignored her, plowing into the meal with hungry abandon. He had been hungry for tortellini for almost three days now, and was glad that he had made it. Mother usually liked it, too but after starting her dinner enthusiastically she had slowed down to merely picking at her plate, swirling the beef enclosed pastas around in the sauce like a child playing with its food. Charley tried to ignore her for awhile, but her demeanor got to him shortly. He put down his fork and looked at her. “Why aren't you eating, mother?"

She shook her head. “I don't know. I thought I was hungry. Guess I really wasn't.”

She was dressed in her usual garb of flannel P.J.'s with a red and black flannel robe covering her corpulent body, her white hair gathered up in a bun behind her head, wispy strands trailing behind her. Her features were wrinkled and cracked, her hands withered like the limbs of an old tree. She looked older than her sixty-four years.

“Well, that's okay,” Charley said. “Leave your plate there and I'll clean it up."

She seemed to accept this and nodded. Charley resumed his meal. Mother remained in her seat, hand still clutching her fork, staring down at her food. She had a vacant stare.

Charley stopped eating and looked at his mother. “Mother, are you sure everything's all right?"

“Yes, I'm sure."

“It looks like something's bothering you."

“No, nothing's bothering me.” She shook her head empathetically.

“Well, it looks like something is."

She looked up at him for a moment, her hands stealing down to the front of her robe. He offered her a smile and lifted his fork to the plate of tortellini. With a fluid motion, mother reached into the folds of her robe and brought out a black beaded rosary.

She clutched it between her knobby fists. “Pray the rosary with me, Charley."

Charley felt his patience deflating. He also felt himself in her crosshairs, suddenly a child again and not an adult man of thirty-six years. “Mother, I really don't think—"

“Why don't you got to church with me anymore, Charley?” Mother asked. She looked saddened suddenly, as if she were looking at a drowning man. “You used to go to church with me every Sunday, sometimes even on Wednesday evenings, but you don't go with me anymore. It's been over three years since you even went to church yourself."

“Mother, please...” He felt himself grow tense.

“Please, what? I'm only concerned for you, Charley. I don't want you slipping down the path of—"

“I'm not slipping down the path of anything!” he cried a little too loudly.

The sound of his voice didn't startle her as it would have in the past. She seemed to brush past it and continue. “You're a good boy, Charley. God knows I raised a good son in you. But you're not like your brother at all. Johnny is not only devoted to—"

“I do not want to be compared to my goddamned brother! ” Charley thundered, and this time the sound of his voice made her tremble.

The resulting silence echoed louder than the tone of Charley's voice. Mother shriveled back into herself, looking down at her food, the tears silently running down her wrinkled cheeks. “Oh, Lord, please forgive Charley for he knows not what he says—"

“Mother!” Charley warned, voice stern and powerful, but not as loud as before.

He was doing all he could to control his anger.

“Why don't you go to church?” She cried and now he could see that she was crying now. Small sobs cracked her voice. “I'm not saying that you have to be like your brother, but if you go to church you will be happier ... you won't be spending so much time in your room doing all those nasty things—"

“Mother—” Charley closed his eyes, steeling himself.

“—that are so sick.... they're sick, Charley. Sick and wrong and—"

“Goddammit mother—"

“...if you went to church you wouldn't have the need to do those things, you might even meet a nice girl that would—"

“A nice girl!” Charley squealed. He rose from his chair abruptly, the chair squeaking back from the table on the floor. “And so what if I meet a nice girl at church, mother? You'll just drive her away like you always do."

Mother burst into fresh tears. She reached out for Charley, grabbing his hand.

“No, Charley ... not like that ... that girl you brought home a few months ago ... not girls like that..."

“Well what the hell kind of girls do you fucking expect me to like mother?” He leered at her. “Nuns? Because other than nuns, girls like Carmen are typical of the girls you see at church. There's nothing morally wrong with them except—"

“They will lead you into sin and despair!” Mother cried sharply. “And don't lie to me boy, I see how you look at those girls with lust in your heart. I know that you watch those ... damn videotapes of naked girls spreading their legs for men ... that you ... you..."

“Masturbate to them? Jack off to them? Yeah, well, welcome to the real world, mother.” Charley was breathing heavily with anger and the exertion of yelling. “That's what happens when you've force fed your son a steady diet that sex is wrong, sex leads to sin, sex leads to eternal damnation, and then finding out later that all that you've been saying is outright lies and bullshit. Thanks for raising me to be not only afraid of women but of my own sexuality as well. You fucking bitch!"

“Charley!” Mother cried fresh tears, sobbing hoarsely.

“Stop your fucking crying,” Charley said but he was crying now too, though not as hard as mother was. The tears ran down his cheeks, and he felt the sobs threaten to spill from his chest, fueled by long-buried emotions that he had kept pent up inside him. His hands clenched at his sides with uncontrollable fury, threatening to unleash on her. Christ, but he felt so much like killing her sometimes. Maybe then the madness would stop.

His mother looked up at him, her chest heaving, her voice coming in starts and fits through her crying. “I always thought you were a good boy Charley ... always ... always just thought that ... maybe you were ... shy ... or something ... I ... Oh God, Charley....

when you didn't show any interest in girls at first I thought you might be a faggot—"

This accusation cut through him like a knife. He clenched his teeth, his eyes widened at the revelation. He felt his cheeks redden. “Mother..."

She didn't notice his reaction but kept going. “...but then I saw that ... you were interested in girls ... but not the girls at church, but those ... tarts and tramps in those ...

heathenish magazines.... and those girls on the street corners..."

“Mother, don't start.” He advanced on her slightly, fists clenched. What she was saying were such lies.

“And then you brought home that one girl from your catechism class, remember her? You said you were going to study.” And Charley suddenly did remember. God, that had been so long ago. He had been fifteen and was studying to receive his confirmation.

The girl his mother was speaking of was Suzanne Borega, who was in the same grade as he. Suzanne was a pretty girl, part of the self-hip, rock and roll/stoner crowd at school, the same crowd that occasionally tripped him up in the halls, flicked his ears from behind his desk in class, and embarrassed him in school with cries of “Hey, Charley ... lose control of your pee-pee lately?” This in reference to when he was in the second grade and he had pissed his pants in class one day and had to be led by the teacher to the bathroom while he cried, and the rest of the class laughed and laughed. That stigma had remained with him ever since.

But Suzanne Borega was a little different. For one, she never made fun of him at all, but then she didn't go out of her way to be nice to him, either. She was pleasant, polite, talkative, and she didn't ignore him. When she came over to study for their Catholic Confirmation it had been at her urging—they had been enrolled in Catechism together since they were nine-years-old, and up until Confirmation they hadn't talked much or associated with each other. She was pretty, popular, and out-going. She hung out with all the cool people, while Charley didn't have any friends. But then one day on the bus home from school, she had asked him how much he'd studied for the test, and he said he was doing pretty well. She then revealed to him that she needed help and wondered if he would help her. Charley had been wary at first; after all, she hung out with the same crowd that made him write their term papers and take their tests and copy his answers for them. He was tired of being taken advantage of, but too scared to stand up for himself. In spite of this he agreed, and the next day she had come over with her books. It was then when he realized she was serious: she did need honest to goodness help, and she wasn't out to cheat off him. But then mother had spoiled it.

After he had ushered Suzanne into his room, he went into the kitchen to get them soft drinks. Mother was in the kitchen making dinner and she started in on Charley immediately; what did he think he was doing bringing that girl in without her prior approval? Did he notice the size of the boobs on that girl? How they bounced freely under her sweater? That meant she wasn't wearing a bra. And you know what that means? She was a whore, a cheap slut, and she was going to take off her sweater and lead Charley into sin right under her own roof and mother wasn't going to have it. And no matter how much Charley explained that Suzanne was his classmate at Our Lady of Guadalupe's catechism class and that they were studying for their confirmation, Mother wouldn't hear it. Her accusations were loud enough for Suzanne to catch some of it, and when Charley returned to his room, mother trailing along behind him, Suzanne rose from his desk where she had been perusing Good News For the Modern Man and the accompanying workbook that was issued with it, and said that perhaps today wasn't a good day for them to study together. Charley had gone red with embarrassment because he knew that Suzanne had heard what mother said about her, and ever since that incident Suzanne spoke to him very little. Charley went through his confirmation and the rest of his freshman year of high school with a feeling of dread that she would tell one of her long-haired druggy friends what had happened and he would receive a viscous teasing or a beating, a cat call across the quad of the school, something like “Hey Charley.... your mother don't like you to study with girls in your room, huh? What does she think you're gonna do? Piss all over them before you can even shoot your wad? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. "

With that memory now crashing full force into his mind, he breathed heavily. “We were going to study, mother. Too bad you didn't give us a chance. I might have learned something. I might have even become a good Catholic like you wanted."

She ignored him and went on with her rant, dabbing at her eyes with a napkin as she sobbed more. “And then you had to bring that tramp home a few months ago ... Oh, God, don't you realize what these women represent?"

“Stuff it up your ass, mom,” Charley said. He couldn't stand it anymore. The hold she had over him was too unbearable. It was so bad he tried not to even be seen talking to a woman when he was in mother's presence. He even tried avoiding the tenant that lived in the back house, which was usually fairly easy since she kept odd hours. Christ, even his fucking brother had had more contact with her than Charley. For all he knew, John had gotten lucky and fucked her.

Mother was sobbing uncontrollably. “Don't talk to me like that!"

"Fuck you!"

“Charley...” She began to collapse. Her tears had run dry, but she still sobbed, hiccuping now amid her crying.

“Go to hell, Mom,” Charley said, rising from the table. “You deserve it for fucking up my life.” He turned and left the kitchen, heading to his bedroom, leaving his mother behind to cry hoarsely and uncontrollably.

Chapter 19

March 24, 1998, 3:30 p.m.

South Bend, Indiana

Rachael Pearce stood on the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Cordby Road in the heart of South Bend's University district. She had a leather satchel slung over her shoulder that contained a mini-cassette recorder, a notebook and some pens, a map of the South Bend area, and another map that contained the routes and byways of Indiana itself, and copies from the reports Daryl had given her. She had spent the last four days in a fruitful search for some meaningful information but so far had come up with nothing that wasn't already in the files.

She had arrived in South Bend three days ago. During her initial research for her book Daryl had seemed supportive, but when she announced her trip he appeared to withdraw it. She had moved out of her condo three weeks ago and moved into his home, and for awhile things were great. But then just a few days before she left he had become sullen and moody and they even had a little argument—their first major one—shortly before he was set to drive her to the airport. This was out of character for Daryl, and Rachael supposed it had to do with the way the Butcher case was going. Ever since the discovery of the last victim last summer, no new leads had turned up. It seemed as if the unknown killer had vanished off the face of the earth.

Of course, Rachael knew that wasn't the case.

The missing persons reports coming out of the area the killer favored seemed to support the theory that the Butcher was still operating. When Daryl drove her to LAX

three nights ago she finally got him to reveal why he was in such a foul mood: the case was going nowhere. The task force members were chasing down useless leads, and they still had at least three missing people in the area that fit potential victims. There was pressure from his internal supervisors to take him off the case because he wasn't making any progress and replace him with an FBI agent. He was worried about Rachael travelling to South Bend alone. Rachael figured this had to do with his fears over what had happened to Shirley, his first wife, and she put his mind at ease. She was tough, she'd assured him. She could kick some royal ass if she had to and that seemed to put him at ease. By the time they reached the airport Daryl had been his old self. He'd apologized.

“I'm sorry for being such an asshole. I'm just worried about you going out there by yourself."

“I'll be fine,” she'd said, kissing him.

Now she sighed and crossed the street at the green light. The day was cold and overcast. The streets were wet, the curbs lined with slush. The area she was in was an older section of town, near Notre Dame University. She had been warned that the area wasn't the best to walk in at night, but Rachael could take care of herself. Besides, she found it rather quaint. It reminded her of the town she had gone to college in. In fact, her sense of familiarity with the area was so strong that she walked through the area slowly, taking in every detail; the old brick buildings, the row houses with their faded porches, the streets crammed with cars parked along the curb. Snow had fallen two days before and another storm was expected to hit in the next twenty-four hours, the last winter storm of the season according to forecasters. Part of her welcomed it and part wished that it wasn't so.

She was eager to drive out to the area on the outskirts of the city on the north side where the bodies of the three victims were found in such weather. Alice Henderson, the first South Bend victim, had disappeared around the same time of the year and it was assumed she was dumped in the area amid the hard ground and snow. Rachael wanted to rummage through the area and see what it had been like for the killer, fantasize what it must have been like for him to drive out on a snowy, cold morning and drag Alice's body out to the woods, then bury her in the cold, hard packed earth. Something might help trigger something, point her in a new direction in the case. It was worth a shot.

Once across the street she spied a small coffee shop on the corner. She darted inside and reveled in the sudden warmth, glad to be inside because frankly the area she was in wasn't the best. Daryl had warned her that the neighborhood south of Notre Dame University was bad, and the students were usually warned to avoid trekking through the streets alone due to the high crime rate. But the neighborhood was where two of the victims lived and presumably the third had resided there as well, so she had to be brave and forsake common sense. Now her common sense was taking over, telling her to get her ass in a business establishment where there were people. Just because you work out and know enough martial arts to kick most men's asses doesn't necessarily mean that you're invincible, she thought as she pulled off her gloves in the waiting area of the coffee shop. There's always somebody bigger and badder.

Her eyes traced the small café for an empty booth or a stool at the counter.

Luckily there was one empty booth left in the place, and she walked over to it gratefully.

She didn't have the patience to sit at the counter amid the dirty old men and the winos who were gathered there.

A middle-aged waitress showed up wearing make-up that made her look like a clown, and Rachael asked for coffee. She waited, hugging herself beneath the long black leather trenchcoat she wore. When the coffee arrived she clutched it, reveling in the warmth through her black leather gloves. She sipped it and sat at the booth, drinking coffee and thinking about what her next move would be.

When the waitress re-emerged with an order pad, Rachael realized she was hungry. She hadn't eaten anything all day. She took a cursory glance through the menu, and without thinking ordered a chicken-fried steak dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetables, and a salad. She also ordered a tall glass of water. The waitress jotted the order down and left. Rachael sipped her coffee and decided that now would be a good time to work on her notes and see where she was on her investigation of the case.

She reached into her satchel and pulled out her notes and papers and looked through them. Sipping her coffee intermittently, she was able to track the last days’ events and come to several conclusions.

Day one: after her arrival in South Bend and checking into the Sheraton near the Michiana Regional Airport, she had slept until noon. Then she'd risen in time to shower and meet the detective that Daryl had talked to two years ago. His name was Chuck Flowers, and he was in charge of investigating the three murders. He met her for lunch in the hotel's restaurant, and it was apparent from the git-go that Chuck was going to prove to be a hostile witness. “I've already told the L.A. cops everything I could think of,” he'd said as they sat in the restaurant's smoking section. “I don't know what else I could tell you that you haven't heard already."

“Humor me,” Rachael had said, turning on the charm.

Chuck went through what she already knew: Alice Henderson disappeared in March of 1984; Howard Manheim, age 23, vanished in April of 1985. In July of that year a group of hikers trekking in the woods stumbled upon a nude, decapitated male corpse just one hundred yards off Interstate 33. A search for the missing head led investigators to the head of Howard Manheim partially submerged in some bushes fifty yards away. The body of the first victim was never identified and his head was never recovered. Likewise, Howard Manheim's body was never found. In October of that year, a group of children came across bone fragments. The resulting search came up with the rib bones, spinal column, and leg bones of Alice Henderson. Her head was never found.

Chuck Flowers related how he picked up on the case soon after the identification of Alice Henderson. He had been amazed at the confessions of Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole two years previously, and had been following up on major serial killing cases ever since. He had begun by checking to see if there were any other missing persons in the South Bend area that resembled the sociological background of Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim—both of whom were drug users and prostitutes. In the year that followed he had found that there were one hundred and thirty-six missing persons that closely resembled the make-up of Henderson and Manheim. With a skeleton crew, he had his men follow up on those missing persons while he and two assistants attempted to track the last few days of Manheim and Henderson.

“Every lead we came to led us to the area south of the university,” he explained.

“It's pretty much the red light district of South Bend. Bars, strip joints, porno shops, massage parlors, a fetid mess. Gangs run rampant in the area, and addicts openly shoot up in the alleys. The area precinct is always getting calls from residents complaining about hookers screwing their johns on their front lawns in full view of their children. And all this going on within blocks of a Catholic University. Jesus Christ on a pogo stick!"

Rachael asked him about the kind of people who lived and frequented the area.

Chuck laid it out quite neatly. The red light district was two blocks south of the University of Notre Dame and four blocks north of the civic center and city hall. The area was largely inhabited by poor African-Americans. The kids in the area ran with two or three different gangs that committed everything from vandalism to strong-armed robbery and murder. Mixed in with this were the bars and clubs that catered to the university students. “The kids know to drive to the clubs in the area rather than walk there. We've had several students attacked walking those streets. A few women have been raped.” He leveled a fatherly gaze at her, as if warning her not to go strolling through the area on foot after dark. It was a nice gesture, and Rachael pressed him on.

Slightly to the south and the east of the Civic Center were the older suburbs which saw the kinds of gangs inner-city Los Angeles was not used to; these gangs were comprised of largely middle-class white kids who adopted the dress and lingo of L.A.

gangsters and rap artists. Most were simply tagging crews, but at least five different gangs were into drug trafficking. They came to the red light district largely to attend the strip clubs and occasionally hire a prostitute.

“So they aren't involved in the prostitution trade at all?"

“Nah. These kids lack the sophistication for that. The prostitution rings here are run mostly by bikers."

Alice Henderson had come from the northwest side, a wealthy suburb that was largely inhabited by doctors, lawyers, and business executives. The housing tract Alice had grown up in was a gated community, with two and three story mansions sitting on at least two acres of land apiece. Alice had seemed to have it all: good grades, acceptance into Yale University, voted most popular girl in high school, and a cheerleader for the school football team. But in her senior year she started running around with a bad crowd.

Her father, an influential physician who was on the faculty of the University of Indiana School of Medicine, bailed her out of jail one night when she and a group of her friends had gone on a drunk driving binge, clipping parked cars along Lincolnway West. Alice was back at it the following week, seen in public hanging on the arm of a boy who was a member of the Cruisers gang, one of the gangs that came from the southside. She left home after graduation and moved in with him, and a year later she was working the main drag near the airport after having had a falling out with the gang. It seemed they couldn't provide her with the crystal methamphetamine she'd become hooked on. A Russian immigrant named Eugene Shectman could, provided she work for him. She could, and she did.

That had been in November of 1983. Alice Henderson worked the streets for Eugene for three months before graduating to a massage parlor on Main Street. A month later she was back on the streets. An acquaintance of the girl had told Chuck that her father had been scouring the area for her and that she had quit the massage parlor for fear he would find her and persuade her to leave for good. Apparently Alice still had a conscience and a soft spot for home and family, but her stubborn streak made her leave the job so her father wouldn't find her. Nonetheless, she worked the streets for close to a month before she picked up her last john.

Chuck pointed out on a map of South Bend where Alice was last seen—the corner of La Salle and High Street, a prime spot for the whores that walked the streets. Traffic from the business district and the civic center came through here and the main highway, Interstate 31, ran through this spot carrying college students from the University of Indiana and Notre Dame University. Interstate 31 ran north and south, from the lower middle-class suburbs in the south, to the wealthier suburbs of the north where Alice Henderson was from. Rachael wrote all this down. It was going to be a lot of research and retracing Alice's steps.

Howard Manheim was a different story. An acquaintance of the Rippers, a rival of the Cruisers gang, Howard was a male prostitute who kept his homosexuality a secret from his gang friends. He kept a one-room loft apartment on the edge of the business district where he lived with an older black male named Patrick Wilson, who was initially arrested for the murder. The two had been fighting at the time of his death, and police had been called to the apartment to break up a fight between them that ended with Howard going to jail. The story that came out in the aftermath of Howard's body being found was that two days after getting out of jail, Howard told his lover that he was going out to make them some money and that he would be in before midnight. Patrick, who had been trying to dissuade Howard from peddling his body, got Howard to take some condoms with him—the recent AIDS scare was giving him second thoughts about spending more time with Howard, hence their recent fights. Patrick spent the evening in the company of his sister and her boyfriend and a group of their friends; a perfect alibi. Howard never returned home.

The area in which he worked the streets was the same stretch of road that Alice Henderson disappeared.

The unidentified body was another matter. The first body found, it had been fresher, killed perhaps three days before being discovered. The remains were that of a young man, between eighteen and twenty-five years of age, with a slight build and brown hair. He had an appendectomy scar that was old. He appeared to be well nourished—in fact, the coroner reported finding undigested kernels of corn in his stomach. Retraction of the neck muscles suggested he might have died as a result of decapitation.

Rachael looked over her notes and pursed her lips. Death by decapitation, and the other two victims too decomposed to make an accurate diagnosis. All efforts to identify the fresher victim had failed, and the closest they had come was a homeless man saying he had spent the night at the YMCA with a young man who bore a similar physical description of the victim found in the woods. Unfortunately, the homeless man could not recall the young man's name. But his description fit the remains perfectly; he had even been able to describe the victim's features, which were sketched up by a police artist and posted on various missing person's reports. Nobody had stepped forward to claim the body or to report the sketched face as a loved one who had recently gone missing.

Rachael's salad arrived and she dug into it hungrily, retracing her last few days in South Bend. After her meeting with Chuck Flowers, he had driven her through the downtown and red light district, pointing out various points of interest to her. Then they had driven out to the area where the bodies had been found. It was on the north side of town, past the suburbs and universities, and still looked the same as it did when the crimes were committed. They parked on the side of Interstate 33 and Chuck led her through the woods, explaining his theory that the killer had to have known the area well enough to park on a side gully that would leave his car unobscured by passing traffic.

From there he'd brought the bodies in on foot, carrying them one hundred yards into the woods away from prying eyes where he clumsily buried them.

Rachael recorded her findings that night in her cassette recorder and notebook, then rented a car the following day. She went to the library and spent the day researching the city of South Bend, its government, racial make-up, and history. Twelve years ago when the murders were committed, South Bend was pretty much the same as it always had been: a mid-size mid-western metropolis where people lived, worked, and went on about their middle-class, mid-western lives. The crime statistics for the years the murders were committed were slightly lower then they were now, but that was a given. She did some research on the immigrant population, finding out when they started arriving in the city and from where. She also researched the city's gang problem, making a note to speak more about it to Chuck for future conversations.

The day after that she drove to the red light district herself. She walked the streets past the filthy denizens: pimps, hookers, hustlers, black dudes lounging against bars as they tried to look cool for her as she strolled by. She walked into the Blue Lady saloon, a bar that Howard had frequented, which boasted a large gay clientele. Chuck had told her the bar had changed owners since the murders, and true to form the new bartender couldn't tell her anything about Howard Manheim. From there she went to an X-rated book/peep show where Alice had worked at briefly, then the massage parlor she had worked at over on Lincoln Way. Nobody would talk to her despite her assurances that she was a journalist working on a book, not a cop.

And then today she had driven out to the woods where the bodies had been found.

She started at the red light district, driving around the streets, trying to picture where the killer would have started out. It would have had to be somewhere close by; these were street hustlers he had killed, people who would have directed him to an alley a block or so away from where they were picked up or a motel room in the area. Of course, maybe the killer kept lodgings close by. She made a note to check out the motels in the area, and from the red light district drove to the outskirts of town where the bodies had been buried.

It was a twenty-minute drive.

She made a note of that.

Trudging through the hard packed snow, she had tried to visualize what it would have been like for him. She had parked her car in the little grove where Chuck theorized the killer parked his own car, and headed down to the spot on foot. She sat on the stump of a tree and looked out at the woods, her mind racing. He would have had to carry the bodies into these woods, once again suggesting that this killer was the Eastside Butcher.

Remember the second and third victims in Echo Park found at the bottom of the gully?

she thought. Those were carried quite a distance, too. She rubbed her gloved hands together, shivering in the cold as her thoughts turned over in her mind.

And then she had headed back to the red light district where she'd spent the last hour walking the streets. The answer lay here. For some reason she felt the killer had been drawn to this area like a firefly to a porchlight. Why, she had no idea. For one, if he had been drawn so much to this area, why wasn't he drawn to similar districts in Los Angeles?

Why not prey on the prostitutes that strutted along Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street in the heart of Hollywood? True, three of the female victims were prostitutes that operated out of escort services or massage parlors, but they had ties to the area street gangs. But then so did Alice Henderson here in South Bend. And then the gang theory that helped hold the case together in L.A. just wasn't here in South Bend. No hardcore gang members had been murdered here. Was it because he was just getting started here?

Were the murders of Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim his first attempts? It would seem likely, since they would have been easy to procure. It could also be safe to assume that the unidentified third victim was a homeless man or a teenage runaway. Someone not likely to be missed.

The waitress emerged with Rachael's dinner, and for the next ten minutes all thought of the case was lost as Rachael's hunger zoomed in. She pushed aside her notes and dug in. She was ravenous. She hadn't eaten all day and her body was screaming for food.

When she was finished she went back through her notes and tried to retrace the killer's steps. Okay, so you kill Alice Henderson on March 18 of 1984, since that was the last day anybody recalls seeing her. It was a cold night, the snow was still on the ground.

You drive her out to the woods and manage to bury her pretty well. And you keep her head. Where you keep it, I have no fucking idea. Maybe you keep it in your freezer. Or maybe you got rid of it, disposed of it somewhere else and it's never been recovered. At any rate a year later you kill Howard Manheim in almost similar circumstances. It's a cold, March night, the snow is still on the ground again, and maybe you were thinking about your murder of Alice a year before, which set you off. You find Howard quite easily since you swing both ways—yes, we know you prefer both sexes, lover boy, don't think that'll throw us off. You dispose of Howard in the same way. And maybe in the year between murders you go back out to the spot you buried Alice and make sure she's buried and to relive her murder. You do the same with Howard. And then in October you kill your third victim—seven months later. Maybe the urge is getting too strong for you to resist now, and you purposefully seek out a homeless person because you know that the police will have a harder time tracing him. You do this, and then three days later his body is found, along with Howard's. You flip out because you still have Alice's head in your freezer—but then, I could be wrong. Like I said, for all I know you could have disposed of Alice's head elsewhere and it was just never found. But no, I think you kept it.

I think it's part of your fetish. It always has been. And now you have to get rid of it and get out of here. Somehow you manage to do that, and you do it successfully. But the publicity from the three bodies found in the woods is too much for you, and that's when you disappear.

Rachael chewed on the end of the ballpoint pen she was using to write her notes with. Her brow furrowed in concentration. This is what had her deeply stumped. It was obvious that the publicity from the discovery of the bodies scared the killer off—but did he remain in South Bend for awhile, or did he immediately flee the city to Los Angeles?

Rachael didn't think so. For one, she was fairly confident that if he had fled his next victim would have been the following year in L.A., when he would have felt more comfortable and when the need would have begun to rise again. But the first victim that matched the profile in L.A. was in 1989, and there was a five-year gap between that murder and the Lady of the Ocean murder. If one man was responsible for all murders, why the long gaps of inactivity?

Maybe he couldn't leave, she thought. Maybe he was tied down here with a job or a relationship or some other obligation that kept him in South Bend. And he laid low. But he got out as soon as he could. And when he did, he moved to L.A. And if we assume it took him a year to muster up the nerve to try killing again, he could have landed in L.A.

in mid to late 1988. But after the 1989 murder, why the five year gap between killings?

She didn't know. She knew of other killers that went through long periods of inactivity between victims. Jeffrey Dahmer was a classic example, although she hated bringing him up in thought due to the clichéness of it. Dahmer's first victim had been Stephen Parent in 1978, a young hitchhiker who he beat to death in his parents’ house. It would be nine years before he would kill again, luring three homosexuals to his grandmother's home where he would kill them in the basement. There was another period of inactivity that lasted a year or so, another period of inactivity when he was briefly jailed for indecent exposure and then he started again, becoming a juggernaut in the last year of his killing spree. Much as the Eastside Butcher was now becoming.

Were you in jail somewhere between 1989 and 1994? Is that why you didn't kill in that time period?

Rachael checked her watch and noted that it was seven-thirty. She reached into her wallet to get some money to pay the bill when a thought occurred to her. She glanced back over her notes, noting the times Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim disappeared. Both vanished between seven-thirty and eight p.m.

With a wild idea formulating in her mind, Rachael paid her check, then headed outside and down the street, toward the parking garage where her car was located.

Another experiment had just occurred to her, one that she was sure would bring some more insights into the specifics of the nights Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim were killed.

Chapter 20

March 25, 1998, 1:30 p.m.

Los Angeles, CA

Father John Glowacz was sitting on a bench watching a basketball game at the Our Lady of Guadalupe recreation center. The recreation center had been set up for the area youths. He was dressed in a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt with his clerical collar on, watching as a scratch basketball game was underway. He was laughing, calling out to urge the kids on, clapping his hands when somebody shot a basket or when a good defensive move had been made. The kids playing on the court were all neighborhood kids, skin-headed youths in long, baggy shorts and tennis shoes, shirtless for the most part, sweating it up and getting their frustrations out on the basketball court. John had picked the teams himself: one team was comprised of a few neighborhood kids and members of both the 18th Street gang and Tortilla Flats, while the other team was comprised of 18th Street, Los Compadres, and some more area kids. The gang members were kids that came to the church and attended Danny Hernandez's youth services. Good kids for the most part that wanted to better themselves. Father John Glowacz did all he could to give them a little bit of hope and pride in their communities.

He jumped up when Team #2 made an impressive basket courtesy of Sparky, a fourteen-year-old shaven-headed kid from Los Compadres. His teammates immediately high fived him, including the 18th Street gang members. There were big smiles of pride over how well they were playing flashing all over the court. Father John Glowacz clapped. “Good going, guys! Keep it up. You're looking real good out there. Real good!"

It was on days like this, when he could get the rival gang members to play basketball together and have them congratulating each other on a game well played, that made Father John Glowacz's day. It was days like this when he felt it was worth it to come work at this parish despite the long sleepless nights he had spent four years before sweating over the decision to accept the position.

Running footsteps heading his way made Father Glowacz turn his attention from the game. A young boy named Pedro Rodriguez was running toward him with a panicked look on his face. Father Glowacz frowned; Pedro Rodriguez was a little on the small side, and had been recently hanging out with members of the Los Compadres street gang. His older brother was one of the boys playing basketball. Father Glowacz had been surprised to not see Pedro with his brother when the older boy didn't shown up, and he hoped the lure of the streets hadn't called him. But as the younger boy ran up to the priest, panting heavily from the exertion of his run, he could see that something was troubling the youngster. “Father Glowacz!"

“Yes, Pedro. What's the matter?” Father Glowacz rose to his feet and put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder.

“I've...” the boy was hopping from one foot to the other, as if he had to go to the bathroom, but Father Glowacz saw that the need to evacuate his bladder wasn't the problem. The boy was scared. “I've just ... ah, shit!"

“It's okay, Pedro,” Father Glowacz said, smoothly. “Just take your time."

The boy nodded and waited until he had caught his breath. Father Glowacz checked quickly to see how the game was progressing. It was still in progress, thank God.

He turned his attention to the young boy. “Okay, feel better now?"

Pedro nodded. “Yeah."

“What do you want to tell me?"

Pedro seemed to pause for a minute, then looked up at the priest. “Is ... is it a bad thing to tell something bad about ... well, about another person here from the church?"

Father Glowacz felt his nerves tremble. “That depends, Pedro. If it's something like hearsay, a rumor you might have heard about a person but have no proof of, then yes.

It's called bearing false witness. You'll learn that in CCD if you haven't already."

Pedro nodded. “This isn't ... hearsay, whatever it is you call it. It's something else.

Something I saw."

Father John Glowacz frowned. “Is it something that might hurt one of the members of the parish?"

Pedro Rodriguez shook his head. “No ... well, yeah, it might be ... it's just that—"

“Just that what?"

“I think I saw the killer,” Pedro blurted suddenly.

This stopped Father John Glowacz cold. He looked down at Pedro, a growing sense of numbness spreading through his body. He felt his mouth grow dry. “You saw...?"

Pedro Rodriguez nodded, speaking rapidly now. “I was coming up Sixteenth Street, going to the grocery store for my mother when—"

“Quiet!” Father John Glowacz hissed, turning around quickly to see if anybody had overheard. The game was still in progress, and a group of other kids were playing handball further down the recreation center. In the recreation center's office, Father Robert Ames was sitting behind the desk talking to one of the after-school volunteers, probably discussing church history again as he always liked to do. Nobody had overheard them. He turned back to Pedro and bent down so that he was at eye level with the boy.

“Are you sure you are telling me the truth, Pedro?"

Pedro nodded, his features grave.

“Have you told anybody about this?"

Pedro shook his head. “No, Father."

“I want you to quietly tell me what you know,” Father Glowacz said, his voice lowered now, leaning toward Pedro as if they were secret conspirators. “Tell me very quietly, okay?"

Pedro looked out at the playground, as if assuring himself that those around them playing hoops were too distracted to hear what he was about to divulge. Then he turned to Father Glowacz and leaned forward, cupping his hand around his mouth and whispering into the priest's ear. Father John Glowacz listened, the knot in his stomach growing tighter as the boy's story spun out, a rivulet of sweat breaking out on his brow as Pedro Rodriguez identified the Eastside Butcher. When the boy was finished it was all Father Glowacz could do to contain his fear and the shakiness in his limbs.

“Good boy,” he said, rising again to his full height. His arm around the boy's shoulder, he led him toward the church and the administrative offices. “I'm going to my office to make a phone call to a detective I know. Why don't you wait in the lobby for me, okay?"

