Breakdown

Chapter 42

No need for the big dig to go unnoticed by the neighbors. The stream of crypt and police vehicles brought them out, gawking and exchanging misinformation.

Milo said, “More foot traffic than this place has ever seen.”

I said, “Let’s have a block party.”

The onlookers were a mixed bunch of residents in expensive leisure clothes, uniformed domestics, and a motley group of dogs. A couple of canines got into altercations with each other, with cross words exchanged by their humans.

I said, “Peace in the canyon.”

As Milo and I prepared to walk through the gates, a hollow-cheeked woman wearing black velvet sweats and several pounds of gold and gems marched up to us. “I need to know what’s going on, Officers.”

Milo said, “We’re doing police work,” and walked away.

The woman said, “Well, he’s got an attitude. What’s his name?”

I said, “Masterson Earp,” and caught up just in time to slip through the closing gates.

The digging crew was Liz Wilkinson and six graduate students. Ben Haroyushi, in a pith helmet and khakis, was off to the side, photographing plants, snipping, bagging, tagging.

When he finished, he walked up to me. “Thanks for the opportunity, Alex. This’ll make for a great lecture.”

“Lethal horticulture?”

“A lot of horticulture is lethal but I never get to talk about it,” said Ben. “Seeing it all in one place, there’s an... aura.” He grinned. “Don’t quote me on that, too new-agey. But it’s hard to ignore, no?”

No use bringing in cadaver dogs. The scents from two graves in a limited area would satiate them in seconds.

Ground-penetrating radar brought up nothing. Neither did a visual inspection of the surface dirt.

Liz said, “If anything’s down there, it’s going to be deep. But we’ll start with surface exploration and take it slowly.”

Milo and I and a couple of uniforms stood around and worked our cellphones as the grad students began staking and gridding, then picked up their hand tools. Earning their stipends with sweat equity. But process doesn’t matter, outcome does, and after a while the futility of the exercise was obvious.

The initial three feet of earth contained no remains other than the skeletons of small animals — moles, gophers, a desiccated twig-like thing Liz I.D.’d as a shrew.

No bones at all in the next tier. Milo said, “That’s six feet under. Going deeper?”

“Let’s do another eighteen inches,” said Liz. “Just to make sure.”

As daylight began to dim and the students replenished with sports drinks, candy bars, and texting, she proclaimed the area “clean.”

I didn’t know what to feel about that.

Enid DePauw and J. Yarmuth Loach remained incommunicado in their jail cells, their lawyers reacting to denial of bail with pro forma outrage and making noises about suing for unlawful arrest. Neither attorney had been given anything but the basics on the arrest warrant. If they had been clued in, they might have sung another tune.

DOJ had confirmed a mother — daughter link between the skeleton buried beneath Imelda Soriano and Zelda Chase. The lab also firmly established the identities of Imelda Soriano and Alicia Santos, each fatally shot with bullets that matched the rifling marks of the .22 found in Enid DePauw’s S&W. Only one set of fingerprints on the weapon: hers.

Milo said, “She didn’t even bother to wipe it. Or to get rid of those documents on Zina and Zelda.”

I said, “Why would she think she’d need to?”

“Living in her walled world and getting away with it for so long? Guess so — oh, yeah, I called the Cleveland D.A.’s office. They’re not rushing to dig up Jim Smith but they’re not saying no.”

“Frosting on the cake for you, a hassle for them. Have you spoken to Ott?”

“Just before you got here. He said, Great, but he sounded bummed about not closing it years ago. Still, talking to him was one of the more pleasant conversations I’ve had recently. Had a second go with the families, along with Lorrie. The worst was Andrea Salton. You can imagine what she had to say about Rod being left off the indictment.”

He wiped his face. “Meanwhile, I’m feeling like an ass because I can’t come clean with her — God, I hate feeling like a bureaucrat.”

His phone rang. “Hi, John... that so? You’re kidding — well, yeah, that was an ad lib... fine, fine, glad it worked out. When?”

