Killer

CHAPTER 35

Musicians are performers but unless Blatt and Younger were trained actors it was hard to see them as suspects.

I supposed Younger’s disability wouldn’t have stopped him from shooting a gun, maybe even stalking Boris Chamberlain in a handicapped-fitted car. But his shocked reaction to the attempt on Boris had come across genuine. Same for Chuck-o Blatt.

I drove back home, checked my messages. The judge I’d ignored wondered if his message had slipped through the cracks. I phoned his court, told his clerk I was unavailable to take the custody case.

The only other call was another from Kiara Fallows. Probably following up on her job search. I made coffee, sifted through mail, as I phoned her.

She said, “Thought I’d let you know I remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

“Who was talking about that case. It was a lawyer. Suit and tie, not a uniform. A bunch of them were walking up the hall, discussing it.”

“Okay.”

“I think he was Hispanic,” she said. “Or maybe Middle Eastern. Hope that helps.”

“I’ll pass it along, thanks. Any luck with your job search?”

A beat. “Uh, no, still looking. Did you find someone who wants someone?”

“Not yet, I’ll keep you posted.”

“Sure,” she said. “That would be great.”

Curious call. Reviewing it only made it feel stranger.

Why had she phoned a second time to offer me useless information? Why did the question about her job search seem to throw her?

I did a little background on Ms. Kiara Fallows.

The Internet gave up four people with that name: a sixty-two-year-old woman in Queensland, Australia, a fifteen-year-old girl in Scarsdale, New York, a college junior at Barnard studying abroad in Sri Lanka, a toddler who appeared in kiddie beauty contests in Tyler, Texas.

More scrolling brought up articles on allowing fields to go fallow and other biblical wisdom for the modern age. The raising, butchering, and marketing of fallow deer for the gourmet meat trade. I was about to log off when I found it.

Two words, conveniently yellow-accented, embedded in a seven-year-old article in the Ventura Star.

Seven years ago made Desiree K. Fallows twenty-four now, consistent with the face on Judge Applebaum’s page.

I searched for more on the story. No follow-up. No matching Facebook or MySpace pages under Desiree or Kiara.

That made Fallows the only twenty-four-year-old woman in the developed world forgoing the social network.

No surprise if you had something to hide. Were sitting in prison.

The plotting teen had been a ward of the state. Nearly eighteen as a sophomore suggested learning problems. Not exactly the scholarship of someone who’d qualify for a plum job in Superior Court, when budgets were strained and hiring was sparse.

Still, seven years was ample time for change and if Desiree K. and Kiara the Clerk were the same person, scoring the position could mean she accrued no adult criminal record.

Could because people slip through the cracks. Last year three cadets at the police academy had been expelled due to gang associations and unreported felony convictions.

If a troubled girl had matured to the point of finding employment in the court system, why had she quit soon after? Blaming it on fuel consumption seemed flimsy in retrospect. But maybe I was making too much of two brief conversations.

Still, the story of Kiara Fallows’s attempted setup of her teacher was creepy and neither of her calls seemed purposeful.

There was also the matter of Fallows’s hem when I asked about her job search. As if reminding herself of a story she’d told the first time.

Back to the con? But she and I had never met, so what was the goal?

Perhaps all of it boiled down to nothing and I was just distracting myself from the Sykes mess.

I went over both conversations, searching for something to decode, came up with nothing more than a hinky feeling.

A girl devious enough to plant dope and call in a false lead. Not your garden-variety rebellious adolescent.

By the fourth go-round my head was pounding.

One more try. Search for something out of context, some tell.

Then it came to me:

Dressed like a lawyer. Suit and tie, not a uniform.

Way too much detail.

A misdirect, diverting me from someone who wasn’t a lawyer? Who didn’t look Hispanic or Middle Eastern?

Subtle at first glance, but clumsy when you examined it closely. What psychologists call over-inclusiveness. It’s a pattern found in some schizophrenics and in many compulsive liars. The inability to leave things as they are, the smidge of self-destructive overreach.

That was perfectly consistent with an adolescent able and willing to set up an elaborate frame.

I reviewed the call, looking for other diversions. Found the biggie.

Not a uniform.

So look for someone in uniform.

And that led me straight to a throwaway line from the Ventura Star article.

Aunt and uncle, both L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies.

The type of connection that could help score a plum job in Superior Court.

I’d just witnessed a husband and wife in matching tan uniforms. Eating Japanese food.

One of whom had daily access to the court record on the Sykes case.

I began typing like a demon. This time Facebook yielded a prize.

The personal page of Willa Nebe, smiling and upbeat, eager to share her taste in music with her eleven friends. Ditto, a snapshot from her road trip last summer to Arizona.

Along with husband Hank.

And niece Desiree.

The three of them, posing in sweatshirts and jeans, backed by red rock.

Willa, wearing a Dodgers cap and her usual grin, holding a super-sized soda. Hank in a ten-gallon hat, eyes shielded by bronze lenses, hulking and saturnine.

Niece Desiree (“who I think of as my daughter”) positioned between them physically and emotionally: daring a smile, but the twisting of her lips was tentative. More than that: wary. A crooked, uncomfortable smile. Stiff shoulders. Eyes drifting to the side.

Expecting deception at any moment because she lied as easily as she breathed and figured so did everyone else?

That could make the world a threatening place. Lead you to make pointless phone calls just in case.

I studied Fallows’s face. Thin, clear, pretty, but for the tension.

Young woman with a more-than-casual interest in a guardianship case that had nothing to do with her.

Aunt and uncle …

I’d told Lionel Wattlesburg not to bother giving her my name. The old bailiff was a sensible fellow yet Kiara claimed he’d ignored the instruction.

I reached him at Marv Applebaum’s courtroom.

“Hey, Doc.”

“I’m going to ask you a strange question, Lionel. Would you do me a favor and keep it to yourself?”

“Now you got me intrigued, Doc. Sure.”

“Kiara Fallows called me yesterday, said you told her I wanted to talk to her.”

“That’s kinda bizarre,” said Wattlesburg. “What happened was I ran into her when she came in for her check, asked her how come she was quitting. She said the work environment was unhealthy. I said how so? Her answer was too many criminals around.”

He laughed. “Criminals, big shock, seeing as it’s a Superior Court, huh? I guess that annoyed me — another spoiled little quitter, so I gave her a hard time about being a fraidy-cat. She got all huffy and stomped off. But no, I didn’t mention your name, Doc, so I have no idea why she’d call you. What’d she want?”

“Looking for a new job, did I know anyone who was hiring.”

“Typical, this generation. Well, anyway, Doc, she didn’t get it from me, I pride myself on being discreet. Have to be, all the crazy things I deal with every day.”

Put another lie on the fire.

Framed as sociopathic thinking, both of Kiara Fallows’s calls made sense.

First, she’d pretended to offer me information but her goal was finding out what I knew about the Sykes sisters. Failing at that, she’d hung up frustrated. And like most antisocial types, delay of gratification was a problem for her.

That led to her big mistake: the second call.

Trying to steer me away from the Nebes.

At their behest? Or was it Little Miss Devious’s bright idea?

More important: Why?

Either way, she’d screwed up because she didn’t know me well enough to grasp how the obsessive mind deals with frustration.

Dig, dig, dig, dig, dig.

Keep digging.

Rinse and repeat.