Pedro nodded and the two walked toward the church as the basketball game continued behind them, unheeded.

Father John Glowacz and Pedro Rodriguez were waiting in Father Glowacz's office when Detective Daryl Garcia showed up forty-five minutes later. He rapped sharply on the door then opened it, peering in. His eyes were alight with curiosity. “Father Glowacz? You wanted to see me?"

“Yes...” Father John Glowacz rose from behind his desk and met the detective at the door. “Please, come in. And close the door behind you please."

Daryl complied, his eyes flicking from the priest to a young boy sitting in a chair by the priest's desk. “I came as quickly as I could. I was sorta busy when you paged me."

“That's okay.” Father Glowacz regarded Detective Garcia through his wire frames, noting that the detective was dressed in his street clothes: a pair of blue jeans, a blue chambray shirt that looked a trifle rumpled, and white tennis shoes. His hair looked slightly ruffled, as if he had been interrupted in the middle of something. “I'm sorry to bother you."

“That's quite all right,” Daryl Garcia said. “When I told you that you could call me on any matters relating to this case, I meant it.” Father John Glowacz nodded, reflecting on this fact; Detective Garcia had questioned him on matters relating to the case three times, all of them in regards to victims that had attended his parish. He found the detective to be a dedicated, intelligent, hard working, honest man. When Detective Garcia had passed him his card and told him he could call him on his cellular phone or have him paged at any time in matters relating to the case, he'd filed the card away in his rolodex.

But when Pedro told him what he knew about the Butcher, he knew he had to give the detective a call. This would be an important lead, one he was sure the detective would want to follow up on.

“Why don't you have a seat?” Father John Glowacz said, motioning to a chair in front of his desk, next to Pedro.

Detective Garcia sat down, his gaze trailing from the priest to the boy. “Okay, so what have you got?"

“This is Pedro Rodriguez,” Father John Glowacz said, indicating the boy with a nod of his head. “His older brother is a Los Compadres street gang member and is attending Danny Hernandez's youth group here at the church. Both boys attend my services here at the church. Pedro is the one that came across this ... rather disturbing information and ... well, I think it might be best for you to hear it from him."

Detective Garcia turned to Pedro and smiled. “Okay.” He held out his hand to Pedro. “Hi, Pedro, I'm Detective Daryl Garcia. Nice to meet you."

“Nice to meet you, too.” Pedro Rodriguez returned the handshake limply.

“Do you think you can tell me everything you told Father Glowacz?” Detective Garcia asked.

Pedro nodded. “Yes."

“Good."

Pedro told him. Father John Glowacz sat behind his desk, waiting for the change of expression on the detective's face. He wasn't surprised by the reaction: when Pedro told him what he knew, Detective Garcia's features changed from interest, to disbelief and shock. Which was just how Father Glowacz had felt.

“You're sure about this now?” Detective Garcia asked. He had taken out a small notepad and pen and jotted down some notes.

Pedro nodded vigorously. “Yes sir! I swear to God, I saw it with my own two eyes!"

Detective Garcia glanced at Father Glowacz, and the priest thought he detected a glimmer of hope in his eyes. The kid might be on to something. It sounded like an important enough lead to summon Detective Garcia as soon as possible, and now it looked like that phone call had paid off.

“I'll check it out,” Detective Garcia said, replacing the note pad and pen in his back pocket. “In the meantime, until you hear from me I'd like to ask you to keep this to yourself, Father."

“Of course,” Father Glowacz murmured.

“You're sure about this address, Pedro?” Daryl asked the boy.

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir."

“Okay.” Daryl Garcia rose from his seat and headed toward the door. Father Glowacz got up and saw him to the door. “I'll give you a call later today if anything pans out. Thank you, Father."

“My pleasure,” Father John Glowacz said, shaking the detective's hand. “In a way, I ... well, I wish ... this isn't the man you're looking for, but ... if it is, I hope it ends it."

“I feel the same way,” Detective Garcia said. He looked at the priest with surprised, haunted eyes, then turned and headed down the hallway of the church's administrative wing to check out the lead that Pedro Rodriguez had supplied.

Danny Hernandez was in the embrace of Hector Miguel when the front door to Hector's apartment burst open with a resounding bang, and the sound of running feet thundered through the apartment amid the shouts of “Freeze, police!"

Danny stiffened at the sudden loud intrusion, and instinctively pulled out of his lover and rolled off the bed. He grabbed his shirt and jeans from the pile of clothing on the floor and was heading for the window, oblivious to what Hector was doing, when they were in the bedroom swarming over him. Strong bodies tackled him to the ground, a hard knee pressed into the small of his back. “Freeze, asshole! LAPD!"

Danny froze as the sounds of the officers also subduing Hector echoed in the din.

“You! Freeze! Freeze your ass, motherfucker!"

Danny felt his arms being wrenched behind his back, a pair of iron cold handcuffs slap on his wrists. A rough hand gripped him by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet.

“Sit down!” a rough voice barked. Danny sat his nude butt down on the worn mattress as the sounds of Hector Miguel being handcuffed cut through his system. “Jesus Christ, thank God they make us wear latex gloves now. It's not every goddamn day we bust a pair of faggots shit deep in action with each other."

Danny felt his face turn red with embarrassment. His penis shriveled and tried to retreat into his groin. A familiar voice called out his name. “Danny!” He turned toward the voice.

It was the detective that had questioned him a few times about the various Butcher murders. Daryl Garcia. He looked menacing, pissed off. Danny's face turned redder and he turned away from the accusing glare of the detective.

Daryl stood in front of him, his imposing figure glaring down at him. “Hey, Hernandez! Look at me. I'm talking to you!"

Danny Hernandez looked up.

Daryl Garcia looked down at him, a smug grin on his otherwise handsome face.

“Looks like you got a lot of explaining to do, homes."

Danny was going to respond with something—he didn't know what—but his mouth was dry. He knew Daryl's record of harassment and physical abuse from some of the other homeboys, and he knew it was wise to keep silent. He shut up and looked down at his nude form. He managed a small squeak when he did speak. “Well, if you're taking my ass downtown, don't I at least get to put some clothes on?"

Daryl motioned to one of the officers that had burst into the apartment. “Get both these fairies dressed and book ‘em. Let's go!"

And with that, Danny Hernandez's secret was now out of the closet.

It had been almost ten years since Danny Hernandez had seen the inside of an interrogation room at Parker Center. Now dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, he sat with his hands still cuffed behind him in front of a large, scarred oak table. The room was bare, a single sixty-watt bulb casting a yellowish glow over the room. He had just been escorted to this room after spending an hour and a half in a holding cell—not with Hector, either—and then gone through processing. Now they had deposited him in the interrogation room, presumably for Daryl Garcia to speak to him. Danny's stomach fluttered. Ever since the bust his nerves had been on edge. He'd been so careful to hide this other part of himself, and he wondered what it was that led them to him after so many years.

The door to the interrogation room opened and Daryl Garcia stepped into the room. He gave Danny a hard scowl as he crossed over to the other side of the table and sat down. The two men looked at each other for several seconds that seemed like minutes to Danny. Finally, Danny looked away.

“What's the matter, Hernandez?” Daryl asked. “Can't face the music?"

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

“Sure you do."

Danny took in a quick breath and clenched his teeth. He could feel his anger building and he willed it to simmer down. “I have no idea what I'm in here for. Until now, I had no idea that being gay was against the law."

“Are you gay, Mr. Hernandez?"

Danny shot Daryl a quick look. “What the hell do you think?"

Daryl shrugged. “It's not for me to pass judgement. Just because I stumble across a man who is pretty well known among his homies to be a ladies man in the barrio and to be a big, bad, macho former gang banger, a veteran loco who all the younger homies look up to, and I see this same big and bad tough gangster in bed with another man—shit, it ain't my position to presume."

“Well, now that you're finished with your smart ass remark, maybe you can tell me exactly what the hell I'm in here for,” Danny sneered.

Daryl looked pleased. “Ahh! So we want to cut to the chase, eh? Forget the cut and dry as to why you were caught in bed with another man when you're supposed to be a role model and a good and upstanding Catholic and all that happy horseshit!"

Danny clenched his teeth. “So you found out I like men, too. All right. Big fucking deal. We all have a taste for the forbidden, Detective Garcia. Some men like to dress up in their wive's panties and masturbate; other men like to be spanked by a dominatrix. When the mood hits, I like to fuck other men. Got a problem with that?"

Daryl shook his head and leaned over the table, elbows resting on the scarred oak tabletop. “To tell you the truth, no. I don't."

“Then what's the deal? Listen, aside from straying off the straight and narrow path when it comes to my religion and stuff, hey, I'm guilty. Okay, so I sinned in that respect.

But I been clean on everything else. I haven't broken the law on anything that—"

“Let's talk about that,” Daryl said, interrupting him. “Breaking the law."

Danny started and sat stiff straight in his chair. His heart hammered in his chest.

“Okay, man. Shoot."

Daryl leaned over and started counting off on his fingers. “One, you haven't been totally clean. We searched your apartment an hour ago and found some marijuana. Bad decision, Danny.” Daryl shook his head. “Very bad decision. An ex-con possessing drugs can revoke your probation."

“I've been off probation for five years now,” Danny sneered, condescendingly.

“There were a couple of balloons of heroin we found, too,” Daryl continued and now Danny's jaw dropped. Daryl noticed it but his expression didn't change. “It could be enough to charge you with trafficking—"

“Bullshit! You fucking planted that heroin in my place! I haven't touched smack in ten years! Jesus Christ! ” Danny leaned back, his face growing hot.

Daryl leaned forward. “Then you're going to have to cooperate with me on this, Danny."

“Cooperate in what?” Danny cried.

Daryl started counting off on his fingers. “One, Louis Hernandez. Two, Rick Perez. Three, Javier Ramirez,” He paused and looked Danny straight in the eye. Danny looked straight back and willed himself not to break his gaze. His heart beat faster.

Suddenly he made the connection. Jesus Christ, man! He thinks I killed them!

Instead, he tried to be nonchalant about it. “What about them?"

Daryl chuckled. Danny felt his soul start to evaporate. “You say that as if you don't know what I'm talking about. But I can tell by the way your hands are shaking behind your back that you are nervous as shit. I can see the sweat bead along your forehead. Your pupils are wide, your breathing is heavy. That's a sign of nervousness, Danny. What are you nervous about?"

“I'm not nervous,” Danny said, licking his lips and swallowing.

“Sure you are. You just licked your lips and swallowed, more symptoms that you know very well what I'm talking about. And as far as I'm concerned we can stay here all night if you want. Because you will tell me about all three of them before the night is over, Danny. All three of them, and maybe some others as well."

And Danny knew then that the reason Hector's place had been raided, knew the reason why he had been brought into this interrogation room and asked about those three homeboys, was that they had been doing more than just checking up on him. They had been following him. And they knew that the comment he'd made before about not breaking the law was pure bullshit. Danny felt his skin grow clammy. Christ.

“What made you think...” Danny began, “that ... that I... "

Daryl appeared to know what Danny was getting at. “What made us think that you might be the killer? Let's just say a little bird observed some strange behavior from you the last few weeks and gave us a call."

Danny's mind whirled. Let's just say a little bird observed some strange behavior

... Who? And for how long? My God, had he been that obvious?

Daryl sat back in his chair, his gaze resting on Danny. He smiled. “Now, why don't we just start from the beginning by telling me where you were on the evening of September 12, 1995..."

March 25, 1998, 11: 48 p.m., Central Time

South Bend, Indiana

Rachael Pearce was ecstatic. Had been since she pulled back into one of the parking garages downtown and began hiking back up to the university district. Her mind was racing madly. Using the stopwatch function on her Timex, she had conducted a series of experiments earlier that evening. Starting on the corners of where both Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim had both disappeared at roughly the same time they were reported last seen, Rachael had driven away from the scene and cruised around the downtown area for several minutes. She noted the traffic flow, which was no less heavy than it was on Sunset Boulevard at this time of night on a weekday. Foot traffic, too, was normal to light. There were people walking home from work or gathered at bus stops to carry them home; there were young mothers walking children, sometimes pushing a baby carriage. The area was predominately black, but there was a sprinkling of Caucasians as well. Most of the people could be easily tagged as lower class. Closer to the university lots of college kids were about, all looking for thrills in either the restaurants, bars, pool halls, night clubs, or coffee bars. Sprinkled among all this were the homeless people begging for change, the occasional street prostitute (who mainly stuck in the alleyways and side streets), and, further down in the seedier sections of town, the drug dealers and hustlers.

Rachael drove around the downtown area for several minutes, noting all of this.

The main strip was seedy, sporting the majority of the bars, pool halls, and the X-rated bookstores and peepshows. All of the shops and restaurants were on the bottom floor of large buildings that spanned ten stories or more. The tallest buildings were in the center of the downtown district, and Rachael could make out corporate logos in some of them advertising phone companies and financial institutions. There were several apartment buildings peppered around the downtown district, and as she drove around she saw a residential section, populated mainly by duplexes and more apartment buildings. Further south were lower class neighborhoods sporting small homes. She doubled back and headed north to the downtown area, her mind searching for a link. It was quite feasible that their killer had lived very close to here. He had to have lived within at least a few minutes of where he had picked up Alice and Howard. If that was the case, where did he spend his days? Did he perhaps work downtown as well?

She had tucked that thought in the back of her mind and caught Interstate 31

heading north, out of town. The onramp was right off the main drag, Lincolnway West, and she saw how easy it would have been for him to pick his victims up, perhaps drive a few blocks south to his house or apartment with the prospect of sex, kill them, then pack them back in his car and drive through the downtown district to catch the Interstate. She made a note to check the on-ramps in the residential areas surrounding downtown. She headed out of town and within thirty minutes found herself parking in the little grove off the side of the road where he surely must have parked—she saw how concealed it was in the darkness—and trotted through the woods with her flashlight. She stopped fifty yards into the woods. It was cold, her breath misting in front of her as she exhaled. She checked her stopwatch. From the moment she'd left the downtown area and gotten on the freeway it had taken twenty minutes.

As she drove back downtown she turned this little experiment over in her mind.

What she wanted to do now was wait until perhaps well after midnight and make a similar run, although this time from the residential areas surrounding downtown, and drive straight out here. The reason was obvious: if he had abducted his victims around seven-thirty in the evening, he surely didn't set off to dispose of the bodies until well after midnight. She quickly nixed this idea. He would have been too smart for that. He would know that there would be a heavy police presence in the downtown area at this time, setting up sobriety checkpoints, and just being on the general lookout for the usual crimes that went with a lot of drinking and the other things peepshows and the like spawned.

There was no doubt that their killer had been careful, that she was sure of. But then, both Alice Henderson and Howard Manheim had disappeared on weeknights, and it was more plausible for him to have killed and disposed of his victims on the same night. Made sense. Police presence wouldn't be as heavy. It also gave her more insight to who their killer might be as well.

She parked her rental car in the parking lot and set off back to the university district. Assuming she was right in her deductions, he had to work some kind of job that was out of the norm of most means of employment. Howard Manheim disappeared on a Tuesday night, Alice Henderson on a Thursday. This indicated that if he spent the entire night killing them, doing God knows what with their dead bodies afterward, then driving them out to the woods later that night to dispose of them, theoretically he was awake well into the morning. From her reading on the subject of serial killers, she knew that this entire act would keep him high and sustained until the wee hours of the morning, after which he probably sacked out and slept. He would have woken up feeling fulfilled and refreshed. It was the only methodology she could think of that could account for the long time gap between murders; if he had a normal nine-to-five job, he surely could have called in sick to his job the following day. But no, she was 99 percent certain that he didn't have a normal nine-to-five job, that his employment might have been sporadic, or perhaps a graveyard shift somewhere. Or maybe ... ?

She was stepping onto the street, heading toward the main drag as these thoughts went through her mind. She was concentrating on them so much that she almost didn't notice the college kids until they almost collided with her. She pulled back, startled, and they did likewise. “Excuse me,” she said, stepping around them. It was a group of three guys and three girls, all dressed in heavy lettermen jackets and blue jeans, hoods pulled over their heads against the bitter cold. One of them, a pretty blonde girl, smiled at her in acknowledgement as they passed her. Rachael continued on her destination and had almost put the college kids out of her mind when it hit her.

She stopped and looked back at the college kids, who were retreating into the doorway of a pool hall just past the parking garage. Their laughter drifted back to her.

Rachael stood on the sidewalk for a moment, watching as they went into the pool hall, then she looked out at the foot traffic on the street and noticed more of them.

College kids. All of them either heading toward the pool hall, the bar across the street, or the coffee shop on the corner of Grand and Central. Or leaving those spots toward the parking garage or toward their apartments.

A sudden thought occurred to her. A tall, gangly kid of twenty walked past her, head bent down in concentration. She stopped him by tugging at his jacket. “Excuse me,”

she said. “Are you a student?"

He stopped, startled, his eyes growing wide from behind the coke bottle thick glasses that straddled his face. “Yeah, er ... why?"

“What school do you go to?"

The kid looked puzzled, but answered her. “University of Indiana."

“How far is it from here?"

The kid shrugged and pointed in the direction she was heading. “About five miles that way."

“Thanks.” She headed in that direction, paying no heed to the puzzled look of the college student, intent only on following this new lead which burned at her nerves.

Chapter 21

March 26, 1998, 8:38 p.m.

Los Angeles, Ca

Channel One.

A woman in her mid-forties with short black hair and a plump ass is taking it missionary position from a man with a walrus mustache. The wet sounds of fucking emanate from the speakers amid their moans of passion and the squeaks of the bedsprings. Charley changed the channel on the video booth's television.

Channel Two.

A gorgeous blonde with waist length hair, augmented tits the size of basketballs, and bee-stung lips is taking it doggy style from a muscular man with long blonde hair.

The sound of her ass slapping the man's pelvis creates a calm susurration in Charley's senses as he imagines himself as the long-haired man plowing into her. Charley's penis grows in his trousers.

Channel Three.

Two women, a blonde and a brunette with shapely figures and large breasts, dressed in black leather bondage gear. A man dressed in similar gear is fucking one of the girls in the ass while the second girl inserts a double-headed dildo in her vagina. The second head of the dildo teams up with the real thing buried in the girl's ass as his rough hands slap her butt.

Channel Four.

An oriental woman with full red lips is engulfing a large cock, taking its engorged length in her mouth.

Charley felt warm, realizing he had held his breath for a moment. He felt his heart beat faster as his excitement grew. His cock was rock hard in his pants. His eyes were riveted on the screen as the woman's head bobbed up and down the immense cock.

Charley shifted his buttocks on the plastic seat in the video booth. He was in one of twenty video booths in Ken's Adult Video and Books in Highland Park. He had just put five dollars worth of tokens in the booth's coin slot and was trying to find a suitable video currently playing on the store's video system. He had come here tonight because mother was getting on his nerves—nothing new there, mother got on his nerves every goddamned day. Usually he just stayed in his room and watched videos while she ranted and raved in the living room. But tonight she had been especially annoying. He couldn't turn up the volume on his television because she would simply pound on the door to his room and scream at him to turn it down. She would sit outside in the living room, pleading for him to come out and pray with her, or to sit up with her and watch TV. He'd tell her he was really tired and was going to bed, and just as he would get in the mood and put in a porn video she would start in on him again. He very well couldn't turn up the volume to that—she would know what he was doing in there, and she would start nattering at him that he would go blind if he kept doing that, or that it would fall off, or he would go to hell. After ten minutes of trying to watch sexual action amid his mother's ranting and raving above the sound affects that helped put him in the mood, he had turned the tape off with a snort of disgust, put on his jacket and shoes and headed out of the house. He ignored his mother as he brushed past her, telling her that he was going out for awhile in response to her “where do you think you're going now? It's late!” He got into his truck and headed out of the neighborhood toward Highland Park.

And now he was here at Ken's Adult Video and Book Emporium, trying to get into the mood again.

He was leery about jacking off in the privacy of the video booth. He had heard that they installed surveillance cameras in these booths and that sometimes police stings were made. He didn't want to get busted on an indecent exposure charge. He just wanted to immerse himself in pure, unadulterated lust in peace for the next ten minutes.

The oriental woman sucking the immense cock brought the man off with a hearty ejaculation of semen that splashed on her face. She licked it up, smearing it across her lips. Charley's breathing grew strained, his skin grew tingly as he watched. With a trembling hand, he changed the channel.

Channel Five.

Two well-built males romp it up under God's blue sky. One is on his hands and knees taking it up the rear from the other, his muscles rippling. Charley noted with bated breath that the man getting fucked had an incredible hard-on. He watched mesmerized for a minute, breath held. He exhaled as both men reached climax, semen landing on flesh and the wet, green grass.

Channel Six.

A woman is tied to a bed, arms and legs spread wide. She is blindfolded, a rubber-ball gag stuffed into her mouth and tied into place by a strip of leather. Two men dressed in bondage gear and black leather masks with eyeholes are swarming over her, one teasing her between her legs with his hand, the other brandishing a whip. Her cries are those of pain and rapture.

Charley's breathing grew faster, more urgent.

He flipped through the channels faster.

The middle aged woman was now taking it doggy style, screaming in ecstasy ...

the woman with the basketball size tits was squeezing her lover's cock between her man-made assets, urging him on with feral eyes ... mingled cries of passion created a soundtrack as a cock spurted semen over a smooth, white female ass ... a double penetration scene as the oriental woman from the oral sex reel rocked in double tandem as a third cock made its way toward her open and waiting mouth ... ?

His breathing grew harsher, his skin tingled ... ?

...as two male tongues entwined with each other, male fingers moving across male chests ... ?

... his cock so hard that it hurt ... ?

...and a female face pressed into the flowery folds of another woman, her finger reaching down to softly part ... ?

Charley rose to his feet and exited the booth, his breath held as he pushed through the double barroom-style doors of the video arcade and went past the movie display racks, the magazines, the sex toys, and out into the street.

He paused for a moment outside of Ken's Video and Books Emporium. Foot traffic on Highland Park Avenue was sparse compared to what it normally was. This section of the street was filled with topless bars and X-rated video stores, along with bars, restaurants, and fast food joints. The night air was cool, a promise of rain in the forecast.

Charley pulled his jacket tight around his body and started walking toward the parking lot.

He walked past a pair of prostitutes who were sharing a cigarette on the outer edges of the parking lot. In the darkness it was hard to tell what the prostitutes looked like but they were dressed identically: skimpy tops with small suede jackets covering their shoulders, tight mini-skirts revealing skinny legs and high heels. One of them called out to him as he entered the parking lot. “Hey, baby! Lookin’ for a good time?"

He imagined himself plowing his cock into her, hands wrapped around her throat, throttling her as he fucked her, her eyes bulging out of their sockets ... ?

“What's the matter, lover?” Her voice was a catcall, mocking and seductive at the same time. “Gotta go home to your mama?” They laughed.

He drew the knife across her throat, severing her larynx and carotid artery, blood spraying him, splashing his face. He drew the knife in deeper, cutting into the thyroid gland and hitting bone ... ?

He shut their laughter out with the slam of the front door of his truck. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, his emotions roiling. His cock was still hard, begging for release. He looked out the window toward the prostitutes, noticing they had turned their attention away from him and had resumed trying to get business from the johns that cruised the street. His mouth turned into a grimace. His hands gripped the wheel tight as their catcall echoed in his mind. What's the matter lover? Gotta go home to mama?

Charley started the truck and backed out of the parking slot, his need building. He cruised slowly toward the exit where the prostitutes were positioned, the need coursing through him, begging for release.

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.

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."

Rachael looked incredulous. “What did you get him for? You don't have anything on him yet, do you?"

“Nothing yet,” Daryl said. He paused as the waiter brought them their lunch—

chicken Caesar salad for Rachael, a Cajun burger and fries for Daryl. “We're merely holding him for questioning. If it looks good, we're going to have him arrested on parole violation."

“Parole violation?"

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Daryl grinned. “Goofy Hernandez may be gone, but Louis told Steve that Peter supplied Goofy with both marijuana, alcohol, and pornography. Goofy was only nineteen, but it's illegal in California to buy pornography and alcohol in the state of California unless you're twenty-one and older.”

He took a bite of his burger, chewing with a big grin. “Having him arrested should give us some time to come up with some more ... er ... live minors whom he might also have supplied with the same contraband. It would make charges stick better with the DA, allowing us to hold him longer while we go through his background."

They dug into their food, talking about the developments. Daryl felt good about them. For the first time in months they had a suspect in custody he felt good about. They just had to get through a series of difficult questions and if they panned out, great. If they didn't they would have to let him go, but Daryl wanted Peter tailed. This guy fit the profile perfectly. He was in his forties, was a latent bisexual, had once worked in a meat packaging plant as a butcher, had been an alcoholic and a drug addict—a trait the FBI psychiatrist said could help contribute to the murders when the killer committed the crimes in a drug or alcohol induced haze. Word on the street was that Peter wasn't just into the old in-and-out garden-variety sex; if it didn't draw blood, Peter wasn't interested.

At least that's what Steve's source had told him.

They were halfway finished with their meal when Rachael started telling Daryl about her updates on the book. “I think I have interest from a publisher,” she said, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I submitted an outline and the first three chapters and got an enthusiastic response from a literary agency one of my colleagues at the paper turned me onto.” Daryl nodded, following along as he ate his fries. He knew that the colleague in question, Michael Frey, who covered the metro section and the police blotter, also moonlighted as a writer of crime novels. “Anyway, the agency called me this morning and they really like it. The guy I spoke to, who happens to be Mike's agent, told me that he's ninety percent sure he can sell this to one of the big houses on a proposal. Isn't that great!"

“Wonderful,” Daryl said. He sipped at his iced tea. “Suppose when it comes time for you to deliver your book we haven't caught him yet?"

“I've thought about that,” Rachel said, and now she looked at him coyly, as if she was about to reveal a secret she was too shy to admit she was harboring. “And that's why I want to talk to you about this first. I want to ... well, I want to put in more information.

More detailed stuff than what other writers and myself have written in the papers. I ...

want to include stuff from the case files.” She stopped, biting her lower lip, her eyes big, wide, and scared, like a deer caught in the headlights of an approaching pickup truck. “I want to include information on all the suspects, everybody that you and Steve and the other detectives arrested in connection with this case. I want to include information on the victims and their families and friends. I want to include information on the neighborhoods they live in. I want to put in as much as I can without jeopardizing your case because—"

Daryl held up his hand. “You're asking for quite a lot."

Rachael stopped, looking flustered, as if regretting she had brought up the subject.

“I know. It's a lot to ask for, but I think it might help. Especially if we can include the psychological profiles and I can include stuff on the Indiana murders. I mean, somebody that we don't even know, somebody who you might not even think of questioning could read it and maybe ... I don't know ... influence them, or make them think of somebody they know who might fit the profile.” She paused again, looking at him as if she was dreading his response. “You hate it don't you?"

“I don't hate it,” Daryl said. He drank the rest of his iced tea and set it on the table.

Actually, he really liked the idea. He just didn't know how his superiors and the guys at headquarters would take it. “I just want you to proceed with this carefully."

Rachael's face lit up with child-like glee. “Oh, I will, Daryl! You can count on me for that. I don't want to get you in trouble at work or anything. You know that."

“I know,” Daryl said and he reached for the bill, which the waiter had delivered a few minutes before. He scanned it quickly, then immediately withdrew his wallet to pay it. “I can only do so much to help you on my end. I'm afraid you'll have to rely on the Freedom of Information Act to get most of your information.” He pulled out two twenties and set them inside the leather billfold in which the waiter had placed their check. He looked at Rachael and smiled. “But off the record I'll provide you with all the information you'll ever need."

Rachael's smile was so wide it threatened to break her head in half and spill the top half over her shoulders. She leaned over the table quickly and gave him a hearty smack on the mouth. Smiling, Daryl stood up from the booth. He leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “If we weren't in a public place I'd take you right here."

“Oh, baby!” Rachael whispered in a seductive coo. She smiled at him as she slid out of the booth. “How about if I take a rain check on that?"

“Sure thing."

“Like tonight?"

“You got it."

She kissed his cheek, winked, and headed toward the lobby of the restaurant, Daryl following behind her. He felt good. For the first time in months things were going great for both the case and for Rachael's career as a journalist. This book sounded like it was really shaping up. Maybe it was just the thing they needed to boost interest in the case from the public. The Los Angeles public eagerly devoured anything broadcast or printed on the case, but if Daryl and a handful of the other FBI agents were correct in their assumption that the killer started in South Bend, maybe somebody who lived back there would read the book and it would jar their memory in remembering a classmate, a neighbor, perhaps a friend or relative. It was worth a shot. As good as Peter Manuel looked as a suspect, in all reality they probably wouldn't be able to pin anything on him.

Daryl hoped they could, though. Although he didn't have a gut feeling about Peter, his instinct told him that a break in the case was coming soon. The publicity of the latest murder had been at the top of the local news for the past three days and it had reached the AP wire as well. Dan Rather had even reported on it on the Nightly News and it was also reported on CNN's World Watch. Publicity in the Eastside Butcher case was starting to snowball like crazy. If it kept up, the tabloid magazines would soon pick up on the story— People, Newsweek, The Star. And when that happened they would be in Jeffrey Dahmer territory, or the Unabomber turf.

Daryl and Rachael walked out of the Hamburger Hamlet hand in hand, their conversation light, their footsteps a joyous bounce. As Daryl walked Rachael to her car in the parking lot, he thought about the suspect sitting in an interrogation room at Parker Center, and the publicity the latest murder was getting. He surely hoped that Peter Manuel was the killer, and they found the right evidence to pin it on him. God, he hoped that was the case.

But in his heart, he felt that Peter Manuel wasn't their man.

Chapter 23

Charley was seated at a corner booth of Top's Burgers, finishing the remnants of his bacon-cheeseburger and fries. The Los Angeles Times was spread out on the table and he had already read the same article five times. He was seated facing the entrance of the fast food outlet and every time the door opened to admit a patron he would glance up with his eyes, face still down as if reading the paper. His nerves were getting twitchy, more so than usual. It had been this way since two weeks ago when the papers reported that they had arrested what looked to be a suspect in the Eastside Butcher case.

Charley ate the last french fry on his tray and took a sip of coke. He had less than a quarter of coke left, and he sipped it down to the ice. He turned the paper back to the front page and scanned through the article again that had captured his attention and made his blood rush.

SUSPECT HELD IN EASTSIDE BUTCHER KILLINGS, screamed the headline. In smaller fourteen point type was another headline: Police confirm the latest discovery of the remaining pieces of latest victim. The basic report was that two days ago, the remaining pieces of Amanda Young were found in a sewer off Main Street and Broadway. She was neatly packed into two burlap bags, cut into eleven pieces. The only parts of her still missing were both hands and her head. The paper reported that the anatomical evidence showed that Amanda was killed by the Butcher and that this put the victim count at around sixteen.

What concerned him was the news about the capture of a possible suspect.

On the day the rest of Amanda Young surfaced, police announced the arrest of Peter Manuel on parole violation and stated to reporters that he was being considered a serious suspect in the Butcher slayings. The news was vague, but an LAPD spokesperson stated that Peter Manuel knew all but four of the victims, sans the Indiana victims of over a decade ago—they were still trying to establish if Peter Manuel had ties in the Midwest—and that several knives had been found at his house, one of them bearing bloodstains which were currently undergoing lab tests. He had a record for second degree murder, for which he had already served time, and a dozen other arrests, mainly assaults, armed robbery, breaking and entering, and other violations. In short, he seemed to fit the profile. Charley read through the article again, his heart racing, his nerves on edge.

Charley glanced at the counter, paying scant attention to the hustle and bustle in the kitchen and the cashiers taking orders. His stomach fluttered. It had been, what, five months since he'd seen Carmen Aguirre here? It had taken three months for him just to muster up the nerve and set foot in Top's Burgers again after what happened at his house, after the fuss mother had caused. He was sure she would never have anything to do with him again, so he had stayed away. He had come back about a month ago to have lunch, take that first step into getting back into the normal swing of things, and Carmen hadn't been there. In the last two weeks since he had been coming to Top's again he came to the conclusion that she was never coming back. She had left.

Or had she?

That's what made Charley nervous, knowing what he knew. He remembered the confrontation at his mother's house the night he had picked Carmen up at the bus stop, remembered how she had stormed out of the house. Then he remembered vaguely chasing after her and catching up to her, finally persuading her to come back inside through the side door, bypassing the living room and heading straight to his living quarters so she could dry off. Carmen had come back reluctantly, and after he had given her a towel to dry off, he told her he could either take her home or call for a cab. She didn't want either.

She would walk home. Not wanting to make an issue of it—he had remained strangely calm—he had let her go. She left then, leaving Charley in a black fury at the situation.

The next thing he remembered was being aware of an intense orgasm. When he regained control of his senses he saw that it was fully dark outside. Sometime between the time Carmen left and he came to, he had stripped naked and had put in an extreme S&M video. It had been a pretty violent one, one he had gotten at an underground flea market specializing in extreme fetish videos. He had shaken his head, shaking the fogginess off, and noticed that he had come all over the carpet. He had gotten up and turned the video off with the remote control. Then he had gone to the bathroom to clean himself off and clean the mess off the floor. It was at this time that he noticed that three hours had gone by.

It was then when he realized that things were going swiftly from bad to worse.

