RK02 - Guilt By Degrees (10 page)

Johnnie was
reluctant to let us take the vase.

“Right now, this is our only link to his identity. We might need to show it to other witnesses, have it analyzed for prints, compare it to other pottery. Until we’ve got his identity nailed down, we have to hang on to it,” I said. “I’ll get it back to you. I promise.” I looked at him intently, wanting him to understand how important this was.

Johnnie returned my gaze, then looked away. Finally, after a few long moments, he responded, “I guess if it’ll help y’all find his killer…”

“I can’t promise we’ll get the killer—but I can promise we’ll try.”

“And I give you my word we’ll bring it back,” Bailey said.

Johnnie nodded slowly. “Then you go ahead and take it,” he said quietly. “But no matter what happens, you bring it back, you hear? A man needs to be remembered. I believe Simon gave it to me because he intended for me to remember him.” Johnnie lifted his chin and looked me in the eye. “That’s what I mean to do.”

The words, softly spoken, were powerful. I held his gaze for a beat. “You have my word.”

Minutes later, we were speeding down the freeway toward downtown. It wasn’t even eight o’clock, but it felt like midnight. I yawned, leaned back in my seat, and watched the lights in the skyscrapers grow brighter as we neared the Civic Center.

“You still going to make it to dinner with Drew?” I asked, glad I hadn’t made similar plans with Graden for tonight.

“Yeah,” Bailey said, sounding as tired as I felt. “But it’s going to be a short one.”

We rode in silence, both of us exhausted but happy. Bailey raced down the off-ramp at Broadway. “It’s unbelievable how we pulled this off,” she said.

“See?” I remarked. “We’re good
and
we got lucky. Just goes to show ya…”

Bailey laughed and held up her fist, and I bumped it with mine as we pulled into the circular drive in front of the Biltmore. But one question nagged at me.

“It’s a ridiculously long walk from Boyle Heights to downtown,” I pointed out. “How did our victim do it?”

Bailey nodded in agreement. “Good question. But now that we have his ID, we just might be able to figure that out.”

“And maybe this’ll buy me more time on the case,” I replied. “Not a bad day, huh, Keller?”

“It’ll do,” Bailey said with a grin. “I’ll run Simon Bayer’s name in the morning and call you with the results.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “After all this, I’m going to be there when you find out. Call me before you do anything.”

“Then get your ass up on time for once,” she retorted.

“I will. Just promise—”

“I’ll call. Now get out.” Bailey laughed. “You’re getting in the way of my love life.”

“Give Drew my best,” I said.

“I’ll do better than that—I’ll give him mine.” She sped off.

I trotted through the lobby, got into the elevator, and ordered dinner from room service on the way up. Chicken breast with steamed broccoli. No bread. But that wasn’t celebratory enough for the occasion, so I added a bottle of Deep Sea Pinot Noir.

The wine, which was delicious, made my virtuous dinner a lot more palatable. When I’d finished, I pushed the room service cart into the hall and took my glass of wine out to the balcony. The city lights cast a soft glow against the cloak of night that flatteringly covered the streets. Above, the stars sparkled in the cloudless black sky. For this one moment, all felt right with the world. I eventually put myself to bed and slowly drifted off, feeling as though I were falling through a cloud.

The next morning came sooner—and noisier—than I’d expected, with the jangling ring of the hotel phone. Only three people ever used this number. By the fourth ring, after my brain stopped swirling, I’d narrowed the possibilities down to one.

“Yeah,” I said, doing my best to sound sharp.

“Don’t bother,” Bailey barked. “I know I woke you up. You want to be here when I run the name, get your ass over here.”

“Jeez, put down the coffeepot,” I groused. “I’ll be there in—”

A loud dial tone told me there was no point in finishing the sentence. I glanced outside. It looked sunny, but I decided to do layers for safety’s sake. It was unlikely I’d be out in the world for long, and I knew for sure that I had to go into the office to tell Eric about our latest break in the case, so I’d have to wear “real” clothes. I quickly threw on wool slacks and heels, a white blouse, and a black wool blazer.

