I was coming up on another brick wall. The problem was that if everything was legit, then there would be a paper trail. There would be a way of getting to the bottom of it just by subpoenaing documents and subpoenaing the person who formed the LLC. But if the person who formed the LLC was a black box, a person who just received cash from the ultimate individual who financed the corporation, I could subpoena him, but I could never guarantee that he would actually be forthright to me about who was ultimately behind it. In the state of California, anonymous LLCs were legal and common, and finding out who was behind these corporations was sometimes impossible.
Nevertheless, it was something that I was going to have to at least attempt to discover.
I was going to have to go ahead and see Mr. McDaniel and see if he could tell me anything at all about who owned the LLC that was the ultimate financier of the Go Fund Me page.
Some quick research of Devon McDaniel told me that he was an attorney whose office was, coincidentally, in the same building where I opened up my new office. I was able to get in touch with his assistant, and she penciled me in for later on that day.
I looked at the kids. “I’m going to go back to the office. My new office. Now, you girls can come along, or I can go ahead and drop you off at the day camp like I talked about earlier. Arabella, you seem like you were getting bored earlier, so maybe you’ll be willing to go ahead and go to the camp?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s pretty lame going along with you. Maybe you should become a prosecutor.” She rubbed her hands together. “They always seem like they have a very exciting job.”
“This is what lawyering is. It’s slow, sometimes painful, work. It’s grinding away. Sometimes there are problems with finding out who is behind the scenes, like with that Chris guy. And I think that’s going to be an issue here, too. I have a feeling that I won’t easily be able to find out who is behind that Go Fund Me. The only thing that I can tell you for sure is that everybody who’s involved with this case are going to great lengths to conceal their identities. I have a feeling that the person who’s involved in organizing the Go Fund Me page is going to be different from the person who paid off Chris to write those bad messages in Carter’s name on the Reddit site. Seems to me that those two people have very different goals in the situation. But maybe not. They might be the same person.”
Arabella nodded her head. I had a feeling that she knew what I was talking about, even if she appeared to be “so over” this entire situation. She looked at her nails. “I see. The person who hired Chris probably at least knows who killed Addison Wentworth. And the person who set up the Go Fund Me page is somebody who’s feeling guilty about what they did, whatever it is they did. If you ask me, it’s probably the same person.”
I really thought about it, trying to game it out. It didn’t make sense to me that the killer, whoever that was, would be the one who would open up the Go Fund Me page. The killer went to great lengths to hire Chris to spoof Carter’s Reddit account and post incendiary messages about Addison on that account, and possibly was able to plant one of Carter’s hairs at the crime scene. Why would that same person make sure that Carter had a good defense?
“So you’re saying that the person who murdered Addison got to feeling guilty about Carter being wrongly accused, so they decided to go ahead and make sure he got an excellent defense?”
Arabella shrugged. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but I watched enough of those shows on TV to know that a lot of times the killer wants to get caught. They’ll do something to make sure that they end up getting busted for what they did. Deep down, they feel so guilty about doing what they did, they do all kinds of stuff that means that they get nailed. So yeah, the person who killed Addison probably would do something like that – make sure that Carter gets a good enough defense that he has a chance to be found innocent.”
I was almost frightened about how smart this kid was. I knew that if I had her IQ tested, she would probably be in the genius range. No other 14-year-old would be able to get to the crux of a situation like this.
At the same time, I was dubious about her theory. What she said was absolutely correct – a lot of times, criminals feel so guilty that they leave clues behind, albeit unconsciously, because they really do desire to get caught. It’s their conscience bubbling up and informing their actions. But this was a different thing – this was more of a premeditated action. Going through all the trouble to form an LLC to open a Go Fund Me account and depositing $5 million into it – these were not the unconscious actions of a guilty mind. It was something else.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Or maybe I was overthinking this whole thing. Perhaps the person who put together the LLC and the Go Fund Me did so out of the sheer generosity of his or her heart.
And again, it was entirely possible that the person who put together the Go Fund Me wasn’t totally innocent, even if that person wasn’t ultimately responsible for the murder. He or she probably knew who was ultimately responsible for the murder, and maybe he or she was afraid of the actual culprit. Yet, they couldn’t necessarily see an innocent kid go down for a crime that this person knew was committed by somebody else. So they did what they could to make sure that Carter did not get convicted.
Of course, Grey’s firm was more than willing to take the case on pro bono, so he was going to be a good defense, no matter what. But, without money, my client would still be in jail. He would never have been able to make bail.
In other words, somebody really wanted to make sure that Carter didn’t spend a day in jail.
That was probably the biggest mystery of all for me to solve.
Chapter 19
Arabella and Luna finally agreed to go to the day camp. “I hate it,” Arabella said as I got her into the car. “I feel like such a baby.”
I sighed. I had two choices, at least until the girls went back to school, and probably, even after they went back to school, these two choices were going to be the same. Choice number one, I was going to have to kick out my mother. That wasn’t a bad idea, considering the fact that I couldn’t trust her to not have pot around the house. She was also going to always be entertaining friends at the house.