Charley closed his newspaper and folded it up. His lunch hour was almost over and he rose from his table, picking up his tray. He carried it over to the garbage can, tossed the trash inside, and placed the tray on a shelf near the counter. Folding the newspaper up further, he tucked it inside his jacket and made his way outside, brushing past a tall, attractive, copper skinned woman with black hair who had just stepped up to the counter to order. He glanced back at the woman as he pushed through the door, his eyes lingering on her shapely ass clad in a pair of black tights, and up her curvy body. She kept her back to him, looking up at the menu as he left the restaurant. Goddamn but she was a looker. And she looked a little familiar, too.

With the woman's image imprinted in his mind, Charley stepped outside and headed back up Main Street toward work.

Back in Top's Burger's, Rachael Pearce watched Charley walk up Main Street and frowned.

Chapter 24

August 7, 1998

After two weeks of mild eighty-five degree weather, Los Angeles was sliding into its yearly late summer heat wave. The last four days had seen the temperature steadily climb; it was one hundred and two degrees today. As Rachael Pearce exited her car in the parking lot of Our Lady of Guadalupe, she was struck by how still the air was, like the calm before the storm. Strange, she thought, as she closed the driver's side door of her tan Acura. She had spent a summer in Kansas when she was an undergraduate, working on the staff of the Wichita Tribune, and she remembered that when the weather got like this—oppressively hot and stifling, the air still—it only meant one thing. A storm was coming.

Rachael looked up at the sky and tried to look north toward the San Gabriel Mountains. The mountains were obscured by thick smog. Likewise, the sky was heavily laden with smog. It was so thick she could barely tell that the sky was blue.

Swinging her purse, which contained her notebook and a mini-cassette recorder, over her right shoulder, she headed toward the church's offices at the rear of the chapel.

The smog was so bad it was a wonder that she hadn't developed some form of lung cancer by now. She had been breathing the stuff for the past thirty-four years, save for four years spent away at college. When the smog levels were high everybody she knew that was from the midwest or the east coast could barely breathe. Rachael barely noticed it.

She found the church offices easily enough, and went through the double glass doors. Sighing in relief at escaping from the heat outside—the inside lobby of the church office was cooled by the central air conditioner—Rachael managed a smile and approached a middle-aged secretary who was seated behind a large, executive style desk typing into a computer. The secretary smiled up at her. “How can I help you?"

“I have an appointment with Father Glowacz,” Rachael said, holding out her hand.

“I'm Rachael Pearce, from the Times. "

“Yes. Father Glowacz is expecting you.” The woman rose from behind the desk and motioned for Rachael to follow her. “This way please."

Rachael followed the older woman down a corridor that ran lengthwise along the building. Halfway down she stopped at a door on the right and knocked twice before opening the door a crack. “Father Glowacz?” She asked, leaning forward to speak through the crack in the door. “Miss Pearce from the Times is here to see you."

“Oh. Um, tell her to come on in."

Smiling at Rachael, the secretary pushed the door open and stepped aside. “Go right in, Miss Pearce."

Rachael went inside the small office as the secretary closed the door behind her and a tall, wiry man rose from behind a desk to greet her. The man certainly didn't look like a priest; he was a good few inches taller than she, rather well built, with large hands that had a firm grip when she shook hands with him. His face was youthful, his blue eyes dancing with glee, like those of a young boy. His brown hair was rapidly fading from the top of his head and was cut short along the back and sides. He wore wire-rimmed glasses.

In a way, he resembled a bulkier version of the actor Anthony Edwards on the television show E. R. His wide, affable grin put her immediately at ease. “Please, have a seat,” he said, motioning to the chair set in front of his desk. His eyes locked on her briefly, as if studying her. “Can I get you something to drink?"

“No, I'm fine."

“Good."

Father John Glowacz wasn't dressed like a parish priest today; he was wearing a tan colored t-shirt with a computer logo over the breast pocket, a pair of faded blue jeans, and white tennis shoes. He noticed her puzzlement and laughed. “It's not customary for priests to wear their clerical collars twenty-four hours a day. When we do administrative work, some of us like to dress casually."

“I know that,” Rachael said, trying to remember her days as a catechism student back when she'd been a practicing Catholic. “I guess I just assumed that if we were meeting in your office at the church that you would be, you know, dressed for work."

“Presiding as a parish priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe is only one small part of my job,” Father Glowacz said, seating himself behind his desk. His eyes appraised her again and he appeared to relax a little. He moved the paperwork he had been working on to a small pile beside his desk blotter and placed his hands on his desk, smiling at her.

“Today is the only day I have to catch up on correspondence and other church miscellany, so I come in dressed casually. It surprises the regulars, too. Especially the little old ladies who come to church every day to pray the rosary. It practically gives them a heart attack, which is why I try not to set foot in the church when I come dressed this way."

Rachael laughed and John Glowacz laughed with her. He had a hearty, merry laugh. She immediately liked him. “Well, I guess maybe I should get started on what I came to talk to you about."

“You said something on the phone about a book?” Father Glowacz cocked a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Yes.” Rachael took out her notebook and mini-cassette recorder. She held the recorder up. “Do you mind?"

“Go right ahead.” Father Glowacz waved his approval.

Rachael pressed the PLAY button.

“I guess the first thing I want to go over is to reiterate what is already common knowledge,” Rachael said, flipping through her notes. “Forgive me for being so curt, Father, but I know you're on a time-limit to see me today."

“That's quite all right. Whatever I can do to help you, just ask."

Rachael started by going over the murder series and verifying which victims had been actual Our Lady of Guadalupe church members. All told, four of the victims had either attended Our Lady of Guadalupe in the past, or were active church-goers at the time of their murders. Of those four, two of them came from Danny Hernandez's Bible Study. Danny Hernandez had a passing acquaintance with at least six of the victims, knowing two or three of them personally. “Didn't you find that a little strange, Father?”

Rachael asked, breaking off from her verification.

“To tell you the truth, no,” Father Glowacz said. “Danny used to deal with a lot of gang members from many different gangs, and it wasn't uncommon for many of these young men to be shot or killed in gang shootings, or get arrested for some viscous crime."

Rachael nodded. She supposed that made sense. She continued. Danny Hernandez had been a gang counselor for ten years and the parish had been shocked at the news of his arrest three months ago. “Danny has officially bowed out of the youth gang outreach program,” Father Glowacz said, a glum look on his face. “It's really tragic. I can understand why the police might have thought of him as a suspect, but the suspicion that was placed on him has made him a changed man. He entered a substance abuse program a month ago to help himself through the problems he's been facing."

Rachael frowned, wincing. “Has he gone back to using again?"

“No,” Father Glowacz shook his head. “Of course, he had long been hiding his marijuana use. But the possibility for getting back into heroin is there, especially in light of the recent events. I sat up with Danny a few times at his apartment in the weeks that followed his release from custody. He was so close to going over the edge, either getting back into using heroin or committing some horrible crime. I stayed with him as much as I could, prayed with him, tried to rally support at the church to give him strength. Through my help—well, really, myself and several other people here at the church—we succeeded in persuading Danny to take a sabbatical from his ministry and enter a drug rehabilitation hospital for therapy. He was surely dangerously close to using, and he needed the support of the substance abuse program one gets in a hospital to keep him focused and on track."

“And how's he doing?” Rachael asked.

“Fine.” Father Glowacz smiled. “Thank God. With the strength of his supporters here and some prayer, Danny will be back at Our Lady of Guadalupe once again using his talents."

Rachael continued her questioning. Father John Glowacz told her how it was becoming a priority for them—for himself, Father Murphy, and a few of the other counselors at the church and the neighboring St. Anthony's—to reach out to the community plagued by the aftermath of violence the killer had left. “Every time a body turns up,” Father Glowacz said, “the gangs go nuts. One gang accuses another of committing the murder, and since the accused has had an issue with the accusers for years, they retaliate with gunfire. And it goes on and on and on. For awhile it died down, especially late last year and early this year. That last victim wasn't from the barrio, and the gangs still don't seem to recognize the fact that all these crimes are the work of the same person. They still think it's the work of rival gang members. And now that summer has come, the heat has brought tempers rising to a boil again. Just normal stuff, actually. Drug turfs being protected, honor being upheld, all that stuff.” Father John Glowacz appeared to banish the normal everyday activities of gang warfare under the rug with a sweep of his hand. “I don't mean to sound crude, but it's finally getting back to normal, for which I'm glad in a way. We've only had three murders in the East Los Angeles and Echo Park area since summer started, which is one below normal. If the killer strikes again those numbers will most likely double, maybe even triple."

Rachael listened, getting it all on tape and making mental notes to herself. She supposed for those who lived and worked in the area, gang murders were a relatively common thing. Many of the children in these neighborhoods would have been first hand witnesses to death or would have personally known somebody who was murdered by the time they were twelve years old. It was a cruel fact of life.

“How well did you know the victims who attended this church?"

Father Glowacz frowned and leaned back in his chair. His forehead furrowed, as if he were concentrating on dredging up whatever memories he may had about the victims.

“Not well at all,” he said, softly. “You are Catholic, aren't you, Miss Pearce?"

Rachael started, blinking rapidly. The question caught her off guard, and she tried to hide her surprise by answering quickly. “Yes, I am. Why?"

“You're no doubt aware of what I see as the most negative thing about the Catholic Mass,” Father John Glowacz said, drumming his fingertips on his desk. He regarded her calmly as he spoke. “My superiors would probably have me excommunicated for saying that, but I mean it. It hurts to say it but it's true. One of the most negative criticisms leveled toward the Catholic Mass is what its critics call its ...

how should I say it ... its...” He appeared to struggle for the right words. “From what I've been able to understand from people who had been Catholics who deflect to non-denominational faiths, the Catholic Mass is impersonal. It's all a series of rituals: sit, stand, kneel and pray, sit, kneel, sit, stand, sit, rise to take communion, kneel, stand, sit and then it's over. With the exception of admonishing the parishioners to greet their neighbor and grant them peace, ninety percent of all those who attend Mass simply show up, go through the motions, then leave again. That's why there's been such an interest in the Charismatic movement lately. Have you been to a Charismatic Mass, Miss Pearce?"

Rachael nodded. She had been to a few ten years ago. They were held at the church she had been baptized in, St. Mark's in Redondo Beach. It was a Sunday evening mass.

“The Charismatic masses are slightly different,” Father Glowacz continued. “I preside over them every other Sunday. I like them very much. I've always believed that the feeling of a church, the ... essence, you might say ... comes from God. But it's up to the people to harness the love that Christ bestows on them. Those that complain about the unfeeling nature of the Mass are those that are holding back the gifts that Christ has given them. It takes action to receive the results one wants. The Vatican has held the Catholic Mass and its rituals in sacred regard for over a thousand years. Taken in the right frame of mind, the Mass is a beautiful ritual, designed to uplift the Spirit of Christ and bring Him glory and worship. It is intended to soothe the spirits of those who come to Mass as well.

But when people began wanting more, instead of attempting some method of reaching out, they leave the church and go to other Christian sects where they find something that fills their spirits. The Catholic Church saw this happening and many parishes adapted.

Our Lady of Guadalupe has its own Charismatic mass as I just mentioned, on Saturday and Sunday nights."

Rachael was listening closely, trying to figure out what this all related to Father Glowacz's knowing any of the victims. She was just about to interrupt him politely and ask him what this all had to do with her question when he beat her to it.

“It is sometimes because of the ... impersonal nature of the Mass that makes it almost impossible for me as a priest to get to know all of the parishioners on a personal level.” Father Glowacz looked grave as he spoke. He stopped drumming his fingers on the desktop and leaned forward over the desk. His light blue eyes focused directly on her.

His mouth twitched in a smile. “I make myself available to anybody who wants to speak to me after each Mass. I meet a lot of wonderful, joyful people. I wish I could meet more, but they don't hang around after Mass. Most people leave immediately after it finishes and head for wherever it is they go in their lives. I place myself at the entrance right by the parking lot so they can stop to meet me if they want to, but most don't. A few people stop by and it is always a pleasure to see them, to talk to them and get to know them better. But for the most part it is literally impossible to meet each and every single parishioner who attends all of our Masses. I conduct five Masses during the weekend alone, and with nearly two hundred people at each Mass, I probably talk to only fifty or so. Of them, I probably know half of those on very good terms.

“So, no, I can't say that I knew the unfortunate victims who attended Our Lady of Guadalupe at all. One of them, Louis Hernandez, was a familiar face, but the others I don't remember at all."

Rachael's heart sank. She knew very well what Father Glowacz was talking about when he spoke about the impersonal feeling of the Catholic Mass. You could attend church for ten years and sit next to the same person week after week and never learn their first name. It was one of the reasons she stopped attending church.

“Miss Pearce? Are you okay?"

Rachael turned and saw that Father John Glowacz was regarding her with a questioning gaze. He managed a slight smile. “I apologize if anything I said may have offended you."

“Oh no! Not at all."

“Good. Some people are very defensive of their faith, which is a good thing. Other people have such ... ideas about it, that anything you throw at them that countermands their belief hits a brick wall. For instance, if you were one of the little old ladies that comes here every day to pray the rosary and heard me say what I just told you, you can guarantee that I'd be chased out of this administrative wing and out into the streets with such fury that it would make the gang killings that go on look like child's play."

Rachael laughed, putting her hand over her mouth as she did so. Father John Glowacz laughed as well and the tension eased. For a while a worm of guilt had burrowed into her stomach when he asked her if she attended church. She hadn't attended Mass in, well, in almost eight years. Ever since she had been trapped in her first marriage. She didn't know it then, but she supposed it was when she was with Bernie that she began to lose her faith in God. Once the divorce was over she hadn't even gone back to church; it wasn't as if she harbored any bitterness toward the church, she just decided to dive into other areas of her life. Some people attended church as a way to help them deal with their problems. Others dived into their careers or took up hobbies or went to the gym in order to work out problems. Others sought the help of professional therapists. For one who felt comforted by the familiar rituals of the Catholic Mass, returning to church might have been just what some people needed to see them through an especially trying time in life.

She saw nothing wrong with that. For Rachael, church just wasn't for her.

“How are you doing with all this?” Father Glowacz asked.

The question caught her off guard. She looked up, smiled, and answered. “Fine."

“Good. I hope everything is fine. I know that ... these things can be hard on you as well."

“I'm doing fine with it."

“Too bad about that suspect they thought they had,” Father Glowacz said. “Poor man. Danny went through the same thing.” He was referring to Peter Manuel, who they had to release two weeks ago due to lack of evidence. For his parole violation, Peter was able to count the time served as a part of his sentence when he went before the judge. As it turned out, there was nothing Daryl and the task force could hold him on: the bloodstained knife found in his home turned out to be his own when he had accidentally cut himself. He had airtight alibis for the nights the victims had disappeared, and by all accounts from friends and acquaintances, he was nothing more than a simple man trying to settle into the straight and narrow life, his sex life notwithstanding. “I surely hope they catch the real killer soon."

“So do I,” Rachael said.

Father Glowacz shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Well, is there anything else I can help you with, Miss Pearce?"

Rachael was about to say no, but then a thought popped into her head. It was a good sense of intuition and she ran with it. “Father, have any of the investigating officers asked you about any strange behavior in the area? Either from the neighborhood or here at the church?"

“Strange behavior?"

“Yes. Like ... you know ... people acting weird. Strangers hanging around I guess, or unusual rumors about other people. Maybe something mentioned in passing from one of your parishioners."

“I don't like to listen to rumors, Miss Pearce,” Father Glowacz chuckled. “Idle gossip plays right into the Devil's hands."

“I know. But sometimes rumors like this can help. Anything out of the ordinary you might have noticed, Father. Anything you might have heard in confession, or—"

“Wait a minute!” At the mention of confession Father Glowacz's eyes lit up, as if he had just had a sudden revelation. His face became livid, his eyes wide. “Yes, there was something."

Rachael crept forward to the edge of her seat. The change in character that came over Father Glowacz at the mention of confession alarmed her. “What! What was it?"

“Two years ago, maybe a little more, one of our priests took a confession,” Father Glowacz related, looking more animated now than during the whole interview. “The penitent kept the drape in place and his voice was garbled, guttural. He confessed to murder. At first Father Gregory thought the man was joking, but something told him it wasn't a joke. The penitent spoke of certain ... details..."

“Details?” Rachael's heart raced. If this were true—

“It was around the time of Louis’ murder,” Father Glowacz continued, looking at her with a sense of intensity. “In fact, I think it happened right after those first two bodies were found. It was a week or so later, something like that. The penitent basically revealed to Gregory that it was he who had killed the two of them and...” He shook his head,

“...remembering it again is just making it so damned hard to go through with it."

“Please, Father. Try to tell me."

Father Glowacz was leaning forward over his desk, his head cradled in his right hand. His expression had turned from surprise at having remembered the incident to a sense of seriousness. “He ... he claimed he killed those two men. Killed them, and ... he described everything he did to Father Gregory. And he said he liked it!” Father Glowacz looked up at Rachael, his features open and shocked from remembering the incident.

“Those were the exact words Father Gregory used when he told me about the incident later that day. You see, Miss Pearce, I was shocked about the incident for the simple fact that Father Gregory told me about it at all. He was so shaken I was afraid I would have to call an ambulance for him. He was simply stricken with shock."

“Why didn't you call the police?"

Father Glowacz shook his head. “That's one of the other reasons why I was concerned when Father Gregory told me. You see, Miss Pearce, if someone confesses to a crime, the priest cannot report it to anyone under any circumstances.” He leveled a serious gaze at her, emphasizing this. “He can encourage the penitent to confess the crime to the police and could even conceivably make it a condition for absolution, but the priest cannot tell anyone. The Seal of Confession also binds with respect to the penitent outside of Confession. That means if you come to Confession to me face to face and I see you ten minutes later outside the confessional, I cannot even discuss with you what we discussed in the confessional."

Rachael remembered this from the catechism classes of her youth. “So why did Father Gregory tell you about it if he wasn't supposed to?"

“Father Gregory was just beside himself with fear,” Father Glowacz resumed. He looked pensive. “He told he me absolved the penitent, blessed him, gave him his penance.

He heard the penitent leave the confessional booth and sit in the pews immediately outside the confessional. After a few moments he heard the penitent get up and leave the church. He sat in that confessional booth literally quaking in his shoes. He said that he was so shocked, so terrified by the whole ordeal, that he almost didn't respond when the confessional opened again and another penitent asked to be blessed for his sins."

He looked up at Rachael. “When Father Gregory burst into the rectory and told me about it he was so shaken I had to sit him down and calm him with some brandy. Once he was calmed down and speaking clearer, I had him start from the beginning. He told me everything, from beginning to end. He told me as a penitent would confess, and I listened to him and prayed with him as his priest. And it is because of that reason that I cannot discuss the matter further. I'm sorry I even let this much out.” Father Glowacz now looked merely disgusted with himself, as if part of him was struggling to break the chains of his religious faith and cooperate with Rachael fully, help her further down this track and identify this guy. “I must say, however, that except for such things as murder—and perhaps even those—God grants His priests a particular grace of forgetfulness. What we hear we tend to forget until we return to the confessional; otherwise we'd be dragging ourselves around burdened by the sins we've heard. I've had people come up to me outside of confession and say they really appreciated the advice or counsel I'd given them; it is extremely rare that I'd even remember having done so. The Holy Spirit also works wonders in the Sacrament of Penance, often giving the Confessor wisdom he would not otherwise possess, to reconcile a sinner to himself. Should a priest be burdened by a penitent's confessing a crime, or even threatening another crime, he is to give that burden to the Lord, since the Lord Himself calls the priest to lay the burden on the One who carried all of Men's sins to Calvary. Although sometimes that is even hard to do.

Sometimes what we hear ... remains with us.” Father Glowacz cast Rachael a dark look, letting this sink in. Rachael got the message loud and clear.

“How often do you get confessions which have murder in them, Father?"

“Very rarely.” Father Glowacz regarded her with those blue eyes again, his once soft, boyish features serious now behind the wire-framed glasses. “Even here in the middle of the barrio. Sometimes the gang members will confess to murder, but when they do they're easily persuaded to give themselves up. It's not up to us to go to the authorities.

When a penitent confesses a mortal sin like murder, it is intended for the priest to hear and it is between the penitent and God. The priest only acts as an interceder."

“You could have helped catch this guy two years ago,” Rachael said softly, looking directly into Father Glowacz's eyes. “You realize that, don't you?"

Father Glowacz met her gaze. “I'm sorry,” he said. “But we've done all that we could here at Our Lady. I've done all that I could, too.” His features were hard and stony.

Rachael turned off the tape recorder and stuffed it into her purse. She could feel her anger rising and she tried to stem it. It wasn't his fault that the police weren't called; he was just acting out of his Catholic faith. Father Gregory hadn't looked out the confessional booth because he didn't want to break the Canon Law. She gathered up her notes, put them in her purse and stood up. “Look, Father, I'm sorry if I came across as a little, well ... pissed off, but...” She shook her head. “I just thought I had something there."

Father John Glowacz rose from his seat and went around the desk to open the door. “That's okay, Rachael. I completely understand where you're coming from. Believe me, I want to see this end as well. We're all on edge over this, I suppose."

“Yes, I suppose we are."

“Is there anything else I can help you with? You know I'm always here. All you have to do is ask.” Once again, his blue eyes were warm and caring.

“No, Father. But thanks for taking the time to talk to me."

“That's what we priests are here for.” Father John Glowacz opened the door for her and escorted her down the hall back to the lobby of the administrative wing of the church. He walked her through the double glass doors and out to her car in the parking lot. They made small talk along the way, mostly commenting about the weather, but when they reached her car the conversation turned back to the case again. “If you need me for anything else, Rachael,” Father Glowacz said, his features serious, “don't hesitate to call me. If you have any further questions or just want to talk. My door is always open to you.

Okay?"

Rachael nodded. “Thanks, Father. I will."

“Good.” Father Glowacz smiled down at her. “Take care of yourself."

“I will.” Rachael opened the driver's side door, threw her purse into the passenger side and got inside. She shut the door, started the car, waved at Father Glowacz who stepped back onto the sidewalk that led to the administrative wing. He waved back.

Rachael put the car in reverse, backed out of the slot and drove out of the parking lot and toward home.

She couldn't stop thinking about the confession as she drove home, trying to sort through the story in her mind. She had thought about asking to speak with Father Gregory but she didn't want to make it appear too obvious. She felt she was intruding on Father Glowacz's time already as it was. She also felt that she had intruded too much on Father Glowacz by him telling her about the penitent Father Gregory had heard in confession; Father Glowacz divulging that information had gone against canon law, and telling her had been a big no-no for him. She supposed now that Father Glowacz would have to seek absolvement from another priest for this particular sin. No wonder why she didn't consider herself Catholic anymore; you could make the same mistake—or sin—over and over again and as long as you confessed you were absolved and saved.

She thought about the story as she drove home. And the more she thought about the confession story, and the more she thought about her talk with Father Glowacz and the way he behaved around her, the more it bothered her...

Chapter 25

“I've just got a break on a lead and I want to check it out before I come home.” It was two days after her interview with Father John Glowacz, and Rachael was sitting in the front seat of her Camaro, a cellular phone cradled between shoulder and cheek. She had punched in her number to call Daryl to tell him that she was running a little late and not to worry. “Expect me home around nine-thirty."

“What's this big lead?” Daryl's voice was faint over the cellular phone frequency.

“I was just at Top's Fast Food over in Highland Park,” Rachael explained. “I'm following up leads on Carmen Aguirre's disappearance, and the owner told me about a guy that sounds very interesting.” The task force had already interviewed Carmen's friends and acquaintances and some of them weren't sure on whether she fit the profile of a Butcher victim. Daryl thought she fit the victim profile perfectly; she lived in the area, where she was acquainted with some of the gang members, and an ex-boyfriend was a Los Compadres gang member. Unlike other Butcher victims, her family had launched a wide search for her and had plastered most of Los Angeles and parts of Orange County with flyers bearing photos of the young woman and information about her disappearance.

Plus, she wasn't like the other women the Butcher had claimed as victims. Carmen wasn't a prostitute, which brought up the question of how the Butcher might have abducted her, if indeed he had. It was this question which split the task force into two opposing camps, one side wanting to investigate Carmen Aguirre's disappearance further, the other wanting to chase down the clues already on hand. It was starting to drive Daryl nuts.

“The guy in question's name is Charley,” Rachael continued. “Mr. Sanchez didn't have a last name for him, but he told me that he used to frequent the place all the time and he was always flirting with Carmen, talking to her, that sort of thing."

“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.

“I've known there was something weird about him from the moment I laid eyes on him.

You know that feeling you get from people who seem bad to you? Like you feel your flesh crawl every time you look at them? That's the feeling I got from Charley. Every time he came in here, every time I saw him and his mother at church on Sundays, every time I happened to see him in that tan pickup truck driving down—"

“What church do you go to, Mr. Ramirez?"

“Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church,” Hector had said.

A finger of ice ran down Rachael's spine upon hearing that. She had tried to suppress the chill with a forced smile. “I've heard it's a lovely church."

“It is,” Hector had said, rising from his seat. “Well, Miss Pearce, I hope I have been of some help to you. If you ever trade information with the police in your search for Carmen, I hope you pass on what I told you. They've stopped taking my phone calls. They think I'm crazy."

“Oh, you're not crazy, Mr. Sanchez,” Rachael had said. “Trust me."

Now with the phone call home to Daryl out of the way, she could concentrate on following up on this lead. Her heart pounded with a rush of adrenaline as she started her Camaro and headed out of Top's Burger's and onto Highland Park Avenue. According to the address Hector Sanchez had given her, and a consultation with a Thomas Brothers Guide, this Charley character lived about five miles away. She drove to the house slowly, Rachael's mind formulating her plan of action. Her experience in conducting similar interviews with people suspected in crimes had given her plenty of experience and she decided on a simple plan of action: knock on his door, introduce herself as a private investigator hired by Carmen's family, and tell him she had gotten his name from an employee at Top's. Her mind focused on the young man who had waited on her at the fast food establishment, and she plucked the name off his badge effortlessly. Tell Charley that she had gone to the church to question some of the people Carmen had gone to church with and had somehow been given Charley's address and she was trying to speak to as many people as she could who had known Carmen. Carmen Aguirre had been a sporadic parishioner at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church as well. That should do the trick.

She made a left on Euclid Avenue and then a right on Van Buren, making a series of lefts and rights per the directions she had jotted down from the Thomas Brothers Guide. A moment later she parked behind a battered Plymouth and looked across the street at the small, but tidy, house tucked in the cozy neighborhood. She checked the address. She had the right house.

Parked in the driveway was a tan Toyota hatchback pickup truck with a camper shell attached to the bed. Charley's truck. He was home.

Plan firmly in place, Rachael took a deep breath and stepped out of the car. She closed the door to the Camaro, walked across the street to the house and mounted the small concrete front porch, noting that the house seemed silent and quiet. Then straightening herself up before she lost her nerve, she knocked on the front door.

Chapter 26

Rachael was just about to knock on the front door for the third time when she heard the unmistakable sound of shuffling footsteps approach the door and then pause.

She stepped back so whoever was approaching could see her through the peephole. The sound of the lock disengaging came and then the door swung open, revealing a man who appeared to be in his late thirties with curly brown hair, rapidly thinning along the top. He peered at her curiously through thick glasses. He had an annoyed look on his face that suggested he had been interrupted at something. “Yes?"

“Excuse me, sir, but I wasn't given a last name and I was told I could find a man named Charley here?” Rachael asked, putting on the charm with a big smile.

The man appeared to flinch, his eyes moving up and down her body, sizing her up.

He was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a blue T-shirt with white tennis shoes. He was at least eighty pounds overweight, pear-shaped and corpulent. She could see what Mr.

Sanchez meant by how he described Charley as a fairy. Charley looked like the kind of bespectacled, physically unattractive shy geeks she knew in school; the kind of boys who were outsiders, not because they were mean or deserved to be friendless, but because something about them drew the bullies to pick on them, thus making them social misfits.

Through no fault of their own they had no friends, and others had seen them as simply weird or ignored them altogether. Charley reminded her of those boys in junior high and high school that she always felt sorry for.

And although it was very faint, there was something familiar about him that she couldn't place.

“Y-yes, I'm Charley,” he said, hesitantly. He was still blocking the doorway with his body, still eyeing her figure nervously, and it was hard to see in the darkened interior of the house. “What can I do for you?"

“I'm sorry to bother you,” Rachael said, putting on her best smile and trying to sound very much like a professional to put him at ease, “but I'm a private investigator.”

She quickly introduced herself, presenting her fake investigator credentials. “I've been hired by the family of Carmen Aguirre to investigate her disappearance and it's come to my attention that you knew her casually. Do you have time to talk to me?"

Charley opened his mouth as if to say no; his eyes had widened slightly in surprise at the sound of Carmen's name and she thought she detected a slight tightening up of his body posture, as if he had just weathered a shock. Rachael smiled reassuringly and Charley closed his mouth, glanced back into the house, then looked back out at Rachael.

He looked nervous. “I suppose I can. You're not a cop or anything, are you?"

“Nope. Just a private investigator.” She smiled and held up her hand, her first two fingers extended up. “Scout's honor."

Charley licked his lips and nodded. “Okay. That asshole at Top's where Carmen worked at called the cops on me when she disappeared. He thinks I had something to do with her disappearance and I don't."

“Okay. Why don't you tell me what you know, Mr..."

“Glowacz,” Charley said. “Charley Glowacz."

Rachael smiled. “Okay, Mr. Glowacz. Can I have a minute of your time then so I can ask you a few questions?"

Charley took another glance behind him, then turned back to Rachael, nodding.

He still looked a nervous but he opened the front door and stepped aside. “Sure. Come on in. We can talk in my room."

Rachael stepped inside the darkened house.

As Charley Glowacz led her through to the back of the house, Rachael paused and motioned toward the darkened living room. “Mr. Glowacz, we can talk here in the living room—"

“It's better if we talk back here,” Charley said, opening the door to his room at the beginning of the hallway. He turned toward her, smiling. “My mother's been sick and she's in the bathroom right now. She's been resting in the living room and we wouldn't have any privacy. Come on, I won't bite."

Rachael showed only slight hesitation; she gave a nervous smile and entered Charley's bedroom, purse slung over her shoulder. Charley closed the door behind him and deftly locked it with a push of his thumb.

His heart raced madly in his chest. His skin felt warm, flushed. She was here. In his room. With him.

From the moment he first saw her, Charley had been captivated by her. He had been fantasizing about her ever since he had first laid eyes on her, and now she was here in the house for the first time, speaking to him, looking at him. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman; her skin was a creamy mocha color—not too dark, not too light—and her eyes were big and deep brown. Her hair was black and thick. She was wearing a pair of black, loose fitting slacks, and a cream-colored blouse. Her body looked beautiful beneath the clothes, but what really captivated Charley about her was her face. It was simply angelic. Her lips were red and the way they turned up in a smile when she looked at him melted his heart. She was simply beautiful.

He had to have her.

She had to help him ... ?

“Have a seat,” Charley said, motioning to the sofa. “Can I get you anything to drink?"

“No, I'm fine.” Rachael sat down on the couch and Charley sat on the opposite end, his undivided attention turned to her.

Charley's skin was tingling as he sat down beside her. Another rush went through him as she smiled at him. Those deep, dark eyes locked on his. She's attracted to me, Charley thought, looking away toward the entertainment center. Nobody's ever looked at me like that before.

“So what do you want to ask me?” Charley asked, turning back to her and trying to keep his excitement down.

“Just a few things.” Rachael extracted a pen and pad of paper from her purse. She leaned forward from her spot on the couch, looking at him as she talked. “I got your name and address from Mr. Sanchez, the owner of Tops. He...” She tried to look sympathetic.

“...didn't have very nice things to say about you, Mr. Glowacz."

“Yeah, I bet,” Charley said. “That bastard's been giving me the evil eye ever since Carmen disappeared."

“Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with Carmen Aguirre?"

Charley took a breath, wondering where to start first. He didn't want to tell her the truth; that would make him sound really pathetic. He decided to embellish a little of the truth. “I didn't know her all that well,” he started. “I just knew her from Top's. I go in there every other day for lunch, and we started talking right away. She's a very nice girl."

“That's what I've been told,” Rachael said, smiling at him.

“Yeah, well she was. And that's really all I knew about her. I'd go in and order lunch, we'd make small talk, that sort of thing. I really didn't know her that well at all."

“Mr. Sanchez said that a few weeks before she disappeared that you asked her out,” Rachael said, writing something down in her note pad. She looked up at Charley.

“Can you tell me a little about that?"

Charley felt himself turning red at the mention of the incident. “I guess I did,” he managed, smiling stupidly. Think! Explain that to her. Give her something more satisfactory than I guess I did, you idiot! “It was nothing, really,” he said, stammering over his words. “It's just that ... I ... I ... well, we were talking about movies and...” he cast his eyes down at the floor, feeling nervous. “...just got so into talking about the kinds of....

well, the kind of.... of movies we liked that I ... I ... asked her if she wanted to someday go to the movies together.” He looked back up at her, as if seeking approval from a parent.

“That's really all it was."

Rachael was nodding, writing down some more notes. He watched her write in her notepad, noting her pursed lips lightly touched with lipstick. How he would love to kiss those lips, feel them kissing him all over his body. His breath rose as the image centered on his mind. He shifted his weight on the couch.

When she looked back at him she looked different. She smiled at him again, but it seemed false. It wasn't the same as before. “So you never went out with her then?"

“No,” Charley heard himself answering. His voice sounded like it was coming from another dimension. “I never asked her again."

“How did you feel after that?” Rachael asked, and now he felt his limbs tighten because she was really looking at him differently now. Her gaze was scrutinizing.

“How do you think I felt?” he heard himself answer. “I was crushed."

Rachael's smile dimmed. She looked at him funny. “Are you okay, Mr. Glowacz?"

