Judgement Calls

I could finally find out what others decided about the future of Frank

Derringer and Chuck, not to mention me.

Chuck had been suspended from all MCT investigations and put on

temporary assignment to patrol. Since detectives don't work patrol,

the police union was filing a grievance, claiming that Chuck had

essentially been demoted without a hearing. The union's interest was

to make the bureau's staffing as inflexible as possible, so the bureau

has to hire new bodies whenever it has a shortage in any single area.

The bureau was fighting the beef, claiming that the change was a simple

reassignment, since Chuck's salary hadn't been docked. Chuck, of

course, wasn't given a say in any of it and was back on patrol, angry

but cognizant of the fact that he could have been suspended.

Personally, I'd rather be suspended. Maybe if I'd boinked the entire

Major Crimes Team, I'd be one of those lucky public employees who got

suspended for a couple of years with pay until a lengthy investigation

resulted in my return to full employment with no discipline other than

an extended paid vacation. But sex with just one detective left me

where I was, back with my drug and vice cases.

Lopez had agreed to an adjournment. True believer that she was, she

wouldn't have acquiesced unless she thought the delay would help

Derringer. Based on that, I tried telling O'Donnell that the time was

ripe to approach the defense with a decent plea agreement. But he

refused, reminding me that the boss had ordered him not to pressure a

plea until the police determined whether the Long Hauler was for

real.

O'Donnell had continued to surprise me with relatively decent behavior.

He agreed that I'd handle communications with Kendra and Andrea about

the case. Even though I suspected he did it to save himself the work

of victim handhold-ing, I was grateful that Kendra wasn't going to have

to hear about the turn of events from someone other than me.

The night after I'd been kicked off the case, I had taken Kendra out to

dinner and did my best to explain why the case was being set over. I

wanted desperately to answer all her questions about what was going to

happen, whether Derringer was still going to go to jail, why some

"stupid" letter had to affect her case, and everything else she asked

me as she played with her food. All I could do was tell her not to

give up hope. We'd have to wait and see.

We both kept up a good front, but the signs of demoralization were

clear in her untouched plate.

Now that the case was over, there wasn't much of an official role for

me to play in Kendra's life. I talked to her about enrolling in the

LAP teen program. Learning Alternatives to Prostitution was intended

for court-mandated treatment of criminal defendants, but anyone could

enroll. I'd already contacted them, and a counselor had told me she

could get Kendra a volunteer tutor to help her with school and Kendra

could participate in weekly group therapy sessions. Sometimes the

"therapy" took the form of activities like painting and gardening, but

those might be just the things Kendra needed to reenter life as a

somewhat regular thirteen-year-old.

Now, Monday morning. I reminded myself that I was supposed to be

acting like a lawyer. I spent the afternoon returning phone calls and

covering grand jury hearings. One guy I indicted definitely earned the

dope-of-the-day award, if not the year. The defendant marched into the

lobby of Southeast Precinct to report a fraud and pulled fifteen ounces

of heroin and a scale from his gym bag. Turns out the seller charged

him for a pound. Outraged by the one-ounce shortage, the defendant

thought the police would help him get what he called "reparations."

Ordinarily, this would have carried me through the day. But even the

reprieve from crank calls, break-ins, head cracks, and brown Toyota

Tercels wasn't enough to make me appreciate my return to the mundane. I

couldn't keep my mind off the so-called Long Hauler and his claim of

responsibility for the attack on Kendra. Something just didn't feel

right about it. I needed to get more evidence against Derringer, so I

could trash him no matter what the Long Hauler's story turned out to

be.

I decided to take a little detour on the way home from work. I

wouldn't even say that I decided to do it; it was more like my body

willed me. Right after my usual merge onto the 1-5 from the Morrison

Bridge, I noticed the exit sign for the Lloyd Center mall. I reminded

myself of how good I'd been about following Duncan's orders. I thought

of the trouble I'd be in for snooping around, the way O'Donnell's

nostrils would flare in anger if he found out, and the possibility that

it was all a waste of time anyway. The next thing I knew, I was

parking my Jetta outside of Meier & Frank in the Lloyd Center parking

lot and walking into the handbags department.

Now, if this had been a premeditated case of meddling into affairs that

were no longer mine, I would have checked Kendra's purse out of the

evidence locker and taken it with me to the counter. But since this

was impromptu meddling, I was left describing the purse to the nitwit

at the counter.

Nitwit was about seventeen years old. Her blond hair tumbled out of

the knot at the back of her head like a fountain designed by someone on

a heavy acid trip. From the bottom up, everything she wore was

irritating: platform sandals that made my feet wince, jeans slung low

enough to reveal a navel ring and bony hips, and a tight belly shirt

that evidently operated like a tube of toothpaste, pushing all her

bodily fluids into her head and retarding the firing of her synapses.

My badge, ID, and lengthy explanation of what I was looking for and why

were apparently lost on her, because she seemed to think I was browsing

around for a new handbag.

And, of course, everything she said ended with a question mark. "We

don't really have any bags by Esprit right now? But we have, like, a

ton of black leather purses, OK? We have some really cute Nine West

purses over here? And there's some on sale over there? But I really

like these Kate Spade ones?" I was beginning to think she was an evil

robot, programmed to prattle on about purses until her frosty-pink lip

gloss dried up.

I explained it to her a few more times. I wasn't interested in buying

a new purse. I was from the District Attorney's Office working on a

criminal investigation and needed to know whether they carried a

certain black leather purse by Esprit last autumn.

After the fourth try, Nitwit clued in and the frosty lips started

moving again. "OK, like, I totally didn't understand that before? You

want to ask about something we had, like, way back in November? I so

didn't work here yet?"

I finally uttered the magic words that should have been my first. "Is

there, like, a manager or something?"

Sweet lord, a woman in her thirties was never such a relief! Her name

tag identified her as Jan, senior sales associate. All that mattered

to me was that she'd worked there for two years and spoke that

increasingly endangered language known as grown-up.

"OK, let's see .. . black leather handbag by Esprit. Around November."

I was nodding as she thought out loud. "Yeah, we had a line of leather

bags by them last year. They normally do more canvas and novelty bags.

What kind of strap did it have? There was one that was more like a

backpack, one that had a shorty little handbag strap, and then a couple

with shoulder straps."

I told her it had a regular shoulder strap and then did my best

sketching it on a piece of scrap paper she gave me.

"Yeah, that looks like one of the shoulder strap ones we had." She

walked around the counter and pulled a bag out that was on display.

"Does it look kind of like this one, but with seams on the side and

without this little buckle here?"

"That's just what it looks like," I said, surprise in my tone. I

couldn't believe anyone could distinguish among purses in such detail,

but I guess others would marvel at my ability to distinguish Grey Goose

from Smirnoff.

"Do most of the people who were here last fall still work with the

company?" I asked.

She looked up in the air like she was thinking and counting. "Yeah,

not everyone, but mostly."

