Guilt by Association (25 page)

Luis was tugging on his cuffs and straightening his shirt collar when he looked out the window and saw where we were heading.

“Uh, excuse me, what we going back to the jail for?”

Bailey continued to drive, and I said nothing.

Luis cleared his throat and tried again. “I don’ want you ladies to take this the wrong way, but you mind if we get this thing
going? I got things to do, you know?”

For some reason, maybe a bit of payback, I decided to let him twist a little. Besides, I was intrigued. “What things?”

“Got to help out with the kids today. My ma’s not feeling good.”

I twisted around to look at him, trying to figure out whether he was yanking my chain. But he returned my gaze, in dead earnest.

“We’ll skip the poly. We don’t need it. We’ve got your DNA, that’s good enough.”

Luis’s face reddened and his brows knitted. “What? No! Tha’s not right, man,” he said, shaking his head vigorously to demonstrate
just how wrong this was. “You promised me a poly—what if they make a mistake with the DNA or somethin’? They can screw that
stuff up real easy. I don’ trust it. Why you doin’ me like this?” Luis said heatedly. He looked at me suspiciously. “You tryin’
to set me up?” He looked down and shook his head as though there were nothing left to trust in the world. “After the way I
hooked you up in there…” He jerked his head toward the jail, then looked at me, wounded.

It was one for the books: a felon begging for his polygraph. If I’d had any doubts about his innocence, they were definitely
gone now. No one is so confident in his ability to fake a poly that he’d beg to take one.

“No, Luis. I’m not ‘doing you like this.’ I think the DNA’s going
to show you didn’t do it, and we don’t need to waste any more time… yours or mine. And, by the way, you can tell everybody
that they definitely don’t screw up DNA
all
the time. But we’re going to need you to stick around. We may need your help with Hector again, so don’t be making any vacation
plans, got it?”

Luis looked at me. “Vacation plans. Tha’s very funny. I bet your homies think you’re a riot.”

I saw Bailey suppress a smile as she pulled into an empty spot at the curb across the street from Luis’s car. He looked it
over through the window, his eyes narrowed, searching for any signs of defilement. His expression told me it had survived
the ordeal of being parked next to the Hellmouth.

Luis started to leave our car and then stopped with one foot on the ground. “Listen, just make sure your DNA person knows
what he’s doin’, okay?”

I nodded.

He looked at me, then sighed and got out and sprinted to his car.

Bailey and I watched as he folded himself into the driver’s seat and fixed his hair in the rearview, then gunned the engine
and pulled away.

“Think he’s really going to help out his mother?” Bailey asked.

“For the next couple of hours, maybe. After that…”

“Yeah.”

Bailey drove us onto the freeway heading west, for the ultimate experience in contrast: from the bowels of hell to the luxe
of Pacific Palisades to check out the errant security guard who worked in Susan’s neighborhood. I rolled down the window and
leaned my head out into the wind. I could feel my hair becoming a tangled mess, but I didn’t care. Ever since we’d left the
building, each inhaled breath had recycled the noxious smell of the jail back through my sinuses, and I had to get it out.
I tilted my face up and took deep, cleansing breaths of carbon monoxide.

When Bailey got off the freeway, I made a halfhearted effort to pat my hair and fix my face. By the time she turned west on
Sunset, I felt as if I’d gotten the worst of Bauchet Street out of my system.

When we drove up to the guardhouse, the top half of the door was opened, giving us a view of a state-of-the-art surveillance
system, with monitors on the walls that showed continuous views of the streets and registered the time and date of each vehicle’s
entry. Even Useless had known to grab the videotapes, so we already knew they hadn’t picked up any activity near Susan’s house.
But since the rapist had gone in through the backyard and the residents hadn’t been ready to let Big Brother plant cameras
on their actual properties yet, that was no surprise.

“Hello? LAPD,” Bailey said, holding up her badge.

A round, rosy-cheeked guard in shirtsleeves who’d been rocking back in his ergonomic chair sat up from the bank of monitors
with a bang and an eager-to-please smile and came to the door.

“What can I do for you, Detective?” he asked. His enthusiasm told me that he had a very boring job. His name tag said he was
DIRECTOR OF SECURITY NORMAN CHERNOW
.

Bailey graced Norman with one of her professional “just the facts, ma’am” smiles and replied, “We’re looking for Deputy Pickelman.
Deputy Duane Pickelman.”

