Panther's Prey

by Lachlan Smith

  “Their loss is beyond words,” I said, because this was undoubtedly true. “Jordan was a lovely woman and a fine attorney. She didn’t deserve to have her life brutally cut short.”

  “We understand from police sources that you’ve admitted to a sexual relationship with Ms. Walker, and were with her just hours before her death. Did your personal involvement with your cocounsel compromise your handling of Mr. Rodriguez’s case in any way?”

  The question did what it was supposed to do: anger me into saying something foolish. “That’s an incredibly stupid question, given that Mr. Rodriguez was unanimously acquitted of that crime by a jury of his peers. We presented overwhelming evidence that in spite of having confessed to rape, he was innocent. The jury obviously agreed with us that our client’s confession was false.” I stopped, took a deep breath, then said, “Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  Chapter 8

  No matter what else happens, the machinery of criminal justice will always grind on. The day after Rodriguez’s arraignment was my first back in court after the murder. I had a preliminary hearing. I’d thought I was prepared, but when my chance to cross-examine came I was like a sleepwalker. During my argument, the judge twice had to prod me to finish sentences. Being in better command wouldn’t have changed the outcome, as it was a foregone conclusion my client would be held over for trial. Nonetheless, the experience disturbed me. I’d walked into that courtroom believing I was fine when I wasn’t.

  Back at the office, I found a message from Rebecca asking me to call her right away. “Jordan’s father’s at my house,” she reported, picking up, her voice just above a whisper. “I don’t know what to do with him. He wants the details of the crime scene.”

  “How long’s he been there?”

  “Twenty minutes. He went to the office first, but neither of us was there. They called me from the desk, and I gave the okay to send him over. I’ve been able to put him off so far. You’re the one he really wants to talk to.”

  I wasn’t surprised. My ten-second sound bite had undoubtedly been seen by half the Bay Area’s TV audience.

  “The thing is, he’s feeling very confused. This is a sheltered man we’re talking about, Leo.”

  A shiver went through me as I was visited by a bodily memory of Jordan on my lap, my hands on her hips, her hands on my shoulders gripping hard for leverage, my palms alternately thrusting and pulling her back. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”

  “Just tell me you’ll be here.”

  I assured her I was on my way.

  Rebecca and her girlfriend, a banker, lived a few blocks from Dolores Park, in what had become one of San Francisco’s most desirable neighborhoods. She nodded toward the big corner living room and I went in ahead of her, crossing a wide expanse of rug to where Hiram Walker hunched in a corner chair.

  I had to speak his name twice, his eyes finding me as if from a long way off. Then he shook my hand. I perched on the footstool across from him, noting that his eyes, though inflamed and dark shadowed, were clear, the pupils not dilated as they’d been at the funeral.

  When he spoke, his tone was more commanding than I’d expected, drawing Rebecca in from the hall. “Is it true you and Jordan were in a relationship?”

  “I don’t know if you could call it that.” I was determined to give him the truth and nothing but—whether or not it might be painful, or not what he wanted to hear. “And we never had the chance to find out what it was.”

  Rebecca stood leaning in the threshold. It was her house but we were both prisoners to the man in the wing chair, waiting to hear what he wanted.

  “I saw you on the news last night,” he said after a pause. “Even after what happened, you still seem to think you were right. That takes pigheadedness. I suppose it’s no different from these district attorneys, the true believers who refuse on principle to accept the possibility they might have convicted an innocent man. The flip side of that is the defense lawyer who believes all his clients are innocent. Is that what you are—a true believer?”

  “I’m able to admit when I’m wrong. All I was saying is that we did our jobs. The DA’s supposed to convict the guilty and not charge the innocent. My job is simpler. No matter what a client’s done, I’ll try to get him off. I did that. Jordan and I did it. We did it together. And we did it well.”

