“So about a month after I made that offer, she called me and said she wanted to do it.”
Conklin said, “She agreed to be a prostitute?”
Lopez said, “She had decided. I didn’t pressure her. Not at all. She said she wanted to try. I made a date for her. I drove her to the Big Four. I like that place because they don’t ask any questions.
“I stayed in the parking lot while Carly was having her date. I had told her I would be lookout in case of trouble. She made a couple hundred bucks and told me to make another date for her.”
“And you did?” Conklin asked.
Lopez said, “Once or twice a month. That was all she would do. Hey. To be honest, Sergeant, I don’t know for sure that she even liked guys.”
“Explain,” I said.
“Just a feeling I had. Look. A lotta girls who turn tricks hate men, don’t you think?”
“Go on with your story, Denny. There’s a line forming outside, people waiting for this room.”
He looked up at the two-way mirror and waved.
I slapped my hand down on the table and his attention came back to me.
Lopez said, “I picked guys who weren’t too gross, and she seemed fine with it for a month or so. Then, a few weeks ago, she said she didn’t want to do it anymore.”
I said, “Is that right?”
I took out my phone, showed Denny the pictures of him coming down the stairs at the back of the motel.
“You recognize this guy?”
He looked at the picture, eyes moving over the small screen, pausing, clearing his throat, then saying, “That’s me.”
“That was a week ago,” I told him.
“I was there,” he said, “but not with Carly.”
I was ready with my follow-up questions. I asked him if he knew Adele Saran and Susan Jones. I showed him the picture I had of all three of them together at a table at the Bridge.
Lopez said he’d seen them there but never spoken to Adele or Susan.
He added, “Those are the missing women I heard about?”
“I think you know that.”
He stood up from his seat and yelled in my face, “You’ve got the wrong man. You’ve got the wrong man! I didn’t hurt anyone. And now I’m getting out of here. Adios.”
CHAPTER 60
Conklin stood up and said to Lopez in his very reasonable and patient voice, “Hey, Denny, you’re free to leave, okay? But come on. We’re not trying to pin anything on you. We’re trying to save some lives here.”
I left Denny to Conklin and went to get our person of interest a soft drink. By the time I had returned to the box, Lopez was chatting with Conklin as if they were old friends.
That was a good thing and I hated to break the mood, but I was still half crazy worrying about two missing schoolteachers. I took my seat, pushed the can of soda over to Lopez.
He popped the top, took a swig.
I pulled out my phone again and said, “Denny, here’s the timeline. Carly checked into the Big Four on Tuesday night a week ago. On Thursday she was found dead in room 212. Murdered. This picture of you is time-stamped 11:23 p.m. Tuesday, the night we think she was killed. You were coming down from her room. What were you doing there? Make me understand.”
Lopez heaved a sigh.
“I didn’t go to her room,” he said. “Actually, I was waiting for Daisy, my new girl. Daisy was in room 314, the top floor. I was in the parking lot, and I saw some man in a sports jacket leave 212, the room Carly always booked. It’s on the corner. She liked that because the room is a little bigger. I figured she might be in there alone. It was a hunch, that’s all. I knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. I went back down to the car and waited for Daisy.”
He looked at my face and said, “That’s the fucking truth. You want to talk to Daisy? Because I don’t have her number.”
Lopez was getting worked up again.
Conklin said, “Keep going, Denny. You waited for Daisy to be finished.”
“Yes. Thank you. When Daisy was done, we did our financial transaction inside the car, and I drove her back to Mission and Eighteenth Street.”
I said to Lopez, “Can you describe the man you saw leaving Carly’s room? The man in the sports jacket.”
“It was a nonevent. He was moving fast.”
“Did you see his car?” I asked.
“No. I was in the back lot, and I think what he did was walk around to the front. Sometimes I park in the front, too.”
I said, “Could you describe him to a sketch artist?”
“Doubtful. I could try. If I do that, will you kiss me good night and drive me home?”
Conklin said, “First, the sketch artist. Then I’ll talk to our lieutenant, and if you’ve been cooperative—no kisses. But we’ll get you a ride home.”
Denny spent a few minutes with our sketch artist, who showed us the resultant drawing of a rectangular face with regular features. It could be anyone.
I didn’t want to release Denny, but we’d gone past reasonable suspicion already. We could charge him for pandering, but there was no point.
We’d done our best with our only suspect—and damn it, we’d come up empty.
CHAPTER 61
It was just after 8:00 p.m. when the lab tech picked up the soda can with Denny Lopez’s DNA on the rim to compare with the lone pubic hair Claire had retrieved from Carly Myers’s body. It was after 9:00 when I sent my report to Jacobi, and as I closed down and packed up for the night, I ran the Lopez interview through my mind again. Was he a small-time criminal guilty of pimping out willing females in exchange for a cut? Or was he far worse, a clever, psychopathic killer?
I was leaning toward the former, that Lopez was a common parasite who was supplementing his by-the-hour taco delivery job, when my desk phone rang.
Yuki’s name flashed on my caller ID.
What was keeping her in her office at this time of night? I picked up the receiver and Yuki didn’t wait for me to say hello.
“I just heard something,” she said. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“Hi, Yuki. What’s up?”
“I gotta talk to you. Your place or mine?”
Yuki’s office was one floor down, so either place was easy enough, but I had one foot out the door, and I asked her, “Can this wait? I’m on my way home.”
“How about we talk in your car?”
I phoned Joe and reached him as he was driving home.
“Have you eaten dinner?” I asked.
“I was thinking we could go out for Thai food.”
There was a restaurant we loved on Clement, located two blocks from our apartment. It was a good idea, but from the sound of Yuki’s voice, I calculated that I was going to be occupied for a while. Joe and I made a plan and a backup plan, and then I took to the fire stairs and headed down.
Yuki was waiting for me on the second-floor landing.
“What took you so long?” she said.
It had been thirty or forty seconds since I’d hung up the phone. I said, “Ha, ha. This had better be good.”
We continued down the stairs to the lobby, exited through the back door, walked along the breezeway past the ME’s office to Harriet Street and the parking lot under the over-pass. I unlocked my trusty Explorer and we both got in. I reclined my seat, and Yuki did the same with hers.