Carpenter road, p.9
Carpenter Road, page 9
‘Well can I, you know, leave a message for him?’
‘Sure.’ The officer grabbed a pen and a notepad and slid them both across the counter to Rochelle.
‘You’ll make sure Officer Jones gets it?’ Rochelle called back.
‘Yeah, relax, I will,’ the officer said.
Luckily for Rochelle, she had already started to walk through the doors into the warm afternoon, when Captain Gretsch approached the reception area from a side door. He had only heard the last part of the conversation, but it was enough to pique his interest.
‘Who was that?’ Gretsch asked, his eyes fixed upon Rochelle as she walked toward the road outside.
‘Some woman asking about Leighton Jones,’ the officer said.
‘What did she want you to write down?’ Gretsch nodded to the A4 pad sitting in front of the officer.
‘She just wanted to leave a message for him.’
‘Tear out the page and throw it in the trash. The woman’s clearly a hooker,’ Gretsch said. ‘She was never here. That idiot Jones is distracted enough from his job without this kind of shit.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Gretsch waited to watch the officer rip the page from the pad and drop it in the wastepaper basket beneath the reception desk.
‘Now, go to the bathroom and wash your goddam hands – use soap too – you don’t know what, or who, she’s touched.’
* * *
At the end of his shift, Leighton was standing in the back lot, using a serpentine yellow hose to wash down the Explorer, when he heard a female voice call to him from across the sea of police cars.
‘Hey, Jonesy!’
He turned around to see a female officer waving to him from outside the glistening circle he was standing in.
‘Hey, Denise,’ he said with a warm smile, and he turned off the hose. The misty water vapour hung in the air making small rainbow arcs of colour.
‘You looking to get your little Honda valeted? I can fit it in for a good price.’
‘No, thanks,’ she said with a grin, ‘it’s all clean – well, mostly. I just wanted to speak to you, if you’ve got a minute?’
‘Sure,’ Leighton said, as he stepped through the puddles to reach her, ‘the turtle wax will keep till next time. Is everything okay?’
‘Yeah, it’s nothing bad. Just, well, a young woman stopped by earlier today. She was nervous as hell and hoping to speak to you.’
‘Was it my daughter, Annie?’ Leighton looked momentarily hopeful.
‘No, I’d recognise your kid. This girl was older, possibly a working girl.’
‘It’s okay,’ Leighton smiled and nodded, ‘I know who you mean – all leopard-print and attitude, right?’
‘That’s the one. When I told her you were out, she asked to leave a message for you to call her.’
‘Thanks, Denise. I appreciate you letting me know.’
‘Not a problem,’ Denise said, and turned to go, but she stopped.
‘Look, Jonesy, it’s maybe nothing, but the captain came up to the desk just after the girl left, he basically told me not to pass the message on to you.’
‘Yeah, I can see how he might do that,’ Leighton said, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I won’t let it slip that you told me.’
‘Thanks, Jonesy.’
‘Now, you sure you don’t need your jalopy washed?’ Leighton asked hopefully and raised his eyebrows.
‘I’m good,’ Denise said, and she walked off as Leighton twisted the hose back on and continued to clean away the dirt and debris.
23
The following morning was hazy but warm; this meant that, down along the beach, the shifting ocean seemed to melt away into a horizon where sky and sea met. Three miles away, in South Ditmar Street, a barefoot Rochelle stepped out of one of the countless single-storey apartments that were crammed together in the Casa Bien development. A single road, Fenwick Avenue, ran in front of her home, connecting it to the busier road of Mission Avenue, but this was an area that few people chose to live in. The combination of low quality accommodation and relatively high crime made it an unattractive place in an otherwise attractive city.
Rochelle had a mane of tangled hair, and a smouldering cigarette was dangling from her lips. She was wearing a white vest and some grey sweatpants and was carrying a swollen garbage bag. As she approached her trashcan, Rochelle glanced up and was surprised to see Leighton across the street, leaning on his hood, reading a newspaper.
