In My Dark Dreams

by JF Freedman

She shakes her head. “No. I’ll work through this.” Another eye dab.

  “Until she was murdered,” Loomis finishes for her.

  “Yes.” She shivers. It’s impossible not to notice that she’s had her breasts done, and probably some more work too, but in L.A. that’s normal, so she doesn’t lose points on that. A girl has to stay current.

  Loomis mentions the name of one of the other victims, who had also been a client of Ms. St. Clair. She had moved on before she was killed, so their connection wasn’t as strong as the one St. Clair had with Cheryl Lynn.

  “Do personal trainers such as yourself become friendly with their clients?” Loomis asks.

  “Oh, yes. Not with all of them, but some of them, for sure.”

  “Were you and Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she confide in you? About her personal life?”

  “All the time.”

  “Sort of like how some women confide in their hairdressers?” Loomis suggests.

  “Exactly!” She perks up. “Did you ever see that movie with Warren Beatty? Shampoo? Sometimes it gets that personal.” Quickly, she frowns. “I don’t sleep with clients. That’s a no-no. Anyway, mine are all women, and I don’t swing that way. Not that I have anything against anyone who does,” she adds. She’s covering all the bases.

  “But they do tell you their secrets.”

  “Yes. Often. They have to tell someone, and I’m a good listener.” She looks up. “And discreet. They know they can trust me.”

  “Was there something specific Cheryl Lynn confided to you, shortly before she was murdered?”

  Joe and I exchange a worried glance. What the hell is this? I make a move to get up and object, but Joe stops me. Let’s see where this is going, he’s signaling me.

  “Yes,” the witness answers.

  “What was that?” Loomis asks.

  The words come out in a rush.

  “She had been having an affair with a married man. She wanted to break it off, but he didn’t want to. She was afraid he might become violent because she was rejecting him. The way she talked about him, it was like he was beneath her, like from a different class or background. She was afraid she would look bad if it became known she was sleeping with a married man who wasn’t up to her standards,” she concludes breathlessly.

  Now Joe jumps up. “Objection! This is hearsay! I—”

  He doesn’t have to finish. Suzuki turns and glares at the witness, then at Loomis. “Sustained,” he declares, his voice echoing through the big, high-ceilinged room. He is royally pissed. “That is the end of this line of questioning, Counselor. Am I clear?”

  Loomis nods. He can take a punch, and he has made his point. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Suzuki turns to the jury box. “The jury will disregard that last series of questions and answers,” he tells the jurors. To the court reporter: “Strike everything from when the witness began talking about personal conversations she had with the deceased.”

  Despite being smacked, Loomis got his innuendo in, so he wraps up his questioning and turns the floor over to us. I waddle to the podium, a sheaf of notes clutched in my hand. I smooth them on the dais and look up.

  “Is Dimitra St. Clair your actual name?” I ask, out of left field.

  She jerks. “What do you mean?”

  “Is that the name on your driver’s license? Is that the name you were born with?”

  Chagrined: “No.”

  “What is your real name?”

  Her face turns crimson. “Noreen Borkowski. I can explain—”

  I step on her line. “You don’t have to. You moved to Hollywood to become an actress, and you took on a fresh name, to have a fresh start. The way Norma Jeane Baker became Marilyn Monroe. It happens all the time, nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Which, of course, she is, particularly since I have set her up to be, so score one for me. “How long have you been a personal trainer, Ms. Bor … Ms. St. Clair.”

  Her eyes, so wide a moment ago, are slits now. “Three years.”

  “And before that you were …”

  Oh, man. She is so pissed at me. Just where I want her. “I did some modeling. And acting.” She pauses. “Waitressing, bartending.”

  “Escort service?”

  She squirms as if she has the hives. “Some. But strictly legit.”

  “Of course.” I let her twist for a few seconds, then ask, “How long have you worked at your present place of employment?”

  “A year and a half.”

  “How many members are there in your club?”