“I'm fine.” Charley smiled. His heart was beating so hard in his chest that it felt like it was going to burst out of it. “I'm really a nice guy."

Now Rachael frowned. “I didn't say that you weren't a nice guy, Mr. Glowacz.

What made you feel I would think otherwise?"

He was nervous and he could feel his throat tighten up. His hands were shaking as he scooted closer to her on the couch. He tried to act casual, tried to make it seem like he was just being normal and friendly. He laid his hand on her knee; he felt her flinch at his touch. “Listen,” he began, “there's nothing to be afraid of."

Rachael's demeanor did an about-face. She moved off the couch, eyes on him, expression changed from one of friendliness to one of revulsion and fear. “Please, Mr.

Glowacz—"

Charley was up in an instant, moving toward her. “It's okay, you don't have to be afraid—” He put his hands on her shoulders. She threw her arm up, knocking his hand off her shoulder. Her eyes were wide with fright, nostrils flared like that of a wild animal.

She tried to retreat, but her back hit the wall. He was on her in an instant, trying to talk to her, tell her there was nothing to be afraid of and she began fighting him. He leaned his body weight against her and as she began to scream he clamped a hand over her mouth.

He locked his left hand on her throat and squeezed and this time she went ballistic. Pain exploded in his crotch as her knee met his balls, and the force of the blow collapsed him to the floor; but because his grip was on her throat he took her down with a loud thud.

Stars danced in his vision, and white-hot bolts of pain stabbed through his groin. It was the worst pain he had ever felt. For a moment he felt paralyzed.

He tried to move, the pain immobilizing him. Through the blurriness of his vision, he could dimly make out Rachael lying on the floor on her side, coughing hard, her hands at her throat. He closed his eyes and willed the pain away and it seemed to work. He moved his leg and a bolt of pain stabbed up through his belly. Through the din of his agony he could make out Rachael gagging, coughing, trying to speak, her voice guttural and deep. His vision cleared and now he could see that she was struggling to her knees.

He rolled over on his stomach and another bolt of pain stabbed through his gut, but this one was easier to fight off. He focused his mind past it and struggled to his knees.

When they came together again it was with a locking struggle as each one fought to gain the upper hand. Charley had the heel of us hand pressed up against her throat.

Christ, she's strong, he thought. Jesus, she's—

He drove his fist into her solar plexus and felt her hold on him crumple a little bit, and then time became a blur as they fought an almost silent dance of survival His hands shook as he took her out of the freezer, piece by piece. He laid her out gently on the floor until she was all there, and then he started rooting around in the workroom for that old patchwork quilt he had picked up the other day. He would bundle her up in that; it would keep her nice and cozy.

Trembling with anticipation, he picked up Carmen's torso and cradled it lovingly to his chest. He closed his eyes tightly, taking deep breaths that threatened to spill out into sobs. He held it in. He couldn't cry now. There was no room for crying. He had to be strong and face these next few steps like a man. He had to get through this if he ever wanted to attempt to try to get help. But first he had to deal with Carmen and the young man that he had gotten around Christmas—what was his name? Miguel something kept coming to his mind. Another young gang member. This one a drug dealer as well as a pimp, but also a man who had a more sophisticated sense of criminal sensibilities. Miguel Something had been one of the higher ups in the Eighteenth Street gang, a young man in his mid-twenties who called the shots to the younger street thugs who routinely shot each other up on L.A.'s streets. Miguel Something had been befriended quite easily. After all, Latino gang members, even from warring gangs, all had one thing in common.

Once he had gotten control of his emotions, he held Carmen's torso out from his body, admiring his handiwork. Unlike the others, he'd kept her torso more or less intact; he had only separated the limbs and head from her body. The portions he hadn't sampled he had kept in the freezer for future use and she had kept quite fresh, unlike Miguel who just seemed to rot no matter what he did to retard decomposition. He ran his left hand along Carmen's frozen, hard body, his thumb tracing around one full breast. He brought the torso up to his face and kissed each breast, pausing to suckle the cold, frozen meat of the nipples, before he set the torso down on the patchwork quilt. He held the tears in as he rapidly worked, wrapping the torso quickly and expertly in the patchwork quilt. The urge to fuck her one last time came and he pushed the thought to the back of his mind. If he fucked her one last time he would keep her, and he couldn't keep her anymore so he continued wrapping her up in the quilt. When he was finished the patchwork quilt covered Carmen completely. Now for the rest of her.

He turned his attention to the arms and legs, which he had left on the floor. Taking a large piece of butcher's paper, which he had gotten from the house, he put a limb in each section of paper and wrapped it up expertly, fastening it with rubber bands that he got from a coffee can on the workbench. He wrapped each limb this way, and when he was done he placed them in a makeshift cardboard box he had constructed from two smaller boxes, the small box fitting into the larger one to create one awkward container.

He put the limbs inside the box and pushed the two together, closing their contents up. He picked up the now one awkward box and shook the contents. Carmen's arms and legs jumbled around inside.

Picking up the patchwork quilt, he carried it outside to the truck and put it in the front seat.

Now it was Miguel Something's turn. The wet smell of decay and rotting flesh rose up to him and he breathed it in, reveling in the smell. He had lost himself in Miguel for awhile, but now it was time to get rid of him, too. He wrapped what was left of Miguel's arms and legs in pieces of newspaper. Then he turned his attention to what remained of his still intact vertebrae, pelvis and ribcage. He had gotten some good mileage out of Miguel.

The only thing that had disappointed him was when Miguel ran out of edible parts. He had been rather tasty.

He put Miguel in the car then checked his watch. There was an empty field five blocks from here. It would take less than two minutes to drive over, dump Carmen and Miguel, and drive back. He considered leaving them in the freezer, but he really had to get rid of them. For one, he couldn't be caught red-handed. And two, dumping them would go along with his plans; it would only serve to confuse the police even more.

He went back inside the house and checked on things real quick. Satisfied, he darted back out, got into the van, started it up and backed it down the driveway.

The drive to the dump spot took less than a minute.

The field was situated at the end of a lonely cul-de-sac, nestled in the valley right behind Dodger Stadium. The other side of the lot sat on a fairly busy intersection, but the back end of it rested against a lower class residential street. A quiet street. Nobody had seen him pull up and nobody would see him drive out. At one-thirty a.m., the area was dead quiet. He put the truck in park, rolled down the window, and began throwing Carmen and Miguel out the window as far as he could. Their various body parts landed well within the field, and that satisfied him just fine. The way people were so oblivious to things, that might go overlooked for quite some time.

When he finished he pulled away from the curb and drove away slowly. He couldn't attract unwanted attention.

It had been a hellish night. The urge to do another one had been so strong with him that he had succumbed to it earlier. But it was his decision to end it all tonight, which had prompted him to make some important decisions; he knew they would be investigating Carmen's disappearance more thoroughly very soon, and Miguel was starting to smell really rank. Besides, that old bitch would start getting suspicious with Miguel's stench seeping through the walls.

He had almost been derailed when that Rachael Pearce bitch starting nosing around. And look where that led to? He'd had to take extreme measures, but he did take care of the problem. He had even gotten rid of that old bitch, too; mother surely wouldn't be bugging him anymore.

He turned the radio on and turned it to a classic rock station. The Cars were singing about how they needed Candy-O. He hummed along as he drove home, pushing everything he had been worrying about out of his mind, knowing that he had gotten over the worst of it.

Besides, he had other matters to attend at home.

He smiled as he drew closer to home, the plan falling into place.

It was going to work just perfectly.

From now on, things were going to work out just fine.

Two a.m.

Daryl Garcia was worried.

He was sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee. He had brewed a pot forty minutes ago to counter-affect the remaining fifth of bourbon he had killed. All the lights in the house were on, blazing bright in the stark white of the living room. Petey was sitting at Daryl's feet, looking up every once in a while with that sad-eyed look dogs sometimes get. Daryl wasn't paying attention to him. Today had been a tough day. He and Steve had been called in to participate in a raid in East Los Angeles on some gang members and he was still wearing the Level II Kevlar bullet-proof vest under his shirt. In fact, he'd only arrived home from the raid two hours ago. His eyes were red and his back hurt.

And he was worried sick because Rachael wasn't home yet.

He had tried calling her a hundred times on her cell phone but she never answered. He had just tried again fifteen minutes ago but all he got was the endless ringing. With rising dread he'd hung up the phone and sat at the kitchen table, staring out into the living room, wondering where the hell she was and coming up with all kinds of ways to verbally kick her ass when she walked in the door for worrying him so much.

She would have called me if she were going to be late, he thought. She would have called me if there had been a change of plans. If she decided to head by the office, if she had run into an accident, she would have found a way to call me. If she had been in an accident somebody would have called me—she keeps our phone numbers with her at all times and all one had to do would be to use the cell phone to alert me. But try as he might come up with different scenarios to explain why none of these things had happened, a small part of Daryl told him that something more ominous had taken place. That the reason he hadn't heard from Rachael yet was because she was—

No! Don't think that, don't even think that—

Fifteen minutes after getting her last phone call he had gotten a call from Bernie Haskins. Daryl had told Bernie what Rachael had just relayed to him—he could tell the agent this because Agent Haskins was the only investigator on the team that actually believed that Rachael helping out in the investigation through her research for the book was a good thing. Everybody else gave that sentiment lip service but they didn't mean it.

Bernie Haskins meant it. Bernie found the information interesting. “Highland Park, huh?

You know, she might be on to something there."

“I think she might be,” Daryl had agreed.

The signal on Bernie's cellular phone began to grow weak. Bernie told him he'd call him when he got home, and rang off.

Bernie called three and a half hours later.

“You're not going to believe this,” he'd said, sounding excited. “But I really think Rachael is on something."

“What?” Daryl had thought it had been Rachael calling, and that had been the beginning of his worry. Nevertheless, he listened to what Bernie had to say.

“I thought about what you told me, so I thought I would swing by the area our last victim was last seen,” Bernie said. “I headed out to Highland Park, did some poking around and guess what I found out?"

“What for Christsakes?” Bernie's excitement was getting on his nerves.

“Charley Glowacz,” Bernie said, letting the last name trill out of his tongue.

“Why's that name sound familiar?"

“Glowacz...” Daryl said, letting the name trip off his tongue. Where the hell was Rachael? “Fuck if I know."

“Charley Glowacz is Father John Glowacz's older brother,” Bernie said, a grin in his voice. “I had to do some real poking around to get a last name, but luckily one of the strip club owners I talked to knew Charley's last name. He and his mother both attend services at Our Lady of Guadalupe. Charley occasionally volunteers for church activities like coaching weekend basketball games with the youth groups at the church. It's a wonder he wasn't questioned, but I can see why he wasn't. While he attends Our Lady of Guadalupe, his input at volunteering is sporadic. He's a very invisible parishioner at that parish."

Daryl was stunned. He couldn't focus on his thoughts. He was still worried about Rachael and getting more worried as the minutes ticked. The news that Charley was Father Glowacz's younger brother was a revelation.

“Like I said, I had a hunch,” Bernie continued. “So I went down to Highland Avenue, near Broadway and Fifty-fourth Street and I canvassed the strip area. I went into some of the bars there, the topless places, the X-rated video joints, and talked to as many of the proprietors and patrons that frequent the place that I could. I described Charley to them and asked if they had ever seen him around, and all of them unanimously said that he's a regular in the area. One of the people I questioned, a guy that runs Ken's Adult Video and Books Emporium, says that Charley comes in every other day. He looks through the magazines, buys a couple, then spends about twenty dollars or so in the coin operated video booths."

Daryl shrugged. “Nothing wrong to frequent an adult bookstore, Bernie."

“True. Only everybody I talked to that claimed they had seen Charley also told me they had funny feelings about him. That he was a weird character. The bouncers at the topless bars all said that they keep a close eye on him when he comes in; they say that he gives the girls the creeps."

Daryl was quiet for a moment. “Does anybody recall if they saw him around March 26 when Amanda Young was last seen in the area?"

“Absolutely,” Bernie said with bated breath. “Everybody I talked to at Ken's video, the guys that run it, the bouncers at the strip club across the street, even some of the hookers that work the area, all agreed that they saw Charley in the area earlier that evening.” He paused. “I think this is a fantastic lead, Daryl. All we need now is probable cause, an address where we can trace him to begin surveillance."

It was then that Daryl told Bernie that Rachael was following up on that now and that he was expecting her back any minute. He told him that as soon as he heard something he would call Bernie back. “I'll be home all night. Whatever time it is, I don't care if it's three in the morning, call me.” Daryl promised he would and hung up.

That had been two hours ago.

He picked up the phone again and dialed Rachael's cell phone number.

It rang fourteen times, fifteen, sixteen ... ?

After thirty rings he hung up.

The knot of tension in his stomach tightened. Something was very wrong.

He sat at the kitchen table in a dilemma, undecided at what to do. Part of him wanted to leave the house and look for her himself, start in Highland Park and drive around, hoping to find her somewhere. He could leave a note at the house in case she came home explaining where he went. He couldn't just sit here; he was edgy, his nerves demanding that he get up and do something. But the problem with that was that he had nowhere to go. It was two in the morning; Tops was closed, and most likely everything else. Without a lead to go by to find Charley Glowacz, he was at a dead end. He could go to headquarters and try typing Charley's name in the computers to see if a record popped up, but—

That's it! He rose from the table and headed for the living room for his shoes and socks. Petey rose to his feet and followed Daryl into the living room, whimpering. Daryl donned his socks and shoes quickly, his mind on overdrive. He would check the computers for a criminal record, and if Charley was in the computer he would head to the Glowacz residence. He didn't give a rat fuck if he woke the man and his mommy up or not. He was worried about Rachael, dammit, and he didn't give a fuck about department protocol now. If Glowacz's address wasn't in the computer system, he would try tapping into the DMV computer database. He didn't know if any of the department's computer gurus were in this late, but it was worth a try. Petey stayed at his side the whole time, still making those whining noises. Daryl paused and patted the dog. “Everything's going to be okay, boy,” he said. “I'll be right back.” Checking to make sure he had his wallet and keys, he scrawled a quite note for Rachael, left it on the kitchen table, retrieved his department issued Glock and shield, and let himself out of the house.

He entered the garage, his mind on one thing and one thing only. He was just reaching for the garage door opener when he heard a voice call out from the darkness in front of him. “Hey motherfucker, remember me?"

Everything happened so fast that he didn't have time to track it. He was able to make out a dim shadow popping out from behind the car fifteen feet in front of him and while it was hard in the darkness to make out discernable features for some reason he knew that it was Rudy Montego, the gang member he and Steve had busted almost two years ago for that cowardly attack in Echo Park. He heard the gunshot, then he felt the slug pound into his chest, knocking him back against the wall. He heard and felt two more shots plug into his abdomen and the last thing he remembered before the world went black was a sharp yell that abruptly cut off.

The next time Charley was aware of anything he was sitting on the floor in the first bedroom of his living quarters, rocking back and forth and cradling something in his lap.

His vision slowly came to focus and the first thing he saw was that his entertainment center was in shambles. Books and video-cassettes had been thrown to the floor. He felt something hard, round, and wet in his lap—the thing he was holding—and looked down at it.

Mother's head gazed up at him.

Charley screamed. He screamed and wailed, throwing his head back and closing his eyes to try to shut the ugly scene out of his mind. But when he opened his eyes again the image remained. Covered in blood, sitting on the floor in his room, cradling his mother's severed head in his lap.

A muffled noise caught his attention and he turned to the right. The bathroom door was closed and something pounded on the door from the other side. A trail of blood led to the closed bathroom door and Charley noticed with growing horror that a large, bloodstained butcher knife lay on the floor. The muffled thumping sounds came from the closed bathroom door again, followed by a scream. “No, nonononononoooo!"

Rachael Pearce.

“Stay away from me! Stay the fuck away from me!"

Charley didn't remember chasing Rachael into the bathroom. He didn't remember killing mother. He didn't remember trying to kill Rachael, either, but he must have as evident from the trail of blood that led to the now locked bathroom door where she had barred herself. But he must have. All he remembered was his fight with Rachael in his bedroom, then the flash of the knife and then his mind went blank. The next thing he remembered was sitting on the floor with mother's head in his lap.

Charley started crying. It was worse then he thought. He had been bottling up the hateful feelings toward mother for a long time now, and he seriously thought he had solved the problem tonight. He was going to take Rachael, take some of his stuff, and get the hell out of here. He had decided that the minute Rachael sat down on his sofa. She was the answer to his problems. If he could only have her she would help him. He had no intention of harming her; he just wanted to take her, take them both away from the pressures of the city, from the world. She would be his completely.

But something must have happened to set him off.

Charley closed his eyes, trying to remember what happened.

He and Rachael struggling.

The flash of the blade as it entered flesh....

Oh my God!

Realization set in. It rocked Charley hard. He gasped, broke into a sob.

His mind went blank.

He rocked back and forth, sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling mother's head in his lap.

His eyes were fixed straight ahead. They saw nothing.

He rocked back and forth.

Back and forth ... ?

...back and forth ... ?

...back and ... ?

Chapter 27

Henry Watson was taking a shortcut through the vacant lot that bordered Highland Avenue and Fifty-first Street when he noticed the smell.

It was barely eight-thirty in the morning and Henry could tell that today was going to be a scorcher. He had slept behind a garbage dumpster last night and it had been so warm that he had actually taken his shirt and shoes off. He had tried to position himself behind the dumpster so that he could catch the slight breeze that occasionally blew through the alley to cool his sweat-drenched body, but was barely rewarded for the effort.

As a result, he slept fitfully and was awakened by the warm sun at seven o'clock. He put his shirt and shoes back on and staggered into Yong's donuts for a breakfast of a chocolate donut and some coffee, paying for it from the change he had panhandled last night. The Korean merchant who waited on him was a familiar sight. He smiled gap toothed at Henry as he took his order. “Warm last night,” the merchant said.

“It sho’ was,” Henry said, smiling back, hoping he didn't smell. He really liked the guy who ran this store and didn't like to offend people that he liked with his body odor.

“It was hard to sleep last night."

“It was seventy-nine degrees last night,” the merchant said, pouring his coffee.

“Weatherman said it supposed to be one hundred and three today. That's hot!"

“You bet yo ass that's hot!"

Christ, a hundred and three? And the Bible described Hell as unbearable. If that was true, hell must definitely be on earth here and now.

After breakfast, Henry trudged through the alley, knapsack slung over his shoulder, and found some more bottles and cans. He emerged at the north end and looked across the street at the Bank of America sign across the street. The building had a digital thermometer that informed passing motorists and pedestrians that it was already eighty-five degrees. God wasn't wastin’ time today! No siree.

He trudged up Brand Avenue and turned left, heading toward the vacant lot he planned to cross to reach Baker and Main. It was then that he noticed the smell.

He stopped in mid-stride and sniffed the air. He lifted his arms and sniffed his armpits. He smelled there, sure enough, but that wasn't the smell that was currently invading his olfactory nerves. Henry hadn't bathed in three days, and the clothes he wore on his skinny black frame were probably soiled as well—the garbage bin he had slept behind last night had contained Chinese food leftovers and stale milk cartons and he'd carried that scent on his clothes all morning. But the scent he was catching now didn't resemble any of those. It was a dead smell.

Henry Watson hefted the knapsack that contained the junk he had scavenged yesterday. Currently nestled inside the sack was the hollowed out remains of an old Technics audio receiver, two cardboard manila file folders, a bunch of returnable can and soda bottles, and a couple of comic books. He knew a second-hand thrift store that might be interested in some of the junk, and the recycling plant on Forty-fourth Street would take the cans and bottles. He should be able to get enough to at least buy himself some dinner.

Part of his reason for cutting through the vacant lot on his way to the recycling plant was in the hopes of finding some more junk to scavenge. He had gotten lucky in this lot before. Once he had come across an old file cabinet that had contained nothing but a bunch of useless business correspondence ... but at the bottom of the drawer was a forgotten box that contained an envelope full of old coins. He had taken the coins over to Carl's Rare Coin's and Jewelry over in Echo Park and been awarded one hundred and thirty five dollars and eighty-five cents for his find. A number of the coins were dated pre-world War I, and a handful of the bills were even older. There were also a number of German coins that were issued during Nazi Germany, all of them bearing the swastika of the Third Reich. Henry had thought the swastika-adjourned coins would be worth some money, but he didn't think the other stuff would be, too.

Now Henry stopped in the middle of the vacant lot and sniffed the air. There it was again, riding high in the air. The stench was cloying and strong and it reminded Henry of something dead all right. It smelled like meat that had been left out in the sun for too long, which was probably what it was. The smell would only get worse the hotter it got. Henry was glad he was in the vacant lot now when the smell was still relatively mild.

Henry took a look out over the vacant lot. It looked like any other lot; a slab of land that occupied probably an acre of land, it was overgrown with weeds and thick grass that was long and yellow in the hot sun. The edges of the lot were littered with refuse and there were patches of dirt and rocks here and there. Henry took another couple of tentative steps, his eyes scanning the lot when he noticed it. There, almost at the edge of the lot, fifty yards ahead of him. A package.

Henry veered off his course and headed toward it. The smell grew stronger and as he reached the object he realized it wasn't a package at all, but a blanket of some sort wrapped around something. There was a makeshift cardboard box lying near it, and as Henry reached over to see what was in the box his foot kicked what he first thought was a large rock. The object rolled over and Henry looked down at what his foot had connected with.

His stomach plunged down an elevator shaft.

A woman's head rolled back, dislodged from its resting spot when Henry inadvertently kicked it.

Yelling at the top of his lungs, Henry dropped the canvas knapsack and started running toward Highland Avenue, screaming at the top of his lungs.

It was a little after eight-thirty and Daryl Garcia was sitting at his desk at Parker Center, his eyes red and his limbs light from the adrenaline running through him. Bernie Haskins sat beside him, nervously looking over his shoulder. “Christ, Daryl, let me take you home. You shouldn't be here. Shit, you shouldn't have left the hospital."

“You got a better idea?” Daryl said, tapping away into the computer. It hurt to talk. His chest was sore—his entire abdomen was one entire mass of bruises from the three rounds the Kevlar vest had absorbed from the nine millimeter rounds, and his left arm was in a sling from a fourth shot that had grazed it. The doctors had wanted to keep Daryl in recovery for observation, but as soon as Daryl felt better he had pulled the IV out of his arm and gotten out of bed over the protests of the medical personnel. Between the time he he was shot by Rudy Montego and the time he finally left, five hours had elapsed.

Five hours too long.

The ferocity of the attack by Rudy had taken him by such surprise that when he felt the bullets hit him he thought he had been killed. The back of his head still pounded dully from where it had connected with his garage wall. He now had a mild concussion, and that was one of the reasons why the doctors wanted to keep him for observation. But as soon as Daryl had become conscious, he tried to convey to the officers that had arrived on the scene what was going on. But they'd ignored him, getting him whisked away to the hospital to have his wounds tended to. He learned what happened later through Bernie Haskins, who had gotten a call at his home an hour and a half ago.

Now Bernie was at his side as Daryl typed into the computer. Daryl accessed the DMV computer and typed in Charley Glowacz's name. “Daryl, what are you doing? We can't just head over to this man's house without proper authority."

“Fuck proper authority,” Daryl said, gritting his teeth. “You got a better idea?"

“Yeah,” Bernie said, looking at Daryl sternly, seriously. “For one, going to a private residence as an officer without your supervisor knowing about it, namely your lieutenant, is grounds for immediate termination. Second—"

“Let them fire me then,” Daryl said, jotting the address down and tucking the paper in his pocket. He rose to his feet.

“Second,” Bernie continued, rising to his feet with Daryl, his hand gripping Daryl's arm firmly, but gently. He spoke low, but firm. “If anything should happen to you and you need back-up, you don't want to be alone."

Daryl looked at Bernie. “So come with me."

Bernie grinned slightly. “I was afraid you'd never ask."

He learned what happened to him from one of the officers who accompanied him to the hospital. The officer relayed it with a grim expression. Rudy Montego managed to get off five shots before being taken down by Petey. That explained the sudden yell Daryl had heard before he was knocked out. It also explained the only brief glimpse he got of the crime scene when he woke up on a stretcher outside—the large pool of blood spreading out from under his car in the garage.

Rudy Montego had broken into the garage using a slim tool he had picked up somewhere and had lain in wait for him in the darkness. An accomplice was waiting outside in a car, and when the accomplice heard Rudy yell and the accompanying growls, he got out of his car, vaulted the fence to Daryl's property and ran into the garage. Petey's massive jaws were locked on Rudy's throat and lower face; the dog had literally pulverized the bones of Rudy's jaw. Rudy's head was flopping back and forth by a thin strip of flesh as the dog shook its head back and forth, spraying blood. The accomplice had scrambled out of the garage, got the back gate open, and ran down the driveway with Petey hot on his heels. The dog brought the accomplice down with a viscous attack that had broken the man's lower right leg and severed all the tendons and muscles of the limb.

It was the accomplice's screams of pain that had alerted the neighbors, who called the police.

Hearing what happened had been shocking to Daryl. Especially hearing the amount of damage Petey had inflicted. Ever since he had Petey he never thought of him as a vicious dog, but remembering what pit bulls were capable of when they were in a blood lust brought everything to stark reality. Petey had been so overwhelmed by the excitement of the attack that by the time the police arrived he'd almost turned on them.

But then something must have snapped in his mind, because Petey turned tail and headed down the street. Animal Control officers later arrived on the scene and managed to subdue Petey. His dog was now in a kennel at the Humane Society. Probably on doggy death row with other canines.

I love you Petey, Daryl thought as they drove toward Highland Park. And I wish this hadn't happened to you, but I've got to find Rachael. I've got to find her first, buddy. I hope you forgive me.

“You okay?” Bernie Haskins was looking at him from the driver's seat as they headed down Interstate 10.

Daryl nodded and wiped his eyes with his fingers. “I'm fine."

“We're almost there,” Bernie said as they exited the freeway. “You sure you'll be okay?"

“Yeah.” Daryl took a deep breath. He patted his side to make sure his piece was still there, checked his pocket for his shield. He'd left the hospital so quickly that it was a wonder that he had remembered to get everything.

There was a squawk on the radio. Bernie picked it up. “Haskins here."

“East Homicide requests the presence of the Butcher Task force in a vacant lot in Highland Park on Highland Avenue and Forty-fifth Street. At least two unidentified bodies have been found. Over."

A sliver of ice dropped in Daryl's stomach at the news. Agent Haskins responded curtly. “Have Detective Hodge and Garrison been notified? Over."

“Affirmative."

“Tell them I'll be there as soon as I can. Over and out.” He replaced the radio and glanced over at Daryl who tried to avoid his gaze. He felt a sinking sense of dread. “We're going to check out Charley Glowacz first,” Bernie said as he piloted the car down Highland Avenue. “We're going to find her, Daryl."

“Yeah,” Daryl said. He wiped a pale, sweaty palm over his face. He turned back toward the highway unfolding in front of him. Bernie turned his attention back to driving.

Daryl leaned back in the seat. At least two bodies found in Highland Park. That means there could be more. Please dear God, don't let one of them be Rachael.

They turned down an older, lower middle-class residential neighborhood and Daryl noted the streets as they cruised slowly. Finally they came to the house. “Right here."

Bernie pulled to the curb and cut the engine. Daryl stepped out of the car and the first thing he saw was Rachael's Camaro parked at the curb. He immediately got a bad feeling about this as they drew up to the curb. A flicker of movement caught his attention and Daryl saw a pair of detectives from homicide division. Daryl recognized them immediately as Rudolph Espana and Carl Douglas. Detective Espana spoke first: “There's no time to explain, Garcia. Dickinson asked us to come out here to give you guys backup."

Daryl felt a slight flutter of pride in his stomach. Dickinson, that bastard! He still had faith in him. Detective Douglas nodded. “Nobody knows about this except for Dickinson and us. Got me?"

“Got you.” Daryl said.

Bernie gave the two detectives a brief recap. They were going to the residence merely to question Glowacz, but it was believed that Rachael Pearce might have gone there last night and may be in danger. Daryl shivered as this was mentioned. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as Bernie gave Detectives Espana and Douglas the gist of the assignment. Please God, let her be all right. Let her be all right...

When Bernie was finished Daryl opened his eyes. Bernie nodded at them and said,

“Okay, let's go. You guys follow us."

“Yes, sir,” Detective Douglas said. Detective Carl Douglas was a light skinned black man with short-cropped hair, wide cheekbones, and a neatly trimmed mustache. He was slight in stature but had a penetrating glare in his brown eyes. His partner, Rudolph Espana, was an older Hispanic man with a head of thick black hair. Detective Espana wore black rimmed glasses and had a prominent scar on his right cheek as the result of a gunshot wound during a gun battle with a bank robber twelve years ago in Hollywood.

Detective Espana looked twelve years younger than his fifty years. Both men had solid reputations as good detectives.

“Let's go,” Bernie said, and the four of them headed up the driveway to the house.

Detective Steve Howe reached the scene at Highland and Forty-fifth Street thirty minutes after he heard the call. He had been on his way in to Parker Center when the call came through on his radio. When he pulled up to the scene, Steve saw that the vacant lot was already swarming with cops. He felt his pulse quicken. Looks like this is the real thing.

He had been thinking about the case on the drive over. He and Daryl had talked yesterday afternoon and both had agreed that with the incredible heat wave Los Angeles was currently facing, another Butcher killing of a gang member was sure to send the barrio into a frenzy. Tempers were already high, the remnants from the feelings that had boiled over during the spring when the last body had been found. It made no difference that the last victim had been a white female. The people of the East Los Angeles area were getting tired of the media scrutiny and the fact that the killer was still on the loose.

Gang violence had gone down slightly, but the tensions were higher than ever, just waiting for something to release it. If this was really another Butcher killing and the victims were gang members, all hell was going to break loose.

The feeling that the bodies reported found at the vacant lot might be the work of the elusive killer had grown stronger and stronger on the drive over. Now seeing the yellow police tape up at the scene, and the growing mob of spectators crowding the lot around from all sides, only reinforced his feelings. He swung out of the car, shut the door, and headed toward the middle of the vacant lot where the majority of on-lookers and police officers were congregated. He looked around for Daryl or Bernie Haskins. Where the hell were they?

As he approached the scene a pair of uniformed officers approached him. Steve reached for his shield and one of the officers nodded. He was a young kid of about twenty-six with short black hair and an olive complexion. He looked excited and sick to his stomach. “I'm glad somebody from the task force is finally here. This is a butcher killing all right. Jesus Christ!"

“Let's have a look,” Steve said, leading the way.

The officer led him through the throng. “A homeless man called it in,” he explained. “He was walking through the lot looking for returnable bottles when he smelled what you're smelling now.” The warm air was rife with the scent of rotting flesh; Steve noticed it right away, having come across it so many times in his career as a law enforcement officer. It was a smell you never really got used to. “He saw this,” the cop indicated a cardboard box and what appeared to be a pile of clothes on the ground in the center of a small patch of weeds and debris. They were now in the center of the maelstrom now, and the crowded onlookers of cops and detectives parted from the scene to let them in. “And his foot accidentally kicked that down there.” He pointed and Steve followed the officer's pointing finger to the severed head on the ground. The head had long black hair that was matted and dirty, but through the dirt and grime he could make out the features as that of a woman. Daryl had told him that he believed that one of the missing women that fit the victim profiles, a Miss Carmen Aguirre, was one of the most likely to be a victim of the Butcher. The description in the file indicated that Carmen had long black hair. Was this Carmen Aguirre's remains they had stumbled upon?

Steve nodded toward the debris near the head. “What's that other stuff?"

One of the officers on the scene answered; he was an African American man in his mid-thirties with a muscular build and wide cheekbones. “It looks like the box and that quilt contain the rest of her, detective."

Steve surveyed the area. The area the remains were found in was about an acre of bare earth with patches of weeds sprouting here and there. The surrounding land was made up of long grass and weeds, now turned yellow from the hot summer sun. The bare area consisted of rocks, crumbled pieces of concrete from whatever had been demolished that once stood on this site, and pieces of old newspapers, cans and bottles. The police crime scene tape was already in place and the area seemed pretty secured. He nodded at the cop. “Any other detectives here?"

The African American cop motioned to a pair of detectives who were making their way toward them. Steve didn't recognize them; they were probably from the East Los Angeles Division. Both detectives were in their forties and were Hispanic.

Introductions were quickly made. Detectives Manuel Sanchez and Rick Guiteirez were quickly introduced to him. Steve turned to the two detectives. “What else have you found?"

Detective Gutierez pointed down at the head, which was nestled by some newspapers. “There's what appears to be bones over here, about five yards away from this victim. We're still trying to secure the area."

“Any ETA on when the coroner will be here?” Steve asked.

Detective Gonzalez answered: “It was called in when the first officer arrived, which was fifteen minutes ago. They should be here any minute."

“What about more officers for crowd control?” Steve said, checking out the crowd of onlookers who had come to gawk. They ranged in age from the very young to people in their sixties, most of them Hispanic, many of them talking excitedly about the discovery of the body. Steve could very faintly make out conversations in Spanish opining that it was another Butcher victim, that the police weren't doing anything to protect them, that nobody cared what happened to them. The people stirring up this kind of talk were younger males, clearly of the gang-banger pumped-up testosteroned level kind. If they kept this crap up they would work this crowd up and there could be trouble. “I think we may need some crowd control here,” he said, turning back to the police officers who had met him at the site.

The African American cop nodded, noting the growing crowd. He gestured to another cop, a female in her twenties who had just arrived at the scene. “Call in for crowd control, Becky, but for God's sake don't make it sound like a riot's brewing. These people see officer's in riot gear, that'll only get them more riled up."

