A slight nod. Sip of beer.
“Thanks for seeing me.”
A shrug. “De nada.” Huerta pauses, holds up his can questioningly.
“Sure. Appreciate it.”
Huerta fishes a can out of the display refrigerator behind the counter. “Can you drink on duty?” he asks. He has a basic east L.A. Mexican accent of a native, not a wetback.
“On duty? I’m not a cop,” Luke says. “You didn’t think I was with the police, did you?”
Huerta shakes his head. “I meant on business. When you’re doing business.”
“No problem,” Luke says, smiling. “I work for myself, make my own rules.”
“Good for you, man.” Huerta sips from his beer, almost with a daintiness, his pinky finger extended. “I don’t work for myself. My brother, he’s my employer now. I got to do it his way.” The way he says it, his brother’s way isn’t fun.
“But it’s better than working at Shutters, isn’t it?” Shutters on the Beach is the fancy hotel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica where Doug Lancaster was staying the night Emma disappeared.
“Shutters paid better money,” Huerta says, staring at Luke. “Especially with the tips. But I don’t work there anymore.” He frowns, saying that.
“You were fired?”
Huerta nods. He looks away, his beer can at his lips.
“How come?” If the guy has a record, this could be a wasted trip.
“They said I came on to one of the guests.”
“You accosted a woman?” This isn’t starting out well.
“A man,” Huerta says with no inflection in his voice. He looks at Luke. “Do I look like a fag to you?” he asks with a challenge in his soft voice.
You could be, Luke thinks; so what? “No,” he says. “You don’t.”
“I’m not,” Huerta says belligerently. “The guest was drunk. He was angry because he said I didn’t bring his car around fast enough. So they eighty-sixed me.” Another shrug, another hit from his brew. “No more big tips.” He looks around the tiny restaurant. “No tips, period.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I got my application in at the Miramar, Holiday Inn, Hilton. Someone’ll hire me on. Anything to get away from here,” he says in a quieter voice, glancing over his shoulder towards the kitchen in the rear. “The hotels always need experienced parking lot attendants. I’m good at it. The people at Shutters are prejudiced, anyway,” he adds, finishing his beer and crushing the can in his hand, a show of manliness for Luke’s benefit. He gets up and fetches another for himself. Then he sits down again.
Prejudiced against Latino laborers? Luke thinks. They couldn’t stay open a week with that attitude.
He gets down to business. “You were working the parking lot at Shutters the night Emma Lancaster was kidnapped?” he asks.
Huerta stares at him. Then he extends his hand, palm up.
Luke pulls out his wallet, plucks a crisp hundred-dollar bill from inside, lays it on the outstretched palm: the price Huerta quoted over the phone for speaking to him. The disgruntled waiter squints at it, making a show of holding it up to the light to make sure it’s authentic. Satisfied, he folds it once and puts it in his shirt pocket. “Double shift,” he confirms. “My regular shift was nights, but one of the guys called in sick, so I took his shift. The early morning shift.”
“So you were there all through the night?” Luke hits on his beer. It’s cold, the metallic taste from the can stings his throat going down. A good sting.
“From five that night till ten the next morning. Wore me out. I slept there in a caretaker’s room, because I didn’t have time to go home, sleep, change, come back for the five o’clock. But I made double overtime,” Huerta boasts, remembering.
“But you were manning the parking lot all through the night,” Luke says. “You didn’t take any breaks?”
“To piss. Five minutes. I was out there the whole time. I didn’t miss a thing,” he declares.
“So you were there when Mr. Lancaster went out for the evening.”
“Went out, came back, went out, came back. Went out.”
“Do you remember when he came and went? The different times?”
“Went out at seven, came back at eleven. Closer to eleven-fifteen,” he says with more precision.
“You’re sure? This was over a year ago.”
A forceful nod. “I’m sure. Mr. Lancaster stayed with us a lot. He was a big tipper. You remember the people who treat you good, everybody wants them. I made sure I was special nice to him, so he used to ask for me by name.”
