RK02 - Guilt By Degrees

by Marcia Clark

  I pulled out my .38 and held it in front of me, and Bailey held her .44 down by her side. Slowly, my body tensed for ambush, we moved toward the metal door. When we reached the edge of the darkened corridor, we stopped and looked from right to left. But it was impossible to see anything in the inky blackness.

  Bailey mouthed, On three.

  I nodded. She held out her fingers. One. Two. Three.

  We ran for the entrance. I’d misgauged the distance, and my adrenaline had given me more speed than there was space. I flew across the width of the dark corridor and hurtled straight into the metal door. It would’ve been funny—except I was sure it would be the last joke we ever shared. I quickly searched the door for a handle. There wasn’t one.

  “It’s probably automated,” Bailey said.

  I looked around. I didn’t know if there was another exit. The only possibility of finding one was to venture blindly down the corridor of inky blackness. No, gracias.

  “We need to make some noise,” Bailey said.

  We began to bang on the door and yell, “Hey! We’re in here!”

  As we were shouting and pounding, I kept anticipating the feeling of a knife in my back or the searing heat of a bullet as it ripped through my flesh. What worried me most was that with all the racket we were making, we wouldn’t be able to hear if someone was coming up behind us. I motioned to Bailey to stop and looked around.

  We waited in silence for a few moments. I tried to get my breathing under control, but my racing pulse made it nearly impossible. The feeling of impending danger was physically painful.

  Seconds later, the door slid open.

  “Sorry,” Gary said, looking upset and embarrassed. “Someone leaned on the panel out here and shut the thing by accident.”

  I was so light-headed with relief I thought I’d faint.

  “You okay?” he asked, looking at us closely.

  “Fine,” Bailey replied.

  “All good,” I said, strolling out with as much nonchalance as my wobbly knees would allow. Whatever you do, I told myself, don’t throw up.

  “Then what’s with the firepower?” he asked, nodding toward the guns in our hands.

  “Oh,” I said. “Just comparing.”

  “She’s thinking about getting a Glock,” Bailey said.

  We got into Bailey’s car and Gary got into his, which was parked a few feet ahead. Bailey rolled down the window.

  “Thanks for everything,” she called out.

  He waved to her and we followed him to the exit, where he punched in the code. The gate opened and we rolled out, inches behind him.

  Bailey headed toward the freeway.

  “Olives on the side, so there’s more room for the important stuff,” I said.

  She nodded and punched the accelerator.

  81

  By the time we got back to my room, we were wrung out—and somewhat inebriated—dishrags. If Gary and the other investigators noticed our condition when we left the bar, they were cool enough not to mention it. We said a blurry good night. I showered and was about to get into bed when I found a message on the hotel phone. That was weird. No one ever called me on that phone. I punched in the number to retrieve the message and listened.

  “Hi, it’s Daniel. It’s about…six thirty p.m. I tried you at the office, but they said you were out in the field. I was just wondering, if you don’t have plans for dinner, maybe you’d like some company. Here’s my number…”

  I reflexively picked up a pen and wrote down the number on the notepad I kept next to my phone. I hung up and stared at what I’d written. I knew the message was about more than just an impromptu dinner invitation. What I didn’t know was what to do about it.

  Too tired to ponder the question after the day we’d had, I fell into bed and hoped for a dreamless sleep. So of course I dreamed all night that I was being chased by giant, faceless, machete-wielding monsters.

  Over breakfast the next morning, I pulled out the brochures I’d found in one of Simon’s boxes.

  “He’s got a pamphlet for a place in Glendale, and one in Venice.” I read from the latter. “Venice Community Housing. It has low-cost housing as well as transitional housing for the homeless. Got a couple of names written on it.” I squinted at the jagged writing. “Looks like…Diane?”

  “Glendale’s probably just a place close to home,” Bailey said. “Venice’s more interesting.”

  “And if it doesn’t pan out, we can hit the Glendale shelter.”

