A Matter of Life and Death

by Phillip Margolin

  “Oh?”

  “He says you’ve met him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Brent Macklin.”

  It took her a minute before she remembered the handsome reporter who was writing a story about illegal fights.

  “Why is he calling from the jail?”

  “He says that he’s just been arrested for murdering Anthony Carasco.”

  Robin swore under her breath. The last thing she wanted to take on was another murder case, but she told the receptionist to put through the call anyway.

  * * *

  “Good afternoon…” Robin started as soon as the guard left the contact visiting room at the Justice Center jail. Then she stopped.

  “Should I call you Luis Ortega or Brent Macklin?”

  Ortega looked embarrassed. “Luis Ortega is my real name.”

  “On the phone, you said you were arrested for killing Anthony Carasco.”

  “I didn’t do it. They have the wrong person.”

  “That’s good to know, but the police must not believe you, and I assume one of the reasons is your snooping around using an alias. Why did you do that?”

  “I wanted to find out who was responsible for my father’s death.”

  “Tell me a little about him,” Robin said.

  “It’s really sad. My dad was in the military. He did several tours in war zones and came back stateside all fucked up. We got him in rehab a few times, but he would fight, and they wouldn’t let him stay. Once he was back on the street…”

  Ortega shrugged. “Mom took him in again and again, but finally, she’d had enough. The last time Mom told him to leave, we didn’t make an effort to find him. We were exhausted. Then the police told us he was dead.”

  Ortega shut his eyes for a second. Then he took a deep breath. “I saw the video of the fight. It was horrible. I didn’t blame Lattimore. I blamed the people who were running the fights. Trying to find out who was really responsible for his death was my way of making amends.”

  “I’m sorry about your father,” Robin said, “but revenge is a strong motive for murder.”

  “I swear I didn’t kill Carasco. I would have told the police what I knew if I had proof Carasco was behind the fight that killed my dad.”

  “The police must have something stronger than your use of an alias if they’ve charged you. Can you tell me what it is?”

  “I found out when the next illegal fight was going to be held. I had some information that Carasco was involved in the fights, so I followed him and staked out the site. I was hidden in some trees with a good view of the barn when the police made the raid. I saw Carasco run out the back and take off in his car. I followed him to the Grandview apartments, but he was far enough ahead of me so I didn’t know which apartment he was in. By the time I drove into the lot, he was nowhere in sight. I was driving around, trying to spot his car, when a security guard drove up. I got scared, and I drove off.

  “I was living in a hotel by the airport. I held off going home, because I wanted to find out if the police had arrested the people responsible for the illegal fight. When I heard that Carasco was murdered at the Grandview, I worried that I might have been seen. I was packing to go to my plane when two detectives showed up. They asked me if I’d ever been to the Grandview, and I lied and said I hadn’t. That’s when they started to arrest me. I panicked and hit one of the officers. The other one arrested me.”

  “Something puzzles me, Luis. The location and date of these fights is a well-kept secret. I only found out there was going to be a fight Thursday afternoon. How did you learn there was going to be a fight?”

  Ortega looked conflicted.

  “Luis?”

  “This is tough. The person who told me … I promised I would keep him out of it.”

  “That’s nice, but you’re facing a possible death sentence, so I’d say that outweighs any promise you may have made.”

  “Will you keep him out of it, unless it becomes absolutely necessary?”

  “That would be up to you. You’re the client. The attorney-client privilege prevents me from revealing anything you tell me without your permission. Now, who told you where the fight was going to be held?”

  Ortega took a deep breath. “He’s a deputy DA named Ian Hennessey.”

  “Hennessey? But you knew he was Carasco’s alibi?”

  “He suspected that Carasco set him up to be his alibi, but he was afraid his career would be ruined if he went to the police. He thought I was writing a story about the illegal fights, and he told me Carasco might be involved with them. He wanted me to expose Carasco if I found he was behind his wife’s murder.”