  “I’m sure she did. She was on her way to becoming a brilliant attorney. I never understood why she wanted to throw it all away on the public defender’s office.” He looked around, his gaze again seeming to return from an immense distance. “No offense, it’s just how I feel. I’m angry, you see. Very angry. So I need someone or something to blame. You, your office, the whole shitty system. Just not my daughter.”

  “I see,” I told him, even though I couldn’t imagine the pain of losing a child the way he’d lost Jordan.

  “Jordan liked to talk to me about her cases. The Kairos case, for instance. They knew for months it was going to trial. She’d come home on the weekends and we’d sit at the kitchen table, share a bottle of wine, talk through whatever problem she was working on. Tom gave her the plum assignments. No one was more surprised than I was when Jordan first decided on law school. She’d always been so independent. I never thought she’d want to follow in my footsteps. I was very proud. It’s a wonderful thing to share one’s profession with one’s child, to discuss important matters as equals.”

  He cleared his throat. “After the verdict, those talks stopped. I didn’t hear anything more about her work for months. Then the last time she was home, we spoke about your case. It was the first time Claire and I’d seen her in months, since she’d taken that sudden leave of absence from Baker. I was feeling left out of the loop. I needed to understand what was going on with her—why she’d been shutting me out. I suppose bringing home the Rodriguez case was her way of making amends.

  “I didn’t think much of your theory of defense when I first heard it. Why would the man confess if he was innocent? I’ve spent a substantial portion of my career representing police officers against allegations of misconduct. I’d built up a professional wall of skepticism, and she wasn’t prepared for that. We fell into an argument after too much wine. It ended with her telling me she thought Rodriguez was innocent and me laughing at her.”

  He winced and closed his eyes tightly, waiting for that painful memory to pass. “She walked out. Her last words to me were, ‘Daddy, the problem with you is you always have to be right.’

  “I tried to call her after the verdict to congratulate her, but she didn’t pick up. She probably knew I wasn’t ready to make a real apology, that I was going to rain on her parade by saying I hoped nothing bad would come of it, that sort of thing. Of course, it turns out I was right. Now, for the first time my life, I find I don’t want to be.”

  “Would you rather the killer was still at large?”

  He ignored my question. “Can Rodriguez even be made to suffer? I don’t think he can. It’s at least an open question whether a man who wants to confess, who wants to be locked up, as the two of you argued, can experience punishment, whether you can even call it that. How do you go about punishing a masochist? You can only reward him.”

  “So you want someone who can be made to suffer to be responsible for this crime?”

  He shook his head as if I were missing the point of what he was saying. “Jordan suffered terribly. How long do you think she was alive in that bathroom, half-suffocating before she died? They won’t tell me. It must have been at least an entire day, maybe as much as forty-eight hours. She was strong. She wouldn’t have given in. She’d have held out as long as possible, hoping someone would come.”

  Someone like me, I thought. But, clearly, her father had cast himself in the role. “I can’t tell you how long she might have lived,” I said. “The position she was in could have constrained her breathing, leading to rapid suffocation. I’d like to believe she didn’t suffer.”

  He was shaking his head, refusing to accept this cold comfort. “I know she
was alive, waiting for help, because I know my daughter. You were the last one to see her alive. The last one except the killer. Tell me what happened between you that night.”

  I took a deep breath and told him the truth, or rather the facts, leaving out how I’d felt about them. I told him that we’d gone back to her apartment after dinner, that it was the first time she’d taken me there, and that we’d been in bed when she’d received an e-mail or a text on her phone. I told him about what she’d said, her refusal to explain, and the cab ride we’d taken together, with Jordan dropping me off before continuing to a destination she hadn’t disclosed. Also, I told him about the gun.

  He seemed to take it all in. “And then she ended up back at her apartment, and someone was waiting there,” he said. “Someone who’d committed a crime like this before.”

  “Someone like Rodriguez.”

