If Angels Fall by Rick Mofina

the guy who
took Becker our missing link in the Donner file?”
    “Wait. For the benefit of everyone coming to this
fresh, walk us through Donner, Walt,” Deputy Chief Kennedy said.
    “I want to measure Becker against Donner from square
one.”
    Sydowski knew the case history by rote. “Angela Donner
is a single, young welfare mother. She puts her daughter, Tanita Marie down for
a nap in the playpen of the fenced rear patio of their ground-floor suite in
Balboa almost one year ago. When Angela goes to answer the phone, someone grabs
Tanita, unseen. No witness, no physical evidence at the scene. No ransom call,
no letters. No demands. Nothing. Three days later, two girls on a science trip
find her about eleven a.m. in Golden Gate, in a garbage bag, under a tire.”
    “Time of death and location, Walt?” Inspector Bruce
Paley asked.
    “Coroner puts it at eight hours before she was found.
She was killed the night before about three in the morning.”
    “At the park?” Paley asked.
    “No. Her stage of rigor indicates she was not killed
there. She was held for three days, then killed and dumped.”
    “What about the baby’s farther?”
    “Checked out clean. Her throat was cut with a small,
tooth-edged knife. Some details of her death are hold-back,” Sydowski said. “We
had nothing, no weapon, no witnesses. Nothing, except suspicions about Franklin
Wallace. We lit the ‘hood, ran everybody in a twelve-block radius of the girl’s
home. Wallace came up, among others. He was a short-order cook, married, and
had a four-year-old daughter. He lived near Tanita, read Bible stories to her
and kids at his Sunday school day care, He also had a ten-year-old conviction
in Virginia for molesting a five-year-old girl. He made our suspect list, along
with others in the area. We questioned Wallace superficially through a routine canvass.
We never went hard on him. He was alibied and we had nothing at the time, which
was days after the case broke.
    “Quantico’s profile leaned strongly to a two-person
team, which was bang on when we got a break later. A patrol officer chasing
drugs in Dolores found Tanita’s plastic diaper and these two Polaroids hidden
under some bushes.” Sydowski passed around enlarged copies of the two
snapshots. “This material is also hold-back.”
    One picture showed Tanita alive, naked, being held by
a man wearing no shirt. The man’s head has been cut out of the picture. The
second photo showed a different man with tattoos on his forearms, wearing a
black hood and gloves, holding Tanita, her little eyes open wide.
    Turgeon covered her mouth with her hand.
    Sydowski continued.
    “We’re still working on the tattoo’s. Looks like he’s
done time. The man in the first picture is Wallace. His prints were on Tanita’s
diaper. We’re certain two men were involved with Donner. Fits the profile. I
suspect the diaper and picture were trophies they kept.”
    “Why’s that?” Tippet said.
    Sydowski nodded to the FBI agents. Rust answered.
    “Because the killer is usually aroused by reliving or
fantasizing about any aspect of the act. Look, the material is not in and
residence. Our boy is smart to hide it in a public place. Makes it tough to
link him to the crime. He can return to the pictures and enjoy them. He likely
savored the baby’s scent from the diaper, it was a clean one. The killer was
the dominant team member who literally cut Wallace out of the fantasy by
removing his head from the picture.”
    “Didn’t the guy try to set up Wallace somehow?” Paley
said.
    “Yeah, he fucked us over good,” Sydowski said.
“Everything happened at once. Right after we found the stuff in Dolores and
before we could nail Wallace, Tom Reed at the Star got an anonymous call
saying Wallace was the killer, that we had pictures of him with the girl and
that he had a record in Virginia. We figured the killer must have seen our guy
find the pictures. How else would he know? Reed called Virginia,