RK02 - Guilt By Degrees (30 page)

It was
a monstrous thing to contemplate. It was awful, but not impossible, to imagine a cop burying evidence of a homicide so he could blackmail the killer. But to use that to force someone to marry him, and keep her hostage with the threat of a murder rap hanging over her head…forever? Even though I was the one who’d raised the possibility, I found it hard to believe.

Bailey shook her head, stricken. “I don’t know…it’s so…”

“Pathological?”

She nodded, her expression troubled. “From every angle. Not only because it’s a sick thing to do to begin with, but jeez, like we just said, once the statute ran, what’s to stop her from nailing him for hiding the evidence? Doesn’t that seem more than a little crazy to you?”

“No, or rather, yes. But not for the reason you think. First of all, even after the statute ran, there’s no way Lilah could ever afford to turn Zack in. Remember, he didn’t falsify that report alone. She’s in it up to her ears. If he goes down for that, then so does she. The only thing she skates on is the manslaughter. And when it comes out that she committed the hit-and-run and then conspired to hide the evidence, even if she somehow beat the criminal charges, her big, fancy career would be toast with a capital
T.
No law firm will hire someone with a record like that. Second, I think Zack
was
more than a little crazy—not that she’s a model of sanity—but he was obviously willing to take the risk that she might not be as predictable as he thought. He had to have considered the possibility that she
might
just decide being free of him was worth the downside. But I think he was willing to go down as long as she did too. It was a game of power and control, and he had it rigged so her only choice was either to live with him and endure or to ‘out’ him and wave good-bye to her future.”

As I said those words, I envisioned Zack and Lilah locked in a macabre tango, nose-to-nose, neither of them able, or willing, to look away, hands clutching each other’s throat. Had the dance finally pushed Lilah over the edge, into murdering Zack?

Bailey blew out a breath. “Damn.” Then, echoing my thoughts, she said, “Then killing him would’ve been the only way out.”

“Yeah, but is there any case that gets investigated more thoroughly than a cop killing? How could she be sure she’d get away with it? Talk about your risks. That’s the mother of them all.”

“True that.”

We fell silent. I knew we had the hit-and-run piece of the puzzle in the right place, but Lilah’s role in Zack’s murder was still an open question. I looked back at Bailey, who was staring down at the floor.

She peered up at me, her expression perplexed. “It’s just so hard to wrap my head around. Especially because the mom and dad…hell, even Simon, seemed so…well, normal.”

“Yeah.” I frowned. It
was
tough to swallow. “But there is one bright side: if there really is evidence out there, and we can find it, we’ll have a good shot at nailing Lilah for not only Simon’s murder but the hit-and-run too.”

It was the only positive note I could find, but Bailey didn’t look all that cheered.

I stared out the window. Something about what I’d just said tickled the back of my mind. Frustrated, I struggled to grab ahold of it. Simon…his murder…the evidence.…It was there somewhere. I began to think out loud.

“Simon winds up on that sidewalk at the same time as Lilah. Too weird to be a coincidence.”

“There had to be a reason,” Bailey agreed.

“On the videotape, it looks like Simon was there to attack Lilah. And he was armed and ready. But how could he know she’d be there at exactly that time?”

She sat up and frowned. “They’d planned to meet?”

I shrugged. “Maybe.” I paused. Suddenly the thought that had been circling just out of reach floated up to the surface. I stared straight ahead, mentally probing for the flaw as I pursued my new theory with a question. “And if that’s true, what’s the one thing Simon might’ve had that could make Lilah want to meet him?”

“The evidence,” she said softly.

We exchanged a long look.

“If we’re right that Zack hid the evidence of her hit-and-run, and Simon found out about it, that’d give Simon one hell of a great way to lure her out, wouldn’t it?” I asked.

Bailey nodded. “Explains why, after disappearing once, she ended up on that sidewalk with him,” she said. “But, as I recall, Simon didn’t have anything on him and the surveillance footage shows the stabber didn’t take anything off him.”

