In My Dark Dreams (46 page)

Her name is Dimitra St. Clair. She looks to be in her early thirties, a few years younger than I am, but fighting hard to stay young, like the women on
Friends.
Came to L.A. from wherever to be an actress—no, not really an actress, a television star. A celebrity. Didn’t make it, like the millions who came before her, so she found a new niche that had cachet. Trainer to women who have time and money to hone their bodies. Women married to guys who make money, women who have good jobs, or students who come from families that have money. The gym is in Brentwood, so it is populated with such rich women. Older ones, too, who want to keep up. They know they have to so they don’t end up on the sidelines, replaced by trophy wives.

The initiation fee at her gym is a thousand dollars, and the monthly dues are two hundred. That’s stiff, even by L.A. standards. (An acquaintance of mine who is a member gave me those figures.) So the clientele is posh, and can afford the rates Dimitra and her fellow trainers charge: a hundred dollars a session. You can live in a nice condo off Barrington and drive a Mercedes C280 racking in that kind of income.

She is dressed demurely. Loomis would have told her to. He doesn’t want her to come across as low rent, even if she can pay the bills.

I hate women like this on sight. I told Joe I had to do the cross. I can read her mind—this is her shot at fifteen minutes of prime time. Who knows? If she sparkles, maybe she could parlay this appearance into spinning the wheel on a game show, or becoming a contestant on
Survivor.

Loomis leads her through a brief explanation of what she does, particularly how she relates to her clientele. Each one has a different routine, depending on what they want to accomplish and their fitness level. Nothing cookie-cutter; it’s all about that special person.

“You were Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz’s trainer?” Loomis asks.

“Yes.” The woman has been massaging a tissue. She brings it to her eyes, which are misting up. No wonder she couldn’t make it as an actress, her gesture is patently phony. “She was a doll to work with. Really worked hard to stay in shape.”

“How long were you her trainer?”

“About three months. Right up until she …” She stops and dabs at her eyes again.

“Would you like to take a short break?” Loomis asks solicitously.

She shakes her head. “No. I’ll work through this.” Another eye dab.

“Until she was murdered,” Loomis finishes for her.

“Yes.” She shivers. It’s impossible not to notice that she’s had her breasts done, and probably some more work too, but in L.A. that’s normal, so she doesn’t lose points on that. A girl has to stay current.

Loomis mentions the name of one of the other victims, who had also been a client of Ms. St. Clair. She had moved on before she was killed, so their connection wasn’t as strong as the one St. Clair had with Cheryl Lynn.

“Do personal trainers such as yourself become friendly with their clients?” Loomis asks.

“Oh, yes. Not with all of them, but some of them, for sure.”

“Were you and Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz friends?”

“Yes.”

“Did she confide in you? About her personal life?”

“All the time.”

“Sort of like how some women confide in their hairdressers?” Loomis suggests.

“Exactly!” She perks up. “Did you ever see that movie with Warren Beatty?
Shampoo?
Sometimes it gets that personal.” Quickly, she frowns. “I don’t sleep with clients. That’s a no-no. Anyway, mine are all women, and I don’t swing that way. Not that I have anything against anyone who does,” she adds. She’s covering all the bases.

“But they do tell you their secrets.”

“Yes. Often. They have to tell someone, and I’m a good listener.” She looks up. “And discreet. They know they can trust me.”

“Was there something specific Cheryl Lynn confided to you, shortly before she was murdered?”

Joe and I exchange a worried glance. What the hell is this? I make a move to get up and object, but Joe stops me. Let’s see where this is going, he’s signaling me.

“Yes,” the witness answers.

“What was that?” Loomis asks.

The words come out in a rush.

“She had been having an affair with a married man. She wanted to break it off, but he didn’t want to. She was afraid he might become violent because she was rejecting him. The way she talked about him, it was like he was beneath her, like from a different class or background. She was afraid she would look bad if it became known she was sleeping with a married man who wasn’t up to her standards,” she concludes breathlessly.

