“As far as those places go, I suppose.”
“True. Any waves there?”
“None to speak of. I didn’t get much of a chance to use a board anyway. Did you do rehab?”
“Yeah, in Laurel Canyon.”
“That place all the stars go to?”
“It was close to home.”
“Yeah, well, I went the other way. I was as far from my friends and my home as possible. It worked.”
“You thinking about going back into surfing?”
He glanced out the window before answering. A dozen surfers in wet suits were straddling their boards out there, waiting on the next set.
“I don’t think so. At least not on a professional level. My shoulder’s shot.”
I was about to ask what he needed his shoulder for when he continued his answer.
“The paddling’s one thing but the key thing is getting up. I lost my move when I fucked up my shoulder. Excuse the language.”
“That’s okay.”
“Besides, I’m taking things one day at a time. They taught you that in Laurel Canyon, didn’t they?”
“They did. But surfing’s a one-day-at-a-time, one-wave-at-a-time sort of thing, isn’t it?”
He nodded and I watched his eyes. They kept tripping to the mirror and looking back at me.
“What do you want to ask me, Patrick?”
“Um, yeah, I had a question. You know how Vincent kept my fish and put it on the wall?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I was, uh, wondering if he kept any of my boards somewhere.”
I opened his file again and looked through it until I found the liquidator’s report. It listed twelve surfboards and the prices obtained for them.
“You gave him twelve boards, right?”
“Yeah, all of them.”
“Well, he gave them to his liquidator.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a guy he used when he took assets from clients—you know, jewelry, property, cars, mostly—and would turn them into cash to be applied toward his fee. According to the report here, the liquidator sold all twelve of them, took twenty percent and gave Vincent forty-eight hundred dollars.”
Patrick nodded his head but didn’t say anything. I watched him for a few moments and then looked back at the liquidator’s inventory sheet. I remembered that Patrick had said in that first phone call that the two long boards were the most valuable. On the inventory, there were two boards described as ten feet long. Both were made by One World in Sarasota, Florida. One sold for $1,200 to a collector and the other for $400 on eBay, the online auction site. The disparity between the two sales made me think the eBay sale was bogus. The liquidator had probably sold the board to himself cheap. He would then turn around and sell it at a profit he’d keep for himself. Everybody’s got an angle. Including me. I knew that if he hadn’t resold the board yet, then I still had a shot at it.
“What if I could get you one of the long boards back?” I asked.
“That would be awesome! I just wish I had kept one, you know?”
“No promises. But I’ll see what I can do.”
I decided to pursue it later by putting my investigator on it. Cisco showing up and asking questions would probably make the liquidator more accommodating.
Patrick and I didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. In another twenty minutes we pulled into the driveway of Walter Elliot’s house. It was of Moorish design with white stone and dark brown shutters. The center facade rose into a tower silhouetted against the blue sky. A silver midlevel Mercedes was parked on the cobblestone pavers. We parked next to it.
“You want me to wait here?” Patrick asked.
“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll take too long.”
“I know this house. It’s all glass in the back. I tried to surf behind it a couple times but it closes out on the inside and the rip’s really bad.”
“Pop the trunk for me.”
I got out and went to the back to retrieve my digital camera. I turned it on to make sure I had some battery power and took a quick shot of the front of the house. The camera was working and I was good to go.
I walked to the entrance and the front door opened before I could push the bell. Mrs. Albrecht stood there, looking as lovely as I had seen her the day before.
Eighteen
When Walter Elliot had told me he would have someone meet me at the house in Malibu, I hadn’t expected it to be his executive assistant.
“Mrs. Albrecht, how are you today?”
“Very well. I just got here and thought maybe I had missed you.”
“Nope. I just got here too.”
“Come in, please.”
The house had a two-story entry area below the tower. I looked up and saw a wrought-iron chandelier hanging in the atrium. There were cobwebs on it, and I wondered if they had formed because the house had gone unused since the murders or because the chandelier was too high up and too hard to get to with a duster.
“This way,” Mrs. Albrecht said.
I followed her into the great room, which was larger than my entire home. It was a complete entertainment area with a glass wall on the western exposure that brought the Pacific right into the house.
“Beautiful,” I said.
“It is indeed. Do you want to see the bedroom?”
Ignoring the question, I turned the camera on and took a few shots of the living room and its view.
“Do you know who has been in here since the Sheriff’s Department relinquished control of it?” I asked.
Mrs. Albrecht thought for a moment before answering.
“Very few people. I do not believe that Mr. Elliot has been out here. But, of course, Mr. Vincent came out once and his investigator came out a couple of times, I believe. And the Sheriff’s Department has come back twice since turning the property back over to Mr. Elliot. They had search warrants.”