He hung up. “So much for keeping our cards close to the vest. Nguyen took it upon himself to give Loach’s lawyer the basics of the case. An hour later, he gets a call: J. Yarmie wants to chat.” He shrugged. “Ends, means, I guess.”

Buttoning his collar button, he tugged his tie toward his gullet, collected his papers, checked his sidearm, and stood to slip on his sport coat.

“Presentable?”

“Downright authoritative,” I said. “You’re heading over to the jail, now?”

“John is apparently operating on his own schedule. You can come, too. Being the APC and all.”

Milo stashed his gun in one of the lockers the men’s jail provided for such, and we both submitted to cursory searches by a pair of bored-looking sheriff’s deputies. Nguyen was waiting for us as we passed through the metal detector and the sally port, dapper in a midnight-blue suit with a stars-and-stripes pin on the lapel, a TV-blue shirt, a red power tie patterned with crossed muskets.

He bounced on his feet, punched air.

Milo said, “You’re looking happy, John.”

“Cracked the bastard, gentlemen. It was more than improv. It was deductive reasoning based on logic.”

I said, “Loach is the submissive and since there’s no hard evidence against him, you suggested a plea for accessory after the fact.”

Nguyen looked as if I’d eaten his birthday cake.

“Actually,” he said, drawing himself up, “I made no specific plea suggestions because that would be amateurish, Alex. What I did communicate was that my case was growing stronger by the moment due to unnamed biological evidence and that time was running out. His counsel began yammering about cooperation in return for a reduction to mistreating a corpse and violation of county burial rules.”

He raised a middle finger. “Good luck with that.”

His voice had risen with each sentence. Two deputies stationed on the other side of the port looked at each other.

Milo sidled closer to Nguyen and spoke softly. What he told Nguyen made the D.D.A. stiffen. “And you learned this when?”

“Couple of hours ago.”

“And you were planning to tell me—”

“Just about to share, John. You’ve been busy.”

“Well, yeah, that’s... okay, obviously that changes things,” said Nguyen. He played with his tie. “All right... good... though it really doesn’t change the overall tenor of my attack... is that everything I need to know?”

“It is, John. How’s Loach adjusting to jail?”

Nguyen pouted and ran a finger down his cheek. “Big boo-hoo story. Constant verbal assault and humiliation from the ruffians who are housed here, an upright senior citizen grows older by the minute. Which I can actually believe, he’s not exactly Crips/Bloods material. That’s why I put him in High-Power. Can you can imagine how long he’d last in general population? Though, according to my source at Lynwood, Madame DePauw seems to be adjusting quite well. She refused High-Power, insisted on joining the blue-scrubs gang, seems to be one of the popular girls.”

I said, “Life-coaching the young ’uns.”

“God help us,” said Nguyen. “Okay, let’s talk strategy on Mr. Wimp.”

I watched through a one-way mirror as Milo and Nguyen entered the room and sat opposite Loach and his counsel of record, a Yale-educated, Beverly Hills — based trial lawyer named Fahriz (“call me Flip”) Moftizadeh.

Milo had prepped by asking Earl Cohen about Moftizadeh and Enid Depauw’s defender, a Columbia-educated, Beverly Hills — based trial lawyer whose sterling career had overcome being named Siobhan Malarkey.

Cohen asked around and reported back quickly. “She’s smart but tends to go broad-stroke and miss details. He’s good with details, sometimes gets overconfident. Overall: A-minus. Your suspects could do worse.”

This morning, Moftizadeh was attired in a peak-lapel, charcoal-brown shadow-stripe bespoke suit with covered buttons, a stiff-collar shirt that made fresh snow look grimy, and a massively knotted gold jacquard necktie that drained some of the power out of Nguyen’s strip of silk.

His client sat hunched in too-large orange scrubs, the designated color for inmates judged too violent or vulnerable for inclusion in general population.

Incarceration had turned Loach’s complexion gray and grainy, added weight to his eyelids, stripped the shine from his hair, and rounded his shoulders. He picked at his cuticles and pumped a leg.

