SHE IS MY ENCHANTED GODDESS CROWNED WITH LAUREL, HARP SO CLEAR.
I studied the picture of the new postcard. What am I missing? I glanced south down Crenshaw and saw swirling red and blue lights and bright head beams on an approaching radio car. Behind the car were tangerine-colored light bars of the CSI van.
I typed “nymphs” into Google’s search bar: female divinity … animate nature … not immortal … bound to places … classifications … the Muses. Then, I searched “Olympus”: Tallest peak in Greece … home of the mythical Olympians …
Colin’s radio blipped. “Yeah?”
“I got Boulard,” Pepe said, “and I’m bringing him over to you guys right now.”
I returned to the Muses article. “The Muses,” I read aloud, “were the personification of knowledge and the—”
“Got here as soon as I could.” Krishna sat down her metal toolbox and pulled a spiral binder from her duffel bag.
I handed her the paper bag containing the new postcard. “He put it on my windshield, beneath the blade.”
She pulled out a chain-of-custody form, told me where to sign, then took the card.
Pepe’s silver Impala screeched into the parking lot. A man sat in the backseat.
“You wait for the names,” I told Colin, “and I’ll talk to this guy.”
Colin nodded and looked at his watch again. “It’s almost two o’clock.”
Blood rushed to my head. “I know, partner.”
Every passing second meant less chance of finding the girl … unless the monster was now seated and cuffed in the back of Pepe’s Impala.
“Take him out,” I told Pepe. “Let him feel freedom. Stand at the perimeter with Luke and Gwen. I’ll cap his ass, though, if he thinks I’m just a girl with a gun.”
* * *
Jimmy Boulard and I leaned against the lot’s retaining wall. He had changed out of his suit and now wore his green ranger uniform.
“Is this necessary?” he asked, eyeing the armed detectives.
I shrugged. “Depends. I’ve called you several times now. You haven’t called me back.”
He studied the treads of his dusty hiking boots. “What number did you call?”
With my eyes also on those boots, I recited the number.
“My son’s place. I don’t live there anymore.” He reached into the pocket of his chinos.
Gwen, Pepe, and Luke raised their guns.
Boulard froze. “Just want a smoke.” He gulped, then asked, “May I?”
I nodded, then said, “Couldn’t wait to get out of that suit, huh?”
Grit covered his khaki shirt and the golden hair on his forearms. No dirt, though, could diminish the tattoo of the bald eagle perched upon the USN banner. He shook a cigarette from the pack of Camels and stuck it between his cracked, thin lips. “Had to go back to work. I’m leading a walk with some Girl Scouts up in the park today. So I’d appreciate it if we sped this little discussion along.”
“Fine,” I said. “How did you know Chanita Lords?”
“I don’t.”
“Why’d you come, then?”
He shook his head, then picked tobacco from his tongue. “I was one of the unlucky folks who found her. Just seemed like the right thing to do.” He sighed. “And my granddaughter mentioned that she knew Chanita.”
“Yeah? What’s your granddaughter’s name?”
“Can’t tell you that,” he said. “Don’t want you asking her questions without me or her daddy present. She’s having a hard time as it is. She tried comin’ today, but I didn’t see her in the sanctuary.”
“She in the seventh grade?”
He took a drag from his cigarette. “You’re not talking to her without her daddy or me.”
“Very nice of you to come to a girl’s funeral,” I said, my gut twisting into a knot. “A girl you didn’t even know.”
“That against the law?”
I crossed my arms, and my right hand brushed against the shoulder holster’s soft leather. “Of course not. Chanita seemed like a good girl. Very talented.”
“Guess the bar is low for ‘good’ nowadays.” He took a final drag from his cigarette, then dropped the butt to the ground.
“So she wasn’t good?” I asked, staring at Jimmy Boulard DNA, now on the asphalt.
“From what I’ve heard, she engaged in behaviors that good girls shun.”
“Like what kind of behavior?”
“Like sexual behavior.”
“Thought you didn’t know her.”
“I don’t.” He smirked. “I got ears, though, and I’m not dumb. You ain’t gotta do much to know what these girls are up to nowadays. The whaddya call it? Sexting. The naked pictures.”
I hid a yawn behind my hand.
“Oh, you bored?”
I shrugged. “Your misinformed outrage over Chanita’s morality, or lack thereof, makes me sleepy, and frankly it pisses me off. Because who the fuck do you think you are?”
“You asked me a question,” he growled. “Don’t be pissed cuz you don’t like my answer. Hell, none of this surprises me. I just hate that them girls on the trail pulled me into this mess.”
“Yeah,” I said. “When they found you, you were clearing brush on that rainy afternoon.”
He nodded, either missing or ignoring my sarcasm.
“So is that a usual practice?” I asked. “Clearing brush during a storm?”
He offered a smile that showed stained, crooked teeth. “Well, you yuppies like your trails clear. I always get complaints about bushes being on the pathway. Imagine that. Vegetation. In the wilderness. Next, you folks will be demanding a Trader Joe’s by the volleyball court.”
“And a vegan cupcake place where I can bring my Weimaraner after yoga.”
His smile died. “And here I was, planning to tell you all that I know.”
“And here I was, planning to let you go home today.”
He chuckled.
I chuckled but didn’t mean it. “So, who do you think killed Chanita?”
“The amigo who moved into the neighborhood last summer.”
I cocked my head.
