Robert Crais - Chasing Darkness

Mrs. Repko crossed her arms.

“It sounds like he’s trying to blame the police for something.”

Mr. Repko glanced at his wife, then studied me as if he thought I was setting him up.

“The police have been good to us. They’ve been very kind. We won’t say anything bad about them.”

“I’m asking so I’ll know how the police framed their investigation. If I know what they did, it will save time by suggesting a direction. You see?”

Michael said, “Mom. C’mon.”

Gordon said, “Can we just do this, please?”

Mr. Repko adjusted his pants. He still wasn’t comfortable, but he had let his sons talk him into seeing me and now he was stuck.

“All right, then. What?”

I glanced at the pad again. The three hundred Spartans would not have approved.

“I understand the police sent a criminalist to your home last week.”

“That’s right. He looked through Debra’s things.”

“Did they tell you what they were looking for?”

“The criminalist didn’t say much. He was a very odd man.”

“Not the criminalist. The police. Was that Darcy and Maddux?”

Michael said, “Darcy and Maddux are gone. These were new cops-Bastilla and Munson. A detective named Crimmens was here, but he left. We haven’t seen Darcy and Maddux in a while.”

Munson was new. I scratched his name onto the pad.

Mr. Repko nodded along with his son.

“Detectives Bastilla and Munson are on this special task force they have. We don’t know what happened to Darcy and Maddux.”

“Uh-huh. And what did Bastilla and Munson tell you they were looking for?”

“Some kind of samples. That’s all they said, really, that they needed to collect samples from Debra’s things. They asked if we’d had them laundered or whatnot, but other than that they didn’t get into specifics.”

“Uh-huh. And did they ask you questions about anything or anyone in particular?”

Mrs. Repko squinted and grew even more strained, like a violin string tightened to the breaking point.

She said, “They told us about her murderer with those sick, twisted pictures. They wanted to warn us because it was going to be on TV. They wouldn’t show us the pictures, but they warned us. I asked to see her. I wanted to see the picture he took, but they wouldn’t let me-”

Her eyes reddened and blinked. Gordon touched her arm and whispered, “Mom.”

She blinked harder, but Gordon’s touch settled her. I wanted to ask more about Bastilla and Munson, but changed the subject to Darcy and Maddux.

Mr. Repko explained that Darcy and Maddox had come to Pasadena on the morning Debra’s body was found. At that time, the detectives believed Debra resided in Pasadena because her parents’ address was still on her driver’s license. When they were told Debra had taken an apartment, Darcy and Maddux asked to see it, so Dennis and Mr. Repko drove into the city to let the detectives into her apartment. Michael and Gordon had stayed with their mother.

I said, “I’d like to talk to her neighbors about visitors she might have had, or if men had come around. That type of thing. I’m sure the police did the same, but I want to hear it for myself.”

Mr. Repko nodded.

“All right.”

“Was she seeing anyone?”

Dennis said, “Not since Berkeley. She dated a few guys at grad school, but they were more like friends, not boyfriend-girlfriend.”

“How about the men at work? Did she mention anyone she might have liked at work?”

Mrs. Repko had relaxed when her husband was doing the talking, but now she visibly tensed again.

“Once she went to work she didn’t have time to date. They work them like slaves at that place.”

“Leverage Associates?”

Michael nodded.

“Yeah. Debra worked hard, but she loved it. She was a politics wonk. It was her dream job.”

Mrs. Repko pulled her arms into her sides.

“It was an awful job, the hours she worked.”

Gordon said, “Mom, she loved it.”

“I don’t care.”

I cleared my throat to bring their focus back to me.

“Did she see someone on the night it happened?”

Mrs. Repko said, “We have no idea. She worked that night. All she did was work.”

“The medical examiner’s report indicates she had a drink earlier that evening.”

Mrs. Repko leaned forward, her face softening for the first time since I entered the room.

“It did?”

“Yes, ma’am. A drink or a glass of wine. The level was very low.”

Mrs. Repko blinked. The blinking grew faster, and her eyes turned red.

“Well, I just don’t know. How could we know? When she was here, we knew, but not after. I never saw why she had to have that apartment, working right downtown like she did. If she hadn’t taken that damned place none of this would have happened.”

Gordon spoke softly.

“She was twenty-six years old, Mom.”

“Oh, you shut up. Just…please.”

She squinched her eyes and waved her hand as if trying to brush away something that could not be brushed. It was easy to see her making that same move a hundred times a day in a terrible endless loop. Her daughter’s death came down to the apartment, to growing up and moving away because if she had stayed home her parents could have protected her.

Mr. Repko suddenly blurted out Debra’s apartment address and the name of the manager, a man named Toler Agazzi, but Mrs. Repko’s pain filled the room and everyone in it like radiant heat. The sons all stared at the floor. Mr. Repko couldn’t look at his wife. I stared at Debra’s portrait. The picture had probably been taken when she was a senior in high school. She was an attractive girl with clean features and smart eyes.

I cleared my throat and shifted. I wanted Mrs. Repko to see me looking at her daughter. I wanted her to know that her daughter was real to me. When I knew she was staring at me, I looked at her.

“What about her girlfriends, Mrs. Repko? I’ll bet Debra had a lot of close friends. She probably has friends she’s been friends with all the way back to grade school.”

Mrs. Repko glanced at the picture, then me. She wet her lips, then we were both looking at the picture. Here they were, the Repkos, upscale and educated, as close as you could come to a Norman Rockwell family portrait except that one of them had been murdered. Scratch Debra from the painting. Draw Xs over her eyes.

Her mother said, “Yes. Yes, she did. The sweetest girls.”

“Could you give me their names and numbers? I might like to talk to them.”

“All right. Of course I could.”

And this time Mrs. Repko didn’t tense in that horrible way when she answered.

I said, “When it first happened, did Darcy and Maddux take anything from her apartment?”

Mr. Repko adjusted his pants again, thinking, then nodded.

“They took her computer and her phone, I think, and a few other things.”

“They took her hard line or a cell?”

“Well, the cell was in her purse, so they already had it. She wasn’t robbed, you know; everything was still in her purse, even her money. But she had a cordless in the apartment. They gave me a receipt. I have it, if you want.”

“That would help. Also, if you have Debra’s phone bills I’d like to see them.”

“We have them. I kept everything in a file.”

Mr. Repko left to get the file, so I turned back to Mrs. Repko.

“Did the police return the items they took from her apartment?”

Mrs. Repko nodded.

“Detective Maddux brought back some things.”

“He bring back her phone, too?”

Mrs. Repko suddenly stood, with her sons straightening as if she might suddenly tip over.

“Here, I’ll show you,” she said. “You probably want to see, so let me show you. I want you to see what you’ve done.”