by Marcia Clark
“Really?” I said, incredulous. Bailey nodded, equally disbelieving. It was so easy to get convicted in juvenile court that the only surprise was when someone didn’t.
“Busted last year for possession of cocaine, claimed the stuff was left in his car by someone else—”
I raised my eyebrows at the common “some other dude did it” defense. Bailey nodded her acknowledgment and continued. “Pled guilty anyway for two days’ detention, basically time served.”
“And no one ever took a buccal swab for his DNA?” I asked.
Bailey shrugged. “It was all chicken-shit stuff.”
“Still,” I said, annoyed. Every rapist had to start somewhere. Who said it couldn’t be with a bust for cocaine possession? “He still on probation?” I asked.
Bailey continued to read, then replied, “Yep. Hang on.” She shuffled through the papers. I signaled to her that I was going to the restroom, and she waved me away.
When I got back, she was dropping her cell phone into her jacket pocket. “We’ve got a meeting with the probation officer in”—she consulted her watch—“half an hour.”
I nodded. If we went right away, we could just make it. The only problem was that when I’d left Glendale after my interview with Jennifer, I hadn’t had an appetite, but now my stomach was feeling hollow. “I’ll need to grab something from the snack bar on the way down.”
I called Melia. “Would you let Eric know that I’m going out to Pasadena with Bailey on the Densmore case?” I asked. I especially wanted it noted that I wasn’t working on Jake’s case, for extra brownie points.
“Uh, yeah,” Melia said absently.
I’d probably interrupted her in the middle of swooning over the bios of the cast members in Hollywood Men, a popular beefcake strip show. “Gustavo likes walks on the beach at sunset…” Ordinarily I wouldn’t have cared, but this time it was important that she have the information ready in case there were any more visits from Vanderhorn.
“Melia, it’s important. Focus, okay?”
When she finally sounded as if she was half there, I repeated the message, then asked her to read it back. After I spelled the name “Densmore” for the third time, I thought she got ahold of it. I hoped for the best, picked up my briefcase and coat, patted the pocket to make sure my .22 was still there, and gestured to Bailey that I was ready.
We made it to Pasadena so fast I barely had time to finish my chicken Caesar wrap. I wiped my mouth with the pathetic excuse for a napkin provided by the snack bar and checked my face in the mirror for crumbs. By the time I was done, Bailey had parked.
The nondescript building could have been any standard government-issue structure, with cinder blocks and ugly green institutional paint. Bailey flashed her badge, and the bored-looking receptionist waved us on and buzzed us through the security door.
Luis Revelo’s probation officer was a heavyset black man with an open, friendly face, casually dressed in a powder-blue polo shirt and khakis. According to the sign on his desk, we were speaking to someone named Tyrone Jackson.
He signaled for us to have a seat while he finished scanning his file on Revelo. After a few minutes, apparently satisfied he’d plumbed its depths, he closed the file, rocked back precariously far in his chair, and said, “Luis didn’t give me any trouble. No new busts, no dirty tests.” He looked from me to Bailey. “So what else can I do for you?”
“When did you last see him, Mr. Jackson?” I asked.
“Tyrone,” he corrected as he flipped to the end of the file. “We had a meeting scheduled for January twenty-fourth, but according to my notes, he never showed up. Said he was sick, so I gave him a pass on that one.”
I looked at Bailey. January 24 was the day after the rape.
“Did he ever reschedule?” Bailey asked.
“Nope, but since he wasn’t in any trouble, I figured it was no emergency.” Tyrone gestured to a three-foot-high stack of files behind him. “Got enough emergencies to keep me busy without worrying about the kids who manage to keep their noses clean.”
I wouldn’t have had a problem with his logic if it weren’t for the fact that Luis Revelo was standing tall as suspect numero uno in a rape case. In my book, that qualified him as one of those emergencies. But I had the feeling that if Useless had contacted Tyrone, he hadn’t given him the 411 on the Densmore case. With Bailey’s next question, I learned I was right.
“Has anyone told you that Revelo is a person of interest in the rape of a young girl in the Palisades?”
