Guilt By Degrees

27

With no avenue to pursue until I sat down with the prosecutor or the IO on Zack’s murder, I had a lot of anxious time to fill. On Saturday, I saw Graden for a casual dinner at our favorite haunt, the Pacific Dining Car-a real railroad dining car near downtown that was converted into an elegant restaurant with fantastic food and one of the best bars in town. We’d had our first date there, and now we thought of it as “our place.” On Sunday, my nerves propelled me to do something, anything, that felt like progress on the case, so I worked on my to-do list. After a few hours, feeling frustrated and stuck, I decided to schlep my sorry ass to the gym. It was sorry because I hadn’t been in a while, and now it was dragging.

By Monday morning, I was ready to jump out of my skin. For all I knew, footage of Lilah was wending its way onto YouTube at that very moment. I’d just poured myself an unneeded third cup of coffee when my cell phone rang. The number on the screen was unfamiliar.

“This is Larry Gladstein returning Rachel Knight’s call.” The voice was gruff, the tone irritated and defensive.

A foul-tempered DA, first thing in the morning. Who says that’s not fun?

“Hi, Larry, thanks for returning the call-”

“Look, let me save you some time here,” he interrupted. “I’ve got nothing more to say about the case. Check with Media Relations if you want information. And maybe the IO.”

Checking with the head of Media Relations, Sandi Runyon, wasn’t a bad idea. She was as sharp as they come and she’d probably have some valuable insights as to why the case went belly-up. And Bailey and I fully planned to talk to the investigating officer, Rick Meyer. But neither of them could give me the lawyer’s point of view, and that’s what I needed right now.

“Larry, I’m not calling to talk about what you did or what went wrong,” I said, knowing he’d probably been second-guessed to death. “I’m calling because we have another murder that seems to be related to your case, and we need the background information.”

There was a beat of silence, then Larry asked me to explain. I filled him in on the stabbing murder of Simon Bayer.

Larry said nothing for so long, I wondered if we’d been disconnected. Finally he spoke.

“I’m real sorry to hear this,” he said, his voice now low and sad. “I had a feeling Simon wasn’t going to be able to move on. But this…” He fell silent again, then sighed. “Okay, we’re instructing the jury on my child molest this morning, and I’ve got a prelim this afternoon, but I should be done by around four o’clock.”

I agreed to meet him at four thirty and texted Bailey.

We left at two. Bailey took the Golden State Freeway north to the 14 Freeway north, and within half an hour, stark, imposing mountains rose on either side of the road with small, isolated ranches sprinkled across the valleys. Above us, downy white clouds floated, creating patches of shadow and light as they moved across the sun. Hawks rode the air currents with graceful power in search of prey. Nothing about this place said “L.A.” For all intents and purposes, we could’ve been in Montana.

I’d done a little homework on Larry. I’d known that he was reputed to be a good lawyer and a hard charger, but what I hadn’t known was that in the twelve years before he picked up the Zack Bayer murder, he’d only lost one robbery case-an impressive record.

Mark Steiner, a buddy of mine who’d worked in the Van Nuys branch with Larry, told me that when Larry’d first caught the Zack Bayer case, there’d been more than the usual jealous carping by other prosecutors.

“Which was completely ridiculous on every level,” Mark said heatedly. “Not only is Larry a great lawyer, but not one of those nimrods would’ve wanted to work that hard or deal with the pressure.”

“Since when did that ever stop them?” I replied.

“Yeah.” Mark sighed. “Anyway, Larry took that part in stride. What got to him was the shit he took after the verdict. He worked his ass off on that case, and I could tell that losing it just about killed him. So it was just a bridge too far when all the hallway hotshots went around bragging about how they could’ve won the case and made asinine claims to the press about what he did wrong. It was all bullshit, but you know how it is, DAs can be cannibals…”

I did. And they were.

“So Larry asked for Antelope Valley?” I said.

“Not exactly,” Mark replied. “Larry asked for a transfer. What they gave him was Antelope Valley.”

Nice. A man gives years of dedicated service, and his reward is to get planted out in the middle of the desert.

But that didn’t mean the verdict had been wrong.

Thanks to Bailey’s lead foot, we reached our destination with half an hour to spare. As she parked, I saw that the courthouse was the farthest outpost of civilization in the town. Just across the street, an unbroken expanse of Joshua trees stretched out to the horizon as far as the eye could see. An aged stucco building next door bore a faded sign saying KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS. But the courthouse building was relatively new, and a lot nicer than the one I worked in. We made our way through the metal detector and upstairs to the reception area.

I introduced myself and Bailey to the secretary and told her why we were there.

She made a call announcing our arrival, then hung up. “He’ll be right out.”

I’d pictured Larry as a big barrel-chested guy in a tweedy jacket with full, ruddy cheeks. The man who came out to greet us was maybe five feet eight, on the slender side, with thinning brown hair and wearing a belt with a huge silver buckle and pointy-toed cowboy boots. So I was close.

“Come on back,” he said, waving us in.

It was a nice office by county standards. Unlike mine, there was room for a normal-size person to walk behind the two visitor chairs that faced his desk, and he had a tall gray filing cabinet in the corner and two six-foot metal bookcases, all of which looked new, against the wall to the left of his desk. The view was great too-if you were into mountains and cacti.

We all sat down, and Bailey pulled out the still photograph taken from the surveillance footage that showed the woman in dark sunglasses. “Do you recognize her?”

