A Matter of Life and Death

by Phillip Margolin

  Hennessey hung his head. “I’m such a sucker. I never suspected that I was being set up for blackmail. There was a bookcase across from the bed. A camera was hidden between two books on the top shelf. Stacey said she had a sex tape of us she’d send to Vanessa if I didn’t help her. When I got upset, she pulled a gun on me and told me to get dressed and go to my office and fix the warrants. I left right away. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.”

  “Did you get rid of the warrants?”

  “No. That’s the crazy thing. Remember, I drove the judge home and we found Mrs. Carasco?”

  Dillon nodded.

  “He couldn’t stay in his house because it was being processed, so I drove him to a hotel. After I dropped him off, I went home and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t, so I went to the office real early and looked for the warrants.”

  “What were you going to do with them?”

  “I honestly don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. They’re gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s an order from Judge Wilma Malone dismissing the cases and the warrants, but it makes no sense. Why would she get rid of the cases? She wasn’t involved with them.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I know you won’t believe me, but I think Judge Carasco slipped Malone the order and she didn’t know what she was signing.”

  “I do believe you. We have evidence that Judge Carasco hired the men who murdered his wife.”

  Hennessey’s hand flew to his mouth. “Oh god. That’s why the judge had my case switched to his court. He set me up to be his alibi, didn’t he?”

  “It looks that way. I don’t know if we’ll need you, but if we do, would you be willing to testify at a grand jury and at trial?”

  “Definitely. This whole ordeal has been a nightmare. I love my job, and I never broke any laws. I never paid Stacey, and I didn’t do anything with those warrants.”

  “I believe you.”

  “What about the prostitution case? I swear I didn’t do it. I’ll take a polygraph.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Can I still stay in the DA’s office?”

  “I’ll talk to Vanessa. She may want you to take some time off while this investigation is active, but I’m going to tell her that I don’t think you did anything wrong. Carasco’s murder plot was very complex, and it looks like you were an unwitting piece of it.”

  “Thank you so much, Detective Dillon. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  “We’ve got some interesting stuff for you,” Carrie told Vanessa when she and Roger were seated in the DA’s office. “First, we found Stacey Hayes. She used a credit card at a motel in Bellingham, Washington. A friend in the state police has her under surveillance. We’re driving up as soon as we finish here.

  “Second, Sally has fixed the time of death to sometime late Thursday to sometime early Friday morning. Helen Raptis says she was in her hotel from dinnertime Thursday until Friday morning, and her bodyguard agrees.”

  “Can anyone else vouch for her?” Vanessa asked.

  “She ordered room service around nine, but that’s the latest she has covered.”

  “So, they’re each other’s alibi?”

  “Yup, and the alibis aren’t very good, because there were a lot of times they weren’t together.”

  “Go on.”

  “Here’s the most interesting thing we came up with. We used a drone to scope out the farm before and during the raid. We reviewed the pictures it took. As we went in, two men ran out the back and drove off the property—one in a pickup and one in a car. We blew up the pictures and we were able to read the plates. Andre Rostov was driving the pickup, and it’s registered to him. The car that left before the pickup is registered to Carasco. It’s the car that was parked in front of apartment 5 at the Grandview.”

  Vanessa frowned. “How long after the raid did Robin have her encounter with Andre Rostov?” she asked.

  “Why?”

  “Find out how long it would take for Carasco to drive to the Grandview from the farm. Then figure out if Rostov would have been able to follow him, kill him, and drive home in time to get there when Robin captured him. If Carasco owed him money, that’s a motive.”

  “Will do,” Carrie said. “But there’s something else. A car drove out of a logging road about a quarter of a mile from the farm and followed the car and the pickup. We ran the plates. It’s a rental, and the number on the plate matches the number on the plate the security guard wrote down.”

  “The car that was cruising the lot at the Grandview?” Vanessa asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who rented the car?”

  “Brent Macklin,” Carrie said.

  “Who is Brent Macklin?”

  “That’s a good question,” Carrie said. “Roger and I met him in the courthouse during the Lattimore trial. He said he was a reporter who writes stories about UFC, boxing, combat sports, and he was working on a story about illegal fights. He wanted to know who was running the one where Lattimore and Ortiz fought.”

  “Oh, right. He tried to interview me,” Vanessa said.

  “We’re pretty sure Macklin is lying about a lot of things,” Roger said. “We haven’t been able to find any article he’s written. And Macklin isn’t really Macklin.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he talked to us in the courthouse, he gave me his card, and I kept it,” Roger said. “It dawned on me that his prints might be on the card, so I had the lab check it out. The prints don’t belong to anyone named Brent Macklin, but we did find a match.

  “Carlos Ortega had a son named Luis Ortega. Luis has been masquerading as Brent Macklin. He’s been trying to find out who was responsible for killing his father and sponsoring those fights, which makes Macklin a prime suspect.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Bellingham is a coastal city in Washington State near the Canadian border, where a tourist can catch a ferry to Alaska or drive east to ski on Mount Baker, a huge, snowcapped volcano. The motel where Stacey Hayes was staying was not mentioned as a tourist attraction. It was situated near a dive bar, a tattoo parlor, and a body shop, and its chief attraction was that it was cheap.

