Final Judgment

by Marcia Clark

  “Except for one minor detail.” She raised her index finger. “What that’ll mean for a certain guy you seem to like.”

  I sighed. She was right. If it turned out someone had killed Tanner, Niko would be number one on the list of suspects. But that thought led me to an idea. “I wonder if Tanner ever said anything to Niko about his mother.”

  Michy gestured to her phone. “Easy enough to find out. Care to place a bet? Five bucks says the answer is no.”

  I put a hand on my hip. “Why on earth would I take a shitty bet like that?”

  She gave an impish smile. “Same reason you’ve taken my other shitty bets. Because you can’t resist.”

  “Then consider this a first.” I headed for my office and called Niko.

  And as we’d expected, Niko said Tanner had never made any kind of reference to his mother. “I kind of got the impression both his parents had passed away.”

  I asked Niko about his own mother. “Have there been any changes in her condition?”

  His voice was tight. “No. But the doctor keeps telling me she’ll decline again soon, and then it won’t be long . . .”

  Doctors. Don’t get me started. “Why does he feel the need to repeat that over and over? It’s not like you’re going to forget.”

  There was a heavy silence for a few beats. “I think he’s afraid I’m in denial about her chances. He just wants to prepare me.”

  I had a few thoughts on that doctor’s helpful reminders. Like, there’s no such thing as “preparing” anyone for so huge a loss. And why knock denial? Isn’t it better to live with hope, regardless of how unrealistic, for as long as possible? After all, medical miracles do happen. Not very friggin’ often, but still. No matter how “prepared” he was, Niko was going to suffer—terribly. But this was no time to rant about the doctor. What Niko needed right now was a shoulder. “I get it. You going back to the hospital tonight?” He’d taken to spending all his free time at his mother’s bedside.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I know it’s crazy, but I feel like she can sense my presence.”

  “I don’t think that’s crazy at all.” I’d heard stories about coma patients who said they’d known—and appreciated—the people who stayed with them. “Want some company?”

  “That’s kind of you, but no. All I do is sit there like a zombie anyway.” Niko said he missed me and I said I missed him, too—though to be perfectly truthful, I thought the fact that we weren’t seeing much of each other right now was probably for the best. The digging I’d done on him and the questions raised by what I’d learned weighed on me. So I was relieved when we ended the call without making plans to get together.

  Just ten minutes later, Alex appeared in my doorway. He rapped on the doorframe. “Ready to fall off your chair with shock?”

  I gripped the arms of my chair. “Go for it.”

  He sat down on the couch and opened his iPad. “The phone number Louisa Hunsecker gave Margaret has been disconnected.” He made air quotes. “‘And there is no new number.’”

  I glanced down. “Still in my chair.”

  Alex held up a hand. “Wait, it gets better. The address she gave belongs to Furry Friends. A pet grooming service.”

  Maybe it was Alex’s wry delivery. Or maybe I just needed a laugh. But this non-news was kind of funny. I spoke earnestly. “Well, then I’m sure she must’ve worked there.”

  Alex widened his eyes. “That’s what I thought. But no. Can you believe it? When I spoke to the manager, he said no one by the name of Louisa Hunsecker had ever worked there.”

  I stared at him. “Well, now I really am about to fall off my chair.”

  He held up his hand again. “Then get ready to hit the floor. Because the name Louisa Hunsecker? Belongs to a thirty-two-year-old junkie. Who died of an overdose in Kansas City—ten years ago.”

  Another dead—quite literally—end. I told him Niko had never heard Tanner talk about his mother. “So now what?”

  Alex frowned. After a moment, he said, “I can only think of one place to go if we want to chase this down.”

  I’d had the same thought. “Angelina.” He nodded. I looked at my watch. It was almost six o’clock. I was supposed to have dinner with Dale tonight. But this was more urgent. “Think it’s too late to hit her up?”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. “Her? You’re kidding, right?”

  I deadpanned him. “They’re not literally ladies of the night. For all you know, she’s an early riser.”