Copies of the search warrants were in the case file. Both times they were looking for only one thing—the murder weapon. The case against Elliot was all circumstantial, even with the gunshot residue on his hands. They needed the murder weapon to ice the case but they didn’t have it. The notes in the file said that divers had searched the waters behind the house for two days after the murders but had also failed to come up with the gun.
“What about cleaners?” I asked. “Did someone come in and clean the place up?”
“No, no one like that. We were told by Mr. Vincent to leave things as they were in case he needed to use the place during the trial.”
There was no mention in the case files of Vincent possibly using the house in any way during the trial. I wasn’t sure what the thinking would have been there. My instinctive response upon seeing the place was that I wouldn’t want a jury anywhere near it. The view and sheer opulence of the property would underline Elliot’s wealth and serve to disconnect him from the jurors. They would understand that they weren’t really a jury of his peers. They would know that he was from a completely different planet.
“Where’s the master suite?” I asked.
“It comprises the entire top floor.”
“Then, let’s go up.”
As we went up a winding white staircase with an ocean-blue banister, I asked Mrs. Albrecht what her first name was. I told her I felt uncomfortable being so formal with her, especially when her boss and I were on a first-name basis.
“My name is Nina. You can call me that if you want.”
“Good. And you can call me Mickey.”
The stairs led to a door that opened into a bedroom suite the size of some courtrooms I had been in. It was so big it had twin fireplaces on the north and south walls. There was a sitting area, a sleeping area, and his-and-her bathrooms. Nina Albrecht pushed a button near the door, and the curtains covering the west view silently began to split and reveal a wall of glass that looked out over the sea.
The custom-made bed was double the size of a regular king. It had been stripped of the top mattress and
all linens and pillows and I assumed these had been taken for forensic analysis. In two locations in the room, six-foot-square segments of carpet had been cut out, again, I believed, for the collection and analysis of blood evidence.
On the wall next to the door, there were blood-spatter marks that had been circled and marked with letter codes by investigators. There were no other signs of the violence that had occurred in the room.
I walked to the corner by the glass wall and looked back into the room. I raised the camera and took a few shots from different angles. Nina walked into the shot a couple times but it didn’t matter. The photos weren’t for court. I would use them to refresh my memory of the place while I was working out the trial strategy.
A murder scene is a map. If you know how to read it, you can sometimes find your way. The lay of the land, the repose of victims in death, the angle of views and light and blood. The spatial restrictions and geometric differentiations were all elements of the map. You can’t always get all of that from a police photo. Sometimes you have to see it for yourself. This is why I had come to the house in Malibu. For the map. For the geography of murder. When I understood it, I would be ready to go to trial.
From the corner, I looked at the square cut out of the white carpet near the bedroom door. This is where the male victim, Johan Rilz, had been shot down. My eyes traveled to the bed, where Mitzi Elliot had been shot, her naked body sprawled diagonally across it.
The investigative summary in the file suggested that the naked couple had heard an intruder in the house. Rilz went to the bedroom door and opened it, only to be immediately surprised by the killer. Rilz was shot down in the doorway and the killer stepped over his body and into the room.
Mitzi Elliot jumped up from the bed and stood frozen by its side, clutching a pillow in front of her naked body. The state believed that the elements of the crime suggested that she knew her killer. She might have pleaded for her life or might have known her death could not be stopped. She was shot twice through the pillow from a distance estimated at three feet and knocked back onto the bed. The pillow she had used as a shield fell to the floor. The killer then stepped forward to the bed and pressed the barrel of the gun against her forehead for the kill shot.
That was the official version anyway. Standing there in the corner of the room, I knew there were enough unfounded assumptions built into it that I would have no trouble slicing and dicing it at trial.
I looked at the glass doors that led out to a deck overlooking the Pacific. There had been nothing in the files about whether the curtain and doors had been open at the time of the murders. I was not sure it meant anything one way or the other but it was a detail I would’ve liked to know.
I walked over to the glass doors and found them locked. I had a hard time figuring out how to open them. Nina finally came over and helped me, holding her finger down on a safety lever while turning the bolt with her other hand. The doors opened outward and brought in the sounds of the crashing surf.
I immediately knew that if the doors had been open at the time of the murders, then the sound of the surf could have easily drowned out any noise an intruder might have made in the house. This would contradict the state’s theory that Rilz was killed at the bedroom door because he had gone to the door after hearing an intruder. It would then raise a new question about what Rilz was doing naked at the door, but that didn’t matter to the defense. I only needed to raise questions and point out discrepancies to plant the seed of doubt in a juror’s mind. It took only one doubt in one juror’s mind for me to be successful. It was the distort-or-destroy method of criminal defense.
I stepped out onto the deck. I didn’t know if it was high or low tide but suspected it was somewhere in between. The water was close. The waves were coming in and washing right up to the piers on which the house was built.
There were six-foot swells but no surfers out there. I remembered what Patrick had said about attempting to surf in the cove.