  As Dillon and Anders approached Hayes’s door, they could hear the drone of a television coming from the room. Hayes opened her door moments after Carrie knocked. She was dressed in a faded Alcatraz T-shirt, dirty jeans, and sweat socks. Her hair was uncombed, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Roger thought that Hayes would be a knockout under other circumstances, but her rumpled clothes and the absence of makeup had erased any traces of glamour.

  “How are you doing, Stacey?” Carrie asked as she held up her badge.

  “What is this?” Stacey asked. She sounded frightened.

  “Nothing scary. We just want to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “You and Judge Anthony Carasco.”

  “The drive up from Portland is pretty long, and we’re starving,” Roger said. “And you look like you could use a cup of coffee and a good meal. There’s a Denny’s across the street. We could talk there or in your room. Your choice.”

  “Do I have to talk to you?”

  “You can refuse,” Carrie said. “Then we’d ask Washington to hold you in jail as a material witness until we could extradite you. That will take quite a while.”

  “A material witness to what?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Anthony Carasco was murdered in apartment number 5 at the Grandview.”

  * * *

  “Do I need a lawyer?” Hayes asked as soon as the server left with their order.

  “Have you committed a crime?” Carrie asked.

  “I didn’t kill Tony,” she answered. “You said he was found in my apartment. I haven’t been there for days.”

  “Why did you leave?” Carrie asked, knowing what Rostov had told them.

  “To save my life. Tony sent
three men to my apartment. They beat the hell out of Karl and told me to get out of Oregon or they’d do the same to me.”

  “Who’s Karl?”

  “Karl Tepper. He’s … an acquaintance.”

  Carrie let that pass. “What did you do when the men left?”

  “I dropped Karl at the emergency room at a hospital in Vancouver. Then I just drove.”

  “Why did the judge send men to beat up Karl?”

  “I’ll tell you if you promise you won’t charge me.”

  “With what?”

  “Look, what I did, it was bad, but Tony made me do it. I’ll tell you everything if you let me go.”

  “I can’t promise anything until I know what you did. Talk to me and I will promise that I won’t use what you tell us now against you.”

  Anders let Hayes think. After a few minutes, she looked across the table.

  “I’m a professional escort. Karl was my manager. I started in Portland and was busted twice, so I left the state and moved to San Francisco. Tony was in San Francisco for the bar convention. We met in a hotel bar, and he paid me to come to his room. After we slept together, he asked me to move to Portland. He said he’d put me up in the Grandview and give me money every month and get rid of the warrants for failure to appear.

  “Before I accepted Tony’s offer to move to Portland, I asked Karl what I should do. He said we’d caught a cash cow, and we should milk him for everything we could get. Karl set up this hidden camera in a bookcase across from the bed in my apartment at the Grandview, and I filmed Tony every time he came over.

  “One day, Tony told me to come to the courthouse and wait until the case he was hearing ended. He said this redheaded DA was going to go into his chambers, and I should wait a few minutes after the DA went in. Then I should walk in. He told me he would set it up for me and the DA to go to dinner. Then I was supposed to seduce him.”

  Hayes looked down. “It was a rotten thing to do, making Ian fall for me. He’s a decent guy, and I didn’t like doing it. I asked Tony what the deal was, but he said that I didn’t have to know and promised me extra money to do it.

  “When I told Tony I thought Ian was hooked, he told me to disappear for a few days, then lure Ian to the apartment on this particular weekday. That’s when I was supposed to ask him to get rid of my warrants or I’d tell his boss he was paying me for sex.”

  “What happened when Ian came over?” Carrie asked.

  “As soon as he came inside, I took him to the bedroom, and we screwed. Then I told him I had outstanding warrants and asked him to get rid of them.”

  “Did Ian say he’d do it?”

  “No. He refused. He said it would be a crime.”

  “What did you do?”

  Stacey hung her head. “I threatened him. I said I had a sex tape and I’d show it to his boss if he didn’t do what I said.”

  “Was there a tape?”

  Stacey nodded.

  “What happened next?” Carrie asked.

  “Ian was really mad. I had to hold a gun on him to protect myself. Then I told him to go to his office and get rid of the warrants. He got dressed and left, and I told Tony that Ian was really upset. He sounded pleased.

  “I didn’t know why Tony wanted me to pressure Ian. Then I found out Mrs. Carasco had been murdered that night and Ian had been with Tony when they found the body. I put two and two together and decided that I’d helped Tony get an alibi.

  “I was scared that I was somehow involved in the murder, so I called Karl to ask what he thought I should do. Karl said he was driving up to Portland and I should get the judge over to the Grandview and we’d blackmail him. When Tony showed up, Karl threatened him with the tapes and told him how much money he wanted. Karl thought we had it made. Then these guys showed up and beat Karl bad.”

