by Marcia Clark
We shared a brief smile before I continued. “I’ve got the list you gave to Jake of all the places Susan visits regularly and all the people that come to the house. Is there anyone you want to add?” It was a surprisingly short list. The only thing missing had been Susan’s clinic. Even Useless had been able to run down—and exclude—just about everybody on it already.
Janet thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“Just two more quick things,” I said. “We’re going to need hair and fiber samples from you and your husband, the housekeeper, and anyone else who had access to Susan’s room. Unless that’s already been done?” I said, and paused to let her confirm what I already knew: that Lambkin hadn’t done squat.
She shook her head. “Will someone come here, or do you need us to go in to the station?”
“We’ll have Dorian do it here. And can you tell us when the painters started work on that balcony? The one off the master bedroom?”
Janet nodded. “He came in through the window. Of course.” She looked down at the floor for a moment. “I believe it was about a week before the… it happened. But I can go back through our paperwork and pin down the exact date, if you like.”
“I would, thank you. That’s all for now. We’re going to check on Dorian’s progress, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. Shall I have Esperanza show you the way?”
“I think we can manage.” We turned to go. “We’ll be out of here as soon as possible.”
“Take your time, and please don’t hesitate to ask for anything. I’m happy to do whatever it takes. I want that monster in jail.”
She didn’t seem the emoting type, so I knew that if she was showing us this much, she was seething inside. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what a class act like her was doing with a putz like Frank Densmore. Dupe that I am, I never want to believe it’s just about the money.
“Thank you, Janet,” I said. “So do we.”
She nodded and headed toward the back of the house to continue whatever she’d been doing. We’d gotten halfway up the staircase when I heard a key turn in the lock at the front door and saw Susan slink in. She closed the door behind her softly and didn’t notice us at first. I checked my watch: 12:30. It seemed early for her to be out of school.
I had a feeling this had been happening a lot more than anyone knew, and I had no doubt about why. Teenagers are drama queens by nature. No matter how sympathetic her peers were, the tragedy that Susan had been through would be a hot Twitter topic for weeks to come. After what had happened to Romy, I knew firsthand the living hell of being the object of that kind of attention.
“Hey, Susan, how’re you doing?” I asked quietly. I hoped my tone conveyed that I wanted to help keep her secret, and I deliberately made no reference to the fact that she was home several hours too early.
Startled, Susan looked up with a guilty expression. I gave her a reassuring smile. “We’re going to see if the crime scene tech found anything. You want to come with us?”
I don’t agree with the notion that victims should be kept in the dark about investigations. I don’t think it spares their feelings; I think it just makes them feel more powerless. I prefer to let them tell me if they don’t want to know—at least then it’s their choice.
“Uh, sure,” Susan replied with some surprise.
We moved quickly and quietly up to Susan’s room and stood in the doorway. I could see that Dorian had thoroughly dusted the windows and frames of the French doors, and all points in between them and the bed. Several little paper baggies were lined up in orderly rows on the floor, and she was checking her notations on a clipboard. Hair and fiber evidence is best preserved in a paper bag so it can breathe and stay dry. I noticed that all but one of the baggies had been folded over at the top.
Dorian looked up. “They took the bedding, right?”
“Yeah, even Useless knew enough to do that,” Bailey remarked.
“Anybody look at it yet?” Dorian asked. Her tone telegraphed the answer she expected.
“No hit on the database with the nightgown, so no rush. It’s sitting in the clean room,” Bailey replied.
The crime lab was so swamped, it wouldn’t move on any more of our evidence until we hooked someone up. Someone, for example, like Frank Densmore’s number one suspect, Luis.
“Find anything?” I asked Dorian.
“Maybe, don’t know.” She picked up the unsealed paper baggie and came over to us. “Found these caught in the headboard,” she said, holding the baggie a couple of feet in front of us. We leaned forward for a better view, which prompted her to abruptly pull the bag away. “Stay back, and use your damn eyes.”
