He wanted to know: “Did you kill the guy or did she?”
I told him briefly what had happened. “It was self-defense, though the law may not see it that way,” I concluded.
“What were you doing there?”
“Jordan Walker,” I said simply.
The name seemed to have nearly as much of an effect on Cho as the news of his wife’s lethal deed. He leaned his shoulder against the rough post that held up the roof of the porch and looked off toward the mountains. “I know who you are now. You’re the boyfriend at the public defender’s office. The one who was with her the night she died.”
“You mean the night she was murdered.”
Lydia chose this moment to join us. She’d changed into jeans and a sweatshirt from the suitcase we’d brought. I, on the other hand, was shivering.
I expected her presence to silence Cho, but he went on. “I was dead by then,” he said. The comment might have been flippant but his voice was mournful, nostalgic for a life to which he could never return.
“If you’re implying I had something to do with her murder, I didn’t,” he added.
“You were there, though, weren’t you? You were the ‘client’ she had to meet. ‘Get rid of him.’ Isn’t that what your text said?”
“I was never her client. I was the guy Jacob Mauldin cheated out of his life’s work, then out of his life, with the help of Tom Benton and a crew of lawyers. Including your girlfriend,” he said bitterly. “Or should I say Tom Benton’s girlfriend. But yes, I was in San Francisco that night. And you’re correct that I spoke with her after you left.”
I wondered why Jordan had made the comment about attorneyclient privilege. Maybe in her mind she’d switched sides by that point, never mind that the most inviolable rule of our profession is that no lawyer ever gets to switch sides.
Perhaps, for Jordan, this fundamental lesson had come too late.
“Did she know the reason you’d faked your death?”
“She knew I’d have been arrested and charged with a sex crime, and that the evidence against me was completely fabricated. At least, I hope I made her understand that.”
“Why’d you tell your secrets to Jordan?”
“Who else? Getting someone to turn was my only chance at being able to come home someday. She was in a position to obtain evidence showing the case against me was a straight-up fraud. And, unlike the rest of them, she seemed to have a conscience.”
“I talked to your lawyer, Ma. He told me you maintained throughout the trial that the video was false, that the kid’s testimony was bought. What made you think she’d believe you now, let alone betray her client, when you hadn’t convinced her or anyone else the first time?”
“Because she’d left the firm. It seemed to me she wouldn’t have done it the way she did, right after her big success, unless she knew what had happened wasn’t right. The fact that she left told me she was a person who might well put her principles into action. If she knew the full scope of what Kairos had done, how Mauldin and Benton perpetrated a fraud on the court and now were using the same false evidence to try to get me arrested and thrown in prison, I thought she might feel obligated to blow the whistle.” He grimaced, indicating his awareness of his own role in Jordan’s elimination.
“She was going back to the law firm so that she could try to satisfy herself one way or another about the truth of what you’d told her. Is that basically it?”
Cho nodded. “She couldn’t take my word for it any more than she did at the trial. Also, she wasn’t going to turn against her client without solid proof. But she sensed there was truth in what I was telling her. I think she already knew.”
“Sounds to me like you did a pretty good job of manipulating her.” I felt a sudden, irrational anger at the way this man—Jordan’s former opponent—had been willing to put her at such risk in service of his own interests. “If you were innocent, you could have stayed to stand trial. Instead, you convinced Jordan to be brave in your place.”
Lydia, watching silently up to now, joined the conversation. “When a civil litigant rigs a trial with perjured testimony and manufactured evidence,” she said, “it’s a fraud on the court and a federal crime. When business interests conspire with gangsters to siphon public money for private profit, it’s a national headline. If anyone finds out. The stakes were too high. He’d have been found dead in his cell.”
“What conspiracy?” I was skeptical. It still seemed possible to me it could have been Cho who’d killed her.
“Mauldin and the Chinatown mafia,” Cho said. “How do you think Mauldin got the contract in the first place? He’s the one who’s connected.”
“So you’re telling me they rigged the trial. But why go to the trouble?”
“If the jury believed me, they’d have been out of the project. I was meant to play ball and keep my mouth shut, but I wouldn’t, and they decided to set me up. And because I’m Chinese, the jury bought it.”
I drew his attention to what I felt his self-justifications sought to hide. “Nothing you’re telling me changes the fact that it’s your fault she’s dead.”
Lydia slipped her arms around her husband’s waist. The gun was in his hand, resting on the deck rail. Jordan was dead but they were alive, her protective embrace seemed to say. No doubt to her it was a trade worth making, or it would have been if Jordan had lived long enough to exonerate her husband.
“Can you tell me more about what kind of money we’re talking here,” I asked them.
“These guys own half the property in Hunters Point. They’ve been buying it up for years. The retail space they’re planning … Whoever ends up in control of that is going to make more money than God. And then there’s the residential units … “
“So setting you up was just about protecting an investment,” I said.
But I still wasn’t sure I believed it was a setup. Like Ma, I’d heard such stories often enough from clients who insisted the evidence against them was fabricated, that it was a conspiracy to frame them for crimes they’d never think of committing. I’d always treated these tales with the disregard they seemed to deserve, viewing them as extraordinary fabrications no different, in my mind, from admissions of guilt. Except that they further decreased the trustworthiness of the person who told them.
