A stack of pink message slips waited for John when he and Paula returned to their desks. No one bothered to leave messages on Paula’s desperate landscape of a work surface, so anything that needed to get under her nose went on John’s desk. He took the messages from his blotter and shuffled through them. Two from a local television news reporter went into the trash. The remaining messages included one from the police officers’ credit union, a message from Jimmy Franck—a longtime CI, a confidential informant who traded information when he needed a get-out-of-jail-free card—a message for Paula from her mom, and one from someone named Mario Guzman.
“That little girl, dealing with all that medical shit—that’s sad,” Paula said.
John shifted in his chair at the mention of the Cardozo girl’s condition and forced his focus on the message slips.
“Call your mom,” he said, passing the pink slip to Paula.
“Oh God, I forgot.” She tugged on the ends of her shoulder-length hair.
“Birthday?”
“Worse,” Paula said. “She’s got it in her head that she has to play matchmaker. She keeps arranging for me to meet guys from her church group. I totally spaced on dinner at her place last night.”
“Ouch. I didn’t know you were that desperate.”
“She sets up these little dinner parties, and her church friends happen to show up trailing their unmarried sons. You can imagine the caliber of that stagnant dating pool; a bunch of mouth-breathing momma’s boys.”
“Come on, give her a break. She’s trying to help. It can’t be that bad,” John said.
Paula leaned over her desk, lowered her voice so the other detectives couldn’t overhear, and said, “Really? You think it can’t be that bad? Last month, she pulled off one of these meet and greets, and the guy was a 290 registrant. A frickin’ child molester we locked up a couple years back. He nearly shit himself when he saw me, so I knew his mommy didn’t know what his deal was. So yeah, it is that bad.”
“At least you know he’s not gonna cheat on you with another woman,” John joked.
Paula threw a pencil at him. “Shut up.”
“Well at least you’re not trolling the web on one of those Internet dating sites.”
Paula didn’t respond.
“No, tell me you’re not,” John pressed.
“You’re such an ass.” Paula flipped him off, swiveled her chair so that her back was to him, and after dialing her phone, said, “Hi, Mom. Yeah, I know, I’m sorry,” into the receiver.
John reshuffled the pink message slips in his hand and spotted one from Jimmy Franck. Jimmy ran in the fringes of the methamphetamine trade in the Central Valley and tipped John to three lab operations last year. John suspected the labs belonged to Jimmy’s rivals or to someone who demanded that Jimmy make good on his drug debt. John wasn’t in the mood to deal with the meth-head’s hustle.
John picked up the message from the police credit union and dialed the number.
“This is Janet,” she said.
“Janet, John Penley returning your call.”
“Thanks for calling back, Mr. Penley.”
“No problem. You have some good news for me?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Penley. We cannot refinance your home at this time.”
“Why not? The interest rates you are handing out on new mortgages are a good three points lower than what we’re paying now. We haven’t missed a single payment.”
“I know, Mr. Penley. The market is still very much upside down, and the appraisal on your property came back too low to support a refinance at this time. When the market values go back up, I’m sure we can do something then. Right now you owe more than the property is worth, and we cannot loan against equity that doesn’t exist.”
“What about the bailouts I keep hearing about? Don’t we get some credit for paying on time?” John asked.
“I’m very sorry, Mr. Penley. If you consider a short sale, perhaps we can help you get something out of the property.”
“I don’t want to sell. We can’t do anything on a refinance? A smaller amount? How about another appraisal?”
“No, Mr. Penley. We have no options at the moment. I’m sorry.”
John hung up and sank into his chair. He closed his eyes and rubbed the pain that sprouted beneath his temples. It felt like a vise clamped down on his head. Stress and nicotine withdrawal competed for his attention.
Paula hung her head, doing more listening than talking on the phone with her mother.
John peered across the desks and low-slung partitions that made up the warren that housed the detective bureau. Lieutenant Barnes stood by his office door and motioned for John. He pushed back from his desk and cut across the space. “Lieutenant?”
“Look at these misfits, Penley. Half of them walk around in eight-hundred-dollar suits and spend all day posing in the men’s room mirror taking selfies. Then I got a bunch who look like hoodlums, and when they go canvass a crime scene door-to-door, we get nine-one-one calls for attempted home invasions.”
“The times are a-changin’, Lieutenant,” John said.
“Listen, I need to talk to you about your case. The A chief hit me up this morning and used the S-word.”
“The assistant chief? Serial killer?” John said.
“Yeah, and when that happens, everything changes. The city council will pressure the chief for a quick close, and calls for the feds to take over will start. The politics behind all this will get really messy. If this killer ends up being called the Sacramento Slasher or something, the politicians will line up at the chief’s door, and it won’t look good for the city.”
“I get it. I never liked serial-killer labels based on location, like The I-5 Killer, Hillside Strangler, Green River Killer, and East Side Rapist. That kind of thinking limits the scope of the investigation. If you’re focused on a specific area, you’re gonna miss what’s happening somewhere else. So no River City Stalker,” John said.
“Give it some thought. The brass and the media-relations folks are gonna have to call him something. Better it come from the detective than the politicians,” Lieutenant Barnes added.
“I contacted the FBI Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and spoke with the contact you gave me, Mike Thompson,” John said. “They had nothing in their files that matched our guy, but he was able to get us a preliminary profile on our killer. Lucky us—this guy is new and unique. The feds can’t offer anything we don’t already have.”
“I’ll brief the A chief and try to buy us some time. Let me know when you have anything new that I can feed to the brass.”
“Will do,” John said.
After a pause, Lieutenant Barnes asked, “How’s your son?”
“He handles all the doctors and drugs like a champ. I wish I was as strong.”
“How’s Melissa holding up?”
“She’s amazing. We take turns propping each other up.”
Lieutenant Barnes nodded and said, “If you need some time off with your family . . .”
“We have a serial killer to deal with.”
“I have closed a few cases myself, you know,” Barnes said.
“Tim, I appreciate the offer, but it’s better if I keep busy here. If I sit around and dwell on everything, I’ll go crazy and be useless to Melissa and the kids.”
“I get it,” Barnes said. “If and when you need some time—let me know.”
From across the office, Paula called out, “Penley, the ME wants to start the post on Cardozo down at the morgue. We gotta go.”
“New partner working out?” Barnes said.
“She needs to put in some clean time to show everyone what she’s about.”
“Newberry took a lot of heat after the Carson investigation.”
“I didn’t know she was on that case. Paul Carson was an asshole. A twenty-year cop selling dope out of the evidence room deserves to go down.”
“Yeah, but Carson was a popular guy, and your new partner set up surveillance on the buy. Some say she set him up.”
“You color outside the lines and you run that risk,” John said.
“The brass said she didn’t exactly fit the mold in IA.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” John glanced at his coffee mug and tossed the thick, burnt coffee in the sink. “I better get going before Paula throws a stapler to get my attention.”
“She couldn’t find one on that disaster of a desk. Do something about that, would you? You’re the senior detective.”
John strode back to his desk and stashed his coffee mug in the bottom drawer. He grabbed his jacket and met Paula, who waited at the door to the detective bureau.
“I’m surprised that the ME is doing a post so soon. It’s been less than twenty-four hours. Things must be slow in the body shop,” John said.
“Dr. Kelly said this one won’t take long because there’s not much left to examine,” Paula reported.
“Then why the rush?”
“She said something was different with Cardozo.”
“What’s that?” John asked.
“Cardozo was alive when he was gutted.”