I squeezed Susan’s arm to let her know Dorian might bark but she wouldn’t bite, and we pulled back. Dorian tilted the baggie toward us, and we looked in. There were a few tiny pieces of light-colored hair. I looked over at the headboard. It was wood of some kind, painted white, with ornate scrollwork. I could see how hair might get snagged on it if someone bumped into it. Only Dorian would’ve noticed a few tiny, light-colored hairs on a swirling white surface. But since Susan was blond, I didn’t see what the big deal was. I looked at Dorian quizzically.
“They’re synthetic,” she remarked.
“Like from a wig?” I asked.
She nodded. “Or a doll. She ever took a doll to bed with her, the hair could’ve transferred.” She turned to Susan. “You keep any dolls in here?”
Susan went over to a large white armoire with gold accents and opened the doors. Three shelves were lined with dolls of all kinds—Barbie, Skipper, and a bunch I didn’t recognize. It would be a nightmare of a job to do all the comparisons and find out whether the hairs from the headboard had come from any of them. But if the dolls could be eliminated as a source, the hairs might be a clue.
Dorian scanned all the dolls, and I could feel her mentally assessing the hours it would take to examine and compare them all. She turned to Susan and said, “I’m going to have to take them.”
Susan nodded mutely.
“Don’t worry, we’ll bring them back,” I said.
Susan nodded again but said nothing. And as I watched Dorian package each doll in a separate baggie, I couldn’t help but feel that we were carting out the last few vestiges of Susan’s childhood.
9
I was glad I’d brought my own car. I wasn’t in the mood to be sociable during the long ride back downtown. Truth be told, Bailey didn’t look all that jolly herself. We got into our separate cars, and I drove back to the Biltmore, my iPod silenced. After giving my car to Rafi—whose quick grin told me I was worming my way back into his good graces—I walked to the office. Some days the walk helped my mood. This wasn’t one of them.
But it did make me realize I was hungry. I’d had my usual egg-white omelet for breakfast, and by now I’d long since burned through it. My stomach growled audibly as I ran for the courthouse elevator. I managed to squeeze in just as the doors were closing. Since it was the end of the lunch hour, the elevator was packed to capacity, and I turned to face the doors as I held my breath. Toni had once told me that the air in those elevators was a breeding ground for disease—too many germ-infested people jammed into a too-small space. I’ve tried not to breathe in crowded elevators ever since.
I sprang out at the thirteenth floor and headed for the snack bar, weaving my way through the crowds waiting for the afternoon court session. I spotted Toni peering through the glass door of the refrigerator, searching for something edible. It was always a challenge.
“See anything good?”
Toni looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Good? I’m just hoping for nontoxic.”
We settled for a turkey and swiss on whole wheat and a diet soda, and walked out into the corridor just as the last of the waiting crowds filed into the courtrooms. As we moved toward the elevators, I saw Lieutenant Graden Hales speed into Department 125 carrying a sheaf of papers—probably police reports. Toni followed my gaze. “Want to
go and see him in action?”
I didn’t really have time to play hooky. I was sure the stack of phone messages, motions, and general casework had grown impressively high. But I was feeling blue after the day’s events with Susan, so I decided a brief distraction might be a good thing.
“What the heck,” I said.
I saw Toni glance down the hallway toward Department 130—Judge J. D. Morgan’s courtroom. Her expression told me their on-again, off-again romance was in its “off” phase. Whether by her choice or his this time was anyone’s guess. They took turns pulling the cut-and-run trigger.
She turned back, saw me watching her, and shrugged. I patted her on the shoulder sympathetically, and we walked into the court’s anteroom. One of the retiree court-watchers followed us in and looked at us curiously, then opened the door and shuffled into the courtroom. I looked in as the door closed behind him and saw that the jury was in the box and Graden was on the witness stand. The defense attorney was just standing up to cross-examine. We filed into the back row next to the retiree and his court-watcher cronies and sat down.
