Guilt By Degrees

25

All that running and jumping had warmed me up, and as I moved toward Bailey’s desk, I had to unwrap the muffler. The room was relatively quiet, with just a few detectives in shirtsleeves working the phones.

“Let the games begin,” I announced as I neared Bailey’s desk.

“Here,” she said, pulling a chair over, “have a seat.”

I sat down and unbuttoned my overcoat. Bailey flexed her fingers and began to type. It took no more than five seconds before the screen filled with listings. She whistled softly, then frowned to herself.

“Hey, wait a minute…,” she said, then stopped. For the next few minutes, she clicked and scrolled in silence.

Finally I could take no more.

“What?” I asked, agitated. “What?”

But Bailey held up a hand and continued to stare at the screen. From my angle, I couldn’t see well enough to read it myself. I was about to shove her out of the way when at last she spoke.

“Sorry,” she said. “Here.” She turned the monitor toward me and clicked on a link, and an article came up.

I read the headline: “Brother of Murdered Cop Takes Case to Feds.” What the…?

I read on:

Simon Bayer, brother of murdered Glendale police officer Zack Bayer, has declared his intention to take the case involving his brother’s murder to federal authorities for filing. A jury acquitted the victim’s wife, Lilah Bayer, in the state trial just two months ago, and the foreman stated it was the belief of most jurors that she was actually innocent: “It wasn’t just that we thought she probably did it but they couldn’t prove it. We really thought she was just plain innocent.” Simon Bayer vehemently disagreed. “That jury got it all wrong,” he fumed. “They fell for a pretty face and a slick defense attorney. I will not rest until I get my brother the justice he deserves.”

There was more, but Bailey stopped me. “If I remember right, Zack Bayer was kind of a rising star in the department. He married this looker who was a young associate in one of those white-shoe law firms. They found Zack’s body in the basement of his home. He’d been chopped up with an ax.”

It was an unusually grisly killing style for any kind of female, except maybe a meth head. This woman didn’t sound like one. “They got the murder weapon?” I asked.

Bailey nodded.

“Any prints or blood evidence?” I asked.

She stared off and knitted her brows. “We didn’t handle the case, and it’s been a few years, so I don’t have the details. I just remember hearing that the jury acquitted her after about five minutes of deliberation. The Feds never did take the case.”

“So Simon didn’t get his wish.”

Bailey shook her head.

I turned back to the computer and continued scrolling through the article. When I got to the end of the story, I hit a link that took me to the first published column. And came to a full stop. I stared at the image on the screen, a ripple of tension crackling up my spine. I barely breathed as awareness of the possible discovery-and its implications-spread through me. How could this be? I was so intent that I lost all sense of place and time. Then Bailey’s agitated voice brought me crashing back to earth.

“Knight? Hey! Speak up, damn it! What’s going on?”

I held my hand up. “Give me a second,” I whispered as I looked up at the ceiling and concentrated on the memory that’d been conjured by the image on the screen. After a few more moments, I nodded to myself. I turned the monitor so Bailey could see it.

“Check this out,” I said.

It was a shot of Lilah taken in court. She was sitting at counsel table. Though the photo was grainy and she was partially hidden by the shoulder of her lawyer, we could still get an overall sense of her appearance. Just enough to make the connection.

“Her hair’s a lot shorter here,” I said, gesturing to the screen.

“I’ll be dipped,” Bailey said, staring at the screen. “She’s the woman in the video-”

I was relieved that Bailey’d confirmed my gut reaction. “Can’t say for sure yet, we can’t tell her height or weight from this photo.”

“But we can nail this one down easy.”

That was certainly true. There’d be a number of people who’d be able to tell us whether the woman in the video was Lilah.

“If it was Lilah in the video-,” I began.

“Simon’s sister-in-law,” Bailey said pointedly.

“Then Simon died trying to get to her.”

“Looks that way,” Bailey agreed. “But how did he know he’d find her right there, right then?”

Bailey and I exchanged a look as the question hung in the air between us. I again envisioned the surveillance footage of the stabbing. “The video showed that she’d turned away by the time Simon went down. There’s no way she could’ve killed him.”

“But someone who was with her might have,” Bailey pointed out.

“Or, at the very least, she had to have seen something,” I added. “She might be our best witness.”

“One way or another, we need to find her…”

And I had an idea where we might get not only a lead on her whereabouts but some answers as to how she and Simon wound up just inches apart within seconds of Simon’s stabbing.

“We’re going to have to get into Zack’s murder,” I said.

Bailey nodded. She sat back and folded her arms, her expression sardonic. “Guess this means we’ll be staying on the case.”

She was right, of course. Now that the victim was “somebody,” it was a Special Trials case. I didn’t know whether to rejoice or break something.