He began to bob his head up and down rapidly, smiling away. “Oh yes, ma’am, I can help you with that. He should be checking
in from his afternoon round in just a minute or so.” His obvious delight in being able to satisfy the request was heartwarming,
if a little over the top.

“Would you like to wait in here with me?” He began to unlatch the door to let us in.

“No, thank you, sir, that won’t be necessary,” Bailey said, gesturing to the turnaround behind the guardhouse. “We’re going
to pull around behind here. If you could just wave and point him out when he gets in, that would be terrific.”

“You got it, Detective. Not a problem. Will do,” Norman said, bobbing his head again and smiling broadly.

Bailey positioned the car behind the guardhouse, and we settled in to wait.

“ ‘You got it, Detective,’ ” I teased. “Show him your gun—it’ll make his whole month.”

Bailey shot me a look that said she didn’t appreciate my humor. Her loss.

We sat and watched the traffic as it passed in and out of the massive, electronically controlled iron gates. A brand-new Hummer
sailed out, driven by an acned boy with pierced ears and a supergelled Mohawk. He was talking into his iPhone, moving his
head to the heavy bass line of a gangsta-rap song that boomed out through an impressive set of speakers. The Hummer was followed
by a brand-new BMW convertible being driven by a young girl with long, jet-black hair that flew out behind her. She wore a
leather-and-bead bracelet that shone in the sun as she carried on a heated conversation on her jewel-encrusted cell phone.
I wondered whether, after watching these idle children of the rich drive by him every day, Duane Pickelman had seen one too
many and snapped.

A cyclist dressed in bright-yellow spandex with black stripes and matching yellow-and-black helmet pedaled up the incline
and turned onto the drive leading to the gates. He waved toward the guardhouse, and Norman waved back gaily as he pressed
the button to let the cyclist in. The man drove in circles, waiting for the gates to swing open. I looked closer, then tapped
Bailey on the arm. “Check out the bumblebee on the bike,” I said with a grin. “Isn’t that our boy Densmore?”

Bailey turned to look. She nodded and chuckled. “The getup serves the purpose, but it does look stupid,” she remarked. “Gotta
admit, though,” she said, watching him. “He’s in great shape.”

He was, but still. Yellow and black? Spandex? The gates finished
their stately swing, and Frank Densmore rode up the hill, ending the show.

As he headed out of sight, a perfectly groomed, manicured, and Botoxed woman of deliberately indeterminate age pulled through
the gates in a convertible Porsche. She too was on her cell—what did these people have going on that they couldn’t even drive
to and from their homes without talking on the telephone? The woman stopped at the curb just inside the gates to finish her
call, talking and gesticulating broadly.

Just then, Normie waved a hand outside through the Dutch door and pointed to a pickup truck with a light bar on the roof and
signs on both sides that said
PALISADES SECURITY—24-HOUR PATROL.
The truck drove out through the gates and parked next to the guardhouse. Bailey was out of the car and at the door of the
pickup before he got a foot out.

I watched as she badged the guard, then stepped back to let him get out of the truck while she blocked the door to discourage
any fancy evasive moves. I got out and moved into position in the backseat of Bailey’s car.

Pickelman was about five feet ten, lean, and rangy. His white uniform shirt and black pants hung loosely off his frame. He
pushed a greasy hank of dirty-blond hair out of his eyes and peered at Bailey nervously as she pointed to her car. I saw him
hesitate briefly, then nod reluctantly and accompany Bailey to the vehicle. She showed him to the front passenger seat and
stood behind him as he opened the door and got in. She then returned to the driver’s seat. I sat behind our passenger, my
hand on the gun in my purse in case he got “creative.”

Bailey introduced me. “This is Rachel Knight, the prosecutor on the case.”

Not wanting to either shake his hand or let go of my gun, I just nodded.

Pickelman looked over his shoulder and nodded back at me briefly, then turned to Bailey. “I didn’t see nothing that night.”

“You were on duty, though, right?” she asked.

“Yeah. So? Lotta guys were on duty. Whyn’t you ax them?” A hint of belligerence creeped into his voice.

“ ‘Ask.’ It’s ‘ask.’ Not ‘ax,’ ” I said, annoyed. Seriously, it’s a three-letter word. What’s so hard?

