Just Evil (9 page)

Jake noticed her staring at the pictures on the wall and
then saw the sad look in her eyes. “You look tired.”

She closed her eyes, leaned her head back on the sofa. But,
as if she’d memorized the photos, she said quietly, “You have such a terrific,
supportive family, Jake. I always envied that.”

“They were great through all of it, the accusations, the
embarrassment, the media blitz. It was hard on them. But their support never
wavered. Dylan and Reese hung in there, just like Baylee and Quinn will for
you.”

“But at least you had family.”

“Gloria’s your family. And I know Baylee and Quinn are like
family to you.”

She opened her eyes. Green speared blue. “Why are you here,
Jake? If it’s because Gloria called you…”

“It isn’t.”

“Then why?”

He leaned over, tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear.
“I want to help you get through this. You don’t have to go through it alone”

But that had her sitting up straighter. “And just like that,
I’m supposed to forget you left for Japan like you did? Another night, just
like this one, we were taking that first step, or the next step, something
different. Then you panicked. You must think I’m incredibly stupid and naïve to
believe you now. Naïve Kit, she’ll believe anything you tell her. How can I
trust you to be here tomorrow or the day after?”

He stroked her hair before pulling her to him. The minute
his lips touched hers, he felt her body go loose, melt against him. He let
himself enjoy the taste, the tingle. He took the kiss deeper. And then suddenly
she broke off. “You son-of-a-bitch. You’re doing it again. Will you be here in
the morning, Jake, or will you find some place to run, some reason to slither
out of town because you’ve had second thoughts? You always seemed to have
second thoughts where I’m concerned.”

Jake got to his feet. “You’re exhausted and saying things
you haven’t thought through. I’ve told you I’m back to stay. How many times do
you want me to say it?” He ran his hands through his hair. “And you’re the one
who keeps using the word
friends
.” His sigh filled the small space.
“Look, I’ll go jump in the shower, get out of these wet clothes, and take you
home.”

When she didn’t say anything, Jake stormed off down the
hallway.

Soon she heard water running, and she sunk back into the
sofa. Feeling drained; the fight went out of her. The wine from dinner kicked
in and she went from buzz to exhaustion in a heartbeat. In her damp dress she
was chilly, so she tucked her bare feet under her legs and looked around for a
blanket. Spotting an afghan draped on the back of the sofa, she wrapped herself
up like a cocoon and curled up in a ball. Before settling in, she instinctively
released the barrette holding the twisted knot of hair at the back of her head.
It felt good to free her hair from the clasp. For some reason her head hurt.
But soon drowsiness overtook her and she fell asleep.

The ten-minute shower helped Jake get rid of the wine buzz.
Wide awake now and refreshed, he quickly toweled off and threw on a pair of
jeans and a T-shirt. Slipping on his topsiders sans socks, he grabbed his
wallet and car keys, and headed back toward the salon. As he rounded the living
area, he stopped in his tracks when he saw her sleeping on the part of the
couch that made up the L.

She’d fallen asleep curled up in a ball, lying half on her
side and half on her stomach, facing toward him with a fist placed just so
under her chin.

He bent down to her level, rocked on his heels to get a
better look. Inches away from her face, he studied her full mouth, the cute
nose, the gold colored skin. She’d loosened her hair and strands of it fell
across her face. On instinct, he nudged a few locks away, letting his hand rest
on her hair.

Even curled up in a ball, snuggled under his mother’s
knitted afghan, she was all legs. Suddenly, a jolt of lust hit him. How could
he let her spend the night thinking the way she did? Gently, he rubbed at her
arm before shaking her back and forth. But after drinking so much wine earlier,
she didn’t so much as stir.

Wasn’t he looking at the very reason he’d made some changes
recently? The timing had always been off, and he intended to change that.

But now she was the one in trouble. He tried all the
reasonable lines before reality took over.

Oh hell, he thought, as he reached down, picked her up, and
carried her to his bed.

In the dark, he hid inside the backseat of the Benz—waiting—patiently
waiting for the prey to come to him was all part of the process. But the spider-waiting-for-the-fly-game
was always incredibly boring. And by jeezus, she was taking her sweet time.