Tyrone frowned. “Definitely not.” He paused, then said, “Didn’t make him for that kind of offender, but it wouldn’t be the first bad surprise I ever got.”
“Can you call him in, tell him it’s just a routine check-in?” Bailey asked.
For an answer, Tyrone picked up the phone. After the space of about three rings, he asked for Luis in heavily-English-accented Spanish. When he hung up, he said, “His mom says he’s asleep, worked all night.” He turned to Bailey. “You got a warrant?”
She shook her head. “Not enough for that yet.”
“Which is why you need me,” Tyrone said.
Bailey and I nodded.
“Okay, let’s do this,” he said as he stood up and clipped his badge and gun to his belt.
15
Luis Revelo lived on the wrong side of the tracks in a working-class neighborhood in Sylmar, a city in the North San Fernando Valley. Heavily Hispanic, the town had been a relatively quiet, respectable little burg until the gangbangers had moved in and turned it into a war zone. There were still pockets that were populated by the sort of decent, hardworking poor of all races that used to be typical of Sylmar, but they were under siege.
We pulled up in front of a “yard” where the only things growing were spare tires, neglected toys, and empty beer bottles. The paint on the front door had peeled to the point where I could no longer tell what color it had been, and the trim on the left side of the frame was gone. We walked up the front path, kicking empties out of our way as we went.
A small woman with a long, unkempt braid answered the door.
“Ms. Revelo?” Tyrone said.
She looked old enough to be Luis’s grandmother, but she was probably his mother. Aging happened a lot faster when life was this hard.
“Sí. Estás buscando a Luis?”
The fact that she’d immediately known who we were looking for showed she had few illusions about her son.
“Sí, yo estoy el oficial de—”
“Sí, sí, entiendo,” the woman said, cutting him off as she gestured toward a door inside the house. She pointed to a room and said, “El está durmiendo.”
Tyrone motioned for us to wait at the doorway. We didn’t have a warrant and had no legal authority to arrest him in his house. Tyrone strode directly to the door and knocked loudly. “Luis, this is your probation officer. Open up.”
No answer. He knocked and called out again, this time louder. No response. “Luis! I’m coming in!”
Now we heard the sound of glass breaking and a loud thump. Tyrone put his shoulder to the door as Bailey pulled out her .44 to back him up. I put my hand into my coat pocket, flipped off the safety on my .22, and ran around the outside of the house.
Just as I rounded the corner, I saw a young barefoot male in a wifebeater and jeans running toward the backyard fence. I fired a shot into the air and called out, “Police!”
But of course he already knew that—that’s why he was running. I hesitated for just a fraction of a second, unsure that I could justify the shoot. We didn’t have him for the rape yet, and he wasn’t wanted for anything else, so he wasn’t necessarily a fleeing felon. That moment of hesitation was all he needed. Luis, or whoever it was, threw himself over the fence and out of sight. One second later, Bailey and Tyrone flew out the back door and ran for the fence, but it was no use. I turned to see if anyone else had been flushed out of the house, but I saw only the thin fabric of a cheap curtain floating through an open bedroom window.
&nbs
p; “Damn!” Tyrone said, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. Bailey, who was barely breathing hard, had some more colorful observations.
I pocketed my .22-caliber Beretta a little too violently. “It’s my fault,” I said. “I had a clear shot. I should’ve taken it.”
“No cause for lethal force,” Bailey said matter-of-factly.
Not to mention the fact that I had no gun license.
Tyrone had been leaning forward, his hands on his knees, trying to get his breathing under control. He straightened up. “I’ll file the notice of probation violation so you can get a warrant into the system,” he said. He turned to me. “We’ll pick him up sooner or later, don’t you worry.”
I wasn’t worried about whether we’d pick Revelo up; it was just the “or later” part that didn’t thrill me. “We need to make this sound like a win,” I said, “or Frank Densmore’ll be on the phone to Vanderhorn whining that we let his prime suspect slip through our fingers.”
“She’s got a point there,” Tyrone remarked… and got a steely glare from Bailey for his trouble. He put his hands up. “I’m just saying.” We wended our way back to the car as he pulled out his cell phone to get the probation-violation ball rolling.
