RK02 - Guilt By Degrees

by Marcia Clark

  “Every neighborhood has one,” I remarked. “How old were you?”

  Tracy tilted her head, brow furrowed. “Five? Six at most. We’d just gotten inside, to the front room, when all of a sudden he was gone.”

  I could actually feel her fear, still palpable, after all these years.

  “I was so scared, I could barely breathe,” Tracy said. “I just stood there, couldn’t even move, for…well, at the time, it felt like hours. It was probably more like five minutes.”

  I pictured her, small and terrified, standing alone in that scary house, waiting for an unknown horror to strike. I could relate to the trauma more than Tracy would ever know.

  She took a moment to collect herself, then continued.

  “Suddenly, he jumped down from…somewhere, screaming in this high, weird voice. Right behind me. I can still hear it.” Tracy shuddered at the memory. “I screamed, and when I turned around, he was gone again. I lost it, I had to get out of there. I ran to the door, but it was closed…it wouldn’t open. I didn’t know what to do, so I kept yanking on the door, kicking at it, but I couldn’t get it open. I didn’t know whether there was a back door, but the idea of running through the house was even scarier. I cried and pounded on that door until my hand was bloody. I was so scared, I thought I was going to die. And then, suddenly, something tapped me on the shoulder.” Tracy paused and looked down. “I…I completely lost it and wet my pants. It was Zack, of course, and he’d seen it all.” Tracy stopped again and inhaled deeply, then resumed. “Threatened to tell everyone how I’d ‘pissed’ myself. He teased me about it for years.”

  She sighed heavily and shook her head at the memory.

  “Did he ever tell anyone?” I asked.

  “No.” Tracy shrugged. “But he never let me forget. I kept going back to him, thinking this time would be different, he’d be nice…and he was.” She paused. “Until the next time.”

  Tracy took another deep breath, then let it out and dropped her shoulders. “Anyway,” she said, “I didn’t see how that had anything to do with Zack’s murder.” She added with a rueful smile, “And Lilah didn’t seem the type to get terrorized by anyone.”

  I knew the irony of Tracy’s last remark had hit Bailey as hard as it’d hit me. Though it wasn’t admissible evidence, what Tracy had just described confirmed everything Bailey and I had surmised about Zack.

  “You’re right. They couldn’t have used it,” I said. “But I really appreciate you telling us.”

  Bailey nodded. “And it goes no further.”

  “Thanks,” Tracy said. She surveyed the front lawn with a sigh. “Got to get back to it. This grass dies, it’ll be harder to sell.”

  We thanked her and shook hands, and she moved slowly across the yard to her next errant sprinkler.

  78

  We’d told the Bayers that we needed to search for evidence of any contact between Lilah and Simon, and they’d given us their approval.

  At the insistence of Gary, the senior DA investigator, our full four-man security team would perform the search.

  And they were doing an impressive job of it too. Gary had set up a grid both inside and outside the house, and the four investigators were moving methodically through it. They searched each area thoroughly, then put everything back in perfect order. Claire said the house hadn’t looked that good in years. She asked if they’d come back next week. I wondered how long it’d been since she’d smiled like that.

  Now, knowing what I did about Zack, I found myself watching Fred and Claire more carefully. After the search was under way, I’d picked up a photograph that showed Zack and Simon in swimming trunks at the beach. Zack’s arm was dropped lazily around Simon’s shoulder, and they both wore toothy grins.

  “Zack was eleven there,” Claire had said. “He was already handsome. People would come up to me on the street to tell me.”

  She had gazed at the photograph with tenderness. There was no hesitancy, no hitch in her voice or her manner that indicated she had any reservations about him. And though Fred was less demonstrative, I’d seen nothing to indicate an awareness that Zack was anything less than the wonderful son and great guy everyone saw.

  When Bailey’d engaged him in a discussion of Zack’s work on the police force, he’d spoken of his son with nothing but pride.