  He shook his head. “So many jokes come to mind.”

  “Please don’t share them. First, let me cancel with Dale.”

  As it turned out, Dale had been about to cancel on me. He’d gotten pulled into helping to serve a search warrant. We agreed to talk the next day and pick another night. I ended the call and said, “Okay, all set. What’s her number?”

  I pushed the buttons as Alex read it to me. Someone with a thick Russian accent answered. “Poranova residence. Who is speaking?”

  I recognized the voice as that of the older woman who’d first answered the intercom at Angelina’s house. How to play this? As super important and urgent? Or laid-back and casual? I didn’t want to sound desperate and give Angelina the impression she had the upper hand. But if I played it too low-key, she might blow me off. I landed on urgent. I told her who I was, then said, “I need to speak with her right away.”

  The woman paused. “You can tell me what is this regarding?”

  I was curious. That was awfully personal. She had to be a relative. But even so, Angelina was a grown-ass woman, entitled to some boundaries. I wondered if she knew this woman asked questions like that. Regardless, my answer was the same. “No. I can’t.” I purposely added a touch of menace. “And I don’t think she’d want me to.”

  She gave a loud harrumph. “Angelina is very busy right now. Give me your number.”

  I gave her my number and ended the call. I sat back. “And now, we wait.”

  Alex loved waiting about as much as I did. Which is to say, he really hated it. He crossed his legs and bounced his foot up and down. “Why don’t we just go over to her place?”

  The idea had occurred to me, too. “If we have to, we will. But it’d be better to get her to respond.” She was the key link to Tanner. If we wanted to get her to open up about him more, we had to make her feel like she had a say in how and when we made contact. That wouldn’t happen if we went and banged on her door without warning every time we wanted to talk to her.

  Luckily, as it turned out, we didn’t have to wait long. Seven and a half minutes later (but who’s counting?), Angelina called me back.

  I put a smile in my voice. “Hey, thanks for getting back to me so—”

  She interrupted me. Her husky voice was even deeper than usual. “I was going to call you. We need to talk.”

  A hundred possibilities fired in my brain. Did we just get lucky? Was she about to admit she’d been hiding Tanner? Did she know who had killed Bryan? “Of course. We can come by now if you want.”

  Her speech was rapid, pressured. “I—uh—it might be better if you come later.”

  I took a guess. “When we’ll be alone?”

  She whispered, “Yes.”

  I knew I should wait till we saw her, but I had to see if she’d give me a clue. “Does this have to do with Tanner?”

  She lowered her voice. “I’ll tell you when I see you.”

  Angelina said I could come over at eight o’clock, and I agreed. I ended the call and told Alex what she’d said and how she’d sounded. “Do you think she knows where Tanner is?”

  Alex drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Maybe. And if so, I wonder why she’s suddenly willing to tell us.” He frowned. “I’m also wondering what’s up with that older woman. I thought she was just a housekeeper, but if she’s the reason Angelina didn’t want to talk just now . . . Did it sound like she was scared?”

  I shrugged. “I couldn’t tell. But it might not be that she’s afraid of the ho
usekeeper. She might just be afraid to let anyone else hear what she wants to tell us.”

  Alex met my gaze. “You mean, like, confess to a crime?”

  I voiced the answer I hoped for. “Yeah. Like maybe the fact that she’s hiding Tanner. Because he killed Bryan.”

  He gave a little chuckle. “Wouldn’t that be perfect.”

  I held up my hands. “A girl can dream, right?”

  But I secretly crossed my fingers. They say dreams—not just nightmares—do come true. Why not this one?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was dark by the time we headed out to Angelina’s house, and as Alex made the turn onto her street, a sparkling array of city lights spreading all the way to downtown LA came into view. Beautiful.

