by Marcia Clark
“In jail. He was up on a murder rap, s’posed to be doing life.” Deshawn gave me a pointed look. “But his lawyer done put the case down.”
So now he was out, and he wanted his money. “How much time do you have?”
“Maybe an hour. Where you got it stashed?”
This, of course, was the problem. Whatever was left of that stash was in police custody now. After I’d taken it from Deshawn, it somehow found its way into the hands of my other client, Harold Ringer. Ringer had been facing life in prison for raping and beating a young homeless boy who’d been tricking to stay alive. I’d managed to persuade the jury to acquit the asshole. When he got released from jail, he’d found the baggy of heroin in his pants pocket. He’d overdosed that same night. So the heroin had gone to a worthy cause, but I had a feeling Deshawn wouldn’t agree. “I don’t have it.”
He jerked the steering wheel to the right, pulled to the curb, and stopped. He stared at me, his eyes wide. “What’d you do with it?”
His panic was infectious. When I spoke, my voice was edgy. “Does it matter?”
“Hell yeah, it matters!”
I couldn’t tell him the truth, and I was too distracted to come up with a halfway decent lie. “I used it to take care of a problem.”
Deshawn was outraged. “You used my dope to solve your problem? The fuck is up with that?”
He had a point. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”
Deshawn put his head down on the steering wheel. “I’m so fucked.” After a moment, he sat up and resumed driving as he muttered to himself. The words motherfucker and dead fuckin’ meat came up a lot.
When he reached my apartment, he parked and stared out the windshield. “Taquan don’t deal too good with pain. If this dude squeezes him, my name’s gonna pop out like a piece of toast.” Deshawn faced me, his expression bleak, terrified. “Which is what I’ll be. You got to get me the money, Ms. Brinkman—or the stuff. That’ll do.”
I started to calculate how much room I had on my credit cards. “What kind of money are we talking about?”
“Like I told you when you took it: a hundred grand.”
I hadn’t believed him at the time, thought he’d just been puffing in front of his crew. My throat closed. Holy shit. I mustered up a confident look before I met Deshawn’s eyes. “I’ll find a way to get the money. Just tell your cousin to lay low for a while. And you do the same.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “What you think I been doin’? This ain’t my ride. I got it from—”
I held up a hand. “Don’t tell me.” I had enough to worry about without hearing who he’d gotten in bed with to score a new Escalade. “I’ll be in touch.”
Deshawn’s expression was grim. “Real soon, right?”
It was the first time I’d ever seen him worried—about anything—and that, even more than what he’d said, told me just how life-threatening this situation really was. “Right.” I got out and patted the roof. “I got this.”
Deshawn drove off, and I trudged up the stairs to my little one-bedroom. The building only has twelve units, no elevator, no security parking—well, no security, period. But it’s situated at the top of a hill that gives me a halfway decent view of the city from the little balcony off the living room.
I let myself in, dropped my briefcase near the door, and looked at my “bar”—the little pass-through counter between the kitchen and the living room—to see what I was pouring that evening. There were about two inches left in my bottle of Patrón Silver tequila. That’d do for now. I threw some ice in a glass, emptied the bottle into it, and took my drink out to the balcony. It was a cool, clear night, and the city lights sparkled against the black-velvet sky. Tomorrow was Saturday. Good. It’d give me some time to come up with a plan. I didn’t know how I was going to find a hundred thousand dollars, and I sure as hell couldn’t imagine how I’d manage to do it in time to save Taquan and Deshawn. I just knew I had to. This one was all on me.
I racked my brain for the rest of the evening, but by the time I fell into bed, the only ideas I’d had were: 1) hold up a Brinks truck, 2) commit a bank robbery, or 3) rip off a high-end jewelry store. Definitely not Plan A material.
The sound of a loud duck quacking—my cell phone ringtone—jarred me awake the next morning. I looked at the clock. It was only eight thirty. On a friggin’ Saturday. Annoyed, I let it go to voice mail.