‘Hey,’ she called over to him with a partial smile on her lips.
‘Good morning,’ he said with a smile, and folded away the newspaper.
‘How did you know where to find me?’ Rochelle asked.
‘I’m a cop,’ Leighton said, and tapped his nose.
‘Yeah, but you manage to hide it well.’ Rochelle forcefully twisted the neck of her garbage bag and dropped it into the dented trashcan.
‘I picked up a message at the station; it said you wanted to see me,’ Leighton said.
‘Yeah,’ Rochelle said with a shrug, ‘I wanted to speak to you about that missing girl, but not here. The locals around here can smell you guys from a mile away. They’d think I was a snitch. Give me a minute to grab some shoes. We can go someplace, okay?’
‘Sure,’ Leighton said, and got into the car.
* * *
When she reappeared, Rochelle was wearing a pair of white sneakers and had pulled her wild hair into a loose ponytail. She glanced around quickly before crossing the street and climbing into Leighton’s car.
‘So, where are we going?’ he asked.
‘Well, I figured that you still owe me an omelette,’ Rochelle said as she fastened her seatbelt.
‘Fair enough,’ Leighton said with a wry smile. Judging by Rochelle’s thin limbs, he figured she could do with a meal or two.
‘Hey, but not at that freaky beach café place,’ Rochelle said quickly, and then she seemed to check herself. ‘If that’s okay? I kinda feel like that place has an unlucky vibe to it.’
‘It’s okay,’ Leighton said, ‘I know a little place nearby that serves pretty good food.’
* * *
As Leighton drove toward the harbour, Rochelle gazed out of the car window, staring almost childlike at the prettier parts of the city.
‘You okay there?’ Leighton asked.
‘It looks much better during the day – safer.’
‘That’s like most places,’ Leighton said with a smile, ‘except possibly Vegas.’
‘Do you like it here?’ Rochelle asked. ‘Oceanside, I mean?’
‘Yes, I think I do. You’ve got to remember; many people would love to live here.’
‘I guess,’ Rochelle said, and continued gazing out of the car window.
* * *
Oceanside’s pier had stretched out over the waves, almost two thousand feet, since 1987. It was an unfussy construction of wood and steel. Leighton loved it: it was plain, sturdy and reliable. In an inexpressible way, he thought of it as somehow defiant, standing apart from the sturdier buildings of the rest of the city. At night, the pier looked like an illuminated sidewalk leading into the dark universe; during the day, it was home to a sprinkling of amiable fishermen – as well as the odd pelican.
At the far end of the pier was Ruby’s - a retro-style diner, complete with a Wurlitzer jukebox and waitresses in red and white striped uniforms. It was here that Leighton was sitting opposite Rochelle at a small table, which was beside a long row of windows that looked out on the glimmering ocean below. Rochelle was eagerly devouring a ham omelette, whilst Leighton had opted for a tall mug of black coffee and some French toast.
Having spent the past decade interviewing witnesses of traffic accidents – sometimes involving fatalities – Leighton knew that people were less communicative when they were hungry. He was therefore content to let Rochelle eat before pushing her for any further information. Eventually, when they had both finished eating and were sipping their respective coffees, Leighton raised his eyebrows.
‘So, pleasant as this is, what did you want to speak to me about?’
Rochelle leaned forward in her seat and spoke in a quiet, almost conspiratorial, voice.
‘Well, I heard on the radio that they caught some guy for, you know, the murder of the girl with my jacket. Is that true?’
‘What makes you think it’s the same girl?’ Leighton asked and took a sip of coffee.
‘They said she had last vanished when out with colleagues at a local café. So, did they catch the guy or not?’
‘Yeah,’ Leighton nodded. ‘That’s what they’re saying. But you seem to know as much as I do.’
‘When did they get the guy?’ Rochelle asked.
‘Tuesday afternoon, as far as I know.’
‘Do you know who he is?’
