Guilt By Degrees

47

Bailey and I thanked Teddy and left the plush confines of Lilah’s former employer.

I thought about our next move. Especially after having heard what Teddy had to say, I wanted to get a better sense of who Zack was.

“Want to hit Glendale PD?” I asked.

“May as well,” Bailey replied.

Glendale was only twenty minutes from downtown, but it still felt like the older, middle-class suburb it’d been back in the ’50s. The Glendale Police Department was smack-dab in the middle of the residential section of town. It struck me that this would’ve made the skinhead attacks on the station that much scarier for everyone involved. Which, of course, would’ve made Lilah’s defense tactic that much more effective.

I’d hoped to talk to the lieutenant who’d testified at the trial about the attacks by the skinheads, but he wasn’t in. We settled instead for Sergeant Paul Tegagian, a jovial, slightly pudgy man who seemed happy to have the distraction of chatting with us.

“Call me Paul,” he said when we’d introduced ourselves and the reason for the visit. He gestured to a couple of metal-framed chairs in his tiny office and plunked himself down in the secretary’s chair behind the small, cluttered desk.

I started out with the most pressing but least likely to be productive question. “Have you had any contact with Lilah since the verdict?” I asked.

“Nah,” he replied. “And I can promise you, no one else has either. She’s a stone-cold killer. You won’t find any fans in this shop.” Paul’s voice was hard with anger.

“What can you tell us about Zack?” I asked.

Paul relaxed back into his chair.

“Zack was pretty well liked around here,” he said. “He was a good cop, and a smart one. Always had his eye on the ball and a nice word for everyone-”

“So he was popular with the troops?” Bailey asked.

“Definitely,” Paul replied. “Plus, Zack wanted to make captain, and you know what they say about more flies with honey than vinegar.” He laced his hands behind his head. “Not to say it wasn’t genuine, but he was a pretty sharp guy, politically speaking.”

“How’d he meet Lilah?” Bailey asked.

Paul looked up at the ceiling. After a brief pause, he shook his head. “You know, I never knew, and never really thought about it.” He added, with a sour twist of his mouth, “With someone as hot as Lilah, you don’t wonder about something like that.”

“Did you know Zack before he met Lilah?” I asked.

“It’s a small department-everybody knew each other.”

“Did you go to his wedding?”

At that, Paul frowned. “They eloped. Didn’t want to waste money on a big wedding.” He shrugged. “Made sense to me at the time, though now I wonder…about everything.”

“Like what?”

“Like she was on track to be a big-time, fancy lawyer-not like you guys, no offense-”

“None taken,” I said, wondering how many more times I could possibly be reminded of my lowly civil-service status in a single day.

Taking me at my word, Paul continued. “I mean, what was she doing with a cop-even if he did manage to make captain? I could see why they’d hook up for a while. But married? It just didn’t fit. Don’t know why, but I never questioned it before.” Paul looked down at his desk, then added quietly, “Wish I would have.”

It probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had. When it comes to sex and romance, people are going to do what they want, no matter how ill-advised. Yet another topic I didn’t need to dwell on.

“Did you get to know Lilah at all?”

“No,” Paul replied. “Zack only brought her to a couple of the bigger wingdings, where no one really had a chance to talk.”

“Did they socialize with any of the other cops as a couple?”

“Nope,” he replied firmly.

“You know why that was?”

In my experience, especially in the smaller departments, officers tended to hang together when they were off duty. That usually meant the wives did too.

“Lilah wasn’t into it, you could tell,” Paul said. “On the rare occasion when she showed up, she’d be polite, but it was an effort.” He fell silent for a moment. “But to tell you the truth, I never heard of Zack trying to schmooze around with anyone either. He’d hang out with the guys, especially if any brass was around, but he didn’t go drinking, and as far as I know he never invited anyone over to his place.”

So Zack was a loner and a climber too. He and Lilah did have something in common after all, and it was not insignificant. Ambition had fueled the fire of many marriages-which made it only harder to see what Lilah’s motive was for murdering Zack. What Paul said next made it harder still.

“Got to say, it really rocked my world when I heard about them starting a family,” he said, shaking his head.

“What?” I asked, sure I hadn’t heard right.

“Yeah,” Paul said, his expression perplexed. “Came out in some article during the trial that Lilah had been seeing a fertility doctor. I’m sure the defense leaked it on purpose. You know, ‘How could she possibly have killed him if they were trying to have a baby?’ But it was the first we’d ever heard about it.”

This did not fit the profile for either of them, but especially not for Lilah. Babies and the partner fast track don’t mix.

“Did you believe it?” I asked.

“Article gave the doctor’s name,” Paul replied. “So I’d guess there had to be records to back it up.”

It was easy to check. Paul remembered that the article had been in the local Glendale papers, which explained why we hadn’t run across it during our first, cursory search. Bailey accessed the news archives and found the article. The doctor’s office was in Glendale. A phone call got us an immediate appointment with the doctor’s record keeper.

The promise of a formal subpoena duces tecum got us an informal chat with the nurse.

Sure enough, she confirmed that Lilah had been getting injections of Clomid, a fertility drug.