Riding the high of having managed to identify our victim last night, I’d been optimistic about my chances of holding on to the case. Now I wasn’t so sure. If Hemet was bound and determined to cause trouble, the fact that I’d been able to put a name to the face might not matter as much as I’d hoped.

I considered skipping makeup, then thought better of it. I might run into Graden. Hating myself for caring, I nevertheless took a few minutes to dust on bronzer and apply eyeliner and mascara. Never mind the lipstick—I was going to pick up coffee on the way, and it’d be gone before I even got to Bailey’s desk. I pulled on an overcoat, dropped my .22 Beretta into the pocket, and at the last minute grabbed a cashmere muffler. I speed-walked all the way to the
Police
Administration Building, stopping only to pick up a cup of coffee from a churro cart, and jumped into a conveniently open elevator just before it closed.

All that
running and jumping had warmed me up, and as I moved toward Bailey’s desk, I had to unwrap the muffler. The room was relatively quiet, with just a few detectives in shirtsleeves working the phones.

“Let the games begin,” I announced as I neared Bailey’s desk.

“Here,” she said, pulling a chair over, “have a seat.”

I sat down and unbuttoned my overcoat. Bailey flexed her fingers and began to type. It took no more than five seconds before the screen filled with listings. She whistled softly, then frowned to herself.

“Hey, wait a minute…,” she said, then stopped. For the next few minutes, she clicked and scrolled in silence.

Finally I could take no more.

“What?” I asked, agitated. “What?”

But Bailey held up a hand and continued to stare at the screen. From my angle, I couldn’t see well enough to read it myself. I was about to shove her out of the way when at last she spoke.

“Sorry,” she said. “Here.” She turned the monitor toward me and clicked on a link, and an article came up.

I read the headline: “Brother of Murdered Cop Takes Case to Feds.”
What the…?

I read on:

There was more, but Bailey stopped me. “If I remember right, Zack Bayer was kind of a rising star in the department. He married this looker who was a young associate in one of those white-shoe law firms. They found Zack’s body in the basement of his home. He’d been chopped up with an ax.”

It was an unusually grisly killing style for any kind of female, except maybe a meth head. This woman didn’t sound like one. “They got the murder weapon?” I asked.

Bailey nodded.

“Any prints or blood evidence?” I asked.

She stared off and knitted her brows. “We didn’t handle the case, and it’s been a few years, so I don’t have the details. I just remember hearing that the jury acquitted her after about five minutes of deliberation. The Feds never did take the case.”

“So Simon didn’t get his wish.”

Bailey shook her head.

I turned back to the computer and continued scrolling through the article. When I got to the end of the story, I hit a link that took me to the first published column. And came to a full stop. I stared at the image on the screen, a ripple of tension crackling up my spine. I barely breathed as awareness of the possible discovery—and its implications—spread through me.
How could this be?
I was so intent that I lost all sense of place and time. Then Bailey’s agitated voice brought me crashing back to earth.

“Knight? Hey! Speak up, damn it! What’s going on?”

I held my hand up. “Give me a second,” I whispered as I looked up at the ceiling and concentrated on the memory that’d been conjured by the image on the screen. After a few more moments, I nodded to myself. I turned the monitor so Bailey could see it.

“Check this out,” I said.

It was a shot of Lilah taken in court. She was sitting at counsel table. Though the photo was grainy and she was partially hidden by the shoulder of her lawyer, we could still get an overall sense of her appearance. Just enough to make the connection.

“Her hair’s a lot shorter here,” I said, gesturing to the screen.

“I’ll be dipped,” Bailey said, staring at the screen. “She’s the woman in the video—”

I was relieved that Bailey’d confirmed my gut reaction. “Can’t say for sure yet, we can’t tell her height or weight from this photo.”

“But we can nail this one down easy.”

That was certainly true. There’d be a number of people who’d be able to tell us whether the woman in the video was Lilah.

“If it
was
Lilah in the video—,” I began.

“Simon’s sister-in-law,” Bailey said pointedly.

“Then Simon died trying to get to her.”

“Looks that way,” Bailey agreed. “But how did he know he’d find her right there, right then?”