"And what are the chances one of them might remember selling that

particular purse to someone if I get you a picture of the person?" I

asked, my smile revealing that I knew it was a long shot.

"Boy, pretty slim. That was six months ago." She could see my

disappointment register. "Hey, it's worth a shot,

though. Tell you what, you give me the picture and I'll make sure

everyone takes a look at it."

"Great." I thought about the easiest way to get a picture of Andrea to

Jan and slipped into thinking aloud myself. "OK, I can get a booking

photo of her from January, which should be pretty much how she looked

last November."

Solid, reliable Jan looked alarmed at the mention of a booking photo,

and I laughed. "Oh, don't worry. She's not a hardened criminal or

anything." Of course, the truth is that hardened criminals come to the

mall and buy regular, boring things from stable, reliable people like

Jan every day, but I didn't see the need to tell her that. "It's

actually kind of a long story. A security guard at Dress You Up

excluded her from the store. It was really more of a misunderstanding,

but they had her arrested a few months later when she came back."

Jan tilted her head. "God, that rings a bell. I sold a purse to a

woman, and I remember she was red hot about some security guard at

Dress You Up. The guy had accused her of shoplifting, and even though

she told them to look through her stuff and they didn't find anything,

he kicked her out of the store. Didn't apologize or anything. You

know, that would've been around November."

I had to refrain from throwing my arms around solid, reliable Jan. It

had to have been Andrea. She must've bought the purse the same day she

had the run-in with Kerry Richardson at Dress You Up.

"And this woman bought the Esprit purse we've been talking about?" I

asked.

"I have no idea. I just remember the thing about the security

guard."

"What about the woman who bought the purse? Was she about thirty-five?

Brown shoulder-length hair? About my height?" I was doing my best to

describe Andrea, whose appearance was most notable for being

nondescript.

Jan shook her head. "I don't know. Like I said, I just remember that

conversation. Maybe if I saw her picture "

I dashed back to my car and drove over to Northeast Precinct. It was

only a couple of miles, but pesky things like lights, cats, and

frolicking children kept getting in the way of my car. The forty

minutes it took me to print Andrea's booking photo from X-imaging and

take it back to Jan felt like an eternity.

Jan looked carefully at Andrea's picture and said, "Yeah, I think

that's the woman. I remember her now." It wasn't the best ID in the

world, but it was a hell of lot more than I had a few days ago.

I was too excited to go home to my usual routine, so I picked up Vinnie

for a visit to Dad's. In the car, I checked my cell for messages.

There were two from Chuck. I'd been avoiding him since the shit hit

the fan in Duncan's office. Hell, I had to face him eventually. I

left a message to meet me at Dad's if he felt like it.

Dad was so happy to see me he didn't even complain about Vinnie tagging

along.

Going to Dad's is a major treat for Vinnie. Dad's yard is large enough

that there were still some bushes that Vinnie hadn't managed to pee on

yet. Vinnie would sniff around back, seeking out unsoiled ones to

violate. Add the Milk Bones that Dad keeps around to control Vinnie's

breath, and Dad's house was the Vinnie equivalent of a Yankees-Mets

game.

By the time Chuck showed up, Dad and I had fed Vinnie, gone to the

market for the "grocks" as Dad called them, and put a dish of baked pen

ne in the oven.

Dad took great pleasure announcing Chuck's arrival before he headed

back to the kitchen. "Sam, your man's here and he's got wine."

Chuck was lingering by the door. As I went to kiss his cheek, he

grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me close. I couldn't tell

if he noticed that my response was awkward. I let myself be held; it

felt good to rest my head against his chest and feel his arms around

me. But I couldn't quite bring myself to return the embrace.

Maybe he picked up on my reticence. As he finally let go of me, he

settled for a kiss on the top of the head. "Hey, you. I brought your

favorite."

It was an Australian shiraz-cab blend, perfect for someone like me who

can't handle a full-blown cabernet. I forced a smile as we headed back

into the kitchen. "Thanks. That was sweet."

Dad gave Chuck one of those half handshake, half shoulder-grab things

that guys give each other instead of hugs. "Hey, big man, how you

holding up?" he asked. I was glad Dad had kicked off the

conversation. I was still resisting the urge to pull Chuck outside and

grill him until I was absolutely positive, beyond any doubt, that he

had fully disclosed everything he knew about Landry's confession.

"You know, patrol's not so bad. It's kind of a nice break from the

heavy stuff." From some guys, this might've sounded like saving face,

or maybe just making the best of a bad situation. From Chuck, it

sounded sincere.

Me? I was just trying to make the most of a bad situation.

"Same here. Too many of those MCT cases and I would've started to lose

my faith in humanity. I'd hate to wind up like O'Donnell one of these

days," I said with a shudder.

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Dad said. "Back with the Forest

Department, you know, we never really had to do anything like what you

were doing at MCT. Just some trespassing, drunks, a few fights. Enough

to make life exciting, but the most you ever brought home at night was

a funny story."

When Dad talked about his career, he tended to leave out his years as

an Oregon State Police detective. He joined the Forest Department when

I was a toddler. He and Mom decided the hours were more regular, the

pension was better, and he was less likely to get shot in the forest

than in OSP. Dad liked to say he was grateful for the switch, but I

always sensed he missed the excitement of his early career.

"So, Lucky Chucky, what kind of stories you got for us tonight?" I

asked, grateful that Dad had never asked for the etymology of the

nickname.

Chuck shook his head as he poured three glasses of wine. "Nothing,

really. Been pretty slow."

I could tell there were a few possibilities, though. Maybe not

full-out, pee-your-pants knee slappers, but enough to make him smile.

"Oh, c'mon," I cajoled. "There's no way you've been on patrol all week

without something happening. You have a civic responsibility to share

your telltale stories with bored retirees and drug deputies."

"OK, there was this one guy. He was weaving his BMW all over the place

through a school zone, right when kids were starting to come in.

Windows tinted nearly black. When I pulled him over and he rolled down

his window, I could see he was yapping into his cell phone. Must've

been what distracted him. I was planning to give him a warning and

send him on his way, but he refused to get off the phone. Kept telling

me that he billed his time at four hundred dollars an hour and I was

keeping him from his work."

"So you wrote him a ticket?" Dad asked.

Chuck smiled. "Better than that. I impounded the BMW."

"You did what?" I said.

"I towed it. Oregon Motor Vehicle Code section 815.222: illegal window

tinting, a tow able violation. Includes applying any tint that limits

light transmittance to less than fifty percent. My best guess is he

should be getting it out of the impound lot right around now," he said,

glancing at his watch.

Dad was laughing, but I wasn't. "I can't believe you did that. It's a

total abuse of your authority. That's why people hate cops, Chuck."

Dad and Chuck exchanged a glance before Chuck spoke up. "It wasn't

just an attitude problem, Sam. He nearly hit a kid and didn't even

care. I was trying to show him some perspective."