“Simon didn’t bring it. He wasn’t completely crazy. But his murder proves that the evidence is still out there. Or, at least, that Lilah believes it is.”

Bailey stared out the window. “And the only reason she would’ve had to believe that is because Zack told her so.”

“Which he would have done in order to use it as blackmail. The evidence must still be out there. It’s the only explanation that answers all the questions: how Zack and Lilah met, how they wound up married, maybe why she killed Zack, and why Lilah was just feet away when Simon got stabbed to death.”

Bailey drove us back to the Biltmore. Though she was in no mood for fun, she had a date with Drew and didn’t want to cancel at the last minute.

With a solid working theory in place, I was too keyed up to stop, so I holed up in my room and spread out the crime scene photographs of Tran Lee.

I’d looked through the autopsy report again, hoping to find some anomalous injuries—evidence of antemortem blunt force trauma that couldn’t be explained by the car crash. But the body had been out in the elements for two weeks. Between decomposition and animal and insect invasion, there wasn’t much left to work with. The coroner couldn’t do any better than say what was already obvious: Tran had died due to blunt force trauma. Not helpful.

I noticed that one photograph showed an officer pointing to a key in the ignition of the car. So it hadn’t been hot-wired. I got excited for a moment. That could be proof the car hadn’t been stolen. But then I remembered that Conrad Bagram claimed the car was stolen off his lot. He probably told the cops he kept the keys in the cars, or had a Hide-A-Key stashed in the wheel well. It might even be true, but I made a mental note to check anyway.

It was only nine thirty, but I needed a break. I gathered up the photographs and autopsy report and stacked them on my desk. Ordinarily this would be when I’d call Graden, or vice versa. We’d hash out our day, talk through our cases, and generally unwind together. I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t miss him. But there was Daniel, in a condo just minutes away. It’d be easy to call him, maybe meet for drinks—hang out like old friends. But I knew that’s not all it would be. The awareness of what we’d been to each other and the possibility that we could go there again would still be lurking on the fringes, like a melody playing in the distance, too faint to be able to distinguish the song but too loud to ignore.

I stood at the window and looked out at the night. Wispy, translucent clouds drifted across the sky. The moon glowed like a neon orb, surrounded by sharp pin dots of starlight. A soft breeze made the trees sway like wraiths, their bare branches floating like ghostly tendrils.

I saw myself reflected in the balcony window, standing alone in a hotel room. Would I always end up this way? Alone and wondering why
this
one hadn’t worked out? And then the next one? My eyes fell on the street below, and I saw one of our investigators sitting in a car at the curb. The sight of my security detail hit me like a bucket of icy water.

I was standing in a lit window that faced the street—like a perfectly framed and backlit sitting duck. A really dumb sitting duck. I abruptly stepped back and drew the curtains.

Depressed, I took a long, hot shower, put on my pajamas, and slipped in a Miles Davis CD. I was in the mood for
Kind of Blue.
I curled up on a chair in my bedroom, poured myself a tall glass of Russian Standard Platinum, and pondered the accuracy of the phrase
drowning one’s sorrows.
This seemed like the night to find out if that was possible. Scientist Rachel Knight conducts a groundbreaking new experiment.

I’d hoped to wait up for Bailey. But I fell asleep early with the lights on, the music playing, and an empty glass beside me.

I woke up at seven, full of energy and ideas. Really good ones, like: Find Lilah! Find Simon’s killer! Find the evidence that’ll nail Lilah for Tran’s killing! Morning never has been my best time of day. I dressed in slacks and a sweater and went out to the living room to see if I’d managed to get up before Bailey.

“Hey, sunshine, you’re up early,” she said.

Clearly not. “Did you order breakfast?”

“Yep.”

I poured myself a cup of coffee from my mini-coffeemaker while I waited for room service to bring the big pot. Seconds later, the waiter, Alejandro, was ushered in by DA investigators Gary and Stephen. He looked a little unnerved by his unexpected welcoming committee.

We made fast work of breakfast and headed out.

