Guardian of Lies

TWENTY-TWO

If the study of crime is a science, its first rule of physics is the law of opportunity. Every cop on the beat will do two things first: nail down the time frame for the crime, and then cast his net over the universe of possible suspects and start trolling for calendars.

If you kept your appointments, and your social agenda for the evening didn’t include sticking knives in Emerson Pike, they would cross your name off the list.

When they are done, the police will zero in on the names that are left, concentrating on people like me who don’t have an alibi for the night in question. It may not be rocket science, but it works.

I have scoured my calendars, the one at work as well as my personal Outlook file from my smartphone, the cellular I carry on my belt. There are no entries on either for the night that Pike was killed, nothing but blank space. I have gone so far as to check my phone records to see if I might have made calls from the house or my cell phone during the period that the police believe the crimes were committed, a rough ninety-minute time frame between nine and ten thirty. I am left to conclude that after hours I lead a dull life. I could find nothing.

Some people would at least slap their computers around, send an e-mail to a friend. Generally I don’t even do that. If I’m not prepping for a case, I’m reading or watching a movie on cable. With my daughter, Sarah, away at college, widowed and living alone as I do, unless a nosy neighbor peeked at me through a window, I have no way of proving where I was that night.

“You worry too much,” Harry tells me.

This afternoon I am driving over the bay, on the bridge from Coronado to the courthouse downtown, Harry in the passenger seat. We have an order-shortening time, allowing us an early hearing on a Brady motion. We are going after Katia’s photographs. True to his word, Templeton has filed no objection.

“You don’t think it’s strange the cops never came back and asked me what I was doing that night, where I was at the time of the murders?”

“Cops screw up,” he says. “It’s the order of the universe.” According to Harry, “They probably just forgot. They talked to you once. Maybe they just didn’t go back and look at their notes, figured they had everything they needed. Don’t go kicking a sleeping dog,” he tells me.

“This particular dog is four feet tall and the last time I looked he wasn’t sleeping. Templeton didn’t forget. If homicide didn’t come back and ask me for an alibi, it’s because the Dwarf told them not to.”

“And why would he do that?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re getting paranoid,” says Harry.

“Then what was all that chatter from Templeton about the stream of men following Katia around, the fact that she was a man magnet, and oh, by the way, isn’t that how you met her?”

“That’s just the Dwarf jerking you around. He’s trying to get under your skin,” says Harry.

“Then you can tell him he’s succeeded.”

“If you’re that worried, check your credit card statements, your ATM card. Chances are, if you went anywhere that night you might have used plastic to buy something. That’ll put you someplace other than Del Mar. We can send a copy of the receipt to Templeton and you can start sleeping again at night.”

I have already done this and come up empty. I don’t tell Harry because I have a bigger problem.

“Forget about it,” he says. “I mean, there’s no reason to worry, right?”

I look over at Harry in the passenger seat. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

“What I mean to say is, you know you didn’t do anything.”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth. You tell me you didn’t do anything. You say you talked to her once in the grocery store, and I believe you. That’s the end of it. Let’s just get this thing done. Get the photos, see what’s in them, and maybe we can make this whole mess go away. Besides, if you ask me, Templeton’s whole theory of a co-conspirator is screwy. You can take every one of his facts, turn them around, and explain them away based on the killer coming in through the back door as Katia went out through the garage.”

“I’d agree with you except for one thing. Juries don’t like scenarios that hang on good fortune and serendipity. Templeton’s theory that two people did it would be much easier to sell.”

Harry says nothing. Silence in the car for a moment. “And so you’re thinking this is especially true if the second person is Katia’s own lawyer.”

“We’ve been working together for too long. You’re now doing mind melds,” I tell him. “Let me ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“What would you say if I told you I met up with Katia more than one time before the murders?” I am concentrating on the road, but as I say it I can tell that Harry gets whiplash turning his head to look at me.

“What are you saying?”

“That I saw her one other time before Pike was murdered.”

“Aw, shit,” says Harry.

“I know. Don’t say it. I didn’t tell the cops. One of the stupider things I’ve ever done.”

“This is like a bad dream,” he says.

I glance over and Harry is bug eyed, staring out at the road as if in a trance.

“Nothing happened,” I say. “It was in the afternoon, about a week before the murders. She called me at the office, said she was going to be in Coronado later that day. She said her friend had some business to conduct and she was going to be window-shopping. She wanted to know if I could get together with her for a drink. I checked my calendar. I had nothing up, so I told her sure, why not? We met at the Brigantine, out in front of the office, had two drinks. The conversation lasted maybe forty minutes, that was it. She left and I went home.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police?”

“They didn’t ask for an alibi, so I figured they weren’t looking for an accomplice, they were just trolling for information. They wanted to know if I was representing her, and if there was no lawyer-client relationship to get in the way, they wanted to know how I met her and what we talked about. What could I say? There was no lawyer-client relationship when we met. You can be sure they’d already talked to Katia and they knew that. I told them about the first meeting, how she got my card, and that was it. They asked me if I’d talked to her or seen her since, and I said no.”

Harry gives me one of his stern looks.

“You don’t have to say it, I was stupid. I felt sorry for her, in the country all alone. I knew she wasn’t happy. When we had drinks at the Brigantine, she told me she wanted to go back to Costa Rica but the guy she was living with wouldn’t let her go. I told her to call the Costa Rican consulate or the police and they’d find a way to get her home. I told her if she had problems with them to call me and I’d wade in. If I told the homicide detectives this, it would have been all they needed to hang her. They would immediately assume she’d found another way to get free and that she willingly turned her back on the simple legal recourse that was available to her. So I didn’t tell them. So go ahead and shoot me,” I tell Harry.

“Find me a gun,” he says.

“I figured it was none of their business. If they were looking for evidence to bury her, they’d have to find it someplace else.”

We rumble over the freeway for a couple of minutes in silence as Harry absorbs all of this, his head in his hand as his elbow rests against the lower sill of the window on the passenger side.

“Katia didn’t have a cell phone,” says Harry. “She had to take Pike’s to call the taxi when she escaped from the house. That means there’s a good chance that when she called you to set up drinks that afternoon, it was from the landline at Pike’s house.”

“And Templeton would have the phone records,” I say. “I know that now. It’s why he’s breathing down my neck. He knows somebody at the house called the law office just a few days before the murders. He knows you didn’t know her. We’d never done any legal work for Pike, so he wouldn’t be calling us. So it had to be Katia who was calling and it had to be me on the other end, because he knew we’d already met.”

“How did you pay for the drinks at the Brigantine?” says Harry.

“Three guesses. First two don’t count,” I tell him.

“Credit card.”

“Yep. You can bet that Templeton’s had his investigators visiting every place I’ve spent money since I met her, flashing photographs of Katia and me and asking the help if they ever saw us together.”

“So the cops would have already been to the Brigantine talking to the bartender and the waitresses,” says Harry.

“Do you want to go over and ask them?” I say.

“No.”

It entered my mind like an icicle two nights ago as I lay in bed and thought about everything Templeton had said during our meeting. He believes I have taken Katia’s case for one reason, so that I can control her, keep the police away, and keep her quiet. Once she is convicted, who is going to believe her? His invitation across the desk to Harry to talk to his client was Templeton’s effort to save her. He’s not sure about Harry, but he has reason to believe that I’m the devil.

He has no doubt already seen my credit card statements and phone records. He could do that without my knowledge. Unless I’m wrong, he won’t wait long to get his hands on my calendar. Why he is waiting, I’m not sure.