Bailey and I exchanged a look as the question hung in the air between us. I again envisioned the surveillance footage of the stabbing. “The video showed that she’d turned away by the time Simon went down. There’s no way she could’ve killed him.”

“But someone who was with her might have,” Bailey pointed out.

“Or, at the very least, she had to have seen something,” I added. “She might be our best witness.”

“One way or another, we need to find her…”

And I had an idea where we might get not only a lead on her whereabouts but some answers as to how she and Simon wound up just inches apart within seconds of Simon’s stabbing.

“We’re going to have to get into Zack’s murder,” I said.

Bailey nodded. She sat back and folded her arms, her expression sardonic. “Guess this means we’ll be staying on the case.”

She was right, of course. Now that the victim was “somebody,” it was a Special Trials case. I didn’t know whether to rejoice or break something.

Eric put
his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair as I gave him the update on our victim’s identity.

When I’d finished, he sat forward and made a few notes on his legal pad before responding. “I can’t say what Hemet—or, more important, Summers—is going to say about this, but given what you’ve told me, it’s a Special Trials case now. And since you’ve been running with it from the start, it only makes sense for you to keep it.”

I could see he wasn’t sorry about this development. It gave him the right to keep the case in the unit and the chance to back Hemet down. But as much as I liked Eric, I didn’t give a damn about management turf wars. It irked the hell out of me that it’d taken a development like this to let me keep the case. I looked out the window for a moment to stop myself from saying something I truly meant. Maybe that’s exactly why head deputies like Eric had the best, most panoramic, views in the building.

“I know this pisses you off,” he said, reading my mind. “And I understand. But all the same, you are getting what you wished for, aren’t you?”

“I suppose.”

“So just remember what they say about that.”

I sure did. That’s why my motto was
Never chase a case.
It invariably comes back to bite you. I hadn’t chased this one; it’d fallen into my lap. But the result would be the same if it exploded in my face. And Eric knew as well as I did that if it all went south on me, Hemet would be right there to point an accusing finger.

“And given the connection to Zack Bayer’s murder case, there’s going to be a fair amount of press interest now. So how do the rest of your cases look?” Eric asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll leave it to you to manage your schedule. But if you’re underwater, I expect you to be honest with me and let me reassign a couple of your cases.”

I nodded to appear cooperative but knew there was no way in hell I was going to let him give away any of my trials. His phone rang, and I used the distraction to slip out.

Back in my office, I went through my calendar. I had ten pending cases, but I’d been right about the schedule: the month of December was relatively clear. This was no accident: December was a dicey month for jury trials. It was hard to know where a jury’s sense of holiday charity might take them. They might feel sorry for a defendant (bad for the prosecution), or they might feel sorry for the victim (bad for the defense). Given that uncertainty, and lawyers’ own holiday plans, little business got done in December. After that, things would get trickier. Because Special Trials cases were so newsworthy and so serious, it was rare to have cases plead out. So a caseload of ten usually meant ten “go” trials.

“Hey, stranger.” I looked up to see a vision standing in the doorway, looking beautiful, as always, in a black gabardine suit with gold buttons and an off-white silk blouse.

“Toni! Where’ve you been?”

She came in and sat down. “Where’ve
I
been? I’ve been here. You’re the one who’s been gone. Is it time for a drink yet?” She looked out the window at the clock on the Times Building. “Just two thirty? How can that possibly be?”

“I know, right?” I chuckled. “You got plans tonight?”

“No, ma’am,” she said. “So we can do whatever. But I’m not waiting till then to find out what’s up with you. A little bird told me Hemet’s after your ass, and you know I never pass up a chance to say ‘I told you so.’”

“You sure did,” I replied ruefully. I filled her in on the events of the past few days.

“This is definitely gonna chap Hemet’s ass. Gotta love that,” she remarked. “And you’re right, the case is interesting as hell, but it’s a real toughie.” Then she added wryly, “Lucky for you, there’s no pressure.”

“Ugh,” I said glumly. “Don’t remind me. I just got an earful from Eric. I’m waiting for the bank’s surveillance-camera footage and hoping it’ll pop something out for us.”

Toni nodded. “You mean, as in, make it an easy one?” She gave me an incredulous look. “You need to share what you’ve been smoking.”

