RK02 - Guilt By Degrees (29 page)

According to
the witness statements, Tran Lee and his buddies all worked at a diner on Fairfax called Josie’s. Although it was a little early for lunch, I’d learned from hard experience: better too early than too late. We got back into the car and headed for Josie’s. I called my security people and reported our destination.

“When can we get crime scene photographs of the crash site?” I asked.

“This is Robbery-Homicide,” Bailey said pointedly. “We’ll have ’em by this afternoon.”

“Can we pull the original paperwork on the consignment of Lilah’s car to Bagram?” I asked.

“Already requested it,” Bailey replied. “If there’s something off, I’m betting that’s where we’ll find it.”

“Could be he just fudged on the sales price to save sales tax,” I suggested.

“He wouldn’t be the first,” Bailey agreed.

She pulled to the curb in front of Josie’s, a small, no-frills restaurant with a counter on one side and wooden tables and chairs in the remaining space. Waiters were taking the chairs down off the tables and getting the place ready for lunch. When Bailey knocked on the glass door, one of them, a skinny kid in black jeans with short blond hair, held up his hands and shouted, “Not open yet!” Bailey showed her badge, and he shielded his eyes with his hand to see, then trotted over to the door. After fumbling with the lock for a few seconds, he managed to get it open and let us in.

“C-come in, Officers,” he stuttered anxiously. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing recent, so don’t worry,” Bailey reassured him. She introduced herself.

I did the same and showed him my badge. I didn’t have to do that, but people take you more seriously when you have a badge. A gun’ll do that too, but I’ve found that sometimes a gun makes them take you
too
seriously and they forget how to talk.

The young man said his name was Duncan Friedkin.

“Did you happen to know someone who used to work here, name of Tran Lee?” I asked.

The young man’s face fell. “Tran,” he said, and sat down heavily in one of the wooden chairs. “Yes.”

“What can you tell us about him?” I asked.

“Tran was a good guy. I mean, you probably already know he was kinda into drugs…”

I nodded.

“But he wasn’t a thief,” Duncan said sadly.

“So you don’t believe he stole that car,” I said.

“No,” he replied, then sighed. “But I guess nothing’s impossible. Not if he was high.”

Duncan stared off.

“He didn’t have a car of his own?” I asked.

“No,” Duncan replied. “He didn’t have a license.”

“What about an ID card?” I asked. An ID card would have his photograph and personal information.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe.”

On a hunch, I pulled out Lilah’s photograph. “Ever see her before?”

Duncan’s eyes widened. “No. Wow.” He recovered himself, then repeated, “Uh, no. Why?”

I didn’t have a good answer. “Just checking into some possibilities.”

I wasn’t 100 percent sure where I was going with this, so I hoped he wouldn’t ask.

We bumped around like that for a few more minutes, but we really didn’t have any more questions. All this kid knew was that his friend went missing and then his friend was dead.

“You have a picture of Tran, by any chance?” I asked. I wanted to see what he’d looked like when he was alive, just in case he didn’t have an ID card.

“No, sorry,” Duncan said.

Bailey and I stood. “Thanks for your help. If you—”

“Oh, wait,” Duncan said. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through an impressively large collection of photographs. “Yeah, here you go. It’s our Christmas photo. We take group pictures here every year.” Duncan pointed to a young man in a photograph featuring a small chorus line of waiters and waitresses in their uniforms. “That’s Tran.”

I saw a young Asian with a wide smile and bangs that jutted straight out from his forehead. He didn’t look like a tweaker, but he might not have been at it long enough for the damage to show.

“Do you know anyone else who was friendly with Tran?” I asked.

“A couple of the other guys who worked here,” Duncan replied.

Bailey jotted down the names and as many phone numbers as Duncan could remember. We thanked him and left.

Back in the Hollywood station, I parked myself at the vacant desk we’d been using and waited while Bailey went to see if the crime scene photographs had been found. When she came back, she was smiling and carrying a manila envelope.