Becky nodded and extracted her radio from her belt and called in the order to headquarters.

Detective Gutierez was standing about ten feet from the patchwork quilt with a strange expression on his face. He wrinkled his nose and looked up at Steve and Detective Gonzalez. “Excuse me, Steve, Manuel! Will you come over here for a minute?"

Steve and Manuel walked over.

Steve was struck by the severity of the stench as they reached Rick. The detective's face was scrunched up from the pervasive stench. He had caught the scent before, but upon seeing the remains of what was probably a woman, he assumed the stench was from her. The detective who called him over looked at Steve, wide-eyed with disgust. “Christ, it smells worse over here."

Manuel had his hands over his mouth and nose and Steve could see the alarm in his eyes. He looked around and saw something in a patch of weeds.

He walked over to it and was forced to cover his mouth and nose with his shirt, the smell was so bad.

The three detectives followed him over and Steve heard Manuel gasp as they almost stepped on the source of the smell.

It appeared to be a second victim. An assemble of bones lay in the grove of weeds: an ulna and a pair of femurs and tibulas, a mass of short little bones that looked like if they fit together would form a spinal column, some long bones that looked they were arm bones, and over a dozen curved bones that looked like ribs. Some of the bones were wrapped in newspaper; some had slimy gelatin remnants of flesh still clinging to them. The stench that rose from the small pit was overpowering; it was like a physical invasion that pushed them back from the small grave.

Detective Gutierez gagged and stepped back, bumping into the African American cop who had come up to take a look. Behind them the collected crowd gasped as some of them saw what lay within the weeds and passed the word to the others. Excited voices in Spanish rose above the din of conversation and officers calling out orders to each other.

Steve could feel the tension rise. Where the hell was the coroner? Where the hell were more officers to control this crowd?

Where the hell were Daryl and Agent Haskins?

“Secure this scene right now and get more detectives from the task force here now!” Steve Howe said, eyes darting around. The crowd was getting to him as well, and Steve could make out what was being said in the anger of the rapidly flowing Spanish: another body had been found, the killer was going to keep killing in the neighborhood and the cops weren't going to do a thing about it and—

Across the lot Steve saw more police cars pull up to the scene. He heaved a sigh of relief. One of the vehicles was the white non-descript van of the coroner's office.

And as more back-up officers arrived to control the crowd, the more excited the onlookers became and the more Steve wished this nightmare would end.

How he wished it would end.

Chapter 28

They headed to the front door of the home Charley Glowacz shared with his mother with service revolvers and shields out and ready. The four of them raced up the driveway in a crouched position, moved up to the porch, and Daryl knocked on the door loudly, gun held up and ready. “Open up! LAPD and FBI!"

When nobody answered the door, Daryl signaled to Douglas who was positioned slightly behind him. Douglas stepped back and gave a fierce kick to the door. The door cracked and Douglas kicked it again, snapping the lock. Daryl pushed the door open and the three men burst in, guns drawn, adrenaline running a mile a minute, pumped up with the energy to take this bastard in.

As they rushed in, the first thing Daryl saw was the blood spatters on the far wall.

He tensed up, a million bad thoughts running through his mind. He motioned to the left of the house. “Check the kitchen,” he said to Douglas. “Espana, cover me."

The two men crept forward, guns ready. Haskins trailed Douglas, covering him.

The living room was dark. Daryl reached toward the wall and flipped the light switch.

The room was bathed in light. The cream colored walls made the bloodstains more stark in contrast to the rest of the room, which was small, but tidy. Homey. It was obvious from the knocked over lamp and the turned over chair that a struggle had ensued. Douglas and Haskins came out of the kitchen. “Clear,” Agent Haskins said. His face was tense and pale.

Daryl motioned to the darkened hallway. “Let's check it."

They crept down the hallway. Daryl's senses were on full alert: he heard every sound that was made, which mostly consisted of the creak of the floor as they walked through the house. The rest of the house was silent.

Haskins came upon a closed door on the left and opened it with his left hand, flattening himself out against the hallway. Gun pointing into the room, Espana checked the room out. “Empty,” he said, as they continued down the hall.

They paused at the closed door at the end of the hall. Faint sounds emitted from the room. It was hard to tell if they were the sounds of sobbing or laughter, male or female.

Oh God, please let it be her, let her be alive!

“LAPD! Come out with your hands up!” Daryl shouted.

There was no movement from behind the door. The only sound that came was the hitching sound of a voice that might have been sobbing or light, mad laughter.

Daryl kicked the door in. It banged against the wall and they swarmed into the room, guns out and ready, fingers itching on the trigger. What lay before them leaped out at them like the shock effects of a horror movie.

The room was bathed in blood. It smeared the walls and ceiling and the floor. It stained the sofa against the far wall. Lying on the tan carpet, now turning a deep crimson from the massive amount of blood, was an elderly woman dressed in a faded blue dress.

Or what remained of an elderly woman; what they could tell that the mangled lump of flesh in front of them was a woman was by her neatly severed head, now resting comfortably in the lap of a tall, portly, middle aged man with balding, curly blond hair.

He was rocking back and forth, his glasses slipped down to the bridge of his nose. His clothes were drenched in blood and he sat cross-legged on the floor, the head of the old woman cradled in his lap. He was laughing and crying madly. Daryl was so stunned by the scene that he remained frozen, gun pointed at the man, feet rooted to the spot. By the time he got his senses, Agent Haskins was already snapping out of his shock. “Put your hands above your head, motherfucker! Now!"

Charley looked up at the officers, his eyes red and wet with tears. His lips quivered. “Sh ... she's dead!"

No shit, sherlock, Daryl thought. He took a deep breath and brought himself under control. Charley Glowacz wasn't holding a weapon of any kind and he looked very well over the edge. Nutty as a fruitcake. Daryl stepped around the hacked up body of the old woman on the floor, who he assumed was Charley's mother, and with Detective Espana covering him he stepped further into the room, gun drawn, heart beating, looking for any sign of Rachael.

There was no sign of her; just a trashed room with books thrown to the floor, stereo and television equipment smashed and strewn around and blood drenching the walls and the floor. For the first time he noticed a big butcher knife, its blade stained with blood. It was lying on the floor, halfway between where Charley was sitting and the closed door.

His eyes trailed down to the bloody floor, tracing a trail of blood that ran down the room to a bloodstained door ahead of him, where it abruptly ended.

Daryl raised his piece. “Cover me,” he said to Douglas, as he stepped carefully around the bloodstains on the floor toward the door in front of him.

He approached the door, his muscles tense.

His hand gripped the doorknob. Twisted it.

It was locked.

And from within the room, a muffled cry.

“Rachael!"

Bracing himself, Daryl threw himself against the door, hitting it with his shoulder.

His chest blossomed with pain from his wounds, and he hit the door a second time, feeling the wood splinter. It banged open and he stumbled into a small bathroom, eyes darting around the bloodstained tiles, not knowing what to expect, afraid of what he might find, when the sound came again and then he saw her, cowering in the bathtub in the far corner of the room.

Rachael Pearce was scrunched up in the bathtub. At first she didn't recognize Daryl. Her eyes grew wide with fear as he rushed in, and she instinctively drew back, her hoarse voice trying to scream. “No, no, please, no, stay away—"

“Rachael, it's me! It's Daryl!” Daryl went to her and tried to take her in his arms.

Rachael tried to pull away at first, but then the fear seemed to suddenly leave her.

Her eyes sparkled with recognition. “Daryl! Oh Daryl!"

And then she was in his arms, sobbing with relief. And Daryl was holding her, not even aware that he was crying with relief, so damn glad that she was here with him, alive, hurt maybe, but alive. He held her, stroking her hair, holding her tightly, not wanting to let her go. He could feel that she wanted to hold him as well, but she was too weak to do so. She made wailing, crying sounds, the pain of her ordeal welling up in her, seeking release. He held her, soothing her, rocking her in his arms. His stomach was roiling now with the fresh smell of blood and sweat and piss and shit. His skin crawled at the thought of the bloodstained man sitting on the floor touching her, even looking at her. “Oh Rachael, oh Christ, are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?"

“My side,” Rachael sobbed, wincing in pain. She motioned toward her left side and Daryl saw that her blouse was stained a deep crimson. “He ... he stabbed me ... a few times ... I ... he just went at me as we were talking ... and ... I tried to fight him off, but ...

he stabbed me and..."

“It's okay, baby, try not to talk,” Daryl got a better look at the wound. His mind quickly filled in the blanks. She somehow must have slipped past him and run into the bathroom, locking herself in. He saw that she had also tried to staunch the bleeding with a bath towel, which had fallen to the bathtub floor when Rachael tried to get up to come to him.

From outside the bathroom: “Everything okay in there?"

“Yeah! Call for backup and an ambulance.” Daryl turned to Rachael. “How bad is that wound?"

“I don't know,” Rachael said. Daryl saw that she was pale and sweaty. “I know I stopped the bleeding. I ... I've just been trying to remain still and ... and hide from him because ... because I didn't know if he was still out there!” She began sobbing again.

Daryl leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “It's okay, baby. We got an ambulance coming. You just stay there, okay? I don't want to risk moving you until the EMTs get here."

Outside in the bedroom, he heard Charley cry out: “She's dead, she's dead!"

“Goddamn,” Detective Espãna said, his breath sounding harsh and heavy. “We got him. Goddamn it if we didn't get him."

“Yes, we did,” Haskins said.

Daryl Garcia was dimly aware of what was going on outside the bathroom. All he could focus on was the incredible rage he felt at almost having somebody else he loved taken away from him. It made him so angry that he felt ready to explode. Daryl cupped Rachael's face in his hands and kissed her, marveling at the sight and touch of her with him, alive and breathing and crying and living. “You okay, baby?"

Rachael nodded, her cries trickling. She had cried hard upon seeing Daryl and being taken in her arms, but her face wasn't as wet with tears as it should be. Most likely she had cried them all out during her captivity.

Daryl kissed her again and lowered her against the tiled wall of the shower stall.

“You lay back here and relax, okay? I'm gonna get something to cover you up with and then when the EMT's get here we'll get you on a stretcher."

“I'm okay,” she said, hissing the words more than actually saying them. It sounded like it was difficult for her to talk.

“I want a medical professional to assure me you are, okay?” His eyes saw a towel in the bathroom and he darted inside to snatch it off the rack. He draped the towel over her and she drew it around herself. Her large brown eyes looked up at him with gratitude.

And love. My hero, they said.

Detective Douglas pounded back in the bedroom. “I've got back-up and an EMT

on the way,” he said. Daryl rose to his feet and exited the bathroom. He approached Charley Glowacz, who was still sitting on the floor cross-legged with his mother's head in his lap, seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him. Daryl walked around till he was facing him. Then he raised his weapon, taking careful aim. His eyes narrowed into hard slits. “You're lucky Rachael's alive, Glowacz, otherwise you'd live through extreme torture for the rest of your life. Count yourself lucky that a gunshot to the head is relatively quick and painless."

Bernie tensed. “Daryl. Come on, man, this isn't the way—"

“Oh, but it is the way, Agent Haskins,” Daryl kept his piece trained on Charley Glowacz, who seemed oblivious to the danger on his life. He cocked the hammer. “It's the only way to bring any measure of peace in the city. We came here to follow our lead and look what we find. Mister pervert psycho himself with a dead old woman, probably his mother, and we bust in and find him like this. Only instead of sitting here and laughing like the fucking weirdo he is, he lunges at us with the knife he used to kill this poor woman with, the same knife that he almost killed Rachael with, and I shot him in self-defense. Oh yeah, I think that will go over real well with not only the public, but the Chief as well."

“Daryl, put the gun down,” Bernie said sternly, but pleading. “I understand very well where you're coming from—God knows I want to kill the bastard myself—but this isn't the way. There's a better way to deal with this. I know it looks bad, but trust me, we've got him and he's going away for a long time. Hell, with over eighteen murders he's facing a death penalty for sure in California. So come on, let's do the right thing and—"

“No,” Detective Garcia said. “This is the right thing. All the goddamned courts will do is let this scum live off our tax money for the rest of his life while he gets all the rights in the fucking world. Free weight training, free fucking cable TV, free education.

That's not right."

“And this isn't right, either,” Bernie said. “Trust me, Daryl, we've got him. It's an open and shut case. Rachael is safe, and we got the bastard. Come on, put the gun down."

Detective Garcia's face was sweaty as he held the gun on Charley Glowacz. His hands were shaking, his eyes narrowing in anger as he locked his sights on Charley.

Images flashed in his mind; busting in the room and finding Charley sitting on the floor amid the blood and viscera, the severed head of—

(Rachael's bloodied features looking up from her bugged-out eyes, her lolling tongue)

—his mother cradled in his lap, the sound of the gang member shouting at him to

“get the fuck out of the car now!", the joy he had felt when Shirley had told him that she was pregnant and then hearing the loud report of the gun—

(glancing back and seeing Shirley lying in the street, a widening pool of blood spreading beneath her shattered head)

—as she was shot, the feeling of loss and pain he had felt ever since that awful day and then coming to the realization that this hole had now been filled by Rachael Pearce. And realizing she had come dangerously close from being taken away from him as well.

His features broke in a sobbing grimace. “It just isn't right,” he cried. He looked down, away from Charley for an instant, gun still trained on him, and Bernie stepped away from Charley, out of the line of fire. Charley Glowacz remained on the floor with his mother's head cradled in his lap, holding it to his chest protectively now, body curled forward in an almost fetal position as if to protect it.

“Come on, Daryl,” Bernie said softly, soothingly. “Put the gun down."

“Yes, Daryl, put the gun down."

Daryl looked up and saw Rachael standing near the doorway to the bathroom. She had wrapped the towel around herself. She was favoring her left side, and she held the towel against the stab wound. Despite the fact that she was in obvious pain and discomfort, she looked at Daryl with a kind, gentle look. “It's not gonna work, Daryl.

Trust me, I'd love nothing better than to beat this bastard to a bloody pulp with my bare hands and make him suffer. But if I did that I'd be no better than he is. And I'd be in deeper trouble than I could ever imagine. You will be too if you pull that trigger."

Detective Espãna joined her sentiments; he pointed his weapon at Daryl. Espãna's face expressed pure despair. “Give it up, Daryl,” Espãna said. “It's not gonna work."

Daryl glanced back casually at Rachael and Detective Espãna. “What are you going to do, Espãna? Shoot me?"

“Don't make me,” Espãna said, both hands aiming his weapon steady at Daryl. “If you shoot this man you will be committing a felony and we'll have no choice but to take you in to custody."

Daryl's heart was racing as he trained his sight back on Charley Glowacz, who seemed to snap out of his trance and was looking up at the detective with a solemn look.

His features were white and pasty. His eyes beckoned to be put out of his misery. Go ahead, they said. Shoot me. I don't give a fuck anymore.

Rachael pleading: “Please, Daryl. Put the gun down."

Daryl slowly lowered the gun.

Bernie stepped forward, hand stretched out to take the weapon.

Daryl lowered the gun to his side, fingers relaxing from its grip. He shuddered, his features quivering with rage. “I could have had him,” he murmured softly, struggling to rein in his emotions. He looked up at them, eyes wide and pleading. “He doesn't deserve to live."

“I know,” Bernie said, reaching forward and taking the gun swiftly from Daryl's grasp. He uncocked it and placed it into the small of his back. Rachael hobbled into the room and took Daryl gently into her arms. Detective Carl Douglas joined them and gently moved the two of them past Charley, who was still on the floor, toward the living room.

Daryl started crying the minute they were out of the room. Espãna donned a pair of latex gloves that Douglas had brought in and stepped toward Charley Glowacz to take him away. The sound of cars stopping outside amid the sound of car doors closing and footsteps running up the walk told Daryl that the rest of the calvary had arrived.

The house was swarming with detectives and other police officers in minutes.

Bernie directed them to the back bedroom and nodded as the forensics team arrived. He pointed down the hall. “It's all yours,” he said.

Bernie joined Daryl and Rachael on the front porch. Rachael was holding Daryl, whose crying had now trickled down to sniffles. The paramedics arrived and Bernie turned to a female officer who was standing nearby and motioned to Rachael. “Can you please help the EMTs and get her into a stretcher?” The officer nodded and scampered off to do just that.

Bernie glanced back toward the house then toward Daryl, who was now under control. Daryl looked at Bernie, his eyes red. “He's not going to go anywhere, is he?"

“No,” Bernie agreed. Bernie clapped him on the shoulder. “We did it, buddy. We nailed the bastard.” For the first time in months Daryl felt something like an incredible burden lifting from his shoulders.

And it lifted even further as Charley Glowacz was led out of the house in handcuffs to a waiting squad car and placed in the backseat, lifted even further as he turned to Rachael and with tears in his eyes took her in his arms again and whispered in her ear that he loved her, lifted completely off as he held her tightly and felt the wonderful sensation of her body against his and felt her vibrancy, a vibrancy that was strong and destined to go on forever.

Chapter 29

Daryl Garcia was at his desk in the homicide unit at Parker Center going over the arrest report and files they had amassed on Charley Glowacz. His back hurt and he was getting a slight headache, but the cup of coffee sitting on the desk was helping to stave off the headach. Around him the sound of phones ringing and conversation created a fog that helped him plow through the work that had waited for him when he got to work that morning, two days following the dramatic arrest at the Glowacz residence.

After Charley Glowacz was taken to Parker Center, Rachael was transported by ambulance to USC Medical Center where she was examined. She had suffered two stab wounds to her lower right abdomen. Luckily, the knife had missed vital organs, but one of them had come dangerously close to slicing through her small intestine. If that happened, she might have died. After having the wounds stitched up and dressed, Rachael had been admitted for overnight observation and was released yesterday morning. Daryl had taken her home and put her to bed immediately, dashing to the kitchen to bring her Gatorade, waiting on her hand and foot. He also kept the reporters at bay. By noon yesterday it was all over the airwaves that the Eastside Butcher had been apprehended, and somehow word had leaked out that Daryl had been one of the arresting officers. He and Rachael remained in the house and while Rachael got some much-needed sleep, Daryl watched the news and got information that wasn't released to the public from Bernie Haskins.

Charley Glowacz had been questioned about the murders but he refused to say a word about them. Instead all he had done was cry and weep that he “hadn't meant to hurt her". When asked who he was talking about, Charley only shook his head and cried harder, rocking back and forth in his chair. A police psychiatrist was brought in and at six p.m. last evening Daryl had a meeting with Haskins, the Chief of Police and the Lieutenant. The psychiatrist was of the opinion that Charley probably committed the murders. “But we won't have any hard evidence until you guys are able to find it at the house,” he said. As it turned out, forensics and the Butcher Task force had found plenty of incriminating evidence.

Now as Daryl leaned back in his chair, looking over the notes he had written, the burden that had lifted from his shoulders last night with the arrest of Charley was a distant memory. The notes he had set down in the lined notebook paper was his way of putting down his thoughts, reaffirming that everything they found in Charley's home and the adjoining back house was more than enough to convince even the most die-hard skeptic that Charley Glowacz was the Eastside Butcher. Daryl picked up the notepad and read through his notes, tapping the pen on the pad as he did so.

The Los Angeles Coroner's office had just faxed over a copy of the official report on the autopsies performed on the two bodies found in the vacant lot yesterday. The first one was positively identified through fingerprints as Carmen Aguirre, the Top's Fast Food waitress who had been missing earlier in the year. Daryl thought back on the conversation he had with Rachael when she questioned the restaurant owner; the man had been right all along that Charley Glowacz had something to do with Carmen's death.

The official coroner's report on Carmen was as follows: cause of death was rapid loss of blood due to decapitation, her head severed with a single stroke between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. Her limbs had been amputated with expert surgical cuts at the hip and shoulder joints; her left leg was further separated at the knee, and her right arm was separated at the elbow, but the remaining limbs were left intact. Her vagina and anus were dilated, indicating sexual abuse, probably post mortem. Slices of flesh had been excised from the upper thighs and buttocks, probably consumed by Charley, the psychiatrist noted. The remaining body parts were dried and hardened from refrigeration—the refrigerator in the Glowacz back house bore evidence that Charley had stashed more than one body in the freezer. The coroner fixed her death at the date she disappeared.

The skeletal remains proved to be an even greater challenge. They were still sifting through missing persons reports to try to find a match to the general physical make-up that the coroner had been able to sketch out. The victim had been male, possibly Caucasian or Hispanic, small boned and standing five foot seven with a weight of one hundred and forty pounds. His nose had been broken at one time and never been reset.

Strands of long, wavy black hair still clung to the skull. The hands, feet, two ribs and several vertebrae were never found. Examination of the bones revealed cuts at the neck, hips, shoulders, wrists, and ankles. Some of the bones had been wrapped in pieces of the Los Angeles Times dating to the year before; the flesh of the victim was still sloughing off like jelly when the discovery of both victims was made.

The autopsy on Evelyn Glowacz hadn't yet been conducted, but it was evident that she was killed with the same knife that had been used in the other murders. Her head had been removed cleanly, but in Evelyn's case the body was savagely mauled; Charley had attacked her in a frenzy. Her decapitation was somewhat cool and methodical, but that's where the resemblance ended. Like Felipe Picano, the victim found in pieces in the LA River last summer, Evelyn Glowacz had been disemboweled, her innards strewn all over the room in which she was killed. It was believed that Charley had attacked his mother in the living room during a fight; neighbors reported that they had heard them arguing late the night before. From there he had dragged his mother into his room where he had killed her and performed the mutilations in a mad frenzy, hacking apart her corpse like a man possessed.

And then his mind had snapped completely. From there, he must have sat on the floor of his room with his mother's head in his lap the rest of the night until Daryl and Bernie burst in the following morning.

Yesterday Rachael had slept all day and into the night. She had wakened suddenly this morning around two a.m., screaming in terror, waking Daryl out of a deep sleep. She had shot out of bed, almost falling to the floor, and Daryl had to grab her. She screamed and fought him and Daryl had to shout “Rachael, it's Daryl. It's Daryl, honey, it's okay....

sshhh, it's Daryl, honey, it's okay..."

And only then did she calm down and go limp in his arms, softly crying herself back to sleep.

Daryl sat at his desk, the sound of phones ringing in the Homicide Unit shattering his thoughts. It was warm outside, destined to be another scorcher. Before arriving at Parker Center, Daryl had paid a visit to Animal Control and been successful in securing Petey's release. When the pit bull saw Daryl for the first time he let out a sharp cry and ran toward him. Daryl laughed and gathered the dog up in his arms, Petey's tongue giving him slobbering kisses. “I'm glad to see you too, boy. I'm glad to see you too."

Rachael was currently being interviewed about yesterday's incident by Bernie Haskins. Daryl hoped she would be okay. He told her on the drive out this morning that she could wait to be questioned later, after she felt mentally prepared for it. But Rachael said she wanted to get it over with. “I want to put this nightmare behind me,” she said.

While Daryl had had his finger on the trigger, sighting down the barrel on Charley Glowacz's face two days ago, more officers had been pouring into Highland Park to quell the growing crowd at the dumpsite of the latest victims. The news media got on the scene immediately, and for the past forty-eight hours the news was playing a tape of the disturbance that had broken out between residents of the area and the police. It had almost turned into a riot. The LAPD called a tactical alert on all of Los Angeles as the news got out that the Butcher had claimed two more victims. With the stifling heat of the past two weeks creating a pressure cooker, and the rising tempers that went along with it, it pushed the mob over the edge. Led by a smattering of young, shaven headed men dressed in baggy shorts and t-shirts, the crowd started on the same old lament. And the more the crowd voiced their disenchantment, the more belligerent the crowd got. More police arrived in riot gear and that's when it got ugly. People started throwing rocks and bottles at the police. The police quickly moved in, arresting ten people and injuring five others with their batons. Most of it was caught by various television news cameras and was the talk of the city throughout the day as the replays were broadcast over and over. And somehow through it all, the Butcher Task force members managed to keep the crime scene secure. By the time the police had the crowd under control, both bodies were at the coroner's office ready to be autopsied.

The Task Force had left this morning for the site to sift through more evidence, but what evidence they already had in hand from the vacant lot and the Glowacz home was more than enough to tie Charley to the murders. The cardboard boxes that contained Carmen Aguirre's limbs had come from a cache of boxes found in the Glowacz garage; likewise, the tin can that contained the skull came from the garbage can in the back alley behind the house. Among the items found in the garage was a cache of burlap bags that came from a local grocery store and a stack of old newspapers, largely the LA Times.

Bernie Haskins had been with the Butcher Task Force at the house for almost twenty-four hours, and he told Daryl about it last night during a forty-minute phone conversation.

They had found a lot of things at the house. And what they found painted an ugly picture.

The front of the house was small, consisting of a living room, kitchen, and den.

Evelyn Glowacz's bedroom was the first room down the hall. Further down, taking up the rear half of the house, were Charley's living quarters, which consisted of a bedroom, an adjoining bathroom, and a small room that opened out into a small backyard. Once in the backyard there was another structure, an addition to the detached garage that fed into the alley. This was the “back house” that Father John Glowacz spoke of to Detective Steve Howe last night when he was interrogated briefly. As Father John Glowacz explained it, when the boys were growing up, their father, Lawrence, who left the family when John was eight and Charley was eleven, had the addition added on soon after they moved into the house. It had been intended as a recreation room, and had been well insulated and very livable. The main room was very large and had a pool table, a sofa, chairs and a television. The next room had been turned into a make-shift S&M dungeon, complete with padded, sound-proofed walls that were painted black. The room was equipped with various S&M paraphernalia including devices attached to the ceiling designed for people to hang from, racks designed to secure people, and a narrow mattress with handcuffs attached to the posts. Directly underneath the head of the bed was a bloodstained, stainless steel bucket. Most of the S&M paraphernalia found in the room—everything from the requisite ben-wa balls, cat o'nine tails, nipple clamps and gargantuan dildos—

bore bloodstains. Just off the S&M chamber was a small bathroom, then a workroom off the garage. It was in the workroom that the task force found the freezer where Charley had kept the bodies, as well as a large, scarred table with bloodstains on it. The concrete floor of the workroom was also stained with blood. Father Glowacz explained to Steve (the priest had been visibly shocked and shaking, Detective Howe told Daryl that morning; in fact, he had cried through most of the brief interrogation) that their mother never set foot in the back house anymore, so there was no way for her to have known what it had been transformed into.

From the evidence found at the home, Daryl came up with this possible scenario of what happened that day: Charley had been packing, preparing to skip town. The detectives had found newspaper clippings of the murders in his suitcase, as well as a few scant pieces of personal belongings from his victims he had kept; pieces of jewelry and clothing, driver's licenses, wallets. Then he had taken a plastic trash bag and removed the eight heads from the freezer that agents had found with the luggage; he had obviously intended to take them with the intention of finding a place to dump them. He must have been peaking in his psychotic state and was most likely paranoid by now. Most serial killers grew extremely paranoid toward the end of their killing spree, becoming so intoxicated by their lust to kill that it was all they thought of. But it also made them less cautious. He was probably tipped off by the closing circle of the investigation when Rachael paid her visit two nights ago. When Rachael told him she was investigating the disappearance of Carmen Aguirre it probably set the paranoia off. He had attacked Rachael, a struggle ensued, and she had been wounded during the fracas. She had managed to barricade herself in the bathroom and Charley, completely gone now, had snapped and unleashed his fury on his mother, who had no doubt heard the commotion and come out of her room to investigate. Then he had dumped the last two bodies, and returned to mutilate his mother's corpse some more. Charley Glowacz hadn't spoken of the incident yet, but the FBI criminal psychiatrist opined that the basis for Charley's sickness stemmed from his mother, which explained why he mutilated her so ferociously.

He had probably blacked out during the actual act, probably wasn't even aware of sitting on the bedroom floor of the house cradling her head in his lap when Daryl, Bernie, Espãna and Douglas entered the house.

The knife found on the floor matched the wounds in the other victims, thus linking Charley to all eighteen murders. Charley's fingerprints were found all over the place; in his room, on the suitcase and knife, all over the back house, in the S&M

dungeon and the items found within it, in the back room with the freezer. Also found in both suitcases were two dozen pornography tapes, most of it fetish videos of the bizarre or violent side; some appeared to be practically snuff films. There was no mainstream porn, straight or gay. Bernie Haskins told Daryl this morning that he had fast-forwarded through four of the tapes himself and there wasn't one in which one of the participants wasn't hurt from being bitten, cut with a knife, burned, or violently penetrated. It had made Bernie sick. “Christ, I thought there were laws against people making this kind of shit."

A team of detectives was currently combing through Charley's pick-up truck for physical evidence. Another team was at the Glowacz house still going through it with a finetooth comb. And finally, there was the team currently at the vacant lot. Another team was out canvassing the streets talking to residents and possible witnesses regarding the two latest victims. The owner of Top's Fast Food had already been brought in for formal questioning, and he stuck with the story he'd told Rachael two nights ago. This helped tighten the noose around Charley's neck, and this morning Daryl had gotten the word that two of Carmen's co-workers were now echoing their boss's sentiments. Charley was bad news, they said. They had a feeling he might have had something to do with Carmen's disappearance. He was always offering her rides home from work.

Daryl leaned back in his chair, mulling this over. It was obvious from looking at pictures of the dead woman and talking to her friends and family, that Charley was far from the kind of man she would have been interested in. She had obviously paid attention to Charley out of kindness; it was her personality to smile at people and treat them nicely, no matter who they were. And yeah, she probably had flirted a little bit with Charley to make him feel good. It was an incredible boost to any man's ego when a beautiful woman smiles at him, or pays attention to him. Despite the innocuous kindness in which the gestures had been intended, Charley had taken them literally. And had started coming to the burger joint like a lovesick puppy dog.

Charley Glowacz hadn't said a word since his arrest for the murder of his mother.

He was incarcerated in isolation at the men's central jail in downtown Los Angeles, awaiting arraignment on that charge while the task force scrambled to try to connect him with the eighteen Butcher killings. So far the physical evidence was overwhelming: the butcher knife found at the house, the eight human heads found in his possession as he was getting ready to flee, the newspaper clippings on the murders he had kept for preservation, and his fingerprints all over the place. Just an hour ago one of the task force members called to confirm that a pair of shoes found in Charley's closet matched the shoe prints found in the Echo Park vacant lot where Rosie Williams’ remains were found a year ago. The FBI crime lab in Virginia was currently trying to match up the one hair sample that had been found in the Melendez case with samples taken from Charley; Bernie Haskins told him privately that it looked like it was going to be a positive match.

The lone hair found with Chrissy Melendez was that of an auburn, wavy-haired male.

Charley's hair was short, brown and wavy. DNA testing would seal the verdict.

The clincher for Daryl was that prints lifted off the butcher knife found at the house, the same knife used to kill Evelyn Glowacz and linked to the other murders, had Charley's fingerprints all over it.

Daryl's mind tracked down these points he had made to himself over and over again. Charley Glowacz knew the East Los Angeles area like the back of his hand. He had a vehicle to transport the bodies in. He was physically tall and strong despite his soft appearance, making him perfectly capable of overpowering his victims, and in some cases carrying the bodies over incredibly rough terrain. He had the relative security of the back house of the Glowacz residence to commit the murders and keep the remains, which was ideal since he could simply enter the back house through the garage despite the adjoining driveway. According to the co-workers they were speaking to at Charley's place of employment, Charley was not only a nice guy, but was the kind of guy they all had liked.

He was quiet, kept to himself, and was friendly. Just like every other serial killer. This was echoed by the few friends he had, the ones he hung out with on Friday nights to watch movies. No wonder he had been able to claim such an impressive body count.

His church activities were documented and were still being investigated. Daryl had an appointment with Father John Glowacz in two hours, and he hoped the priest would give in to the matter of justice and cooperate. He knew how family members could be when they found out a loved one was accused in some sort of crime. They would sometimes spill the beans during an interview, telling detectives everything they needed to know, and then when trial came they would deny ever admitting anything, suddenly

“forgetting” those crucial points. Daryl hoped Father Glowacz wouldn't give him any trouble. He liked the priest and his sympathy went out to him. The poor man was not only going through the turmoil of seeing his brother being arrested for murder, but he had lost his mother to a brutal murder, a murder his brother was being charged with committing.

And worse yet, his brother was being accused of the Butcher killings. All that bad news hitting somebody once was enough to put anybody on the defensive.

Daryl closed the manila file folder on the Butcher case. A smile cracked across his features. They had him. They had caught the man responsible for the Butcher murders, and nothing was going to keep Daryl from letting this one slip between his fingers.

They were almost home when Rachael started telling him what happened. Or what she remembered of it.

After being questioned by Bernie Haskins at length, Rachael had emerged from the interrogation room and gone straight to Daryl's desk. She was still tired and wanted to go home. Daryl had grabbed his keys and glanced at the overhead clock. He had plenty of time to whisk Rachael home and be back in time to question Father Glowacz. He told Bernie Haskins that he would be back in an hour and escorted Rachael out of the building.

He asked how the interrogation went. “Fine,” Rachael said. She remained silent as they got in the car and drove out onto Main street. Daryl decided not to press the issue further. She would tell him when she was ready. He was simply glad that she was here with him. Daryl's only concern now was for her mind. He had hoped the questioning would help her confront those issues and deal with them.

So when she started talking, Daryl was pleasantly surprised and glad. “I told Bernie all I know, Daryl, which isn't much. I hope he doesn't think I'm a fool."

“He's not going to think you're a fool,” Daryl said, getting off the freeway at Central. He headed up the street toward Magnolia.

“He seemed rather disappointed that I didn't see Charley actually kill his mother,”

Rachael said, her features wan and tired. “I was ... locked in that bathroom during much of that..."

“And thank God you were,” Daryl murmured, eyes on the road. “What did you tell him?"