  “Someone who knew about Rodriguez’s trial and was following it,” he said. “What I think is that it was someone who had a special interest in following that trial, enough of an interest to know who Rodriguez’s lawyer was, and enough vicious imagination to pick her out as his next victim, knowing Rodriguez would stand up and confess. You might also hypothesize this was a crime of opportunity, but the steps the killer took are too deliberate. The man who did this had done it at least once before.”

  “A serial rapist.”

  “A serial killer,” Walker said. “Listen, for once in my life I want to have been wrong where my daughter was concerned. I don’t want to live knowing I won the last argument we ever had. What I need is for someone to agree with me on this.”

  Rebecca had taken a step back from the doorway but was still there, listening.

  “About Rodriguez being innocent, you mean.” I lowered my voice. “He’ll have to plead guilty this time, or stand trial and be convicted. The defense we used won’t work a second time. All the DA has to say is look what happened last time he got out.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, the police have their man, and this time the DA’s going to obtain a conviction for sure, or more likely force a plea. The case is closed. I’m not agreeing that Rodriguez is innocent, but either way, it’s going to happen now just how it happened before, except this time they’re going to seal the holes. After all, we showed them how.”

  Rodriguez’s confession was the easy answer, a thoughtless balm, and I’d wanted it to be true. Until now I’d accepted it, though it didn’t sit right. But I knew Jordan wouldn’t have given in so easily. She’d have gone on fighting for her client.

  Though I’d been relieved of that responsibility, didn’t I owe it to Jordan, at least, to find out where she’d gone in that cab? Walker didn’t ask me to do anything. His desire was to understand what had happened, without resort to the easy answers the press and the police had seized on. It didn’t seem the moment to mention that if Rodriguez were eliminated as a suspect in Jordan’s death, the police would just try another easy answer.

  When he stood to leave, I realized I didn’t actually want him to go. Talking to him had cleared my head.

  “It’s magical thinking,” Rebecca insisted when the door had shut behind him. “I don’t want any part of it. He thinks he can somehow bring her back by believing the man who confessed is innocent. He’s not. Jordan was wrong. We almost always are in this business, and that’s how it should be—even though we fool ourselves with every case, or, at least, we try to. Rodriguez is guilty.”

  “Jordan didn’t think so. Her father’s right that this new confession wouldn’t have changed her views. A confession is what you’d expect if our theory of defense is correct.”

  “Yeah, but Jordan doesn’t get to decide, and you don’t get to win arguments by saying what she would have thought. She’s not here to speak for herself and she didn’t nominate you to speak for her. So don’t tell me what Jordan would want.”

  “She’d want whoever did this brought to justice. She wouldn’t want her client blamed because blaming him is the most expedient solution.”

  “How do you know Rodriguez isn’t telling the truth? Leave it to the police.”

  “I’d certainly like to know the identity of whomever she was planning to meet when she left me. That message could have been a trick, or a trap. Maybe someone was trying to lure her away from her apartment.”

  “Or maybe there was no text. Maybe there was no cab ride.” Rebecca faced me across the room. She held my gaze long enough to make clear she’d said more than she intended, but that the words, irretrievable now, would not be called back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her jaw trembling. “Or, rather, I’m not. Anything could’ve happened. Anyone could have done this if Rodriguez didn’t. My loyalty is to Jordan. You were the last person with her. Who knows if you had a motive? Or if you needed one. I don’t know you. Why should I believe you?”

  I stood shocked in front of her.

  Rebecca walked past me, opened the door, and held it open for me to leave.

  Chapter 9

  Even though I’d faced Chen’s suspicion in the interview room, that had been cop suspicion, unthinking and reflexive and utterly familiar. A Maxwell family birthright, you might call it. Rebecca’s words, by contrast, had entered me like a sword, the wound remaining fresh. Falsely accused, I found myself missing my father. No doubt he could have told me a thing or two about the little death that premature judgment brings.

  Later that evening my phone chimed with a text from Rebecca. Sorry, it said. I miss my friend and I’m scared. Call me when you know where the cab driver went.

