Killer in the Hills (15 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Joel Fischer, my attorney in New York, was in LA within 24 hours after my arrest that night in Eagle Rock. He scrambled a defense team for Karen and me, and I was remanded to the custody of the good people at UCLA Medical Center, who sewed me up and reset my wrist. My hip was intact—the bullet only grazed the bone—but I would require weeks of physical therapy.

Karen was placed at a pay-to-stay juvenile facility near Thousand Oaks, while the lawyers worked on our release. Until then, I was not allowed to see her or communicate with her.

Melvin was at Cedars for a month before he could speak—the bullet had passed between his skull and the protective tissue around his brain without doing irreversible damage. As soon as he could talk, he swore out a statement from his hospital bed and corroborated my story. I was allowed to see him a week later.

He was propped up in bed, his shaved head half-swathed in bandages. When I walked in he looked at me under heavy-lidded eyes, then looked back up at the television hanging from the ceiling. I sat next to his bed and waited.

“DA’s office not fond of you,” he said, looking at the TV. His speech was clear but even more spare than usual. “Heads already roll.”

“How’s yours?” I said.

His eyes moved from the TV to me.

I nodded. Stupid question. He looked at the TV again.

“Lawyers pushing self-defense, defense of another person. Looking at weapons charges, reckless endangerment. Wait and see about the rest.”

“That’s what Joel tells me,” I said.

“Every man you shot a size-large felon. Homicide, drug and sex traffic. People wondering why they’re on the street. Hard to push a case against the man who did what DA’s people supposed to be doing.”

I nodded.

“Bureau’s on the bomb scare,” he said. “Do what I can.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “What about Karen?”

He took a sip of juice. I looked at the pattern of surgical scars in his scalp, where black stubble had begun to grow around the new tissue.

“Taking a long time to get a full statement from her,” he said. “Gonna drop murder charge for the mother. Salerno says Erlacher paid Victor Kaloff to do it—Russian you hit. Shot Penelope in the tub, moved her to the bed.”

“Salerno made a deal for Zach’s murder?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Rat his mom to clear the death penalty. Lot of people going down now Salerno’s talking. Including the pedophile in DA’s office who had Cyber track my car to the Bowl. Starting to share your distaste for this town.”

“So what’s the holdup with Karen?” I said. “The prints on the gun?”

“No, they like Victor for the mother,” he said. “Don’t know about the prints. Maybe Sal smarter than everybody thought. Figured another set of prints on a weapon not a bad idea. ‘Specially if they belong to a minor.”

“So what is it?” I said. “Why won’t they release Karen?”

Melvin took a moment before he spoke.

“Some guys at the Bureau wondering about some things,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Gun they found in Erlacher’s hand night he was killed,” he said. “Some wondering why no other prints on it besides his.”

“That’s not so hard to explain—” I said, before Melvin interrupted me.

“Best if you don’t say anything.”

I shut up.

“They find only one set of prints on a gun, they ask questions. Like could the gun have been wiped clean, placed in Erlacher’s hand.”

He looked at me. I waited.

“Plus her statements are inconsistent,” he said. “Where she was standing when Erlacher about to shoot her, where you were standing when you shot him to protect her… Told ‘em I’d talk to you, see if you had anything to say.”

I shook my head. After a moment he gave a small nod.

“I’ll call ‘em tomorrow,” he said.

“Alright.”

“Anything you want to tell me? Off the record?”

“Just that I’m sorry I got you into this.”

He closed his eyes and rested his head back on his pillow.

“Thought about what you’re gonna do with the girl?” he said.

“Nicki was talking about foster homes,” I said.

“Had a friend grew up in a foster home,” he said. “Ten kids, mom and dad don’t work, pick up checks from the state for all of ‘em.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“So you finally talk to Nicki,” he said.

“She called when I was at UCLA,” I said. “She was glad I was okay but she’s done. It was just too much for her, being with me through all this.”

“Can’t say I blame her,” he said. “Sucks being with you.”

“We’re still friends.”

“Sucks being your friend,” he said.

“You still my friend?”

He laid still, his eyes closed.

“Working on acquaintance,” he said.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

After months of legal wrangling, the charges were formally dropped against Karen and she was allowed to go home—to New York—where she would stay with me.