An hour later, after I’d kicked over my engine with my third cup of coffee, I checked my phone to see who’d been dumb enough to wake me up on a Saturday morning. Tiegan Donner. Talk about a blast from the past. Five years ago, when I was a public defender, I’d represented her older brother, who’d been busted—basically for having won a bar fight. Tiegan had sat in the back of the courtroom every single day, a very pretty, petite blonde who’d asked fairly intelligent questions for a layperson. I’d won the case. The so-called victim had popped off at me during cross-examination, which showed the jury who’d really started the fight. I wondered whether her brother was in trouble again.
Her message didn’t offer any clues. She just asked me to please call her as soon as possible. But she sounded upset. Really upset. Only one way to find out. I pressed the call back button.
Her voice sounded shaky but relieved. “Sam, thank you so much for getting back to me.”
“Sure, no problem. What’s up? Is your brother okay?”
“Yeah, he’s fine. It’s not about him. Have you seen the news this morning?” I hadn’t. “There’s been a—a horrible thing. It happened last night. One of my students, her family was murdered. Her mother’s still alive, but they don’t expect her to make it.”
I grabbed the remote and turned on the television. It must’ve been late last night or I’d have heard about it. “I’m so sorry, Tiegan.” But why was she calling me?
She paused for a moment, then said, “I don’t know whether you have time for this, but I thought I’d take a chance and ask. I’m her counselor as well as her teacher, and the lawyer for our school told me that Cassie should have some legal representation—a criminal lawyer—to kind of be there for her.”
“Why? Is she a suspect?”
“No! Oh no. Actually, Cassie’s the closest thing they’ve got to a witness right now. But she’s just a kid, and the police said they can’t rule anyone out right now, so the court agreed to appoint a lawyer for her.” Tiegan paused again. “Anyway, you did such a great job for my brother. I was wondering if maybe you’d consider taking the case?”
The kid probably should have someone around, if only to hold her hand. And if the court was going to appoint a lawyer, that probably meant the family couldn’t afford to hire one. But why was Tiegan the one calling me? “Tiegan, I’m flattered that you thought of me, but her family might want to have a say in all this.”
She gave a deep sigh. “Cassie’s adopted. The only family she ever really knew is gone now. She’s got relatives in . . . Michigan or something, but they’re not close. She’s basically lost everyone.”
That was pretty rough. Abandoned at birth. Now she’d be feeling abandoned all over again. I’d been clicking through the channels looking for the story on the news. I found it on Channel Four. They were showing a million cops and crime-scene techs moving in and out of a small brick-front house with white shutters. Outside the yellow crime-scene tape, I could see that it was a quiet, middle-class suburban neighborhood. A banner across the bottom of the screen said, “Family Stabbed to Death in Glendale.”
Pretty gruesome for that quiet place. I was more than a little curious, and I could definitely use the billable hours. It wouldn’t even make a dent in what I owed Deshawn. But it might put enough money in my pocket to give him some temporary help until I found a way out of this for him. “I’ll call the court on Monday.”
Tiegan spoke in a rush. “Thank you so much, Sam! Do you want to meet her? I think it’d be good for her. The more support she’s got, the better.”
If I could tell the court I’d alr
eady met with the client, I’d stand a better chance of getting the case. “Good idea. Tell me where she is.”
TWO
For the time being, until her relatives decided who’d be able to take her in, Cassie Sonnenberg was staying with the Reeber family. The daughter, Debbie Reeber, was just a classmate, not a close friend. But Tiegan didn’t want Cassie to stay with one of her two BFFs, because they had “inappropriate family dynamics.” Tiegan didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask. According to Tiegan, Debbie’s family was stable, and her mother, Barbara, was one of those saintly types who was always willing to step up and do the right thing. Plus, they lived just a couple of blocks away from Cassie, so it wouldn’t be a big move.
But from what I saw, Cassie neither knew nor cared where she was. She sat scrunched up in a corner of the couch in the Reebers’ living room. Barbara Reeber sat next to her, holding Cassie’s hand. Even folded up like an accordion, in the throes of earth-shattering grief and shock, she was clearly pretty. She had a strong jaw and high cheekbones, and her cutoff jeans and black T-shirt showed a strong, slender, athletic body. But right now, her short, purple-streaked blonde hair was tangled, the knots stuck up at the back of her head; her blue eyes were vacant; and her face was pale and slack.