"Sounds kind of like something you'd do, Sam," Dad said, laughing.

Maybe, but it still bothered me that Chuck thought it was funny.

He insisted on making sure I got home OK. I had half a bottle of Pinot

Gris in my fridge, so I poured a glass for each of us to finish it

off.

He finally raised the subject we'd been avoiding. "One of the guys

called me a couple of hours ago. Word is, IA's got something on the

Long Hauler."

I looked at him with surprise. "Guy seemed like a pro. First letter

had no prints, not even DNA on the stamp or envelope."

"I assume the second letter's the same," he said. "I didn't mean they

figured out who he is. But the stuff in the letter, it's for real.

They found four unsolved homicide cases that match the other girls this

guy says he did."

"But is it stuff he could've gotten from papers?" I asked.

"I don't know. He also said he left something of Jamie's in the Gorge.

IA's got a bunch of Explorers out there combing through the forest

looking for it."

Explorers are high school students who want to become police officers.

They make for a handy resource during fishing expeditions. They don't

mind hiking around in the mud as long as they get to wear a uniform,

they're a hell of a lot cheaper than police officers on overtime, and

they aren't fat yet, so they can do helpful things like climb hills and

fit through small spaces. On the other hand, if you want an idea of

how reliable they are in their searches, the DC police used them to

search Rock Creek Park for the body of that poor missing intern a few

summers ago.

"Do you know what they're looking for?" I asked.

"No. I'm surprised I heard anything. IA's being quiet about this, and

I of all people am not supposed to hear a word. But, you know, the

guys look out for each other."

It bothered me that he didn't say who shared the information. Was he

actually worried I'd be angry at one of the MCT detectives for leaking

information to him? If the gap between cops and DAs seemed that wide

to him, maybe he was in a place I would never truly understand. As it

stood, I realized I knew little about Chuck Forbes the detective.

Perhaps I had been too quick to assume that his hands were squeaky

clean.

I turned on the TV to catch my favorite talking-head show, Hardball. I

still don't know how a guy who looks like a fifty year-old surfer dude

had the balls to think he'd get away with a motto like "Let's play

hardball," but Chris Matthews seems to have pulled it off. Maybe if

Griffith fired me, I could get Matthews to hire me as a talking head.

It would be an easy job, and it seemed like an inevitable stop on the

road for anyone at the middle of a media frenzy. Yes, the congressmen

did it. So did the missing kids' parents. So did that guy who used to

play a detective with a bird on TV. They pretty much always did it.

Chuck and I didn't say much during the show. The silence was

interrupted occasionally as we vented about the new terrorism warnings

that were issued every time the president's ratings were slipping. But

we said that all the time.

I don't know when I decided not to tell him about solid reliable Jan,

but I took the fact that I didn't want to as a bad sign, one he

apparently picked up on. Once Chris Matthews got through telling us

what he really thought, Chuck announced that it was time for him to

head home. I didn't try to stop him, and he kissed me on the top of my

head again when I walked him to the door.

thirteen.

Things started moving forward the next morning.

The media had gotten wind of the search in the Gorge and were clamoring

for more information. That meant I could probe O'Donnell for

information about the search without tipping him off that someone on

MCT was talking to Chuck about the investigation. I stuck my head into

his office door and asked him for an update.

"I'm beginning to think you suffer from selective deafness, Kincaid.

You .. . are .. . off.. . the .. . case!" O'Donnell pantomimed the

words with his hands to mimic sign language. I would definitely not be

inviting him to my next Charades party. He sucked.

I reminded him that I was still supposed to be coordinating

communications with Kendra and her mom. I had prepared a white lie:

Andrea Martin was clamoring for answers and he either had to fork over

some information or explain it all to her himself before Channel 2 did.

A pissed-off victim is every prosecutor's worst nightmare. A weepy

interview on the local news saying they've been left out of the loop

and victimized again by the system rings true to every viewer who's

ever been ignored by a bureaucrat.

As it turned out, I didn't need to resort to my bluff, because

O'Donnell actually caught himself being an asshole and apologized.

"Sorry, you're right. I snapped because this case is getting to me.

Have a seat," he said, clearing some notebooks from a chair for me.

He picked up the phone, indicating with his thumb and forefinger that

it would be a short call. "Hey, Carl. It's O'Donnell. Did you

double-check with all the crime labs yet?" He gave the frequent

"yeahs" and "unh-huhs" that aren't very helpful when you're

eavesdropping on one side of a conversation. "Well, we gave it a shot.

This guy's one lucky son of a bitch."

"Bad news?" I asked as he hung up.

"Understatement of the century," he said, rolling his eyes. "C'mon, I

gotta go over all this stuff with Duncan. You might as well come."

"I thought I was off the case," I said, imitating his mock sign

language. He laughed, and I had to as well.

"Damn, you can be a pain in the ass. Just come on, OK?" he said,

walking out of his office. If O'Donnell kept this up, I might actually

start to like him.

Duncan was on the phone when we walked in. He gestured for us to have

a seat. I was doing a lot of this today.

O'Donnell leaned forward so the two of us could talk quietly while we

waited for Duncan to finish his call. "None of this goes to Forbes,

right?"

The request was reasonable under the circumstances. I nodded.

"OK. We found four unsolved homicides through the Northwest Regional

Cold Case Database. One in Idaho, one in Montana, and two in

Washington. All of them women, all either prostitutes or promiscuous.

So far, the details match the Long Hauler letter to a T. We're dealing

with a grade-A psycho."

"What kind of details, public information or concealed?" I asked. In

any murder investigation, law enforcement always held back certain

details. It kept the bad guy from knowing what investigators had, and

it could help down the road if a wanna-be confessor tried to jump into

the mix.

"Stuff no one else could know. Position of the bodies, personal items

that were taken, whether specific items of clothes were on or off. I

told you, the guy's for real."

"Just on the four new cases? What about Zimmerman and Martin?" I

asked. It sounded funny to label Kendra by her last name, but

O'Donnell was sharing information. It was better not to remind him of

my personal attachment to the victim.

"Them too. On your case, he gave us the exact intersection they pulled

Martin from, everything they did to her, that they threw the purse in

the trash. The paper didn't have those details."

"No, but it all came out in trial," I said. I was playing it cool,

removing the lid from my latte and blowing in the cup, like we were

talking about running times or stock performances.

"Are you saying you saw a suspicious serial-killer type sitting in on

your trial?"

He was right. I would have noticed if someone had been watching. "Any

possibility that Derringer did it all and then wrote to the paper as

the Long Hauler when he got caught on the Martin rape?" Clearly

Derringer was benefiting from these letters, and given what he did to

Kendra, he certainly had it in him to rape and kill other women.

But O'Donnell was already shaking his head. "Doesn't look like it. No

way he could've sent them himself. The jail reads all outgoing

prisoner mail. There's always the possibility that he could sneak a

letter to a visitor or something, but it doesn't look like he could be

the guy. We've already got him solid in Oregon during two of the

out-of-state murders. He had a parole meeting with Renshaw during one

of them and was doing time on the Clackamas County attempted sod for

another."