Now Joe jumps up. “Objection! This is hearsay! I—”

He doesn’t have to finish. Suzuki turns and glares at the witness, then at Loomis. “Sustained,” he declares, his voice echoing through the big, high-ceilinged room. He is royally pissed. “That is the end of this line of questioning, Counselor. Am I clear?”

Loomis nods. He can take a punch, and he has made his point. “Yes, Your Honor.”

Suzuki turns to the jury box. “The jury will disregard that last series of questions and answers,” he tells the jurors. To the court reporter: “Strike everything from when the witness began talking about personal conversations she had with the deceased.”

Despite being smacked, Loomis got his innuendo in, so he wraps up his questioning and turns the floor over to us. I waddle to the podium, a sheaf of notes clutched in my hand. I smooth them on the dais and look up.

“Is Dimitra St. Clair your actual name?” I ask, out of left field.

She jerks. “What do you mean?”

“Is that the name on your driver’s license? Is that the name you were born with?”

Chagrined: “No.”

“What is your real name?”

Her face turns crimson. “Noreen Borkowski. I can explain—”

I step on her line. “You don’t have to. You moved to Hollywood to become an actress, and you took on a fresh name, to have a fresh start. The way Norma Jeane Baker became Marilyn Monroe. It happens all the time, nothing to be ashamed of.”

Which, of course, she is, particularly since I have set her up to be, so score one for me. “How long have you been a personal trainer, Ms. Bor … Ms. St. Clair.”

Her eyes, so wide a moment ago, are slits now. “Three years.”

“And before that you were …”

Oh, man. She is so pissed at me. Just where I want her. “I did some modeling. And acting.” She pauses. “Waitressing, bartending.”

“Escort service?”

She squirms as if she has the hives. “Some. But strictly legit.”

“Of course.” I let her twist for a few seconds, then ask, “How long have you worked at your present place of employment?”

“A year and a half.”

“How many members are there in your club?”

She frowns. “I don’t know. Hundreds, I’m sure.”

The answer is over five hundred, as of a week ago. We learned that last night.

“How many do you train a week?”

She has this answer down. “At the moment, twenty-two.”

“Sessions or clients?” I ask.

“Clients,” she answers. “Some train with me more than once a week. I actually do about thirty-five hours of training. It’s hard work.”

More than three grand gross. Even after the house takes its cut, it’s pretty good money. As much as I make with my fancy law degree.

“You say the club has several hundred members. Besides providing workout facilities, does the club sponsor social events? Get-togethers?”

She shakes her head. “No. We’re a health club, period. You come to get in shape, not to socialize.”

“A serious gym.”

“Yes.”

“Are there classes as well as individual workouts?”

“Of course,” she says. “All health clubs have classes. I teach some of them.”

I look at my notes. “To your knowledge, or from memory, did the two victims who belonged to your club take any of your classes? Or any classes?”

“Yes. They both did.”

“With you?”

“And other instructors. I encourage my clients to take classes. They are free—I mean they come with the monthly dues—and it helps supplement the individual workouts.”

I home in. “Did these women have any classes together with you?”

She thinks for a moment. Another bullshit pose—she knows the answer. “Not that I recall,” she admits.

“Or with any other instructor, to your knowledge?”

She looks at Loomis, as if for guidance, then comes back to me. “They couldn’t have,” she says. She explains. “They weren’t members of the club at the same time. By the time Cheryl Lynn joined, Marta (the other victim) wasn’t a member anymore.”

“So if these two women knew each other,” I continue on that line, “it would not be because they had met at your club?”

“No. They would not have met at the club.”

I look at Judge Suzuki. “No further questions, Your Honor.” I begin to walk back to the defense table, then I change my mind and take the podium again. “I’m sorry. I do have another question. A few more, actually.”

Suzuki nods. “Go ahead.”

“When did you meet with the police and tell them about this?”

“Last week,” she says. She plays with her tissue. Crosses her legs.

“Just last week? This case has been all over the media for months. Why didn’t you come forward before?”

She squirms some more. “I didn’t know about it.”

I practically laugh in her face. “You didn’t know about it until a week ago? Don’t you read the newspapers? Watch the news on television?”