She sat down next to me and pulled out a stack of photos. The first pictures were establishing shots of the area. It looked vaguely familiar to me.

“Is this near the Griffith Observatory?” I asked.

Bailey nodded.

We sifted through the photographs. The embankment wasn’t all that high, but it was steep. When the car drove off, it had gathered enough speed to hit the tree with real force. Tran had been propelled straight through the windshield and rolled down to the bottom of the ravine.

I stared at the report for a few moments, then went back to the crime scene photographs and pulled out the ones that featured Tran.

“Remember the photo Duncan showed us?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Notice anything different here?” I pointed to the crime scene photographs of Tran.

Bailey looked for a moment. “No glasses. He was wearing thick ones in Duncan’s photo.”

“They could’ve been thrown when he crashed.”

“But then they should’ve been found at the scene,” Bailey replied. “Evidence report,” she muttered to herself, then shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a two-page report. We carefully scanned the pages, going entry by entry.

No glasses were listed.

“Do we know if he had an ID card?” I asked.

Bailey nodded and gestured to one of the reports. “It was in his personal effects.”

She woke up the computer and began tapping keys.

Thirty seconds later, Tran was staring back at us. The same wide grin, the same firecracker bangs.

And the same heavy glasses.

Hoping we
were on a roll, I called Scott. “Hey, Scottsky,” I said. “How’re we doing on the autopsy report?”

He loved it when I called him Scottsky.

“You know I hate when you call me that,” he said. Then he sighed. “I’ve got it. But it’ll cost you.”

I knew the drill. “You say when.”

“I’ll leave it for you at the desk.”

I picked up my coat and purse. “Autopsy report’s ready.”

This time we got lucky and hit the freeway between traffic snarls. We made it to the coroner’s office in just thirty minutes. We were back in the car with the report open on my lap in another three. Although reading while the car’s in motion usually makes me queasy, I couldn’t wait.

“Degree of decomposition indicates Tran was there for about two weeks,” I said.

“So he stole the car and nailed himself on the same day.”

“Yeah…cause of death, blunt force trauma…tox report shows meth in the bloodstream…personal effects…clothing, wallet…” I stopped.

After a few moments, Bailey turned to look at me. “What? What?” she said impatiently.

“No glasses,” I said. “No cell phone. And only one shoe.”

“He got thrown through a window,” Bailey said. “Everything went flying. Maybe they just didn’t find it all. And some stuff could’ve been dragged off by critters.”

“I suppose…but coyotes don’t use cell phones, and I don’t know of anything that eats shoes.” I shifted in my seat, agitated.

Bailey sighed, recognizing the signs. “Okay, what’re you thinking?”

I took a moment to collect my thoughts.

“We’ve got a bogus theft report for Alicia Morris made from La Poubelle, which was taken by Zack Bayer,” I began. “Lilah’d been sighted there around that time. We have an Asian kid on his way to meet buddies at Birds, just a few feet away from La Poubelle, on the night he goes missing…”

Bailey nodded. “Then we have an auto-theft report by Conrad Bagram that says the car registered to Lilah was stolen off his lot about the same time Tran Lee goes missing,” she chimed in. “And two weeks later, Lee’s found dead in that car in Griffith Park—”

“Missing his glasses, a cell phone, and one shoe,” I added.

“Stoned and with a crack pipe,” Bailey said.

I frowned. Something about this was bugging me. “Bagram’s shop. How far is it from Birds and La Poubelle?”

“About two miles,” Bailey said.

“So why would Tran hit a place like Bagram’s on the way to meet his buddies?”

After a few moments, Bailey replied, “Maybe took a bus to Birds, rode past Bagram’s place, got inspired…”

We could check possible bus routes, but I didn’t like it. “If Tran was going on a joyride, wouldn’t he have called his buddies and invited them to join? Or at least tell them he wasn’t coming? According to Duncan, he wasn’t the type to just flake out.”

Bailey stared at the road. “Unless he was that high.”