I laughed and shook my head. “A girl can dream, right?”

“Sure, whatever,” Toni said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “You ever hear back from Scott about the victim’s physical condition?”

“Not yet. But I’ll keep after him. So catch me up with you—what’s going on?”

Toni exhaled heavily, her expression dour. “I just got assigned to that geezer bank robber case.”

“That eighty-year-old guy with the oxygen tank on his back?” I asked. “I didn’t know they had a suspect in custody already.”

“They don’t, but we just had a press conference today,” Toni confirmed. “I’m totally screwed on this one. The way he shuffles around on that surveillance tape, he looks like a geriatric tortoise,” she said, shaking her head morosely. “The jurors are going to think he’s just the poor little senior fighting back against the big, bad banks. It’s got
not guilty
written all over it.”

I bit my lips to keep from laughing. The geezer bandit was one for the books. He’d robbed all nine banks with an oxygen tank on his back, and after he got the money, he toddled out, slow as molasses. The case was ready-made for jury nullification. Boiled down to its essence, every jury trial is a popularity contest. And these days banks aren’t exactly prom queen. The jurors would probably carry him out on their shoulders.

“You think the defense’ll bring in the oxygen tank as an exhibit?” I asked.

“I know you think you’re funny, I just don’t know why,” Toni replied flatly. “But I suppose I’d let you apologize for your insensitivity by buying me
dinner
.”

I held up a hand. “I just spent about thirty dollars of my limited discretionary income on a couple of homeless guys. Take pity on a poor civil servant.”

Toni relented, but we decided we deserved a splurge, so we agreed to try out Drago Centro, a relatively new restaurant in the financial district with an exotic menu and reputedly great service.

Toni took her leave, and I pulled out the Simon Bayer file and a legal pad. Having dinner plans always improved my focus. I started to work on my to-do list, but when I got to “canvass for more surveillance-camera footage,” I stopped cold as my stomach twisted into a knot.

I immediately picked up the phone and called Bailey. After giving her the unsurprising news that I’d been assigned to the case, I got to the problem that had jumped out at me. “If it
is
Lilah Bayer in that surveillance footage, the fact that she never came forward to report the stabbing tells us at the very least that she’s not interested in getting involved, right?”

“Yep.”

“But we need her—badly—since we can’t see the stabber on any of the footage we’ve found so far. The problem is, once I amend the complaint to show that the victim’s name is Simon Bayer, the press will be all over it. Even a halfway-alert reporter will be able to figure out their connection and start looking for footage showing the stabbing—”

“They’ll have that footage before the ink is dry on your complaint. ‘Brother of Murdered Cop Zack Bayer is Stabbed to Death! Acquitted Wife, Lilah Bayer, a Witness! Film at Eleven!’”

“Exactly. And once that footage hits the airwaves, she’ll
really
drop the shades and pull up the blankets. So the question is, how do we keep it under wraps?”

“You don’t, Knight.”

“Glad I asked. Okay, good talk. Later—”

“Hold on. I’m just trying to be realistic here. We can’t ask the store owners not to share the footage—”

“Especially if someone shows up with money,” I said. “And even if we got a warrant and seized everyone’s footage, they’ve probably all got backups.”

I stood behind my desk, holding the phone in a death grip as I mentally played out the options. None was foolproof.

“I could hold off on amending the complaint,” I said. “There’s no suspect in custody, so the correct name of the victim isn’t critical just yet.” But I couldn’t legally use that gambit for long. I’d have to get my witnesses in hand fast. Especially Lilah Bayer. “And in the meantime, we’re going to have to work under the radar. The press can’t get wind of what we’re doing.”

Bailey gave a short bark of a laugh. “Good luck with that. The press lives on our doorsteps, and you know both our offices are sieves. Our only hope is to move fast, before the yakking has the chance to hit the wrong ears.”

When you’re skating on thin ice, your safety’s in your speed.
Bailey was right. Too many people already knew about this case: Chief Deputy Summers; Phil Hemet; my boss, Eric, who was certainly trustworthy, but also by extension Melia, the town crier, who certainly wasn’t. And I hadn’t even factored in the people on Bailey’s side. I took a deep breath to loosen the band that had just tightened around my chest. I wrapped my arms around my torso and paced, still gripping the phone as I quickly calculated our first move. With time being of the essence, I’d have to prioritize carefully.