  She frowns. “I don’t know. Hundreds, I’m sure.”

  The answer is over five hundred, as of a week ago. We learned that last night.

  “How many do you train a week?”

  She has this answer down. “At the moment, twenty-two.”

  “Sessions or clients?” I ask.

  “Clients,” she answers. “Some train with me more than once a week. I actually do about thirty-five hours of training. It’s hard work.”

  More than three grand gross. Even after the house takes its cut, it’s pretty good money. As much as I make with my fancy law degree.

  “You say the club has several hundred members. Besides providing workout facilities, does the club sponsor social events? Get-togethers?”

  She shakes her head. “No. We’re a health club, period. You come to get in shape, not to socialize.”

  “A serious gym.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are there classes as well as individual workouts?”

  “Of course,” she says. “All health clubs have classes. I teach some of them.”

  I look at my notes. “To your knowledge, or from memory, did the two victims who belonged to your club take any of your classes? Or any classes?”

  “Yes. They both did.”

  “With you?”

  “And other instructors. I encourage my clients to take classes. They are free—I mean they come with the monthly dues—and it helps supplement the individual workouts.”

  I home in. “Did these women have any classes together with you?”

  She thinks for a moment. Another bullshit pose—she knows the answer. “Not that I recall,” she admits.

  “Or with any other instructor, to your knowledge?”

  She looks at Loomis, as if for guidance, then comes back to me. “They couldn’t have,” she says. She explains. “They weren’t members of the club at the same time. By the time Cheryl Lynn joined, Marta (the other victim) wasn’t a member anymore.”

  “So if these two women knew each other,” I continue on that line, “it would not be because they had met at your club?”

  “No. They would not have met at the club.”

  I look at Judge Suzuki. “No further questions, Your Honor.” I begin to walk back to the defense table, then I change my mind and take the podium again. “I’m sorry. I do have another question. A few more, actually.”

  Suzuki nods. “Go ahead.”

  “When did you meet with the police and tell them about this?”

  “Last week,” she says. She plays with her tissue. Crosses her legs.

  “Just last week? This case has been all over the media for months. Why didn’t you come forward before?”

  She squirms some more. “I didn’t know about it.”

  I practically laugh in her face. “You didn’t know about it until a week ago? Don’t you read the newspapers? Watch the news on television?”

  “I don’t read the papers,” she snaps. “They’re a pack of lies. And I do watch some news, but it’s usually too depressing. I don’t like to be depressed. I believe in having a positive outlook.”

  “Weren’t people talking about it at your health club? It was about women they knew!”

  “Yes.” She moans, as if this is such a waste of her time. “But I didn’t put it all together. I messed up, I know. But when I did learn it was Cheryl Lynn, I came to the police right away.” I’v
e got her on the defensive, so her instinct is to strike back at me. But she doesn’t know how, so she sounds like a whiner. “I didn’t have to,” she simpers. “I knew some sharpie like you would try to trip me up. But I did it anyway, because it was the right thing.”

  “Yes, it was the right thing,” I spit back at her. “Too bad it took so damn long.”

  Loomis stands in place. “Your Honor—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” I wave him off. “Withdraw the last comment.”

  The witness has completely lost her composure now. She sits slumped over, and there are dark moons of sweat under her bra line. “Before you went to the police, Ms. St. Clair, had you ever heard the name Roberto Salazar?”

  She shakes her head. “No.”

  “No one ever said that name to you? Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz never said that name to you?”

  “No.”

  I turn to our table. “Roberto, would you please stand up?” I ask him.

  He stands in place. I look at the hapless witness again. “Do you know this man?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever seen him before today?”

  “No.”

  “Not once?”

  “I have never seen him,” she snaps. “Okay? I’ve never seen him.”

  The prosecution rests. The defense rests. Tomorrow, closing arguments. Then twelve men and women will decide whether Roberto Salazar goes free, or dies.

