“Well, as I was saying on the phone, I am defending Esme Gutierrez on this case. I wanted to ask you a few questions about what she told me about you and Colleen. I wanted to get your side of the story.”
He nodded his head again. He uncrossed his legs and then re-crossed them on the other side, then sat back in his wingback chair. “I believe that anything that she has told you has probably been a lie. But please, indulge me.”
I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling very nervous. The way this guy was just staring at me, his icy blue eyes without any kind of soul or mirth behind them, was setting me on edge. I cleared my throat again. “Sir, why would you say that?”
“Why would I tell you that anything that she said to you was probably a lie?” he asked. “The reason why I say that is because almost everything she says is a lie. Therefore, the odds are great that anything that she told you was also a lie.” He continued to stare at me, and I felt a chill go up my spine.
“Okay, I guess that it’s your position that Esme lies. And you’re entitled to that opinion. Be that as it may, I wanted to speak with you about a few things that she said to me. As I said, I want to get your side of the story.”
He motioned me with his hand to tell me in a nonverbal way that he wanted me to continue.
“First of all, I was curious about one thing. Who is Aria’s birth mother?”
“Her mother is Colleen. Any other questions?”
“How old is Colleen?”
He appeared to bristle at that question. “How is that any of your business?”
“I’m simply asking the question. How old is she?”
“She is 35.”
I raised an eyebrow, and I looked over at Christian. This guy was certainly defensive. Of course, it was entirely possible that he was only being defensive because there were such an age gap between the two of them. News reports had stated that he had just celebrated his 75th birthday. Maybe he was defensive because Colleen was 40 years younger than him. And she obviously was a gold digger. At least, that was the thought in my head. Because, after all, this guy was not exactly a man with a scintillating personality. Granted, he was physically attractive, but I couldn’t imagine being in the room with him for two seconds.
In fact, I wanted to leave right at that moment.
“You see, the reason why I ask you that question is because you told me that Colleen is her mother. Now, are you telling me that Colleen gave birth to Aria when Colleen was only 14?” And then I gave him a look like I was trying to tell him is that what you’re saying, are you trying to tell me that you impregnated a 14-year-old? Is that the story that you’re sticking with?
“Of course not.” By the tone of his voice, I could tell that he was thoroughly offended that I would even ask that question. “I was simply saying that Colleen is the only mother that she knows, the only mother that she’s ever known. So, for all intents and purposes, Aria’s mother is Colleen. Now, what is your next question?”
“Where is her mother? Her actual mother? The woman who gave birth to her?” I asked him.
“That is none of your business. Now, I gave you a courtesy when I agreed to go ahead and sit down for this interview. I am a very busy man. And, at the moment, it seems that you have been wasting my time. Colleen advised me against speaking with you. After all, you are the person who is defending the woman who murdered my daughter. I have an interview with the prosecutor, and there’s a reason for me to to speak with the prosecutor. The prosecutor is the one who’s going to be putting Esme Gutierrez into prison, on death row. Where she belongs. Now, if you will excuse me, my domestic help will show you out.”
“Your domestic help,” I said, not making a move to get up. I was going to put this guy off balance, and see if anything he said gave me something to go on. I doubted that he would, but it was worth a shot. “Is she an immigrant? Is she here on protected status? Did she flee a war-torn country?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, she did. She’s here from Syria.”
“Oh.” So far, I had my suspicions about this other domestic worker. She, like Esme, was a refugee from a war-torn country. She, like Esme, was fair-skinned and blue-eyed. She was also pregnant. “I noticed that she’s in a family way. What are you going to do when the baby comes? Does your domestic worker, I’m sorry I didn’t ask for her name, live here on the grounds with you and Colleen?”
“Calista, her name is Calista. And yes, she does live on the grounds with us. Now, I’m sorry, what was your question?”
“Is the baby going to live with her on the grounds?”
“Again, I fail to see how that is any of your business.”
“It’s just that when I talked to Esme, she told me that you fathered her child. In fact, the way that she spoke, it sounded as if the main reason why you wanted her to be here with you and Colleen was so that she could have your child. Now, I see you have another a domestic servant, who apparently is also a protected refugee from a war-torn country, and she, too, is pregnant. Perhaps you are trying to produce a replacement baby with her? Or an insurance policy, perhaps?”
I looked at him, and I thought that he might kill me. His blue eyes were no longer cold, but, rather, they were lit from within. Lit with rage, it seemed. “That girl, I told you that she tells lies. Lies are all that she’s about. I cannot believe that you come here into my home and accuse me of something so vile.”
I looked over at Christian, who silently nodded his head. “Sir, with all due respect, I would like to meet your son. What is his name again?”
“His name is Jake. Jacob Whitmore II. And you cannot meet him, because he is currently in school. He goes to school in Manhattan. Leman Manhattan. He’s been going to school there since he was five years old.”
I leaned back in my chair. I took a sip of the brandy. It was smooth as butter, and its dark richness hit the back of my throat and tickled it just a little bit.
