The Violated Page 2

  His belief that Martin Torrey was the rapist was based on gut instinct, the thin circumstantial evidence we’d gathered from the crime scenes and victims’ testimony, and the facts that Torrey had a sex-crimes conviction in Ohio and had concealed that from both the California Department of Justice and his employer. But the Ohio conviction wasn’t for rape, attempted rape, or molestation; he’d been caught masturbating while watching a woman taking a bath and subsequently confessed to three other incidents of voyeurism—aberrant misdemeanors he professed to be deeply ashamed of. Nine months in a psychiatric facility had cured him of the compulsion, according to official reports from his attending physicians. Robert had come down hard on him nonetheless, and harder still once word of his past offenses came through NICS.

  Only time would tell if Robert was right and Torrey’s death marked the end of the serial assaults. Meanwhile, the possibility of more attacks would continue to cause tension, fear, anger, in the community. Torrey’s murder solved nothing, served only to make a bad situation worse.

  The sexual assaults already had the mayor, the city council, the media, and citizens groups up in arms and clamoring for results. “Justice” dispensed by some fool with a gun and a bellyful of rage might meet with the approval of some, but it set a dangerous precedent. Guilty until proven innocent. Condemned without just cause. That kind of mentality was intolerable.

  “Jack Spivey,” I said. “You spent more time with him than I did. He strike you as the type to take the law into his own hands?”

  “He’s full of machismo,” Robert said. “And very angry at what was done to his wife.”

  At least a borderline racist, too, judging from his open hostility toward Robert the one time I’d met him. And a hunter and gun collector—rifles, shotguns, handguns, all legally registered. One of his handguns, a .38 S&W, had been stolen after the assault on Ione Spivey. It had been kept in a nightstand between their twin beds, and the perp spotted it when she tried to get at it during the act. More fuel for a killing rage in a hothead like Jack Spivey.

  “Well, it’ll make our lives easier if he’s the shooter,” I said. “Too many other possibles if he’s not. Husbands, boyfriends, brothers, other relatives of the victims. Or just some crazy who’s seen too many Clint Eastwood movies.”

  “If it’s a man.”

  I’d had that thought, too. “Yeah. But very few women are hard-core vigilantes, if that’s the motive. And they tend to be more impulsive than men when it comes to a revenge killing. Shoot their victims on the spot, quick, instead of taking or luring them out to a place like Echo Park.”

  “Unless Echo Park had some special significance.”

  “Such as?”

  “The first victim was assaulted there.”

  “That’s a possibility,” I admitted.

  “There’s another,” Robert said. “A fifth rape attempt and Torrey picked the wrong victim, one who was armed for self-protection.”

  “Then where’s his car? And how did he get to the park?”

  “Grabbed the victim somewhere else and forced her to drive him there.”

  “That doesn’t match his MO,” I reminded him. “On-the-spot attacks in each of the other three assaults, and all in different locales.”

  “Torrey could have reverted to the park again for number five,” he said. “How can we know what goes on in the head of a serial rapist?”

  We were entering the historic part of downtown now, past the hundred-year-old brick-and-false-front buildings that flanked the main drag. The cherry trees spaced along the Donner Street sidewalks were in full bloom, a sea of white. Usually spring was my favorite time of year. New growth everywhere, the eastern and far-western hills still bright green despite the ongoing drought—just enough rain this year to keep them that way into April. The streets seemed less crowded than usual for a Saturday, or maybe that was just my imagination. They wouldn’t stay that way once word of the murder spread. The fourth, most violent rape and Torrey’s subsequent arrest had brought media not only from Riverton, the county seat, and other nearby towns, but from Sacramento and San Francisco. The Torrey homicide would bring them flocking back. And once again I’d have microphones stuck in my face, questions hurled at me, statements to make.

  Santa Rita used to be a quiet town. Somewhat off the beaten track, not much in the way of tourist attractions except for boating, fishing, hiking, and hunting in the nearby foothills, the economy supported mainly by agriculture, Santa Rita Feed and Grain, Soderholm Brewery. Somewhat old-fashioned in attitude as well as architecture, with a real small-town sense of community—active Chamber of Commerce and Rotary, parades on Veterans Day and the Fourth of July, charity fund-raisers at the community center, carnivals and other events at the fairgrounds, Little League baseball and adult softball leagues, a Boys & Girls Club, a little theater group. Better-than-average schools. Two public swimming pools. A downtown park with a bandstand, Echo Park with its picnic areas and limited river access. All in all a good place to live, raise a family. Raise my family, if I could finally talk Jenna into starting one.

  Before the sexual predator, whoever the hell he was, started his reign of terror, there was relatively little crime. Drug-related offenses, mainly—scattered incidents of possession with and without intent to sell, small-time marijuana-growing, a hash-oil explosion a year ago that luckily hadn’t resulted in any casualties. Otherwise the usual random assortment of DUIs and DDs and bar brawls and domestic-abuse cases; petty theft, burglaries, other nonviolent felonies. Very little of the gang violence you have in other small Northern California towns with a population of around fifty thousand; what there was in the county was concentrated in Riverton, which was more than twice our size. And almost no homicides. Until Martin Torrey’s body was found this morning, there’d been only two during my seven years as chief of police, one a domestic stabbing and the other a shooting involving drugs.