I was, after all, her father.

By summer I had enrolled her in a boarding school in upstate New York—a small, leafy campus with ivy-cloaked buildings and discreet administrators—and I got her started with a therapist. We spent the summer fixing up my guest room and exploring the city and preparing for school in the fall. We didn’t talk much about events in LA, and when we did it was brief and superficial—and only when she brought it up.

Melvin let me look at her statements once the charges were dropped. She had been paid to be with Erlacher twice. She did not know who he was, she only knew him as “John.” Sal had threatened her with the specter of Leukatov if she didn’t do it, and she never had sex for money at any other time.

Her statements reflected no sign of doubt that I was her father, and we never spoke of it until one evening, at the end of the summer, as we walked back to the apartment after dinner. She was talkative at dinner, and seemed excited about starting school. But after we left the restaurant she became quiet and thoughtful.

“I need to know some things,” she said. “We haven’t talked about it and I’m about to leave and…I need to ask you .”

“Okay.”

“How come you never asked me why I shot him?” she said.

I looked west as we approached Central Park. There was a dull pink line of sunlit horizon under a bank of clouds. In a minute it would be night. In a week she would be gone.

“We lied about it,” she said. “I said you shot him, like you told me to that night. And you never said anything about it all this time.”

“I figured you’d talk about it when you were ready,” I said.

“I heard what he said to you,” she said. “About being my father.”

“That’s what he said. Doesn’t make it true.”

“Is it true?” she said.

“I have no idea.”

“Can’t you find out? Can’t you have Melvin check our DNA or…?”

“Yes.”

“And you never had him do that?”

“I thought about it, but decided not to.”

“Why not?” she said.

I watched a duck fly up from the park, heading south. Once it cleared the trees I lost track of it.

“I guess it has to do with what makes a person a parent,” I said. “How important blood is, among other things. Why should it matter, really?”

“Because I want to know who my father is.”

“I’m your father.”

“But I want to know if he—if I…” she struggled to find words.

“I understand,” I said. I didn’t need to force her say out loud what had no doubt tormented her for months.

“I can handle it,” she said. “I’ve handled worse and survived.”

“There’s more to life than survival.”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “I’m tough enough to hear the truth.”

“There’s more to life than being tough.”

“I don’t need a lecture,” she said. “I just want to know, that’s all.”

“What if it’s not what you want to hear?”

“I told you, I can handle it,” she said. “Negative capability, right?”

“So you do listen when I lecture you.”

“Sometimes.”

“Any of my other wisdom stick with you?”

“Some,” she said. “Like what you said about be being exploited for money, and about self-respect. I talk a lot about that with Dr. Slater. She agrees with you.”

“About time somebody did,” I said. “What about you? Do you agree?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Good.”

“So…will you have Melvin check?” she said.

“Okay.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

It is five o’clock in the evening on the first Friday in October when Karen and I return to the apartment. I have brought her back to the city for the weekend. In the car she was in good spirits, and she made me listen to her music the whole way back from school, and attempted to explain it to me. I figured if I let her explain her music to me, she might let me explain Bob Dylan to her on the trip back to school Sunday night.

When we enter the apartment she heads for the coffee table and drops her gargantuan backpack and starts unloading books while I scoop up the mail from the floor by the door.

The phone rings. I go to the counter that separates the living room from the kitchen and pick up the handset and look at the ID.

Melvin.

“Hey,” I answer. “What’s up?”

“Got the DNA,” he says.

“Okay,” I say. I look at Karen. She is digging around in her backpack for something.

“Okay to talk now?” he says.

“Sure.”

“Her DNA matched Erlacher’s,” Melvin says. “He was her biological father.”

I keep my eyes on Karen, who looks up from her backpack, sensing something in my voice.

“Ran it as a blind sample,” Melvin says. “No one knows but you and me.”

“Okay,” I say to Melvin. “Thanks.”

I hang up.

“That was Melvin,” I say to Karen.

“What’d he say?”

“The DNA results are back.”

She sits very still and looks at me.

“So?” she says.

I hesitate, even though I know what I’m going to say. I knew before Melvin called.

“Are you my dad?” she says.

“Yes,” I say.