Not a hint of Cary Grant. At best, a low-level character actor, the type relegated to playing boozers and hangers-on.

Flip Moftizadeh said, “Good morning. How about we establish some ground rules... is it John?”

Nguyen said, “The rule is that your client answers questions truthfully and I decide his fate.”

Loach flinched. “If I might,” said Moftizadeh, airily, “you’ll file the charges but a jury will decide his fate, no? Now, you say there are biological factors that will—”

“I’ve got enough to indict Mr. Loach for first-degree homicide. I can go special circumstances given the cruelty factor.”

Moftizadeh blinked himself, then recovered with a patronizing half smile. “My client is not a cruel man, John.”

“We’ll see how a jury feels about that.”

“Well,” said Moftizadeh, “we’re here to exchange ideas. Let’s see how things develop.”

Loach gnawed his lip, tugged at his orange blouse, ran a finger behind one ear.

Nguyen looked at his watch. “If Mr. Loach has something to say, let’s hear it.”

“C’mon, John, no need for zero-sum. Folks can get along, even in this context.”

“Folks,” said Nguyen. “That sounds like a campaign speech.”

Loach burped. Grimaced in shame. Covered his mouth.

“Cuisine around here takes getting used to,” Nguyen told him. “You’ll have plenty of time to adjust.”

“John,” said Moftizadeh.

“Have we met?”

“Now we have.”

“I was just wondering, sounds like you knew me. Fah-reeeez.”

“Flip is fine.”

“Flippant isn’t, Fahriz. Are we doing this or not?”

Moftizadeh turned to his client and patted his hand. “You ready?”

Loach’s response was a low grunt.

Nguyen said, “Should I take that as a yes? I don’t speak inmate.”

“John,” said Moftizadeh, “I’m here to make your life easy. Mr. Loach has compiled a statement that I will read. You’ll like it.”

The statement, printed on Moftizadeh’s stationery, took four minutes to read and once you got past the lawyer’s metaphoric flourishes and overuse of adverbs, the essence was simple:

Enid DePauw had killed Zina Rutherford thirty years ago without J. Yarmuth Loach’s prior knowledge, telling Loach, then an employee of her husband, that her half sister had trespassed her property in a state of mania and attempted to attack her. Believing the assertion of self-defense, Loach had buried the body at the rear of Enid’s property.

Moftizadeh paused. “An error in judgment, not a real crime.”

Milo and Nguyen remained stony. Moftizadeh resumed the narrative.

Flash forward. Enid, long accustomed to relying on Loach, now her estate attorney, had phoned him in a panic, reporting that Zina’s daughter, “shockingly” mentally ill in a way that “eerily” evoked her mother, had trespassed in a “bizarrely, brazenly, and unprovokedly similar” manner and attempted to attack her without provocation. Loach had no trouble believing the assertions of mental illness because he recalled Zelda living with Enid and Averell as a child, the couple “doing its best to adequately and wisely parent” but giving up because “the child displayed rabidly unpredictable behavior — tantrums, bursts of anger, and disruptive defiance.”

Zelda’s death, Enid insisted, had been natural — a seizure, heart attack, or stroke, right in front of her. Probably as a result of “manically induced arousal.”

This time, Loach had advised a different approach: Instead of hiding the body, he suggested Enid phone in the episode as a stranger home invasion. Imagine his shock when mere days later, Enid called yet again, explaining that she’d been examining a gun she kept for personal protection and had “accidentally and fatally” shot her housekeeper.

Making matters worse, the housekeeper’s friend, another “Hispanic housecleaner,” had been visiting at the time and, in an “unwisely carried-out panic move,” Enid had shot her, too.

Milo said, “A single bullet in the back of each head is panic, let alone accidental?”

Moftizadeh was unfazed by the question. “My client only knows what he was told.”

“He saw the wounds?”

“He saw two bodies, the shock was overwhelming. I’d like to continue, John.”