Pickelman looked startled but obediently replied, “Ask.”

“Because we’re asking you, Duane. Can I call you Duane?” I paused half a beat. “So, Duane, did anything unusual happen during
your rounds that night?”

“Nuh-uh…,” he said, groping for an answer.

The reaction told me he knew he’d missed his checkpoints. What he didn’t know was whether we’d found out about that.

“That wasn’t a word, Duane. Did anything unusual happen that night?” I tried again.

“Not… not that I remember right now. I mean, it’s been a while.” He stumbled over this line, which for him was probably quite
a speech.

“But it was a big night—little girls don’t usually get raped in this hood, from what I hear. So try thinking back. You see
anyone on the street near Susan’s house? Any unfamiliar cars?” I asked, hoping he’d take the bait.

Duane Pickelman frowned, making the “thinking” face that probably never even fooled his kindergarten teacher. Then he shifted
to his “oh yeah” face.

“Yeah, yeah, I think I might’ve seen a white Camaro. I know I seen one around that time, and I remember thinking it was kinda,
you know, outta place.”

I could tell he was proud of this effort.

“What time was that? Roughly?” I asked.

Duane screwed up his face even harder, looking like a Cabbage
Patch doll but not as cute. “Prob’ly late, like toward midnight. I’m not sure…”

“You remember where you saw it?”

“Uh… nuh… I’m not sure,” he said, glancing sideways at Bailey.

“But it was here in the community, right?”

“Oh yeah. Yeah, it was here, all right,” he said, looking relieved.

“Interesting how you remember seeing that, Duane,” I said. “Because, according to the records, you missed all your checkpoints
after eleven o’clock that night.”

Duane blanched so quickly I thought he might faint. His mouth opened and closed silently, then he finally used some good judgment
and clamped it shut.

“Want to explain why you missed those checkpoints, Duane? Now’s your chance.”

“I… uh… I don’t know. I don’t remember missing ’em…” Duane’s verbal engine ran down again.

“How about I make it easy on you?” I said. “Why don’t you come downtown with us and give us a saliva and blood sample so we
can exclude you? Because, frankly, if you’re not involved and you were just goofing off on the job, it’s no skin off my butt.
I won’t tell a soul. That way we can rule you out, and no one will ever know you played hooky.”

Duane Pickelman’s face settled into a grim expression that told me he’d shut down. He shook his head slowly. “Nuh-uh, not
doing it. No.”

“See, that makes me think you did the rape, Duane. You didn’t do the rape, did you?”

“I din’t do no rape, no, ma’am. But I’m not taking any tests,” he said, his face set stubbornly, like a toddler determined
not to do naptime.

I couldn’t have scripted it better. I hadn’t expected him to agree, and I couldn’t force anyone to give a DNA sample without
a court
order. I didn’t know if we could get one either. It was tough to get a judge to sign off on an order to take DNA samples without
consent if the donor wasn’t in custody. That pesky Fourth Amendment. But maybe, with Duane’s refusal in pocket, in addition
to the fact that he couldn’t explain why he’d missed his checkpoints, a judge might give us the order.

“Okay, no problem. Then listen up, Duane: better stick around in case we need to talk to you again. Because if we come back
and find you’ve beat feet out of here, it’s going to make you look very guilty, and I know you wouldn’t want to look guilty.
Right? Duane?”

Duane continued to peer straight ahead, but I saw his eyes stray to the corners as he gave me a sidelong glance, his nostrils
pinched and flaring as two bright-red circles flamed on his cheeks. “I got no reason to run. You can’t prove nothing.”

I nodded and gave him a cool smile, then pointed to the door. “That’s the spirit. Thanks for your time. Have a nice day.”

Duane didn’t wait for me to change my mind. He opened the door and vaulted out, then headed into the guardhouse. I wondered
what he’d say to Normie.

I grabbed a spare napkin out of Bailey’s glove compartment and wiped off the seat before getting in, then Bailey drove out.

“Maybe it’s time for you to break down and get a ‘carry,’ ” she said with a pointed glance at my purse, where my .357 nestled
peacefully. “Put your rebel youth behind you,” she said dryly.

“This is the thanks I get for being your loyal backup? You make me get a permit?”

“You shoot somebody, I’ve got to do double the paperwork.” Bailey gave me a warning look.