Guilt By Degrees

69

According to the witness statements, Tran Lee and his buddies all worked at a diner on Fairfax called Josie’s. Although it was a little early for lunch, I’d learned from hard experience: better too early than too late. We got back into the car and headed for Josie’s. I called my security people and reported our destination.

“When can we get crime scene photographs of the crash site?” I asked.

“This is Robbery-Homicide,” Bailey said pointedly. “We’ll have ’em by this afternoon.”

“Can we pull the original paperwork on the consignment of Lilah’s car to Bagram?” I asked.

“Already requested it,” Bailey replied. “If there’s something off, I’m betting that’s where we’ll find it.”

“Could be he just fudged on the sales price to save sales tax,” I suggested.

“He wouldn’t be the first,” Bailey agreed.

She pulled to the curb in front of Josie’s, a small, no-frills restaurant with a counter on one side and wooden tables and chairs in the remaining space. Waiters were taking the chairs down off the tables and getting the place ready for lunch. When Bailey knocked on the glass door, one of them, a skinny kid in black jeans with short blond hair, held up his hands and shouted, “Not open yet!” Bailey showed her badge, and he shielded his eyes with his hand to see, then trotted over to the door. After fumbling with the lock for a few seconds, he managed to get it open and let us in.

“C-come in, Officers,” he stuttered anxiously. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing recent, so don’t worry,” Bailey reassured him. She introduced herself.

I did the same and showed him my badge. I didn’t have to do that, but people take you more seriously when you have a badge. A gun’ll do that too, but I’ve found that sometimes a gun makes them take you too seriously and they forget how to talk.

The young man said his name was Duncan Friedkin.

“Did you happen to know someone who used to work here, name of Tran Lee?” I asked.

The young man’s face fell. “Tran,” he said, and sat down heavily in one of the wooden chairs. “Yes.”

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

“Tran was a good guy. I mean, you probably already know he was kinda into drugs…”

I nodded.

“But he wasn’t a thief,” Duncan said sadly.

“So you don’t believe he stole that car,” I said.

“No,” he replied, then sighed. “But I guess nothing’s impossible. Not if he was high.”

Duncan stared off.

“He didn’t have a car of his own?” I asked.

“No,” Duncan replied. “He didn’t have a license.”

“What about an ID card?” I asked. An ID card would have his photograph and personal information.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe.”

On a hunch, I pulled out Lilah’s photograph. “Ever see her before?”

Duncan’s eyes widened. “No. Wow.” He recovered himself, then repeated, “Uh, no. Why?”

I didn’t have a good answer. “Just checking into some possibilities.”

I wasn’t 100 percent sure where I was going with this, so I hoped he wouldn’t ask.

We bumped around like that for a few more minutes, but we really didn’t have any more questions. All this kid knew was that his friend went missing and then his friend was dead.

“You have a picture of Tran, by any chance?” I asked. I wanted to see what he’d looked like when he was alive, just in case he didn’t have an ID card.

“No, sorry,” Duncan said.

Bailey and I stood. “Thanks for your help. If you-”

“Oh, wait,” Duncan said. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through an impressively large collection of photographs. “Yeah, here you go. It’s our Christmas photo. We take group pictures here every year.” Duncan pointed to a young man in a photograph featuring a small chorus line of waiters and waitresses in their uniforms. “That’s Tran.”

I saw a young Asian with a wide smile and bangs that jutted straight out from his forehead. He didn’t look like a tweaker, but he might not have been at it long enough for the damage to show.

“Do you know anyone else who was friendly with Tran?” I asked.

“A couple of the other guys who worked here,” Duncan replied.

Bailey jotted down the names and as many phone numbers as Duncan could remember. We thanked him and left.

Back in the Hollywood station, I parked myself at the vacant desk we’d been using and waited while Bailey went to see if the crime scene photographs had been found. When she came back, she was smiling and carrying a manila envelope.

She sat down next to me and pulled out a stack of photos. The first pictures were establishing shots of the area. It looked vaguely familiar to me.

“Is this near the Griffith Observatory?” I asked.

Bailey nodded.

We sifted through the photographs. The embankment wasn’t all that high, but it was steep. When the car drove off, it had gathered enough speed to hit the tree with real force. Tran had been propelled straight through the windshield and rolled down to the bottom of the ravine.

I stared at the report for a few moments, then went back to the crime scene photographs and pulled out the ones that featured Tran.

“Remember the photo Duncan showed us?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Notice anything different here?” I pointed to the crime scene photographs of Tran.

Bailey looked for a moment. “No glasses. He was wearing thick ones in Duncan’s photo.”

“They could’ve been thrown when he crashed.”

“But then they should’ve been found at the scene,” Bailey replied. “Evidence report,” she muttered to herself, then shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a two-page report. We carefully scanned the pages, going entry by entry.

No glasses were listed.

“Do we know if he had an ID card?” I asked.

Bailey nodded and gestured to one of the reports. “It was in his personal effects.”

She woke up the computer and began tapping keys.

Thirty seconds later, Tran was staring back at us. The same wide grin, the same firecracker bangs.

And the same heavy glasses.