RK02 - Guilt By Degrees (3 page)

Paperwork in
hand, I headed to the clerk’s office and got lucky to find Rosario, one of the more efficient filers, on duty. She let me in behind the counter, where I’d be able to avoid the usual obnoxiously long lines. Then I got even luckier and ran into Toni LaCollier—fellow denizen of the Special Trials Unit and one of my two “besties.”

I gave her the lowdown on my eventful morning.

“Girl, trouble and you are like white girls and Justin Bieber—one always chasing the other,” Toni said, shaking her head.

“Kind of like black girls and Usher?”

“We don’t have to chase,” Toni sniffed. “We just have to slow down.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “But, seriously, you need to watch out for that little tool, Brandon.”

“You know him?”

“I know of him.” The clerk passed Toni the complaint for her case—the initial charging
document
—and she signed it.

“From?” I asked.

“J.D.”

Judge J. D. Morgan was Toni’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. Perfectly suited for each other, they had all the bad
and
the good things in common. Since both were commitment-phobic, this meant that one or the other would inevitably back away after they’d been together for any length of time. And once they’d been apart for a while, one would eventually sidle up to the other. They were currently in one of their “on” phases.

“He tried a case in front of J.D.,” Toni said. “According to him, the guy was a showboat—without the boat.”

“That fits,” I replied. “And he’s got a big hard-on for Special Trials.”

“Want to know why?” she asked.

“No,” I replied.

Toni ignored me. “Guess who’s his boss and big angel in the office?”

“No clue,” I said, shaking my head.

“Phil Hemet,” Toni replied.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, stricken. “The idiot who lost the only case he ever tried?” I fished through my memory. “A caught-inside-the-car joyriding case.”

“A genius he ain’t,” Toni agreed. “But he’s a world-class brownnoser.”

“Right. Got promoted to director of central operations at one point, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Toni snorted. “And on his way up, he headed Special Trials for about five minutes.”

“Thank God we weren’t around for that. But how did they let a fool like that run a unit like Special Trials?”

“How do they do anything around here?”

The clerk pushed the complaint for my case over to me, and I stopped to sign it.

“I will tell you this, though,” Toni said. “I heard that the deputies in the unit gave him endless shit. Refused to talk to him about their cases, never listened to a word he said, and if he called a meeting, no one would show. They’d all say they had to be in court.” Toni recounted the story with relish.

“Sounds like good, responsible lawyering on their part,” I replied.

“Most definitely,” Toni agreed. “But you know who demoted his ass?”

I shook my head.

“Your buddy, District Attorney Vanderhorn,” she said.

“Nooo!” I replied, truly shocked.

Toni held up her hand. “If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”

Vanderhorn and I were like oil and water. He thought I was insubordinate and unpredictable. I thought he was a boneheaded politico with no legal skills whatsoever. On any given day, we could both be right. But apparently he’d had a rare fit of good judgment where Hemet was concerned.

“Well, you know what they say…”

“Yeah, I do, so spare me,” Toni said, knowing what was coming.

I continued, undaunted. “Even a clock that’s broken is right twice a day.”

Toni walked out ahead of me, muttering to herself—something about gagging.

I knew
the defense would jam me into the earliest possible date for the preliminary hearing, which meant I wouldn’t have much time to pull everything together. From what I’d heard in court, and the flimsiness of the file in my hand, there was still a lot of work to do, not the least of which was to figure out who my victim, currently listed as “John Doe,” was. So I turned down Toni’s offer to hit Little Tokyo for a sushi lunch and grabbed a no-guilt turkey-and-lettuce sandwich to eat at my desk while I worked.

By the time I settled in and spread out the file, the eighteenth floor was largely deserted. Quiet and empty, just the way I liked it. I shoved the murder book onto the table next to the window and tried not to look at the teetering pile of
other
murder books and case files that were starting to impinge on my treasured ninety-degree view. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, dropped my purse on top of the bottle of Glenlivet, and propped my feet up on the edge of the drawer.

I flipped open the slender file. My John Doe had been walking north on Hope—insert irony here—between Fourth and Fifth Street, when he lunged out and grabbed a woman’s arm. They struggled for a moment, and that’s where the narrative got murky. Either she broke free and then the victim fell to the ground, or he fell to the ground and then she got loose. The report quoted witness Charlie Fern as saying that the defendant, Ronald Yamaguchi, was standing right next to John Doe, so he had to have done the stabbing, though Fern hadn’t exactly seen it.

It was an interesting twist on what Fern had said in court. Not so much a contradiction as a difference in emphasis. The gap was right there in plain sight: he “hadn’t exactly seen” the stabbing. Why he’d shaved down his statement in court was anybody’s guess. Taking the oath can make witnesses nervous, but it was equally possible that Fern had exaggerated what he’d seen when he’d spoken to the cops. Regardless, the statement itself gave fair warning of a possible problem, and a prosecutor who was paying attention would’ve noticed that and either taken some time to interview Fern before the prelim or at least anticipated a possible snag on the witness stand. In other words, if “I could give a shit” Brandon Averill had been doing his job instead of his hair, he would’ve made sure the cop who took that report had his butt firmly planted in the seat next to him before he even thought about announcing “ready” in court.