He tried not to think about what she was doing—inside that
house. He wondered if her husband knew about her little sex nest, all the
trysts she’d had inside. Funny, he thought, everyone thinks she’s such a pillar
of the community, such a workhorse; if they only knew. Underlings do most of
the legal work, except of course for the work she doesn’t want anyone to find
out about.

Prophetically, poetically, philosophically: for he thought
of himself as all those things, prophet, poet and philosopher, he wondered if
anyone ever really knew another person. Oh, they think they do, would swear
that they knew another’s heart. But does one person ever really know the evil
that lurks inside another?

He laughed about how often they’d be wrong.

Finally he heard heels clicking on pavement, heard the beep
of a keyless remote opening the locks. She was so distracted she never realized
her security had already been breached. The car door flew open. He waited for
her to start the car before popping up from the back seat.

“Nice of you to finally join me.”

When she started to scream, he calmly clamped a hand over
her mouth. The other went around her throat. In a whispered brogue, he told
her, “Shut up. Just shut the fuck up. Do you understand?”

When she nodded, he removed his hand.

“Don’t rape me,” she breathed out raggedly.

So that was it. Well, he’d set her straight on that score.
“Look lady, with all the people you’ve screwed over the years and I mean that
both physically and metaphorically, the last fucking thing I’d want is to
exchange bodily fluids with you, not even with a fucking condom, not even if
you were twenty years younger. Right now, I hate having to get this close to
you. Unfortunately, it’s necessary. Now drive. Were you headed home after your
little rendezvous? You’ll head to The Enclave now.”

When she didn’t answer, he went on, “Jess, Jess. Your little
press conference this afternoon was quite a performance. ’Lana would have
applauded your efforts; that is, if she could. But did you really think your
charade would go undetected forever? Now, take the Coast Highway. And let me
tell you a story. Once I’m done, you’ll never see me again.” He saw her relax
somewhat.

“How...how did you get inside my car?”

He smiled, held up a little black scanner. “I love
technology.”

“What do you want? Don’t hurt me.”

“I want you to listen to a story and see if a hotshot lawyer
like yourself can argue your way out of this one.” He put his hand in his
pocket, touched the 9-millimeter Glock pistol, and wondered if the police would
be able to solve this puzzle. Would they take the easy way and blame it on the
woman with the big green eyes? Well, we’ll see what we will see about that, he
thought, as Jessica’s car headed up the ramp and toward Malibu.

The Malibu Police patrol car flipped on its lights as it
circled the black late model S420 Mercedes Benz, parked in the left turn lane
near the 1600 block of Cross Creek Road. Before he got out of his car, Officer
Mark Wilson noted the time as 1:55 a.m. and automatically ran the California
plates. Parked in a random fashion next to the median, the vehicle was a road
hazard. Believing he had a well-to-do drunk driver who had merely passed out at
the wheel in a very inconvenient location, Officer Wilson parked his cruiser
behind the Benz, and grabbed his flashlight.

However, when the beam hit the driver’s side window, the
blast of blood splatter on the glass had him instinctively trying to open the
driver’s door. Finding it locked, he tried the other three doors and found them
locked as well. He backtracked to his cruiser and radioed dispatch for backup
and requested a CSI unit, explaining that he had what looked like a suicide.

After several minutes another patrol cruiser pulled up.
Backup had arrived in the form of Officer Bill Schroeder. Promptly Wilson
explained the situation to Schroeder and they both decided they should get
inside the vehicle.

Schroeder went back to his police car, opened his trunk as
if searching for something, and pulled out the auto thief’s age-old tool: a pry
bar. This time when the officers walked up to the passenger window, Schroeder slid
the metal between the glass and the frame. The passenger door popped open.

A White female in her sixties sat behind the steering wheel,
slumped back as far as the seat would allow in a recline position. Blood
stained the leather seat and saturated the victim’s clothing, coagulating
inside the crevices. A 9-millimeter Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol lay on the
passenger side floorboard. The Glock had caused a sizeable hole in the woman’s
left temple. 