The consequence of not believing Cho was to accept that the opposite was true, that he was the one with the organized crime connections, and that he’d leveraged those connections for illicit sexual favors. Which led me once again to the conclusion that I was now in great danger. Once more my eyes went to the gun.
“Why’d you file a whistle-blower case instead of going to the DA?”
His answer was surprisingly honest. “There’s no payday in going to the DA. A whistle-blower, on the other hand, stands to reap a substantial reward, a cut of the money recovered on behalf of the government.” A consolation prize, perhaps, for someone who’d missed out on the graft. “I knew if I succeeded, the criminal investigation would come.”
“And when things turned bad, why didn’t you drop the case?”
“I had the chance. It’s true,” Cho said. “One evening, a few months before trial, I came down to the parking garage from my lawyer’s office and found two men waiting for me. They forced me to drive with them up to Twin Peaks. There they explained I had two choices. Either I could be arrested for sex with a minor, or I could drop the case.
“I refused because I thought we could turn it against them, use the threat as a means of convincing the jury that the accounting records they’d produced were manufactured. However, the next week they sent my lawyer the video and an affidavit from the kid I was supposedly with. As I said, it was completely false, but the judge allowed it into evidence.
“The week after the verdict, I was arrested. After I made bail I decided not to stick around. One afternoon I left my car at the bridge, stuck a suicide note in the driver’s seat, and stole a van. Eventually I worked my way here. The place belongs to an old
friend.”
Lydia’s arms had tightened around him.
“Tell me about Jordan,” I said.
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve bought the Chronicle whenever I make my weekly supply run to town. I had enough cash to last well into the winter if I needed to. I was biding my time. I didn’t know what I was waiting for, but I recognized it when it came. It was the Rodriguez case. There was a story in the Chronicle, and it mentioned Jordan’s name and yours as Rodriguez’s attorneys.
“During the Kairos trial, Jordan was one of Tom Benton’s associates, a corporate attorney neck-deep in the fraud for all I knew.” He paused. “Now, it seemed, she was working for the public defender’s office. The only way to explain the change was that she’d gotten a whiff of what they’d been up to and decided she didn’t want any more part of it. The few times I’d met her she’d struck me as cut from a different cloth from the rest of her colleagues. I think it was simply that she seemed honest.
“They’d destroyed me, taken away the possibility of ever working in business again. And they’d threatened me with more than that. I wanted revenge, but I also wanted my life back. I didn’t think, acting alone, that I could have both those things.”
I said nothing, letting him continue.
“I decided to contact Jordan. The first time I spoke with her was right before the Rodriguez trial. I called her at your office. She didn’t want to talk to me at first, but in the end her curiosity got the better of her distrust. I told her much of what I’ve explained to you. She was skeptical, and wary of the situation. She had no reason to believe what I was telling her, yet at the same time she didn’t seem surprised. She wanted to meet in person, make sure I was who I claimed to be. So I agreed to come into the city.
“We set the meeting for a Friday night a week after the Rodriguez trial ended. I was keeping watch, and saw her bring you back to her apartment. I was certain I hadn’t been followed, that I’d taken every necessary precaution with our communications. Still, I remained very concerned Jordan might be under surveillance. After all, she’d made such a sudden exit from the firm, Mauldin was likely to have arrived at the same conclusions I had.
“Having observed her building for a long period and seen nothing, I texted her. ‘Get rid of him.’”
Just as Benton had said.
“She was aware of the possible danger, and so took a long cab ride, she told me later, having the driver make all sorts of turns and stops. Her destination, of course, was her apartment, right back where she’d started. It seemed safer to both of us than meeting out in public. I waited until she got out, then met her at the building entrance, where she let me in.”
This was awful for me to hear. But Cho, focused on his own misfortune, was oblivious.
“We talked for maybe an hour. She kept her cards close, not trusting me completely. Nonetheless, by the end of our meeting, she told me she intended to return to work at Baker. To get proof that the company had submitted false books in the trial, and, if I was right, fix the damage.
“I left at around two AM. I saw no one lurking around, didn’t notice any watchers. My idea was to come back up here, wait for the story to break, then reclaim my life. Of course, the story that eventually broke was very different from the one I’d expected. From then on I knew I was a hunted man. I took a Greyhound north, and have been here ever since.”
Chapter 20
I suggested we go inside. I wanted him to walk me through it again, so I could make the mental effort required to believe his self-serving story as Jordan evidently had come to believe it that night. She’d given his tale sufficient credence that she’d decided to go back on one of the most important decisions of her life. Because of that, I felt Cho deserved as much time as he needed to convince me as he had her. I didn’t want to believe she’d been fooled by him—her opponent in that contentious litigation—any more than I’d wanted to believe she’d been fooled by Rodriguez, her own client.
It all seemed so implausible. Yet I wanted desperately to see what she’d seen.