  The weather was a little cooler than yesterday, and a few clouds had moved in, but it was still fairly mild for December. I wore a crewneck sweater, jeans, and a leather jacket. I figured the layering would let me adapt if it got warmer. We were on our way out the door when my cell phone played the opening bars of “The Crystal Ship.” “It’s Toni,” I said. “Probably calling to see what we want to do tonight.”

  Bailey shrugged. “Let’s see how the day pans out.”

  I nodded and let it go to voice mail. “I’ll call back later.”

  The transitional-housing facility in Venice turned out to be a charming house with blue wood siding and brick-colored trim. Since there was no parking lot, Bailey waved the investigators toward the open spot in front of the house while we drove farther down the street to park in a red zone.

  I looked pointedly at the red-painted curb. “It’s not just me this time, Keller,” I said. “We’ve got other sworn law-enforcement officers on the scene. They might actually bust your scofflaw ass.”

  She strode up the sidewalk ahead of me. Gary had gotten out of his car and was watching the foot and vehicle traffic, looking up and down the street.

  When we drew close, Gary leaned toward Bailey. “I was going to take that spot,” he said.

  She gave me a smug smile.

  “This is me ignoring you,” I said.

  We moved up the walk, and Bailey knocked on the door. It was answered within seconds by a short, slender blond woman in her fifties, dressed in dark slacks and a long-sleeved cream-colored shirt. She had a kindly face—the sort you’d be glad to see if you’d lost your place in the world.

  “Can I help you?” she asked. Bailey introduced us, and we showed our IDs.

  “Come on in,” she said. “I’m Teresa Solis.”

  Teresa ushered us into a front room with windows that faced the street. It was lined with photographs of women and children, singly and in groups.

  “We’re looking for a man who was homeless and who might’ve stayed here a few months ago,” Bailey said.

  She looked at us, her expression puzzled. “That’s not possible.”

  “Because?” I asked.

  “It’s a shelter for homeless women and their children,” Teresa replied.

  Aha. Thus the photographs of women and children. But now it was my turn to be puzzled. Why did Simon have a brochure for a women’s shelter?

  “Does anyone named Diane work here?” I asked, remembering the handwriting I’d seen on the brochure.

  Teresa’s brows knitted, and she shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of, and I’ve been here for the past six years.”

  I paused and stared over her shoulder at the photographs on the wall.

  “Maybe someone named Diane lived here?” I asked.

  “We do have a Diane living here. I’m not sure how long she’s been here, though. When were you thinking this man made contact?”

  “I’m thinking sometime in the past couple of months,” Bailey replied.

  Teresa turned from her desk to a short metal filing cabinet under the window. She put on a pair of green-and-black-framed reading glasses and opened the top drawer. She looked through a stack of folders and pulled out a slender red file.

  “Diane Nguyen,” she read. “She and her daughter have been here for the past two months. Apparently she was also here four or five years ago.” Teresa read some more, then looked up. “She had a young boy with her back then.”

  I got one of those chills you get when you ju
st know an unexpected connection is coming.

  “Is the boy’s name listed?” I asked.

  Teresa looked down at the file and shook her head.

  Bailey began to look around. She was feeling it too.

  I knew this had to pan out somehow. I went at it another way. “Does it say about how old he was?”

  Teresa looked down at the file again. “Fourteen.”

  But boys, especially small ones, can look younger than their years. “Are there any photographs of them?” I asked.

  “Not in the file,” she replied. “Sorry.” She looked at me sympathetically, then put the folder back in the drawer and took off her glasses.

  “Is this Diane?” Bailey said, pointing to an Asian woman in a group photograph on the wall near the window.

  Teresa and I both went over to the photograph. She put her glasses back on.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s her.”

  Bailey and I looked at each other, then turned back to the photograph, where, next to Diane, the smiling face of Tran Lee beamed back at us.

  82

  We briefly explained who he was and what we were hoping to find.