  “Why did he think his career would be ruined if he took what he knew to the police?”

  “Hennessey had been sleeping with a woman who was a prostitute. He said he didn’t know that until she told him that she’d been arrested in Portland for prostitution and had outstanding warrants. She threatened to tell Vanessa Cole he had paid for sex if he didn’t get the warrants off the system. He was sure he’d be fired if his boss learned about the prostitute.”

  “How did he learn about the fight?”

  “He overheard something that was said in the DA’s office. He called me with the information on Thursday afternoon. He didn’t have a location, but he said I could follow Carasco.”

  “Did he know the judge was going to attend the fight?”

  “No, but it was the only way he could think of to help me get to the fight.”

  “This is good to know.”

  “Will you have to tell Ian I broke my word?”

  “I’m not sure. It depends on whether or not revealing his involvement will help you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  “Come in,” Vanessa told Carrie and Roger, whom she’d summoned to her office to discuss the case against Luis Ortega.

  “Can we go to a grand jury with what we have?” Vanessa asked when the detectives were seated.

  “The case isn’t as strong as we’d like it to be,” Roger said, “but he was using an alias and asking questions about the illegal fights, so there’s a strong argument that Ortega was in Portland to avenge his father’s death. That’s motive.

  “Then, he was at the Grandview during the time period when the judge was killed. That’s opportunity. And he fled the scene, which is evidence of guilt.”

  “Has the lab come up with any trace evidence that puts Ortega in apartment 5?”

  “Not yet. And there is one complication,” Roger said.

  “Oh?”

  “We did what you suggested and timed the shortest route from the barn to the Grandview, then from the Grandview to Rostov’s house. If Rostov followed Carasco to number 5, killed him right away, then drove home, he could have arrived home in time for Lockwood to have her confrontation with him.”

  “Why is that a complication?”

  “Rostov’s prints are in the apartment. They were probably placed there when he beat up Hayes’s pimp, but you can’t date fingerprints. Ortega can argue that Rostov had as much opportunity to kill Carasco as he did, and Rostov’s prints were inside the apartment, and his weren’t.”

  “Damn. Were there any other latents found in number 5?”

  “Only what you’d expect: Hayes, Hennessey, Carasco, Tepper, and two men who are known associates of Rostov.”

  Vanessa was about to ask another question when her intercom buzzed.

  “Put her through,” Vanessa told her receptionist.

  “That was Robin Lockwood,” Vanessa told the detectives when the call was finished. “She’s been hired by Luis Ortega, so we’d better get all of our ducks in a row.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  “Hi, Amanda,” Robin said. “You’ll never guess why I’m calling.”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “I’ve just been hired by Luis Ortega, Carlos Ortega’s son. He’s been charged with murdering Anthony Carasco, and I need a second chair. And before you say no, you need
to know that he swears he didn’t do it, and he sounds like he’s telling the truth.”

  Amanda sighed. “Have you checked to see if Mike is prosecuting?”

  “Of course. I wouldn’t have called if he were. But this is Vanessa’s case. Are you in?”

  * * *

  Robin studied the crime scene photographs that had been taken in the bedroom of apartment 5 at the Grandview. After a few minutes, she put them down, closed her eyes, and rubbed the lids.

  Robin and Amanda had been seated across from each other at the table in Robin’s conference room for hours. In front of the attorneys was the discovery Vanessa had sent over in the Anthony Carasco homicide investigation. It included the photos, the autopsy report, the crime scene report, reports on the raid at the barn, and transcripts of interviews with Andre Rostov, Ian Hennessey, Stacey Hayes, Luis Ortega, Bert Solomon, Helen Raptis, and others, as well as duplicates of all of the reports from Joseph Lattimore’s prosecution.

  “What do you think?” Robin asked her cocounsel.

  “The case against Ortega is thin.”

  “Because?”

  “They have him in the lot at the Grandview, but there’s no DNA, fingerprints, and so on that put him in apartment 5,” Amanda said. “Then there’s the gun. They don’t have it, so there’s no evidence that connects Luis to it.”

