Guilt By Degrees

68

On Monday, I had an appearance on a double homicide that’d been languishing while the defendant played “musical lawyers,” hiring and firing them to delay the inevitable. Bailey went to the station to work the phones with a contact at the DMV and check out Alicia Morris and the stolen report on her red Audi.

The judge let the defendant substitute in his fifth new lawyer but put his foot down. “This marriage is going to last, Mr. Hamlin. No more divorces. Got it?”

Glad to have a go-date for the trial but worried about my burgeoning caseload, I hurried toward the courtroom door, too distracted to notice that someone in the gallery had stood up to intercept me.

“Rachel?”

I stopped and turned. Graden came out to the aisle. “Could I talk to you for just a second?”

My pulse stuttered at the sight of him. There was no denying it, the attraction was still as strong as ever. But the courthouse, where the whole world could see-and gossip-was not the place to hash anything out, even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t.

He saw my expression and shook his head. “It’s important.”

Not trusting myself to sound as cool as I wanted to, I nodded mutely and headed out to the corridor. We moved to a corner that was relatively quiet.

“I…first, how are you?” he asked.

Standing this close was distracting-the smell of his cologne, the warmth of his gaze…it was an effort to wall off my feelings. “I’m okay, and you?”

Graden looked at me closely. “I’ve been better. Look, I came to tell you about a weird thing that happened the other night.”

He told me about a woman who’d gotten “friendly” with him at a bar and tried to buy him a drink. At first I thought maybe he was trying to make me jealous. But by the time he’d finished, I stared out at the crowded hallway with eyes that were filled with the image of Lilah. There was not a doubt in my mind that that’s who had chatted Graden up at the bar, and I told him so.

“It fits.” He frowned. “But it’s very weird. And very dangerous.” He looked at me with a puzzled expression. “You don’t seem all that shocked.”

I wasn’t, though I couldn’t explain why. I shrugged. “She’s a strange duck-nothing she does would surprise me.”

But I had to admit, what she’d done made no logical sense. The woman had an alias and obviously didn’t want to be found. But she was stalking me, mucking around in my life? Whether she’d hoped to seduce Graden or not-and I had to admit I was impressed that he hadn’t taken the bait-somehow I knew her goal was to get at me. And though I wasn’t surprised, it did creep me out. The danger was less of a worry, thanks to my trusty security detail. How to let Graden know about bodyguard investigators without telling him I’d been banged up? But the conundrum solved itself.

Graden peered at my face, his expression worried. “What’s going on? Did something happen to you?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to deny it, but for some reason I couldn’t. I told him about how I’d been ambushed.

Graden raked his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. “Jesus, Rachel. Why didn’t you…” He caught himself-we both knew why I hadn’t told him. “Please tell me you have security.”

“Oh, I’m loaded for bear.” I smiled. I told him about the investigators who’d been assigned to me and how they were dogging my footsteps. Seeing him smile and nod his approval reminded me of how good it’d been to be with someone who understood my world, because it was his world too. I’d missed him. But that didn’t mean we were good for each other.

“Will you promise to let me know if I can do anything?” he asked.

“Of course,” I lied.

Graden’s expression told me he didn’t entirely believe me.

“Well…thanks for the heads-up,” I said.

“I…sure.” He paused and gave me a searching look. He seemed to want to tell me something. I braced myself for whatever that might be, but then he said simply, “Take care of yourself, Rachel.”

I nodded and headed for the elevator. When I got back to my office, I found Bailey there waiting for me. I started to tell her about my visit from Graden, but when I saw the dark expression on her face, I changed course. “What happened?”

“The car registered to Lilah was found in Griffith Park about two weeks after it was stolen from Conrad Bagram’s lot.” Bailey paused and examined her notes. “The car had rolled down an embankment and crashed into a tree,” she said. “Young guy named Tran Lee was found in the driver’s seat. Dead. Lee was a meth head who presumably stole the car while he was high and crashed it.”

