Guilt By Degrees

51

On Monday, I was sitting in court, waiting for my last case to be called, when inspiration hit me. We’d gone about as far as we could trying to find Lilah by conventional means. No one she’d known in her previous life had any idea where to find her, and all of Bailey’s efforts had failed to turn up any trace of her under either of her known legitimate names.

But maybe there was another way in. I’d been noodling around with a theory about Zack’s case, and it might just dovetail with our search for Lilah.

“People v. Reynolds,” the judge announced.

Finally my case was called. The defense attorney jumped up, eager to get it done and get on the road to his next appearance. We picked a trial date, and I headed to the snack bar to grab a water.

As I rounded the corner, I spotted Melia. She was standing near the elevators talking to a short man who was obviously trying to alter that perception with hair that was gelled to reach for the sky. I kept moving as I tried to figure out why he looked so familiar. Then it hit me. I nearly stopped dead in my tracks. He was a reporter for one of the syndicated news agencies. Melia, aka Gossip Central, talking to a reporter spelled nothing but trouble in general. But for me in particular, it might mean total disaster. If the press was onto the Simon Bayer case, I was hosed. I quickly ducked into the snack bar and pretended to browse. When he got on an elevator, I started to head over to Melia, but when I saw that she was moving toward the snack bar, I stayed put.

The moment she walked in, I pulled her to the back corner. “What did that reporter want?” I asked.

Melia made a face and eased her elbow out of my grip. “What’s your damage? I didn’t tell him anything.”

“I didn’t ask what you told him,” I said. “I asked what he wanted.”

Melia looked at me sullenly. “Since when am I not allowed to talk to people?”

I took a deep breath to keep from choking her. “He’s not ‘people,’ Melia. He’s a reporter. And that can be a problem-for all of us.” I looked at her pointedly, but her expression told me I’d have to spell it out for her. “You included.”

Melia gave an exasperated sigh. “He was asking about you guys-”

“Us guys?”

She rolled her eyes. “Special Trials deputies. What hours you worked, how many cases you carried. Like that, okay?”

“And what’d you tell him?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I told him to ask Eric.”

The subject was just boring enough to make me believe her. “He ask about anything else?”

“Like what?” she said, finally interested.

Like I’d tell her. I shrugged. “No idea. I was just asking.” I was pretty sure I knew what the reporter was after, and it wasn’t good. But the fact that it wasn’t the Bayer case and, even better, that Melia didn’t know the case was gossipworthy was excellent news. Relief made me magnanimous. “I’m getting water. Can I get you something?”

Back in my office, I called Bailey on my cell phone so she’d see it was me and pick up. On any given day, this might or might not be a winning strategy. On this day it was-either that, or she hadn’t looked at the number.

“Yeah?” she said.

“I’ve got two good reasons why we should celebrate over lunch. We just dodged a big bullet, and I have a hot new plan for finding Lilah.”

“The bullet-dodging, maybe. The hot idea…we’ll see,” she said dryly. “Where?”

“How about Engine Company Number Twenty-eight?”

“Meet you downstairs in fifteen,” Bailey said. “Toni coming?”

“I’m waiting to see. But if she’s not here by then, we’ll let her know what she missed.”

Ten minutes later, I heard the kee-koo of Toni’s stiletto heels hitting the linoleum down the hall. I jumped out to intercept her and told her about our lunch plan.

“Fantastic,” she said, pushing her bangs off her forehead. “I can’t wait to get out of here. Just let me drop this junk.” She gestured to a thick file in her arms.

I waited in the hallway, and we trotted out to the elevator together.

“What was that?” I said, referring to the file she’d been hauling.

“Old arson case. Judge kept jurisdiction to impose restitution, and it took a while to get all the paperwork in to prove up the losses.”

“Which I’m sure the defendant’s going to pay, making all that dough on license plates,” I said sarcastically.

Toni nodded, her expression fatalistic. “It’s the principle, you know?”

I did. As we stepped out of the elevator, I whispered, “I had dinner with Daniel on Friday.”

Toni stopped and stared at me, her eyes huge. “You what?”

