Interest of Justice

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  This time she did as he said, holding her body rigid, her arms locked at her side, her legs straight out in front of her. The man’s disgusting laughter was echoing in the empty garage. Don’t fight, she told herself. Don’t fight or he’ll kill you right now. What she had to do was stall for time. Her nose was running, but she dared not move. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he dumped the contents of the briefcase all over the garage floor and began sorting through them, tossing the papers in the air, searching the side pockets, snarling, growling, cursing.

  Locked inside those few moments, memories from the past flooded her mind. She saw herself walking home from school with Ivory, her chunky little legs struggling to keep up with her older sister, her face beaming. She could almost smell her, smell the bubble gum she was always chewing, blowing big bubbles and letting them pop all over her face. Lara closed her hand, thinking she could feel her little sister’s hand in her own. Then she saw herself at her graduation from law school, searching for her mother’s and Ivory’s faces in the crowd, consumed with pride and accomplishment. She saw herself when she was sworn in as a judge. Even though she’d had no family present that day, it had been the proudest moment of her life. She was going to change things, she had thought, actually make a difference. If she’d never become a judge, she would have never released Ivory’s killer.

  The man was making horrid noises now. Guttural sounds were emitting from the stocking mask. Lara knew he was going to kill her. She could sense it, feel it. Death was swirling all around her. When he’d held the knife to her throat, she had seen his excitement. He sounded and smelled like a wild animal. For a second she let her eyes drift to him and wondered if he was real or some terrible creature spawned from the filth of the city.

  She asked herself what had gone through Ivory’s mind those few moments prior to death.

  Josh’s face appeared before her and she tried to freeze it, lock it in. She whispered to him, hoping in some magical way that he could hear her, “I love you, Josh. All my life I wanted a child. Don’t be bitter. Try to go on.” Tears were stinging her eyes and dampening her face. Her time was evaporating. Soon it would all be over. She crawled inside herself. She prepared herself to die.

  “They’ve not here. Fuck. You lying fucking bitch,” he yelled, his voice booming. He kicked the papers away in a fury, heading in her direction with his shoulders squared and his head down like a bull on a rampage. Then he froze in his tracks.

  The electronic gate opened with a loud cranking sound, and a white panel van headed down the ramp. The man turned and quickly disappeared into the shadows.

  Lara sat up and screamed, “Help me. Over here. Please help me. God, someone please help me.”

  Just as the white van pulled up beside her and two men in white uniforms leaped out, another car roared past them up the ramp, its tires squealing. It was an older model blue Corvette, one side bashed in, the windows tinted so she couldn’t see inside. Lara locked her eyes on the license plate and narrowed her vision so it was the only thing in sight. She committed it to memory, repeating the letters and numbers over and over. “347PJG…347PJG…347PJG.” The men were beside her, trying to help her to her feet. She glanced at the name on their shirts: orange coast janitorial.

  “Call the police,” she yelled. “Hurry, he’s getting away. Call 911 and tell them someone tried to kill me. Blue Corvette,” she stammered, gasping, “license number 347PJG.”

  The men stared at her and shook their heads.

  “Hurry. Please. He’s getting away. Run. Call the police. I’m a judge.” She was standing now, wobbling, weak. ‘Didn’t you hear me?” she yelled again. “He tried to kill me. Call the police. What’s wrong with you? Are you idiots?”

  Finally the smaller of the two men spoke, “No habla Inglés. No comprende,” he said in Spanish. “Policia…?”

  Lara shoved them aside and staggered to her car. She used the car phone to call 911, repeating the vehicle description and her location. Razor-sharp pains shot through her side, and she leaned over the steering wheel gasping for breath. She was alive, she kept telling herself. It wasn’t meant for her to die now, not when Josh needed her. There was a God, she thought. No one else could have saved her. She had prayed and somehow He had heard her. She could still taste her own demise on the tip of her tongue. She had been so close.