It looked like we had a serial killer on our hands. "Any other cases

in the Cold Case Database that match?" I asked. The computerized data

bank was a partnership among law enforcement agencies in the Pacific

Northwest and included details of all unsolved homicides.

"Nope, nothing obvious," he said. "Our guy's MO seems to be street

girls, strangled and dumped outside so it takes awhile to find them.

Looks like he copped to all of them in his letter."

Duncan hung up the phone. "Governor's office," he said, by way of

explanation. "They're all over me. Jackson's under pressure to pardon

Taylor and is looking for something to hang his hat on. Fucking pussy.

He won't admit it's because of the death penalty. Doesn't want to lose

eastern Oregon."

Bud Jackson was a Portland liberal who managed to win a statewide race

only by sending his wife, the daughter of a prominent local ranching

family, on the campaign trail throughout conservative rural Oregon.

"If he can say Taylor might be innocent, he could do the pardon and

save face." Duncan stopped, seeming to register my presence for the

first time since I sat down. "This OK with you, Tim?" he asked,

tilting his head toward me.

"Yeah, I'm going to need some help with the Martin family. I was just

giving Sam what we got out of the letters."

"Well, it's nice to see you two sharing the sandbox again. So where

are we this morning?" he asked, folding his arms in front of him. "I

see we weren't able to keep the Gorge search quiet."

"No, sir, we weren't," O'Donnell said, laughing at the obvious

understatement.

"They find anything?" Griffith asked.

"Yes, miraculously." Tim turned toward me. "To get you up to speed,

Kincaid, the Long Hauler said he threw Zimmerman's purse from his car

past a bend in the road up the Gorge, about a quarter mile from the

freeway, so we sent the Explorers out there yesterday to dig around

along the road out there." He turned back toward Griffith. "They

spent all day searching yesterday, but no luck. The bureau was about

to call everybody in, but they wanted to make sure they didn't screw it

up. Don't want to pull a Washington, DC have some old guy's dog dig it

up next year from right under their noses. Anyway, the detective

supervising the search pulls out a park map and talks to every Explorer

to make sure he marks off where they've searched. Turns out there's a

monster patch of blackberry bushes no one wanted to touch. About a

quarter of a football field, four feet high. Now most people would've

let it slide, thinking no way a purse can get in there."

I nodded. Blackberry bushes are dense and woody. You can't get

through them without a hatchet. I knew from the countless golf balls

I'd lost to them that a purse thrown on a blackberry bush would bounce

off.

"But this guy is ex-military, total sphincter boy. He checked with the

parks department and found out they started letting those bushes grow

two years ago, meaning they weren't there when Zimmerman was killed. So

he gets everybody clearing out blackberry bushes all night. They found

it early this morning," he said, sounding more excited. "They actually

found Jamie Zimmerman's purse, and it's pretty much where the guy said

it would be. Still has a bunch of stuff in it. Cigarettes, makeup,

and, most critically, a fake ID issued to one Jamie Zimmerman. A

detective told me he got chills when he found it. Her real ID was in

the pocket of her jeans along with a condom and a lipstick, and we

figured that was all she carried. We never even knew to look for a

purse."

"So we've got him tied to everything now," Duncan said. "Jesus, five

dead women, Sam's vie, God knows how many others. Do the police have

any leads on this guy?"

"No. Whoever he is, his luck is unbelievable. Crime lab says there's

no DNA on either letter. The Cold Case Databank entries for all four

of the other cases indicated there was too much deterioration for

testable DNA samples, just like with Zimmerman. I had IA call the

hometown police agencies to verify the computer information, and I

heard from them right before I came down. Nothing."

"Were there any other strangling cases in the database without DNA

evidence?" I asked.

O'Donnell paused. "No, just the ones from the letter."

"What's the FBI doing?" Duncan asked.

"They're interested but haven't taken over yet. They've got a profiler

studying the cases. Can't give me a time line on when they might have

something."

Duncan gave a dismissive wave. "Useless anyway. Let me take a wild

guess. Guy in his mid-twenties to forties, loner, no meaningful

relationships with women, with a job or lifestyle that takes him

through the Pacific Northwest. Likes to type letters and call himself

the Long Hauler. Yeah, real science."

He looked down at his desk and picked up a file.

"Alright, folks, here's what we're going to do. We're dumping the case

against Derringer." Duncan put up a hand to silence me before any

words came out of my open mouth. "No, Sam, we're dumping it. Your

evidence has gone to shit. You've got nothing but the vic's ID. Now,

I know you've got a personal interest in the girl, and it's admirable.

It really is. But the girl was coming out of a heroin OD. Plus you've

got a nearly identical crime committed by a different person same type

of victim, same location, both with missing purses. Oh, and don't

forget that the different person is confessing to both crimes. You

don't have enough to prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt. Hell,

Sam, you don't even have probable cause."

"Duncan, the man's a convicted sex offender with shaved pubic hair.

That, combined with the confession "

He interrupted me. "You know damn well the jury can't hear about the

sex offense. Plus we had that defense attorney in here a couple days

ago about that, because the shaving was bothering me too. I can see

why you butt heads with her," he said, smiling. "What's her name

again?"

"Lisa Lopez," I said.

"Right, Lopez. Real firecracker, that one. But she made a good point.

She says Derringer shaved his privates because he was due for a second

pethismograph the Monday after the assault. I guess the wires pulled

at him on the first one." Duncan and Tim both made faces like even the

thought was painful. Wusses. They should try a bikini wax. "We

confirmed it with the PO what's his name "

"Renshaw," O'Donnell reminded him.

Griffith nodded. "Renshaw checked his calendar. Derringer was due in

on Monday, just like Lopez said. She couldn't find a way to bring it

out at trial without letting the jury know her guy was a pervert, so

she had to leave it out. Anyway, all you've got left is the ID, Sam,

and it's not enough."

But I had more than that. I had solid reliable Jan. I told them about

my visit to Meier & Frank. Surely it would be enough. It meant that

the fingerprint was back. The print had always been the best evidence.

So why weren't they excited?

"No dice, Sam," O'Donnell said, shaking his head. "I saw your note in

the file that the mom thought she got it from Meier & Frank. Just to

be safe, I called Staffpower, the temp agency that Derringer worked

for?"

I nodded.

"They faxed this over," O'Donnell said, handing me a piece of paper

from his file. "Turns out most stores do inventory before the holiday

shopping frenzy, and a lot of them use Staffpower. Derringer did

inventory at Meier & Frank last October also."

The paper he'd handed me was a list of all of the jobs Derringer took

through Staffpower last year. In the two months before Thanksgiving,

he must've worked inventory for half the stores in the mall.

"You could've saved yourself some time if you'd talked to me before you

went running around Meier & Frank on your own after you got taken off

the case," Tim said.