  “It’s a hard job, policing,” he’d said. “But Zack said he wanted to do something important. Wanted to help people.” Fred had shaken his head. “Don’t think I could’ve done it.”

  How did such normal parents produce a sociopath like Zack?

  We had to check the house, but Bailey and I hadn’t held out much hope that there’d be anything to find. Neither Zack nor Simon had lived there at the time Tran was killed, and Zack wouldn’t have wanted to risk having his parents stumble onto his evidence. So this search was just a base-covering move that’d ensure we didn’t ignore what might be right under our noses.

  And, of course, it was a message to Lilah. This house was beyond her reach, but if she was having us followed—as we believed—she’d easily be able to see we were here. I wanted her to be good and nervous about why and what we might find.

  By the time the investigators were finishing their last grid, also known as the hall closet, Bailey and I began to focus on lining up our next targets.

  “When you sold Zack and Lilah’s house, who did the cleanup to get it ready for sale?” Bailey asked.

  “We all did,” Fred replied.

  “You, Claire, and Simon?” I asked.

  “Right,” Fred confirmed.

  “Anyone else?” I asked.

  Fred shook his head. “We wanted to do it ourselves.”

  He swallowed and cleared his throat. I could feel the anguish behind his words. It hurt to even imagine what it must’ve been like to go through that house, touching Zack’s toothbrush, his shoes, his ties, each item evoking a memory, a smell, a familiar feel. Whatever he’d been, his family had known only the loving son and older brother. Every second in that place, among his things—the pieces of his life—reinvoked the brutal loss of him.

  “Where did Simon live before he…” I stopped short, hating the fact that I was forced to keep bringing up the most painful moments of their lives.

  “He had a little apartment not far from here,” Claire said. “He rented the garage downstairs as his studio.”

  “Do you know the landlord?” I asked.

  Claire nodded. “She was a sweetheart. Mrs. Kluffman—an older lady. She lived in the main house. Simon’s place was a converted apartment over the garage. But it’s probably been rented out for a while now,” Claire said. “I could give her a call and find out, if you want?”

  I did, and she went to find the number. Bailey and I checked in with Gary, who told us the search was done. No evidence was found. I leaned in and whispered to him, “Do me a favor. Have the guys put together a couple of boxes and carry them out to your car.”

  “Got it,” Gary said. “We’ll make it look good.”

  “Thanks.” I smiled. Sweat, Lilah, sweat.

  A few minutes later, Claire returned.

  “We’re in luck,” she said. “Mrs. Kluffman rented the apartment out for a few months after Simon left, but it’s empty right now. I told her about what you were doing and she said she’d be happy to let you in and have a look around.”

  “Great,” I said.

  We took the address and phone number and headed to Mrs. Kluffman’s place. Again, it was a long shot, but since it was a much smaller space, it’d be a lot less time-consuming than Fred and Claire’s house.

  As our little caravan drove the few miles to Simon’s last private abode, I pulled down the visor and looked in the mirror, trying to see if we were being followed.

  “That only works for Nancy Drew,” Bailey said knowingly.

  She was right. I closed the mirror and flipped the visor back up with an exasperated sigh.

  Mrs. Kluffman, a big, round woman right out of “grandma” central castin
g, nodded sympathetically when we told her of our mission. She led us up a flight of outdoor stairs to a small studio apartment. The garage below, where Simon had set up his studio, was now storage space.

  Gary surveyed the territory with a practiced eye and once again set up a search grid. Three hours later, the investigators had finished. As predicted, the search yielded nothing of evidentiary value—though they did find a couple of Simon’s creations in the garage: a bowl and a serving tray. This time I didn’t have to ask. Gary had the investigators carry three empty boxes out to the car.

  We thanked Mrs. Kluffman, and I called the Bayers and told them the search hadn’t turned up anything. While I was following the investigators around, something struck me, and I’d made a mental note to ask the Bayers about it. Now I questioned Claire.