I was getting to this guy. Striking a nerve. And that was my intention, to be honest. I wanted to see if I could rattle him. See what kind of temper he would have if I said something to him that really upset him. And for just one second, the way he looked at me, I thought that he had it in his soul to murder somebody in cold blood.
The only thing was, I didn’t really understand why he would murder Aria. I didn’t quite know how everything was fitting together, but I knew that there was a puzzle here for me to put together.
“Your daughter, did she happen to know the true nature of the paternity of young Jake? Did she know that your domestic worker was the actual birth mother of the child?”
I saw Jacob take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m going to tell you one more time, and then I’m going to have to ask you to leave. There is no story to tell about the birth of my son. Colleen is his mother. His mother is not Esmeralda. I don’t know what you’re getting at with these questions. I don’t know what it is that you are trying to prove here. Now, as I said, I’m a very busy man. I gave you the courtesy of meeting with you today, and I really didn’t have to. In fact, I have meetings all day after I leave you. Calista will show you out.”
I stood up. “With all due respect, I also made an appointment with Colleen to speak with her. Is she around?”
“You’re going to have to speak with her another time.”
“I also have a court order from the judge to go and inspect the crime scene. Can I do that right now?”
“No, I’m afraid that you cannot. Perhaps you can come back tomorrow, or another time. At the moment, I have to leave for work, and nobody will be here for you to be supervised. Please set up another time to come back. I’m not trying to hide anything, it’s just that I’m a very busy man.”
“So you said.”
At that, Christian and I stood up. Calista came to the door, smiled at us, and showed us out. “I’m very sorry, I know that you wanted to speak with Mrs. Whitmore. I’m afraid that she’s taken ill. She gets migraine headaches sometimes, and she’s now in her bedroom with the
shades drawn, the lights out, with a cool pack on her forehead. Perhaps she can speak with you on another day.”
“Maybe. But maybe you would like to talk to me.”
“What would I say to you? What kind of information could I possibly give to you?”
“You could give me a lot of information. For one thing, you could tell me what kind of environment you are working in. And I really hate to be nosy, but I would really like to know who the father is of your baby.”
She’s looked down at the floor, and then looked around as if she was afraid. I knew why she was scared. If Jacob had seen her still talking to us, by the front door, he probably would’ve fired her, or worse. I wondered if she was in a tenuous situation, much like Esme. I wondered if the Whitmores constantly threatened her refugee status, constantly threatened her with going to ICE and turning her in for some imagined violation. I wondered if the Whitmores had threatened to plant drugs on her and call the police. I wondered if she was being treated as poorly as Esme was.
“I don’t know why you ask me that question.”
I looked over her shoulder, to make sure that Jacob was not coming out to see me talking to her. “What is your legal status in this country?” I asked her.
She bit her lower lip. “I came here from Syria, just two months ago. I was very lucky that I was able to make it this far. I know that in this country that refugees are not being welcomed as much as they used to be in the past. I understand what kind of place this country is. It’s a much better country than the one I came from, but I’m not so welcomed here. I have applied for protected status, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. I do know that Mr. Whitmore has ways, or so he says, of making sure that I can stay in this country. But that is all that I can really tell you.”
I nodded my head, knowing what this woman was going through. She was going through something similar to Esme. Always afraid that she was going to be sent back to her country, to be murdered. I knew that she probably had seen the same kind of atrocities and horrors as Esme did on her journey over to this country. I knew that she probably had been sexually assaulted, beaten, tortured. I could see the fear in her eyes. It was palpable. It was almost as if the fear in her body was an independent thing. Like I could touch it. That was how strong of a vibe I got off of this woman.
“Just be careful. Please. Esme was in the same situation as you. Now she’s in jail, awaiting trial. It’s possible that she might end up on death row. Now I don’t know exactly what happened, but I do have my suspicions about what’s going on here behind closed doors. And I just want you to be careful. These people, these Whitmores, they don’t have your best interest at heart. They may have their own agenda.”
She nodded her head. “I know. I know that they have their own reasons for doing what they do. And I know that I’m trapped in my situation. But you have to believe me, anything is better than going back to my country. Have you seen what happens to people when they inhale chemical poisoning? Have you seen the burns on the skin? Their eyes water, they choke, their lungs are burning, they can’t breathe. Do you know what it’s like to see your own child die from a chemical attack?” She hung her head, and tears came to her eyes. “You can’t know. You can’t understand what it is that I’ve gone through. And I will never, ever, go back to that. So I do what I can to stay in this country.”
I knew that I had to speak with her a bit more, but then, at that moment, Jacob was coming down the hall. I was afraid that he was going to say something to Calista, maybe tell her that she needed to make sure that we left. I was afraid that he was going to maybe fire her, because she was obviously speaking with us for too long.
“Thank you very much,” I said to her. I figured that that was an innocuous enough thing to say to her, so that Jacob didn’t necessarily know what we were talking about.
She nodded her head, and shut the door behind us.
Christian and I walked to his car, and I got in after he pushed the button to unlock the door. “So, what do you think about all that?”