“And we would’ve known that if we’d finished running down the records on Lilah’s car before we hit Bagram,” I said.

We both fell silent. Something about this latest development didn’t feel right.

“I wouldn’t mind shaking out any paperwork Bagram had on that car,” I said. “At the very least, he must’ve written up some kind of consignment agreement.”

“Agreed,” Bailey said. “Rick Meyer must’ve investigated this at some point when he was getting ready for Lilah’s trial.”

“I would too,” I said. “There’s one way to find out…”

Bailey nodded, but she didn’t look happy. She abruptly shifted gears. “First, let’s get all we can on Tran,” she said. “The reports should be at the Hollywood station.”

We threw on our coats, and Bailey went to tell the DA investigators they could take the day off. Five minutes later, we were in Bailey’s car and rolling. I told her about Lilah’s move on Graden.

Her eyes widened. “Oh man. Who is this psychobat?”

More than ever, that question burned in my mind. I’d spent more time researching her than I’d ever spent on any defendant. What I’d learned in terms of concrete facts was precious little. But I had a growing intuitive sense of her, especially after hearing about her interaction with Graden. It wasn’t something I could quantify or put into words, though, so I shorthanded my answer to Bailey. “She’s like no other. Nervy, nuts, and obsessive. A bad combination.”

“But now we know: she is still in town.”

“And can therefore kill us both at close range,” I said.

“You are such a buzz kill, Knight.”

I supposed I was. I sat back and tried to relax, but the morning traffic was brutal, and our halting progress was making me want to jump out the window, so I fished out my headphones and punched up “Soul Food” featuring Cyrus Chestnut on piano and James Carter on tenor sax, one of the finest players ever to lift the instrument. I defy anyone to feel bad when they listen to that song. I was swaying to the music when Bailey nudged me.

“Uh, excuse me, Ms. Daisy,” she said, annoyed. “There’s a way you could actually be useful.”

I hit pause and took off my headphones. “Already did it,” I said.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“Yeah, I do,” I replied, enjoying the moment. I don’t often get the jump on Bailey. “While you were talking to the investigators, I called Scott and asked for Tran’s autopsy report.”

Unlike other recent requests I’d made of coroner’s investigator Scott Ferrier, this one hadn’t put him in the position of risking his job to smuggle out confidential material. I’d thought he sounded a little disappointed about that, but I could be wrong.

Bailey stared at me. “Put your headphones back on,” she said flatly.

I gave her a smug grin and returned to James Carter.

Back at the Hollywood station, it took very little time to find Tran Lee’s accident reports. The car had rolled down an embankment and hit a tree at the bottom. Tran Lee had been thrown through the windshield. A crack pipe had been found on the dashboard, and the coroner’s toxicology report showed his blood tested positive for methamphetamine. Cause of death was massive blunt force trauma. It’d been two weeks since the car was reported stolen, and the condition of the body indicated it had been lying there for some time when two hikers finally stumbled upon it. The coroner’s report would tell us how long.

“No witnesses,” I said, disappointed.

“And no next of kin,” Bailey added. “At least not in this country.” She continued to scan the final report. “But here’s something.” She read for another moment. “Tran Lee’s friends said he was supposed to meet them for dinner but never showed. And he didn’t turn up at the restaurant where they all worked as waiters either, which wasn’t like him. Apparently he was a pretty reliable employee. When no one had heard from him for a couple of days, they filed a missing persons report.”

I took the incident report from her with no great enthusiasm. It looked like another dead end. Some tweaker stole a car, got high, crashed it. Sad, but not all that remarkable. I set it aside, then picked it back up. Something had caught my eye. I scanned through the report again.

And then I saw it.

“You happen to notice where the dead guy was supposed to meet his buddies?” I asked Bailey.

“No, where?”

“Birds,” I said. “Mr. Lee stole a car on his way to dinner at a restaurant that’s just a few doors down from La Poubelle.”