After Tiegan introduced me to everyone, I took the chair across from her. “Hey, Cassie. Did Mrs. Donner tell you I’m asking the court to let me be your lawyer?”
Tiegan leaned in and said in a soft voice, “I let all the kids I counsel call me by my first name.”
I nodded. Cassie was staring at me as though I were speaking Urdu. I tried again. “If I’m appointed, I’ll be on hand to help you out, sit in when the police talk to you, answer questions for you, things like that. Sound okay?”
Cassie wrinkled her brow, tears pooling in her eyes. “You mean the police are going to talk to me again?”
A million times. But she looked so lost, so forlorn, I decided this might not be the time to tell her that. Besides, she’d see for herself soon enough. “They probably will. But at least you won’t have to do it alone anymore.” I was curious to know what she’d witnessed, but I wasn’t going to grill her right now, when she was so obviously grief-stricken and in shock.
Tears spilled over and ran down her face. “I just keep seeing them . . .” She clamped her hands over her eyes. “I keep thinking it’s not true, that I’ll wake up and it’ll turn out to just be a bad dream.” After a moment, Cassie dropped her hands and finally looked at me, the misery on her face so deep it was heartbreaking. “But I can’t wake up.” She began to sob. “And they won’t even let me see my mother! She’s all I’ve got left! Why won’t they let me see her?”
I glanced from Barbara to Tiegan. “What’s her condition?”
Tiegan gave me a warning look and shook her head. “She’s in a medically induced coma. I hear they plan to keep her under for at least a week or so.” She looked at Cassie with sympathy. “They’ll let you go see her in a day or so. But it might be tough, Cassie. She won’t be able to talk to you.”
Cassie bent over, her arms wrapped around her torso. “I don’t care! I just need to be with her!” She put her head down on her knees and sobbed.
Barbara patted her back and made soothing noises. “Of course you do. And the minute they say it’s okay, I’ll take you to the hospital.”
I waited for Cassie to sit up, then asked, “Do you have any questions you’d like to ask me?”
She took a couple of ragged breaths. “When do you think they’ll catch the guy?”
“That’s hard to say. I heard that you think you saw him. Is that right?” Cassie nodded. “Can you tell me about that?”
Cassie stared at a point on the floor. “I saw him through Abel’s window. He was running across the backyard. At first I was so . . . messed up, I didn’t realize he might be . . . that he was the . . .” She stopped and swallowed as fresh tears ran down her face.
I tried to distract her. “What did he look like?”
She twisted her hands together, her voice trembling as she spoke. “I only saw him from behind, but he was big, and he had on a blue bandanna.”
I figured the police had already covered this ground with her, but she obviously wanted to talk about it, and I didn’t see how it could hurt to let her. “What else was he wearing?”
Cassie swallowed. “It must’ve been something with no sleeves, because I could see his arms. He had tats. I think one looked like a lightning bolt.”
Blue bandanna, a lightning bolt. Typical signs of a skinhead gangbanger, maybe a local faction of the Aryan Brotherhood. I wouldn’t have expected that in Glendale, though I’d heard rumors that white gangs were moving into some suburban areas. But why would they target Cassie’s family? “You only saw him in the backyard, not inside the house?” Cassie shook her head. “So by the time you woke up, it was all over?”
Cassie’s face crumpled. She dropped her head into her hands and began to sob again, but now the sobs seemed to scrape up from deep inside. It hurt just to hear them. She couldn’t speak for a few moments. Her voice was raw, broken. “N-no. I heard Mom and Dad come home. Then . . . I fell back to sleep, I think. But a little while later, I thought I heard my mom scream. It sounded like she was in Abel’s room. That’s what woke me up. I was so scared, I hid under the bed! I didn’t know what to do!”
I could only imagine. And I could see she felt guilty. “You did the right thing, Cassie. There was nothing you could’ve done to help anyone. What made you leave your room?”