  FORTY-TWO

  I HARDLY GOT ANY SLEEP last night, and it wasn’t because the baby was kicking up a storm inside me. She was relatively quiet, for once. I’m giving the closing summation for the defense. My first in a murder trial. Obviously my most important, ever.

  My taking the leading role was Joe’s call. Increasingly, as the trial has progressed, he has turned over more and more of the work to me. It’s not that he’s lazy or indifferent—he is neither. He has seen me grow as a courtroom advocate, and he’s decided it’s time I was kicked out of the nest. Fly or die.

  There is another reason I’m doing it. We don’t have a case. We have won some specific battles, but any objective observer would say we have lost the war. If betting on the outcome was legal, we would be heavy underdogs. So our defense will be an offensive barrage, a give-no-quarter onslaught. A young woman in her third trimester attacking the system can get away with much more than a rumpled, middle-aged man.

  I’ve been rehearsing my speech for days, changing details as new stuff comes up during the last days of the trial, but it’s basically set. I will have a conversation with the jurors. It is onesided—I talk, they listen. But it’s still a conversation, a connection. The last one you make, and usually the most important one.

  There is a faint hum from the air-conditioning. Otherwise, all is quiet. The courtroom is packed. Amanda and Mrs. Salazar are in their accustomed seats. Scattered throughout the chamber are witnesses who gave testimony, including Cordova and the members of his team. They occupy part of a row halfway back, on the prosecution side, a monolithic, foreboding force. All the spectators—in the gallery, in the jury box, at the prosecution table—are leaning forward in their chairs, as if waiting for a symphony orchestra to start the music.

  Earlier this morning, Arthur Wong gave the prosecution’s opening statement. They go first, we follow, then they rebut. Harry Loomis will carry the ball to the goal line for them, and he will bring the real fire, so Wong’s presentation was relatively dry. He laid out the facts, crisply, cleanly, and concisely. We recessed for fifteen minutes, and now we are back in session.

  I stand at the podium. One deep cleansing breath, and I begin the most important summation of my life.

  “The police needed to find a killer. They were desperate for one. The city was in a panic, paralyzed. Month after month, during the period of the full moon, a woman was killed. One woman per month, three months in a row. The police were sure the killings were all the work of one man.

  “A police task force was formed. The best detectives from all over the city and county, from the LAPD and sheriff’s department and the other involved jurisdictions, were assigned to it. They had one job, and one job only: find the killer.” I repeat the last phrase, but change the article. “Find a killer.

  “But then the killings stopped. That caused a different kind of panic. If there were no more killings, the task force would be disbanded, and the killer might never be caught. He might vanish forever, like the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco did, back in the 1960s.

  “Nothing is more frustrating to a detective than an unsolved crime. That is his life—to solve crimes. When he doesn’t, his life, or at least his work, which for a conscientious detective are almost one and the same, loses meaning. Not solving a crime is failing. And cops don’t like to fail. They hate it. Their essence, their ego, is tied up in solving crimes. And I say this with praise, not accusation—a good detective has a strong ego. He or she has to. You can’t survive out on the street without one.

  “But then comes a fourth killing. Same time frame, same method. The police are horrified, of course, but secretly, they are also relieved. Because they still have a job, and they still have a chance to catch their elusive quarry. They would never admit to this, but it’s true.”

  I pause to drink some water, because my mouth is dry.

  I continue. “The pressure on the task force to find the killer is enormous now. There had been a false sense of security, because people thought maybe the killing was finished, and it was safe for women to go out at night again. The latest killing shattered that illusion.”

  I repeat what I said earlier. “The police had to find the killer. They had to find him. No matter what. And they had to find him now.

  “It’s early in the morning, but the clock is ticking. The public doesn’t know about this latest killing yet, but they will, very soon. And when they do, all hell is going to break loose. The talk shows and the poll-driven politicians are going to have a field day with this. Disasters sell tickets, and this disaster is off the Richter scale.”

  Again, I say, “The police have to find a killer. But they don’t. And now it’s daybreak. They’re stymied.