“Why commit suicide in the middle of an intersection?”
Wilson asked Schroeder.

Just as perplexed, Schroeder pointed out, “Not only that,
but there’s not much recoil to a Glock, how’d the pistol get on the passenger
side floorboard when the bullet wound is in the woman’s left temple? That’s on
the opposite side.”

Without disturbing any of the blood evidence, both officers
combed the car for a suicide note. There wasn’t one. They looked around the
interior of the car with a flashlight until Wilson focused the light on a shiny
gold object lying on the front seat of the passenger side. “What do we have
here?”

“Looks like some kind of toy soldier.” Without picking up
the toy trinket, Schroeder focused his flashlight on the object. “No, it looks
like a cowboy. See the horse? The cowboy is sitting on top of a horse. There’s
a sunset in the background.”

Schroeder asked Wilson, “You run the plates?”

“Plates came back clean, no outstanding warrants. The
Mercedes is registered to Jessica Geller Boyd.”

Max St. John had hoped he could wrap up the Stevens murder
in a neat, tidy package. But Jessica Boyd’s murder muddied the water.
Considerably. Since three-thirty that morning, he’d known he had a problem. He
had two murders and two victims who knew each other. And both murders fell into
that high profile category. Throw in another gold cowboy trinket left at the
scene and he had a complication. At least this time the thing hadn’t been
shoved down the victim’s throat. Another reason, he thought, to suspect Kit
Griffin. Maybe she wanted to silence her mother’s lawyer.

Holloway recognized his partner’s thoughts. “Max, where are
you going with this?”

“We have a mess on our hands, Dan. For now, we’ll let people
think the Boyd woman committed suicide. But we both know we’ve got two women,
friends, pillars of the community—”

“And two identical toy cowboys left at the crime scenes.”

“Which we’ll keep to ourselves for now.”

Driving along the Malibu shoreline, St. John pulled his
police issue Crown Victoria up to a gatehouse where a security guard with a
clipboard stepped out of his hut to stop his progress. 

“Detectives Max St. John and Dan Holloway to see Sumner
Boyd,” St. John said as he held up his badge for inspection. After glancing at
the shield, with a nod of his head, as if he’d been expecting them, the guard
pushed a button inside the hut, opening the iron gates, allowing them to enter
the grounds toward the massive compound known as The Enclave, a cluster of
multi-million dollar homes snuggled up against the Malibu cliffs and the
Pacific Ocean.

As they pulled away from the guard station, Holloway joked,
“Not a bad gig if you can get it; sitting in a hut, stopping traffic. But all
this security didn’t help Jessica, now did it? If someone’s got it in for you,
a guy with a clipboard isn’t going to stop a determined killer at some point.”

Over the wrought iron eight-foot tall fence, St. John noted
that the Enclave looked more like a bustling resort at the height of the busy
season rather than a row of private residences. Behind the iron gates, three
families lived within walking distance of each other and chose to use golf
carts as a means to go back and forth. Rich people, he thought, could afford
such luxury. The mansions shared the one common gatehouse, hence the security
guard. After that, a private road took visitors along the water for almost two
miles in either direction, winding by driveways belonging either to a Gatz, a
Geller, or a Boyd.

Impressed at the Boyd mansion, Holloway looked at the lavish
tri-level, contemporary- style, forty-thousand-square-foot main house and
recalled he’d seen a tour of the place on the Home Channel one Sunday afternoon
during football’s off season. He remembered the program had boasted that the
house had ten bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, a theater room, and a law library.
He wondered if the rumors he’d heard about the place over the years were true.

The Boyds’ had purchased the property in the late ’60s after
they’d won their first major court case in 1967, a David-versus-Goliath type
lawsuit that had pitted a small-time rancher against a mega construction
company. Just when it looked as if the fledgling law firm was going to lose,
they’d pulled a bona fide miracle out of thin air, producing not only flawless
documentation at the eleventh hour that proved liability but a surprise witness
who had testified that the construction company dumped toxic waste on the
rancher’s land, killing his cattle.