RK02 - Guilt By Degrees

by Marcia Clark

  “Hey!” Bailey interjected.

  But Mario was on a roll. “What the hell did you think you were doing, setting this up without telling anyone? And you”—he turned to Bailey—“I know you know better than this. So what the hell…?”

  Bailey ground her lower jaw. Her voice was harsh and raw. “I tried to talk her out of it, okay? But she wasn’t listening. She would’ve done it alone. How’m I going to let her do that?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, then clamped it shut. Bailey was right. I’d always had a tendency to push the envelope, riskwise—I called it tenacious. Carla the Crone diagnosed it as survivor’s guilt. But even for me, this plan was a bridge too far. This time it wasn’t just me; I’d endangered Bailey’s life as well. How could I have done this? Why on earth had I taken it so far? Gary’s death, this case—something about Lilah—it all had me more unhinged than I’d realized.

  Mario turned on me, eyes blazing, then stormed off, venting, “This is why no one wants to guard you—no one!”

  When he was in a more receptive mood, I’d explain that we didn’t think we could tell him about the plan because we suspected that Lilah had a source somewhere in the police department or the DA’s office—maybe both. By then maybe he’d be able to hear me, and even agree. But maybe not.

  The bags of Chinese food I’d been carrying were splayed all over the sidewalk. Crows had already found the banquet and were cawing their victory over the orange chicken.

  “Bailey,” I said, “where’d you put our buddy—?”

  She motioned to me to follow her. “Be right back,” she called after Mario.

  One of the police officers yelled out to us, “You’ll have to give statements, so don’t go far.”

  We moved quickly down the street and turned the corner. Bailey led me to her car. There, stretched out in the backseat with a feast of Chinese food, was Cletus. Bailey knocked softly to warn him we were there, and he sat up and gave us a semitoothless grin. She opened the door.

  “How you doing, Cletus?” I asked.

  “Just fine, missy. Cletus’s just fine,” he replied in the gravelly voice that seemed to come from the middle of the earth. “Not as good as yours, though,” he said, pointing to the boxes of food.

  “I had to make do,” Bailey apologized.

  “Cletus, you might want to get inside tonight,” I said. “There’re going to be cops all over your space.”

  He frowned. “What’d you two get up to?” he said suspiciously.

  “Don’t ask,” Bailey said.

  He shook his head. “Got to bother an old man like this. Ain’t right, ain’t right.” He sighed. “I got a ride,” he said, looking around the interior of Bailey’s car. “May as well use it. Take me to Johnnie’s.”

  I looked at Bailey. We weren’t exactly Johnnie Jasper’s favorite people at the moment.

  “You mind if we let someone else give you a lift there?” I asked. “We’ve got to hang around for a bit.”

  “Sure, sure,” Cletus said, digging into his fried rice.

  We headed back to the crime scene to find someone to give Cletus a ride. And to spend another million hours giving statements.

  89

  Bailey and I got up the next morning at the crack of dawn. One of us was happy about this.

  “You know,” I said when she shook me awake at six fifteen a.m., “you can probably go back to your own pad now.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “Besides, what’s the rush? I’m not filing on that guy without ballistics and DNA results—”

  Bailey held up her cell phone and waggled it under my face. “You got ’em. The blood on Simon’s shirt came back to him, and the gun he was carrying matches the one used to shoot Gary. Good enough for you?” she asked.

  That had to be the fastest I’d ever seen DNA come back. This case had a lot of people fired up. “It’ll do,” I replied.

  Bailey drove us to the courthouse for what I figured would be the last time. With Simon’s killer in custody, I’d be walking to work again. Though we hadn’t lucked out and caught Lilah going to or from her parents’ house, I was confident our newly arrested killer could be persuaded to tell us where she was. Besides, now that she knew we had the evidence on Tran’s case, Lilah had nothing to gain by killing us. She seemed to be a fairly pragmatic murderer.