I knew that she was in a dilemma. The dilemma of her own making, to be sure, but what could I do? With her shoddy credit, her record of evictions, combined with the fact that she was usually living paycheck to paycheck, with no savings whatsoever, no decent apartment complex would allow her in. I could cosign for her, but I knew what that would mean – I would be on the hook for probably thousands of dollars of back rent by the time she left the place.
My second choice would be to simply make sure that I had a nanny in place to watch the girls. I was probably going to even get a nanny to watch the girls after school. No way would I be able to trust Arabella home with my mom.
As intelligent as Arabella was, I knew that she had to understand the reason why I was going to have supervision for her.
In fact, she started up a conversation in the car on the way over to the day camp that told me that she understood exactly what was going on. “I was only joking last night, when I said that your mom was going to have to share her pot with me. I don’t actually smoke. I’ve tried it, I won’t lie. But I don’t like the way it makes me feel. I just get too zoned out.”
Arabella sat next to me in the SUV, and I looked into the rear view mirror at Luna. I caught her eye, and, as Arabella was talking about how she doesn’t smoke pot, I saw Luna shake her head.
That told me everything that I needed to know.
“Okay then,” I said. “So you don’t smoke pot. I don’t want you to get started with it, so that’s the reason why you’re going to have to have supervision at the house. Besides, you told me that you’re a little sneak. You run away. I’m going to have to have somebody to keep an eye on you.”
She pointed at Luna. “You’re right. If it was just me, ain’t no way I’m staying around. I would be living on the st
reets before I let anybody try to control me. But I’m never gonna be leaving my little sister, and I know that she can’t survive on the streets. Me, I can survive on the streets. But having to drag around an eight-year-old – that’s a nonstarter. I’m not gonna do it to her. So I can tell you that you never have to fear that I will actually run away. So you really don’t have to have somebody to supervise me.”
I took a deep breath. “I am going to hire some supervision for you. And that’s the end of the story.”
She crossed her arms, looked out the window, and didn’t say another word.
I dropped the kids off, and headed up to my office. My appointment with Devon McDaniel was scheduled for 3 o’clock, so I had a couple of hours to take some measurements in my new office, and maybe go and see if I could meet the other people in the suite.
When I got to the suite, I ran right into Declan. He was standing outside in the lobby, talking to Olivia, when I walked in. He smiled at me, showing his dimples, and my heart did little flip-flops.
“Hey, Emerson, right?” he asked me, pointing to me and smiling.
I nodded my head, feeling tongue-tied again. “Yeah,” I finally managed to spit out. “Uh, I have an appointment on the 30th floor at 3, so I decided to go ahead and come in and take some measurements of my office so that I can get some furniture in there.”
“I actually don’t have anything going on right now, so why don’t I help you with that? I can hold one end of your measuring tape.”
Feeling flustered, I simply nodded my head and Declan followed me into the office.
“Oh, you have the office with the good view,” he said, looking out my wall of windows onto the city below. In the distance was the Hollywood sign and the Capitol Records building, two icons that told all visitors that they had entered Los Angeles. He turned to me, his cup of coffee in his hand. I noticed that he had on a dress shirt with no tie and that his pants showed the slightest curve of his rear-end, which seemed to be a very nice one indeed. “Now, let’s get to work,” he said. “Do you have a piece of paper and a pen, so that we can record all the measurements?”
“I do,” I said, showing him my pad of paper and pen. “And I put the measurements on my phone, since I tend to lose papers a lot.”
He raised his eyebrows. “If you lose papers a lot, you better get a good assistant,” he said. Then he pointed to a door. “There’s a small office that connects with this one. I’m sure that you knew that, though.”
“I did know that,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons why I chose this office. I had an assistant, Sarah, at my last law office, and she wants to come here and work for me. So, I guess I’m going to poach her from that firm, like I poached Carter Dixon from them. Guess my old firm is going to be suing me up the yin-yang soon.”
Declan nodded his head. “Yeah, but you know that California doesn’t go for those bullshit employer contracts that restrict movement, though. They’re going to have a tough time winning in court.” He sat on the ledge and raised his cup of coffee to his lips as he stared at me with those piercing blue eyes.
“So, how did you end up with Carter Dixon as your client?” he asked me. “Every lawyer in town was wanting to get a piece of that action. That trial is going to be the biggest thing to hit this town since the slow-speed chase.” He was referring, of course, to OJ Simpson slowly driving down the highway with the cops on his butt, waiting to arrest him. That chase, and the trial that followed, defined this town for a little while. It definitively defined our legal justice system ever since.
I felt uncomfortable telling Declan the story, but found it spilling out, anyhow. “Well, see, I was working for one of the biggest white-shoe firms in town. O’Donnell and Laurie,” I explained. “And they were the ones who landed the case. The managing partner there, Grey Jenkins, is a very aggressive guy who has some major contacts down at the jail. He was able to get to the kid first. He assigned the case to me, and, on the day that I went to see Carter in jail, I was fired.”
Declan nodded his head. “Fired. That’s rough. What did you do?”
I took a deep breath. “I told off one of their biggest clients. He was treating me like dirt and it just triggered me. I got the phone call the day that I told off that bastard, er, client. My firing came after I saw Carter, and Carter decided to stay on with me.”