I shrugged. “Pretty strained, don’t you think?”

“So…what? You don’t think Tran stole Lilah’s car off Bagram’s lot?”

“No.” I paused to collect my thoughts. “None of the contact information about Alicia Morris checks out, but Tran Lee definitely wound up in Lilah’s car—”

“And he didn’t take that car to Birds—”

“And he never contacted his buddies to say he wasn’t coming,” I said. “In fact, he wound up several miles away from there, up in the woods in Griffith Park.”

“Pretty hinky,” Bailey agreed. “And then there’s the bogus info on Alicia Morris.”

“Who reported her car stolen about the same time Bagram reported Lilah’s car stolen. Which, by the way, just happened to be six months before Zack and Lilah got married—”

“And Alicia’s car happened to have a VIN only one digit off from Lilah’s. So the VIN wouldn’t be an obvious mismatch with the year of the phony car.”

“Lilah is Alicia Morris,” I said. “That’s how Lilah and Zack met.”

Bailey considered what I’d said, then nodded. “Why would Lilah give Zack a fake name, address, and VIN?”

“I don’t think she did.”

Bailey turned to look at me before refocusing on the road. I could see the implications of what I’d just said settling in. “The only other way that report gets dummied up like that is if Zack…”

I said nothing and let Bailey fill in the blanks. We drove in silence for the next few minutes. By the time she parked behind the Criminal Courts Building, her expression was stormy. We didn’t speak again until we’d fought the surging homebound crowds and reached my office. I dropped my purse and took off my coat, and Bailey settled into a chair in front of my desk.

“Lilah hit Tran and took the body up to Griffith Park,” Bailey said.

“She covered up a hit-and-run.”

“It did bug me that Tran Lee’s supposed to meet his buddies at Birds and somehow winds up solo, driving off an embankment in a stolen car.”

“When someone calls in a stolen car, there’s a record of time, date, and place the call was made, right?” I asked.

Bailey nodded. “And a recording of the call—”

“So you could hear the voice—and tell whether it’s male or female, young or old, right?”

“Yeah,” Bailey replied. “It’s probably not clear enough to match up a voice to a person in a court of law, but it’s good enough to rule out a voice that obviously doesn’t fit. And if your theory holds, then Lilah called it in herself—”

“So there was no hiding the fact that a female made the stolen report, and said it’d been stolen from the area near La Poubelle. Zack knew whatever he put in his report would have to match that call. Hence, he put down Alicia Morris, white female, a close VIN, and the location as La Poubelle. So then the question becomes, why would Zack bother to dummy up her stolen report? He’s basically burying her connection to the car Tran ended up in, right?”

“Right. And she’d get a copy of the report at some point and be able to see that all her personal information was bogus. So she had to have gone along with it.”

“My take? Lilah’s report was a lie to begin with. Her car was never stolen,” I said.

We fell silent. I played it all out again in my mind, looking for flaws, but I was pretty sure I’d figured it out. At least some of it.

“But if Lilah drove up to Griffith Park and then sent the car off the hill, that means she would’ve had to drag Tran’s body into the car. She’s no weight lifter,” Bailey said.

I looked at the coroner’s report. “Tran Lee was barely five foot two, weighed one hundred and ten pounds. A woman could drag a body that size into a car. Especially with this kind of motivation.” I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and put my feet up.

“So if we think Detective Rick knew about Lilah’s car being reported stolen, how come he didn’t catch this bogus report listing Alicia Morris as the victim?” Bailey asked.

I’d thought about this too. “Why would he?” I replied. “Zack was a murder victim. The only reason that report gets a look is if you’re doing what we did. Even if he did do a search through Zack’s past reports—and he might have—he would’ve done it for a different reason.”

“To find suspects who might’ve had motive and means to kill Zack,” Bailey said. “With an emphasis on skinheads.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So why would you look at an auto-theft victim—a female at that—as a suspect for Zack’s killing?”

“You wouldn’t,” Bailey agreed.