  We were so early, we beat the morning courthouse crowds and got an elevator within seconds. Two minutes later, we’d settled in my office. I woke up my computer.

  “So do we have a name for our perp?” I asked.

  “Chase…” Bailey fished out her notebook. “Erling. Was a bouncer at Les Deux a few years back. But his full-time gig—that is, before he went to work for Lilah—was in computer hardware and electronics. Used to work for a gadget company named Omni—”

  “Electronics and computers?” I frowned. “What the hell?”

  “Must have something to do with Lilah’s business.”

  “When he’s up and running, do you think he’ll be willing to cough up some information on Lilah in return for a choice of prison placement?”

  Bailey shook her head. “I’d say negatory—”

  “Though you really shouldn’t, ’cause it sounds silly,” I observed. “But why not?”

  “Because we found this inside the lining of his jacket,” she said, holding up her cell phone.

  It showed a photograph of a watch. TAG Heuer, to be exact.

  I frowned at Bailey. “Okay,” I said. “He’s got the watch we saw on the video. So why does that mean he won’t talk?”

  “Check out the next picture,” she instructed.

  I hit the arrow. A photo showed the underside of the watch. It was inscribed. Fondly, L.

  “Lilah,” I said. Then I put the rest of it together. “After he saw our photo, he knew he couldn’t be seen wearing the watch anymore. But he didn’t want to dump it because it was a keepsake from his…girlfriend?”

  Bailey shrugged. “I wouldn’t necessarily go that far, but there was obviously some kind of relationship, and it meant something to him.”

  I turned back to my computer. “Two counts of murder…use of a deadly weapon on Simon…use of a firearm on Gary. Even if the judge stays sentence on the deadly weapon, this guy’s getting seventy-five to life.”

  We shared a satisfied smile.

  “I’ll be done with this in fifteen minutes,” I said. “If I walk it down, we’ll be ready to arraign him within the hour. Think you can get anyone to move him in for the afternoon session?”

  “Let me find out,” Bailey said. She went into the hallway to make the calls.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was back. “Our boy will be on the afternoon bus.”

  “Excellent.” With a DA investigator as one of the victims, the press would likely get interested in the case. It’d be nice to at least have the arraignment done without the hoopla. I hit print and took the pages as they spit out.

  I looked at the clock on the Times Building. It was only ten thirty. I stood up and put the papers into a plain file folder to shield them from view. “I’ll be back,” I said. I turned on my heel and left.

  The clerk got the case filed as fast as I’ve ever seen. Within half an hour, I was on the elevator and headed back to my office. I dumped some sandwiches on the desk in front of Bailey.

  “Turkey and Swiss for me, ham and cheddar for you,” I said.

  “Looks great,” Bailey said. “I do miss that silver tray, though.” Her cell phone rang. She looked at the number on the screen.

  Bailey answered the phone. “Keller here.”

  That was pretty formal for her.

  Suddenly she dropped her feet to the floor and grabbed the desk. Her face looked pale. “When?”

  She listened, and I stood up. What? I mouthed. But Bailey wasn’t looking at me.

  “How?” she asked.

  I was ready to pull out my hair. What the hell was going on?

  When Bailey ended the call, her expression was thunderous. “Chase Erling,” s
he said. “Someone attacked him on the transpo bus.”

  90

  “Someone shanked him when they were loading up the bus for court,” Bailey said.

  “I thought they had him as ‘special handling.’”

  “Yeah, so did I,” Bailey said, hands on her hips. She stared out the window.

  “We got the guy who did it?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s looking at about a hundred years to life himself—”

  “Figures.” He had little to lose.

  “And he’s a skinhead,” she continued. “Nazi Low Riders.”

  We stared at each other as the significance of what she’d just said settled in the air.

  “Lilah,” Bailey said simply.

  Though I’d come to the same conclusion, I didn’t want to believe it.

  “How could she possibly manage to get to someone in the jail that fast?” I demanded.