By the time Bailey and I got back to my office, we’d agreed on the spin. I called Eric and gave him the spiel so he could feed it to Vanderhorn.
“We were just about to haul him in, but someone tipped him off. He’s in the wind, but we’ve put a no-bail warrant out for him. Given the way he rocketed out of there, I’d say he’s looking pretty good for the rape. We don’t know of anything else hanging over his head. So, bottom line, you can tell Vanderhorn the case’ll be wrapped and ready for trial as soon as we get him.”
“But we don’t know how soon ‘soon’ is.” Eric sighed. “Okay, I’ll pass it along. You going to tell Densmore?”
“I was thinking you should let Vanderhorn do it. It’s his buddy. Besides, it’ll let him feel useful for a change,” I replied.
I could hear the smile in Eric’s voice as he said, “Never thought I’d see the day when you put ‘useful’ and ‘Vanderhorn’ together.” He paused, then continued on a more sober note. “I have no doubt Vanderhorn will jump at the chance to give this news to a potential campaign supporter like Densmore, so you should expect that call to be made by the end of today. Once Densmore hears this, he’s going to expect an arrest in about five minutes. Stand by for major flack if it doesn’t happen.”
I’d just closed my cell when it went off in my hand. The default ringtone, “FM” by Steely Dan, played as I stared at the unfamiliar number. I flipped the phone open, thinking it was probably a misdial. It was Graden Hales. It figured. I was tired and frustrated, and in a bad mood because I’d lost Revelo, and Bailey was watching. When else would he call?
“You must be hungry by now,” Graden said playfully.
I noted that he’d called me on my cell phone though I’d never given him the number. I shouldn’t have been surprised—after all, he was a cop. “You could’ve called me at the office. I’m here.”
“The point was to impress you with how resourceful I am.”
It wasn’t a big intrusion, I had to admit. I gave my cell number to defense attorneys all the time. Still, it bugged me a little. “You’ve definitely made an impression,” I said dryly.
The pause on his end told me he was smart enough to sense that this particular superpower wasn’t my favorite.
Bailey lifted an eyebrow to show me she’d noticed this wasn’t a work call. I couldn’t tell her it was Graden, since I hadn’t told her about his lunch invitation and it wasn’t the kind of news that could just be dropped in her lap. I’d been meaning to say something about it, and now I wished that I had. I nodded, confirming that this was personal, and mouthed, “I’ll tell you.” Bailey nodded back, motioned for me to call her later, and left.
Graden’s tone was conciliatory. “I’ll make you a deal. Have lunch with me tomorrow, and I’ll get you a blocked number. No one will have it. Including me.”
That was pretty quick on the uptake. I remembered Bailey’s warning about him being a babe magnet, but lunch wasn’t a huge commitment. Besides, what did I have to lose? I took a look at my calendar. It was packed with pretrial hearings on all my other cases. I’d stacked them up to get it all over with at once.
“Tomorrow’s a nightmare. What about next week?”
We settled on Tuesday.
“How does noon sound?” he asked. “I’ll meet you in front of the building.”
I said that sounded fine, but no sooner had I closed the phone than my apprehension began to mount. I wasn’t that good at making new friends, unless they were sitting in a jury box; first dates always made me nervous and grumpy. Then it occurred to me that I could use the opportunity to pump him for information about Jake’s case. The thought immediately relaxed me.
I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for my upcoming hearings: which cases I’d make offers on and which ones would have to “plead to the sheet”—plead to all charges with no offers and no deals. By 5:00 p.m. I was good and ready for a playdate. I walked down to Toni’s office.
“How about Charlie O’s?” I asked. A cozy, no-frills jazz bar, Charlie O’s was one of our favorite hangs.
“I’m gonna convert to whatever deity sent you with this message of mercy,” Toni said. She’d been hunched, bleary-eyed, over her computer, and now she leaned back and blew out a long breath. “I’m not really in the mood to drive, though. You mind letting me crash on your couch tonight?”