  He was probably gone. She should have taken the gun when Rickerson offered it. If only I had, she thought, gritting her teeth against the pain, seeing his distorted face in front of her. If only I’d taken the gun, she kept repeating, imagining the gun in her hand, her finger on the trigger, the explosion reverberating inside the underground garage. Finally, after all the years of dealing with violent crimes and violent offenders, Lara fully comprehended how a person could reach that point beyond reason. If she had taken the gun, she knew what the outcome would have been. There was absolutely no doubt in her mind. She would have killed him.

  Chapter 21

  Detective Rickerson didn’t show up until the other officers were almost ready to clear the scene. Lara was sitting in the front seat of her car, turned sideways, the car door open, her feet on the garage floor. Her forehead was bruised and scraped, her blouse torn and her stockings ripped. On her neck was a thin red line where he had pressed the knife to her throat. In one spot the skin had actually been broken. The paramedics had treated the scrapes on her elbows and knees with antiseptic and covered them with bandages.

  “Are you okay?” the detective said, rushing to the car. “I’ll take you to the hospital. They should check you out.”

  “No,” she said. “I have to go home. Josh is with Emmet, but I want to go home.” She touched her side and winced in pain, lifting her blouse to look. There was an already darkening bruise right under her rib cage where he had kicked her. “The bastard kicked me,” she said, still breathing hard. Every time she took a deep breath, her body was racked with pain.

  “You might have a broken rib. Let me take you to the hospital. Josh will be fine.”

  “No,” she said emphatically. “It’s just a bruise. I’m fine. All I wish is that I’d had a gun. I want that gun now,” she said, searching his eyes. “If I ever see that man again, I’ll kill him. I promise I’ll kill him.”

  “You did good, kid,” Rickerson said, patting her gently on the shoulder. “You got the license plate. We’ll get him. He’s probably the same man that broke into your place when Emmet was there. The plate comes back to a Frank Door. If Frank Door was actually driving that car, he got out of jail the day of the break-in.”

  Lara’s eyes grew wide. “What was he in for?”

  Rickerson looked away. He’d hoped Lara wouldn’t ask that question. “Attempted murder.”

  “Shit,” she said. “Who did he try to kill?”

  “Oh,” Rickerson said, realizing she would find out anyway, trying to make his recitation casual instead of alarming, “just an ex-wife. He tried to put her in the crematorium at the mortuary where he worked. Nice guy, huh? Guess he didn’t want to make alimony payments.” He let forth a nervous chuckle.

  “Not funny, Ted,” Lara said. “Lord, he tried to put her in a crematorium? Really? I’ve never had a case like that in my life.” Just thinking about it made her entire body shiver, and she wrapped her arms around herself. She’d certainly sized her attacker up accurately. If the janitors had not come when they did, she would almost certainly have been killed. “How’d he get out, then? Did the victim refuse to press charges or something?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then he was out on bail?”

  “Nope.”

  She glared at him. “All right. Want to tell me about ! it and quit playing games? I’m not in the mood, believe me.”

  “According to the jail, they received a court order the other day to release him. So they released him. We had someone check the court file, and the preliminary hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. There’s nothing whatsoever in the file to explain his release. The charges wer
en’t dismissed. He was being held without bail.”

  Lara was getting the picture. It was beginning to smack of the situation with Packy Cummings. Not only that, but it was beginning to give credibility to the detective’s suspicions about Evergreen. “So it was probably Evergreen? Right? Whose name was on the order?”

  “The jail says it came from Division Twenty-seven.”

  “That’s the arraignment calendar. Hector Rodriguez is in there now. You think Evergreen called him, told him to release this guy like he did Packy Cummings?”

  M I just don’t know, Lara. It wasn’t Hector Rodriguez’s name that was on the order.” He paused and his voice lowered. “It was yours.”

  She was shocked. All the blood drained from her face and she leaned against the door frame. “Mine? T-that’s not possible,” she stammered. “I didn’t sign an order to release this person.”

  “Then I guess someone forged your name. Since the order was sent by computer from the court to the jail, I don’t even know if there was an actual signature.”