As I listened to the cross-examination, the simple case unfolded. The defendant had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend at a party. Someone had intervened, and the defendant had then left the party and lay in wait for the girlfriend behind a Dumpster that was near her car. When she walked to her vehicle, he jumped out and fatally stabbed her.
The defense attorney was trying to get Graden to concede that there were a lot of other people at the party who could have done it. But Graden was one tough witness—calm, collected, and immovable. After about twenty minutes, I could tell the defense attorney had hit the wall and was fishing around for a face-saving way to wrap up the cross-examination. He should’ve quit while he was behind.
“In fact, Lieutenant Hales,” the lawyer boomed, “isn’t it true that Sonia Fontina was the last one to see the victim alive?”
Graden paused, then calmly replied, “No, Counsel. Your client was the last one to see the victim alive.”
The defense attorney tried to object to the answer, but the objection was overruled and the attorney moved shakily to his seat. The prosecutor wisely chose not to mess up a strong finish and declined redirect.
Since we were tucked into the back of the room among the court-watchers, Graden didn’t notice us as he stepped down from the witness stand and strode out.
Toni watched him leave, then turned to me. “Good witness, though he’s kind of a smart-ass.”
Personally, I liked my witnesses with a touch of smart-ass. “Yeah, but you’ve got to admit, it was a pretty sweet jab.”
“ ’Twas,” Toni said with a small grin, then sighed. “Guess it’s back to the salt mines.”
We quietly slipped out and headed upstairs.
Back in my office, I slogged through my case files until the sun dipped behind the Times Building and the sidewalks were nearly emptied. That lovely end-of-day quiet had descended over the DA’s office. I exhaled, stretched my arms over my head, and leaned from side to side to work out the kinks in my neck and back as I looked out at the darkening sky. At this time of year, nightfall came early and quickly. Now that I’d caught up on my backlog and pushed forward on the Densmore matter, I could afford to ponder how to move on Jake’s case. Wanting to lean on Bailey as little as possible, I took out my cell phone and scrolled through my list of contacts. I stopped when I got to the letter “F” and looked up at the clock on the Times Building. It said 5:20. I dialed my buddy Scott Ferrier, the coroner’s investigator. I got lucky—Scott hadn’t left yet.
“Guess the reports are done on Jake by now,” I said as I thought how strange and awful it was to be talking about a coroner’s report on a friend.
“Don’t ask, Rachel.”
“Too late, I just did. Besides, you know the file’s safe with me.”
“It’s too risky. If someone finds it on you, it’s my ass.”
“Who’s going to find it on me? The cleaning crew? All I have to do is put the file in the middle of my floor—believe me, they’ll never see it.”
“I don’t know…”
Sensing weakness, I pounced. “Lunch at Engine Company Number Twenty-eight, on me.” The old converted firehouse was one of Scott’s favorite restaurants.
He sighed, defeated by the lure of gastronomic ecstasy. “When?”
“Tomorrow,” I said, trying to keep the triumph out of my voice.
Scott agreed and I hung up, satisfied. With that coup, I felt as if I’d put in a good day’s work. Time to quit while I was ahead. I packed up, thinking I should hit the gym for a workout, but I just couldn’t get up for it. Then I remembered it was Wednesday: Chinese takeout night. I consoled myself that the hike to Chinatown would at least qualify as cardio and headed out. The Oolong Café had been Toni’s find. She’d had to talk me past the garish pink-and-green neon sign, but I was glad she did. The food was surprisingly good—and the service was fast. Within minutes, I had a big grocery bag filled with fried rice, orange chicken, and beef chow mein, and a separate smaller bag that held a carton of steamed vegetables.
I moved briskly up the west side of Broadway in search of a particular spot. When I hit the corner of Broadway and 1st, I found it: a pile of dirty blankets, on top of which sat a well-worn Lakers hat.
“Hey, missy, how ya doin’? How ya doin’?” said a gravelly voice so deep it seemed to come from the center of the earth rather than from under the blanket heap.
“I’m well, Cletus,” I said. “And you?”