I walked back inside, and as soon as I reentered the bedroom, I realized my phone was ringing but I had been unable to hear it because of the ocean noise. I checked to see who it was but it said PRIVATE CALLER on the screen. I knew that most people in law enforcement blocked their ID.
“Nina, I have to take this. Do you mind going out to my car and asking my driver to come in?”
“No problem.”
“Thank you.”
I took the call.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. I’m just checking to see when you’re coming by.”
“Me” was my first ex-wife, Maggie McPherson. Under the recently revamped custody agreement, I got to be with my daughter on Wednesday nights and every other weekend only. It was a long way from the shared custody we’d once had. But I had blown that along with the second chance I’d had with Maggie.
“Probably around seven thirty. I have a meeting with a client this afternoon and it might run a little late.”
There was silence and I sensed I had given the wrong answer.
“What, you’ve got a date?” I asked. “What time you want me there?”
“I’m supposed to leave at seven thirty.”
“Then, I’ll be there before that. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“That wouldn’t be any of your business. But speaking of lucky, I heard you got Jerry Vincent’s whole practice.”
Nina Albrecht and Patrick Henson entered the bedroom. I saw Patrick looking at the missing square in the carpet. I covered the phone and asked them to go back downstairs and wait for me. I then went back to the phone conversation. My ex-wife was a deputy district attorney assigned to the Van Nuys courthouse. This put her in a position to hear things about me.
“That’s right,” I said. “I’m his replacement, but I don’t know how lucky that makes me.”
“You should get a good ride on the Elliot case.”
“I’m standing in the murder house right now. Nice view.”
“Well, good luck in getting him off. If anyone can, it’s certainly you.”
She said it with a prosecutor’s sneer.
“I guess I won’t respond to that.”
“I know how you would anyway. One other thing. You’re not going to have company over tonight, are you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about two weeks ago. Hayley said a woman was there. I believe her name was Lanie? She felt very awkward about it.”
“Don’t worry, she won’t be there tonight. She’s just a friend and she used the guest room. But for the record, I can have anybody I want over at my house at any time because it’s my house, and you are free to do the same at your house.”
“And I’m also free to go to the judge and say you’re exposing our daughter to people who are drug addicts.”
I took a deep breath before responding as calmly as I could.
“How would you know who I am exposing Hayley to?”
“Because your daughter isn’t stupid and her hearing is perfect. She told me a little bit of what was said and it was quite easy to figure out that your… friend is from rehab.”
“And so that’s a crime, consorting with people from rehab?”
“It’s not a crime, Michael. I just don’t think it is best for Hayley to be exposed to a parade of addicts when she stays with you.”
“Now it’s a parade. I guess the one addict you’re most concerned with is me.”
“Well, if the shoe fits…”
I almost lost it but once again calmed myself by gulping down some of the fresh sea air. When I spoke I was calm. I knew that showing anger would only hurt me in the long run when it came time to re address the custody arrangement.
“Maggie, this is our daughter we’re talking about here. Don’t hurt her by trying to hurt me. She needs her father and I need my daughter.”
“And that’s my point. You are doing well. Hooking up with an addict is not a good idea.”
I was squeezing my phone so hard I thought it mig
ht break. I could feel the scarlet burn of embarrassment on my cheeks and neck.
“I have to go.”
My words came out strangled by my own failures.
“And so do I. I’ll tell Hayley you’ll be there by seven thirty.”
She always did that, ended the call with inferences that I would disappoint my daughter if I was late or couldn’t make a scheduled pickup. She hung up before I could respond.
The living room downstairs was empty but then I saw Patrick and Nina out on the lower deck. I stepped out and over to the railing where Patrick stood staring at the waves. I tried to put the upset from the conversation with my ex-wife out of my head.
“Patrick, you said you tried surfing here but the rip was too strong?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you talking about a riptide?”
“Yeah, it’s tough out here. The shape of the cove creates it. The energy of the waves coming in on the north side is redirected under the surface and sort of ricochets south. It follows the contour of the cove and carries it all the way down and then out. I got caught in that pipeline a couple times, man. It took me all the way out past those rocks at the south end.”
I studied the cove as he described what was happening beneath the surface. If he was right and there was a riptide on the day of the murders, then the sheriff’s divers had probably searched in the wrong place for the murder weapon.
And now it was too late. If the killer had thrown the gun into the surf, it could have been carried in the underwater pipeline completely out of the cove and out to sea. I began to feel confident that the murder weapon would not be making a surprise appearance at trial.
As far as my client was concerned, that was a good thing.
I stared out at the waves and thought about how beneath the beautiful surface a hidden power never stopped moving.
Nineteen
The writers had taken the day off or moved their picket line to another protest location. At Archway Studios we made it through the security checkpoint without any of the delay of the day before. It helped that Nina Albrecht was in the car in front of us and had smoothed the way.
The Brass Verdict Page 12