  My shoulder radio crackled as we crossed the River Street bridge. Sergeant Eversham notifying me that Mayor Delahunt wanted to see me in his office ASAP. Damn. My relationship with Delahunt had been adversarial ever since I was hired by the city council over his handpicked candidate, Captain Frank Judkins, and the lack of progress on the assaults, for which the mayor blamed me, had strained the relationship even more. The Torrey homicide would have him in a dither. I was in no mood for a session with him, but I couldn’t very well avoid him. I said to tell His Honor I’d be there in twenty minutes or so.

  “I’ll have a talk with Jack Spivey,” Robert said when I signed off.

  “Better take Al Bennett or Karl Simms along.” They were the other two male members of the IU. The fourth, Sergeant Susan Sinclair, worked gender-sensitive crimes and served as victims’ advocate.

  “Not necessary. I can handle Spivey.”

  Robert being stubborn again. “Okay,” I said, “but go easy on him unless he gives you serious trouble.” The SRPD was under a public microscope these days, like so many law enforcement agencies nationwide. The last thing we needed was a lawsuit for police harassment.

  “He won’t give me any trouble.”

  “Let’s hope not. Check in with me after you see him.”

  City Hall was just up ahead now, an old adobe-brick building that needed retrofitting if the city council could ever find enough money for the job. The relatively new PD building, beige-colored plaster over reinforced cinder block, stood at an angle behind it. Nearly twice the size of the old one, it had up-to-date communications equipment, more rooms, a small but well-outfitted lab, and two additional holding cells. There was a shared parking lot between the two buildings and a fenced-off security section next to the station.

  I pulled into the marked chief’s space, next to where Robert’s cruiser was parked, then walked over to City Hall. On the way, I thought wryly that no matter how things turned out with Jack Spivey, Robert’s meeting with him was liable to be less disagreeable than mine with our esteemed mayor.

  HUGH DELAHUNT

  I have
always made an effort to get along with the media. You can’t have a future in politics unless you get the newshawks on your side and keep them there. There are ways to do that, little tricks you learn early on. Always be prepared, no matter what subject is on the table. Always be polite, even in contentious situations. Give straightforward answers to the questions you’re willing to address and be careful how you sidestep the ones you’re not. Never lie or conceal anything unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t get caught out.

  The same methods apply in dealing with the voters individually, in small groups, in public forums. Some are knowledgeable, but a high percentage are herd followers; they believe most if not all of what they see on TV or read in newspapers and on the Internet and vote accordingly. Keeping the media on Hugh Delahunt’s side is essential. It was how I got elected mayor, and it was how I was going to be elected to the county board of supervisors next year, and, if all went according to plan, to the state assembly in the not-too-distant future.

  All of that sounds crass and self-serving, I know. But it doesn’t mean I don’t care about the people and the city of Santa Rita. I’m proud to say I devote considerable time and effort to getting things done to improve the common good. You have to be hard-nosed to accomplish those objectives, and to make more political hay doing so. I can honestly say that I have been a strong, forceful leader during my two terms. Santa Rita is a better place to live since I took office. Or it was until these goddamn rapes threw everything into turmoil.

  It certainly isn’t my fault Chief Kells and his minions are ineffectual bumblers. Yet I’m forced to endure almost as much flak as they are, as if I were also responsible. And already I was being subjected to more, even though the murder of Martin Torrey had happened less than twenty-four hours ago and I had known about it for less than four.

  Not flak from the media at large, thanks to my cordial relations with them. No, all the heat past and present was coming from the one man I hadn’t been able to win over no matter how hard I’d tried. For some benighted reason, Ted Lowenstein had taken a dislike to me from the minute he bought the Santa Rita Clarion three years ago, and he has been a splinter in my ass ever since. Critical editorials, snide remarks in news stories and at city council meetings, and all for the flimsiest of reasons. Party advisers keep reassuring me that his attacks haven’t done me any real harm, and I’m sure they’re right. Still, the Clarion is distributed and read countywide, not just in Santa Rita, and Lowenstein also makes it available on his website and on a blog he writes. Some of the herd-following voters are bound to be swayed by all the unfair sniping—not enough to cost me the supervisor’s seat in the next election, surely, but it makes me uncomfortable nonetheless.

  Lowenstein’s harassment would increase the longer the rapes and now this revenge or vigilante murder went unsolved. He had made that plain enough through innuendo when he showed up at my office ten minutes after I did. If I had refused his request for an interview, he would have found a way to turn it against me. So here he was, sitting across my desk from me in one of the ridiculous Hawaiian shirts he favored, his skinny legs crossed, his sparse brindle hair sticking up every which way as usual. Those shirts and that seldom-combed hair and his confrontational attitude explained why he was long divorced and had never remarried. What was puzzling was how a man who looked like him could have fathered such an attractive daughter. Angela Lowenstein, at least, had none of the same axes to grind at my expense. None that were apparent, anyway.