Toni’s house, a small but charming two-story, two-bedroom, was perched at the top of one of the narrow, winding streets in Laurel Canyon. It was a tough road to navigate even in daylight, so she’d frequently bunk in with me after a night out rather than hazard the drive in darkness. And since Toni and I basically wore the same size, she didn’t have to worry about packing for the occasion. Of course, Toni, being Toni, occasionally groused that my wardrobe choices were boring—she had a more feminine, frilly fashion sense (and she was a little better endowed than me)—but I handled that by reminding her that if she didn’t like the offerings, she could just wear the same clothes she’d worn the day before. This was akin to telling her to don a hair shirt and leg chains.
“Not a problem,” I said.
“Bailey coming?” Toni asked. “I haven’t seen that girl in… forever.”
“It’s been a day,” I replied, amused. “I’ll call her now.”
Bailey agreed to meet us at the hotel at 7:30. Back in my room, I changed into jeans and tucked them into knee-high motorcycle-type boots. I added a Harley-Davidson vest that laced up the sides. Toni found one of my few pairs of strappy sandals and picked out jeans to go with the rose-pink cashmere pullover she’d left in my room after a previous outing. At 7:25, our finishing touches completed, we ran downstairs just in time to see Bailey pull into the driveway.
Charlie O’s wasn’t swanky. It was small, with cottage-cheese-style ceilings that’d been darkened by the smoke of a million cigarettes back in the day when that was still allowed. The walls were lined with portraits of jazz greats: Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner. A lively painting of the exterior of Charlie O’s that’d been done by a veteran cocktail waitress hung at the end of the wall near the back door, where the regulars entered.
It was a great night. Tenor-sax player Pete Christlieb was leading a tight quartet, and the martini was almost certainly the best one I’d ever had.
“Here’s to surviving the week,” I said, lifting my glass carefully.
“I heard that,” Toni said with feeling.
We clinked and drank, then soaked in the music and exhaled. When the band took their first break, Toni and I ordered another round of drinks. Bailey, as the designated driver, switched to club soda and lime.
“I’m going to door-knock the Densmore hood again myself on Monday. See if I can dredge up any witnesses,” Bailey said after the waitress left.
<
br /> “You don’t think Luis is our guy?” I asked.
“I want to make sure all other options are ruled out by the time we find him so we can move on it.”
I looked at Bailey as closely as the dim light would allow. If she was willing to do the scut work of door-knocking the neighbors herself, something was up.
“Densmore called your captain?” I asked.
“He did,” Bailey admitted.
I sighed and we all picked up our glasses, and that was the end of shoptalk for the night.
16
I’d planned to start my morning at the usual 7:30 and set my alarm accordingly. As usual, life did not cooperate. The phone blasted me from a deep sleep to a jerked-upright, heart-pounding, and confused state of alertness at the barbaric hour of 4:30 a.m. I yanked the phone up, punched the talk button, and croaked, “ ’Lo?”
“Rachel, it’s Elan.”
My blurry brain got as far as asking, Elan? Who? when he continued, “From hotel security. Someone’s hit your car—”
“Huh?” I said, still fuzzy. “But it’s in the garage—”
“Yes, your car is in the garage. And you need to come down here, because I’m about to call the cops,” he said with exaggerated patience.
“I’m on my way,” I said, and slammed the phone back down. A rush of adrenaline propelled me to a standing run for the closet. My brain tried to sort out what had happened, but it kept hitting dead ends. I washed up, ran my hand through my hair, and threw on jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt-jacket. Toni was sleeping peacefully on the foldout couch, so I tiptoed out of the room and ran for the elevator.
As I rode down to the garage, I tried to remember where Rafi usually parked my car, but when the doors opened, that problem at least was easily solved. All I had to do was follow the blaring horns and whistles of the alarm. I ran toward the noise, remote control in hand. The moment my little Honda came into view at the far end of the garage, I frantically began to press the button. The blasting stopped, and the contrasting predawn silence made the air feel like a solid mass. The echo of my footsteps seemed to be coming from a distance, adding a surreal, out-of-body quality to an already bizarre moment.