“I don’t know. He certainly was stonewalling, but I don’t understand why it is that he agreed to talk in the first place. You know that he didn’t have to. I wonder why he agreed to it. He certainly wasn’t willing to give us information. That’s for sure.”
“That’s true, and I was kind of wondering the same thing. What did he think he was going to gain by talking with me? What did he think he was going to gain? All I know is that he’s hiding something. I don’t really know quite what.”
I didn’t know what he was hiding, but I was certainly going to find out.
Chapter 19
Regina
Regina was being stymied by trying to find this Julian person. Anna was certainly helpful in that she told Regina where Julian probably was. However, as Anna said, it was going to be very difficult to find out exactly in which hospital he was being held.
That was a frustrating thing, to say the very least. Regina had a feeling that this guy had the keys to this entire case. Not that she thought that when she saw him that everything was going to become clear. But she certainly thought that since he was friends with Aria, maybe he would have some kind of a clue as to exactly what had happened to her.
So she decided to go ahead and call her boss, Avery, and meet with her. She remembered that Avery had told her that Christian was apparently a computer genius, and a hacker. She also remembered that apparently Aidan was working for a law firm that defended people who were involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.
She called Avery from her car. “Hey,” she said when Avery picked up. “I got a hot lead here, Julian Rodriguez. You remember me telling you about him?”
“Of course, how could I forget about that? He was a guy who lived in the barrio, and apparently had some mental issues, but he knew Aria. How are you coming along with trying to find him?”
“I’m not. Nah, scratch that. I am trying to find the guy, but he seems to be in some kind of a nut house. I don’t know where. That’s all that his old neighbor, Anna, seemed to say to me, that he apparently ran naked through the streets screaming at the top of his lungs. The next thing she knows, he’s being taken away in a police car. She assumes that he was put into a mental institution of some sort, but she doesn’t really know. I need to track this dude down. I’m like, I think this dude has some information that’s going to be breaking this case wide open. So I need to go ahead and try to find him. But I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Well, we can certainly start with all the mental institutions in the La Mesa area. Because didn’t you tell me that he had moved to La Mesa? I would imagine that probably he would’ve gone to Alvarado Hospital or maybe Sharp over on Grossmont, and then was transferred to more of a long-term care facility if he needed it. I know that there’s a few of them in that area. Maybe we can start with ones around his old apartment.”
“That’s all well and good, I mean it’s a good idea, but you know that those places are tighter than a rich bastard’s wallet. They ain’t gonna tell us crap. I mean, we can’t just be all calling them and being all, ‘hey, do you have a dude named Julian Rodriguez squatting in one of your rooms?’ They’ll be like ‘bitch, don’t be bothering me with this crap.’”
“That’s true enough. So, anyhow, here’s what we do. Meet me in my office in a half-hour. Christian and I are going to be there to meet you. I think that we’re going to have to do something that’s a little bit extralegal. Christian can get access to the databases of the hospitals around town. He can also get access to the medical records. Of course, both of us would be disbarred if anybody found out about what we were doing, but sometimes it’s important. Because you’re right, I think it’s odd that Aria was friends with somebody who came from a much different world from her. I just kinda wonder why. What brought them together?”
“That’s good,” Regina said. “But listen, I think you also need to talk to your brother, and ask him to get in on this. Because even if we figure out where
he is, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to be able to just go on in there and be all like ‘yo bitch, I want to see Julian Rodriguez right now.’ They’ll slam the door in our face. They’ll laugh us out of the place. But your brother, he probably has some kind of pass. Something that allows him to get in behind those doors. Maybe he knows people?”
“Good thinking. You’re right. We probably need Aidan to be a part of this whole situation. I’ll give him a call, and maybe we can all meet up at my condo. He won’t necessarily want to come to my office, because you know he’s always busy. But hopefully he’ll be around this evening. Maybe we’ll order out, you can come on over, and we’ll all brainstorm exactly how it is that we are going to go ahead and be able to talk to this Julian Rodriguez person.”
“I’ll see you then.”
Chapter 20
Avery
I met Regina over at my condo that evening, and she came over with a bottle of wine. Christian was also over at my condo, and my brother was expected at any moment. My brother was very important to this entire operation, because, as Regina said, even if we managed to track down Julian Rodriguez, it didn’t mean that we would be able to go and see him. Mental institutions were very tight with who was allowed to see their patients. To see a patient, you had to be on a list, or be given a patient code, before you could even get in the door. As an attorney, I could possibly get a court order to go in and see Julian, but I didn’t know if I could show the judge that this Julian Rodriguez was a material witness. All we knew at that moment was that he knew Aria. That was the only thing that was known.
Regina and I sat down at the table, while Christian was in the kitchen getting plates for us. We had ordered out through Uber eats, and we were soon going to be sitting down to some Thai food. Regina was busy with going over with me what she had found out in her preliminary investigation. She had not only gone to speak with some people in the barrio, but she also had done extensive background research on Aria herself. She went through her school records, and every other kind of record that was available to her.
Presumption of Guilt Page 13