Leighton shook his head. ‘Just some waste of space with a bunch of priors for rape and battery against women. But hey, he’s locked up, so the streets are a little safer, right?’
‘Maybe from your position but, I don’t think so,’ Rochelle said as she shook her head.
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means I don’t think the streets are safer.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s why I came to see you yesterday. I’m worried about a girl – Jenna – who works the Boulevard with me. She vanished on Wednesday night. I thought maybe the same sick bastard from last Friday had taken her, but if you said he was locked up on Tuesday then it couldn’t have been him, right? So, there must be another asshole out there.’
‘What do you mean, “she vanished”?’ It was Leighton’s turn to lean across the table.
Rochelle shrugged. ‘Jenna is the kind of girl who will come out every night – even in the holidays – only for a couple of hours, but every single night. After last Wednesday, nobody seems to have seen her. A couple of girls have asked me about her, but she’s just gone.’
‘Couldn’t she have spent the night with a client?’
‘Not Jenna – she never stays out, ever. No motels either. She strictly does the front seats of cars or nothing.’
‘Could she maybe be sick, taking a couple of nights off?’ Leighton offered.
‘I wondered about that too, but then her boyfriend Darnel has been driving around the usual corners looking for her. He’s been asking all the girls if they’ve heard from her.’
‘Look, I’d give it a few days,’ Leighton said.
‘You’re right,’ Rochelle said, and nodded. ‘I guess I’m probably just spooked by the whole situation.’
‘Well,’ Leighton said sympathetically, ‘it happens to us all at some point. Everybody gets unsettled by the scary stuff. But you’ve got to remember that these things are extremely rare. Hopefully the psycho who did this is locked up, and the rest of us can get back to normal.’
‘I know,’ Rochelle nodded again. ‘It’s just that I keep thinking about the resemblance thing.’
‘What resemblance thing?’ Leighton asked. He could feel the jitters coming off Rochelle: her legs beneath the table were shaking so fiercely that the cutlery was trembling.
‘Jenna, she, you know, looked kinda like the girl from the café. The one who got killed.’
‘You know about that?’ Leighton tried to hide his surprise.
‘It was on the news. She looked younger in the photograph, but I recognised her just the same.’
‘And she looked like this girl, Jenna?’
‘Yeah, on the night I met that girl, she called to me from across the street and I thought she was Jenna. So, then, when I heard Jenna was missing too. I thought maybe he’d got to Jenna too. I figured maybe the sicko has, like, a type, you know?’
‘Well, you don’t need to worry because it looks like he’s locked up.’
‘They’re sure they’ve got the right guy?’
‘Apparently so,’ Leighton said. ‘As far as I know, there was evidence linking him to the remains of the girl you met.’
Rochelle let out a long sigh, and her expression softened.
‘Thank God, because I realised that me and Jenna look a lot alike too. Some of the other girls on the street thought we were sisters. So, I got to worrying that maybe he’d come after me next.’
‘No, there’s nothing to worry about,’ Leighton said. Unaware just how wrong he was.
24
Karen Luz had finally had enough of the stench from Barney’s Bar ’n’ Grill. She ran a small craft shop in the town of Lakehead. It was a neat and pretty little shop, selling colourful dreamcatchers, scented candles, local pottery, and little figurines of cartoon cacti with googly eyes, wearing various outfits. She had opened the place three years earlier and it did good trade – especially during summer and fall. It probably helped that hers was the last business on the street: customers who had walked the length of the main street and wanted to make the trip worth their while usually bought something. Almost directly across the road from Karen’s shop, was Barney’s Bar ’n’ Grill.
She had become increasingly aware of the smell in recent months. When there was a light breeze, it didn’t seem too bad. But on days when the heat was rising, and the air was still, the aroma of rotting meat drifted across the street like a stinking phantom. If she closed the shop door, customers would walk on by and she would lose sales; if she left it open, the whole place would stink. What made the situation worse was that Karen’s apartment was located right above the shop, so she couldn’t even go home to escape the smell of decay.