“I’d like to see Rick Meyer today, if you don’t mind,” I said.

She looked like she did mind, but she nodded.

“I got us lined up to talk to an expert about the watch on our stabber’s wrist,” she said.

Our watch expert was downtown in the Jewelry Mart area. The mart is a huge building with about a hundred different businesses devoted to all aspects of jewelry sales, design, and acquisition. Our man was in one of the little shops across the street from the main building—a bright space filled with watches in lit stands that crowded the floor, and in glass cases on the walls. Herman Rozen, a plump man with tufts of gray hair that floated around the periphery of his head like a baby bird, was dressed in suspenders and wire-rimmed glasses.

After making our introductions, Bailey handed him the blowup of the stabber’s wrist. He looked at it with a large magnifying glass.

“Hmph,” he said. He snorted twice, then swallowed and gave a disturbingly long, wet cough that just couldn’t have been healthy. Or normal. Or tolerable.

“TAG Heuer Monaco Calibre Chronograph,” Herman said. “It’s worth about three thousand dollars.”

“Wow,” I said, referring to the watch, and his cough.

“It’s no Patek Philippe, but it’s nice, I suppose,” Herman sniffed. Then he snorted and swallowed again. I wondered how long it would take the CDC to come and get him.

“Where’s it likely to be sold?” Bailey asked.

Herman looked at her as if she’d just asked where she could find the Pacific Ocean.

“In stores that sell watches,” he said. “Or on the Internet, or at an estate sale, or—”

Bailey favored him with one of her “don’t fuck with me” looks. “I get the picture. Thanks.”

“Sure,” Herman said.

He snorted again, but this time I walked out before I had to witness the whole stomach-turning routine. Bailey followed close behind.

We stood on the sidewalk. Our investigators were a few paces away, watching in all directions.

“I’m thinking he might not be our
A
material for the witness stand,” I said.

Bailey made a face. “I’ve got Purell in the glove box,” she said as we headed for her car. “Use it.”

We caught
up with Duncan during a lull at the diner. He confirmed what we’d suspected about Tran’s eyesight.

“Tran couldn’t see his own hand without his glasses,” Duncan said. “He couldn’t have driven more than ten feet without running into…something.”

Tran’s glasses should have been recovered at the scene, but they weren’t. If they were among the evidence Zack found near La Poubelle and then stashed, as we suspected, those glasses would likely be one of the items he’d hidden. But in order to be able to prove the hit-and-run, I’d need to link each item to Tran or to the scene itself. The glasses were a distinctive item because they were prescription lenses, so if we could link them to Tran, it would be strong evidence of a hit-and-run and subsequent cover-up.

“You know how long he was in this country?” I asked.

Duncan thought. “At least two years,” he said. “That’s how long I knew him.”

“You met here?” I asked.

“At the diner,” he replied. “Why?”

“I’m hoping to find the doctor who prescribed the glasses for him,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d know who that was?”

“No, but it had to be someplace cheap,” Duncan remarked.

It was a neighborhood diner. No single tip amounted to much, and even in volume, the tips would barely pay rent on a studio apartment—split with another roommate.

“Where did Tran live?” I asked.

“Depended on how…things were going,” Duncan replied carefully.

In other words, it depended on where his drug habit took him.

Duncan continued, “But he liked Venice. He liked the beach.”

Venice, a beach community that was formerly a hippie enclave/run-down semislum, was now enjoying a resurgence as artistic types with money moved in and gentrified the area. But it was still a patchwork where the very poor and homeless lived just steps away from designer rebuilds on the canals. Duncan gave me a couple of addresses, and I wrote them down.

We bid him farewell and got back on the freeway, heading west to the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Can you get someone to check out the free clinics in the area?” I asked Bailey.

“How about the Hardy Boys back there,” she replied, referring to our security detail. “Maybe they can spare a few minutes out of their very busy day to make a few house calls.”

A testy remark, and it seemed gratuitous since the guys were pretty decent at the gig. “What’s your problem? They’ve been staying on top of it.”