“Since Lilah was unquestionably on the scene, I’d say she’s priority number one,” I said. “And we hit the people who worked Zack’s case for contact information on her.”

“I’ll reach out to the investigating officer and see if he has a line on her right now,” Bailey said.

“I’ll get ahold of the prosecutor and set up a meeting.”

“They’ll both be able to say for sure whether the woman in the footage is Lilah,” Bailey said. “And I’ll have to notify Simon’s parents.”

We fell silent. Death notifications were a miserable part of police work. And this family had lost
two
sons to murder. What a nightmare. I didn’t envy Bailey. We hung up, and I started to chase down the prosecutor.

A few phone calls later, I learned that the prosecutor, Larry Gladstein, had transferred out to the Antelope Valley branch court—about as far away as you could get and still be in Los Angeles County. I vaguely remembered the area as the desert you crossed on the way to Arizona. I got Larry’s voice mail and left a message.

Unable to make any other moves for now, I decided to get work done on my other cases so I could at least clear the decks. But in stray moments between phone calls and motions, I found myself thinking about Zack’s murder. An ax killing in itself is rare—but an ax killing by a woman is rarer than a Republican at an NPR fund-raiser. I wondered what kind of evidence had persuaded Gladstein to file.

By six thirty p.m. Toni and I were more than ready to go. Although a brisk wind was blowing, we decided a little exercise would justify a lot of indulgence and hiked the several blocks to the restaurant. As we hurried in, the soft strains of a jazz trumpet greeted us, and I recognized it as Clifford Brown playing “Stolen Moments.” The anxiety that had curled up and made a nest in my stomach began to unwind. By the time we reached our table, the rich smells wafting out of the kitchen had me ready to eat the air. The waiter brought black napkins so as not to—heaven forfend—leave white threads on our dark slacks, and took our drink order: Ketel One martinis, cold, dry, straight up with a twist. When our drinks came, we toasted to finally getting a night out together and took a sip.

“So how’s it going with J.D.?” I asked.

Toni’s eyes darted away before she answered. “Uh, okay.”

“Gee, someone in space might actually believe that,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Really, nothing,” she said with a sigh. “At least, nothing new. We’ve been getting along really great, but I can feel him starting to get nervous.”

Graden had given me the skinny about this during our dinner at Yamashiro, but I’d been sworn to secrecy. For a moment, I was torn between my promise to Graden and my loyalty to Toni. But the moment passed and, as always, loyalty won out. It’s a girlfriend thing.

I looked at Toni with a raised eyebrow. “That’s funny, because J.D. said the very same thing about you.”

“What?” she asked.

“You can never, ever admit you know this. Okay?”

Toni looked at me, curious.

“J.D. told Graden that you were the one always backing out and that he was the one always getting dumped.”

Toni sat back, her expression stunned. “Huh.” She looked away and frowned, trying to reconcile this new information with what she’d thought she knew. “
I’m
the one always backing out.”

I spread my hands. “That’s the skinny.”

Toni looked perplexed but thoughtful. “I just find it hard to believe that I could’ve misread him so completely.”

“Maybe it’s not so complete,” I observed. “Maybe it’s just a matter of interpretation. He saw something in your behavior that made him think you were about to jump ship, so he got nervous. You saw him getting nervous and thought he was ready to bail.”

Toni nodded slowly.

“Most of us are insecure in relationships, so when in doubt, we latch on to the most negative explanation,” I added.

Toni gave me a lopsided smile. “Well, look at you, Sigmund Freud.” She did that little head bob only she could pull off. “All jiggy with your analytical thing.”

“Anna Freud, please,” I said. “Sigmund had issues.”

Toni rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said. “You sure Graden didn’t misinterpret something, get a little creative?”

“Men’s imaginations aren’t that good.”

Toni had an impish grin. “At least not when it comes to that stuff.”

We both laughed, and I raised my glass.

“To the other stuff,” I said.

We clinked and drank.