Cassie seemed lost in misery. It took her a moment before she replied, “I heard the back door close. It was all quiet. I wanted to call the police, but I’d left my cell phone in the kitchen.” She began to shake again. “I opened my door just a little bit, so I could see.”
“Where’s Abel room in relation to yours?”
“Across the hall, a little farther down.” Cassie’s breathing turned fast and shallow. “I didn’t want to go out, but I had to do something. So I decided to run to the kitchen as fast as I could, but when I passed Abel’s room, I felt the wind blowing. I stopped to look and noticed the window was broken. That’s when I saw him, the guy with the bandanna. He was running through the backyard. Then I saw . . .” Cassie’s face screwed up in a tight ball, and she began to sob again.
Barbara Reeber put an arm around her. “Tiegan, would you get her pills? They’re in my purse in the kitchen.”
Tiegan had been watching Cassie with helpless anguish. “Sure.” She hurried out.
I watched Cassie sag against Barbara’s shoulder, the pain on her face so vivid it was hard to look at her. “They gave her a sedative?”
Barbara nodded. “I think she needs to rest and try to let go of it all for a little while, if she can. The police have already put her through it so many times. I’m hoping they’ll realize she’s given them all she’s got to give and leave her alone now.”
I thought, Oh baby, they so won’t. But I just nodded. Tiegan came back with the pill bottle and a glass of water. She tipped out one pill and gave it to Cassie, who took it with a big gulp of water. She leaned back against the couch and closed her eyes as she caught her breath. Her face was mottled with red spots from crying so hard.
I stood up and gave Cassie my card. “In case you want to talk or you have any questions.”
Cassie took the card, then looked at me with red, swollen eyes. “So if I have to talk to the cops again, you’ll go with me.”
I nodded. “If you want me to.”
Her frightened expression said it all. “I will.”
Tiegan walked me out to my car. The day was incongruously beautiful. It’d rained for most of the night, and the air had that fresh, green smell; the sky, washed clean of smog, was a deep, rich blue. The trees that lined the sidewalk dripped fat, heavy drops that sparkled like topaz in the sunlight. I waited until we got away from the house, then spoke in a low voice. “I hear the cops don’t think it was a burglar.”
Tiegan nodded. �
��Abel’s wallet is missing. But that’s not much.”
I agreed. If someone were there to steal, they’d take more than just a wallet. The small theft felt like an afterthought. So it had to be personal. “What do you know about the parents? Anyone have issues with them?”
“Not that I know of.” Tiegan said that Paula Sonnenberg was a city councilwoman, and her husband was a storage systems administrator at IBM. The son, Abel, a high school senior, was your average suburban white boy: no criminal background or gang ties. Tiegan stared down the street. “I didn’t know the parents myself, but from what I’ve heard, they were really good people.”
It always started that way. But “He was such a great guy” and “She was so kind” inevitably gave way to stories that painted a less glowing picture. Even if they were only tales about how “He drank a little too much” and “She racked up charges on their credit cards.” But there had to be something wicked gnarly going on for a whole family to be targeted. “So the skinhead angle is the only one that makes sense.”
She nodded. “I’m scared for Cassie. This guy’s got to be crazy. What if he comes back for her?”
It seemed a little far-fetched—and a lot risky—to me, but someone rabid enough to do a massacre like this couldn’t be relied on to do much rational thinking. I told Tiegan I’d spotted a patrol car passing by the house when I’d arrived. “They’re obviously keeping an eye out, but I’ll check in with the cops and see what they’re doing.”
Tiegan forced a shaky smile. “That’d be great. Thank you so much, Sam.”
“Glad to help.” I opened my car door, which gave an embarrassingly loud metallic groan. Beulah, my ancient Mercedes, has more than 250,000 miles on her, and like an old person, she just doesn’t care about appearances anymore. She squeaks and burps and farts at will.
Tiegan gave the car a worried look. “I can give you a lift to the station, if you like.”
“Thanks, I’m good.” I patted the roof. “Beulah likes to complain, but she always gets me there.” A big fat lie. Beulah has crapped out on me so many times the Uber drivers all know me by name.