Great. Luke jots that down.
“I especially remember that time because it was on the TV practically every day,” Huerta continues. “It stuck in my head.”
Makes sense. “And the second time?”
“Left at one, about ten after one. I remember that clear because I was watching Saturday Night Live in our command post in the lobby by the front doors, and he called down to have his car ready right when the show was ending. Then he came down for it a few minutes later.”
“You brought it around for him.”
A nod.
“When did he come back after that?”
“A quarter after nine in the morning.”
This is critical: “You’re sure?”
“Positive,” the former parking attendant says. “I remember looking at my watch, ’cause I was dragging my ass by then. He pulled up real fast, jumped out, told me not to garage it, because he was going to change clothes and leave again right away.”
From one at night until nine that morning Doug Lancaster was not in his hotel room. Which is not the story he told the police. “Do you remember what he looked like?” he asks. “When he came back at nine o’clock?”
“Like he’d been rode hard and put up wet.” Huerta smiles slyly.
Where was Doug Lancaster from one at night until nine in the morning? Luke grimaces inwardly at the thought of having to pursue that, but now he has to, he has no choice. “When did he come back for his car that third time?”
“Twenty, twenty-five minutes later.”
“And how did he look then?”
“Better. He’d changed his clothes.”
“Dressed for golf?”
Huerta thinks. “Could have been. He was casual.”
Luke drinks the last of his beer, leaves the can on the table. “Thanks for your time,” he says. “Appreciate it.”
Huerta pats his shirt pocket where the hundred’s nestled. “Anytime.”
Luke gets up, shakes the man’s hand. It’s soft—he uses hand lotion. He walks to the door. As he’s pushing it open, Huerta calls after him.
“Say hello to Mr. Lancaster for me,” he calls out plaintively. “Tell him I miss him.”
Riva has also been quietly snooping around, trying to ferret out information about Emma Lancaster. Pregnant at fourteen, that’s heavy. But sophisticated young girls have been known to be promiscuous. Witness her coming on to Allison.
Questions abound. For instance, how much did her parents know? Riva’s guessing that Emma’s parents were in the dark about it. Most girls that age, especially girls from Emma’s background, don’t reveal their lives to their parents, and they’re too scared of the parents’ reaction. But they confide in friends, and friends tell other friends, and the word gets around the teenage underground. Sometimes a sympathetic teacher will find out, or a girl might even go to a teacher, for adult advice and support.
Emma’s pregnancy isn’t in the public record, won’t be until the trial, although all kinds of rumors and stories have been floating around ever since the autopsy report came back. When the fact that she was pregnant becomes public knowledge, it will create a sensation in the courtroom. Not necessarily a positive for Luke’s client.
It’s a delicate matter, trying to uncover this kind of stuff. If she and Luke can find out who Emma was screwing, Joe Allison might walk out of jail. Was it one boy (or man), or more than one? Whoever it was, s
omeone got Emma Lancaster pregnant—it was not an immaculate conception. The planter of his seed was almost certainly the actual killer. Which means that man or boy—assuming he wasn’t Joe Allison—is still at large, somewhere out there. Probably still living in the area, watching the developments carefully, hopeful that this will play out all the way, that Joe Allison will be convicted and imprisoned for the crime.
Who was sleeping with Emma Lancaster? Everyone in law enforcement thinks it was Joe. His condoms matched the ones in the gazebo. That’s damning evidence—convictions have been won with less evidence than that. It’s so slam-dunk it seems futile to try and fight it.
But they have to, if they’re going to have a prayer of winning this case. And she has to keep an open mind, and be optimistic, or she’ll sabotage the man she loves.
If Emma Lancaster were alive now, she’d be finishing ninth grade. If she were still alive she would be going to Bolt School, a prestigious private boarding school in Summerland. She applied before she was murdered, and with her good grades and her parents’ clout in the community, she would have been accepted. She would be one of the handful of day students, getting all the benefits of the school, but sleeping in her own bed at night instead of sharing a cramped dorm room. On weekends she would bring her boarder friends to her house, where her mother would fuss over them, feed them well.