"I didn't 'run around," " I said, making air quotes with my hands. I

was seething. And I hate air quotes. "It's on my way home and "

Griffith put a hand up to silence us. "Sandbox. Remember, kids?" Tim

and I stopped. Duncan was right. It didn't matter anymore.

"Sam, you'll explain the situation to the family?" Griffith asked.

I nodded. Yes, I would have to. I couldn't pretend any longer that

the case was winnable. It rested entirely on Ken-dra's ID. Eyewitness

ID is always questionable, but I had a child victim who had suffered a

horrific assault and was under the influence of heroin. And if I

couldn't maintain that the case was winnable, I couldn't argue with the

decision to dismiss it. I hated the thought of breaking the news to

Ken-dra, but I couldn't stomach the idea of anyone else doing it

either.

"What do you want to do with Taylor and Landry?" O'Donnell asked.

"That one's trickier," Duncan said, pressing the pads of his fingertips

together to make something resembling a filleted crab, an annoying male

gesture that seemed popular in the power corridor. "Juries heard the

evidence and found Taylor and Landry guilty. Even now, the evidence

we've got on them isn't so bad, a lot better than we've got on

Derringer. There's no way around the phone number and earrings that

Landry planted on Taylor. But now we've also got ironclad proof that

the Long Hauler is involved."

"We've basically got proof beyond a reasonable doubt of two separate

theories," I said.

"Right," Griffith said, "unless we buy Landry's explanation for how she

knew so much. So if we say she didn't do it, we're basically admitting

that a cop helped her with the set-up on Taylor and then lied about it

on the stand. I want to be careful here."

He turned to Tim. "Call the FBI. See if they'll make a polygrapher

available to us. Then see if Landry and Taylor will agree to polys.

You'll have to discuss the questions with the FBI examiner, but what I

really want to know is whether they did the Zimmerman girl, and whether

they know the Long Hauler."

The results of a polygraph examination aren't admissible in court, but

the examinations are used by law enforcement all the time. Sometimes

you hook a suspect up to one so he'll confess after he fails it. The

failed poly doesn't come into evidence, but the confession does.

Polygraphs also help clear someone you already want to cut loose, based

on your instincts: the missing kid's parents, the dead woman's husband,

the suspects who become suspects merely because of their status. If

you don't have any other reason to suspect them, a passed poly lets you

stop looking at them and move on to less obvious theories. Griffith

would feel more confident about exonerating Landry and Taylor if they

passed polygraphs first.

"Isn't there also the possibility that someone connected to Landry or

Taylor wrote the Long Hauler letters?" I asked. It couldn't be Landry

or Taylor themselves. As O'Donnell had pointed out, outgoing prisoner

mail is strictly monitored.

"I thought that was a possibility with the first letter," Tim said,

"but I can't see it with this new one. First of all, I don't think

Landry knew about Zimmerman's purse, or she would have mentioned it

when she was trying to set Taylor up for the fall. More importantly,

whoever wrote the Long Hauler letter had to know not just about the

Zimmerman murder but the four other murders, plus your case. No way

some friend of theirs could cook this up. But, like Duncan said, we

should make sure with the poly that Taylor and Landry aren't somehow

wrapped up with the Long Hauler."

"So there's the plan, team," Duncan said. The filleted crab fingers

were gone and the capped smile was back. "Sam, you take care of the

dismissal on Derringer. Any calls from the press, you give 'em some

bullshit about new evidence produced by the defense. Don't tie it to

the Long Hauler, or we'll get even more pressure to cut Landry and

Taylor loose. And talk to the victim today. The family needs to be on

board for this. Let them know we're going after this guy and her case

won't be forgotten. Tim, get me those polys. I need to get back to

Governor Jackson."

So that was it. The case was gone, and I was the one who had to

dismiss it and deliver the news to Kendra.

Part of me wanted to call her immediately. Get it over with. Rip the

bandage off. But she was in school, so I worked my hardest to keep my

mind occupied, trying not to think about how much the case's dismissal

would hurt her.

I used the morning's custodies as an excuse not to complete the

dismissal order for Derringer. And not to call Chuck. He'd already

left me two messages asking why I'd been so cold the night before. As

much as I knew that I'd eventually have to answer that question, it was

the last thing I wanted to think about right now. So, I stayed cold

and worked on custodies.

Today's custodies were typical. Thirty-two new cases,

almost all of them identical. Knock and talk, traffic stop, jaywalking

ticket. Something small usually a ruse starts the encounter between

police and someone who looks like they're up to no good. Sometimes the

no-goodnik consents to the search. Sometimes it's a pat-down for

officer safety reasons, or maybe the officer claims exigent

circumstances. Whatever the basis, the search always occurs, and the

police find either heroin, coke, or meth. I timed it out once and

figured I spend an average of seven minutes to review and issue the

typical drug case. Nothing to be proud of, but, like I said, they're

all the same.

When I finished up, I changed into my running gear and headed out into

the drizzle. The loop around the downtown and east side waterfronts of

the Willamette is almost exactly three miles. I ran hard, trying to

chase visions of Kendra and Chuck from my head, and I finished in

twenty-two minutes. Not quite as fast as our current president, but I

work a lot harder at my day job.

Back at the office, I bought myself some more time, drafting a

procrastinated response to a motion to suppress. But I couldn't ignore

the clock's reminder that my time to write the dismissal order for

Derringer was running out.

It's surprisingly easy to make a criminal case go away. I prepared a

one-sentence motion and order stating that the case was dismissed in

the interests of justice in light of exculpatory evidence produced by

the defense at trial. Lesh signed and filed it, and I faxed copies to

Lisa Lopez and the jail. Derringer would be out in a couple of

hours.

By the time I finished, I was pretty sure that Kendra would be home

from school.

After a couple of minutes of small talk, I told her I wanted to come

out to talk about the case. The tone of my voice must have given her

an idea of what was coming. "Go ahead and tell me," she said. "God or

Edison or whoever invented the phone for a reason, you know."

This wasn't going well. When I insisted on driving out, I got a

"whatever" in response. I signed myself out on the DVD board, grabbed

the file, and made it to Rockwood in record time. When I knocked on

the door, I heard what I recognized as Puddle of Mudd blasting from

Kendra's CD player. In my neighborhood, that kind of volume would

trigger a call to police. In Rockwood, it was background music.

She apparently didn't have any plans on answering the door for me. I

banged on it and pressed the bell for a full two minutes before walking

around the back of the house to knock on her bedroom window. "I know

you're in there, Kendra. I'm not leaving until you open the door." I

rapped the bottom of my fist against her window with the beat of her

music for a couple of songs until she finally turned it off.

A few seconds later, I heard her holler from the front door in a

singsong voice, "I don't know how you expect to get into the house if

you're not here when I open the door." I sprinted around the house

like a famished cat responding to a can opener, before Kendra could

change her mind. When she didn't say anything about making me wait, I

pretended like she hadn't.