  “I’d guess Tran Lee was posing as her son so he’d have a place to stay,” Teresa concluded. “And you’d like to talk to Diane about it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’ll take you up to her, but I can’t force her to talk to you. I hope you understand.”

  Teresa led us upstairs to the living quarters. As we walked down the hallway, I counted the doors and saw that the house had been converted to make eight separate rooms, each one presumably for a separate family. Teresa stopped in front of the fifth door and knocked sharply.

  “Diane?” she said. “Are you there? I need to talk to you.”

  “Just a minute,” said a soft voice.

  We heard some rustling and a drawer shutting, then a few light footsteps moving toward the door.

  It was opened by a petite Asian woman.

  “Yes?” she said, looking from Teresa to Bailey to me with a slightly alarmed expression.

  “There’s nothing to be worried about, Diane,” Teresa said gently. “Nothing is wrong. These women just have a few questions for you. Do you mind if we come in for a moment?”

  Diane’s face immediately relaxed. With a tentative smile, she stood aside and gestured for us to come in. The small room was neat as a pin and sparsely furnished with a bed, a dresser, a table, and chairs. But the colors were bright and cheery, which gave it a nice, homey feeling.

  My heart was thudding loudly as I prayed that our theory would pan out, but I tried to act cool and calm so I wouldn’t spook Diane. Bailey and I introduced ourselves and reassured her again that she was in no trouble at all, and then I dived in.

  “Did you ever know someone named Simon?” I asked.

  Diane looked at me blankly. Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t know anyone by this name.”

  This could not happen. I knew I was right. I could feel it. “Maybe you called him by a different name,” I suggested. I pulled out Simon’s photograph and showed it to her.

  She took it from me and looked at it carefully. Then she smiled. “Oh yes,” Diane said. “But his name is Zack.”

  I felt my scalp tighten. It made a weird, emotional kind of sense that Simon would use Zack’s name. “We think he might’ve given you something to hold for him. Does that ring a bell?”

  Diane regarded us closely but made no response.

  “Diane,” Bailey intervened, speaking gently. “Zack isn’t coming back. Someone…killed him, and we’re trying to find the person who did it.”

  Her face froze and she sat perfectly still for several long minutes. Then tears slowly began to slide down her cheeks. I moved to put an arm around her, but she reflexively shrank back, out of reach. I’d forgotten who I was dealing with. The world was not a gentle place for anyone, but it was particularly harsh for a homeless woman. I sat down and waited, my hands clasped in my lap to keep them still. After a few more minutes, she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve.

  Then she got up and went to her dresser. She took the clothes out of the bottom drawer and set them on the bed, then turned back to the drawer and retrieved a small yellow canvas tote bag.

  “This is what he left with me,” she said, presenting the bag to me.

  I took it, not even daring to breathe. I swallowed hard and steeled myself for disappointment. I could feel Bailey next to me, tension radiating from her body in pulsing waves.

  I looked inside. And found it all. One shoe, one pair of prescription glasses, a police report—listing Lilah Rossmoyne as the victim of a car theft, a card bearing the address of this housing shelter, and a photograph of Tran Lee with Diane. Zack must have lifted the card and photograph out of the evidence locker before the reports were prepared. Who’d notice if something as minor as that went missing? After all, it was just a homeless crackhead who’d done a swan dive in a stolen car.

  This was the evidence Simon had found, and it led him straight to this shelter. It took a Herculean effort to keep my reaction restrained.

  “Diane, thank you so much,” I said.

  She nodded and gave us a tremulous smile. “He was a good man,” she finally said. “I hope you will get his killer.”

  Elated by the breakthrough, I was in a hurry to get outside and tell Gary that he wouldn’t have to endure days and nights of sifting through piles of papers. We trotted down the stairs behind Teresa and stopped just outside the reception room, where a young woman in frayed jeans and an army jacket was talking on a cell phone.

  “Teresa, I so appreciate your help,” I said.