Bailey shrugged. Her nasty ’tude looked to me like a classic case of what shrinks call “misdirecting.” I was something of a practitioner myself, and so I knew that what was really bugging her was our upcoming meeting with Rick Meyer, and it was spilling out all over the place.

But she’d agreed to meet with Rick now, in part so we’d have a chance to get a little more ammunition before bracing up Lilah’s parents. My thoughts turned to Lilah, as they seemed to do a lot lately. She’d known Graden would tell me about their encounter—her parting shots made sure of it. Where or how she’d turn up next, I had no idea. But I had no doubt that she would. I wanted to make sure I got out in front of her with a couple of my own moves.

The clouds had largely dissipated, with just a few thin streaks lingering near the horizon, and the sky stretched blue and luminous above the gently rolling ocean. But it was December, so although the sun shone overhead, its pale light provided little warmth, and the air was damp and chilly. A few die-hard surfers, who’d braved frigid waters that didn’t even have the decency to provide them with rideable waves, shivered in wet suits as they packed their surfboards into their cars by the side of the highway.

The security guard let us through the gate at Rick’s trailer park, and we wove around the concentric circles that led to his home. Rick was standing outside when we drove up, a can of beer in his hand. He pointed to the parking space he’d saved for us. We followed him inside, and this time he began by offering us something to drink.

“I’m good,” I declined. Bailey did the same.

I purposefully took the lead and dove right into our reason for being here.

“We had a chat with Conrad Bagram,” I said. “The guy who—”

“—claimed he had Lilah’s car on consignment and it was stolen off his lot,” Rick interjected. A defensive note crept into his voice. “Yeah, we looked into that.”

“And?” I asked.

“It was a dead end,” Rick said firmly. “He called it in two weeks before they even found the body. We checked the consignment paperwork, and it all looked legit.”

“Did you keep a copy of it somewhere?” I asked. I’d gone back and forth over the murder book and hadn’t found any trace of it.

“Nah,” Rick replied, his tone dismissive. “Didn’t have much on it. Just showed that Lilah’s car was delivered to him, and gave the date of delivery and the terms of the deal.”

“Did it say who delivered the car?” I asked. “Whether it was Lilah or someone else?”

Rick shook his head. “I would’ve kept it if there’d been anything to run with.”

Now came the really unpleasant part.

“You check into any possible connection between Conrad and Zack?” I asked.

Rick’s eyes went flat, and I heard the beer can crushing under his hand.

“I ran all things Conrad through the system, then I checked out Zack’s busts. Nothing.”

“You check out the auto-theft report Zack filed two weeks before they found the car with the dead body?” I asked.

Rick frowned. “Probably,” he replied.

“Then you found out that the report was bogus?” I asked.

He pulled himself straighter in the chair and cleared his throat. “What are you talking about?”

I told him about the fictitious Alicia Morris and the likelihood that she was a stand-in for Lilah.

Rick took it all in, breathing heavily. “Wait, how do you know this…Alicia, whatever…didn’t give Zack the false information to begin with?”

“Why would she?” I asked. “Why make a stolen report at all if you’re going to misidentify the car? And you know it wasn’t Lilah who gave him the wrong license and VINs. She needed to explain how her car wound up in Griffith Park with a dead body in it.”

“What you’re saying makes no sense,” Rick said. “Zack covered up a homicide no one even knew had happened until two weeks later?” He shook his head slowly, like a buffalo that’d taken a blow to the head.

It was a lot to take in even if Rick had wanted to believe it—which he didn’t. But I needed him to know where we were headed. I owed him that much. Then he’d have the chance to either step up or slink away.

“He’s the only one who responded to the call, which meant he was first—and maybe the only one—at the scene,” I explained. “The first thing he would’ve done that night was ask Lilah to show him where she’d parked. And she would’ve shown him. She wouldn’t have thought there was anything left there to incriminate her. All he had to do was ask her to wait at the bar while he looked around. SOP,” I said.

Rick’s expression grew darker, but he made no effort to stop or argue with me, so I continued.