  “My God, every day this gets more bizarre. Evergreen must have done it and put my name on it. That fucking bastard. If you’ll give me that gun, maybe I’ll just shoot him and get it over with.”

  Rickerson looked away. This man’s record was far worse than Packy’s. This man had been convicted five times on felony assault charges and once for rape. Lara was lucky, more so than she realized. If the janitorial service hadn’t shown up, he might have raped her. With his last victim he’d said good-by by biting off one of her nipples. They’d convicted him by his teeth marks. He had an overbite.

  “We tried to talk to Judge Rodriguez. He wasn’t at home, but we’ll get him in the morning and find out the particulars. Since the order came from his courtroom, he should know something about it. Pray that he does, Lara. Otherwise, we’ll be up shit creek on this one.

  “I’m praying,” Lara said. “Believe me, I’m praying.” She locked eyes with the big detective and filled her lungs with oxygen, then exhaled in one long, painful whoosh. “I can’t take much more of this, I just can’t, Ted.” She fought back the tears. She didn’t want the detective to see her crying. Then she thought of something: the budget cutbacks. “Ted, there’s another possibility. I mean, it’s farfetched, but no more so than, your ideas about Evergreen.”

  “What?” he said, defensive.

  “Just that there’s going to be one less slot on the bench next year. Someone has to go.”

  Rickerson’s eyebrows arched and he flicked the hairs in his mustache. “You mean someone would do this to get your position?”

  “Possibly.”

  “That’s dumb, Lara. Just plain dumb. They might want to destroy your credibility or something like that, but they wouldn’t send a goon like Frank Door over here to beat the shit out of you. I’m right about Evergreen.” He glared at her and his voice rose a few octaves. “When are you going to believe me? When he walks up to you and blows you away like Packy Cummings?”

  Lara didn’t answer. She looked away.

  He bent down to help her stand. “How did this go down? Did he simply assault you? Did he say anything, give you any indication why he was doing this? Did he rob you?”

  “He wanted the pictures. I guess whoever put him up to this told him I had the pictures, I lied and told him they were in my briefcase. When they weren’t, he was going to rip me apart. I think he would have killed me with his bare hands. I don’t think this man even needed a knife. I think he liked it. You know, the killing, the brutality.” Her eyes rose to the detective’s. The muscles in her face were twitching. Her voice dropped to a whisper, “I’ve never been that close…you know, to dying.”

  “Scary, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve looked down the barrel of a few guns in my life. It’s not something you forget, let me tell you. But think about it. It’s all related. The pictures, your sister’s murder, the break-ins. This couldn’t possibly have anything to do with budget cutbacks.”

  For a few moments they just gazed into each other’s eyes. Lara felt a sense of camaraderie. She knew now what it was like to be a cop. It was no wonder so many of them went off track, became brutal and hardened. Having someone you’d never even met try to end your life was the ultimate injustice.

  The silence was shattered. Rickerson slapped his thighs. “It’s obvious that this was Evergreen’s doing. If the attacker demanded the pictures, then this certainly wasn’t a random act. Now that they’ve searched both your house and the condo, they have to assume you have those pictures on you somewhere—that you’re holding them yourself. Has Evergreen been in your office? He could have searched your office and didn’t find them. Where do you generally keep your briefcase?”

  Lara was silent for a few minutes, thinking. The other officers came over and told Rickerson they were clearing. He stepped aside and said a few words to them and then returned to Lara.

  “I generally keep my briefcase in my office,” she said. “It’s one of the big ones, a litigation case. You know, it’s a pain to drag around. But lately, since all this has happened, I haven’t been taking any work home, so I had it in the trunk of the car. I just brought it in today. I was going to review the Adams case. And as far as Evergreen getting in my office, it wouldn’t be a problem. But what about Phillip, Ted? He could have sent that order to the jail and forged my signature.”