The moment Larry saw the photograph, his mouth set in a grim, hard line and his jaw clenched. “I sure do. That’s the defendant, Lilah Bayer.”

Just to be on the safe side, I showed him the photograph of Simon.

He nodded. “That’s Simon.” He shook his head sadly. “What happened to him? I mean, other than the obvious. This is not the guy I knew during the trial.”

“He’d been on the streets.”

I explained what we knew so far about Simon’s murder, then relayed the information I’d just gotten from Scott, the coroner’s investigator, earlier in the day.

“According to the coroner, Simon’s condition indicated he hadn’t been living out there for years, but he’d been out long enough to show some wear and tear…obviously.”

“I knew Simon took it hard. I just didn’t know it got that bad,” he said, gesturing to the photograph I’d shown him.

Larry’s suffering was palpable, the air around him heavy with grief. He seemed to turn in on himself, his eyes, focused on a point outside the window, unseeing. We sat in silence for a long moment.

Larry continued to look outside as he spoke. “Simon was…a little too good for this world. What happened here would’ve been a lot to deal with for anyone, but for him…” He sighed heavily, the corners of his mouth turned down. “He wasn’t exactly a flower child or anything, but he kind of had that softness, you know?”

I did. I shook my head sadly. The world seemed to grind up people like that.

Larry continued, “I remember when they read the verdict, he went a little nuts, almost had to be restrained.” He paused a moment and kept staring out the window. “I gotta admit, I wasn’t far behind.”

“You know he tried to get the Feds to file the case?” I asked.

“Yeah. But I knew it was hopeless. They only take the slam dunks.”

“Guess that should be a little reassuring to you, no?” I asked sympathetically. The Feds’ refusal to file showed they didn’t think they could win it either.

Larry shrugged. “Maybe so, but it doesn’t help. If I’d had my druthers, the Feds would’ve taken it and won it.”

I nodded. I would’ve felt the same. Of course, the other possibility was that the Feds might’ve refused to file because they didn’t think Lilah Bayer was guilty.

“You think Simon was after Lilah?” he finally asked.

“It seems logical, since they were on the same stretch of sidewalk at the same time,” I replied. “I don’t like coincidences. And at the very least, regardless of why Simon was out there, Lilah was close enough to see who actually stabbed him. We need to find her, if only to question her.”

“And she might very well be involved,” Larry suggested, looking at me closely.

I returned his look. “Like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences-”

“Neither do I,” he agreed.

“I’m not committing to any particular theory yet,” I continued. “But the fact that both she and Simon and someone with a knife all managed to find their way to the same few square feet at the same time in a city as big as L.A. presents a strong likelihood that they’re all connected.”

“Well, if you can tag her for Simon’s murder, you’ll have my undying gratitude,” Larry said. “So what do you want to know?”

“Was Simon close to Zack?” I asked.

“He was devoted to Zack,” Larry replied. “Simon was about six years younger, so they didn’t exactly share a childhood. But Zack was kind of a hero to him. You know, the cool older brother. Though with Simon, it seemed to be more than the usual.”

“Because?” I asked.

Larry paused for a moment. “You’ll probably get a better sense of this from the parents, but I got the impression that Simon had been a timid kid, probably got pushed around some in school. From what people told me, Zack was a lot tougher and much more social. He’d protect Simon when he could, though what with the age difference and all, he wasn’t around a whole lot.”

“What can you tell me about Lilah?” I asked.

Larry’s expression, soft while reminiscing about Simon, suddenly hardened, deepening the lines in his face and giving his eyes a flat, dead look. “Lilah was a real looker and no dummy. Put herself through law school, eventually got hired in one of those big corporate law firms.”

“A partner?” I asked.

“Nah, too young,” he replied, shaking his head. “She was just a new junior associate when she killed Zack. Though, from what I heard, she was on the partner fast track.”

I paused, struck by Larry’s reaction to Lilah. Whenever her name came up, everything in his demeanor changed-his voice, his features, his posture-the hostility, even rage, still burned through his pores. I’d expected him to be bitter. No prosecutor likes to lose. But Larry’s attitude didn’t strike me as the typical anger we all feel when a guilty defendant walks out the door. It was much deeper, much more personal. Now, I admit that I’ve occasionally run into defendants who made me want to run them over with a bus…repeatedly. But once the case was over, I let it go-win or lose-as we all do. Larry’s fury, both in its magnitude and persistence, was unusual…and troublesome. “What was your take on Zack?” I asked.

Larry shrugged. “An ambitious guy on his way up. Popular with the troops, smart, good-looking.” He turned and pulled out the murder book. He opened it to a page, put the book in front of us, and pointed to a photograph.

Zack was in uniform, and the photo looked like the kind taken to commemorate a formal event. Judging by how young he seemed, my guess was that it was taken when he graduated from the police academy. An open smile on a pleasant, even-featured face, warm brown eyes, regulation-length brown hair, a nose that might’ve been broken in the past and never set properly-not quite rugged, but fairly handsome.

“Was he a good cop?” I asked.

“Good, but from what I hear, more into the politics than the police work,” Larry said.

“Think we’ll have any problems getting his friends to talk to us?” Bailey asked.

A not-guilty verdict can make friends and family a little less than cordial toward the prosecution.

“I wouldn’t think so,” Larry replied. With a bitter note, he added, “Unlike some in this office, they understood it was a softheaded jury.”

I nodded sympathetically, though since we hadn’t heard the evidence, I wasn’t ready to commit to the “crazy jury” theory yet. It was time to find out what kind of case Larry’d had against Lilah.