  “And then, a fantastic coincidence. A phone call comes in, an anonymous tip. Not from a cell phone, which you would expect, coming from an area of the city where everyone has a cell phone, or multiple cell phones. It comes from a pay phone.” I take a step toward the jury box. “A cell phone is traceable,” I say. “But a pay phone is not. I want you to remember that, ladies and gentlemen. What kind of phone this anonymous tip was made from.

  “This anonymous tipster, who has never come forward, tells the nine-one-one operator that a suspicious-looking man is lurking. What makes him suspicious? He is Latino, and is driving a pickup truck.” I throw up my hands. “Think about that. Today, in Los Angeles, a Latino driving a pickup truck is suspicious.”

  I shake my head at the absurdity of that. “That is so idiotic it defies any credibility. It’s not even racist, it’s just dumb. Drive around any part of the city or county, from San Pedro to Chatsworth to Valencia to Santa Monica to Pasadena. You see Latino men driving pickup trucks, all hours of the day or night. It’s such a common sight that no one would think twice about it. But for some reason, this sighting arouses suspicion.

  “So the police investigate. The man in the truck has a perfectly valid reason for being where he is. He is there to work. He has to wait until the proper time, because he doesn’t want to disturb the neighbors, so he eats his breakfast and reads his newspaper and doesn’t bother anyone.

  “But the police, for some reason that is absolutely unbelievable, decide to search his truck. The reason they give is that he had been arrested before. They know he was found not guilty of that charge, but in their minds, an arrest is reason enough.

  “Later on, they will point to the coincidence that this man’s earlier arrest happened in the vicinity of one of the previous killings.” I step closer to the jury box. “But they did not know that at the time they demanded he l
et them search his truck. All they had was an eighty-year-old man’s vague account of maybe having seen one of the victims talking to a man who had a pickup truck. He didn’t even know whether the man was Chicano. He was dark in complexion, that’s all he could say. An eighty-year-old man, looking at a pretty young woman, from almost a block away, in the dark of night.”

  I walk back to the podium. “And that was the only excuse the police had to justify searching Mr. Salazar’s truck. That sounds like an awfully flimsy excuse to me. But they did it. Better safe than sorry, that was their excuse.” I give a little who-knows shrug. “Okay. I’ll buy that.”

  I pause, and raise a finger. “But now here is something I am sure you remember. One of the detectives who searched that truck had already been to the victim’s home. He had been in her bedroom. He was in there alone. No one else was with him. He was alone in the room where the victim kept her soiled clothes, in her clothes hamper. Her soiled clothes, which included her worn underwear.”

  It’s as if I have suddenly pulled the pin from a grenade and am holding the live grenade in my hand. Somebody might get maimed, and fast. You had better duck for cover.

  “The detective who had been in the victim’s house, in her bedroom, is now the same detective who is searching Mr. Salazar’s truck. This is not an ordinary detective, by the way. This is the head of the task force. More than anyone, finding the killer is on his shoulders.”

  Once again, I say, “He has to find the killer. He has to find a killer.

  “Lo and behold, what does he find in Mr. Salazar’s truck? Buried under a floorboard? A pair of the victim’s panties.” My eyes widen. “My God, he did it! He found the needle in the haystack. A one in a million chance, and he pulled it off!”

  The buzz in the room is electric. I can almost feel the floor vibrating under my feet. I would love to sneak a peek to see how Cordova is handling this, but I don’t dare. Instead, I sip some water, so that I keep my rhythm steady, and don’t rush.

  “So what does he do? Does he leave the evidence in place, where he found it, so the other detectives who are searching the back of the truck can see where it was hidden?” I shake my head. “No, he doesn’t do that. He picks it up, puts it in a plastic bag, gets out of the truck, walks around to the back, and then shows it to his partners.” I catch myself. “Excuse me, not his partners. He is the boss. The other detectives work under him. They take his orders.”