"You really didn't have to drive all the way out here, you know," she

said, sitting on her bed and going through her CDs, probably searching

for the one most likely to give me a headache.

"I know," I said, even though it wasn't true. "But I wanted to see

you. You hungry?"

"You trying to give me an eating disorder or something?

French fries and a milkshake don't make everything OK, Sam."

Since when? "Fine," I said. "I want to talk to you about the case,

though."

I started by showing her the Oregonian articles about the Long Hauler.

Andrea didn't subscribe to the paper, and I suspected Kendra had never

seen the articles themselves. "What are these?" she asked.

"Please, just read them, and then we'll talk."

She took them from me and spread them out in front of her on the bed,

but I could tell she wasn't really reading them.

"Do you mind if I get a glass of water from the kitchen? I'm kind of

thirsty," I said, backing out of the room. I got another "whatever" in

response, but it gave me a way to leave her alone in her room with the

articles for a few minutes. When I returned, she was clutching a

pillow on her lap and staring at the photographs on the front page.

"I could've sworn it was him," she said.

"You're not sure anymore?" I asked.

She held the paper up to her face, staring at the photograph of

Derringer. "I still think it looks like him, but it can't be him, can

it?"

I should've given Kendra more credit. I had been clinging to our

theory of the case because I was too stubborn to admit we were

mistaken. Here she was, five minutes after reading the article,

accepting the unavoidable conclusion. We had the wrong man.

"No, Kendra, I don't see any way it can be him. I know that the

newspaper only says the Long Hauler letter had details about your case,

but it actually had a lot of information that no one could have had

without being one of the men who did this to you."

"So does everyone think I'm a liar now?" she said.

"No one thinks you lied about anything." Looking at her, knowing she

was doubting my faith in her, made me want to cry. "We know you told

the truth about what happened to you, but you might have made a mistake

about who did it. You shouldn't feel bad. You had just been through a

horribly traumatic experience. Plus, there was a lot of other evidence

pointing to Derringer. Even if you hadn't identified him, we would

have wound up focusing on him anyway after his fingerprint came up on

your purse."

"My mother did not steal that purse," she said.

"I know that. It looks like it came from Meier & Frank. The problem

is that Derringer worked there too."

Kendra gave what I thought was a growl of exasperation into the pillow.

But when she didn't lift her head, I realized she was crying. I held

her and patted her on the back. There was nothing to say.

Once the tears had stopped and she was breathing regularly again, she

wanted details on where the Long Hauler investigation stood.

"Well, you already knew that a girl named Jamie Zimmerman was killed a

few years ago. Her body was found in the Gorge, not too far from

where" I didn't know how to refer to what happened to her with her: Not

too far from where you were dumped? were found? "from where the

ambulance picked you up. Like the paper says, a couple named Margaret

Landry and Jesse Taylor were convicted of killing Jamie, but they claim

they're innocent. You knew that Derringer's attorney was suggesting in

your trial that whoever did the bad things to you had also killed

Jamie. With these letters, it's starting to look like one person,

someone other than Margaret Landry and Jesse Taylor, killed not only

Jamie but four other women. And he's claiming he was one of the people

involved in what happened to you."

"Will the police be able to find out who the Long Hauler is?" she

asked. I wanted so much to assure her that they would, that we'd nail

him and justice would be served. But I learned a long time ago that

you should never make promises to victims unless you don't mind

breaking them.

"I know they're trying. They've got the FBI involved. The police

chief and the DA are making this a top priority. The feeling is that

if the guy's writing letters to the newspaper and naming himself, he's

escalating."

I could tell from the way she looked at me that she didn't know what I

meant.

"The suspicion is that he'll start to kill even faster," I explained.

"That he'll come up with a signature or something now that he's

interested in notoriety."

"Oh, so that's why they want to catch him, to keep him from getting to

anyone else. They don't actually care about the people he already

hurt," she said.

"Hey, you know that's not what I meant. Kendra, the man has killed

five women. Of course they want to catch him. I was just trying to

tell you how much this matters to the police."

She was quiet while it all sank in. "I guess I wasn't really thinking

of it like that. That guy killed other people. And he meant to kill

me." She looked dazed. "I knew you'd charged him with attempted

murder and all, but I never thought of it as someone trying to kill me.

That I'm lucky I lived through it."

"Shows you're a survivor, kiddo. You're tougher than him; you beat

him."

"Do the police know anything yet?" she asked.

"Well, enough to think that this guy did the things he said he did. The

paper didn't mention all the details, but the letter included pretty

specific descriptions of all the attacks. The information he provided

about what happened to you and Jamie was accurate, and it's stuff he

couldn't have taken from a newspaper or something. Also, the police

have found unsolved homicides that match the other murders."

"Did they find anything when they searched the Gorge?" she asked.

"Yes, I was going to get to that. Again, the paper didn't publish this

detail, so it's important that you keep this between us for now. But

the Long Hauler told police he'd taken Jamie Zimmerman's purse and

thrown it off the side of the road in the Gorge. Using that

information, the police were able to find the purse, and it's

absolutely Jamie Zimmerman's. It even had her fake ID in it."

"I guess that's another thing that makes her case like mine, huh? That

he left us in the Gorge and took our purses?"

I hadn't thought about that before. Lisa Lopez had had the prescience

to argue that Kendra's case was just like the murder of Jamie

Zimmerman, but what exactly had she said about it?

I went out to the Jetta to grab what had grown into several volumes of

files on the Derringer case. I knew I'd seen the trial transcripts in

a binder somewhere. After Duncan turned the case over to O'Donnell,

O'Donnell must have ordered them so that he and Duncan could get up to

speed. Something was nagging at the forefront of my brain, something

someone had said during the trial. I flipped through the transcript

pages frantically. It was going to be lost if I didn't find a trigger

to pull it forward.

Then I spotted it.

"What's going on?" Kendra asked.

"Wait a second, Kendra." What else had I missed? I started from the

beginning of the file and reread everything. When I was finished, I

knew exactly where I had gone off track. It wasn't just what someone

had said at trial. I'd also missed the Tasmanian Devil.

I looked up at Kendra. "Tell me more about Haley."

I looked for her first outside of the Pioneer Place Courthouse, the

waterfront, the Hamilton motel, all the places I could think of. I

finally found her at midnight, standing on the corner of Burnside and

Fourth Avenue. She had her thumb out and looked like she'd just shot

up.

I stopped the Jetta in front of her, and she walked over to the

passenger side and opened the door. Guess she couldn't see through the

tinted windows at night.

"Hey, Haley. Want a date?" I said.

"What the fuck are you doing out here?" She looked around. Not seeing

any police, she said, "Nothing you can do to me without a cop

around."

All those Law & Order shows had done some serious damage to my image

out there. Now that everyone understood that whole "separate but

equally important parts of the criminal justice system" thing, no one

is afraid of being arrested by prosecutors anymore. Sometimes it's

just a matter of reeducation.