  “He lied and ran when the detectives confronted him, and he ran when the security guard confronted him,” Robin said.

  “True, but he stayed at the airport hotel for a few days after Carasco was killed.”

  “And there’s the alias,” Robin said.

  “Yeah,” Amanda answered. “We won’t be able to deny that he was in Portland hunting for his father’s killer, but the police didn’t know that Carasco was behind his wife’s murder until after Kevin Bash and Rostov were interrogated. So, when he followed him to the Grandview, Luis wouldn’t have known Carasco had devised a plot that resulted in Carlos’s murder.”

  “Hennessey had given him reason to believe the judge might have been involved, and Luis followed him to the fight. Vanessa will argue that Luis confronted Carasco and got him to confess.”

  “That would be pure speculation without evidence that Luis was in apartment 5,” Amanda said.

  “Do you see any other suspects?” Robin asked.

  “Rostov jumps out. Dillon and Anders figured out that he could have followed Carasco to the Grandview, killed him, and driven home just after you got there.”

  “What’s his motive?” Robin asked.

  “Maybe the judge didn’t pay him for beating up Tepper, or he was afraid that Carasco would sell him out if he was arrested.”

  “What do you think about Stacey Hayes?” Robin asked. “They seem to be handling her with kid gloves.”

  “You think she might have killed Carasco?”

  “I can make a case for it,” Robin said. “The murder was in apartment 5, and her gun is the same caliber as the murder weapon.”

  “She told Dillon and Anders that she didn’t have the gun when she left the apartment.”

  “We only have her word for that. Doesn’t it make more sense that she’d take the gun with her for protection against Rostov and his goons? And she has plenty of motive. After seeing Tepper beaten to a pulp, she might want revenge on the man who ordered it. Plus, she could lure Carasco to the apartment, and no one knows where she was from the night Tepper was beaten until she was spotted in Bellingham.”

  Amanda yawned.

  “Don’t do that,” Robin said. Then she yawned, and the women laughed.

  “My brain has turned to mush,” Amanda said.

  Robin leaned back and rubbed her eyes again. “I’m ready to pack it in. Shall we call it a day?”

  “I won’t fight you.”

  “Okay. Let’s call it quits.”

  “What’s next?” Amanda asked.

  “I’m going to request a bail hearing. You’re right. The state’s case is thin, and this way, we can force Vanessa to tell the court why she thinks she’s got enough to keep Luis in jail.”

  * * *

  That night, Robin fell asleep, exhausted, and soon found herself wandering through damp, dark, and narrow passages lined with the thick, slime-covered gray rock found in medieval prisons. She was desperate for a way out, and she knew that there was a door that would let her escape, but it was hidden somewhere in the maze of intersecting corridors, and she couldn’t see where it was.

  Jeff was home from the hospital. Robin was tossing, turning, and moaning so loudly that she woke him, and he shook her shoulder. Robin’s eyes snapped open, and she sat up. Her heart was beating rapidly, and she was soaked with sweat.

  “Sorry I woke you, but you were having one hell of a nightmare.”

  Robin took a deep breath and fell back on the bed. “It was a doozy,” she said, and she told Jeff about her unsettling dream.

  “Do you think you regret taking the Ortega case and you’re subconsciously searching for a way out?” Jeff asked.

  “I don’t know, Dr. Freud, but I guess it could be a reaction to being sucked into another life-or-death prosecution when I should have gone on a long vacation.”

  “That will teach you to have empathy and a sense of civic duty,” Jeff said.

  Robin laughed.

  “Can you get back to sleep?” Jeff asked.

  “I think I’ll go in the living room. My heart is still pounding. Sorry I woke you.”

  “Let me know if you figure out why you were wandering around a spooky castle. But do it in the morning. I’m going back to sleep.”