I pulled her by the arm through the crowd, knowing Bailey was probably already waiting outside.

“I’ll explain in the car,” I said.

“You bet you will, honey,” she replied.

Our timing was perfect. Bailey pulled to the curb just as we got to the top of the stairs, and we jumped in.

“Did you know this girl had dinner with Daniel?” Toni said the moment we’d closed our doors.

“You what?” Bailey said, echoing Toni’s response.

I explained how it’d all happened, but I admitted that I’d had a good time.

Toni shook her head.

“What? Daniel and I can’t be friends?”

“You certainly can,” she said. “But you’re still pissed off at Graden, which makes it a dicey time to strike up a friendship with an old boyfriend. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I couldn’t, so I said nothing. Engine Co. No. 28 appeared on our right. Bailey deliberately picked a parking space in the loading zone to the left of the entrance.

We got a good booth toward the back of the restaurant, and when we were settled, I told them about my Melia-with-reporter sighting. “My guess is he’s running with Phil Hemet’s vendetta against Special Trials,” I said.

“Not good,” Toni replied, frowning.

“But not as bad as it could’ve been,” Bailey said. But I could see that the close call had made her as nervous as it’d made me. She leaned forward, her arms folded on the table, expression intense. “Let’s hear your genius idea.”

“I never said it was genius,” I replied. “I just said it was…new.”

“I believe the term you used to bribe me was hot,” Bailey said.

“Try this on,” I began. “It’s fair to assume that Zack told Lilah about the skinhead attacks on the police station?”

Bailey nodded. “I’d say so.”

“Then that’s where Lilah got the idea to finger the skinheads as Zack’s killers.”

“Or maybe even hired one to do it?”

“It’d be risky,” I admitted. “These guys aren’t choirboys. She’d have to know that the minute a guy like that got busted, he’d start yapping about who hired him-”

“But who’re the cops going to believe?” Toni pointed out. “Some skinhead asshole or a lawyer who was married to a cop? Especially the way this murder went down-”

“Exactly,” I said.

“But if she did hire a skinhead to do the murder, how did she get to him?” Toni asked.

“I have an educated guess,” I said. “Remember Larry said she’d interned in the DA’s office? We had a hiring freeze. She wound up working in Orange County-”

“Lots of skinhead activity down south,” Bailey interjected.

“Right. So even if she didn’t work on skinhead cases herself, she had access to all kinds of information.”

“Names, addresses, phone numbers, and who the heavy hitters were,” she said. “It’s a definite possibility.”

“So I’m thinking that we run down Public Enemy Number One,” I said. “I’m not saying she hired one of them to do the hit on Zack, but it’s worth looking into the possibility that she’s got some kind of connection to them. Who knows? She might be using one of them as a bodyguard-”

“To protect her from Simon,” Bailey finished. “She had to be worried that he’d come after her, the way he went off in court. And it was in the news that he was trying to get the Feds to file on her.”

“Right,” I said. “And don’t forget, there was a whole police department that thought she did it and took the verdict very friggin’ personally.”

“So if your theory plays out, Simon’s killer might be a skinhead,” Bailey observed.

I shrugged.

“But if not, at the very least one of those clowns might know where to find her,” she finished.

“And if we find her, we might be able to convince her to give up the stabber-”

“Because if she doesn’t, she looks good as an aider and abettor to the murder,” Bailey said. “I buy the logic. I’m just not sure about the ‘how’ of it. As in, how we’re gonna get a skinhead to talk to us. We’ll need to have some serious leverage on whoever we grab.”

“Come on,” I said. “How many of these guys don’t have a tail of some sort?”

The odds were good that most of the gang members would be on probation or parole for something. And finding a violation to bust them for wouldn’t challenge a kindergartner.

Bailey nodded. “The trickier part will be figuring out who we can talk to without earning ourselves a toe tag. So how do you propose to find a way in with these jokers?”

I gave a self-satisfied smile. “This is where you thank me for my interpersonal skills.” Bailey just looked at me.

“My buddy Luis Revelo,” I said. “The shot-caller of the Sylmar Sevens.”