Guilt By Degrees

90

“Someone shanked him when they were loading up the bus for court,” Bailey said.

“I thought they had him as ‘special handling.’”

“Yeah, so did I,” Bailey said, hands on her hips. She stared out the window.

“We got the guy who did it?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s looking at about a hundred years to life himself-”

“Figures.” He had little to lose.

“And he’s a skinhead,” she continued. “Nazi Low Riders.”

We stared at each other as the significance of what she’d just said settled in the air.

“Lilah,” Bailey said simply.

Though I’d come to the same conclusion, I didn’t want to believe it.

“How could she possibly manage to get to someone in the jail that fast?” I demanded.

Bailey shook her head. “They just told me the skinhead claims he heard the guy was a chomo.”

Chomo. The slang for child molester. It was a skinhead credo that they had an obligation to kill any known child molester on sight, and it was a badge of honor to carry it out.

There was nothing whatsoever in Chase Erling’s file that indicated he was a child molester.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Definitely,” Bailey agreed. “But it’s great cover for the skinhead, and who’s going to bother proving that Erling wasn’t a perv?”

No one. The Low Rider would enter a fast guilty plea and get carried into prison like he was Cleopatra.

“She used them as the fall guys for Zack’s murder-,” Bailey said.

“And now she’s done it again,” I said with cold fury. “What would it take to bribe a cretin who’s already doing one hundred years to life?”

“Nothing.”

We sat in silence for several minutes. The skinhead would never admit he’d been put up to it. And, for all I knew, he really believed Erling was a chomo. It wouldn’t have taken much to convince him-just a few well-chosen words. I couldn’t say I minded Erling’s death. What I did mind was the giant fuck-you it came with.

“Chase Erling was our only way of getting to Lilah,” I said.

Bailey nodded, her expression stony. “And now there’s no way we’ll find her. She’s in the wind.”