  I’d been trying to keep my hopes for this meeting in check so I wouldn’t crash and burn if it didn’t pan out. But my sweaty palms and thumping heart made it clear I wasn’t succeeding. I needed to calm down. I told myself to take deep breaths, to consider the possibility that what she wanted to tell me might be the worst possible news—that Niko had killed Bryan, or Tanner, or both. But that only made me more nervous. As we walked up to the outer door of her house, I dried my palms on my jacket. I couldn’t remember whether Angelina was a handshaker, but I wanted to be ready just in case. I tilted my head toward the intercom. “Hit it.”

  Alex licked his lips and took a deep breath before he pushed the button. It made me feel better to see that he was nervous, too. Angelina answered. “Who is it?”

  I leaned in. “It’s us.”

  A buzzer sounded, and we walked through the courtyard. Angelina appeared at the door. She was barefoot, in fashionably shredded skinny jeans and a white crop T-shirt. I tried to read her expression for some hint of what was to come. She seemed more somber than last time but nowhere near as freaked out as I’d expected.

  She headed toward the living room and waved for us to follow her. As we entered, I saw that the floor-length drapes—which had been closed before—were open now, which exposed a bank of windows that afforded a view of the city. She’d left a lit cigarette in a black ashtray that was shaped like a cupped hand. Between the mesmerizing view and the tendrils of smoke that floated up toward the high ceiling, I felt like I’d stepped into a noir fifties movie. Angelina sat down and picked up her cigarette.

  Alex sat on the paisley ottoman across from her, and I took the overstuffed burgundy chair to his right. Now that I had a chance to study her more closely, I could see that she was agitated. She was ready to get down to business. So was I. I dug my nails into my palms to keep my hands from shaking. “Tell us why we’re here.”

  She took a drag from her cigarette and blew out the smoke in a fast, long stream. “I need you to do something for me. It’s about my sister.”

  Her what? I’d been so sure she was going to tell us something about Tanner, I had to take a moment to regroup. “Older or younger?”

  Angelina tapped the ashes off her cigarette. “Younger, much younger. Fifteen years old. Eliza was what our mother called a surprise baby.”

  Angelina had to be at least ten, maybe even fifteen years older. She was probably more like a second mother to Eliza than a big sister. Eliza must be in some kind of trouble. This was good news for me, because Eliza was a minor, which meant that unless she’d killed someone, I could probably get her out of doing any time. And it wouldn’t take much work. A nice, easy-peasy way to earn brownie points with Angelina. “What’s going on with her?”

  She rubbed her forehead. “Eliza knows she has to call me before she comes over. I don’t allow her to be here when I have . . . guests. But two weeks ago, she came without calling. She’d just had a fight with her—how did she call it?” She tapped her forehead. “Her, uh . . . bestie. I wouldn’t have let her come if she’d called. I had a big party going that night. Many men Tanner and Bryan were trying to do business with. Ordinarily, I would have sent her home immediately, but she was so upset.” Angelina paused and put down her cigarette. “I had to let her stay.”

  I’d heard about Tanner’s parties. I hadn’t known she threw them, too. “Were those parties a regular thing?”

  She picked up her cigarette and studied it for a moment. “Yes. But not usually here. Most of the time, we used Tanner’s condo.”

  I had a bad feeling about this. “What happened?”

  She bit her lip. “I couldn’t really talk to her, and the party was getting very loud, so at about ten o’clock—maybe a little before that—she called for a Lyft and went outside to wait. The next thing I knew, she was back and pounding on the door.” Angelina seized the neck of her T-shirt and pulled. “She was crying. Her blouse was torn; her hair was a mess. She said she’d gone outside to wait for the car, and someone came up behind her and grabbed her around the waist. He put a bag over her head, tied her hands behind her back, and dragged her into the back seat of a car, and . . .”

  I closed my eyes for a brief moment. This one hit a little too close to home. “And raped her.”

  Angelina nodded. Her hand trembled as she took a long drag off her cigarette. “I asked her if she could remember anything about him. Was he tall? Was he old? Young? Did he speak?”

  Good questions, all. “And?”

  She shook her head. “All she could say was that he seemed older, because when she tried to fight him off, he was breathing very hard.”