Ignoring Milo, trying to put a wedge between cop and D.A., Nguyen got it and said, “Any questions Lieutenant Sturgis asks are important to me. And the two he just asked should be important to you, Fahriz.” He sniffed the air. “No riding stables around here, why am I picking up horseshit?”

“John.”

Nguyen said, “Anything else, Milo?”

“Nope, I’m ready for more entertainment.”

“Hmm,” said Moftizadeh. “Where was I...?”

He told the rest of the story. Yet again, Enid had turned to her trusted advisor and said advisor had made another “hastily concocted grievous error in judgment” burying “those women.” A mistake for which he realized he now needed to be held accountable.

Moftizadeh put down the paper.

Milo and Nguyen studied Loach. Loach studied nicks and stains on the tabletop.

“Gentlemen,” said Moftizadeh. “Do we have an understanding?”

Nguyen said, “You’re serious.”

“I couldn’t be more serious about my faith in the truthfulness of Mr. Loach’s accounts of his motives and actions. Particularly in view of the fact that the Chase woman died of natural—”

“She was poisoned, Fahriz.”

“You know that to be—”

“Without a doubt, Fahriz.”

“Well... I don’t see how that’s relevant—”

Nguyen took the typed statement, folded and placed it in a jacket pocket, and got up. “You brought us down here for this? Let’s go, Lieutenant.”

Milo stood. Moftizadeh said, “Whoa whoa whoa. Please allow me to explicate further, John.”

“If anyone explains, your client does.”

Moftizadeh said, “I am, essentially, my client. We’re trying to work with you. If that’s your additional evidence, an alleged poisoning that my client cannot have been expected to recognize as such, I have to say I’ve heard more compelling. Overconfidence can lead one astray, John.”

The criticism Cohen had heard leveled against him.

Nguyen patted his pocket. “If you’re confident about this load of crap, you’re in big trouble.”

Moftizadeh’s face hardened. “Over the phone I told you we’ve recontextualized. Are you willing to listen or not?”

“If Mr. Loach has found his voice. I need to hear it from him.”

“I don’t see why that’s — all right, I’ll be flexible, John. And I’ll trust you to reciprocate at arraignment.”

Nguyen remained on his feet.

Moftizadeh nodded at Loach.

Loach said, “I was a fool. Believing her. She uses me, always has. Given the issue, obviously she was at fault—”

“What issue is that?” said Nguyen.

“The... the chemical agent.”

“Let’s just call it poison,” said Nguyen. “Colchicine. You’ve heard of it, right?”

“I’m not a horticulturist,” said Loach. “Be that as it may, I realize in retrospect that the other two were deliberate.”

“The other two what?” said Milo.

“The domestics.”

“They have names,” said Nguyen. “Alicia Santos, Imelda Soriano.”

“I never knew their names,” said Loach. “The disturbed woman I never saw. It’s a terrible thing. That Enid did. When she told me, my heart sank.”

He ran hands along his temple. “She must be a radically different person from the one I thought I knew. So disillusioning. At my age, to be such a gullible fool.”

Moftizadeh patted his hand again. “We’ll get through this.” To Nguyen: “My client is prepared to testify fully against Mrs. DePauw in return for consideration—”

“Not with that story,” said Nguyen.

“It’s the story he was told, John. It formed his opinion set. Does it lose credibility when one steps back contextually? Of course. But we’re talking a senior citizen. Things slow down. It takes a while to put things into place.”

That sounded like the seeds of a diminished capacity defense. No doubt there’d be a selection of experts willing to certify Loach was suffering from dementia.

Moftizadeh leaned forward. “Besides, the very ludicrousness of Mrs. DePauw’s story can play to both our benefits.”

“We’re on the same team now?”

“Aren’t we, John? You want to punish a calculatedly, egregiously cruel murderess — if there was ever a case for special circumstances it’s her. So does Mr. Loach. He’s shattered by the deception she put him through and wants to make things right.”

“He’s a victim.”

“Isn’t he, John? Which isn’t to say he’s not culpable. Or rueful.”