"Not today, maybe. But I can go drive my little Volkswagen back to the

courthouse, type out an affidavit, and have an arrest warrant for you

in the system by tomorrow morning. It's not like it takes the cavalry

to find you or anything."

She thought about that for a while. "Yeah, well, I can handle another

loitering pop. Nothing but a thing at juvie." Her eyes were barely

open. It's probably hard to care about being arrested when you're

pumped full of heroin.

"I'm not talking about juvie this time, Haley. I'm talking Measure

Eleven time."

She might not know the details, but anyone on the street as long as

Haley knew the gist of Measure 11. It meant being charged as an adult

and getting real time. The threat was enough to fire her up as much as

could be expected in her current state.

She pretended to laugh. "You ain't got shit on me. Now you better

move along, bitch. I got work to do."

I suppressed the impulse to mow her down with the Jetta. I would've

opened a six-pack of Fahrfegnugen on her ass over the c-word, but under

the circumstances I could handle the b-word.

"I'd be careful about how you choose to work, Haley," I said. "From

where I sit it's called promoting prostitution, not loitering. And

promoting prostitution for a thirteen-year-old lands you under Measure

Eleven."

"Pimping? Lady, you got me confused with some Cadillac-driving,

purple-velour-wearing, platform-shoe-stomping dude." She was laughing

uncontrollably now, rattling off some more descriptors I couldn't

understand.

"Haley, listen to me. You're in major trouble here, and I'm not

fucking around." My tone got her attention. "You arranged dates for

Kendra in exchange for a cut of the fee. You set her up at the

Hamilton, knowing she was using the room to work. You sold her condoms

when she ran out, again at a profit and knowing she was using them for

prostitution. Plus, you knew she was only thirteen years old. All I

have to do is go down to the Hamilton, and I suspect I'll find several

other girls who'll say you do the same things for them. Guess what,

Haley? That's promoting prostitution, even if you don't wear purple

velour."

"That's bullshit. I was helping her out, is all. Safer to work at the

Hamilton than out of cars. And, big deal, I hooked her up with a few

guys who liked younger girls and who I knew were all right."

"Too bad, Haley. I'd heard you were smart. At this point, I'd advise

you to shut up until you've talked to a lawyer, because what you just

said amounts to a confession to a Measure Eleven charge."

I rolled up the window and hit my turn signal like I was going to pull

out into traffic on Burnside. I was beginning to think she was going

to let me leave when I heard the tap on the window. I rolled it down

again.

"So what do you want?" she asked.

"Now that's more like it. Get in."

Fourteen.

When I finally got home it was nearly two in the morning.

Chuck's Jag was in my driveway, and Chuck was asleep in the backseat. I

tapped on the window, and he reached over his head and unlocked the

front door.

"This piece of crap chose my driveway to break down in?" I said.

"Cute. Where have you been?" he asked, sitting up and pushing his

hair down from sleep.

"Another late one," I said.

"A late one where? I've been leaving you messages all night."

"Sorry. I got busy. I would've called you tomorrow."

"So, again, where have you been?"

Shoot. He'd learned something about interrogations over the years.

"Working. Griffith told me I had to dismiss the case against

Derringer, so I went out to Rockwood to break the news to Kendra."

"You were at Kendra's until two in the morning?" He sounded

appropriately skeptical.

"I had some follow-up. I'll tell you about it later. Right now I'm

exhausted." I headed toward the front door.

He grabbed my arm as I was walking up the steps to the porch. "Dammit,

Sam. What kind of follow-up? Where the hell have you been?"

I pulled my arm from his grip. "Jesus, Chuck. The stalking routine

really isn't becoming. Is this jealousy? Do you actually think I was

with someone else?"

He shook his head.

"What?" I asked.

"You scared the shit out of me. I thought something happened to

you."

"Well, nothing happened to me. With Derringer's charges dismissed, he

doesn't have any reason to try to scare me off anymore, so stop

worrying. I told you, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Please respect

that."

"Don't do this, Sam. You were distant last night, you blew off my

calls all day, and now you're out till whenever and won't tell me where

you were. I know you. The only thing I have to compete with is your

job, so something must be happening on the case. What's going on? My

guys tell me the governor's cutting Landry and Taylor loose. You tell

me you've dismissed the case against Derringer. So why were you out so

late?"

I looked at him but didn't say anything.

"You don't trust me, do you, Sam?"

I knew I should say something, but I didn't. I couldn't get my mouth

to work.

I finally spoke up when he started walking toward his car. "Explain it

to me, Chuck. How did Landry know so much about Jamie's murder if she

wasn't a part of it? And if she was a part of it, how come she passed

a polygraph while some guy tells the Oregonian where the police can

find Jamie's purse? Explain it to me. Come inside and talk to me

about it."

He turned his head just long enough to say, "You're really

unbelievable, Kincaid. You don't know me at all."

I stopped myself from pulling out my cell phone as I watched him drive

away. Part of me wanted to apologize; another part wanted to scream at

him.

Instead, I decided to get to sleep so I could wake up and work on what

I'd learned from Haley.

Two days later, my ducks were finally in a row.

Sneaking around hadn't been easy. Once the charges against Derringer

had been dropped and the news had been broken to Kendra, my role in the

matter was officially over. I was taking a big risk by jumping back

into it again without notifying Duncan and O'Donnell.

I had reserved a block of time in front of the grand jury without

indicating a specific case name. Anyone looking at the schedule would

just assume I was presenting several drug cases together. Actually, I

was trying to indict Derrick Derringer.

Getting an indictment's much easier than getting a conviction. The

grand jury's only role is to decide if there's enough evidence against

the defendant to warrant a trial, and in practice grand jurors "true

bill" almost every case presented to them. Because the grand jury

doesn't actually determine the defendant's guilt, the proceedings are

considerably less formal than at trial. No judge, no defense attorney.

Just the prosecutor and seven trusting grand jurors. We rarely even

kept a record of grand jury testimony in state court, but I'd gotten a

court reporter for this particular session. At least if I got fired,

I'd have a transcript to show for my hard work. It wouldn't be a great

trade, but it was better than nothing.

"Members of the grand jury, today's proceedings will not be typical of

the hearings you have experienced so far as grand jurors. By now, you

have figured out that most criminal cases are cut-and-dry. The

prosecutor says hello, calls in a police officer or two, and asks for

an indictment. No one gives you the other side of the story, the

evidence that complicates the picture, what the defense will say at

trial.

"Today, I will ask you to indict Derrick Derringer on charges of

obstruction of justice, perjury, statutory rape, and conspiring with

his brother to rape and murder a thirteen-year-old girl named Kendra

Martin. This will not be a straightforward story. You will learn, if

you do not already know from the news, that the State has already

dismissed charges against Derrick Derringer's brother, Frank Derringer,

for raping and attempting to murder Kendra Martin. To complicate

things further, someone has written anonymous letters to the Oregonian,

claiming that he and an unnamed accomplice, and not Frank Derringer,

are responsible for the attack on Miss Martin.