As a general rule, I don’t like to second-guess fellow deputies. No one but the trial deputy really knows what’s going on, and sometimes his smartest moves are the ones he
doesn’t
make. But there was no benefit of the doubt to be given here. Not after what I’d seen in the report. I had no doubt that Stoner was telling the truth and Averill had forgotten to issue the subpoena.

So how had Fern fingered Yamaguchi for the police in the first place if, as Fern claimed, he didn’t know Yamaguchi?

I quickly paged over to the arrest report. Apparently Yamaguchi had been in the crowd of gawkers who’d gathered when the police had finally been called to the scene. Charlie’d noticed him there and pointed him out. Odd. Why would Yamaguchi return to the scene when he’d gotten away free and clear? Then again, he wouldn’t be the first defendant to get off on watching the police work the crime scene he’d created.

And who was our John Doe, who lay alone and ignored on a filthy sidewalk while his life seeped away? I imagined a mother looking down at her newborn’s face, full of hopes and dreams.

I pushed aside the depressing thought and refocused on the report. John Doe’d had a box cutter in his pocket, and he’d grabbed that woman. It was possible the killer had stabbed John Doe in response to a threat. But if it wasn’t a self-defense killing, then I owed it to John Doe to make his murderer pay, or at least to give it a fair try.

The crime scene was just a short hike from the office and only a few blocks away from my home—a suite at the Biltmore Hotel, a grand historical landmark in the heart of downtown L.A. I’d been lucky enough to score a sweet deal as a long-term resident after getting a sentence of life without parole for the murderer of the CEO’s wife. Recently, the CEO had upgraded me to a suite with two bedrooms, claiming it wasn’t getting much use anyway. I’d been a little reluctant to be on the receiving end of even more of his generosity. But when he continued to insist, I caved in. It did make sense that my old room, being smaller and more affordable, was easier to book.

I picked up the phone and punched in Bailey’s number. Being at a crime scene always gives me a firsthand feeling for how everything went down—gives me ideas about where to look and what to look for. And it always helps to have the benefit of Bailey’s discerning eye.

“Detective Keller, please,” I said.

I gazed out at my view of downtown Los Angeles. Having a window office had thrilled me from the moment I’d landed here, in my dream job as a prosecutor in the Special Trials Unit. I made it a point to enjoy the spectacular view every day, no matter what else was going on. The wind was still wreaking havoc with skirts, hats, and hair. A young
couple
in jackets that were way too thin for the wintry cold shivered and clung to each other as they waited to cross Spring Street. An older woman—who’d unfortunately chosen to wear a wide skirt—awkwardly walked with one hand pressed to her thigh as she hugged the shoulder strap of her purse with the other hand. Behind her a teenage boy mugged for his friends, pretending to be Marilyn Monroe in the famous skirt-blowing scene. He pressed his hands to the legs of his jeans and puckered his mouth as the others snickered.
Yeah,
I thought,
you try walking downhill in a skirt and heels in this wind, smart-ass.

My call was put through.

“Keller.”

“Knight here. Want to walk a crime scene?”

“John Doe stabbing?”

How the hell…?

“It’s all over the station, Knight. But how’d
you
wind up with this case? It’s not exactly Special Trials material.”

“The guy who had the case was a useless sack—”

“Who was gonna dump it, so you got pissed off and grabbed it. And, now that you’re in this thing up to your ears, it turns out the case is a dog.” Bailey sighed. “You know, I get your whole ‘justice for all’ thing. What I don’t get is why it means
I
have to be roped in.”

As if Bailey—or Toni, for that matter—was all that different from me. This wasn’t just a nine-to-five job for any of us. But given Bailey’s current attitude, not to mention the fact that she was right about the case being a dog, I decided now was not the best time to point that out. “Because you’ll get to give me hell about my lack of impulse control?”

“I can do that anyway, and besides, I’m in the middle of a report…”

I saw that I’d have to up the ante. “I’ll give you the blow-by-blow on what happened in—and
out of
—court.”

Bailey exhaled. “Where’s the scene?”

The lure of gossip. It seldom fails. I told her.

“Meet you in ten,” she said, and hung up.

It gets tiresome the way Bailey goes on and on.

I called
Melia, the unit secretary, and told her I’d be going out to a crime scene. Then I pulled on my coat, reached into the pocket for my .22 Beretta, flipped off the safety, and headed out.

I found Bailey standing at the corner of Hope and Fourth Street, her short sandy-blond hair barely ruffled by the heavy wind. Only the tall and lean Bailey could pull off a midcalf-length camel-hair coat. The day was cold enough to make even the weatherproof detective wrap a scarf around her neck, and its jewel-toned colors brought out the green in her eyes. If she weren’t one of my besties, I’d hate her guts.

