Twisted

CHAPTER 3

Over the next week, five detectives worked the Paradiso shootings, interviewing family members of the dead teens, recontacting potential witnesses. None of the victims had gang affiliations, all were praised as good kids. No relatives had criminal histories; no one had anything of value to say.

The girl in the pink sneakers remained unidentified, a personal failure for Petra. She’d volunteered to do the trace, worked at it, came up empty. One interesting fact from the coroner: The girl had undergone an abortion within the last few months.

Petra asked Mac Dilbeck if she could go to the media and he said sure. Three stations ran sketchy renderings of the girl’s face on the evening news. A few calls came in, nothing serious.

She worked the shoes, figuring maybe an item like that was unusual. Anything but: Kmart special, made in Macao, shipped to the States in huge lots for over a year, she even found them for resale on eBay.

She tried to recontact Sandra Leon because Sandra had given off an uneasy vibe, though maybe it was just tension about being sick. Resolving to go gently with the poor kid, Lord knew what she’d been through with her leukemia. The phone rang but no one answered.

Ten days after the mass murder, the team still hadn’t developed any leads, and at the next sit-down Mac Dilbeck informed them they’d been cut from five D’s to three: he’d remain as the principal and Luc Montoya and Petra would do backup.

After the meeting, Petra asked him, “What does that mean?”

Mac collected his papers and didn’t look up. “What does what mean?”

“Backup.”

“I’m open to ideas.”

“The unidentified girl,” said Petra. “I’m wondering if she’s the key. No one’s reported her missing.”

“Funny, isn’t it,” said Mac.

“Maybe someone wanted her really gone.”

Mac smoothed his glossy hair. “You want to try to chase her down some more?”

“I can try.”

“Yeah, it’s a good idea.” He frowned.

“What?”

He touched the front of his flat, seamed brow. “I got a big fat what-if floating around in here. As in what if there was no motive. Just a bunch of bad guys out to kill some people.”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely,” said Petra.

“It could be, though.”

“It sure could.”

Two days of working the anonymous girl proved maddening. Petra was at her desk eating a hot dog when the sound of a throat clearing made her look up.

Isaac Gomez. Again.

He stood off to the side, wearing his usual blue button-down shirt, pressed khakis, and penny loafers. Black hair parted and plastered down like a choir boy’s. Smooth, brown face all freshly scrubbed. He held a stack of old murder books to his chest and said, “I hope I’m not bothering you, Detective Connor.”

Of course, he was. Of course, she smiled up at him.

Every time she saw Isaac, Petra thought of a Diego Rivera kid grown up. The hair straight as brush-bristle; the nutmeg skin; the huge, liquid, almond eyes; the clear hints of Indian blood in the elevated cheekbones and finely boned nose.

Isaac was five-ten, maybe one-fifty, with square shoulders, bony wrists, and a deliberate but awkward way of moving.

Chronologically, he was twenty-two.

Twenty-two and a year from his Ph.D. Lord only knew how old he was intellectually. But when conversation veered away from facts and figures, he could end up mired in aw-shucks adolescence.

Petra was sure he was a virgin.

“What’s up, Isaac?”

She expected a smile- the embarrassed smile she seemed to elicit from him. Nothing about happiness, everything about the jitters. More than once, when they were together, she’d spotted a tenting of khaki in his crotch area. The flush around the ears, the quick cover-up using a textbook or his laptop. When that happened, she pretended not to notice.

No smile this evening. He looked tense.

Eight-fourteen P.M. The detectives’ room was nearly empty, reasonable people had gone home. She’d been playing with the computer, logging on to missing kids’ databases, still trying to trace the girl in the pink shoes.

“You’re sure I’m not intruding?”

“I’m sure. What are you doing here at this hour?”

Isaac shrugged. “I got involved… started with one thing and ended with another.” He hefted the pile of blue notebooks. His eyes looked hot.

“Why don’t you put those down,” said Petra. “Pull up a chair.”

“I’m sorry if this is disruptive, Detective Connor. I know you’re working Paradiso, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t intrude.” Flicker of smile. “I guess that’s not true. I’ve intruded quite a bit, haven’t I?”

“Not at all,” Petra lied. The truth was, babysitting Brain Boy could be a butt-aching disruption when things got busy. She motioned to a side chair and he sat.

“What’s up?”

Isaac played with a collar button. “I was working on my multiple regression analysis- plugging in new variables…” He shook his head. Hard. As if emptying it of extraneous information. “You don’t need to hear all that. The essential point is I was searching for additional ways to organize my data and, serendipitously, I came across something I thought you should see.”

He stopped. Took a breath.

She said, “What, Isaac?”

“It’s going to sound… on the surface, it may look like nothing, some kind of coincidence… but I’ve done statistical tests- several tests, each one covering the mathematical weaknesses of the others- and it’s obvious to me that it’s not just factitious, not just a quirk. As far as I can tell, this is real, Detective Connor.”

Unblemished, brown cheeks were suddenly slick with sweat.

Petra sat there.

“It’s totally weird,” he went on, suddenly sounding like a kid, “but I’m sure it’s real.”

He began flipping open murder books. Started off talking softly, at a near whisper. Ended up shooting out words, like an automatic weapon.

Assault-brain.

Petra listened. Brilliant or not, the kid was an amateur, this had to be nonsense.

As if reading her mind, he said, “I promise you, it’s genuine.”

She said, “Why don’t you tell me about those statistical tests of yours?”