  Robin closed the door to the bedroom and walked into the living room. She stood in front of a window and looked down at the street through a rain-streaked pane. A homeless man huddled under the protection afforded by a doorway. No one else was out. The pale glow from the interior of a store across the street illuminated the raindrops that bounced off the pavement. It was a peaceful scene, and Robin watched the city lights, waiting for her eyes to grow heavy.

  While she stood in the window, she couldn’t help wondering if her nightmare was a reaction to something in the police reports. She’d had a nagging feeling that there was something wrong or out of place in one of them, but she had no idea what it was.

  Her eyes closed for a moment, and she felt her body grow heavy. She walked back to her bed and slipped under the covers. This time when she fell asleep, she didn’t dream, but she remembered the dream in the morning and vowed to reread every report to try to see if her unease was justified.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The bail hearing in Luis Ortega’s case had been assigned to Harold Wright because he was familiar with the Lattimore case and there would probably be some overlap. Luis came into court wearing a suit and looking like a young professional. He took a seat at the counsel table between Robin and Amanda, and Robin handed him a pen and a legal pad so he could take notes.

  “If there’s anything you think I need to know, write it down and make sure to tell me during a break in the testimony. If it’s really important, tell Amanda, and she’ll interrupt if she agrees. You’re a smart guy, Luis. Use your brain and help us out.”

  “Got it,” Luis said just as the bailiff called the court to order and Judge Wright came out of his chambers and took his seat on the dais.

  “Mrs. Cole, Ms. Lockwood, and Ms. Jaffe, welcome back. I feel like I’m in a movie sequel.”

  “We hope it has a similar ending,” Robin said, and even Vanessa smiled.

  “Mrs. Cole, for Mr. Ortega to be held without bail in an aggravated murder case, the state must establish that the proof is evident or the presumption strong that Luis Ortega murdered Judge Anthony Carasco. You want to hold Mr. Ortega without bail, so the ball is in your court.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. I’m going to let homicide detective Roger Dillon tell you why we think the proof is evident or the presumption strong that Luis Ortega murdered Anthony Carasco. There’s a lot that you heard when you presided over
the Lattimore case that is relevant to this hearing, but I’m going to have Detective Dillon go back to the beginning of the events that led up to Judge Carasco’s murder to give you a complete picture of our case against Mr. Ortega.”

  “I’m listening,” Judge Wright said as soon as the detective was sworn and had taken a seat in the witness-box.

  “This case really started many months ago in San Francisco during the American Bar Association convention,” Roger Dillon told Judge Wright. “That’s when Judge Carasco met a prostitute named Stacey Hayes. They spent the night together, and he became infatuated with her and asked her to move into apartment number 5 at the Grandview complex in Portland. Hayes agreed, and the judge began spending a lot of time there. So much time that his wife, Elizabeth Carasco, discovered the affair and started divorce proceedings.

  “Our witnesses will testify that Judge Carasco had been bleeding his wife’s trust funds dry. Other witnesses will tell you that the judge was using some of these funds to finance illegal, no-holds-barred fights. Kevin Bash was promoting the fights, and Carasco got a share of the profits Bash made from gambling and the fee spectators paid to attend.

  “When the judge learned that his wife was going to divorce him, he devised a plan to have his wife murdered. He went to Bash and asked him to hire someone to kill his wife. Carasco offered to pay Bash with cash and by forfeiting his share of the profits from the next two fights.

  “Part of the judge’s plan involved providing himself with a cast-iron alibi. A few years before the judge met Stacey Hayes, she had been arrested for prostitution in Portland. When she failed to appear for her trials, warrants were issued for her arrest. Carasco introduced Hayes to Deputy District Attorney Ian Hennessey and ordered her to seduce him. Once the young DA was hooked, Carasco ordered Hayes to tell Mr. Hennessey, on a specific date and time, that she would tell Mrs. Cole that he was paying her for sex if he didn’t erase her cases and warrants from the system. Mr. Hennessey didn’t want to fix the warrants and went to Judge Carasco for help.