  Bailey shook her head. “They just told me the skinhead claims he heard the guy was a chomo.”

  Chomo. The slang for child molester. It was a skinhead credo that they had an obligation to kill any known child molester on sight, and it was a badge of honor to carry it out.

  There was nothing whatsoever in Chase Erling’s file that indicated he was a child molester.

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “Definitely,” Bailey agreed. “But it’s great cover for the skinhead, and who’s going to bother proving that Erling wasn’t a perv?”

  No one. The Low Rider would enter a fast guilty plea and get carried into prison like he was Cleopatra.

  “She used them as the fall guys for Zack’s murder—,” Bailey said.

  “And now she’s done it again,” I said with cold fury. “What would it take to bribe a cretin who’s already doing one hundred years to life?”

  “Nothing.”

  We sat in silence for several minutes. The skinhead would never admit he’d been put up to it. And, for all I knew, he really believed Erling was a chomo. It wouldn’t have taken much to convince him—just a few well-chosen words. I couldn’t say I minded Erling’s death. What I did mind was the giant fuck-you it came with.

  “Chase Erling was our only way of getting to Lilah,” I said.

  Bailey nodded, her expression stony. “And now there’s no way we’ll find her. She’s in the wind.”

  91

  Lilah took one last glance around the empty office. She’d made sure every inch was scoured. There’d be no trace left of her. She’d always known this day would come, one way or another. What she hadn’t been prepared for was Chase. Hotheaded, yes. Impulsive at times, yes. But going after that prosecutor? Suicidal. Now, in hindsight, Lilah realized the screwup in Venice had affected him more deeply than he’d let on. And she couldn’t afford to leave him behind. He was too big a liability. Loyal as he was, she knew better than to believe he’d never crack. She sighed heavily as she closed the door for the last time. Somehow, everyone always failed her in the end. She should be used to it by now. No one was as strong, or as smart, as she was.

  The car was waiting for her at the curb. She looked around and saw the street was deserted, then gestured to the driver. “In there,” she said, pointing to the luggage just inside the entranceway. The driver nodded, opened the back passenger door for her, waited while she got seated, and closed it behind her before trotting up the walkway.

  Lilah pulled out her phone and called Maxwell Chevorin. “I’m on the way out. Is it ready?”

  “All set. Only the pilot knows the destination, and he works for me.”

  “I’ll be in touch as soon as we land,” she said.

  Chevorin seemed satisfied with that. She ended the conversation and closed the phone, her expression grim. Now she was beholden to him—not something that sat well with her. It gave him too much power. She tapped the back of her cell phone, thinking about how to even the score. A little smile lifted the corners of her mouth as a possibility came to mind. Half an hour later, the driver pulled onto the tarmac.

  Lilah boarded and buckled up. Within minutes, they’d ascended over Van Nuys Airport and climbed into the clouds. She couldn’t stay gone forever. But she couldn’t come back until she’d eliminated the threat. Lilah pulled out her throwaway phone.

  92

  “They’ll probably pronounce him in the next half hour or so,” Bailey said.

  I clamped my jaws shut to keep from screaming in frustration. Chase Erling had been rushed into surgery, but it was a doomed effort—the kind they make out of duty, no real hope involved. The skinhead had managed to stab him five times in the head and torso.

  My office phone rang. I snatched it up angrily. “Yeah.”

  It was the mail room. A package—another response to my subpoena for records—had come in. Arturo, the mail room clerk, offered to drop it off on his way out. “Great, thanks,” I said with no interest whatsoever. Lilah’s medical records were of little import now.

  When Arturo dropped off the slim package, I barely glanced at it. But after a moment I absently tore open the manila envelope and read the document.

  “What?” Bailey asked, seeing my expression.

  “Lilah was almost five months pregnant when Zack was killed,” I said.