  “Can you identify any of these men?”

  “No. They had masks. They were all big, but one of them was huge, like an NFL lineman.”

  Roger was pretty sure she was describing Andre Rostov.

  “What did the men want?”

  “The tapes. The giant made me show him where I was hiding them.”

  “Where were they?”

  “The camera was hidden by two books. Karl had hollowed out the books, and the tapes were in the books. The big guy took them and told me to get out of Oregon. That’s all I know.”

  “Where is the gun you used to threaten Ian?”

  “I don’t know. It was in my nightstand, but I didn’t take it with me when I ran.”

  “What caliber gun was it?” Carrie asked.

  “A .38.”

  The same caliber as the bullets that ended Anthony Carasco’s life, Carrie thought.

  “Do you still have the key to your apartment?” Roger asked.

  “No. I tossed it.”

  The server appeared with their order. Stacey inhaled her food as soon as her plate hit the table. Roger guessed that she was low on funds and was not eating three squares a day.

  “How much trouble am I in?” Stacey asked when she came up for air.

  “If Ian wants to press charges, you could be in a lot of trouble, but I don’t think he will. It would be embarrassing and not the type of thing he’d want going public.”

  “Are you still going to hold me as a material witness?”

  “It would be easier if you rode back to Portland with us. Again, it’s your choice.”

  “What if the guys who beat up Karl come after me? They said they would if I showed my face in Oregon.”

  “You told us Tony sent them,” Roger said. “The judge is dead, and men like that don’t work for free. I think you’re safe. But just to be sure, I’ll see if we can put you in a safe house.”

  Stacey took a sip of her coffee, and the detectives let her think.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go back.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  After suffering a rash of thefts, the company Luis Ortega rented from had installed trackers in their cars. Two hours after Anders and Dillon arrived back in Portland, the company manager told them the current location of Ortega’s car, and the detectives found it parked in the lot of a hotel near the airport.

  Ortega’s room was on the first floor near a door that opened into the parking lot. Carrie knocked on the door. Ortega opened it, and Carrie displayed her badge.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Ortega.” Luis felt sick when he realized that Carrie had used his real name. “I’m Detective Carrie Anders, and this is my partner, Roger Dillon. I don’t know if you remember, but we met in the courthouse. We’d like to ask you some questions. Can we come in?”

  Ortega hesitated. Then he stepped back and waved the detectives inside. Roger looked around the room. A suitcase lay open on the bed, and it looked like they’d caught Ortega in the act of packing.

  “What’s this about?” Luis asked.

  “It’s about you calling yourself Brent Macklin.”

  “That’s not a crime.”

  “It is if you’re concealing your identity as part of a plot to murder someone.”

  “Whoa, hold on. I haven’t killed anyone.”

  “Not even Anthony Carasco, the man who had your father murdered?”

  “I didn’t know the judge did that,” Ortega said, but he didn’t sound convincing.

  “You didn’t follow Carasco from a barn in the country to the Grandview apartments on Thursday night?”

  “Where?”

  “The Grandview apartments. They’re on the Columbia River.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We think you do, Luis.”

  “I’ve never been to those apartments.”

  Carrie looked at Roger. Roger started to pull out his handcuffs, and Ortega punched him in the shoulder. The blow moved Roger aside. When Ortega started for the door, Carrie put all of her two-hundred-plus pounds behind a punch that sent Ortega to the floor. Roger snapped on the cuffs.

  “Luis Ortega, I am placing you under ar
rest for the murder of Anthony Carasco,” Carrie said. Then she read Ortega his Miranda rights.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Robin was experiencing post-death-case depression. While Joe Lattimore’s life hung in the balance, Robin didn’t have one restful night. She knew that Joe could die if she wasn’t perfect. Exhausted from lack of sleep and plagued by doubt, adrenaline had gotten her through each day.

  Once Joe was free, the exhaustion she had fought for weeks swept over her like a tsunami. Now that she was no longer responsible for Joe’s life, Robin slept like a dead person. When she woke up, she wanted to stay in bed, but she knew it was important to get back into her routine, so she forced herself to grab her gym bag and run the five miles to McGill’s gym, where she battled weights for an hour.

  Robin’s muscles ached, but she felt refreshed after taking a shower and making the leisurely walk to her office. She had a slow day and no desire to plunge back into her cases, so she sipped a latte and wasted an hour reading the Oregon State Bar Bulletin and a few issues of a magazine dedicated to mixed martial arts that she had not had the time to read while Joe’s case was occupying her every waking moment.

  After the pressure she’d been under, Robin was grateful that her caseload consisted of several briefs that were not due for months, a shoplift, two DUIIs, and a he-said-she-said domestic violence case that would probably be resolved by a plea. None of her trial-level cases contained a complex legal issue.

  Robin was reading about a teen phenom who had won his first five UFC bouts, when her receptionist buzzed her.

  “You have a collect call from the jail.”

  “Tell the caller I died.”

  “You may want to take this one.”