  “What happened to Simon’s things after he left Mrs. Kluffman’s house?” I asked. “Did you store all of it at your place?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “It was a small apartment, but Simon managed to pack a lot into it. And, of course, the potter’s wheels took up a good deal of space.”

  “What did you do with it all?” I asked.

  “We put it in storage,” Claire replied. She tsked once, then continued, “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that? The locker isn’t far from you. I’ll meet you there.”

  I thought that was a capital suggestion.

  Until I saw the place.

  79

  It was dusk by the time we reached the storage facility, and darkness was quickly spreading across the sky, squeezing out the last rays of sunshine. Our destination, U-Store Lockers, a big concrete-and-beige box of a building, was at the edge of town, where real estate was cheap and ugly warehouses proliferated. Surrounded by a high fence of black steel, the place had the desolate look of a vacant house on a deserted lot. Very few people who had to rent lockers were in a good place in their lives. The building seemed to give off an air of disappointment, loss, and rootlessness.

  Claire was standing at the keypad that operated the gate when our little entourage drove up. She punched in some numbers, and the gate slowly swung inward, reminding me of a door to a haunted house that opens with barely a touch—hinting at dark, unseen forces. A sudden shiver of foreboding pushed me back in my seat, an unconscious effort to resist the car’s forward movement as Bailey drove through the opening.

  “Any thoughts on how big this locker might be?” I asked, just to hear myself say something—anything—to take my mind off the very bad feelings I was starting to have about this whole operation. Bailey shook her head silently. I stole a look at her out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was having a few misgivings of her own. But, of course, us being us, neither one would admit it.

  We parked in the lot and followed Claire up the road that separated the rows of buildings. She stopped at an entrance on the left.

  “It’s on the second floor,” she said. “You have to take the elevator.”

  You know what’s worse than a storage locker? An elevator to a storage locker.

  The elevator was large and empty, and Claire had to punch in her code to operate it. The security measure reassured me…sort of. We stepped out on the second floor into a freshly painted but eerily quiet and dimly lit hallway. The floors were concrete, and our shoes clacked flatly, the only sounds in the entire building. Claire stopped at the last unit on the left, inserted her key, and pulled the door open.

  The locker seemed to be the size of a small room. Seemed, because the darkness in that room was so dense, it felt like a solid mass.

  “No lights?” I asked.

  “It’s not a living space, so you bring your own.”

  Gary had a police-issue flashlight—the big, heavy kind that doubles as a weapon. He turned it on and slowly shined it around the airless unit. It was as big as a bedroom, and large pieces of furniture were piled on top of one another. A bulky object under a sheet that looked like it might be Simon’s potter’s wheel was standing in the far corner, and boxes were stacked in rows that reached almost to the ceiling.

  “Are all these boxes from Simon’s apartment?” I asked.

  “All except the five up front here,” Claire replied, pointing to some cardboard boxes stacked near the wall to our right. “Those are the things he left in our house.”

  Gary dispatched one of the investigators to fetch the rest of their flashlights, but Claire stopped him.

  “You’ll need this,” she said, handing him a yellow Post-it note. “That’s the keypad combination. It’s for the elevator and the outer gate. The exit’s to your left as you leave the building.”

  Gary handed the Post-it to one of the younger investigators, who trotted down the hall toward the elevator.

  “You’re not staying?” I asked her.

  Claire shook her head. “No,” she said. She dropped the locker key into Gary’s hand. “Just let me know if there’s anything else you need. You can drop off the key whenever. We don’t come here, so no rush.”

  “Thank you for all your help, Claire,” I said. “I know this hasn’t been easy.”

  She turned to go, then stopped and looked at me, her eyes wet and bright. “I’ve made my peace with the fact that Lilah got away with…Zack,” she said, her voice intense and strained. “I don’t want to have to do it again. Whoever this monster is, he took my last baby.” She blinked rapidly for a moment. “Get him.”

  “I will,” I replied. And I meant it.