Cho didn’t want to go in. “You can’t hear anything inside.” Then, by way of explanation, he added, “About an hour ago, there was a car. Just shortly before I came back into the cabin. It stopped maybe a mile down the road. We don’t have many people down this way at night.”
Someone was looking for Cho. The man at Lydia’s house was dead, but there would be other of Mauldin’s “security guards,” if that’s who the man had been. I hadn’t wanted to believe Hayes, but after this morning’s events, anything seemed possible.
Lydia went to the farthest corner of the house, scanning the dark woods at the edge of the clearing, then returned.
“What do you think?” Cho asked her. “You’re still sure you two weren’t followed?”
“I don’t see how,” she said impatiently. “But even if we weren’t, how long can we go on hiding here?”
“Depends on what the alternative is.”
I spoke up. “We need to prove our case. One way to do it is through the judge who presided over the trial. If we can convince him Kairos won it by fraud, he’s the only one with the power to fix it.”
“I don’t have any more proof now than I had at the trial,” Cho said angrily. “If it wasn’t enough then, how could it possibly be enough now? You were with Jordan the night she died. Just like you were at the house with Lydia earlier today. You’re undoubtedly a suspect, and if I say I’d met with Jordan that night, then so am I. How much credibility will any of us have, really?”
“I’m not sure. But I don’t think going to ground here is a serious long-term plan.”
I could see that Lydia agreed with this.
“Jordan had credibility,” Cho said, not telling me anything I didn’t know. “That’s why I went to her. When they killed her, it all fell apart. That is, unless we can show they had her killed, staged the rape to stop her from talking.”
“Look,” I said. “What about Benton? After all, he was running the show. Maybe we should approach him. Try to get him to open up.”
Cho scoffed at this. “The first thing Benton’ll do is tell Mauldin, who’ll sic his dogs on us. Probably the very same ones who lost one of their own this afternoon.”
“I’m not so sure. It seems obvious Benton and Jordan had been sleeping together. The chronology of their affair’s not clear to me, but I find it hard to believe he was knowingly involved in her murder. If I’m right about him, he’s got to be looking for a way out. It’s even possible he’d like to see Jordan’s death avenged.”
Cho shook his head. “People are dead. Jacob has nothing to lose by killing a few more. By now, he’d probably consider even Tom Benton to be expendable.”
“You intend to spend the rest of your life, however long it is, running from these men?” I challenged him.
Lydia paused midpace and turned to look at her husband, waiting for his answer to my question. Cho met her gaze in the moonlight. “All right,” he finally said, nodding to me, his mouth tightening. “We’ll go back to San Francisco.”
We loaded the Beemer with Lydia’s suitcase and a backpack Cho had ready. His escape bag, he called it, though how he’d planned on getting out if he needed to leave in a hurry I couldn’t tell. The only visible transportation at the cabin was the mountain bike. Cho drove, Lydia seated beside him, me in the back.
We’d gone half a mile when the headlights picked out an SUV parked lengthwise across the gravel road ahead, blocking our exit.
Fifty yards from this obstacle, Cho stopped. “You brought them with you.”
I flinched and raised my hand as a spotlight shone out from the SUV. Even squinting, I could see nothing ahead. They’d be coming now, approaching on either side of the car. Cho slammed the Beemer into reverse, turning around in his seat and using the illumination of the spotlight to navigate in lurching turns between the trees.
“I don’t know where you think you’re going,” Lydia said. “The road ends.”
The SUV had pul
led forward and was keeping pace, the spotlight leveled at blinding height. “There’s an abandoned logging road,” Cho said. “That’s how I get to town when I need to. I ride my bike. I’ve got an old pickup parked at the end of it, covered with branches. The trip’s about four miles. We’ll have to leave the car. I’ve never done it in the dark, but—”
“Where?”
“Here. We’ll have to run.” Cho stopped. The SUV didn’t. “Lydia!” he shouted as the passenger door swung open. I glanced back in time to see her spotlighted, jumping out and running for the woods. Maybe she expected us to follow her, but there wasn’t time. Before I could open my door, the SUV slammed into our front bumper, driving the Beemer backward.
My head snapped forward and I fell into the foot well between the front and back seats. We were being pushed down over the rocky river bank. The car stalled and the noise of rushing water filled our ears, the spotlight suddenly raking the sky overhead. I felt us tip and roll; then we were upside down. I fell onto the roof, then found the door handle and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge, but breaking the seal caused the water, breathtakingly cold, to flow in faster.
For a moment all was dark, then the spotlight began probing outside the windows, as if searching for a way in. “Through the windows,” I heard Cho say, but mine wouldn’t go down. The glass shattered. Hearing a strangled cry over the liquid sound of the river being sucked into the car, I saw Cho, still inverted in his seat belt, clutch his throat, the glow from the spotlight illuminating him. Then his head was underwater and he made no attempt to lift it out.
I heard bullets thunking against the underside of the car. There remained only pockets of air. My head was pressed against the seat. Frigid water splashed my chin and mouth. Again I fumbled for the door handle, grabbed it, tugged, and also shoved against it with my shoulder. This time, with the pressure equalized, it came open and I was able to float out.
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