Rachael paused, as if collecting her thoughts. Then she told a simplified version of her story of how she went to the house, how Charley invited her inside and ushered her to his room because he didn't want to disturb his mother. “Even then I didn't feel right about it,” she said. “I got a creepy feeling about him. I can't explain it, but if you were a woman you would understand. There are just some guys that just radiate this ... weirdness about them that is akin to your skin feeling like worms are crawling all over it."

Daryl nodded. He had heard the feeling described to him before by other women of guys that just didn't feel right to them. Mainly rape victims. It was a sixth sense that was often ignored when it should have been heeded.

“We sat on the couch and I started questioning him and then he started to get really weird,” Rachael resumed. “He started going on about how he didn't kill those people—and I hadn't even asked him about the Butcher murders. It was as if he had already made up his mind that I knew he was involved in the murders and he was denying it. Then he grabbed me and I tried to get away from him, tried to tell him to calm down, and that's when he attacked me.” She stopped, took a deep breath and continued. “I kneed him in the groin and we both went down. He ... had his hands around my throat and was strangling me.” Her hands went up to her throat where the bruises were still evident. She had been complaining of a sore throat since last night and at times she talked with hoarseness in her voice.

“We both got up,” she continued. “And he came at me and I tried to disable him with a straight punch, but I didn't even see the knife. He jabbed it into my side. I gave him a forward chop in the Adam's apple, but he got me again. He was just about to stab me again when I grabbed his wrist and disarmed him. I was able to elbow him in the solar plexus, and that's when I used that opportunity to run. Only I was so disoriented, so overtaken by everything, that the first place I ran to was the bathroom. The moment I got in the bathroom I could tell he had recovered and was coming after me, so I slammed and locked the door.” She was breathing heavily, remembering it. “He pounded on the door and yelled at me for what seemed like hours, and I just screamed and screamed at him. I was barely aware I was bleeding. Finally I heard him move away from the door, and that's when I heard his mother out in the hall. Then...” She took a deep breath and paused.

“Then I guess he attacked her. I couldn't bear to hear it, so I covered my ears with my hands. I was just ... so out of it."

“It's okay,” Daryl said.

“At some point,” Rachael continued, “I saw that I was hurt and I got a towel to try to stop the bleeding. Then I just ... I don't know ... lost it I guess. I barely even remember hiding in the bathtub. I just remember things in bits in pieces. Like...” Her breath was starting to hitch again, as if she were going to cry.

“You don't have to tell me if you don't—” Daryl began.

“I want to finish,” Rachael said, looking at him. She looked tired and worn out, but she looked like she was ready to go back into battle again. Her eyes regained some of that spark that he found so attractive. Daryl nodded at her to continue. “I could hear him out there, muttering and crying. I couldn't tell what he was saying, but I could tell that he was ... cutting her up. And then I heard him get up and leave the room—"

“Charley left the room?” Daryl asked.

Rachael nodded. “He left the house once I think. He was gone for like.... I don't know.... an hour maybe. I really don't remember. I think I blacked out a lot.” She paused.

“The next thing I remember, aside from that weird feeling you get when you think you're awake or half asleep and you're really just out of it, is waking up and everything was so quiet. And ... I knew he was out there somewhere, just ... waiting for me to come out."

They were almost at the house. Daryl was silent as he pulled the car into the driveway and turned it off. He turned to Rachael and touched her arm lightly. “Are you going to be okay?"

Rachael nodded. She mustered a smile. “I'll be fine. I'll probably need therapy for the next ten years, but I'm fine."

“Nothing wrong with therapy,” Daryl said. It sure could have helped Charley Glowacz, he thought. He felt more pity for Charley Glowacz now. It was slowly replacing the rage he had felt two days ago when he'd almost killed him. He was looking forward to talking to Charley's brother John; maybe he would be able to shed some light on Charley's sickness.

Daryl helped Rachael out of the car and they walked to the front door together. He unlocked the door and they went in. Petey greeted them at the door with a great swishing of his hindquarters. “Petey!” Rachael cried as the dog jumped on her, trying to smother her face in dog kisses. The central air conditioning had kicked in, and the house was fresh and cool. Rachael turned to him, holding onto Petey's front paws, still favoring her right side a little bit. She smiled. “I'll be fine. You go back and talk to Father Glowacz. Will you try to be home early tonight?"

“I'll be home early,” he said, kissing her. She hugged him and he held her; he was finding it hard to resist holding on to her whenever the opportunity arose. She had come so close to being taken away from him and holding her whenever possible, touching her, holding her hand, was his way of making sure the contact between them was unbroken, that she was still with him in the here and now. That she would never go away.

When Father John Glowacz showed up at Parker Center looking tired and haggard an hour later, Daryl Garcia offered his hand. “Father, please accept my condolences for your loss. I'm very sorry."

“Thank you,” Father Glowacz said. His face was pale, his cheekbones appeared sunken, as if he hadn't eaten in the last few days. His eyes were red with black circles under them. He managed a small smile. “It's been a tough forty-eight hours. I haven't gotten a bit of sleep and I'm supposed to say Mass tomorrow morning."

“I'll try to make this as quick as possible then,” Daryl said, leading the priest down the hall of the homicide division. He stopped at a door on the right and opened it. He stood aside and motioned for Father Glowacz to enter. “Go on in and have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?"

“Water would be fine,” Father Glowacz said, stepping into the bare interrogation room. “I've had so much coffee that I'm afraid when I get back to the rectory I won't be able to sleep."

“Okay. Be right back.” Daryl went to the break room and got two glasses of water from the Sparklets dispenser. He carried the Styrofoam cups back to the interrogation room, handed Father Glowacz his, set his own cup down on the scarred wooden table that sat in the middle of the room, and closed the door. Father Glowacz had already seated himself in one of the stiff wooden chairs and Daryl Garcia took a seat opposite him. A tape recorder sat on the table. Daryl's hands traced the tape recorder's buttons. “So you don't want to have an attorney present with you during questioning?” Daryl asked. Father John Glowacz wasn't a suspect in the least, but he had given the priest the option of having an attorney present during questioning when he spoke to him on the phone this morning. He had told him that in his brother's best interest it might be best if he spoke to one before he came to Parker Center this evening. Father Glowacz said he didn't think he would need one.

Father Glowacz nodded his confirmation of this again. Although he looked nervous, he appeared to be weathering this quite well. “I'm sure. A lawyer would only mess things up. I want to get what I have to tell you off my chest."

“Do you mind if I tape it?"

“No. Go right ahead."

Daryl pressed the RECORD button on the tape recorder.

Taking a sip of his water, Daryl leaned forward over the table, trying to collect his thoughts. He had everything he wanted to ask the priest in his head. Four simple questions. He fired off the first one. “Tell me about Charley's childhood. As much of it as you recall. He's five years older than you, correct?"

Father John Glowacz nodded, sipping his water. He appeared to think about what he was going to say, his brow furrowed in concentration or struggle. “When Charley was born, our parents weren't doing very well. Our father was an alcoholic, a rather violent one, and ... well, Charley wasn't a wanted child. At least that's what I learned years later from our mother. They fought a lot and he used to beat her up. Used to thrash the two of us around as well. We moved to the house in Highland Park when dad got a promotion—

he was a foreman at a construction company—and he put in the addition on the house right away. He did that himself. About a year later he finally left the family. It drove my mother to tears."

Daryl let this sink in, trying to imagine what it had been like for the two young boys. As a cop he had often seen the first hand results of children in dysfunctional families. It was the worst thing he had ever seen, worse even than the murders and the gang crimes he came to live with as a homicide detective. When children were the victims of their parent's neglect and cruelty it was enough for one to question the nature of the universe, to wonder why God would allow such things to happen. How could any parent kill their children, abuse them like that? It was something he could not understand.

“How old were you when your father left?"

Father Glowacz's brow furrowed. “Oh, I guess I was ... eight years old or so, and Charley was twelve or thirteen. By then he was very self-sufficient. He was a good brother to me. He kept me away from our folks when they were fighting, kept me entertained with different games we'd make up. He took me to church a lot. We went to church every Sunday as a family, but Charley took me to St. Anthony's when we lived in Boyle Heights, and later Our Lady when we moved to Highland Park. The church became my sanctuary."

Father Glowacz covered the formative years pretty quickly. Charley became the man of the house after their father left, and took care of young John while their mother worked two jobs to keep the mortgage paid and food on the table. Their father never supported the family, and neither boy was stricken with grief when he died five years later from alcohol poisoning. When Charley graduated from high school he took a job as a butcher at a grocery store, which he held for three years. He worked various second jobs during this period as well. By the time John graduated from high school, Charley had left the grocery store and was working at Acme Insurance as a file clerk, while their mother had left her second job permanently and settled into a secretarial position. John got an academic scholarship to Notre Dame University.

Daryl's ears perked up at this bit of information. “You went to Notre Dame?"

“Yes,” Father Glowacz said, taking a sip of his water. He still appeared to be fumbling through the interrogation, as if he was struggling with some inner turmoil. He's probably feeling as if he's betraying his brother, Daryl thought. “It was a good school. I did quite well there,” John said.

“Where did you live? In the dorms on campus, or in town?"

“I had an apartment in town,” John said, fidgeting in his chair, obviously nervous now. “It was nice, a split level duplex. I ... I had a roommate, a young woman who lived on the lower floor. I lived upstairs and—"

“Did your mother or Charley ever come out to visit you?” Daryl was leaning forward, very interested in this bit of information.

Father Glowacz's brow furrowed again in thought. “Yeah, a few times I suppose.

“Do you remember when?"

John shrugged. He appeared to slump in defeat. “God, I really don't know. I suppose ... let's see ... Mom visited me during my first semester, and my brother came out a few times after that. Then they both came out at least twice, and then my brother came back out to visit two or three more times."

“Try to remember dates for me,” Daryl said. “It's very important."

John sighed heavily and rubbed a hand over his face. “Well, let me see.” He appeared to think about it for a moment, and after about five minutes he was able to confirm a series of visitation dates: a visit from Mom in November of 1982; a visit from both Charley and Mom in May of 1983; a visit from Charley in October of 1983; a visit from Mom again in February of 1984; a visit from Charley in September of 1984, and two more visits from Charley in April and September of 1985. Mom came back for another visit in March of 1986, and again in May when he graduated. Charley never did come back.

Daryl nodded along, taking it all in. The last three dates of Charley's visits corresponded to murders committed in the South Bend area. It was almost too good to be true. “Did you always live in the same place in South Bend?"

“No. Like I said, I had that nice duplex with my roommate, a girl named Stacy Temple. But for my freshman and sophmore years, I lived on campus in the dorms. In my junior year Stacy and I rented an apartment four blocks from downtown. It was a great place. Horrible neighborhood, but a great apartment. Stacy had the basement, and I had the upper floor. It was an old, three story Victorian home that had been chopped up into apartments. It was perfect for a couple of college kids.” Father John Glowacz smiled.

“Did this ... Stacy Temple ever meet your brother?” Daryl asked.

Father Glowacz nodded. “Several times. The first time Charley and mom came to visit us at that house, Stacy had to move back to her own quarters for awhile. We—"

“Why's that?” Daryl asked. He was jotting down notes.

“We were dating,” John said, trying to sound casual. “Living together, I guess you could say, and—"

Daryl Garcia looked at the priest in surprise. “So you weren't attending Notre Dame with the intention of being a priest? You were actually living a secular life?"

Father John Glowacz nodded. “Y-yes. I ... I was rather confused about where I wanted my life to go. Stacy was, too. We just sort of ... threw ourselves together and had this mad, passionate affair. She was just as confused as I was."

“I bet your mother wasn't that happy with it,” Daryl said.

“She never knew.” Father John Glowacz sighed. “That's why whenever she came Stacy moved back into her downstairs apartment. Later, when we graduated and she came out here to California and I entered the priesthood, we still managed to stay in touch. I even helped her out for awhile when she moved to California. Mom was hurting for money and that back house was livable space, so Stacy rented it for awhile from my mother."

This was news Daryl wasn't expecting. He leaned forward over the table. “How long did she live there?"

“I ... I don't know.” Father Glowacz rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

He looked nervous. “A year, maybe a little more."

“Charley lived at the house the whole time she was living in the back house?"

Father Glowacz nodded. “Y-yes."

“When did she move out?"

John shrugged. He sighed. “I don't know. Three years ago maybe. Sometime in late ‘95."

“Have you heard from her since?"

“No."

Daryl detected a hint of sorrow in that last answer. He regarded the priest calmly, noting his body language and posture. He's nervous about something, he thought. He's nervous about something and I'll be damned if I know what it is. At least he had a name: Stacy Temple. He could do some checking on her, try to have her located and questioned to see if her story corroborated Father Glowacz's. As to why Father Glowacz was so nervous, perhaps even embarrassed about mentioning her, Daryl had his suspicions, so he decided to try a different tactic of questioning.

“Both you and Charley were raised in the Catholic faith,” Daryl asked, trying to find the right words to formulate his next question. “Tell me more about the kind of values you and Charley were raised in."

Father Glowacz frowned. “We were raised with good values. We had a good Catholic upbringing. Our mother raised us well."

Daryl tried to backtrack; he could see that he had offended Father Glowacz, but he didn't give a shit. The priest had just revealed why he had been so nervous whenever he mentioned his old lover Stacy Temple. “Humor me, Father. What kind of values specifically? Did she teach you that you weren't to take the Lord's name in vain and to go to Church every Sunday? Did she tell you that if you looked at a girl with lust that you would fry in the Big Hot Place? What kind of values?"

Father Glowacz's frown deepened. “Charley and I were raised to respect our mother, to respect the church and God. We were raised to be good Catholics. Are you Catholic Detective Garcia?"

“Yes,” Daryl answered. He didn't want to get into why he hadn't attended Mass in nine years, so he quickly brushed the question aside. “But still, humor me, Father. When I was a kid going to catechism, some of my buddies who came from good Catholic homes were encouraged by their fathers to chase as much skirt as possible, while my grandmother, God rest her soul, told me that to do so was a grave sin in the eyes of God.

Same faith, two different perspectives on it. Which perspective were you and Charley raised with?"

“The right one."

“And which one was that?"

Father Glowacz fidgeted in his seat. It was obvious that the nature of this question was uncomfortable for him. “I'll spell it out for you then. Our mother taught us that sex outside of marriage was a grave sin. The Catholic Church teaches this, and is rather strict about it. My mother, God rest her soul, was only trying to raise Charley and I in the best way she could."

“Yet it appears you broke that little rule there when you were seeing this Stacy Temple person. Right, Father?"

“That was before I took my vow of celibacy and that is between myself and God!”

Father John Glowacz thundered, pounding his fist on the table. Daryl was startled at the priest's sudden outburst. His face was flush, the veins standing out along his neck, his eyes livid with anger.

Daryl nodded, already shifting gears. It was obvious that Stacy Temple was a sensitive issue. But then so was the topic of his mother. He tip-toed back down that particular subject. “How did your mother discipline the both of you, Father? Was she strict?"

Father Glowacz nodded, breathing hard and heavy. “Yes, but no stricter than any other mother."

Daryl let this sink in, and now his mind turned to the report his partner Steve had turned in to him thirty minutes ago. Steve had questioned a couple of the neighbors in the neighborhood, two of them who had lived there long enough to recall when Father Glowacz and Charley were still kids. Both neighbors were unanimous in their recollections that Evelyn Glowacz had been a domineering, strict woman who ruled over her boys with an iron fist. One of the neighbors, a retired man named Ngyuen Phan Houng, recalled that he used to hear Evelyn scream at the boys for the kind of things he and his friends in school used to take for granted—mainly an interest in girls. Something told Daryl that Evelyn had found out about John's relationship with Stacy Temple and she had given him holy hell for it. “So, in other words when you so much as talked to a girl, your mother would go apeshit. Is that correct, Father?"

Father Glowacz reacted as if he had been slapped. “I beg your pardon?"

“Come off the moral high horse, Father,” Daryl said, leaning over the table, eyes locking with the priest's. “With all due respect for you and your religion—and believe me, I ain't trying to knock it—your mother was more than just strict. She was a damned titan.

She was a repressed, domineering woman who ruled over both of you with an iron fist."

“I take great offense at the way you just described my mother.” Father John Glowacz's features were red with rage.

“My apologies.” He meant them. Evelyn Glowacz was the woman who had made Charley a monster by transferring her repressed views onto her son. He couldn't go on the full attack because the woman was dead, and her son, a respected Catholic priest, was sitting in front of him. Christ, he hated it when he blew up like that and lost control of his emotions. “I'm really sorry, Father,” Daryl said, still angry, but meaning every word of the apology. “Please forgive me."

“I forgive you,” Father Glowacz said, but the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes suggested that he really didn't.

Daryl switched gears quickly. To continue on with this track would only make the priest defensive of his brother. “What happened after Norte Dame? You apparently attended seminary somewhere, right?"

Father Glowacz nodded. He paused for a moment, as if calming himself down.

When he answered his voice was calmer, steady, yet still retaining that bit of anger from his outburst before. “I attended seminary in New York. I did missionary work in El Salvador from 1990 to 1994 and came to Los Angeles a month after the Northridge earthquake. I was appointed to Our Lady Of Guadalupe right away, and became assistant pastor in ‘95."

“And you live at the rectory?"

“That's correct."

“And Charley continued to live at home?"

“Yes."

“And this old girlfriend of yours, Stacy Temple, when did she live in the back house?"

“She contacted me four months after I arrived in Los Angeles,” Father Glowacz said. “She needed a place to stay, and I knew mother needed the extra money, so I arranged for her to live in the back house.” She probably moved in around April or May of ‘94."

“How did your brother feel about it?"

“I don't know. I never asked him."

And your mother?"

“She needed the money. As long as Stacy paid the rent, she didn't care. Mom didn't see much of her anyway. Stacy worked long hours."

“How long did Stacy live there?"

“A little over a year. A year and a half or so."

Daryl drummed his fingers on the table. This was the second time he had asked the priest this question, and there had been no change in the time-line. It was obvious Father Glowacz was telling the truth. “And you haven't seen her since she cleared out?"

“That's correct.” Father Glowacz looked nervous again.

“Was Stacy into bondage at all, Father Glowacz?"

“I beg your pardon!” John Glowacz looked shocked at the question.

“Let me rephrase it. Did she like to be tied up? Whipped? Spanked? That kind of thing?"

Father Glowacz stammered, his face growing red again. “Th-that's none of your business!"

“Do you know if she and Charley had a thing going on?"

“What kind of questioning is this?!” Father Glowacz was getting irritated now.

“They're straightforward questions, Father. Your brother turned that center room into quite an S&M dungeon. I was just wondering if the change to that room was recent, or if your little girlfriend perhaps was into the same thing your brother was."

“I don't need to listen to this.” Father Glowacz stood up. His eyes were livid, blazing with anger.

“Sit down, Father. I'm not finished yet."

“You may not be, but I am."

“Just a few more questions. And I promise I won't ask about your sex life again."

Father Glowacz regarded him for a moment. Daryl Garcia beckoned him to sit down. “Please. Have a seat."

Father Glowacz sat back down slowly. Daryl saw that he had pushed his limit with the priest. It was obvious that his mother had warped him to the point that he grew extremely defensive whenever any mention of his relationship with Stacy Temple was brought up. Daryl jotted a brief note to have this lead checked out, then turned back to the priest. “Okay. I'm sorry. I won't ask you about that again. Let's talk about your work with Our Lady of Guadalupe, okay?"

Father Glowacz nodded. His features set, still glowering with anger.

Daryl studied the priest for a moment before continuing. “Your mother and Charley both attended Our Lady of Guadalupe, even before you became a parish priest there, correct?"

Father Glowacz nodded. “My mother was very proud that I had become a priest.

She was even happier when I returned to the community to minister at the church we had been confirmed at."

“How close were you to your brother when you returned home?"

Father Glowacz sighed and related a boring series of anecdotes that covered the last seven years. He saw his mother and brother at least once a week, usually at the house when he stopped by for his weekly visits. And he always saw them at church. They attended the Sunday morning 10 a.m. mass.

“Your brother did volunteer work at Our Lady of Guadalupe, right?"

“Yes,” Father Glowacz said, appearing to grow tired of the questioning. He sighed. “But not very much. He was especially drawn to children's causes. He was great with kids. But because of his job at Acme, that made his volunteer work very difficult.

And within the past three or four years he volunteered less and less at the church."

“Did he know any of the gang members who lived in the area or who attended mass at Our Lady?"

Father Glowacz frowned again, as if grimacing before stepping into black, oily waters. “I suppose he might have. He would only have come across them at mass. He kept pretty much to himself at church."

“Did your brother ever try to move out of the house?” Daryl asked.

Father Glowacz thought about it for a minute then shook his head. “No. In the last

... oh, I'd say, ten years, mother's health had gone rapidly downhill. I was away at seminary when she had her first stroke, and we decided that it was in her best interests if Charley take care of her. She retired from her job as a secretary, and Charley kept up his job at the insurance company. When I came back from missionary work, I did all I could to help."

“No vow of poverty for you then, Father?"

Father Glowacz smiled. “The only priests who take a vow of poverty are Franciscan and Dominican priests. Diocesan priests take no such vow and receive a salary from which they must pay for their cars, insurance, clothing, entertainment, vacations and whatever else. My salary goes towards my bills and the remainder went to helping my mother."

Daryl Garcia glanced at his watch and saw that nearly an hour had gone by. He didn't want to keep the priest any longer and he also didn't want to fall back into his full interrogation mode. He knew that he had pushed it to the limit already, and that the priest was going through a lot right now. He wouldn't get anywhere if he tried to chip away at the stone any further. He was confident that Father Glowacz was telling the truth, but he had the impression that the priest was reluctant to divulge much information about his brother. Blood ties can be strong, even if the blood tie was accused of brutal murders. It was a human thing to protect those that you loved from harm, and Daryl silently commended Father Glowacz for telling him as much as he knew. The priest could very well have secured an attorney and refused to answer any questions. Daryl felt very lucky to have gotten this much information from him. He could get the rest from the task force members who would be questioning Charley's co-workers, neighbors, and former schoolmates.

Daryl pressed the STOP button of the tape recorder. He rose, holding out his hand.

“Thank you, Father. I really appreciate this."

Father Glowacz rose to his feet as well, his imposing figure looming over the detective. He looked a little more relaxed, lighter on his feet than he had when he came in earlier. “Forgive me if I sounded a little ... defensive of my mother, Detective Garcia. I loved her and I know Charley did as well. She was a good woman. I know that in these days and times people tend to look upon those who hold such views on sex and wickedness and the like as—oh, how shall I say it?—fanatical. Extremist perhaps. Maybe she was. I don't know. All I know is that Charley seemed to—how shall I put it?— rely on our mother more. When mother said jump, Charley asked how high. But even though he was ever the devoted son, I sensed the struggle within him. I know he wanted to get out from under her thumb, so to speak. Knew that he held the same sinful desires as all men. I tried to speak with him about it, of course, tried to divert him to something more positive and uplifting. I tried to get him to join the Catholic singles club, and while he came to a few meetings he dropped out. I don't know why because I know he had ... you know, those desires.” His features darkened. “I just didn't know they were desires of the most wicked sort."

Daryl pocketed the tape, opened the door to the interrogation room and escorted the priest out. He led the priest down the hall to the lobby, engaging him in small talk. As they reached the elevators, Father Glowacz turned to Daryl and managed a smile. His features were a little brighter. He was doing remarkably well in keeping his emotions under control despite the pressures and circumstances of the last twenty-four hours. “I would like to see my brother, Detective Garcia. Could it perhaps be arranged for me to—"

“Consider it done,” Detective Garcia said, shaking the priest's hand. “I can get you in to see him tomorrow if you want."

Father Glowacz smiled. “That would be good. Tomorrow at three would be a good time."

“Three tomorrow it is."

“Thank you.” Father Glowacz's large, strong hands encircled his own. His grip was firm and warm.

“I have one small favor to ask of you,” Father Glowacz said, his eyes locking with Daryl's.

“What is it?"

“Your girlfriend, Rachael. I met her for the first time a few weeks ago when she came to interview me for a story she's doing on the murder series. She's a lovely girl.

Smart woman, too. I understand she was seriously hurt at my mother's house ... that Charley tried to kill her. Is she all right?"

Daryl smiled. “She's fine, Father. Thanks for asking."

Father Glowacz nodded. “It must have been terrible. The ... suddenness of the attack. It must have been a shock for her. I know she'll heal physically, but I hope it hasn't damaged her mind any."

“Rachael's tough,” Daryl said, walking the priest to the elevators. “She bounced back, tough as nails.

Father Glowacz nodded slightly and smiled. “I'm glad to hear that.” He paused for a beat, then said, “I take it she won't be covering the case for the paper much then?"

“Oh, she will,” Daryl said. “In fact, she can't wait to get back on it."

“Ah. I was hoping that ... well perhaps if you could ask her ... as a favor to me ... if she would..."

Daryl nodded, already knowing what the priest was asking. So far the only news items that had come out since Charley's arrest were reports on the Reuters and AP wire, as well as the local coverage. Charley's name hadn't been released, but the media found out about it despite police efforts to keep that information under a tight lid. Daryl surmised that Father Glowacz was doing everything he could to stay away from the media frenzy.

“I don't want to get in the way of Rachael's career as a journalist,” Father Glowacz went on, smiling nervously. “But if you could perhaps—"

“I'll ask her to not mention Charley's relationship with you, Father,” Daryl said, patting the priest on the shoulder.

“Thank you.” Father Glowacz smiled.

“But I have to tell you, Father,” Daryl said as the elevator opened and Father Glowacz began to edge toward it. “Somebody is going to find out about it sooner or later.

I'll do what I can to keep that information under lock and key, but I can't guarantee that it's going to stay put. The media is already hungry for information on Charley, and we don't intend to release anything until he's arraigned. Unfortunately, the media is already finding out about him through the usual sources. Sometimes the best detectives are journalists. Know what I mean?"

Father Glowacz nodded, entering the elevator and turning to face Daryl. His features were grave again. “Yes, detective. I know what you mean.” The elevator doors closed.

Daryl Garcia stood at the elevator as the doors closed, then turned and began to slowly walk down the corridor to homicide. It was closing in on three p.m. He wanted to get home to Rachael. The last two days had put a strain on him.

He went to his desk and retrieved his notes. On his way out he stopped by Bernie Haskins’ office. Bernie was inside, sitting at his desk on the phone. He looked up as Daryl stepped in and raised his hand to stop him. “...yeah, Bill, I know. The goddamn press is nosing in everywhere. I've got as tight a lid on it as I can but these fucking vultures are relentless. One of them posed as Evelyn Glowacz's brother for Christsakes and managed to talk to one of the detectives who arrested Charley. Hold on a sec...” He looked up at Daryl. “Daryl, hold up a minute!"

Daryl stepped in the office and set the tape down on Bernie's desk. “I think you'll find this interesting,” he said softly.

Bernie cupped his hand to the receiver of the phone. “What is it?"

“My interrogation of Father Glowacz. Charley's brother."

“Holy shit!” Daryl turned back to the phone. “Listen, Tom, you're doing a great job. Just have your report on my desk tomorrow at seven. And remember. Nothing to the reporters. Ya got me? Great. Later.” He hung up the phone and turned to Daryl. “What does he say?"

“I think you'll want to listen to it,” Daryl said. “He revealed so much without really saying much at all."

“Like what?” Bernie Haskins was eager to hear the news.

“In a way, it's almost predictable,” Daryl began. “Both of them grew up in an abusive home. Father was an alcoholic, beat the wife, thrashed the kids around. Dad left when Charley was thirteen and John was eight or so, and they never saw him again.

Mother was a Catholic and got into the Church very intensely after her husband left. She raised the boys in an almost puritanical way, the most prominent theme being that sex of all kinds, even thinking about it, was a grave sin."

“I was raised a Southern Baptist and they believe the same thing,” Bernie Haskins said. “I was taught the same shit. I didn't turn out to be a raving psycho."

“That's where this story gets interesting,” Daryl said. “Like I said, Father Glowacz didn't go into details, but it was obvious from what he told me that Charley was very much the mama's boy. He relied on Evelyn for everything: advice, companionship, comfort. He loved and respected his mother, but because of the way she raised him, being a strict disciplinarian and her views on the church and sin and what not, he also came to despise her. In fact, she had such a puritanical view on sex that she forbid Charley to even talk to girls."

“Christ,” Bernie said. “That's just like Kemper.” The two of them had talked about the similarities between this case and that of Edmund Kemper, the early seventies’ serial killer who murdered young college co-eds in the Santa Barbara area. Kemper had grown up in similar circumstances and his mother had put similar restrictions on her son. The murders ceased when Kemper killed his mother and humiliated the corpse, thus finally striking out at the person who was the basis of his psychosis. Which was exactly what Charley Glowacz had done.

“Exactly,” Daryl replied. “And like Kemper, he killed his mother at the end.

When we burst in there and found him sitting on the floor of his bedroom cradling her ...

her head in his lap, and rocking back and forth bawling like a baby ... well, it was obvious that he'd finally snapped and struck out at the authority figure who was the cause of his obsession. And in killing her he not only set himself free from his sickness, but he destroyed a part of himself as well."

Bernie Haskins was silent for a moment. Daryl continued: “He also gave me some pretty important information on the South Bend connection."

Bernie's eyebrows rose. “Oh? And what's that?"

Daryl told him and Bernie's eyes grew wide. “I'm sure we can run checks in South Bend with Charley's mug shot, see if we can locate some surviving witnesses to see if they remember seeing him. We might even be able to find this old girlfriend of John's.

She might be able to tell us something Father Glowacz didn't. It's worth a shot. The dates he gave me place Charley in the same area the three South Bend victims were killed and dumped."

Bernie whistled. “Christ."

“I wanted to question him some more,” Daryl continued. “But he's been through so much that he got pretty defensive. Especially when it came to sex and how he felt his mother would react when she found out one of her boys was yanking his crank or laying pipe with some broad. I had to back off and ... well, you'll hear it on the tape. He told me enough to allow me to piece together the rest of the puzzle. I'm sure we can fill in the missing pieces with the rest of the investigation."

“Yes, I'm sure we can,” Bernie said. “Besides, maybe later when Father Glowacz is feeling less stressed he'll be willing to talk to us in more depth."

Daryl nodded. He'd been thinking the same thing, but doubted if he wanted to do that. The man had been through enough. “Maybe."

Daryl turned toward the door and paused for a moment, turning back to Bernie.

“Oh, one other thing. Father Glowacz asked that nothing be mentioned about him being Charley's brother when we finally make a statement to the press. I guess he doesn't want it to be known that a respected parish priest in Los Angeles has a brother who is the Eastside Butcher. Or maybe he just wants to avoid the press. Whatever the case, I told him I'd do my best. Maybe he'll ask his bosses or the Vatican—whoever it is priests report to—for some time off to get away until the fiasco wears down."

Bernie nodded. “Maybe. I don't blame him."

Daryl smiled wearily. “I'm going home. See you tomorrow?"

“Yeah. I'll be here."

“Okay. Night."

“Take care. And Daryl?"

Daryl stopped and turned around.

Bernie smiled, proudly. “Good job."

Daryl smiled back, feeling for the first time that the horror was finally over.

Chapter 30

The following afternoon, shortly after three-thirty p.m., Father John Glowacz sat in the drab waiting room at the men's central jail in downtown Los Angeles calmly reading a magazine. He was dressed casually in blue jeans, a short-sleeve shirt, and white tennis shoes. His hair was combed neatly, his features sallow. Beneath the wire-rims of his glasses his eyes bore traces of red from the last four days of turmoil. He was holding up as best as he could.

The waiting room was occupied by a variety of people, most of them black and Hispanic, but a few of them white. Mothers and fathers in to see sons who had been arrested for various felonies: hit and run, assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder. Even that old standby, murder in the first degree. Father Glowacz wondered how many of these other people had loved ones at the jail who were behind bars for taking another life.

He had been seated in the waiting room for approximately twenty minutes. He thought about dressing more appropriately and donning his clerical collar but decided not to; he had deal with this on a family level. When he arrived he had gone up to the receptionist window and told them he was here to see his brother. The clerk behind the counter ran her finger down a list, found an entry, and looked up at him. “Identification, please?"

Father John Glowacz had presented his driver's license. The clerk scrutinized it, then handed it back. “Have a seat. Your name will be called when your visitor is ready."

Father John Glowacz thanked her and seated himself in the far corner of the waiting room. Two seats down from him, a young woman with dirty-blonde hair was trying to quiet a young toddler who was crying and making loud noises. The young woman was probably in her early twenties, but she looked older. Father Glowacz had seen expressions of similar despair; lower class, probably on public assistance or held a minimum or lower-paying blue collar job, uneducated, was probably here to see her boyfriend or husband who would be in the joint on something petty and trivial. Drugs.

DUI. Maybe domestic violence. The vicious cycle turned on and on.

He thought about his own role in what had happened. If he had only been strong enough to face his own problems and deal with them, he wouldn't be sitting in this waiting room right now and his brother wouldn't be in jail. Both of them would be seeking much needed help. Father Glowacz knew he needed help and spiritual guidance, but he didn't know where to turn. He had an appointment with the Los Angeles Archdiocese tomorrow, where he planned on tendering his request for a transfer, but he also wanted to unload some of his own burdens.

Why did I let it go on this long? he thought, trying to calm himself down. Why didn't I just nip it in the bud early on? I could have prevented all this. I could have saved Charley from everything and—

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door opening. “Mr. John Glowacz?"

John looked up. A young black officer wearing the tan uniform of an LA County Sheriff's Deputy was motioning to him. John rose, replaced the magazine on the battered table in the center of the room, and went through the door to see his brother.