If Emma were still alive her parents would get her a car on her sixteenth birthday. Nothing fancy, the style at Bolt is understated. An old Volvo, Jeep, or Honda, something slow and safe. She’d be chauffeuring her friends around, driving them into Santa Barbara on the weekends, taking them off campus to break up the monotony.
She would be popular; she always was, from kindergarten. Most kids don’t date in ninth grade, they travel in packs, boys and girls combined. But she’d date some boys, too, juniors and seniors. She had already lost her virginity. She was way ahead of most of these bright, sheltered kids.
The hangout of choice for the kids Emma used to run with, those who now go to Bolt, is the doughnut shop in the Carpinteria Mall. Riva sits at a table near the back nursing a latte, away from the counter where customers line up to order their drinks. Teenagers drift in and out, more girls than boys, getting drinks, talking with each other in high, laughing tones, comparing stories, notebooks, gossip. It’s easy to tell the Bolt kids from the locals.
These girls are women, Riva thinks, looking them over. Emma would be here with her friends. She’d be the center of attention, and she’d be enjoying it. The first blush of her emerging sexuality having passed, she’d be taking her life easier, not having to prove anything, including her womanhood.
Or she might be indiscriminately fucking her brains out. She’d started at a very early age. Well, I did too, Riva thinks. I was fifteen when I lost my cherry. As did other girls I knew.
By now it might be second nature to Emma: you liked a man or a boy, you slept with him. You just took better precautions.
The girl she’s been waiting for walks into the shop. She’s with friends, a group of other girls. They’re Bolt girls—two are wearing Bolt sweatshirts. They all order mocha cappuccinos with extra whipped cream.
The girl sees Riva. Excusing herself from her friends, she comes over and sits down at Riva’s table.
“Hi, Hillary,” Riva says, her tone friendly, inviting.
“Hi, Miss Montoya,” Hillary responds in greeting. She’s at ease with Riva.
Hillary Lange was the girl who, along with Lisa Jaffe, was sleeping in Emma’s bedroom the night Emma disappeared. She was Emma’s best friend. They had grown up together, had gone to school together from kindergarten.
If any of Emma’s friends knew about her secret life before she died, Riva guesses, it would be Hillary. She’s been cultivating the girl for weeks: coming into the coffee shop, gradually introducing herself, accidentally running into Hillary at the Paseo Nuevo shopping mall in downtown Santa Barbara on the weekends. Hillary knows who Riva is, that she’s involved in the murder trial. Riva has been careful not to spook the girl. After all, she is working for the man accused of murdering Hillary’s best friend.
Curiosity is a powerful seducer, being in on a secret is another, and flattery rounds out the trio. Combined, they’re hard to resist, especially when you’re fifteen and the adult world is inviting you to join it in something special, which only you have entry to. Slowly, slowly, Riva has been drawing Hillary into her web, talking to her about school, about the case, marveling how sophisticated and cool Hillary is compared to other girls her age, gradually gaining her confidence. Hillary knows she shouldn’t be talking to Riva about Emma; Riva’s the enemy, she’s working for that lawyer everyone hates, to get Emma’s killer off. But the exclusiveness and deliciousness of the situation are too much for Hillary to resist; she knew about Emma’s crazy, daring life, her forays into the world of sex with grown men.
“How’s school going?” Riva asks.
“It’s going. I’ve got a physics test tomorrow I’ll be up all night studying for.”
“Isn’t that a lot of work for ninth grade?” Riva asks, coming on sympathetic. “I never stayed up all night studying in high school.”
The girl shrugs. “Everyone will be. That’s Bolt.”
Riva glances around the room. A few of Hillary’s friends are casting curious looks in their direction, but they aren’t a focus of attention. The others don’t know who she is. Riva knows that Hillary wants to keep this relationship to herself, her secret, private status.
“Can we talk about Emma?” Riva says, getting down to business, keeping her voice quiet.
“Sure.” Hillary runs a finger around the rim of her cup. “What do you want to know?”
“Do you know who the man was that Emma was having sex with?”
They’ve gotten this far in previous conversations—that Emma was no virgin, that Hillary knew about it, that Riva has found out. But Riva hasn’t told Hillary about the coroner’s report.
Hillary shakes her head. “She’d never give me a name.”
“Did she say it was an older man? Or was he, you know, one of your friends?”
“It was a man. The boys we know—knew—were way too slow for Emma.”
“Did she say anything about him?” Riva asks, pushing gently.
“I think … I think she was a baby-sitter for his kids.” She dabs a finger of whipped cream into her mouth, sucking on the finger.
All right! Not Joe. That’s a big break, if it’s true. “Do you know when it started? Emma and this man?”
“Near the beginning of eighth grade, I think. Maybe the summer before eighth grade started.”
Emma would have been barely fourteen. She didn’t waste any time. “Do you think that was the only one?” she asks carefully.
Hillary hesitates before speaking again. “There were more men than one,” she confides.
“More than one?” Riva asks. Jesus. Little Emma got around. “Do you know how many?”
Hillary shakes her head. “I think only one other.”
“Did she say anything about him?”
Another head shake. “He was handsome. He drove a really cool car.”
Joe Allison’s made-for-television handsome. And he drives a Porsche, by any definition a really cool car.
Still, this is progress. Emma had multiple lovers, and one of them is going to be easy to find.
“But Emma never told you who he was?” she still probes, very carefully.
“No. She never did.”
Riva pushes her latte away—it’s cold now. “Thanks for talking to me,” she says sincerely.
“I’m not going to get Emma in trouble, am I?” Hillary asks, suddenly fretful.
She’s dead, honey; she’s way past any trouble you can bring. But she knows what the girl means. The memory, the idealized picture of what people thought Emma was. “No,” she lies. “No one’s ever going to know what we talked about.”
“Thanks,” Hillary says brightly, feeling relieved. “E
mma was really a good person,” she says earnestly, wanting Riva to believe her. “She just …”
“She was a great kid,” Riva assures her. “And that’s the way everyone’s going to remember her.”
Driving back up the coast, Luke thinks about what he’s done today. Interviewing witnesses, gathering information—that’s all part of the job, nothing he hasn’t done a thousand times. He’s much more involved now, of course. Once you’re the D.A., or high up in the office, you’re more an administrator than a litigator. You push papers around and make decisions. In that sense, this is more rewarding. It’s hands-on, you’re the man, it’s your show.
That’s not what he’s thinking about. He’s thinking about the law, his attitude towards it, how he’s dealing with it. He didn’t have an epiphany and start believing the world was any more of a corrupt place, that the jails are full of innocent people and he has to be one to stem the tide, none of that stuff. He knows that almost everyone who is in jail, should be, small-time drug busts being the only exception.
It’s about methods, what means justify what ends. Yes, the old Luke Garrison would have paid an informant what amounted to a bribe. You have to, sometimes. No one will get hurt—no one who shouldn’t—and the information might be helpful to Joe Allison, his client, which is his primary concern.
It’s the way he did it. He never would have misrepresented himself, even by omission.
He acted the way he did for good reasons, which he can justify to himself. He doesn’t want to alert the prosecution, and thus Doug Lancaster, that he’s pursuing this line of investigation. He doesn’t want to give Doug the chance to cover his tracks, should they need covering. Nor does he want to alert Ray Logan’s office that he might be traveling down this particular road; he wants to hold that back until the last possible minute.
Those are proper, legitimate reasons to mask his activities. But he doesn’t like the means by which he reached the end. It’s beneath him; or if it isn’t, it should be.
The other reason he acted the way he did is the animosity he’s carrying towards Doug Lancaster. He’s still smoldering over the attempted bribe. And although he told Riva he didn’t think Doug was involved in the trashing of his motorcycle, deep down inside he thinks Doug was. And that angers him further.
The Disappearance Page 19
