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Authors: Robert Crais
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avoided detection.
I clipped out the article and map, then used the names and dates to search online for articles published at the times of the original murders. There wasnât much to find. Only four of the seven murders had made the local papers, producing a total of nine published pieces spread over the seven years. I made notes as I read.
Sondra Frostokovich, the first victim, had been given six column inches in a single article. Described as an office manager in the city administration, her body was found in a downtown office building empty for renovation. She had been strangled only four blocks from the city administration building where she worked. The story ended with a pro forma plea that anyone with knowledge of the crime contact a Central Bureau Homicide detective named Thomas Marx. I wondered if it was the same Marx. Had to be. I wondered if he even remembered.
Janice MâKele Evansfield was the second victim, whose arcing blood showed that she was still alive when the picture in Lindoâs book was taken. Her body had been discovered at the edge of the Brentwood Country Club in one of the richest parts of L.A., eleven months and sixteen days after the Frostokovich killing. A follow-up article two weeks later reported there were no suspects in the case and requested the publicâs help.
Unlike Frostokovich and Evansfield, the third, fourth, and fifth victims were prostitutes. Chelsea Ann Morrow, Marsha Trinh, and Yvonne Bennett had not been covered by the local papers, but the sixth victim, a homeless woman named Lupe Escondido, made the front page because of the horrific nature of her murder. On a cooling night in October, she had been doused with gasoline while sleeping behind the Studio City Park and burned to death. In the picture Lindo showed me, she had been engulfed by yellow flames. I hadnât even been able to tell she was human.
I read about Escondido, then went to the kitchen because I needed a break from the deaths. The cat purred when I looked at him. He was by the garbage bin where I dumped his rat. I opened the bin, fished out the legs, and put them in his dish.
I said, âYou earned them.â
The final two articles were about the most recent victim, Debra Repko.
Like the first victim, Repko was white, educated, and professional. She had recently earned an MA in political science from USC, after which she was hired by a downtown political consulting firm called Leverage Associates. Sometime between eleven P.M . and two A.M . thirty-six days before Lionel Byrdâs body was discovered, she was struck from behind and suffocated by having a plastic garbage bag held over her head. This event occurred behind a strip mall two blocks from her apartment on the outskirts of Hancock Park, just south of Melrose Avenue. She was survived by her parents and three brothers, all of whom were heartbroken by the news of her death.
I pushed the articles aside, got a bottle of water, and went out onto my deck. The wind had died sometime during the night, and now two red-tailed hawks floated overhead. They had been down with the wind, but now they were up. They appeared to be hunting, but maybe they just enjoyed being in the sky. Maybe, for them, there was no difference.
Thirty yards away, my neighbors were out on their own deck, reading the morning paper. They waved when they saw me and I waved back. I wondered if they were reading about Byrd.
I drank some of the water, then stretched through the traditional twelve sun salutes from the hatha yoga. My neighbor Grace shouted across the hillside.
âDo it naked!â
Her husband laughed.
The yoga flowed into a tae kwon do kata. I kicked and punched with focus from one side of the deck to the other, running one kata into the next, not the classic Korean forms, but combinations I had created: a little wing chun, a little krav maga, a little shen chuan. I moved through all three planes of space, working with greater intensity until sweat
I clipped out the article and map, then used the names and dates to search online for articles published at the times of the original murders. There wasnât much to find. Only four of the seven murders had made the local papers, producing a total of nine published pieces spread over the seven years. I made notes as I read.
Sondra Frostokovich, the first victim, had been given six column inches in a single article. Described as an office manager in the city administration, her body was found in a downtown office building empty for renovation. She had been strangled only four blocks from the city administration building where she worked. The story ended with a pro forma plea that anyone with knowledge of the crime contact a Central Bureau Homicide detective named Thomas Marx. I wondered if it was the same Marx. Had to be. I wondered if he even remembered.
Janice MâKele Evansfield was the second victim, whose arcing blood showed that she was still alive when the picture in Lindoâs book was taken. Her body had been discovered at the edge of the Brentwood Country Club in one of the richest parts of L.A., eleven months and sixteen days after the Frostokovich killing. A follow-up article two weeks later reported there were no suspects in the case and requested the publicâs help.
Unlike Frostokovich and Evansfield, the third, fourth, and fifth victims were prostitutes. Chelsea Ann Morrow, Marsha Trinh, and Yvonne Bennett had not been covered by the local papers, but the sixth victim, a homeless woman named Lupe Escondido, made the front page because of the horrific nature of her murder. On a cooling night in October, she had been doused with gasoline while sleeping behind the Studio City Park and burned to death. In the picture Lindo showed me, she had been engulfed by yellow flames. I hadnât even been able to tell she was human.
I read about Escondido, then went to the kitchen because I needed a break from the deaths. The cat purred when I looked at him. He was by the garbage bin where I dumped his rat. I opened the bin, fished out the legs, and put them in his dish.
I said, âYou earned them.â
The final two articles were about the most recent victim, Debra Repko.
Like the first victim, Repko was white, educated, and professional. She had recently earned an MA in political science from USC, after which she was hired by a downtown political consulting firm called Leverage Associates. Sometime between eleven P.M . and two A.M . thirty-six days before Lionel Byrdâs body was discovered, she was struck from behind and suffocated by having a plastic garbage bag held over her head. This event occurred behind a strip mall two blocks from her apartment on the outskirts of Hancock Park, just south of Melrose Avenue. She was survived by her parents and three brothers, all of whom were heartbroken by the news of her death.
I pushed the articles aside, got a bottle of water, and went out onto my deck. The wind had died sometime during the night, and now two red-tailed hawks floated overhead. They had been down with the wind, but now they were up. They appeared to be hunting, but maybe they just enjoyed being in the sky. Maybe, for them, there was no difference.
Thirty yards away, my neighbors were out on their own deck, reading the morning paper. They waved when they saw me and I waved back. I wondered if they were reading about Byrd.
I drank some of the water, then stretched through the traditional twelve sun salutes from the hatha yoga. My neighbor Grace shouted across the hillside.
âDo it naked!â
Her husband laughed.
The yoga flowed into a tae kwon do kata. I kicked and punched with focus from one side of the deck to the other, running one kata into the next, not the classic Korean forms, but combinations I had created: a little wing chun, a little krav maga, a little shen chuan. I moved through all three planes of space, working with greater intensity until sweat
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