  Dr. Aigler had been the last to see Lilah and Zack at the clinic. It’d been his pleasure to give them the happy news that she was four months pregnant. But two weeks later, Lilah had canceled her prenatal checkup. When the office had called to reschedule, she’d said she was changing doctors—she’d send them the address of his office so they could forward the records. So the office had packaged her file and set it aside, ready for mailing. Which was why, when my subpoena was served, it’d taken a little longer to find it. They’d never heard from Lilah again.

  “Didn’t she get arrested right after the murder?” I asked.

  Bailey shook her head. “Not for a while. I can check, but it was at least three or four months.” She frowned. “And she definitely wasn’t pregnant when she went into custody.”

  “According to Audrey’s records, Lilah never went back to work after the arrest.” I stared out the window. “She might’ve been able to find a doctor who’d abort it—”

  “Wouldn’t be easy, though.”

  “No.”

  “So what happened to that baby?”

  I leaned back in my chair, and we fell silent. But in the next moment, Bailey and I simultaneously stopped and stared at each other. Like a blast of cold wind that blows away the fog, the revelation left a view that was crystal clear. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

  “If she’d had that baby with Zack still around—,” Bailey began.

  “She’d never be free of him,” I finished.

  Bailey nodded.

  “She did it. Lilah killed Zack.”

  My cell phone buzzed in my hand. It was a text message.

  Did anyone ever tell you that one month after Romy disappeared, a parking citation was issued to a red pickup truck just twenty miles away from your home? And that a black dog was in the cab?

  Or that six months after that, a man in a red pickup truck was given a speeding ticket up in Eureka? And that his “daughter” was asleep in the backseat?

  You didn’t know any of that, did you? And there’s more, so much more that I could tell you…

  I stared at the message with such intensity, it got blurry. I could barely breathe.

  “Rachel? What’s wrong?” Bailey asked.

  But my heart was pounding so hard, I couldn’t speak. I handed her the phone.

  If the kidnapper hadn’t killed Romy within the first forty-eight hours, there was a chance he hadn’t killed her at all. I had hope—real hope—for the first time in decades that my sister might be alive.

  The sudden adrenaline rush left me trembling. I wanted to jump on this possible lead with all fours. But I couldn’t afford to dwell on it right now. I looked down at my shaking hands and willed them to stop. Because I had a message for
Lilah.

  I set my phone to camera mode, held it up to the hospital bed in front of me, and clicked. And sent Lilah the photograph of Chase Erling. Who had miraculously survived.

  Then I typed: Don’t you wonder what else I know?

  Epilogue

  I felt fairly certain that when Chase woke up and learned that Lilah had put out a hit on him—and I’d make sure he did—we’d have an important source of information on her. Not only where to find her but also her involvement as the mastermind of the murders of Simon and Gary. I’d find her eventually. And when I did, I’d make sure she was locked up for life.

  For now, Bailey and I found some consolation in the fact that we’d caught the actual killer responsible for Gary’s and Simon’s murder, and thanks to the efforts of the fine doctors at Harbor General, Chase Erling would get to live for quite some time. Long enough to serve at least one of his multiple life sentences.

  I’d asked the Bayers if they’d mind donating the bowl and serving tray Simon left behind in his studio to Johnnie Jasper. They’d been happy to do it, and they’d enclosed a beautiful, loving note to Johnnie, thanking him for the kindness he’d shown to Simon. We braved Johnnie’s wrath and delivered the items, including his vase, personally. I called out to him, and when he emerged, I placed everything just outside the fence. He waited until I got back in the car, but I saw him open the gate before we pulled away.

  Toni told us we owed her dinner—why, she didn’t say. But we’d been meaning to check out Rivera, a Nueva Mexicana restaurant downtown that was supposed to be the bomb, so I got us reservations. Whatever Toni thought we owed her, I figured that would settle the score.

  She was resplendent in a leopard-print dress, and Bailey looked hot as usual, in her Calvin Klein sweater and slacks. We ordered our Ketel One martinis and toasted to “Girls’ night.”

  “So give it up, Tone,” I said. “Why do we owe you?”