"I'll be honest with you. I am currently unable to offer a single

theory that explains both the evidence against Mr. Derringer and his

brother, and the anonymous letter that would appear to exonerate the

Derringers. I suspect that you will also find it difficult to

reconcile the evidence against

Mr. Derringer with some of the State's other evidence. That's why

your role today is so important. At the end of the presentation of the

evidence, I will ask you to decide for yourselves whether the evidence

against Mr. Derringer warrants an indictment, regardless of the

exculpatory evidence."

I started with a thorough overview of Frank Derringer's trial, the

Jamie Zimmerman case, and the Long Hauler letters. The rules of

evidence do not apply during grand jury proceedings, so I didn't have

to use live testimony to establish this background. Instead, I offered

it in summary form, using the white board to make a list of the central

characters in the case and the important points for them to remember. I

ended with the discovery of Jamie Zimmerman's purse.

The jurors looked exhausted by the time I was done. An elderly woman

across the table raised her hand. She gestured to her notes with her

pen while she spoke. "Um, maybe I'm confused or something," she said,

"but it sounds like whoever wrote these letters killed Jamie and the

other women and also raped that poor little girl. And you're saying

that you don't see how these other people Margaret Landry, Jesse

Taylor, and Frank Derringer could have written the letters, so it

sounds like they're all innocent. Have you told us anything about

Derrick Derringer yet?"

"Not yet. The evidence I have just summarized for you is the

background of a larger investigation that relates to the case against

Mr. Derringer. What you've heard so far suggests exactly what you've

stated. Like I said, you may find it difficult to reconcile all that

information with the evidence you will hear today. So I want you to

consider the remaining evidence in light of the background I've given

you and then decide whether to issue the indictment."

There were no more questions, so I called my first witness, Haley

Jameson.

Haley walked in with an attitude. I would've been disappointed in her

if she hadn't. She slumped down into the witness chair at the center

of the room and looked up at the ceiling as I had her spell her name

and take her witness oath.

"Where do you live, Haley?" I asked.

"Varies day to day. I been in a bunch of foster homes, but mostly I

just crash with friends. Stay at a place in Old Town called the

Hamilton."

"And how do you pay for things like your hotel room at the Hamilton,

food, things like that?"

"I got immunity, right?"

"Right. As we've discussed, you're testifying today with my promise

that nothing you say will be used against you."

"Mostly I date," she said. "Sometimes I'll sell some pot to friends or

something to pick up a few extra bucks."

"When you say that you date for money, are you referring to

prostitution?"

She rolled her eyes and sank into her chair a little deeper. I was

starting to worry she might slide right off.

"You need to reply to my questions with a verbal answer, Haley. The

court reporter is transcribing everything."

"Yeah. I meant prostitution," she said.

"How long have you been working in prostitution?" I asked.

" "Bout three years," she answered.

"And how old are you now?"

"Sixteen."

A couple of the grand jurors shifted uncomfortably in their seats as

they worked out the math.

"Do you know Frank and Derrick Derringer?" I asked.

"Unfortunately," she said. "Can't be on the street as long as I have

without running into them."

I had made the connection when I reviewed the file at Kendra's. I had

printed out Derrick Derringer's PPDS record so I could cross-examine

him about his prior convictions, but I'd never seen the need to pay any

attention to the basic identifying information, like hair and eye

color, height, and, most importantly, tattoos.

I pulled out one of the photographs that Kendra had given me the first

time I met her, the one showing Haley and a couple of girls with a man

whose face wasn't shown but whose tattoo was. I'd retrieved the

photographs from Tommy Garcia before I'd gone looking for Haley.

"Haley, I'm handing you a photograph that appears to show you with a

man and two other girls. Will you please tell the grand jurors what's

going on in that picture?"

"Uh, it's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

"Humor us," I said.

"Well," she said, looking at the picture, "a few of us were partying

with a guy, and someone saw a disposable camera lying around and

started taking pictures."

"Whose camera was it?"

"Kendra's," she said.

"Kendra Martin?" I clarified.

"Yeah. Kendra wasn't actually there. She'd been in my room earlier,

hanging out, and left it behind."

"Are the other girls in the picture also from the Hamilton?"

"Yeah, on and off, like me," she said.

"Who's the man in the picture, the one with the tattoo of the Tasmanian

Devil?"

"That's Derrick Derringer."

"How do you know him?" I asked.

"Like I said, hard not to know him," she said. "Him and his brother

cut in on a lot of the girls' business out there. They take a share

from you, or all of a sudden bad things start happening to you."

"Do you give any money to Frank and Derrick Derringer?"

"Yeah, I got to give 'em half of what I make. For a long time, they

were leaving us younger girls alone as long as we'd do other stuff for

'em. Now they want both. Like that night we took the picture, we did

the group thing for him, but then I had to keep giving him money on top

of it."

"So you have had sexual intercourse with Derrick Derringer?"

"Duh," she said.

"The court reporter, Haley," I reminded her.

"Yes. I've had sexual intercourse with him."

"To your knowledge, did Kendra Martin pay any of the money that she

earned to Frank and Derrick Derringer?" I asked.

"Nope. She hadn't been working long enough to really know who they

were yet. She seemed to think she was too good for a lot of it and was

real careful to stay on her own."

"What did the Derringers think of that?" I asked.

Haley and I had gone over her testimony carefully before I'd given her

the immunity deal. I was still worried, though, that she'd back out on

me.

"They were pissed. All the girls knew Kendra was out on her own. A

couple times, we told her to come around when we knew Frank or Derrick

were coming by. You know, we'd say we knew these guys and we wouldn't

be getting paid but needed to do it anyway. I figured she knew the

score, but she kept blowing us off while we were still getting stuck

with them. It was pissing a bunch of the girls off too, and they

started telling Frank and Derrick that they weren't going to go along

if Kendra wasn't."

"How did the Derringers react to that?"

Haley looked at me and then the door. For a second, it seemed like she

considered bailing, but she stayed put. She was going to need some

prodding.

"Haley, I asked you how the Derringers reacted to that."

"All I know is, I saw Derrick the day after Kendra got messed up. He

said that me and the other girls should take a lesson from her, that

that's what happened to girls who didn't have someone watching out for

them."

"Did he ever tell you directly that he or his brother was involved in

the attack on Kendra?" I asked.

"No, just that we should take a lesson from it."

"Did you say anything in response to that?" I asked. I could tell she

was considering clamming up again, but then she gave up.

"Yeah. I was pretty messed up at the time and mouthed off to him. I

told him he'd better be careful because Kendra had a picture of him."

"Are you referring to the photograph that we just discussed?"

"Yeah. I saw the pictures after Kendra got them developed. Derrick

freaked when I told him and started shaking me to find out what I was