“According to the report,” I said by way of greeting, “our John Doe was slightly more than halfway between Fourth and Fifth when they found him.”

We headed toward the spot.

“I didn’t leave my cozy cubby just to walk a scene with you. What the hell happened in court?”

I filled her in.

“Jeez,” she said with a sigh when I’d finished. “Poor Stoner. He’s had it rough lately.”

“So you know him?”

“We worked together in Hollywood Division a while back. Really good guy, and a great cop.”

“So I should believe him when he says he won’t give me grief if the case goes south?” I asked.

Bailey hesitated. This did not reassure me.

“What?” I asked impatiently.

“Yeah, he’ll probably be okay,” she said, then stopped and looked off down the street. “It’s just that he’s going through a real bitch of a divorce. It’s got him a little…unhinged. Otherwise he never would’ve gone off on some dumb-punk DA, no matter what he said.” Bailey put her hands into her pockets and looked at the ground for a moment. “But you did him a solid—pulled his case out of the Dumpster. I’d think you’d be bulletproof where he’s concerned.”

I didn’t care for the choice of words, reminding me as it did that if Stoner lost it, I might literally need to be bulletproof.

A group of men in business suits who were trying to navigate the sidewalk and talk at the same time created a moving roadblock, so I stepped to the curb to avoid a collision. They never even broke stride or seemed to notice that they’d commandeered the sidewalk. They’d probably walked around my John Doe with equal oblivion.

“Anyway, it may all be moot,” Bailey continued. “If that DDA beefs Stoner, they’ll make him ride a desk until it all gets sorted out.”

“So who’ll I get?”

“Depends on who’s up.” Bailey shrugged, then gave me a little smile. “But I’d take the hit and work with you for Stoner’s sake.”

Bailey and I had met and bonded over a serial-killer case we’d worked together six years ago. We’d wound up becoming best friends and had finagled our way into working more than our fair share of cases together. But then Bailey got transferred into the elite Robbery-Homicide Division, and we didn’t need to finagle anymore. It was common practice for Robbery-Homicide to funnel nearly all of their cases to the Special Trials Unit.

Bailey thought a moment. “I could probably get clearance to babysit the case until Stoner’s beef is settled. That should be long enough to at least get it through the preliminary hearing.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet no one’s going to fight to get their hands on this one.”

“True story.” Bailey sighed and shot me a sour look. “Seriously, Knight, would it kill you to get me in on an easy one for a change?”

“Apparently,” I said with a shrug. I did seem to have a habit of sticking us with some of the nastier messes. “You want to call Stoner and let him know we’re out here?”

“Probably be the smart thing to do.”

Bailey opened her cell, and I looked around at the businesses on this stretch of Hope Street: a travel agency advertising low-fare tickets to Costa Rica, a dry cleaner whose window afforded a view of racks filled with men’s dress shirts, a bank, a liquor store, and a Subway sandwich shop. I watched a man in a flannel lumberjack coat bite into a thick, juicy meatball-and-cheese submarine and remembered that I’d been too angry to finish my wafer-thin turkey-and-lettuce sandwich. I felt my
stomach
rumble as I watched the tomato sauce drip onto the paper wrapper he’d spread on the
table
. I was just about to throw caution to the wind and go order one for myself when Bailey snapped her phone shut. Her expression was grim.

“What? Is he pissed?” I asked. Maybe we should’ve gotten his okay before invading his turf.

“Apparently that asshole, Averill, already beefed him. Stoner’s gonna be stuck at his desk for a while.” Bailey shook her head. “The good news is, he’s glad to have me help out. For now anyway.”

This had clearly put Bailey in one funky mood, but since there was no chance she’d get a whole lot happier in the next hour or so, I decided the only thing to do was to roll on with the business at hand.

“Most of these places have surveillance cameras, don’t they?” I asked.

“They should.” Bailey looked up and down the street for a moment, then stopped and gazed at a storefront near the northwest corner of Hope and Fifth. “Especially that one.”

I followed her gaze and saw that there was a check-cashing store across the street. I hadn’t noticed it before, because the sign was so small. I figured that was a testament to the business’s popularity. I peered at the building and thought I could see a camera mounted above the storefront window.

It was the start of rush hour, and traffic was
beginning
to get serious, so we walked up to the corner and waited for the light. Between the commuters in a hurry to beat the bottlenecks and the homicidal taxi drivers, jaywalking was tantamount to a death wish.

“Wouldn’t you think Stoner would’ve done this already?” I asked.

“Maybe he did and just didn’t have the video in time for court.”

“Or maybe he got it and it didn’t help,” I said.

Bailey nodded. Neither of us voiced the third possibility: that Stoner had dropped the ball because his life was falling apart. That was definitely not Bailey’s style. Or mine. We were great at what shrinks call
compartmentalizing.
Frankly, I think being able to keep your worlds separate is a great thing. Keeps me sane. Or close to it.