The White Angel Murder

61

Stanton sat at his desk. He had the pathologist from the Imperial County Medical Examiner’s Office on the phone and was discussing the autopsy of Pamela Dallas. He asked if fecal matter had been found in her throat and the pathologist asked why he would’ve checked for that. He said he did look to see if it was clear of obstructions, but no scrapings were taken.

From the way he spoke, Stanton guessed it wasn’t him that had actually done the autopsy. Salton City was small, a population of less than a thousand, but Imperial County as a whole had one of the worst epidemics of meth in the entire nation. He dealt with plenty of corpses and may just have assumed Pamela was some junkie before giving the project to his assistant. Or, as Stanton had seen in smaller towns, he knew he was not qualified to perform forensic investigations of homicide victims and he passed the buck to someone else that could catch the blame.

His desktop dinged and he looked to see that he had received a new email. It was from Anderson. It was a scanned file of a missing persons report with a note that said, “You may want to check this out.”

Stanton opened the file, and his heart stopped in his chest. He told the pathologist he would call him back and stared at the photo on his computer screen. It was Tami Jacobs, but not quite. This girl was younger but the resemblance was striking. Same color eyes, same height, big breasts, they even styled their hair the same.

It was also Pamela Dallas.

He read the report quickly as it was only a page and a half. The investigating detective had written that the boyfriend grew hostile and seemed unconcerned about the girl’s disappearance. Stanton checked to make sure the email had also been sent to his Android and then took off out the door.

He saw Jessica in the hallway.

“You’re going to want to come with me.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“Might be nothing.”

“Hang on, let me get my badge.”

She went to her desk and pulled out her badge and firearm with her holster and took off her jacket before placing it on. She met him at the elevators and saw that he looked excited and agitated at the same time.

“What’s this about?”

“Missing person.” He pulled up the file on his phone and let her read the report.

“Looks just like-”

“I know.”

“We going to pay Brian a visit?”

“Yes.”

Stanton got on the elevator. She followed and pressed the button to the first floor.

“I called you last night,” she said.

“Yeah, I saw. Sorry, I meant to get back to you. What was it?”

“Nothing important. I just wanted to talk.”

“About the case?”

“No, just … talk.” She cleared her throat. “I saw George Young today.”

“Oh yeah, what did he say?”

The elevator stopped and they got off. “Nothing much. He got off of his suspension today so he’s back at his desk. They didn’t find any misconduct; just that he had identified the wrong witness. He did mention you though. He said for me to tell you to keep the hell away from him.”

“No problem there.”

They climbed into Jessica’s Jeep Wrangler and pulled out of the parking lot. Stanton noticed that the CD playing in the car was Yanni.

“You like Yanni?”

“Don’t laugh. A lot of people like Yanni.”

“No, that’s not what I was laughing at. I like him too. I just never pictured you liking him. You seem more like a Led Zeppelin girl.”

“I can like both. But you’re right. When I was ten I went to a Led Zeppelin reunion concert with my grandfather of all people.”

“How’d he like it?”

“He hated it. He was strictly a Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard guy. But he took me cause he knew I liked them.”

“Were you guys close?”

They turned onto the interstate and Jessica sped past another car on the onramp.

“When he was around. He was actually in and out of jail most of my life. Nothing serious, he was just always drunk and getting into fights. He was Irish though so it’s hard to blame him I guess. But he could be a real asshole too. He sold all of his kids’ Christmas presents once and took the money to a bar and got drunk.”

“It’s difficult to know what other people are going through. He may have had some demons that wouldn’t let him go unless he was drunk.”

“I guess. It wasn’t all bad though. Scared the crap out of my dad so he never touched so much as a beer.” She turned the music down. “So why are we going to interview Brian? I thought we had our guy and he’s under surveillance.”

“I checked on that this morning. He hasn’t left his house. Surveillance hasn’t even seen him to snap a photo. If he has her she could be in his house. Brian may know something.”

They came off the interstate onto Maple Drive and Stanton directed her down a residential neighborhood and then up a hill. Near the top of the hill was a convenience store and gun store and across the street was a barber shop. They parked in front of the convenience store and then walked down to the gun store.

The first thing they saw when they came in was a giant poster of the statue of liberty with a holster and a gun and a giant stamp on the bottom that said SECOND AMENDMENT: USE IT OR LOSE IT.

An older man was at the counter showing some handguns to a family and Stanton walked over to him and flashed his badge.

“I need to speak to Brian please.”

“We got two Brians. Which one you need?”

Stanton flipped through the report on his phone. “Newman.”

“All right, hang on.”

He went in back and came out with a young man following him. Brian appeared malnourished he was so skinny and he had the floppy, disheveled haircut of a stoner.

“Are you Brian Newman?”

“Yeah.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Jon. We’re from the San Diego Police Department. We just need to ask you a few questions about Zoe.”

“I already talked to the cops.”

“I know, but we have some follow up we’d like to talk to you about. Won’t take more than a minute or two.”

“All right, let’s talk in back.”

They followed him through a door to the back area. It was filled with boxes and firearms. A few deer and moose heads adorned the walls and there were two other people cleaning pistols and rifles on a metal table.

“So what’dya need?”

“The night she disappeared, you said she ran out to her car in the parking lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Could you see her from where you were?”

“No, I was inside the mall.”

“How long did you wait for her?”

“I dunno, like five or ten minutes maybe.”

“And I think you said you were in a hurry to get to a friend’s house.”

“Yeah, we was way late and she was taking forever. So I went out there.”

“Did you go to her car?”

“Yeah, I didn’t see nothin’ though.”

“Well was there anything or anyone around her car? Or nearby; maybe farther down the parking lot?”

“Nope. There wasn’t nothin’. I thought maybe she’d gone back inside.”

“Where was her car parked?”

“Near a light in the back’a Macy’s.”

“Were there any cars around hers?”

“Yeah, like some blue van and a-”

“Where was the van?”

“Um, like right next to her car.”

Stanton took out his notepad and began to write. “What kind of van was it?”

“Blue. Had like rust all over it. Looked like a piece.”

“Did you see anyone in it or anyone that got into it later?”

“No.”

“Did you see the license plate?”

“No I wasn’t really lookin’ ya know?”

“Were the windows tinted?”

“Yeah, yeah I think so.”

“Brian, this is really important, do you remember anything else about the van that could help me identify it if I saw it?”

“Um, no. No I don’t think so.”

“All right.” He asked for a card from Jessica and gave it to him. “If you think of anything else, you call this number and ask for Jon or Jessica, okay?”

“Okay.”

When they had left and were back on the road Stanton called Chin Ho. He answered on the second ring and sounded out of breath.

“What’s up, Jon?”

“You at the office?”

“Yeah, yeah just took the stairs. What’s going on?”

“I need you to log in to the State-wide and check on a car for me.”

“Okay, one sec … all right, whose car?”

“Our boy’s mother.”

“Okay, you know her name?”

“Debra Rattigan. She’d have a birthday in the sixties.”

“All right, hang tight a sec … okay, three Debra Rattigan’s, one with a birthday of August eleven, sixty eight. Same address as our boy.”

“That’s it. What kind of car?”

“She has a Chevy Express cargo van.”

“What color?”

“Ah … blue.”