“And who’d ever care about that report? The VIN and license plate listed on it don’t tie in to any other crime.”

Bailey nodded. “Then that means two things: one, Zack figured out that Lilah’s story about the auto theft was bullshit very shortly after he took her report, and two, he got Bagram to cover for Lilah by saying her car was stolen off his lot.”

“It’s not hard to imagine that Bagram had a relationship with a cop who was willing to cut him slack now and then,” I agreed.

“How did Zack know there’d be a body to find?”

I stared out the window, then spoke slowly, considering the plausibility of my theory as I laid it out. “I don’t think he did. Even Lilah, with her considerable superpowers over men, couldn’t count on getting a cop to cover up a homicide. No, she made a phony stolen report and hoped it’d stick. I think when Zack checked out the scene, he found evidence that showed Lilah
might’ve
done a hit-and-run and dummied up his initial report, put in a fake name and fake VIN and license plate number—”

“Just in case a body turned up,” Bailey finished.

“That way, he’s got a report to show for the auto-theft call that came in that night and it won’t come back to Lilah’s car,” I said. “And then he covered for the possibility that her car would turn up with evidence that it was in a hit-and-run by getting his buddy Conrad Bagram to report that Lilah’s car was on consignment and got stolen off his lot.”

“So, even if Zack was wrong about the hit-and-run, or the car never turned up again, it wouldn’t matter,” Bailey said.

“And six months after all this business with the stolen car and Tran Lee, Lilah—a brand-new junior associate with a bright future at a big law firm—marries Zack, the cop who just happened to take the first theft report—”

“Which turns out to be bogus,” Bailey said. “They met when he covered her for a hit-and-run—”

“Nothing spells
love
like hiding evidence of a homicide.”

“And I’d bet Zack could tell she’d been drinking,” Bailey said. “He made contact with her at the bar, so he not only saw for himself what she looked like but had access to the witnesses who could tell him how much she’d had that night.”

“Right. If she hadn’t been drinking, she wouldn’t have had anything to hide. There’s no need to set up a car-theft story if it was just an accident. She’s a lawyer—she knows this much. She was probably looking at a drunk-driving manslaughter. A young lawyer with a conviction like that means
bye-bye big corporate career.
”

Bailey frowned. “But if Zack saved her future when he got rid of the evidence, why would she kill him?”

“Good friggin’ question.” I exhaled and folded my arms across my chest. “It’s not like he could ever afford to ‘out’ her. If he did, he’d get charged with filing a phony report, hiding evidence…the list goes on. They’d cart him away in handcuffs. So why kill him?” I sat back in my chair.

“Matter of fact, assuming she wanted to dump his ass, why not just wait for the statute of limitations to run out? What is it, six years?”

“Something like that.”

“Not so long to wait. And once the statute runs, she’s in the clear; they can’t prosecute her.”

I nodded. “And, being a lawyer, Lilah would’ve known that…”

“So maybe she really didn’t kill Zack.”

I dropped my arms and leaned back in my chair. I had the feeling we were missing something. But what? I knew we were on the right track; the Tran Lee hit-and-run figured into all of this somehow. I turned the problem over, trying to see it from different angles. It’d always seemed odd that Zack and Lilah wound up together. Though it was true they both appeared to be climbers, she was on the partner fast-track in a high-dollar corporate law firm. What could a cop—even an upwardly mobile one—do for her career? Nothing. In fact, in her crowd, it’d be a hindrance, make her look déclassé. And from what I’d seen, Lilah wasn’t the romantic type who’d throw it all away for love. My thoughts looped back to the hit-and-run…Zack as the investigator…

And suddenly I knew. It was foul, depraved, and sickening, but I knew I had it. I turned to look at Bailey—she was going to like this even less than I did.

“What if Zack didn’t destroy the evidence?”

Bailey sat forward and looked at me intently. “And Lilah knew it?”

We exchanged a long look.

“Zack was blackmailing her,” I said. “That’s how he got her to marry him.”