“We live across the street,” he explained, “and the neighbors are all whisperin’ back and forth. And, yeah, he lives in Nita’s building. Name’s Raul Moriaga.” The park ranger glanced at a passing group of tight-jeaned teenage girls walking along Crenshaw Boulevard. The girls ignored us—Jimmy Boulard and I were both too old to be noticed. “He’s been in jail before,” Boulard said.
“Who told you that?”
“Ain’t nobody need to tell me shit. I got a computer and I got the Internet.” He squinted at me. “Things have changed since you moved out, Detective.”
My skin flushed. “You know I lived in the Jungle.”
“Like I said, neighbors are whisperin’, I got a computer, and I got the Internet.”
I crossed my arms—sweat had dampened my silk shirt.
He chuckled, then said, “I heard that Moriaga used to watch her walk by all the time, that he’d make kissing sounds at her. She’d never be interested in a loser like that.”
“Ontrel Shaw ain’t Sidney Poitier,” I pointed out, “and she was interested in him.”
Jimmy Boulard toed the cigarette butt. “Ontrel Shaw ain’t nothing but a thug. Girls think he’s exciting. Tough guy, my ass. Ontrel so big and bad, how he let Nita wind up dead?”
“Can you do me a favor?” I took out a small steno pad and pen from my back pocket and handed it to him. “Can you write down your name and new address since you no longer live with your son? Also, your phone number and any e-mail addresses, in print, all caps. Better to understand. Please?”
He blinked at me, took the pad and pen, and started to write using his left hand.
I watched him print, certain and then uncertain that he had written the nymph postcards.
He scrutinized what he wrote, then handed me the results.
“So this Raul Moriaga. Why do you think—?”
“Not just me.”
“Why do you and the neighbors think he’s the one?”
“Assault,” he said. “Molestation. Rape. And for no reason. Just senseless.”
My limbs numbed. “Is there ever a good reason to rape, molest, or assault someone?”
Jimmy Boulard blinked at me, visibly agitated by my question. “You know what I mean. They come to our neighborhoods and they mess with our girls, and you cops know these cats are snooping around, but you hassle regular folks like me. I’m glad I only got sons. Don’t ever have to worry about them being helpless, being weak. And I brought them up to stay away from gals like Chanita.” He snorted, then threw me a sideways glance. “Is there ever a good reason.”
He squinted at the girls who had just passed us. “I saw the oddest thing yesterday. I’m at the bookstore, just flipping through some magazines, and I look up cuz I smell all this perfume in the air. These two females walk past me. Look like the ones down there.” He nodded in the girls’ direction—they were now talking to two guys in a tricked-out Nissan Armada.
“Lotta makeup. Lotta jewelry. One was wearing these pants with the word ‘Juicy’ on the ass. They walked past me and right into the children’s section. And they’re talking to each other in these little girl voices, and I’m thinking, What the hell? Are they girls or are they women? Looking at them, you’d think they were twenty years old. What mother buys her twelve-year-old girl pants with ‘Juicy’ on the ass? They’re sitting there, reading Where’s Waldo and Harry Potter, wearing whore’s makeup and them pants. What’s a man supposed to do in that situation?”
My breathing quickened, and I pushed out, “Be a man?”
Boulard continued to stare in the distance. “They think they’re adults. But if you treat ’em like adults …” He looked back at me, his eyes dark and haunted. “You got monsters out there, Detective. You ever become a mother—and I can tell that you ain’t—do all that you can to keep your daughter away from those monsters.”
He clucked his tongue. “That Raul Moriaga? He lives in another world. Yeah, you a detective and all, but trust me: that’s a world you don’t know nothing about.”
“Gee, thanks, Dad.” I placed my hands on my hips. “So: I need your DNA.”
He blinked at me. “Why?”
I laughed. “You obviously don’t watch a lot of TV cop shows. There was someone else’s body fluid on Chanita. I wanna check to see if that mystery fluid belongs to you.”
He eyed me and chewed the inside of his cheek. “You think I killed Nita?”
I fake gasped. “That thought never occurred to me.”
He blinked.
“Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”
“How long will it take?” His eyes ping-ponged between me and Crenshaw Boulevard.
“I got the Q-tip if you got the spit.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“You wanna know how many times I’ve heard those exact words? Probably just as many times as you get complaints about bushes on the trail. One more thing: can you show me the bottoms of your boots?”
“Why?”
“Because I asked nicely. Next time won’t be so nice.”
He hesitated, then lifted his right boot.
I used my phone to take pictures of his soles. Then, I radioed Colin and asked that he bring Krishna over with her DNA collection kit.
A moment later, Colin and I stood yards away, watching the CSI tech run a long cotton swab along the inside of Jimmy Boulard’s cheek. Krishna had also plucked the cigarette the ranger had just smoked and abandoned on the asphalt—you could never have too much spit.
“Krishna didn’t pull much off the car,” Colin said. “What about this guy?”
I shrugged. “I can’t read him. I sniff evil but not which kind. And standing there with him … He’s a little over six feet, and pretty muscular for an old guy.”
“Strong enough to carry a dead girl to that trail?”
I shrugged. “Compared to our other suspects, he knows the park best.”
“He smart enough to send ciphers?”
“Possibly. He has a navy tat.”
“Can we hold him?”
“Not yet, but we can watch him.” I held up my tiny notepad. “And we’ll see if the writing here matches the writing on the cards.”
My radio blipped. “Lou!”
Colin and I both straightened as though Lieutenant Rodriguez stood before us.
“I’m five minutes out,” our boss announced, “and I got a list.”