  When I’d explained the situation, the man on the phone began apologizing, telling me the company’s policy of not giving out information about employees or customers. And anyway, he said, the police had already talked to the driver a week ago. I cut him off. “Your driver was the last person I saw with my friend the night she was murdered. He picked her up around twelve thirty, made one stop in the Tenderloin, and continued to a second destination.” I gave him first Jordan’s address, then my own.

  It finally ended with him promising to give my number to the driver, with no promises I’d be called back. Part of me hoped this would be the end of it. Rebecca’s mistrust had made me wary of further involvement in what, after all, was a police matter. Two hours later, however, a phone call summoned me from bed and I rose with a sigh and went down to the street.

  It was the same guy—heavyset, white with a dark goatee—who’d driven the cab we took that night. I got in the back and he pulled away. “Meter’s been running since dispatch called.”

  I didn’t say anything, and he simply drove. His eyes kept checking me in the mirror. It suddenly seemed too great an effort even to open my mouth, let alone make words come. I wondered what was wrong with me. Instead of feeling energized by taking the first concrete steps I’d taken since Jordan’s death, I felt pinned down. I suppose it was the futility of it that depressed me. No matter what the answers to my questions were, they couldn’t bring Jordan back, and I’d long since quit believing in the usual idea of justice.

  “Where we going, man?” the guy finally said when the meter hit fifteen dollars. We were somewhere in the Sunset.

  Instead of answering, I asked if he’d been watching the news.

  “I used to listen to the radio all through my shift. I had to give it up. You follow the world too closely, you start to care too much, and sooner or later you end up talking back to these assholes. Started cutting into my tips.”

  It was silent as the grave in the cab. I finally gave him Jordan’s address and told him to drive there. When we arrived outside the building I said, “You picked up a double fare a week ago last Saturday night at this address. One of them was me. You took us to the Seward, and dropped me off there. The young woman who was with me stayed in the cab when I got out. She had you drive her to another destination.”

  “I remember. I was wondering what the fuck she was doing going to a shitty SRO like the place I dropped you off.”


  “I need to know where you took her after you left me.”

  His fingers drummed a quick riff on the steering wheel. He seemed to be debating with himself. Finally he said, “You’re lucky I got an easygoing boss. What you did was, you called him up, after he’d already got through dealing with the cops, and evidently you made a very inflammatory comment about me being the last person to see your murdered friend alive. I’m just the cabbie, man. You can’t blame me for what happens to people after I drop them off wherever they want to go.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but I had to find you.”

  “I already talked to the cops. I told them what I know. They already arrested the guy who killed her. He confessed, right? So why should I talk to you? You’re probably working for the guy’s lawyer, trying to get him off.”

  “Get him off again,” I corrected. “Believe me, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Then what do you care?”

  “Because I have to know. Please, just take me where you took her.”

  “We’re already there,” he told me. “I drove her right back here.”

  I sank lower into the well-worn seat, turning my head to gaze out the grimy window at her building, which I’d been inside exactly twice. So she’d lied to me about the meeting; it was just a ruse to get me out of her bed. Or maybe someone was coming over, someone she’d wanted to be with that night more than she wanted to be with me.

  Or someone she was afraid of, whom she didn’t want to know about me.

  “Did you notice anything? Anyone lurking around inside?”

  “Normally, if it’s a woman alone I’ll watch until she’s through the door, but that night I didn’t. I’m telling you, man. I didn’t see anything, and she didn’t say a word to me.” He glanced in the mirror. “You want to go somewhere else?”

  I told him to take me home. Up in my room again, I reviewed what I’d learned. The story I’d just heard was consistent with Rodriguez’s confession. I had no reason to believe the driver was lying, though it’d seemed to me that at the last minute, parked in front of Jordan’s place, he’d been about to tell me something important. In any case, nothing he said had made me fear the cops had arrested the wrong man.