“Rueful,” said Nguyen. “Even by his account Imelda Soriano was cold-blooded murder. He put her in a shallow grave and hightailed it to Rome for a vacation.”

“Not a vacation,” said Loach. “We needed to decompress.”

“We,” said Milo.

Moftizadeh said, “There were two of them traveling. A collective pronoun is in order.”

Nguyen said, “How lawyerly, Fahriz. When are you running for Congress?”

Loach said, “What I meant was, I needed to keep an eye on her.” Quick glance at his lawyer. “It’s confusing, I’ve been feeling more and more confused... the memory.”

Nguyen said, “We’ve got an EEG coming, Fahriz? Don’t bother answering, I couldn’t care less. You can dim cap to your heart’s content. We’re talking three murders, you think a jury’s going to view your client as kindly Uncle Joe? At the absolute minimum, we’re talking accessory after and I’m not convinced of even that. In fact, nothing I’ve heard changes my mind about Murder One.”

Loach lowered his face.

Moftizadeh said, “I understand where you’re coming from, John, but I sincerely believe that would be a misstep on your part. You know what happens with a pair of defendants — particularly defendants able to arouse sympathy. She’ll blame him, we’ll blame her, the jury will grow confused and you’ll experience dilution of verdict across the board. If there was a poisoning, she did it. She pulled that trigger. Twice. Are you really willing to see her skate on manslaughter in order to crucify my client?”

Nguyen headed for the door, Milo following.

Moftizadeh said, “This isn’t right, look at objective elements here, John. Given the lack of physical evidence against my client, Murder One is highly unlikely. He killed no one, he wielded a shovel. A man with no criminal past and unlikely to have a criminal future. A man whose charitable contributions to inner-city—”

Nguyen waved him silent. “Forget about abusing a corpse. The least I’m willing to consider is accessory before the fact.”

“But that wouldn’t be accurate, John. He really was informed after.”

“That’s his story.”

“It’s a true story.”

Nguyen pulled the statement out of his pocket and scanned. “No way will he avoid a serious charge on Imelda Soriano. Even if I believe that he swallowed DePauw’s ludicrous story and I don’t, even by his account he was aware Soriano was cold-blooded homicide — and don’t insult my intelligence with that panic crap. Santos was shot because she had incriminating information about the murder of Zelda Chase and Soriano was shot because she was seen speaking to Santos. This is witness elimination, pure and simple, and that’s special circumstances.”

J. Yarmuth Loach said, “I can tell you something.”

Moftizadeh said, “Hold on—”

“I can tell you why. The first domestic was... what happened to her. She knew Zelda didn’t fall over, outside. Enid had locked her in the house for two days. Kept her in the cellar. Fed her soup. The domestic wasn’t supposed to see it but she disobeyed Enid and went downstairs to sweep the steps and heard something and got a key.”

Milo said, “Soup.”

Loach nodded. “Canned vegetable soup. She... fortified it.”

“With?”

“Something from her garden,” said Loach. “She likes doing it. Devising her own pesticides.”

Nguyen and Milo sat back down. “If Mr. Loach is willing to write down what he just said, along with a statement specifying his awareness that Imelda Soriano was a premeditated homicide that he helped cover up, I’ll go with after the fact. Even on her.”

Moftizadeh said, “Appreciate that offer, John, but we really need more.”

“Once he’s convicted, if you petition for reduced sentence based on infirmity, I won’t challenge you. He could be out in a short time.”

Loach said, “I’ll take it.”

Moftizadeh said, “Yarmie—”

“I’ll take it. I can’t stay here.” As if ready to check out of an inferior hotel.

Nguyen said, “You have more stationery in your briefcase?”

“I do, John.”

“Get it out. Start composing, Mr. Loach.”

The handwritten addendum was examined and agreed upon. Two pages in Loach’s shaky hand, signed and dated.

Nguyen placed both sheets in his pocket.

Moftizadeh said, “In view of the reduced charges, let’s revisit the issue of bail. Give me something reasonable.”