  “I don’t think so. It’s Evergreen’s son in the photographs, not Phillip. Look, get out and let me drive. I’ll call for a unit to pick me up at your house.” Then he tilted her head up and peered at her forehead, touching it gently with the tips of his fingers. “This one isn’t that bad. It’ll go away in a few days, but that one on your side looks pretty nasty.”

  He helped her to the passenger seat and they took off, Rickerson gunning the Jaguar up the ramp and down the street.

  Josh was still at Emmet’s. Lara was thankful. As soon as she walked through the door, she’d typed out a message on the computer telling him to come home for bed in an hour. She didn’t want him to see her this way. The poor kid had been through enough as it was. She didn’t want him to know that someone had almost killed the only relative he had left in the world.

  She washed her face. She sniffed her clothes and tossed them in the trash can. Fear smells, she thought, trying to cover the place on her forehead with makeup. Rickerson wrapped a bunch of ice cubes in a towel. He handed it to her when she came out.

  “Here,” he said, “put this on your side. It will keep the swelling down.”

  Then he returned to the kitchen and poured them both a stiff drink from Emmet’s cabinet. Lara was leaning back in the gray and black chair, her feet resting on the ottoman, her shirt hiked up and the ice pack on her side. Rickerson was wired, tossing the drink down in one swallow, going back to refill it, returning to pace back and forth in front of her chair.

  “We’re getting close, Lara, really close. Evergreen’s got to know that we’re on to him now. He’s just got to know. And my guess is that he believes Ivory told you something. We know he thinks you have the photos, so he has to have come to this assumption as well. Maybe Frank Door was hired to do more than break into your car. He could have been hired to kill you.”

  Lara removed the ice and let it fall to the floor. Her blouse had become wet and she hugged herself to keep from shivering.

  Rickerson continued, “I think Evergreen is trying to erode your credibility. By spreading rumors that you were using your position to protect your brother-in-law, and initiating an investigation, he’s protecting himself. He figures by the time you come forward, no one will believe you. They’ll just think you’re retaliating in anger, trying to implicate him because he implicated you. He’s setting this whole thing up like a pro.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “He is a pro.” Presiding Judge Leo Evergreen knew more about the ins and outs of crime than the majority of criminals, Lara thought. He’s been a member of the California State Bar Association for over forty years: sixteen years a
s a prosecutor, twenty-four as a judge. And he was a master manipulator with tremendous power to get what he wanted.

  “You know what I think he’s doing?” she told Rickerson, finally falling into sync with him on his suspicions of Evergreen. “I think he’s shopping for these goons like a person shops from a mail-order catalog. He has a computer in his office and he can pull up anyone’s rap sheet, court date, release date, cases. You name it. Any agency in the country will tell him anything he wants to know. Nothing is beyond his reach. With a push of a button, he can manage anyone’s release. He could have an army of these guys working for him, doing his dirty work. Not only that, he knows just how dirty they will get. You know, which ones are violent and which ones are not. Once he springs them, they need cash to get out of town before the court date comes up and we issue a warrant, enter it in the system. It’s the perfect situation.”

  “Pretty scary,” Rickerson said, looking hard at Lara. She knew that all too well after tonight. “But listen, we’re getting close.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “We’re getting close, all right. I almost got killed tonight. I thought you weren’t going to let anyone hurt me.”

  The detective’s face flushed and his mouth fell open. Then he just shrugged his shoulders.

  So much for the hero stuff, Lara thought. “Did you find out anything on the apartment?”

  “Not what I wanted to find out. Seems Evergreen owns part of the building. It’s an investment…something like a syndicate, they said. You know, a group of investors. I don’t know a lot about that type of thing, but it sounds like a tax shelter to me. Anyway, he made an initial investment and then pays a certain amount every month.”

  “Shit,” Lara said, sipping her drink and then setting it on the floor. Reaching up, she touched her neck where the knife had been. She could still feel the blade there, feel the cold edge against her skin. “What are we going to do now? We have to connect all these crimes to build a case. I don’t want him on some minor charge. I want him for the whole ball of wax.”