  That wasn’t much. “Did she remember anything about the car? Whether it seemed new? How big it was?”

  “She just said the seats felt like leather.” Angelina’s tone was bitter. “It’s nothing. She knows nothing.”

  I could feel the guilt coming off Angelina in waves. “But you think it was someone who’d been at your party.”

  She nodded. “It must have been. This neighborhood, sometimes homeless people who live in the park roam around. But this man does not seem like a homeless person. The problem is, Eliza doesn’t want anyone to know, and I can’t go to the police anyway. If it was one of my clients . . .”

  They might decide to tell the police what Angelina did for a living—if only so they could use it to discredit Eliza. “So you and Tanner were business partners?”

  Her face hardened. “Not partners. But yes, it was all business between us. He paid me to keep the men happy so they’d invest with Gold Strike.”

  And now I could see that she hated herself for it. “Then I take it Bryan and Tanner were at the party that night?”

  Angelina flicked the end of her cigarette in the direction of the ashtray. The ashes fell to the floor. “Of course. But I know it wasn’t either of them. They never left.” A look of anger crossed her face. “Too busy working their targets.”

  That figured. “Do you keep guest lists?”

  She pointed to her head. “I keep them in here. I can give you the names of the fifteen men I personally invited.”

  I could hear a but coming. “Were there more than fifteen there?”

  “Many more,” she said, her tone despairing. “The problem is, I always allow them to bring a plus-one.”

  Of course. “A plus-one who has money to invest.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And they often stretch the plus-one to a plus-two. There were at least thirty people at the party—maybe more. I don’t know.”

  I thought about that. “Maybe your caterer knows?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “He might have an estimate. But I always serve buffet-style.”

  Alex said, “Because you never know how many there’ll be.”

  “Exactly,” she replied.

  Alex opened his iPad. “You can rule out Bryan and Tanner. Anyone else?”

  She thought for a moment. “Yes. Three of the men I personally invited. I know them very well.”

  He nodded. “Tell you what, just give me the information for all fifteen you personally invited. The three you ruled out, too. Someone might’ve seen who left around the time Eliza did.”

  She nodded. “But I must warn you, the names may not be real. Em
ail addresses, phone numbers, yes. Names, no.”

  I said, “And you don’t know who any of the plus-ones were.” She shook her head. Terrific.

  Alex looked up from his iPad. “What about your security camera? Have you checked the footage on it to see if it showed a man leaving the party right after Eliza?”

  Angelina’s expression was grim. “Of course I did. But my camera only shows the courtyard, and two of the lights in the courtyard were out. I couldn’t see anything.”

  Alex asked, “Would you mind if I took a look? Fresh eyes . . .”

  She stood up. “Come with me.”

  We followed her into an office that was just a few steps from the living room. She tapped a key on the desktop computer, and it whirred to life. Then she sat down and typed for a few seconds. A dark image that showed the outlines of the courtyard at the front of the house appeared on the screen. She moved aside and waved Alex over. “This is from the night of the party, just before Eliza left.”

  I watched over his shoulder as he played the footage. Angelina was right. I could see figures moving around, but I couldn’t even tell who was male and who was female. And it was impossible to see if anyone left. The front gate was shrouded in darkness. Alex rewound the footage and played it again more slowly, but it was no use.

  He pushed away from the computer. “You need to upgrade your equipment.”

  Angelina gave him a flat look. “This is not news.”

  This was going to be a daunting bitch of a hunt. “We’ll do everything we can to find this guy. But just out of curiosity, what’re you going to do if we find him?”

  Her eyes turned to slits. “Don’t worry about that. That will be my problem.”

  I had a feeling that man—whoever he was—would wind up sleeping with the fishes. I was A-OK with that. In fact, it was downright inspiring. I’d move heaven and earth to get that bastard. “We’ll need to meet with Eliza.” We might be able to ferret out more information than Angelina had. Not just because we were experienced at getting witnesses to talk, but also because witnesses—and especially sexual assault victims—can be more comfortable talking to sympathetic outsiders than to family.