  “I take it this is what you were looking for?” she asked, gesturing to the canvas bag.

  “It’s everything we were looking for,” I replied. “And more than we ever expected to find. I can’t thank you enough. But it would be best if you didn’t mention this to anyone for a while.”

  “I understand. I wish you the best of luck,” she said warmly.

  We stepped out onto the porch and I waved to Gary, the bag tucked under my arm. He took another look up and down the street, then moved up the sidewalk toward us. When he saw my ear-to-ear grin, he smiled.

  “It’s been pretty quiet, so I let Stephen take an early lunch,” he said. “What’d you get? From the looks of you, it must be pretty good.”

  I gave him the bag, and he peered inside. I watched Gary’s eyes grow big as he inhaled sharply. He looked from Bailey to me, and I nodded. We had the gold.

  “You know, I was starting to doubt whether there was anything to find.” He shook his head with a rueful smile. “Congratulations, you two. Why don’t we meet the guys for lunch and give them the news? They’re all going to Joe’s.”

  It did feel like some kind of celebration was in order. Joe’s, a no-frills-looking box that served top-notch food, had been around for twenty years, but I’d never had the chance to check it out. “Great idea,” I said.

  “You know how to get there?” Gary asked.

  “Yep,” Bailey said.

  “Okay, then you lead, I’ll follow.”

  As we turned to head for Bailey’s car, Teresa walked out onto the porch with the young woman who’d been in the waiting room. Teresa waved to us, and we waved back. We got to the car just as Gary pulled up. We moved out in front, heading down the narrow street toward Abbot Kinney Boulevard.

  “We might just have found the linchpin that’ll nail Lilah for the hit-and-run and as an aider and abettor in Simon’s murder,” I said. I was jubilant.

  “Seems so,” Bailey said.

  I started to tell her to unwind and enjoy our big score, but it was slow, careful going on the narrow street that was made more so by the parked cars that lined both sides, and I could see she was focused on the road. But when she stopped at an intersection and peered around me to look for oncoming traffic, I saw that she was grinning like a kid with an ice-cream cone.

  As Bailey pu
lled forward, I chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile like that since—”

  But my next words were cut off by the high-pitched screech of tires behind us. I turned and saw an old-model Chevy roar out of the narrow street we’d just crossed and slam into the front passenger side of Gary’s car. It spun on impact, and over the sounds of shattering glass and crumpling metal came the thunderous noise of gunfire, many shots in rapid succession: bang, bang, bang, bang!

  The blasts were still ringing in my ears when I saw the Chevy’s passenger window slide down and the muzzle of a handgun turn toward our car. “Get down!” I screamed. Shots exploded through the trunk and back window. The whine of bullets whizzed right past my ear. I reached down for the gun in my purse, and I’d just wrapped my hand around the grip when Bailey suddenly threw the car into reverse and floored it. We flew backward and crashed into the side of the old Chevy, driving it into Gary’s car. The force of the impact threw me forward against my seat belt and knocked the air out of me, but I had to get out, get to Gary. I managed to unbuckle and throw myself out of the car just in time to see the Chevy wrench itself out from between our cars and turn toward us. I took a steadying breath and, using our car as a shield, emptied my clip into the Chevy as it squeezed past us and then sped off.

  I leaned into the car to tell Bailey. And the world shattered into a million jagged shards.

  Bailey was slumped over the steering wheel, her face covered in blood.

  83

  My mind shut down, refusing to believe what I saw. I reached out and took her hand off the steering wheel and felt for a pulse. Nothing. My heart gave a slow, heavy thump. Afraid to move her, I looked for the source of the bleeding, praying I wouldn’t find a bullet hole.

  As I studied her head, her neck, her shoulders, whatever I could see, I found myself gripping her wrist, as though I could squeeze her back to life. “Bailey,” I said softly. “Bailey. Come on, come on.” Unshed tears closed my throat and my words came out in a strangled sob.