“Can’t complain,” said the voice in the blankets.
“I had a taste for orange chicken tonight,” I said as I put the bigger bag down next to him.
A hand snaked out and pulled the bag closer. “Smells like you got chow mein in there too. Good choice, good choice.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “Take care of yourself.”
“No, you take care,” he called out.
“Bon appétit,” I replied as I waved.
Me and my sad little carton of steamed veggies headed for home.
10
The next morning dawned windy and cold but clear. I decided to treat Scott by taking the Accord. Once again, it occurred to me that I ought to get it washed. On the other hand, someone who drove around in a car with dead people probably wouldn’t notice a few empty coffee cups.
I picked Scott up just before noon so we could beat the lunch rush. After twenty years, Engine Co. No. 28 was still a popular spot. It always reminded me of the old grill restaurants up in San Francisco. The firehouse that had been on this spot in 1912 was now restored, with mahogany booths and a great bar, and the original fireman’s pole still stood at the far end of the restaurant.
I ordered a Cobb salad, and Scott had the short ribs. My friend, paranoid, kept looking around after we’d been seated, so I steered clear of any conversation about Jake’s case. I forced myself to make small talk and twisted my napkin under the table as the minutes slowly dragged by. Finally the waiter brought the check. I paid in cash to avoid any further delay, and when we got into the car, Scott opened my glove box and pulled the report out of his jacket.
“Lock it up,” he said, sliding it inside. “And don’t let anyone see you with this.”
I nodded and tried not to set a land speed record getting Scott back to his office.
After I dropped him off, I drove to Elysian Park, a pocket of green near the downtown police academy. I parked under a tree at the end of the lot, where no one could get close. Scott might be paranoid, but it was better to be too cautious than risk screwing him over.
I quickly flipped through the physical descriptions of Jake and the boy found with him—Kit Chalmers—and cut to the chase. No indication of smoke inhalation for either of them. So they were both dead by the time the fire got going. That might mean someone else had caused it. Jake didn’t smoke, but it was likely that Kit did. So maybe Kit had lit a cigarette and left it to burn. Or the fire might’ve been caused by faulty
electrical wiring. Damn. Too many options. I turned to Scott’s section. The coroner’s investigator lays out the crime scene, though not usually in as much detail as the police report. But Scott’s descriptions were always meticulous, and this one was no exception. He’d noted all kinds of disgusting debris, such as used condoms in the bathroom, old cigarette butts, even a rubber “tie”—what junkies use so they can fix. Lovely. I supposed it was possible that one of those cigarette butts could’ve caused the fire—if the filter had kept it from being consumed. Seemed unlikely, but it was a possibility since the fire had been extinguished fairly quickly.
The FBI should be comparing any DNA on those butts to Jake and Kit, I thought. Though even if it turned out that none of them matched either person, it wouldn’t exactly be a big clue. A place like that probably got vacuumed twice a year.
I turned to the toxicology report. Traces of THC—marijuana—in Kit’s blood, but Jake was completely clean. No surprise there. Tarring in Kit’s lungs confirmed he was a smoker. The possibility that the fire had been started by his cigarette had just gotten stronger. And if it was Kit’s cigarette, my theory that someone else might have started the fire in order to destroy the evidence would go out the window.
I jumped ahead to the cause of death. As predicted, for both it was a gunshot wound to the head. An unregistered .38 Smith & Wesson was found near Jake. Gunshot-residue tests showed a couple of particles on his right hand. Not much for a suicide, but GSR was so inexact anyway. Though it wasn’t Scott’s job to interview witnesses, I flipped ahead to see if any were mentioned. Nothing. Even in a flophouse, people would’ve heard two gunshots, wouldn’t they? And if they did, wouldn’t they at least try to look out and see what was going on? If I could get my hands on the police reports, I’d be able to find out. If no one heard anything, that might indicate that a silencer was used. Since, according to Scott’s report, no silencer was found at the scene, that could mean a third party had been involved.