Sitting on a wooden stool at the rear of her shop, she picked up the phone and called the San Diego Environmental Services.
‘Hi there, I really need to speak to somebody that deals with public sanitation. I’m in Lakehead, and there’s some kinda problem with the property across the street from me.’ There was a pause and Karen rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah, sure, I’ll hold,’ she said.
25
After they’d left the clatter of Ruby’s diner, Leighton and Rochelle walked along the pier. The warm air blowing over the sun-bleached boardwalk was fresh and smelled of ozone.
‘Do you come down here often to escape all the crazy cop shit?’ Rochelle asked, as she took a pack of cigarettes from her purse.
‘I used to visit here all the time about ten years ago,’ Leighton said, as he gazed around nostalgically. ‘When my daughter was little we would come down here every other afternoon after school. We’d mostly go to the play park over on Tyson Street.’ An involuntary smile touched the corners of Leighton’s mouth. ‘Man, she would spend hours there. I sometimes think I enjoyed the place as much as she did. Good times.’
‘But not anymore?’ Rochelle asked. She could see the sadness in his eyes.
‘Huh?’ Her question pulled Leighton out of the past. ‘No, I guess I’m not really much of a dad any more. Haven’t really been for a while now.’
‘How come?’ Rochelle asked bluntly.
Leighton glanced at her momentarily and decided it couldn’t do any harm to talk about it.
‘She wants to grow up, I suppose, but to me she’s still just a kid. I mean, she’s already fooling around with boys and staying out all night.’
‘Sounds pretty tame to me. What does her mom say?’
Leighton stopped for a moment and looked out across the restless ocean.
‘She has no mom, that’s partly the problem.’
‘So, is there no Mrs Jones at home?’
‘No, I was married once, but it didn’t work out.’
‘You never know, she might come back. These things happen.’
‘Not this time,’ Leighton said definitively.
‘Why not?’
‘Heather took her own life not long after our separation.’
‘Shit,’ Rochelle frowned. ‘That must’ve been pretty tough.’
‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I try to cut her some slack – maybe too much.’
‘I meant on you,’ Rochelle said softly.
‘I can handle it,’ Leighton said, ‘that’s the parent’s job, right?’
‘Yeah? Well not in my world.’
‘Do you keep in touch with your family?’ Leighton asked.
‘C’mon! What parent wants an addict and a hooker for a kid? It was never on the cards; no little girl grows up wanting to be like me. At least I hope they don’t.’
‘What did you want to be when you were a kid?’
‘Loved,’ Rochelle said simply.
‘Tough times?’
‘Other people have a worse story than mine,’ Rochelle said dismissively, and Leighton thought the conversation was closed. Then, for some reason, Rochelle looked at her feet and spoke in a quiet voice, different from her usual tough persona. ‘When I was a little kid, maybe seven or eight, I had this book from the school library. It was a proper hardback with a dustjacket and everything – Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.’
Leighton nodded. ‘Like the TV show?’
‘Yeah, I think that’s right. But we didn’t have a TV – the repo men took it away when my mom failed to make any payments on it. After dad left she didn’t really know how to take care of things. Losing the TV wasn’t a big deal to me, books were better. Some nights when I was too hot to sleep I would lie in my bed and read it cover to cover. I wasn’t the best reader – I guess I just loved the idea of travelling through the land in that wagon, your own home on wheels. Imagine keeping on going till you find the perfect spot then building a cabin on it.’
Leighton smiled. ‘So, you fancied the freedom, huh?’
‘Yeah, I still do, but I guess I liked Laura in the books – she was a little fighter. And the pa in the story was the real deal. He kept his children safe and told bedtime stories and played music on his fiddle. Maybe that’s what I wanted when I grew up – someone like that who would make me feel safe.’ She laughed in a sad way. ‘But instead I got Billy, a crack pipe, and lived unhappily ever after.’
‘You’re still young, Rochelle. There are good people and a whole world out there just waiting for you.’
