Free Bleeding Out by Baxter Clare

received his call at 0613 hours. It had been cold last night. Not a lot of people had been out, and parked cars obscured the body from the street. The victim was found on her back, but lividity indicated she’d been dead for at least ten hours. She’d been left on her stomach—whoever killed her hadn’t moved her until her blood had settled anteriorly. She had to have been dumped sometime before dawn, which also explained why she hadn’t been discovered earlier. Frank had SID print the cars on the school side of the street. Maybe their guy had bumped into one and steadied himself with a bare hand. She copied the license numbers and makes. Flanking the school were a shoe repair shop and a taqueria. Two vacant buildings, a styling salon, a mom-and-pop burger stand, a Frostee Freeze, and an Assembly of God church were across the street. They were all covered with sprawling gang tags. A boarded and crumbling building in a large, weedy lot looked like a shooting gallery, and Frank had uniforms bagging matchbooks and cigarette packs, torn soda cans, used hypos, potato chip bags—all the trash in there. She wanted everything printed. A pile of old clothes and rags looked like a makeshift bed. If somebody’d been in here last night she wanted to know who.
    The church had had a service the day before but it had finished by 8:00 p.m. and there wasn’t another scheduled until noon today. No one opened when they knocked, no lights were on. They talked to people at the food joints, which all closed at 11:00 or midnight. The salon was open 9:00-6:00, shoe repair 8:00-5:00. No one was around at the time they believed the body was dumped.
    The detectives spent the morning showing Polaroids of the girl’s face to everyone at the school, but they didn’t get one good hit. She was pretty battered, though, so chances were they wouldn’t have gotten an ID anyway. Missing Persons records were no help this time. They broke for lunch around one o’clock, ordering gorditas and tacos at the taqueria next to the school. The school kids didn’t like all the heat around; they ate across the street at the burger place. Frank was feeling human again. She munched on fried pork between two soft corn tortillas, wondering why these girls were being dumped in front of schools. If it was the same guy, she reminded herself. So far they had nothing but speculation to go on. Frank glanced at her watch. She was waiting for Crocetti’s call. His prelim would tell them more about any similarities between this case and Agoura’s.
    She was anxious for the ID on the vie, too. Handley had rolled her fingers, promising to have Frank paged as soon as the prints were run. She was wadding up the paper her tacos came in when her pager went off. She nudged her jacket aside with an elbow and glanced at the number. It was the coroner’s office. She returned the call.
    “Hey, Lieutenant,” Handley bragged, “I’ve got a name for your girl.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Jennifer Peterson. DOB: 1/5/82.” Handley paused.
    Frank asked, “Address?”
    Handley gave it to her. She thanked him tersely and hung up. She called the operator and referenced the phone number. When Frank tried it, all she got was the answering machine. She identified herself and told the machine she had some information about Jennifer Peterson that she needed to discuss with her parents. No one picked up.
    Frank grabbed Noah. “Let’s go for a drive.”
    She filled him in as they drove west on Manchester Boulevard to Sepulveda. The address took them to a tired house in Culver City bordered by frayed banana trees and overgrown bougainvillea. It looked tropical despite the spitting sky and sixty-degree weather. When their knock went unanswered, they split up to talk to the neighbors. Two houses down, the harassed mother of three preschoolers told Noah that Jennifer Peterson babysat for her. Her mother’s name wasn’t Peterson, it was Wyche, Delia Wyche, and she was a nurse at Brotman Memorial.