“Zack had plenty of time to search the area. Even if he wasn’t sure what’d happened, there was no downside to collecting what he saw and waiting to find out,” I said. “A cell phone, a shoe, a pair of glasses. Maybe they proved a hit-and-run, maybe they were just street trash. But he could afford to hold on to it and see what developed. And he could’ve written a legitimate report at first—in fact, I’m sure he did. He just didn’t file it. He held on to it, along with any evidence he’d found, and he waited to see if anything came of it. Then, when Tran Lee turned up dead in Lilah’s car, he held back the original report and filed a bogus one that would correspond to the auto-theft call he’d gotten that night.”

“And if we’ve got it right,” Bailey said, “that may be the reason Lilah killed Zack.”

Assuming, of course, that she did kill Zack. But neither of us needed to add insult to injury by airing our doubts on that front. We had enough trouble on our hands as it was. “And it may also explain why Simon was killed,” I added.

Rick threw the crushed beer can at the trash container and leaned forward in his chair, shoulders hunched, eyes down. “So you want me to buy that Zack hid evidence of a possible homicide…for what?” he said, his voice a low rumble. “To get a woman?”

I waited for Rick to look up, then gazed at him steadily. “Maybe.”

He stared out the window for several moments before answering. “And you think the evidence is still out there somewhere?”

“It makes the most sense,” I said.

Rick shook his head. “That dog won’t hunt. Why would Lilah kill Zack without knowing where the evidence was?”

“Because it didn’t matter whether she knew where the evidence was. As long as Zack couldn’t get to it, the odds were good that no one else could either—at least not before she did. Don’t forget, that evidence also nailed Zack for some serious felonies. He wasn’t about to leave it with anyone else, not even Simon. Which means Zack stashed it somewhere. And with Zack dead, Lilah figured she’d have time to look for it.”

“No one wants this to be true, Rick,” Bailey said. “But everything fits our theory. Including, maybe especially, Simon’s murder. I’ve had people scouring the city and county records looking for any trace of Lilah. Nothing. But somehow Simon—who’s so messed up he can barely find his way home—manages to get close enough to put his hands on her. You going to tell me that’s a coincidence?”

Rick’s expression hardened and his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer.

Bailey continued, “Simon found a way to flush her out. And evidence of the hit-and-run is the only thing big enough to make her jump. He didn’t have the mental capacity to bluff, or he would’ve done that long ago. That evidence has to exist, and somehow he got to it first.”

Rick still said nothing. Simon’s murder wasn’t his case, and he was in no mood to shoot the breeze with us. I shifted gears back to Zack and hoped Rick would calm down enough to remember something useful.

“Do you know of anyone who was really close to Zack?” I asked. “Someone he might’ve confided in…at least to some degree? Because we’ve gotten limited snapshots but not a complete picture. I don’t think anyone knew him well enough to know what he was really capable of.”

Rick drew himself up and glared at me. “From everything I saw, Zack was a hell of a good cop and a decent guy. It’s no snapshot, Ms. Prosecutor. My witnesses all knew him for years and I can tell you that there’s no reason—
none
—to believe he was someone who’d bury evidence of a homicide just to score some tail.”

I stood up. It was time to go. This had devolved into a pissing match, and I didn’t see the glory in being the best pisser.

Now I understood Bailey’s mood before this meeting. She’d known we were in for a brawl, and she’d been right. We got into the car and drove through the warren of trailers and out to the gates. When we emerged onto the Pacific Coast Highway, I reassessed the meeting. Sometimes it’s what isn’t said that makes all the difference.

“He didn’t have an answer for the bogus report by Alicia Morris,” I said.

“Nope,” Bailey replied.

“And he had no comeback for our theory that Conrad lied about having Lilah’s car.”

Bailey shook her head, her expression grim.

“Rick doesn’t like it, but he knows we’re right,” I concluded.

“Or he will.” Bailey sighed. “In time.”

Sometimes cold comfort is the only kind you can get.