  I forced myself to be pleasant and cooperative, to the point of allowing Lowenstein to record our conversation. “Come on now, Ted,” I said, smiling, “tell me how you found out about the murder so quickly. I was only informed myself a short while ago.”

  “I have my sources. As you well know.”

  “In the police department, I suppose.”

  “Privileged information.”

  “Well, in any case there’s nothing I can tell you. Chief Kells is the man you should be talking to. He’s due here any minute, as a matter of fact.”

  “Good. Meanwhile, Mr. Mayor, what’s your initial reaction to the shooting?”

  “Outrage, of course.”

  “Really? I would have thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Pleased? Why in heaven’s name would I be pleased about the first homicide in Santa Rita in three years?”

  “It solves the serial rapes, doesn’t it?”

  “If Martin Torrey was guilty, it does. Had there been enough proof to bring charges against him, District Attorney Conrad would have done so.”

  “But you do believe he was the rapist.”

  “My personal feelings are irrelevant. This is America—a man is innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Mayor Hugh Delahunt, master of the evasive response and the appropriate cliché.”

  I refused to dignify that snotty slur with a response.

  “‘Innocent until proven guilty.’ You’ve been heard to say differently here and there in private,” Lowenstein said. “My sources again.”

  My smile dipped slightly; I restored it before I said, “Your sources are inaccurate and malicious.”

  “On the contrary. You were heard to state more than once before witnesses that Torrey was guilty as hell. To Craig Soderholm, among others. Your brother-in-law didn’t waste any time firing Torrey.”

  “Are you suggesting I had a hand in that?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  Well, I did, as a matter of fact. With complete justification. Craig is not decisive and is inclined to give undue benefit of doubt. Public feeling had been running high against Torrey, guilty of rape or not, since his arrest on the other felony charge, and allowing him to remain on the brewery payroll would have reflected badly on the company, the family, and me.

  “Well, Mr. Mayor?”

  I smoothed my neatly trimmed mustache, a habit of mine while framing answers to certain questions. “Torrey was let go,” I said slowly, “because of his failure to register as a convicted sex offender—”

  “A minor felony given the nature of his Ohio crimes.”

  “—and for deliberately lying about his past criminal record on his employment application.”

  “So in effect you’re saying Soderholm Brewery’s personnel department was lax in not checking his background.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying at all. He was hired as a deliveryman, a low-level position, on the recommendation of his brother-in-law. It isn’t always considered necessary to check an individual’s background or additional references in such cases.”

  “May I quote you on that?”

  “No, you may not. Now if you have no more questions—”

  “Oh, I have quite a few more questions. Do you think Torrey’s murder was motivated by revenge? Or is it a case of vigilantism—a misguided citizen eliminating the man he believes, as you do, to have been the serial rapist?”

  “If I were you,” I said, smiling with difficulty now, “I wouldn’t equate my feelings with those of a murderer in print.”

  “I won’t. I know the libel laws better than you. Are you going to answer my question?”

  “Yes, by saying I refuse to speculate on motive until more facts have been gathered. And you can quote me on that.”

  Lowenstein shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “I’ve been given to understand there are no suspects in the shooting as yet. True?”

  “You’ll have to ask Chief Kells.”

  “Word also is that Torrey was shot three times, once in the temple and twice in the groin, the groin shots obliterating the poor bugger’s privates. Can you confirm that?”

  “No, I can’t.” A brief mental image of obliterated privates made me wince slightly in spite of myself. “You’ll have to ask Chief Kells.”

  “Has the weapon been recovered? Or at least the caliber identified?”

  “You’ll have to ask Chief Kells.”

  Lowenstein chuckled. “You don’t think the chief and Robert Ortiz will solve this crime, do you?�
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  “They had four months to satisfactorily solve the assaults and failed to do so.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. So you’re still of the opinion that outside help is necessary, despite the fact that all the crimes were committed within the Santa Rita city limits.”

  “Of course I am. That has been my stated opinion all along.”

  “But outside help was brought in, to no avail. Or have you forgotten that Kells asked for and was given aid and advice from a state expert on sex crimes? Or that both DA’s and county sheriff’s investigators were brought in at your insistence, the result of which was a jurisdictional wrangle that hindered rather than benefited the investigation?”

  “I have no comment on that.”

  “No comment. The politician’s favorite hiding place.”

  “You know, Ted”—I still managed to smile—“sometimes you sorely try my patience.”

  “Fools and political hacks try mine.”

  The intercom on my desk buzzed. A good thing, too, or I might have lost a little of my cool and said something he could use against me. “Yes, Vernon?” Vernon Nichols, my administrative assistant.

  “Chief Kells is here.”

  “Fine. Send him right in.”

  Kells came in looking as if he’d slept in his suit. I had long since given up trying to convince him to wear his gold-braid uniform daily instead of only at public functions, or at least to openly display his badge instead of keeping it pinned inside his suit coat. But it annoyed me that he failed to dress himself more neatly. He claimed that he couldn’t help it, he was one of those men possessed by invisible gremlins who rumpled him up (his idea of a joke) five minutes after he put on a freshly pressed suit and laundered shirt. Perhaps so, but a sloppy-looking police chief sets a bad example. It reflects poorly on the city, and on me when we share a podium.