“I don’t read the papers,” she snaps. “They’re a pack of lies. And I do watch some news, but it’s usually too depressing. I don’t like to be depressed. I believe in having a positive outlook.”

“Weren’t people talking about it at your health club? It was about women they knew!”

“Yes.” She moans, as if this is such a waste of her time. “But I didn’t put it all together. I messed up, I know. But when I did learn it was Cheryl Lynn, I came to the police right away.” I’ve got her on the defensive, so her instinct is to strike back at me. But she doesn’t know how, so she sounds like a whiner. “I didn’t have to,” she simpers. “I knew some sharpie like you would try to trip me up. But I did it anyway, because it was the right thing.”

“Yes, it was the right thing,” I spit back at her. “Too bad it took so damn long.”

Loomis stands in place. “Your Honor—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I wave him off. “Withdraw the last comment.”

The witness has completely lost her composure now. She sits slumped over, and there are dark moons of sweat under her bra line. “Before you went to the police, Ms. St. Clair, had you ever heard the name Roberto Salazar?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“No one ever said that name to you? Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz never said that name to you?”

“No.”

I turn to our table. “Roberto, would you please stand up?” I ask him.

He stands in place. I look at the hapless witness again. “Do you know this man?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen him before today?”

“No.”

“Not once?”

“I have never seen him,” she snaps. “Okay? I’ve never seen him.”

The prosecution rests. The defense rests. Tomorrow, closing arguments. Then twelve men and women will decide whether Roberto Salazar goes free, or dies.

I
HARDLY GOT ANY SLEEP
last night, and it wasn’t because the baby was kicking up a storm inside me. She was relatively quiet, for once. I’m giving the closing summation for the defense. My first in a murder trial. Obviously my most important, ever.

My taking the leading role was Joe’s call. Increasingly, as the trial has progressed, he has turned over more and more of the work to me. It’s not that he’s lazy or indifferent—he is neither. He has seen me grow as a courtroom advocate, and he’s decided it’s time I was kicked out of the nest. Fly or die.

There is another reason I’m doing it. We don’t have a case. We have won some specific battles, but any objective observer would say we have lost the war. If betting on the outcome was legal, we would be heavy underdogs. So our defense will be an offensive barrage, a give-no-quarter onslaught. A young woman in her third trimester attacking the system can get away with much more than a rumpled, middle-aged man.

I’ve been rehearsing my speech for days, changing details as new stuff comes up during the last days of the trial, but it’s basically set. I will have a conversation with the jurors. It is onesided—I talk, they listen. But it’s still a conversation, a connection. The last one you make, and usually the most important one.

There is a faint hum from the air-conditioning. Otherwise, all is quiet. The courtroom is packed. Amanda and Mrs. Salazar are in their accustomed seats. Scattered throughout the chamber are witnesses who gave testimony, including Cordova and the members of his team. They occupy part of a row halfway back, on the prosecution side, a monolithic, foreboding force. All the spectators—in the gallery, in the jury box, at the prosecution table—are leaning forward in their chairs, as if waiting for a symphony orchestra to start the music.

Earlier this morning, Arthur Wong gave the prosecution’s opening statement. They go first, we follow, then they rebut. Harry Loomis will carry the ball to the goal line for them, and he will bring the real fire, so Wong’s presentation was relatively dry. He laid out the facts, crisply, cleanly, and concisely. We recessed for fifteen minutes, and now we are back in session.

I stand at the podium. One deep cleansing breath, and I begin the most important summation of my life.

“The police needed to find a killer. They were desperate for one. The city was in a panic, paralyzed. Month after month, during the period of the full moon, a woman was killed. One woman per month, three months in a row. The police were sure the killings were all the work of one man.

“A police task force was formed. The best detectives from all over the city and county, from the LAPD and sheriff’s department and the other involved jurisdictions, were assigned to it. They had one job, and one job only: find the killer.” I repeat the last phrase, but change the article. “Find
a
killer.

“But then the killings stopped. That caused a different kind of panic. If there were no more killings, the task force would be disbanded, and the killer might never be caught. He might vanish forever, like the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco did, back in the 1960s.