Rachael Pearce was sitting propped up in bed sipping a cup of tea when Daryl entered the room. He had just fixed a plate of scrambled eggs and toast for her, and as he set the tray on the bed Rachael smiled. “This smells wonderful. I should get hurt more often."

“Don't even think about it,” Daryl said, chuckling. “How are you feeling?"

“Better. There's less pain in my side. I'm just really tired now. All that stress really took a toll on me. It seems all I want to do is eat and sleep. How are you?"

“You really want to know?"

“Of course."

Daryl got into bed with her. For the past day or so, Daryl had felt great. The Butcher case had taken a heavy toll, creating pressure in their relationship. Now that the case was closed and he had saved Rachael from the clutches of a madman, Daryl had emerged the victor. He felt he had conquered a tremendous personal demon. By saving Rachael he felt he had done all he could in trying to save Shirley, even though that first fatal incident had resulted in a far more serious tragedy. Instead of blaming himself for not being able to save Shirley, Daryl finally felt that he had done all he could in preventing the murder. He felt he'd redeemed himself by saving Rachael from Charley Glowacz and that helped close that painful door to the past.

“Remember how I told you last night that I felt that a part of me felt some sense of closure? That closing this case was, in a sense, a symbolic closing of my past feelings of inadequecy in dealing with Shirley's death?"

Rachael nodded. They'd talked about this numerous times. Daryl knew that police-work was his way of dealing with Shirley's death. Last night he had told Rachael that saving her from Charley Glowacz and playing a part in his capture had been the epitome of his career. There was no longer the burning need to chase after the ghosts of Shirley's killers, trying to amend her death.

“I've been doing some thinking. And I've come to the decision that the Butcher case is the last case I'll ever take. I'm done with it."

Rachael looked surprised. “Done with detective work?"

Daryl paused and looked up at Rachael. “Yeah. I think so."

“Honey! Are you sure?” Now Rachael looked concerned.

“I'm thinking about it,” Daryl said. He had been thinking about it. Quite a lot, in fact. He didn't want to be involved in anything else that he deemed a risk to his and Rachael's personal safety anymore. The fact that he had almost lost a woman he had come to love very deeply, or that he had been almost killed by a revenge-seeking gang member, was what affected this contemplation of his career. “Haven't made up my mind yet, but ...

yeah. I think it's something I may want to do."

Rachael looked down at him, pride beaming her features. She opened her mouth to respond when the bedside telephone rang.

Daryl reached across the bed and scooped up the receiver. “Hello?"

A sharp, excited voice barked at him through the receiver. Daryl's features grew alarmed. “What? Are you serious? When did this happen?"

Rachael looked concerned as she watched Daryl. He sat up in bed, the covers spilling down to his lap. Rachael sat up next to him, watching his face and trying to listen to what was going on. From the look on Daryl's face the news wasn't very good.

“Jesus Christ,” Daryl said. He ran a hand through his thick hair. “Does anybody know about this? Bernie Haskins, the Chief?"

Another barrage of conversation from the other end. Then Daryl responded: “Not a word about this to the press. Not until I get there and we've gotten ahold of either Bernie or the Bureau.” He hung up.

Rachael hovered over him, brimming with worry. “What is it? What happened?"

“That was Steve,” Daryl said, swinging his legs over the bed and reaching for wallet and keys. “Charley Glowacz just killed himself in his cell."

The news hit Rachael like a sledgehammer. “How? They had him on suicide watch, didn't they?"

“Yeah, they did. He was in solitary and he had a guard posted outside his cell.

They took away his shoes and the light was too high on the ceiling for him to jump to and smash down. Besides, it was reinforced by plexi-glass."

“Then how did he kill himself?"

Daryl looked at her, his face pale with shock and disbelief. “He bit into both his wrists and bled to death."

Father John Glowacz was sitting in the office of Father James O'Grady in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. A minute before he had been ushered into the Father's office by a pretty young woman who was filling in for Father O'Grady's personal secretary. The young woman had blonde hair that was cut short, framing her pretty features exquisitely.

She had offered Father Glowacz a kind smile as he entered the lobby of the Archdiocese and announced himself. She didn't even offer him a seat in the waiting room; simply stood up with a kind smile and said, “Right this way, Father Glowacz. Father O'Grady is expecting you."

She led him down the hall and knocked lightly on Father O'Grady's office door.

Father James O'Grady was up in an instant, a look of concern on his ruddy features.

“Father Glowacz,” he said softly. “How good it is to see you."

“Father O'Grady.” John Glowacz smiled and the two men embraced. John Glowacz felt comforted by the older man. He had seen Father O'Grady two days before at the funeral masses for his mother and Charley. Father Peter Murphy, Pastor at Our Lady of Guadalupe, had presided over the mass. Despite the fact that it was a private mass, security had to be called in to keep the crowd outside from growing unruly. The news that Charley Glowacz was identified as the Eastside Butcher had caused an explosive reaction in the neighborhood. Many of the residents and parishioners were still coming to grips with the fact that the killer was not only a familiar face, but a family member of a beloved figure in the neighborhood. In the past few days Father Glowacz had caught more than a few vibes of resentment from his parishioners and the areas residents.

He stifled back a sob as a sudden well of emotion washed over him. Father O'Grady stepped back and nodded at the pretty young blonde woman. “Theresa, get me a pot of coffee, please. Father? Coffee for you, too? Or maybe some tea?"

“Coffee is fine,” Father Glowacz said, not looking at the secretary as she headed back down the hall to the small kitchen that was nestled off to the side of the foyer.

Father O'Grady led him into the office and motioned for him to sit. John sat down in a plush recliner in front of the massive oak desk that took up the entire rear half of Father O'Grady's office. O'Grady perched himself up on the edge of the desk, a concerned look on his face. “Please accept my condolences for the loss of your mother and brother Charley, Father Glowacz."

“Thank you,” John said.

“Would you like for me to pray with you?"

John opened his mouth to answer, then paused. He looked up at Father O'Grady.

“I would but ... not just yet. I need to talk, James. I need to talk to you about something ...

rather important."

“Then talk we shall.” James moved back around to his side of the desk and plopped his stocky frame in the chair. He regarded John over the large oak desk. He was a large man, not very tall, but overweight by about eighty pounds. Most of that weight resided in his stomach, buttocks, thighs, and the doughy flabs of his cheeks and jowls.

John Glowacz had known James O'Grady on a professional level now for six years, and personally for two. He had gone to him four years ago to request funds for Our Lady when it became apparent that Danny Hernandez's gang ministry was proving to be a success. Father Glowacz had wanted the funds to go towards buying computers for the youth center to provide job training and education, as well as purchasing more sports equipment for the playground and hiring a couple of counselors to be on hand to work with the children. He had wanted to employ Danny full time, but the funds James O'Grady had been able to shake from the coffers of the Archdiocese hadn't been enough.

Next time, Father O'Grady had told him when he received that first check. James had presented the check to him at a get-together at St. Jude's in downtown, and his fatherly hand on his shoulder had been reassuring. “I like the work you are doing at Our Lady of Guadalupe,” he'd told him. “I think that there is much more good work in store for you at that particular parish.” They'd spent the rest of the evening talking about the plans John Glowacz had for Our Lady, and for the first time since he'd entered the priesthood, Father Glowacz felt that he had met a superior who understood what his mission was. From that point on he felt he had an ally in Father James O'Grady.

The pretty blonde secretary came back into the room bearing a tray with a pot of coffee, two mugs, and bowls of sugar and creamer. She set them down on the edge of Father O'Grady's desk. “Will there be anything else?” she smiled.

“No,” Father O'Grady said. “Thank you, Theresa."

Theresa smiled at Father Glowacz and left the room shyly. “Is she new? She seems awfully bashful."

“She's replacing Alice while she's on vacation,” James O'Grady replied, picking up the pot and pouring them coffee. Alice Peterson was Father O'Grady's personal secretary and had been working for him for twenty years. “Alice and Charles, her husband, went to Europe for the month. Theresa is a friend of Alice's daughter, Joyce.

She is enamoured by the church. Totally enamoured."

John's eyebrows raised. “Really? She seems so young. I don't think I've seen anybody her age be so enamoured with the inner-workings of the Catholic Church in ...

well, in ages!"

“Yes,” James said. He handed John his coffee. “It's really refreshing. Theresa is only twenty-one and is entering Cal State Long Beach this coming semester. She's the total opposite of Alice's daughter, Joyce, who is more interested in chasing boys and going to ... what do they call them now? Raves."

Father Glowacz laughed. Raves. Synonym for Wild Party.

“Here's some cream and sugar if you want some.” Father O'Grady pushed a small container of sugar and a cup of powdered creamer in John's direction. He leaned back in his chair and sipped at his coffee. “I prefer mine black."

John Glowacz picked up the plastic spoon that Theresa had brought in on the tray of coffee and spooned some sugar in his coffee. He opened the powdered creamer and began doling it out. “I like it with the works, myself.” Cream and sugar added, he stirred it into the coffee, making it a rich golden color. He set the spoon down and picked up the cup, taking a sip. “Ahh. Perfect."

James O'Grady smiled at him over his desk. “Good.” He sipped at his own coffee, regarding him calmly. “So what can I do for you today, Father Glowacz?"

John had been rehearsing what he wanted to say all morning and now he let it all out. “I am here to put in my request to be moved to another parish."

Father O'Grady's eyes widened slightly in surprise. “A new parish? Are you sure, John? Forgive me for sounding so crass, because I know you've suffered such a tremendous loss, but all the work you've—"

“I know, James,” Father Glowacz interrupted. “The work I've done at Our Lady is still incomplete. Four years ago I had outlined my entire plan to you for what I wanted to do at Our Lady of Guadalupe. And I'm halfway there. But ... may God forgive me, I just...” he was at a loss for words. He struggled to rein his emotions in. He couldn't cry in front of James O'Grady. He took a deep breath and looked the older man in the eye. “I just can't take it, James. I spent all day yesterday going through my mother's things at the house, trying to decide what stuff I wanted to donate to charity, what I wanted to throw out, what I wanted to keep. And being in that house left me feeling so cold. Ever since the press found out my relation with Charley, it's been horrendous. They were practically camped out there at the house when I arrived and wouldn't stop asking me questions when I walked up to the front door. I asked them very nicely to please leave me alone and one of them blocked my path.” His breath hitched. “I'll tell you, James, when that happened, when that reporter blocked my path to my mother's house, I felt this—God, forgive me—I felt this incredible rage. I just wanted to reach out and snap that man's neck with my bare hands. I was literally shaking. I was thinking the whole time ‘you don't care about the people who died. You don't care that my mother died. You don't care about the conditions the people in these neighborhoods have to deal with. You don't care who my brother was as a person. You just want to make him up like some cheap monster to sell more newspapers and magazines. If I were to tell you everything I knew about my brother, all the good things that he was, all the good things he stood for and did in his life and the community, you would ignore it and write about the crimes it is alleged he committed. And if I didn't tell you anything, you'd make things up anyway and it would be printed and that's what people would believe. And it wouldn't matter what I had to say'. I thought all that and I was filled with so much rage that I came close to ... physically assaulting this man. I gave a quick silent prayer for the Lord to lead me strongly and then I merely said, very calmly, ‘Would you please step out of my way, sir. You're blocking my path.’ Just like that. I spoke to him the way I would speak to a young kid coming to me for guidance, or the way I speak to people in the confessional booth. And he blinked as if he were snapping out of some delirium and stepped out of my way, calm as you please. And he asked me one question as I was unlocking the door. Actually it was a very astute observation, followed by a question. He said, ‘Father, your brother Charley is believed to have committed the Eastside Butcher killings, all the while assuming what you thought was a normal, productive life. If you had known what he was doing would you have tried to stop him?’”

Father Glowacz paused, his mind racing on how to proceed, then plunged on. “Of course I would have stopped him. If I had only known what was happening I would have been the first to put a stop to it. But I didn't tell that to the reporter. I almost did, but I couldn't. It would merely lead to him having an opening into what I considered a beautiful thing; my relationship with my mother and brother Charley. He would taint that, corrupt it. I wouldn't let him in that place, so I told him nothing. He moved aside and I inserted the key in the door and said I had no comment, that I really couldn't comment on this because the whole thing was still upsetting to me, and by then I was almost crying. And he saw that I was becoming emotional and something in him changed; he became less arrogant, less aggressive. He moved aside and I stepped into the house and closed the door. And then I retreated to the bathroom, shut the door and cried my eyes out."

He looked up at Father O'Grady, eyes red but dry from the last four days of mourning. “Frankly, James, I am devastated over this whole thing. It's bad enough to lose your mother, but to lose her in such a horrible manner.... “He shuddered, head down. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hands. “And to have him charged with my mother's murder, and have the authorities accuse him of the Eastside Butcher murders. I mean ... I was utterly shocked when they found those bodies in the freezer ... or what was left of them.” The rest of it came in hitching sobs. “It was such a shock ... to think that my brother ... the man I had looked up to when I was a kid growing up ... the man that took care of me, kept me from the wrath of our drunken father ... to think that this could happen to him!” He broke down in an uncontrollable fit of sobbing.

Father James O'Grady sat behind his desk for a moment as if unsure whether to rise and comfort the younger priest, or maintain some semblance of authority and guidance. He was just beginning to shift his chair backward to rise when John Glowacz raised his hand. “It's okay, James. I've been bawling so much lately that I seem to have run out of tears.” He looked up, offering James a half-hearted attempt at a smile.

Father O'Grady reached for the box of Kleenex that was on his desk and handed it to John, who accepted it thankfully. After the young priest had wiped his eyes and blew his nose, Father O'Grady leaned forward, his fingers steepled on the desk. “John, again, please accept my heartfelt condolences for ... the loss of your family."

“Thank you,” John Glowacz said, dabbing at his eyes with the Kleenex.

Father O'Grady spoke slowly, as if choosing his words carefully. “I will submit your request to the council along with my recommendation that you be transferred to another parish. If you have a particular choice where you would like to be transferred, I would like to know as soon as possible so I could include that in your request. I agree that what you have to go through, the emotional as well as the ... psychological trauma, is too intense for you to remain at your parish. You've done such good work at Our Lady that it is hard for me to accept your request, but I will do so because you mean so much to me as a priest and as a person.” He smiled at the younger priest. “There is much good work ahead in store for you, Father Glowacz. Despite what happened in the East Los Angeles area and the murders, the good work you have done to help build that community up before and during the murders, is commendable. When you were parish priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe, gang murders fell by thirty percent. They were on a fifty percent decrease when the murders started, and if you hadn't been stationed at that particular section of the city I'm afraid we would have had an all out war in the area.” He paused, letting his words sink in. John was only too familiar with what the older man was talking about. He nodded, agreeing with everything Father O'Grady said.

“During the time of crisis you held your parish together like glue,” Father O'Grady continued. “You soothed the spirits of those whose loved ones had been killed, as well as those who fell to the resulting gang violence. You worked harder with your counselors to reach out to the youth of the community, to urge them to drop their weapons and take an active part in their community. Your ministry brought more gang members to Christ than any I can remember. You raised money to help some of the young gang members to open a legitimate business, which is doing very well and is expanding. I have no doubt that you will duplicate these goals and more where ever you go."

Father John Glowacz smiled. It felt good to be recognized for the good contributions he had given to the community. He knew very well that without the guidance of the Lord it wouldn't have been possible. “Thank you, James,” he said. “That really means a lot to me. It really does. God knows I want to stay but...” He took a deep breath and looked down at the floor, struggling to keep his emotions in check. “But it's hard,” he said, his voice cracking, hovering on the brink of breaking down again. “It's so hard."

“I know, my son.” Father James O'Grady rose from his chair and walked around the desk to comfort the younger man. He put a fatherly arm around the young priest's shoulders and for a moment the two men awkwardly embraced, John Glowacz still sitting in his chair, his head resting against Father O'Grady's belly while the older man stooped over him, his arms around his shoulders. “Have you seen anybody? I know a good psychiatrist that could help you."

Father Glowacz shook his head. “Thank you, James, but I've already set up an appointment with somebody. I see him tomorrow."

“Good.” Father O'Grady patted John on the back and went back to his chair behind the desk. “If there is anything else I can do for you, just give me the word. I mean that, John."

“I know,” Father Glowacz said, looking up at James with a look of gratitude.

“Thank you."

Father O'Grady sighed and set his hands down on his desk. “Well, I guess first things first. How soon do you want to be transferred and did you have any place in mind?"

And as Father John Glowacz thought about that question and answered it to the best of his ability, it seemed that even though he still hadn't faced up to the source of his problems, today he had taken the first step in ending the hurt and the pain that had been plaguing him for ages. He would work at it; he promised himself. He would do so through the act of confession.

God give him the strength to go through with it and give up the burden of his sin.

Chapter 31

The week of Charley Glowacz's suicide was turmultous for both Daryl Garcia and Rachael Pearce. Daryl launched into his investigation full tilt, often staying at the station for sixteen and seventeen hours a day while the various members of the task force collected data on Charley Glowacz. It was exhaustive, time consuming work, but within a few days they had enough to sufficiently pin Charley Glowacz to all eighteen of the Eastside Butcher murders, the crimes in South Bend, Indiana included. For Daryl that meant the world. It meant that the case could be officially closed, their suspect identified, caught and stopped by his own hand. They might not have gotten a solid confession or found out what drove Charley Glowacz to the grisly murders, but the evidence he left behind was enough for the forensic psychiatrists to paint a ghastly picture.

Daryl got the opportunity to discuss it one evening two weeks after Charley's suicide, in the office of Bernie Haskins. They had spent the evening with the forensic psychiatrist, a bespectacled man named Eric Donahue, and a grizzled, lumbering man with long scraggly blonde hair and a beard who was a criminal psychiatrist, the best in the field. His name was Edward Cooper. Rachael had stopped by the office on her way home from work, and she had been lucky enough to sit in on the conversation.

“You know, even though we couldn't prove it in court,” Daryl said after introducing Rachael to the two psychiatrists, “I am one hundred percent sure that Charley Glowacz was the Butcher."

Rachael nodded. “I agree.” She was leaning against the frosted pane glass of the windows that looked out at the Homicide Department.

“I'm also glad that Father Glowacz was able to hightail it out of here before the press descended on him like wolves,” Bernie said, leaning back in his chair. The two psychiatrists were sitting in chairs in front of the FBI Agent's desk.

“I know,” Rachael said, shaking her head. “That poor man. I did all I could to not have anything to do with the press finding out about him. I even tried to get the people I worked with at the paper to ease off the guy, but no go. I guess now you can understand why this book deal means so much to me."

Daryl smiled. The day after Charley killed himself, Rachael's agent had landed a six-figure deal for the book she was working on, hardcover rights only. Negotiations were still underway for a paperback deal, and her agent had put her in touch with a film agent in Hollywood for possible option of the book for development as a feature. The first installment of the advance would allow Rachael to quit her job as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She was fairly confident that she could find appropriate subjects for future true-crime books.

In the week or so since the story broke, the case of Charley Glowacz had exploded in the media. His mug shot and various snap shots from different sources appeared on the cover of People, Time, and Newsweek. The supermarket tabloids were running banner press headlines: Did the Los Angeles Butcher eat parts of his mother after he killed her?

Find out what was found inside the freezer of a former Los Angeles altar boy! Rachael told Daryl that she was aware of at least one paperback exploiting the crimes of the Eastside Butcher in the works besides her own, a sensationalistic affair culled from AP

news sources . Others were sure to follow until Rachael Pearce's definitive tome. The name Charley Glowacz was already becoming as recognizable as Jeffrey Dahmer in the annals of serial killer crime.

“Dr. Cooper, I've really got to commend you for hitting the nail right on the head,”

Daryl said. He was leaning against a bookshelf. “You know, about Charley's virginity.

His mother fixation."

“I don't think I've heard this yet,” Rachael said, looking amazed. “Why don't you share some of that knowledge."

Dr. Cooper grinned. He was the sort of man you might expect to see at a Hell's Angel rally rather than presiding over the official psychiatric analysis of a vicious serial killer. Daryl liked the big, burly man the minute they met. “No problem, Miss Pearce.

We're just really getting started."

Dr. Edward Cooper's deductions, supported by Dr. Eric Donahue, was that Charley's upbringing in a physically violent, as well as psychologically abusive home, was what formed his views of sex, religion, and society. As the only child for the first five years of his life, he bore the brunt of his parent's hardships; victim of and witness to his father's alcoholic outbursts against mother and son, combined with both parent's strong religious beliefs set a deeply rooted seed in him, one that took form early on. As Father John Glowacz testified to Dr. Cooper yesterday after he'd resigned from his position at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic church, by the time the priest was born the bad times were in full swing. Charley had to take care of both himself, his mother, and a younger brother and keep them away from a father who had mood swings that were unpredictable.

“Mental illnesses like the kind Father Glowacz described is sometimes hereditary,” Dr.

Cooper explained. “Sometimes it can skip a generation. We generally deem people like this as sociopathic, people that are unable to feel empathy for others. Sociopathic behavior combined with what Father Glowacz described in his father—the physical abuse, the religious rants—is termed violent schizoid personality behavior, which is aggravated by chronic alcoholism. In the elder Glowacz's case he may have been feeling inadequate for not being able to provide for his family, feeling that God was punishing him for this sin, and since God was punishing him then he would punish his family as well. Weaving this in with the Catholic church's infamous teachings on sex is ... well, enough for anybody whose mind is a loose cannon to completely lose it."

Dr. Eric Donahue chimed in about Charley Glowacz's early childhood, all recounted by Father Glowacz. “Charley had been taken away from his mother once when he was three months old by social workers when their father beat their mother so badly that she landed in the hospital. For the next two years he was in and out of the home, shuttling back and forth to different relatives on his mother's side of the family and to foster homes. It wasn't until their father briefly stopped drinking, when Charley was around four or five, that there was some kind of stability within the family. By then John was about a year old, and had been removed from the home as well. But by then it was already too late for Charley,” Dr. Donahue had said, nodding at his colleague. “The bonding process had been interrupted. Nearly all serial killers that have been profiled by the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit have come from similar backgrounds, where they were abandoned by their mothers or raised in extremely dysfunctional homes. The extreme religious hysteria that went on in that house surely didn't help, either."

“Father Glowacz grew up under the same conditions and he didn't turn out that way,” Bernie pointed out from behind his desk. Rachael frowned, her features serious and contemplative as Bernie went on. “Lots of other people grow up under similar circumstances and manage to not cut people up and make them into meat pies. Why Charley?"

Dr. Cooper nodded and looked at each of them, a questioning look in his burly features. “Why Charley, indeed. That's something we may never know."

The extreme religious hysteria had been described accurately by Father Glowacz, who obviously would have taken great offense if he had been sitting in on this discussion.

Once she had her family back, Evelyn Glowacz had become a devout churchgoer. Her husband, Lawrence, also became briefly enamoured by the trappings of the church. It gave him an opportunity to continue on his destructive path and feel no guilt. Work all day, go home and yell at the wife and kids for awhile, maybe slap them around a little bit, go out drinking and whoring with the boys late at night, stumble home drunk and pass out. Maybe beat the wife and kids again when he got home. And accelerate the behavior on the weekend. And then when Sunday mass rolled around, pack up the family and head off to church, plop yourself in the confession booth and spill the beans on all the sins you had committed and receive penance, thus absolving you of your sins and guaranteeing your seat in heaven next to Jesus Christ. And then start the whole thing over again come Monday.

By the time John Glowacz was five years old this behavior was already in full swing. It would continue for the next three years, with Lawrence Glowacz's drinking and abusive behavior becoming more violent. Evelyn suffered through it because as a Catholic she was taught that she must not only obey and honor her husband, but that to divorce him would be a major sin in the eyes of God. So she had stayed with him until finally Lawrence left on his own after moving the family into the house in Highland Park.

It was then that Evelyn Glowacz's religious mania grew more extreme.

“So let me see if I get this straight,” Rachael said, reiterating the summation of what had made Charley Glowacz a monster. “Lawrence Glowacz leaves the family when Charley is around thirteen. By this time Charley has been a victim of, and bore witness to, his father's brutality. He is also the victim of his mother's extreme religious views. John Glowacz told us that his mother forbid him to even have friends that were of the opposite sex for fear that he would be tempted into having lustful thoughts.” She had pulled out a notebook during the conversation and jotted down brief notes. “How anybody can put such demands on their children is disgusting."

“I agree,” Dr. Cooper said. “Evelyn Glowacz's mental aberrations were no doubt worse then we all thought. And it continued on well into adulthood. She used to chastise Charley constantly about women at church, mocking him, belittling him. And then there was her tenant, that woman who lived in the back house."

“Ah, yes. Father Glowacz's old girlfriend,” Bernie said, trading a glance at Daryl.

“Right.” Dr. Cooper turned to Daryl. “Any developments on that end?"

Daryl shook his head. “None. We found out that she attended the University of Indiana and is from Gardena, California, which is pretty weird.” He glanced at Rachael.

“That really struck me as hitting a little too close to home. Both Rachael and I are from the South Bay area."

“Yes, that is an odd coincidence,” Dr. Donahue said.

“Anyway,” Daryl continued, turning back to the psychiatrists. “We haven't been successful in locating Stacy Temple.. There were no official records she had even lived in the back house at the Glowacz residence, since no formal rental agreement had been entered between the parties. Evelyn never registered with the city as a landlord.

According to Father Glowacz, Stacy paid her rent in cash. We managed to locate her parents. They haven't heard from their daughter in quite a while. Apparently there had been a falling out in the family and Stacy had packed off shortly after graduating from high school in 1982, and they haven't seen her since. Father Glowacz wouldn't admit it when I questioned him, but I had the feeling he really loved this girl. I could tell when we talked. And I think it tore him up that he couldn't even be open about the relationship with his mother. He knew that he would get a lot of shit for it, so he kept it hidden."

“But he still managed to keep in touch with her,” Rachael said. “After all, he was able to talk his mother into letting her live in the back house."

Daryl nodded. “I questioned Father Glowacz a few more times, right before he left yesterday. Every time I brought Stacy up he would tip-toe around the subject. I get the feeling he was hiding something. When I asked if Charley knew Stacy, Father Glowacz got real defensive. I think Charley had a thing for Stacy. They may have even been having an affair."

Rachael frowned. “Do you think..."

“That she became a Butcher victim?” Dr. Cooper said. He rubbed his bearded jaw.

“I don't know. It's possible that he was aware of John's relationship with her. It's possible that, if he was aware of the relationship, that he was jealous of his brother. That surely could have helped Charley in his obsession, in his madness."

That was the extent to which they had discussed Stacy Temple. The psychiatrists didn't pay much attention to her during their analysis. Dr. Donahue said that, if anything, Stacy Temple was merely an innocent bystander, lucky enough to have briefly lived in the same house as a burgeoning serial killer and going on to live a normal, anonymous life, probably not even aware of the madness that was percolating within Charley's mind.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people went through similar circumstances with other serial killers.

“Do you suppose if Charley hadn't killed himself that he would have been classified as insane?” Rachael asked the psychiatrists.

Dr. Cooper shrugged his burly shoulders. “Hard to say. Cases of terminal mentally ill serial killers are rare, but it can happen. It would be hard to make that diagnosis without examining Mr. Glowacz first."

“It just seems that he had this facade,” Rachael said, turning to the two men. “The people we all spoke to said he seemed quiet and normal. They had no idea he was capable of doing what he did. It's almost like he had a split personality."

Dr. Donahue smiled. “Split personality cases are common. The common term is Dissociative Identity Disorders. It is characterized by the presence of two or more distinct identities or personalities. At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior."

“So he wouldn't know what he was doing if the personality that liked to kill people actually went out and did it?"

Dr. Donahue nodded. “No, he wouldn't. But cases like that are extremely rare. In fact, I don't know of any cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder in which the patient harbored a personality that killed and the other personality, the patient's real identity, wasn't aware of it."

“But is it possible?"

“Sure. It's possible. It would be what I would term a very serious case of the disorder. But I suppose it is possible."

“What about the theory that he cannibalized some of his victims?” Bernie asked.

He was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up on the desk, looking very interested at the theories and diagnosis that were being tossed around.

“Well, that is surely a sign of some extreme form of fetishistic behavior,” Dr.

Cooper said. “I think we can safely assume that if he had engaged in cannibalism on some of the bodies, and that if he was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, that he would have committed the act while in the throes of the disease."

“In other words, he would have done it while in an entirely different personality?”

Daryl mused.

Dr. Cooper nodded. “Yes."

“Wow.” Rachael and Daryl traded glances.

“Here's something else that interested Dr. Donahue and I,” Dr. Cooper said, turning in his chair to address the agent, Daryl, and Rachael. “We've gone through as much of the Glowacz medical history as we've been able to find, and there is no history of mental illness. There is also no history of animal abuse in Charley's background."

“I didn't know having a history of mental illness would be a factor,” Daryl said.

“Most serial killers have a history of animal abuse,” Dr. Donihue related, nodding.

“There is none in Charley's background. There is also no evidence that Charley abused his younger brother. The good priest denied it when Dr. Cooper and I asked him, and he may well be telling the truth, which I think he is, but there is the chance that he was abused nonetheless. Serial killers often abuse other children during their formative years, either younger siblings, or neighborhood children. Father Glowacz doesn't recall any of the neighborhood children coming to him with such stories, so we can probably safely assume this didn't happen. Still..."

It was a good point made. All had been seemingly normal in the Glowacz household. John Glowacz was doted on by Evelyn rather overprotectively, while Charley worked two, sometimes three jobs to help make ends meet. He attended mass twice a week with his mother and younger brother, volunteered at Our Lady of Guadalupe for any number of things. When John showed academic promise, his mother began steering him toward college—Notre Dame University was her first and only choice for higher education. Father John Glowacz had laughed about it during his Q & A session with the task force. “Father Glowacz told me that at that time, his mother was a more devout Catholic than he was,” Daryl related. “I suppose he only went to Notre Dame to appease her."

And appease her he did, winning a scholarship to the prestigious University and taking off for South Bend the semester after graduating from high school. He confirmed the visits from his family, and with the assistance of Bernie Haskins and Daryl, was able to pin the specific dates that his brother Charley visited him in South Bend. They corresponded exactly to the dates that the first three victims of the Butcher were slain.

“It's circumstantial, but it's surely something you can't ignore,” Bernie said, lifting his feet off the desk and leaning forward. “John was living in a house with one other student, who also happened to be his lover, Stacy Temple; her basement apartment had a separate entrance. Both she and John weren't home much of the time. This would have provided Charley with ample opportunity and privacy to commit his first murders. He had the space, he had the use of John's car at the time, and the area where the two identified victims were abducted was real close to where they lived."

Unfortunately, they hadn't been able to come up with any witnesses who were able to identify photos of Charley, although they tracked down as many as they could. Friends of Alicia Henderson, the female prostitute from the affluent family, thought they saw her with somebody who looked vaguely like Charley, but then it could have been anybody. In 1985, Charley Glowacz had looked more like a student slogging his way through his graduate studies or Ph.D. thesis. Bespectacled and already losing his hair, he wasn't as heavy as he was when caught a month and a half ago, but he still bore that look of the ineffectual loser. It was a stigma he would never live down.

“What really got me about this whole thing was how he was able to kill well-armed gang members,” Bernie said. “I mean, he basically kills three street people in South Bend, but then his first victim in Los Angeles four years later is a gang member. A Crip. How the hell did he do it?"

Daryl shrugged. During the post suicide investigation, Daryl had come across a dozen gang members who identified Charley as somebody they all knew, mainly because he was Father Glowacz's brother, and they knew him at church. But other than that Charley didn't associate with them, didn't seek them out to buy drugs or for association.

There was even less evidence that he had used them to procure the services of a prostitute. At least four of the prostitutes killed were gang associates. It was very possible that Charley had used their services and kept it very well hidden and the gang members simply couldn't remember. And while a couple of masseuses and other high-class call girls who worked the area were shown Charley's photograph, few could identify him.

Some thought he looked familiar, but they weren't sure if they ever had him as a client.

As one girl put it, “you see as many horny bastards and suck as much cock as we do, they all start to look the same after awhile."

“Well,” Rachael said, her brow furrowed in contemplation. “We could probably formulate a pretty good guess. It's probably feasible that Charley lured the male gang members into his car by posing as a drug buyer. Four of the victims were frequent attendees of Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church. He could have won their confidence when they recognized him as Father Glowacz's brother. It probably also brought an edge to them to be selling drugs to the priest's older brother. Once in the back house at the Glowacz residence it would have been easy for Charley to overpower the them."

“How the fuck would he have been able to do that?” Bernie asked, looking perplexed. “The guy wasn't in the best of shape, Rachael."

Dr. Donahue frowned, stroking his chin. “His height could have been an asset.

Might have made it a little easier for him to wrestle them to the ground."

“There's that, and there's another thing too,” Rachael said, addressing the psychiatrists and Bernie. “It would have been very easy for him to approach them from behind and place them in a choke hold. It doesn't take a person of great strength. All you need to know is where to apply pressure and you can stop the flow of blood to the brain in less than three seconds. It's an easy way to knock somebody out."

“How do you know?” Daryl asked. The psychiatrists looked interested at this bit of information and waited for her to respond.

“That's one of the first things they teach you in any martial arts class,” she said, grinning. “I should know. I've been practicing it for quite a while."

Daryl traded a glance with Bernie, who shrugged. “We haven't come across any information that suggests he was interested in martial arts. Father Glowacz never mentioned it either."