  Claire left, and her footsteps echoed down the hallway. We looked around as best we could with just one flashlight while we waited for reinforcements.

  “That’s a lot of boxes,” Bailey remarked.

  Gary nodded. “But there’re six of us,” he said. “We’ll make pretty fast work of this.”

  And he wasn’t kidding. Box by box, including every drawer of Simon’s dresser and desk, every possible space where evidence could be hidden, was explored within an inch of its life.

  Bailey and I focused on the five boxes Claire had identified. In the fourth one, I found a few brochures of services and shelters for the homeless. Simon had scribbled some names and numbers on a couple of them. I figured they were probably contacts at the shelters. I showed them to Bailey.

  “Take those. They’ll at least give us another place to search.”

  And another place to find nothing. I hadn’t expected to unearth a gold mine, but we were coming up completely empty on every front, and it was getting to me.

  Gary came over to us. “Anything?” he asked.

  Bailey and I still had the papers from our last box spread out on the floor, where we could shine the flashlight directly at them. I cleared some space and showed him the brochures.

  “We might have a lot more here,” he said, playing his flashlight over the other boxes that were being searched by the investigators. “But it’s mostly paper with scribbles, and it’s too hard to read in this light. I say we take them back to the office, where we can spend some time and see what we’re doing.”

  I was down with anything that’d get us out of there sooner. “Good idea,” I said heartily.

  Gary told them to pack up all the boxes they hadn’t finished searching and take them down to the cars. Each of the investigators hefted a couple of solidly packed containers and moved out into the hallway.

  “I’m going to carry those out,” Gary said, pointing to the last two boxes. He gave me the key to the locker. “And since you’re going to see the Bayers, you may as well lock up and take it with you.”

  I took the key. “We’ll pack up and be right behind you,” I said.

  I tucked the brochures into the pockets of my jacket and helped Bailey reassemble our last box. I’d just picked up the final sheaf of papers in front of me when she tapped my arm and held out a newspaper article. It involved a case that’d been prosecuted in Riverside. The defendant had been acquitted in state court of the murder of his business partner. The federal prosecutors had taken the case and won it. The article was underline
d and highlighted, with names circled and notes written in pen in the margin.

  “Now we know how Simon got the idea,” Bailey said.

  I nodded. We both scanned the article. I wanted to see why the case had gone south at the first trial and what had made the Feds pick it up. But halfway through the story I suddenly became aware that a heavy silence had settled around us. I looked up. We were alone.

  “Come on,” I said with some urgency. “We can read it in the car.”

  We threw the rest of the papers into the box, and Bailey carried it out. I yanked the door shut and nervously fumbled the key into the lock, but it stubbornly refused to turn. I had to pull it out and jam it back in twice before I finally got the damn thing locked.

  Quickly we moved to the elevator, and I held the door open for Bailey. Inside, I punched the combination into the keypad. The door closed and we began to descend, but before we could reach ground level, a deafeningly loud clang reverberated through the walls. My stomach lurched. Bailey and I looked at each other, our eyes wide.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked.

  Bailey shook her head. “No idea.”

  She unsnapped her holster. I took the hint and pulled my gun out of my purse.

  The elevator came to a stop at the first floor, and the doors slid open. Bailey picked up the box, and I motioned to her to stay there. Heart pounding, I peered out into the hallway. Nothing. I stuck my hand out to hold the elevator door open and looked around to my right. Nothing. I looked to my left. And saw where the sound had come from. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, in the hope I was wrong. I wasn’t. I turned to Bailey.

  “We’re locked in.”

  80

  The garage-style door to the main entrance, which was corrugated metal, had slammed down, shutting us in. Bailey dropped the box outside the elevator. The hallway to the main door was lit, but the corridor that ran perpendicular was completely dark. We’d have to cross that corridor to get to the entrance. I strained my eyes to see as far as I could, but the darkness was so total, it was like staring into a well.