Declan looked perplexed. “How did that kid manage to afford a firm like O’Donnell and Laurie?” he asked. “You guys must bill at $1,000 an hour or more. I know that firm. It pretty much just represents rich bastards, whose hands are caught in the cookie jar, and politicians. Usually they’re one and the same. I got a look at that kid. He doesn’t look like he can afford that firm’s fee.”
“They bill at $1,500 an hour, and no way Carter could afford that. They were going to take him pro bono. That meant that I didn’t think that I could take his case, because I certainly can’t afford to take a major case like that pro bono as well. But, somehow, someway, a Go Fund Me was opened up in Carter’s name and the organizer started the page off with a $5 million donation.”
Declan raised an eyebrow. “Come again?” He shook his head. “Who would do something like that?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. All that I know is that an LLC opened up the Go Fund Me account, and the only name that I know from that LLC is a guy by the name of Devon McDaniel. I guess that he works for a law firm in this building that specializes in forming LLCs for people who wish to remain anonymous. I don’t think that Devon is going to just tell me who is the actual owner of this LLC, but I figure that it’s worth a try. He might be able to reveal it in a subpoena, if I can convince a judge to allow me to issue one. That’s a long-shot, though. I’m going to have to show why this LLC is pertinent and relevant to this case, and, frankly, I don’t know the answer to that. I have my theories, but nothing concrete.”
“Yeah,” Declan said. “Good luck with finding out the owner of that LLC. It’s sometimes literally impossible to find out that information, especially here in California. As you probably know, California allows LLC owners to remain secret. You’re going to have to have good cause to subpoena that guy to testify, and you’re not going to be able to depose him because California doesn’t allow depositions in criminal cases unless you can show that the witness won’t be able to appear at trial. Sounds like a long-shot that you’re going to be able to find out that information before you try your case.”
That was one of the stupidest rules, I thought - you can’t depose a witness in a California criminal case unless you could show the judge that the witness will be unavailable at trial or is likely to leave the state before trial. Of course, that meant that if I wanted to subpoena this guy, as Declan said, I was going to have to wait until trial. That was going to be too late to help me out in this case. So, he was going to have to tell me voluntarily who the owner was of that LLC, or I was going to reach yet another dead end.
I had a feeling that it was going to be the latter. This guy wasn’t just going to give up his client. If he did, then all the other rich guys and ladies who hired him to keep their activities secret and hidden behind a shell company wouldn’t hire him anymore. I would imagine that his firm wouldn’t be too happy about that.
“I know,” I said. “It’s frustrating. I had another issue with this computer hacker who spoofed my client and wrote threatening messages about Addison and made it look like my client was posting those messages on his Reddit account. I couldn’t find out who hired him, either. He told me that he got the assignment on a burner phone and the money came into one of his many burner accounts.”
“What kind of messages did that hacker post on your client’s account?”
I opened up Carter’s Reddit account and showed Declan the messages. Some of them were dated from before the murder, but I knew that a good hacker would have the ability to back-date messages to make it look as if the messages came from a different time than when they were actually posted.
The first mess
age was relatively tame:
Addison Wentworth is a worthless cunt. She’s supposed to be some A-List bitch, but she ain’t shit. I’d like to put my dick in her face and give her the best facial she’s ever had. You know that’s next for her, anyways. She’s gonna be doing porno soon, the desperate whore. Some john is going to be gizzing all over her face on screen. I’ll do it for free.
That message was dated August 18. The date that Addison went missing was August 21.
There were several more messages like that one - just dirty fantasies and lots of name-calling. It looked as if Carter had an unhealthy obsession with Addison. I had to keep in mind that Carter didn’t write these messages - that Chris Warford kid wrote all of them.
Then, on August 21:
Man, I want to kill that bitch Addison Wentworth. I just saw one of her movies, and she was calling my name. Carter Dixon, come fuck me, she said. Yeah, man, I’ll fuck you. I’ll fuck you hard, so hard my dick will go in your ass and come out your mouth. That way, you’ll be blowing me while I’m ass-fucking you, you worthless piece of shit. Then, after I get through fucking you, Imma take my knife and slit your fucking throat. Imma gut you just like the stinking pig that you are. Then Imma take my knife with your blood on it and slice open your pussy and mix my cum with your blood. That’s what Imma do to you, you worthless piece of shit.
Declan raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Well, I can already see your defense, based on this particular message. It’s obvious that this message had to have been created after the murder and planted. Otherwise, I would think that the cops would have been knocking on your client’s door the second this thing was posted.”
I nodded my head. “That’s what I thought, too. That was my first thought when I read this message. But, then again, she went missing later on that day. The cops probably didn’t even know about this message until after my client was arrested. I don’t think that they’re that diligent about policing these sites. Maybe somebody would have reported him to the authorities, if he did write this message on August 21, which he didn’t, but, again, I just don’t think that the cops would be that quick to question him about it. But, you’re right. I’m going to have to keep it in my back pocket and try to use it to show reasonable doubt.”
Dark Justice Page 14