“Reasonable being...”

“What Mr. Loach can actually pay. It’s in your best interests, John. He’ll be of far greater utility to you once he’s out of this terrible environment.”

John Nguyen smiled. “I could go with that logic if it was only three victims, Fahriz.”

“Pardon?” said Moftizadeh.

“Have I said something confusing? We’ve got your client’s story on three murders but there’s a fourth.”

“I don’t under—”

“Three plus one equals four, Fahriz.”

Moftizadeh turned to Loach. Loach’s eyes bugged.

“What the hell’s going on, John?”

Nguyen said, “Fresh evidence. Out-of-the-oven evidence. Fill them in, Lieutenant.”

Milo said, “A man named Roderick Salton — your client’s assistant — was murdered by poisoning prior to the other three homicides. That crime took place nowhere near Mrs. DePauw’s property and, in fact, Mrs. DePauw was out of town. Unlike Mr. Loach who, on the day in question, used his corporate credit card to pay for lunch at the Water Garden restaurant. Food for two, wine for one. Which makes sense because Mr. Salton was a Mormon.”

“That’s an assumption—”

“Restaurant staff identify Mr. Loach and Mr. Salton as dining together that day. One server describes the atmosphere as shifting from friendly at the beginning of the meal to tense by the end. Given Mrs. DePauw’s proclivity for poison, we checked her whereabouts and she was at the Grand Hyatt in Lake Tahoe. She flew in privately the previous night, returned two days later to L.A. by commercial jet.”

Loach blurted, “Of course she was gone. She went there for an alibi!”

Nguyen said, “That was the plan the two of you cooked up?”

“I—”

Moftizadeh barked, “Quiet, Yarmie!”

Loach buried his head in his arms and began mewling.

No sympathy from his lawyer, just morbid fascination.

Milo said, “I’m sure Mr. Loach is correct. Mrs. DePauw went to Tahoe to establish an alibi after she furnished Mr. Loach with a toxic substance from her garden called aconitum. Deadly stuff, Mr. Loach slipped it into Mr. Salton’s food. By the end of the day, Mr. Salton was dead, his body dumped after dark near the courthouse on Hill and Washington.”

Nguyen said, “A neighborhood and a facility that Mr. Loach knew well, as he’d filed papers there on behalf of Mrs. DePauw on various real estate disputes.”

Moftizadeh’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. “Without admitting acceptance of this... tale, what possible motive would my client have to kill this Salting person? And what evidence do you have that remotely supports such a fanciful—”

“Sal-ton,” said Milo, spelling it. “The motive was similar to Soriano and Santos. Mr. Salton knew too much. But unlike Soriano and Santos, he had the ability to do something about it.”

“How in the world—”

“Hear me out, Counselor. We know for a fact that Zelda Chase entered Mr. Loach’s office and made statements about Mr. Loach killing her mother years ago.”

Nguyen said, “Which was taken for psychotic ranting but was obviously true.”

“That,” said Moftizadeh, “is categorically false. We just—”

“You spun a yarn,” said Nguyen. “We’ve got it on paper.”

“This is absolutely—”

Milo said, “What Zelda Chase told Roderick Salton sparked his curiosity enough for him to look into her claims. We have his fingerprints on documents obtained from Mr. Loach’s files on Mrs. DePauw. Specifically, papers pertaining to Zelda Chase. Being a moral person, Mr. Salton raised the issue with Mr. Loach. Being an immoral person, Mr. Loach suggested they discuss it over lunch and contacted Mrs. DePauw. Who did her Bad Chef bit.”

“The rest,” said Nguyen, “was history for poor Mr. Salton. Nasty death, he suffered. So whatever happens on Chase, Soriano, and Santos, your client’s going down on Salton. With special circumstances.”

“Ridiculous,” said Moftizadeh, regarding his mute, hunched client with horror. “Tell them, so, Yarm. This is a yarn, never happened.”

J. Yarmuth Loach sat up slowly. Looked at each of us. Belched again.

Then he vomited all over the table.