No Regrets

remarked. “I think I’ll go on back and see if he’d like to waive extradition.”
    Ayala told Cucco and his partner, Billy Mathis, that he thought he’d just as soon go back to Seattle. It was 6:00 A.M. on July 18 when John Nordlund and Detective Danny Melton arrived at the Harris County Jail. They took custody of Ayala, who said he would “ride this beef out in prison,” but he also hinted that he might commit suicide. He knew he was going to prison, but preferred Washington penitentiaries to those in Texas.
    During the flight back to Seattle, Ayala inquired about Arden Lee’s health. Nordlund reminded him that he didn’t have to talk about the incident.
    “She was a whore who said she’d get me off twice for forty dollars, but she went back on her promise.”
    He seemed to feel he was justified in doing what he’d done to her. He said she’d tried to steal his wallet.
    Nordlund and Melton stared at him, this cold man with no remorse at all for what he had done to another human being. Ayala seemed to feel justified in what he had done. “Well,” he sneered. “She tried to steal my wallet.”
    Neither detective believed him.
    When they landed in Seattle, Ayala seemed oddly anxious to return to the dark basement where the rape and beating had occurred. He was taken back there and he showed detectives the route from the Korea Tavern and how he’d gotten Arden into the basement. His statement agreed with Arden’s except that he insisted that she’d agreed to go with him for money. Finally, he admitted that he had put the rope around her neck and forced her into the cellar.
    “She promised she wouldn’t tell the police,” he said, “but I got paranoid and I picked up a stick and started to hit her.
    “I went back to work. I thought I’d go back later and check on her, and maybe call an ambulance, but I didn’t get around to it.”
    Ayala’s written statement to Nordlund showed more violence on his part than he’d admitted during verbal statements. “I hadn’t bought the house. I just wanted to get her there. I was ahead of her and I think she started getting paranoid. She started screaming ‘Help me’ or something like that.
    “I found the rope next to a bush and put it around her neck. I dragged her down the stairwell. She was crying. Ididn’t want to hurt her or anything—I just wanted to talk to her.”
    Ayala said that the victim had offered to perform fellatio, but that he’d stopped her because he didn’t want it then. “We were in the basement. It was dark in there. I took the rope off. I hit her. She was on the ground. I hit her with my hand open. I didn’t know if I should let her go or not. I picked up a stick from the floor and I hit her about eight times. I could hear her kind of foaming from the mouth. I put my ear on her chest. I could hear her breathing. I closed the doors and took off.”
    Ayala admitted he’d been in the Exotica the next day when Lamphere and Nordlund came looking for him, but he said the girls covered for him, giving him a chance to escape. “After you left, I closed the place and split.”
    Ayala had hopped a bus for Galveston and gotten off in Houston. It was quite possible that he thought he’d killed Arden Lee when he left her in the basement of the deserted house. If she had not managed to crawl out to the street and finally summon help, she probably would have died alone with the rats and the spiders. As it was, she barely survived. Even as she seemed to be getting better, she developed pneumonia; somehow she fought that off, too.
    She did recover, somewhat scarred, and with a niggling fear of the dark that she will probably always have.
    George Allen Ayala pleaded guilty to an amended charge of assault and received a forty-year sentence.
    One of the most helpful informants in the Arden Lee case did not fare as well. Roger Pomarleau, the owner-manager of the Exotica, was always on the lookout for fresh youngtalent to feature in the center window. He recruited a new employee in mid-September—only two months after George Ayala was arrested. Cheri Schak was a tiny blonde, only nineteen, and she was thrilled when she listened to the usual spiel that she would make one hundred dollars a night and tips for gyrating in the window of the Exotica and giving dance “programs” in the back rooms.
    Since Pomarleau invariably ended up collecting a hefty percentage of “his” girls’ earnings, he was pleased with Cheri, who was more attractive