Rhonda rubbed her wrists. “What if I don’t like the accommodations? You also mentioned money a while back.”
Lloyd got out of the car and pointed to the door. “Later. I’ve got some reading to do. You sit tight while I do it, then we’ll talk.”
The records sleeves were thick and heavy with paper. Picking them up, Lloyd felt comforted by the bulk of the cop data. He unlocked the door, flicked on the light and motioned Rhonda inside. “Make yourself at home, anywhere downstairs.”
“What about upstairs?”
“It’s sealed off.”
“Why?”
“Never mind.”
“You’re weird.”
“Just sit tight, all right?”
Rhonda shrugged and started opening and closing the kitchen cabinets. Lloyd carried the sleeves into the living room and arrayed them on the coffee table, noting that the paperwork came from the L.A. County Department of Corrections, L.A. County Probation Department, County Parole Bureau and California State Adult Authority. The pages were not broken down by the names of his four suspects, and he had to first collate them into stacks—one for Duane Rice, one each for the Garcia brothers, one for Anne Vanderlinden. That accomplished, he broke them down by agency, with R&I rap sheets on top. Then, with the sounds of Rhonda’s kitchen puttering barely denting his concentration, he sat back to read and think and scheme, hoping to pull cold facts into some kind of salvation.
Duane Richard Rice, quadruple cop killer, grew up in the Hawaiian Gardens Housing Project, graduated Bell High School, had a 136 I.Q. The first of his two arrests was for vehicular manslaughter. While working as a mechanic at a Beverly Hills sports car dealership, he lost control of a car he was test-driving and killed two pedestrians. He ran from the scene on foot, but turned himself in to the Beverly Hills police later that same night. Since Rice possessed no criminal record and no drugs or alcohol were involved, the judge offered a five-year prison sentence, then suspended it on the proviso that he perform one thousand hours of public service. Rice shouted obscenities at the judge, who retracted the suspension and sentenced him to five years in the California Youth Authority Facility at Soledad.
While at Soledad, Rice refused to participate in group or individual therapy, studied martial arts and worked in the facility’s auto shop. He was not a disciplinary problem; he formed no discernible “close prison ties.” He was not a member of the Aryan Brotherhood or other institutional race gangs and abstained from homosexual liaisons. Judged to be a “potential achiever, with high intelligence and the potential for developing into a highly motivated young adult,” he was paroled after serving three years of his sentence.
Rice’s parole officer considered him “withdrawn” and “potentially volatile,” but was impressed with his hard work as foreman at a Midas Muffler franchise and his “complete eschewing of the criminal life-style.” Thus, when Rice was subsequently arrested on one count of grand theft auto, the officer did not cite him for a parole violation, mentioning in a letter to the judge that “I believe this offender to be acting under psychological duress, deriving from his relationship with the woman with whom he was cohabitating.”
Rice received a year in the county jail, was sent to the Malibu Fire Camp and evinced spectacular bravery during the Agoura brushfires. His parole officer and the judge who tried his case granted him a sentence reduction as a result of this “adjustment,” and he was given three years formal county probation and released from custody.
Lloyd put the Rice records aside, and turned to the paper on the girlfriend.
Vanderlinden, Anne Atwater, white f