“He wouldn't have even had to have taken a class to learn the technique,” Rachael explained. “People that are into auto-erotic asphyxiation practice this all the time, and I think it's safe to assume that they never learn to cut off blood or oxygen to the brain by taking a class. All one needs to know are the right pressure points in the neck. There's no concrete evidence Charley Glowacz was into auto-erotic asphyxiation, but being that he was into hardcore S&M, it's quite possible he might have been."

Both psychiatrists were nodding. Dr. Cooper said, “It makes sense to me, given his psychological profile."

They had all been mystified at how the Butcher managed to subdue his victims with one hand while cutting off their heads with the other—after all, in most of the cases, decapitation had been the actual cause of death. With this bit of new information it was safe to assume that this was how Charley incapacitated his victims. It would also explain why Chrissy Melendez, the Hispanic girl who had gone out to make an incall from a massage parlor, had been killed outright. Charley could have used a little too much force, killing her immediately.

And of course, it was easy enough to estimate where Charley's supposed surgical skill had come from. Being a butcher for three years would have made him very familiar with the knife. A few readings through Gray's Anatomy, found among the belongings in his bedroom and well book-marked, would have made him familiar with the human body.

Bernie leaned back again in his chair. “You know, I think all my questions are finally answered about this guy. We found out about his family background, his formative years, his religious beliefs. We know that he had a severe hang-up about sex, that he was a latent bi-sexual as evidenced by the pornography found in the house.” Crammed in one of the suitcases was a stash of bi-sexual, straight, and gay pornography, all of it on the bizarre side. There was also a stash of more hardcore porn; bestiality, kiddie porn, violent S&M bordering on snuff films. “But still, the guy must have had a death wish hanging over him. I still think back on some of the stuff he did and just shake my head. Planting Javier Perez's body in Los Compadres Turf at two in the morning was a risky move. He could have gotten himself killed."

“That is a distinct possibility,” Dr. Donihue said. “When most serial killers are reaching the apex of their spree they often take risky chances in either abducting victims, choosing them, or in disposing of the bodies. They want their work to be seen by society, to flaunt it. This could have been Charley's way of saying ‘hey, look at me! Look what I can do!’”

“Well, at least it's over. We got the bastard.” Daryl reached for Rachael's hand.

“We stopped him and we pretty much know why he did it. I guess the only thing we can be thankful for is the fact that we got him when we did. If he had kept on going without us catching him it would have ended up a lot worse.” He looked at Rachael and she returned his gaze. It was obvious from the expression on her face that she knew very well what he was talking about.

“Well,” Bernie said, rising from his seat. “I guess that brings this case to a close then."

The five of them chatted on their way out of the office to the elevator. Once outside they parted with handshakes. “Feel free to contact us if you need any additional background information,” Dr. Cooper told Rachael.

“I will,” Rachael smiled. “Thanks."

Once in Daryl's car he turned to Rachael. “We were lucky, you know that?"

“Yes, we were."

“He could have killed you."

Rachael.... “But he didn't."

Daryl smiled back. “No, he didn't."

They embraced.

“I love you,” Rachael said, smiling.

“I love you, too."

“And I'm so proud of you."

“I'm proud of you, too."

“It was a hellish experience that I never want to go through again, but in a way I'm glad we did,” Rachael said. She grasped both his hands in hers. “It not only brought us together, but it made our relationship stronger."

“Mmm hmm. And do you know what else?"

“What?"

“It made me realize that life is too short to continually mourn the past.” Thoughts of Shirley briefly came to mind, and for the first time in years they were not only happy thoughts, but he found that he could think about her without feeling regret that he hadn't been able to do anything to prevent her death. It was simply an unfortunate incident that had happened, one that would remain with him forever. But an incident that was no longer a crutch or a hindrance to how he approached relationships now. Rachael had helped him through that. And if this case hadn't thrown them together he might still be lost in that myriad sea of hurt, still smarting from the pain, and still angry.

Rachael's fingers caressed his hands, interlocking with his fingers. “I guess good things can come out of bad times, can't they?"

Daryl smiled. “Yes. I think they can."

Epilogue

And in the end, they really did set off to live happily ever after.

The evening after their discussion with Bernie and the psychiatrists about the case, Daryl asked Rachael to marry him. Happily, Rachael said yes.

Daryl quit his job as a detective three weeks later. A month after that he found a position with a Private Investigation firm. Most of the work was mundane; skip-tracing people who owed various debts, tracking down family members who were named in last wills and testaments, finding long lost lovers. It paid substantially less than his work as a homicide detective, but it was something to keep him busy and earning income while he went back to school to earn his teaching credentials.

He had always wanted to make a difference.

He got his teaching credentials the month they married, in April of 1999. They had a small, private ceremony in the backyard of his father's house in Cambria. They invited thirty of their closest friends and Daryl's family. After the brief non-denominational ceremony, a dozen white doves were released to fly over the ocean.

Among the guests who were invited were Rachael's friends from the Times, Daryl's former partner Steve Howe and his wife Jeanette, his former boss Hank Wilkeson, and FBI Agent Bernie Haskins. Some of the old members of the Butcher Task Force had shown up, too—Detectives Gonzalez and Espãna, Douglas and Rexer, and some others.

They tried to locate Father Glowacz, but the new priest at Our Lady of Guadalupe told Daryl that the priest had requested ??? Daryl didn't blame the priest for wanting to pack up and leave. A year after the events that led to Charley's arrest and suicide, the story was still getting ample press coverage. Three books had already hit the stands about the case, and a fourth, Rachael's book, was set to be released that fall in hardcover. There had been numerous television specials on the case, and Rachael's book had been optioned by a major production company. The money had been more than enough to set Rachael on the road to a new career—she started work on her next book a month after they returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii. It was probably for the best that Father John Glowacz didn't attend the wedding. No matter that he knew that his brother had been a killer and a sick man, he might still harbor feelings toward the events that resulted in the death of his mother and brother.

After a nice, lazy summer vacation in which Daryl didn't work at all, floating on Rachael's advances, which had been more than enough to tide them over for the rest of the next year if they wanted to, he found work in August teaching criminology at a community college in Seattle, Washington. This meant a move, which they hastily arranged over a three month period. By November they were settled in their new home.

Daryl fell in love with the city of Seattle immediately. Meanwhile, Rachael started her second book, this one about the Militia Movement and their ties with the far Christian Right.

In October they got the news that Rachael was pregnant, which was a miracle.

Rachael always believed that she couldn't have children. She had been told by her doctor that she was incapable of bearing children. Her pregnancy proved this diagnosis wrong.

And on May 1, 2000, Daryl was present in the delivery room when Rachael gave birth to a healthy baby girl. She weighed in at seven pounds, two ounces and was twenty-two inches long. They named her Catherine Shirley Garcia. For Daryl, it was the happiest moment of his life. Next to his and Rachael's wedding day.

Some stories have happy endings.

But then, some don't ... ?

May 12, 2000, 7:30 PM

Los Angeles, CA

Father John Glowacz had just been ushered into Father James O'Grady's private study when he started having the shakes.

He couldn't control it. He had been having them a lot lately, especially whenever he thought about his family and his role in their deaths. He just couldn't take it anymore.

He had to talk to somebody about it. He had to speak to Father O'Grady.

James O'Grady stepped into his study and closed the door behind him. The priest was still dressed for duties, his clerical collar still in place. Today was John's off day at his new parish, a nice little church in the South Orange County area. He had made the drive up to Los Angeles in a blind heat after debating and praying about his dilemma for the past few days. The more time went by, the more this was eating at him. He was beating himself up over this. He had to find absolvement for his sins.

“You sounded rather urgent over the phone,” James said as he stepped up to the bar. “Would you like a drink?"

“Please.” John said, taking a deep breath.

“Scotch okay?"

“Scotch is fine."

James O'Grady poured them both three fingers of Scotch in heavy tumblers, then carried them over to the sofa. He handed John his, and the priest took it in a shaking hand and gulped half of it down. James frowned. “I think we'd better talk."

“Bring the bottle over,” John said. “I think I'm going to need it."

James looked at him with a sense of curiosity, then went back to the bar for the bottle.

John filled his glass and took another gulp of scotch. He sighed. The whiskey was already racing through his system, calming his nerves. His hands were less shaky now, his stomach less fluttery. Soon his tongue would be looser, too. That would make it easier to confess what he had been wanting to for the past six years.

“Normally I don't recommend using alcohol as a crutch when it comes to confession,” Father O'Grady said, sitting down in the easy chair opposite John. “But I think we need to make an exception in this case. You tell me whenever you're ready, John."

John nodded, taking another sip of scotch. He was feeling better already. “What I have to talk to you about is very personal,” he said. “Some of it concerns my life ... before I took the oath. The rest concerns some of my past sins. I may be committing a sin just by telling you some of this stuff, but ... by keeping it secret, I may be sinning as well. It's such a—"

“Take your time,” Father O'Grady said. “Tell me all you want to tell me. I'm here to listen as a friend, not as a priest."

John looked at the older man. “Are you serious, James?"

“If that is what you wish, yes."

“Good. Because it's very important to me, James. Very important. I ... I may need to talk to you at a later time ... after I've told you what I've come to talk about ... I may need to see you as a priest. But now ... for this ... I need to talk to you as a friend."

James O'Grady leaned forward, his smile warm and caring. “I'm honored that you've chosen to speak to me as a friend, John. I've always thought of you as a friend. I'm only too happy to be able to help you in whatever is ailing you."

John nodded, took another drink. He set the glass down on the table. Then, speaking slowly, being sure not to leave anything out, he told James O'Grady.

Everything.

When he was finished two hours later, John asked Father O'Grady. “Now I'm asking you advice as a priest. What should I do?"

And James O'Grady, the horror still on his now waxy face, could only shake his head. He looked at John with reddened eyes. “The two of us will go to confession tomorrow morning, here at St. Mark's. You will confess that you have revealed the sins of one of your penitent's, that you have discussed it with me. Then we say nothing."

“Nothing?"

“If you wish to remain a priest, you say nothing! ” Father O'Grady's voice was stern for the first time.

John Glowacz thought about it. His fingers caressed the empty glass of scotch.

The near empty bottle sat between the men on the coffee table. “I just want my life back,”

John said, his voice trembling.

“Then make your confession tomorrow and make a good act of contrition and penance,” James O'Grady said. “And give the burden to the Lord.” The older priest's features were set, stony in his seriousness. “It's the only way."

John nodded. Yes. It was the only way.

God help him.

September 5, 2000 1:02 PM

Seattle, Washington

George Castro couldn't wait. He simply had to call Alfonso DiMartini now, even though he was due in a development meeting in five minutes. George punched Al's number in by memory, hoping his old friend wasn't making rounds. Alfonso had surprised everybody in their clan from high school by becoming a physician, graduating in the top ten of his class at UCLA Medical School. He now practiced medicine in Ventura County, specializing in Family Practice, while George had wound up in Seattle as a Software Engineer for Microsoft.

Alfonso picked up the phone on the third ring. “Yes."

“Al,” George said, eyes glancing at the clock on a cluttered shelf in his cubicle.

“It's George. I don't want to keep you, but you are not going to believe who I just ran into today—"

“Make it quick, George, I've got a patient coming in three minutes."

“Okay. Remember Stacy Temple?"

“Yeah."

“I just ran into her today at lunch near Pioneer Square."

“Really? You sure?"

“Positive. I'd never forget that face. She looks a lot different. Shit, I always thought she was pretty but she must have, I don't know, gotten help or something. Gained some confidence in herself or something, because her hair is styled real nice, and she dresses nice, and she actually wears make-up. Not too heavy, just enough, you know, and—"

“Did you talk to her?” Alfonso sounded just as eager to hear about this as George thought he would be.

“Well, I tried to,” George said, still puzzled and confused over the encounter. “I recognized her right away, you know? She still looked basically the same, she just looked better, you know? Same height and all. She was in front of me in line at Carl's, a take-out place I usually like to go to at lunch, and I knew it was her. Only when I stopped her and asked if it was her, she was different."

“What do you mean different?"

“She was heading back toward the exit of the restaurant and I intercepted her,”

George said. “And I said, ‘excuse me, but aren't you Stacy Temple? From Gardena?’ And she looked at me, and I knew it was her. I knew it! But—"

“But what?"

“She told me I had mistaken her for somebody else. And her voice ... it was all weird and shit."

“Weird? Like how?"

“It was deep. Like a man's. It was like she was purposely speaking in a deep tone, trying to disguise it or something. It reminded me of the last time I saw her, when she showed me that tape. Remember?"

“Wow."

“Yeah. And her face, that was weird, too."

“How so?"

George paused, shuddering at the thought of that face again. He could have sworn that it was Stacy Temple he had seen. He was positive. The woman that had been standing in front of him, the woman that had walked out of the restaurant with a confident stride in her walk, had been Stacy Temple all right. Simply add eighteen years, dress the Stacy Temple he had known back in high school in nicer clothes, make her hair and face up, and the woman he saw today at lunch would have been her. But that voice, that face—

“What about her face, George?"

“Her face ... her expression, it wasn't her. It was ... it was like it was somebody else. It was like watching somebody you used to know, that you haven't seen in years, and then you see them for the first time in years and they're ... not the same people they were before."

“Well, Christ, George, we all go through that—"

“This was different.” George finally had the right descriptive word choice for Stacy Temple. He swallowed, still feeling spooked by what he had seen. “I was looking directly into Stacy Temple's face. I knew it was her. But the person inside Stacy Temple was a completely different person. And that person, whoever it was, was completely insane."

September 5, 2000 5:31 PM

Seattle, Washington

He caught the bartender's eye as the man wiped down the far end of the bar. He motioned to his empty glass and the bartender plucked it off the table, refilling it with what he had been drinking—Jack Daniels, on the rocks. It had been a long time since he sat in a bar. It was a nice feeling to be back among people.

The television perched on the top shelf behind the bar was tuned to the news. He had been watching it disinterestedly for the past twenty minutes, calmly sipping his drink and chilling out. He had stopped by the bar on impulse, driving into the Sea Tac strip quite easily and cruising around till he found a bar that looked right. And it was, too.

Plenty of people milling around, talking over pitchers of beer and food, a couple of barflies spaced intermittently at the bar with him, a couple of guys playing pool, the faint melodic strains of Eric Clapton coming out of the jukebox. It was a peaceful, relaxing place.

He took a sip of his drink, aware of the motion of somebody sitting on the stool next to him. He stole a sly glance toward his left and let it linger. It was a young woman, thin, lithe body dipped in black tights that hugged every curve, a skimpy halter top, and a black suede jacket with fringes. Her brown hair was long and hung straight down her back. She had large brown eyes and features that might be attractive if she hadn't buried them under the make-up. Otherwise her features were strong; high cheekbones, full lips, small nose. She caught him glancing at her and smiled. She was chewing gum. Judging by the way she was dressed in this particular neighborhood, it was obvious what she did for a living. “How ya doing tonight?"

“Fine,” he replied.

“You work around here?"

“I suppose you could say that?"

The woman paused, checking him out. “You work the classy places, right? That's why I haven't seen you before."

He laughed. “Oh, I can see where this is going, young lady."

The woman's smile faded slightly. “Young lady?"

He turned to her, the crucifix he was wearing in plain site. “I work up the street, at St. Anthony's. I do missionary work."

The woman looked shocked. She sputtered. “Christ, I'm sorry ... I ... I hope I didn't offend you."

He laughed and his put drink down on the bar. “I'm fine. Really. Let me buy you a drink."

The woman accepted the offer. He ordered another JD and the woman ordered a Tom Collins. “So that's why you're here then,” she said. She was already starting to look relaxed. “You can drink. They probably let people like you, missionaries, drink, right?"

He laughed. “That's funny. You think priests and nuns have some sort of ban on the Catholic community when it comes to drinking?” He took a sip of his drink, set it down. “You must not be Catholic."

“Oh, I'm Catholic all right.” She brought out a pack of cigarettes from the small, black purse slung over her right shoulder, extracted one, lit it. “Or was. Actually I am, but I haven't been to church in a while.” It was amazing how she was already starting to act guilty around him when he hadn't even proved to her that he worked for the church. All he'd done was told her. He had dressed casually today when he set out to run his errands and was wearing a clean pair of blue jeans, a blue and red sweater with a brown leather jacket over it and his white Nikes. He smiled as the woman said, “And I never seen priests drink in bars before."

“Well, Miss ... er?"

“Giacomini. Rita Giacomini."

They shook hands. He introduced himself. “Nice to meet you, Rita. And yes, priests and nuns are allowed to go to bars on occasion, even indulge every now and then in a glass or two of spirits. So are bishops and missionaries. Some of us smoke. Not very healthy mind you, but then we're only human."

“So you're really a missionary, huh?” She asked, lighting a cigarette. She smoked calmly, regarding him wistfully. “Does this mean you guys don't have to take a vow of chastity, or whatever it is you call it?"

“Oh, no! We can have sex just like normal people."

This brought laughter from her and he laughed with her. Rita was an air-head, but she seemed like a nice girl. He could tell.

He took another quick sip of his drink when a news item from the television perked his attention.

“...the headless body was found floating in the Green River. Authorities are denying that this is—"

Rita made a face next to him. “Oh, how gross!"

“—the work of the Green River Killer, who is believed to have killed 49 young women in the Seattle area in the 1980's.” Close up on a Deputy Sheriff, a forty-something man with a perpetual squint and a ruddy, chapped face. “This victim was a male, and we haven't identified him yet. It appears that whoever did this committed the crime elsewhere and then dumped the body in the river."

The scene cut back to the newscaster. “Detectives have their work cut out for them. The police aren't speculating on a motive for the slaying, but I assume we'll learn more as the investigation unfolds."

The broadcast immediately switched to the next topic, this one concerning the plight of Cuban immigrant Elian Gonzalez. Rita was still smoking her cigarette. She shook her head. “I heard a real brief flash about this thing this morning before I left.

That's so awful."

“Yes, it is."

“I hope they find whoever it is who did it,” Rita said. She took a hearty sip of her Tom Collins. “There's so many damn nuts out there, a girl doesn't know what to do."

“What about a guy?” He said, motioning toward the television. “That poor sucker was a man!"

“I know!” Rita exuded syrupy melodrama that bordered on the ridiculous. She was making too much of trying to appear sympathetic. “You can't do anything these days without some nut either shooting you for the quarter in your pocket or because he thinks you looked at him cross-eyed. The world is becoming a scarier place. It's even scarier now that the millennium has hit us."

“Oh, I know,” He said, taking a quick sip of his drink. “In my business I have to try to calm people's fears of the millennium. Everybody thinks that the year 2000 signifies the rapture and the End Times. In reality, none of us will know when Our Lord will return."

For the next forty minutes they talked. Rita finished her drink and he bought her a second one. He asked her about herself gently, not prying, and she told him, not holding back. She had gone to college but had to drop out to get a job when her father was killed in an auto accident so she could support her mother, who had been badly injured. She had fallen into the wrong crowd, did drugs and drank a lot, and now she worked as an escort.

He tried to look surprised at this news and Rita swallowed it. “I don't work the streets,”

she explained, as if trying to justify what she did for a living. “There's no way I would do that. I respect myself too much for that. I work through an agency and they send me out on jobs. Lots of my clients are businessmen that fly in and out of Seattle. I was just coming back from the airport when I decided to stop by here for a drink. I know some of the girls that work the streets and I like to come here and chat with them. You know, try to convince them that the streets aren't good, that they'd be better working in something like I've got."

He was about to respond, but then stopped himself in time. He was going to suggest why work in your line at all? Why not encourage them to strive for something better? But that wasn't for him to say.

“Let me tell you something,” he said, choosing his words carefully. His now empty glass sat in front of him. He had switched to Seven-Up after he had finished his Jack Daniels upon meeting her. “I once knew a priest in Los Angeles, a real nice guy named Father Glowacz. Father Glowacz's church was in a really bad section of the city.

They had a bad gang problem there. Four or five different gangs operated within a ten mile area. The neighborhood was really affected by the gangs; the violence, the drug sales, the ... just everything about it. Many of these gang members were hopeless themselves. They had no self confidence, no confidence in each other, really, despite their

... pseudo macho pontifications of Latino pride. What it all boils down to is that they didn't give a shit about each other.” At the mention of the word shit, Rita's eyes widened.

He put a hand over his mouth, a look of shock on his face. “Oops! Sorry. That slipped."

Rita laughed.

“Anyway, Father Glowacz came to the parish and listened to the kids. He and another guy there, a counselor who used to be a gang member, paid attention to the gang members. And what they did was start a youth program. They recruited volunteers to staff it and they provided after-school activities for the kids. They offered workshops for those kids more prone to join a gang, and they offered counseling and bible studies for gang members. They worked with them, prayed with them, loved them the best way they could.

Sometimes they ... went to their old ways and picked up a gun when the heat got too hot in the kitchen and tempers flared. Father Glowacz presided over too many rosaries and funeral masses for those kids than he'd probably like to remember. But he stuck with the system and eventually got a grant from the city to start a business. It was entirely run by several ex-gang members and it was a small Mexican restaurant in East Los Angeles. A business owner donated the equipment.” He smiled. “That business has done well. Three months ago I heard it was voted that they served the best tacos in all of East Los Angeles."

Rita smiled. “That's really neat."

“I guess what I'm trying to say is you've got more going for you than ... what you're doing.” He looked down at her gently, touching her shoulder lightly. “You can do whatever you want to do in your life, Rita. And if you ever feel you need help you can call me."

Rita Giacomini looked at him. Her features had softened, became more weary.

She looked like she wanted to drop all the troubles she was carrying right on his lap.

“Thank you,” she said, offering him a smile that shined with true honesty for the first time since they'd spoken. “I really appreciate it.” Her voice cracked slightly. “I really do."

“But...” He detected a slight hesitation.

Rita turned to light another cigarette. He waited calmly while she took a drag and blew the smoke out. She took a sip of her screwdriver—her third one—and stared off into the bar. Finally she turned back to him and her features had grown softer. He saw that if she dropped the façade she carried herself in she could be a beautiful girl. “Oh, I don't know,” she said. “I really appreciate what you're trying to do, but I haven't been to church in, like, years—"

“Going to church has nothing to do with it,” he murmured.

“—and I'm not really sure if I can really go back. I mean, I've never been the best Catholic."

He smiled. “That makes two of us, Rita."

“What do you mean?” She took a drag on her cigarette. “You're, like, a missionary. "

“Big deal,” he said. “I'm human just like everybody else. All I do is to help intercede for our Lord Jesus Christ in helping people get closer to Him and accept Him as their Lord and Savior. That's all."

Rita seemed to take this all in. She took another sip of her screwdriver, finishing it. “Yeah, well ... what church do you work at? Or is that preach at?"

He laughed. “Well, I wouldn't call what I do preaching. We Catholics usually leave that up to folks like Pat Robertson or Lou Sheldon."

Rita smiled shyly. “You know what I mean."

“I do know what you mean,” He said, smiling. “And to answer your question, I am assistant to the head pastor at St. Peter's on the south end of town."

“Oh, I know where that is! That's just off Interstate 5."

“Right."

“I don't live too far from there. Maybe ten blocks or so."

“Well, there you go! You can come by and see me anytime."

“Really?"

“Really. And it doesn't even have to be in the capacity of church. If you ever need to talk to me for any reason, you can call the church and have me paged. We can talk about whatever you want, whenever you want. If you have any kind of problem—and I mean any kind—I'm here for you. And I won't press you to start attending mass if you don't want to."

For the first time since they'd started talking, Rita Giacomini looked relaxed, almost bubbly. “That would be nice. I've been wanting to ... you know ... talk to somebody, but I don't know who. Sometimes I get really confused—"

He glanced at his watch and groaned. “Oh no! I'm running late. I promised a friend I'd stop by and feed her cats at six-thirty and it's already twenty after.” He looked at her. “I'm really sorry, but I've got to run."

“Oh, that's okay,” Rita said, stubbing her cigarette out. “I've got to get going myself."

“I really hate to interrupt our conversation,” He said, reaching into his wallet and extracting a couple of bills for the bartender's tip. “But this friend of mine—she's a secretary at St. Peter's—is on vacation for two weeks and she left me in charge of her cats. It shouldn't take that long to feed them all, but it has to be done."

“You make it sound like it's a chore,” Rita said, clutching her purse as she got off the barstool.

“It's not that,” he said, stepping away from the bar. “It's just that I was really enjoying our conversation."

“I was too,” Rita said, smiling. They headed toward the entrance of the bar. As they passed the lobby, he glanced at their reflections in the mirror and he flinched at what he saw.

Rita Giacommini was at his side, smiling and laughing as he nodded and smiled, too. He noted his own features, which were contorted, a shimmering mass of feminine monstrosity. Black hair sprouted from his head to hang about his shoulders; his mouth was a red maw. Twin mounds of corpulent flesh sat perched on his chest. No matter how hard he tried to hide it with the clothes he wore, he knew what lay beneath the surface.

They walked out of the bar together. They headed out to the parking lot, Rita reaching for her keys when he snapped his fingers.

“Listen, if it's not too much trouble why don't you come with me to the house and then back to the church? I can show you around.” Rita stopped, right hand in her purse as she looked up at him. He smiled reassuringly. “It shouldn't take long. I was really enjoying our conversation and I hate to break it up just because of this chore. We can talk on the drive, and once we're at the church I can show you around so you'll be more familiar with the place if you decide to visit. I'll run you right back here to your car in no time."

Rita nodded, her features brightening. She smiled at him. “Yeah. I think I'd like that."

He smiled, motioning toward a row of cars. “Great!"

He led Rita to his car—a tan Oldsmobile Sedan—and opened the passenger door for her. She got in, he closed the door, and went to the driver's seat and got in. He started the car and sighed, turning to her with a smile. “Now where were we?"

She laughed, and started talking about her Catholic upbringing. He nodded and smiled at the appropriate times as he backed the car out of the parking space and headed out of the parking lot, merging into the thoroughfare of Interstate 5. He was barely listening to her, barely able to sustain his pleasure that he had gotten her into his car. She was a big step up from the gang members and their girlfriends that he had relieved himself with previously. In fact, compared to them she was high class. Rita looked to be in her early twenties and didn't appear nearly as used up as some of the female gang members he had taken. Next to Carmen Aguirre, she was one of his most attractive victims. Maybe he could focus on women and men like her now rather than the criminal element who were so easy to win over. It would definitely be more challenging.

He smiled as they drove, nodding and answering Rita's chatter with “yes, uh huh's” or “wow, that's really great's". The home they were driving to was one he had bought from Charley's and Mother's life insurance cash-out policies. He had forged the signatures himself. It was easy to put the money into the property so he would once again have his private place for his fun and games. It would prove to be more private then the back house in Highland Park.

Of course, the drawback was if the shit hit the fan here like it did back in Los Angeles, he wouldn't have his ex lover's family to blame his fetish on.

He smiled as his mind ran down the list of events that had led to the present: how easy it had been to lure gang members to his car by posing as a priest, sometimes a nun, other times as a street-walking whore. How easy it had been to take them to the back house; how easy it had been to come on to them once the facade was down, and how they reacted—what homeboy wasn't up for playing out his fantasy of fucking a nun? Or a priest? And then the few times he had gone after women, how they had responded to his advances just as he had thought they would, responding in basically the same way. And once he got them into his dungeon ... the rest was just so easy. Applying the right pressure to their throats, inserting the ball gag in their mouths and trussing them up. Then waiting for them to wake up and feeling the power surge through him as their eyes widened in horror as he held the power of life and death in his hands. Of course, the best part was the look on their faces—in their eyes—when he lopped off their heads.

His own parents had taught him so well. It was they he always thought of as he raped his victim's dying bodies, it was their faces that he superimposed on the faces of his victims as he snuffed out their lives in his make-shift dungeon.

And the more he did it, the more power he felt over them. They would never hurt him again.

In the end it had been easy to replace Charley's rather middle-of-the-road porn with his own unique taste in pornography when things started getting too hairy. He had Charley to thank for everything. The guy was a slob and left shit everywhere, so it had been easy to swipe a couple of hairs off his brush one morning as he was heading out to his car (the brush had been left in Charley's truck, with the window open, making the theft even easier). He had put those hairs to good use, planting a strand or two with Chrissy's head to divert attention. The rest he had scattered around the back house. He even had Charley to thank in snaring Carmen Aguirre. He had been leaving the back house when Carmen had rushed out of the front house and almost ran into him. Carmen had been angry and was on the verge of tears and she had been so glad to see him, she had to go to the bathroom so bad ... and he had led her back to the rear house and let her in.

She had been so thankful and so had he. He had been smitten with her the moment he saw her.

Of course, that last night was the clincher. Charley was on his own downward spiral himself. The buttwad had always been a pussy; Charley had lusted after him when he had been fucking his brother, John. He remembered the way Charley used to look at him whenever he flew back east to visit John. And he remembered the look on Charley's face when John arranged the rental deal with Evelyn. Charley probably jacked off every night just thinking about him. That really had been a nice arrangement; he'd had the safety and privacy of the Glowacz's back house to partake in his fetish. And he'd had John's vow as a priest to keep his mouth shut. John had started to put two and two together a few years after he followed him back to California. He had sensed John was putting the pieces together and he had gone to him; the two were still involved sexually, John still had to have his occasional dose of S&M domination. He had told John that he was confiding to him as a Catholic. He had confessed with the right amount of sincerity and conviction, and John had heard his confession and been bound to keep it secret between the two of them; as a priest, John was bound not to tell anyone. Over the years he had visited John in the confession booth at Our Lady and informed the priest of his latest conquests, taking a special glee in knowing John was prohibited from going to the authorities. Not if he wanted to keep his position with Our Lady. Not if he wanted to be exposed; if he wanted it kept secret that he still wasn't coming to him at night to play out S&M scenes, he would keep his fucking mouth shut. And he had.

He really hadn't seen that finale coming from Charley, though. No fucking way.

He had been quite surprised at Charley's boldness; it had been Charley's move that had brought him out.

And it had been his coming out that had made Charley go completely mad.

The rest had been easy. He had deposited the newspaper clippings of his work in Charley's suitcase, as well as the few personal items he had kept from the victims. The tapes that he had kept in the dungeon were dumped in Charley's living quarters. The remaining heads in his freezer were placed in a large trash bag which he had put by the suitcase; it would make it appear that Charley was going to take the heads and get rid of them. All that was left was to get rid of were Carmen and Miguel whats-his-name, bitch slap Charley around some more, make him go into the back house and leave his fingerprints all over everything (and boy what a sight that must have been; he wished he had that on tape. He could still picture herding Charley in the back house, the portly man's hands tied behind his back, ball gag in his mouth, his eyes wide and afraid. He remembered how Charley reacted as he held the knife to his throat and undid the rope binding his wrists, remembered commanding Charley in his best tone of domination to put his palm and fingerprints here and there, and that feeling of power had almost made him come right there). Once that was over, the rest was easy: distort the truth a bit when the detectives questioned him, and wait for Charley to finish himself off in prison. That had been the last thing he'd commanded Charley to do. He had whispered it in his ear as he sat the fat fuck down on the floor and placed Evelyn's head in his lap. He had whispered it to him over and over as Charley sat in catatonic shock. He told him exactly how to do it. He knew Charley would follow his orders explicitly.

Unfortunately, talking somebody into committing suicide and telling them how to do it wasn't as much fun as killing them yourself.

He laughed at this thought. Rita stopped in mid-sentence and looked at him curiously. “What's so funny about my best friend getting an abortion?"

He didn't miss a beat. “Nothing. The story just reminded me of something. That when we are faced with the most dire, most disturbing moments of our lives we somehow find a way to laugh in the face of our adversaries and carry on. Your friend going through what she did no doubt scarred her, but it probably made her a stronger person, even though she might not realize it.” He turned to her and smiled. “There are worse things, Rita. Always remember that and be thankful that no matter how bad you have it, somebody else has it worse."

Rita forced a smile. “I'll remember that. It might even help with dealing with my own past."

“Which is?"

“Did you forget already? My dad ... you know ... molesting me when I was real little."

“Oh yes.” He didn't remember that part of the conversation; he had been too busy remembering his exploits back in LA. He nodded as if he remembered, not missing a beat. “Taking that approach will really work. It's worked for me."

“How so?"

“I was sexually molested by my parents, too."

“Really?"

“Uh huh. And I got through it. Living through it made me a stronger person."

“What did you do? Did you like ... go to counseling or something, or—"

“No, none of that,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. “I took control. I told myself that nobody was ever going to treat me that way ever again. Nobody was ever going to dominate me again, or make me feel that I'm their slave or that I'm owned by them. I wanted to escape that old life, so I changed my name and left home when I was eighteen. I never once looked back."

Rita appeared to think about this. It was six-thirty in the evening. He had at least three hours that he could spend indulging in Rita's flesh and blood before he had to be back at home. She would stay fresh in the freezer until tomorrow morning when he could then begin to prepare her. With the exception of Carment Aguirre, the three gang members he had consumed in Los Angeles shortly after acquiring the taste of human flesh all had tough, sinewy meat that was hard to chew and had a slightly bitter taste. Rita might look older than her years, but she would no doubt taste much better. Besides, he had always liked Italian.

“So you changed your name ... what did your name used to be?"

“Stacy Temple,” he said, smiling. “I changed my name to Rachael Pearce the minute I left South Bend in ‘86. And I never once looked back."

Later that night, Daryl Garcia sat alone in the bedroom he shared with Rachael, cradling their infant daughter in his arms. He looked at the clock on the nightstand by the bed. It was twelve-fifteen a.m. His daughter had just fallen asleep after having cried for her mother for the past two hours. And as Daryl sat in the glider, cradling his infant daughter, his stomach began to flutter with nerves and he wondered where his wife was and what she could possibly be doing this late at night.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue