Snap Judgment (Samantha Brinkman Book 3)

by Marcia Clark

  I dropped my briefcase just inside my office and took off my coat. “I guess it could’ve just been a random home invasion thing, maybe Alicia forgot to lock the door.” For all that USC is a richy-rich-kid school, the campus is in a shitty ’hood where anything can happen. I thought about how her father must be feeling. “Graham must be out of his mind.”

  Graham Hutchins, a hotshot civil litigator from South Carolina who’d wisely hung on to his southern accent for maximum benefit with juries, was one of my regular sparring partners on the cable show Crime Time. Though we weren’t what you’d call close, during our time spent together in the green room, I’d heard a lot about his only child, Alicia, who was the light of his life.

  Michy had restarted the news footage on her computer, and she sighed as a photo of Alicia in her high school graduation cap and robe came on the screen. She was a beautiful girl by any standard. Long blonde hair that hung straight down her back, wide-set green eyes, and lips that seemed to just naturally curve upward in a semismile. I remembered Graham saying he’d wanted to walk the halls of her high school with a shotgun just to let the boys know “what fate awaited them if they touched a hair on her head.”

  From what I’d heard about her schedule, I’d wondered when he thought any boy would have the chance to get to her. Gymnastics, drama, debate club, the school newspaper—you name it, Alicia not only did it, she stuck the landing. She graduated high school with honors and had her pick of colleges.

  I do think kids should have goals and reach for the stars and all that. But they should also get to enjoy some downtime, too—play a few video games, binge something on Netflix once in a while. To me, Alicia’s schedule was way over the top. And I was fairly sure the pressure to achieve came from her dad. Graham was one hard-driving, ambitious guy.

  And now she was dead. Murdered. Before she ever got the chance to live.

  My childhood had been no bed of roses. I’d spent my final year in junior high getting raped every night by Celeste’s—AKA Mommy Dearest’s—billionaire boyfriend, Sebastian Cromer. And it’d gone on for a full year because she’d refused to believe that her Daddy Warbucks was a raging pedophile. But at least I was still breathing.

  Michy pushed back from the computer. “You want me to send Graham some flowers?”

  I’d been about to head into my office. Now I stopped. “Can we afford to?”

  She sighed. “Of course not. But what’s another hundred bucks when we’re—as usual—about two thousand bucks in the red?”

  A fair point. “Yeah, good idea. Send him one of those orchid pots, something that’s actually alive, okay?” I never understand why people send cut flowers to a house in mourning. It seems cruel. Why send something that’s basically already dying?

  I went to my desk and got to work on my next trial. It was about as dumb as it gets. My guy and his genius buddy had run out of beer, so they decided to go get some more. Without paying. The clerk caught them and called the cops. The other guy fled, but my guy decided to hang around and debate whether it was fair for the clerk to call him a “pussy.” They got into a tussle over the issue and were still at it when the cops arrived. Which was lucky for my guy, because he was definitely on the losing end of the minifight. Ordinarily, this was the kind of case I could expect to settle for straight probation. Except the DA had charged my client with robbery for this little escapade, and he had a rap sheet longer than the line for the bathroom at a Bruce Springsteen concert. He was facing twenty-five to life.

  An hour later, Alex came in and stopped at my office door. It was still only eight thirty, but for him, that was late. And he was yawning. Very uncharacteristic. “What did you get up to last night?” I took in his clothes—which were the same ones he’d been wearing yesterday. “Or should I say—down to last night?”

  Alex folded his arms. “For your information, I was up late studying for my license.”

  He was the best investigator I’d ever had, but he still hadn’t gotten his PI license. It wasn’t his fault; he was a hard worker—obsessively so—but I kept him plenty busy, too busy to focus on prepping for the PI test. So it was a credible story. But my bullshit-o-meter said it wasn’t true. Something about him—and I couldn’t say what that was; it was just a gut feeling—told me that this time it was about fun. And that was a credible explanation, too.

  Alex is one gorgeous specimen. Dark eyes, with the long, curly lashes we women would kill for but never seem to get, and a mane of thick, shiny black hair. And he was effortlessly charming. All this came in handy when we had to interview female witnesses—who routinely let him know they wouldn’t mind an after-hours interview and never had a clue that he was gay.

  I stared him down. “No, you weren’t.”

  Alex caved. “No, I wasn’t.” He paused. “I met someone.”

  Alex talked about his dates every once in a while, but only when the story ended in a punch line. So the fact that he’d made no effort to joke about this one told me it was different. “No shit?”

  He nodded. “No shit. We’ve only been seeing each other for a couple of weeks, but it feels pretty real.”

  I waved him over. “Get in here and spill. I want to hear everything. Where does he live? What does he do? How did you meet him?”

  Alex came in and sank onto my couch. “His name is Paul Angelo, and he lives in West Hollywood, about five miles from here. I met him in the cold-and-flu aisle of the CVS pharmacy on Santa Monica Boulevard—”

  “Doesn’t get more romantic than that.” I rolled my eyes, then got worried. “You never said you were sick.”

  An annoyed expression crossed his face. “I wasn’t. Michy put a serious dent in my stash of Benadryl with her hay fever spell, so I had to replenish.”

  Alex is one of those people who needs to be constantly prepared—which is cool. But he takes it to a level that, at best, qualifies as obsessive. He keeps a huge, multitiered and partitioned plastic box in the office that’s filled with every cold/flu/allergy remedy I’ve ever heard of, in addition to Band-Aids, Ace bandages, BENGAY, Tiger Balm, a splint, an EpiPen—you get the picture. He even has an oxygen tank and a defibrillator. “So Paul was sick?”

  Alex had a little smile. “No. He was running low on his stash of Tamiflu.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Oh my God. There are two of you nutcases? And you found each other? This must be the End of Days.”

  Alex gave me a mock glare. “Guess I’d better get back to work.”

  I pulled back. “Pardon me. I meant two of you incredibly helpful, well-prepared gems. So what does he do?”

  He flicked a speck off his trousered knee. “He’s a pilot for Delta Airlines.”

  Nice. “So you get to fly free?”

  Alex gave me a pointed look. “How would I know? I never have a day off.”

  I shook my head in sympathy. “Sorry your boss is such an asshole.”

  He was not amused. “Anyway, we had coffee, and we just talked and talked. It felt like we’d known each other forever. We wound up having dinner the next night, and the night after that, and . . . now we’re talking about moving in.”

  So soon? What, did they turn into lesbians? That kind of fast leap into marriage—and I don’t care what they call it; that’s what moving in together really is—always worries me. It almost never ends well. Michy says I’m ridiculously pessimistic about relationships. I say I’m just a realist. But Alex looked so happy I didn’t want to be a buzzkill. He’d just have to find out the hard way, like the rest of us. “Got any pictures?”

  Alex smirked. “We’re gay. We live on cameras. Of course I’ve got photos.”

  But as Alex reached for his cell phone, Michy appeared in my doorway, her expression dark. “So you heard about them?”

  I was confused. “Heard about . . . ?”

  She looked from me to Alex. “Alicia’s photos. I thought that’s what you were talking about. It just came on the news. They found her nude selfies on a porn website. They went up a couple of days
before her murder. And I just heard they got posted to her Facebook page, too.”

  Alex picked up on Michelle’s use of her first name. “You know this girl?”

  “Sort of.” I brought Alex up to speed on my relationship with her father.

  Alex pulled up her photo on his cell. “Pretty girl. There any chance she posted them herself?”

  Michelle shook her head. “No way. There was a message under her photos on the porn website inviting guys to come over and play out her rape fantasies—with her address and Facebook page link.”

  I agreed. “I’m with Michy. No way she’d write something like that. This is classic pissed-off ex-boyfriend shit. I’ll bet the cops already have him in custody.”

  “You going to try and get the case?” Alex asked.

  Represent that asshole? “Not if we were starving and living in Tent City.”

  TWO

  To no one’s surprise, an hour later, it was reported that Roan Sutton, Alicia’s boyfriend, had been brought in for questioning as a “person of interest.” According to Alicia’s friends, she’d broken up with Roan Sutton the day before the nude selfies—and that disgusting, not to mention, life-threatening “invitation”—got posted to the porn website.

  I’d gone back to work on my beer burglar’s sentencing memo when Michy and Alex came into my office to give me the news that Roan had been taken in. And, to be perfectly honest, to procrastinate. We weren’t working on any particularly fascinating cases at the moment.

  Michy took a swig from her bottle of water and deadpanned, “Shocking development. Boyfriend gets dumped, boyfriend takes revenge.”

  Alex’s expression radiated disgust. “What a despicable loser.”

  It really was sickening. I’d heard way too many stories about this kind of thing, and it seemed to be happening more and more frequently. “Will they be able to prove he posted the photos, Alex?”

  To say that Alex knew his way around a computer was like saying Stephen Hawking knew a little something about physics. Alex could hack his way into the Pentagon if he wanted to. The only reason the cops had caught him when he’d “transferred” ownership of those two BMW 750Lis to himself was sheer dumb luck. And they knew it. That’s why I’d been able to get him a deal for straight probation: the dealership wanted him to show them how he’d done it.

  Alex sighed. “I doubt it. If he’s even halfway hip, he’d know enough to use a proxy server. In which case, I’d say no, they’ll never be able to prove he posted them.”

  Damn. “What about the Facebook posting? Same thing?”

  Alex nodded. “Afraid so.”

  Bummer. “Well, at least they’ll be able to tag him for her murder.” It was the most typical, obvious of motives. But clichés are clichés because they’re true.

  Michy leaned back in her chair. “Not necessarily. It could’ve been one of the douchebags who answered her so-called rape fantasy ‘ad.’”

  I made a face. “Rape fantasy. Talk about an oxymoron. I guess that’s possible. But for some reason, it feels more personal than that.”

  “Yeah.” Alex grimaced. “Her throat was cut. That seems too gruesome for it to be a stranger. And I heard they found the knife in the tub, under her body.”

  Which meant it’d been in water for a while by the time they collected it. The odds of finding prints or DNA were infinitesimal. “Did they say where it came from?”

  Alex glanced back down at his phone and shook his head. “Says they have no information on whether the knife came from her place or the killer brought it with him.”

  “Or her.” Michy screwed the cap on her now-empty water bottle. “If it wasn’t Roan, it could’ve been a girl. Alicia was pretty small, from what I saw. And it happened when she was in the bathtub, probably dozing.” Michelle threw the empty bottle into the recycling can. “Oh, and by the way, based on those porn website photos? She had no cellulite whatsoever.”

  Smart, beautiful, and a perfect body? “That alone is reason enough to kill her.”

  Michy gave me a grim smile. “The list of suspects just quadrupled.”

  A sick sense of humor is a prerequisite in this business. But she was right: the killer could’ve been a girl. “I’m surprised they didn’t take the photos down from that website already.”

  “It’s not that easy to find these scumbag website owners.” Alex stretched and put the back of his hand to his mouth to cover a deep yawn. “Of course, if they’d just ask for my help, I could have him by the balls within the hour.”

  That might not be a bad idea—offering up Alex’s services to the cops. It’d be a favor to Graham for sure, and my relationship with the Five-O could always use a little—or actually, a lot of—burnishing. I’ve never been a fan of the boys in blue, and the feeling is more than mutual. “Since we’re obviously not going to get back to work anytime soon, I may as well call and see if I can squeeze some info out of Dale.”

  But Dale was in no mood to be squeezed. “It’s not my case, and you know I can’t tell you anything. Besides, you don’t need me to tell you who looks good for this one.”

  Roan, of course. “Just tell me if the kid has an alibi. And whether you’ve found anything on the murder weapon.”

  He huffed. “‘Just’? You’re asking me to tell you what came out of his interview and the crime-scene search.”

  “No, I’m not. I only asked two short questions, and they can be answered with just two short words. Come on, you know I won’t tell.”

  Dale sighed. “The answer is no and no.” He ended the call.

  I spoke into the phone. “Great, thanks. Appreciate it. Let’s do dinner.”

  Michy smirked. “Hung up on you again, didn’t he?”

  Can she never miss a thing? “A little.” I reported what he’d told me. “He seems pretty sure Roan Sutton’s the killer. Then again, cops do rush to judgment.”

  Alex’s lips twitched. “You mean, kind of like you just did?”

  I folded my arms. “My conclusion was based on solid deductive reasoning—with which both of you happen to agree.” I stared them down.

  Michy shrugged, as always, impervious to my glare. “Like I said, not necessarily.”

  Alex set his jaw. “Well, even if he didn’t kill her, I hope the little fucker gets nailed for posting those photos. My cousin got revenge porned when she dumped her fiancé. She went anorexic for a year, lost chunks of hair, her skin turned gray. It was horrible.”

  I stared at Alex. He wasn’t the type to turn the other cheek. “And he’s not in the hospital?” Alex knew how to fight, and this guy sounded like a perfect candidate for a beat down.

  He waved his hand with a look of disgust. “He ran to Mexico.”

  We all went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Alex said and what kind of hell Alicia had gone through. I tried to imagine how I’d feel. To know that thousands, maybe millions of strange men were looking at nude photos of me—photos I’d only ever meant my boyfriend to see. I pulled up the website, XXXtraSpecial. Most of the women in the photos looked like pros: heavy makeup, tongue touching open lips painted a deep red, and poses that’d probably be a revelation to some gynecologists. And the quality of those photos was fairly polished.

  Alicia’s were nothing like that. They were amateurish selfies, and relatively tame. Alicia wore very little makeup, and her smile, meant to be seductive and naughty, looked nervous—and a little bit scared. The poses were as vanilla as they get: one shot was taken from the side as she stood at her desk, bent at the waist; there were a few boob shots and one rather blurry crotch shot—with legs closed. The photos all seemed so innocent, so vulnerable, it was painful to look at them. And the disgusting “invitation” to join in her “rape fantasy” infuriated me. It deliberately, viciously set her up to be attacked by . . . God knows what kind of filthy pig.

  And now she was dead. I didn’t care whether Roan was her killer. Just for that alone I hoped they nailed him to the wall. I went to Alex’s office. Smaller
than mine, but with a window that faced the street, it was a step up from the coffin-size, windowless copy room he’d occupied before we’d moved into our relatively nicer digs here in West Hollywood.

  And he’d done a nice job of decorating it. Not. Fighting the gay stereotype, Alex did not do a damn thing with his space. The walls were bare; he didn’t even have a small plant. The only item on his desk besides his laptop was a large framed photo of his family. I spoke to him from the doorway. “I know you’ve got work to do, but would you mind—”

  “Already on it.” Alex glanced up at me and raised an eyebrow. “You wanted me to find the website owner and call the cops, right?”

  I hate when he does that. Reads my mind. “Uh, yeah. But if you find him, let me figure out which cop to give it to.” It’d be nice to kill two birds with one stone and give the gift to a cop who was working on the case—and hopefully one I’d pissed off in the past. The group I’d pissed off was fairly large, so the odds that one of them was involved in the case were pretty good.

  As I turned to go back to my office, Alex said, “Can they lock this guy up?”

  “The website owner?” Alex nodded. “Depends on whether they can prove he had reason to know the photos were posted without Alicia’s consent. But Roan should definitely get charged for it. Putting up that bullshit rape fantasy ‘ad’ shows it was all about revenge.”

  “How much time will he get? Assuming he doesn’t get tagged for murder.”

  I sighed. “Not much. Six months and a fine.”

  Alex shook his head. “That’s pathetic.”

  “It really is. If it were up to me, the asshole would get locked up for a few years. Get a chance to explore rape fantasies in prison.”

  Alex snorted. “Hell, I’d be in favor of waterboarding.”

  I wholeheartedly agreed.

  Just three days later, our wishes came true—and then some. I came in to work Monday morning and found Michy watching the television in my office.