Moral Defense (Samantha Brinkman Book 2)

by Marcia Clark

  I was bracing myself with one hand against the passenger door and the other one on the console. “The freeway. We’ll outrun them.”

  Deshawn was breathing hard as he tried to weave through traffic. I craned my neck to look into my side-view mirror. The white Honda was still on our tail. The good news was, the asshole couldn’t shoot at us in traffic. The bad news was, I’d forgotten that the on-ramp we were headed for curved up and over the freeway. If he got close enough, he’d be able to ram into us and push us over the side.

  But there was no turning back now. The traffic had lightened up, and as we neared the off-ramp, we hit a stretch of open road. My stomach had started to seesaw again, and I felt hot bile burn in my throat. Ping, ping, ping! Three more shots hit the passenger side of the car. I scrunched all the way down on the floor, put my head between my knees, and wrapped my arms over my head. This was not going to end well.

  I heard more horns blare and looked up to see that Deshawn had blown through the light at the bottom of the on-ramp. The Mercedes began to climb up the elevated road. This was it. I looked in my side mirror, hoping we’d put some distance between the Honda and us. No such luck. It was pulling up to our rear bumper.

  Deshawn floored it, but it was just a two-lane ramp, and there were cars in front and to the left of us. There was nowhere to go. The Honda was right behind us and trying to edge to our left. Up ahead, I saw that the guardrail on our right was damaged, the metal bent down almost level with the road. One hard shove and we’d plummet over the side. I looked back and saw that the car on our left was falling back, giving the Honda room. “Deshawn! Pull to the left!”

  But before he could maneuver, the Honda had moved in. I saw the driver’s head turn toward us as he jerked the steering wheel to the right and slammed into us. I screamed as the Mercedes lurched to the right. The tires started to slide off the road, and I stared down at the traffic below. The car teetered there for a second, and I steeled myself for the final shove that would send us flying.

  But Deshawn yanked the steering wheel to the left and slammed into the Honda. It swerved away and scraped against the low wall. Deshawn fell back and then gunned the engine and rammed straight into the passenger side of the Honda. I’d never heard a more satisfying sound than the crunch of that driver’s-side door against the concrete. As car horns blasted all around us, Deshawn floored it onto the freeway. I leaned back and gulped air, and after a few seconds I managed to push myself up off the floor and get back on the seat. My shirt was drenched in sweat, and I was shaking all over.

  Deshawn didn’t look much better. His voice was shaky as he said, “We gotta ditch this ride, like, now.” But his hands were steady as he steered through the traffic.

  I was still trying to catch my breath as I pulled out my cell phone. “Not a problem. I got this.” It was pretty amazing what Deshawn had just pulled off. That made me realize that I only knew about the times he got caught. I’d never stopped to think about how much more he’d probably done.

  Today’s Olympic-level performance showed it was one hell of a lot. Not for the first time, I acknowledged that Deshawn had more than enough brains and talent to make it in the straight world—if only he’d wanted to.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Deshawn ditched the Mercedes on a tiny side street where there were no parking restrictions, and we walked to the dive bar I’d spotted a few blocks away. I ordered a double shot of Glenlivet. Deshawn ordered a triple shot of Jägermeister. We took our drinks to a booth at the back, where it was so dark I could barely make out the whites of his eyes.

  Just looking at his drink made my stomach lurch. “How can you drink that shit?”

  He stared at me like I’d said Mickey Mouse was a sewer rat. “You ever tried it?”

  I shook my head. “Can’t get past the smell.”

  We polished off our drinks in one swallow. Deshawn leaned his head back and closed his eyes. After a moment, he blew out a breath. “That was intense, man.”

  Deshawn: the master of understatement. “Ya think?” I was still light-headed. “Awesome driving back there.”

  He nodded. “Amazing what you can do when you ’bout to die.”

  “They’re not going to get their dope or their money if you’re dead.”

  “I was jus’ kidding. I don’ think they tryin’ to kill me—least not yet. They tryin’ to snatch me. Make me tell ’em what happened to the dope.” He gave me a meaningful look.

  I didn’t need the added incentive. I already felt bad enough for putting him in this position. “I’ll get you the money. You sure you’re safe with your homies?”

  “For a little bit. Won’t last long, though. Somebody’ll tell somebody something. People always be runnin’ their mouths.”

  I had to figure this out, and fast. But right now, I just wanted to enjoy the fact that we were still breathing. By the time Alex showed up, we’d polished off another round and were feeling much better than we should. I’d told Alex that I’d gone to see one of Deshawn’s buddies who was a potential new client and that we’d gotten into an accident. That explained the nasty bumps on my head, which hurt like crazy now that I had the luxury of being able to think about pain.

  Alex dropped Deshawn at a friend’s house—not the place he was really staying; he’d made it clear at the bar: “Not like I don’t trust you or nothin’, but I can’t take no chances. They catch up with you . . .” I got the hint.

  When Alex took me to my car, he looked at my forehead—which I could tell was visibly swollen. “Let me drop you at home. I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning. You can get your car then.”

  I agreed, though I didn’t realize just how right he was until I got home and saw my bed. I fell on top of the covers and didn’t move again until sometime after midnight—when I finally woke up, undressed, and got under the covers.

  The next morning, I found a couple of nasty bumps on my forehead and cheekbone. I did the best makeup job I could and hoped no one would notice.

  Alex picked me up bright and early at seven thirty, and we bought coffee and bagels on the way to my car.

  When I walked into the office, Michelle stared at me. “What happened to your forehead? And your face?”

  I told her the same story I’d given Alex about getting in an accident on the way to meeting a potential new client.

  She had a look of concern. “Is Deshawn okay?”

  Define okay. I gave her a smile. “He’s good.”

  I took an egg bagel and one of the coffees into my office and sat down at the computer. But I didn’t open a case file. I thought about how to get the money for Deshawn.

  When I went out to get a refill on my coffee, Alex came out of his office looking glum. “I give up.”

  Michelle and I stared at him. I put a hand to his forehead. “Are you okay?” I’d never heard him say anything like that before. Ever.

  “I can’t get anyone to talk to me. Doesn’t matter what I promise, what language I use, how sympathetic I am. These people don’t care. They don’t know; they don’t remember; they’re sorry.”

  I summed it up. “The families of the missing deportees. They’re scared.” Alex nodded. “We knew it was a long shot, Alex. If you couldn’t make them talk, no one could. How many did you reach?”

  “More than a hundred and fifty.” He sighed. “I’ll show you. It’s unbelievable. I thought for sure someone . . .” He shook his head and went back to his office. He came back out a few seconds later with two sheets of paper and handed them to me. “Check it out.”

  I took the pages and my coffee into my office and started to scan through the list of missing deportees. On the second page, I saw a name that made me stop and put down my cup. I highlighted it with a yellow marker and called out to Alex. When he came in, I handed him the pages and pointed to the name I’d highlighted. “I want you to check that name for me. Get all the information you can find on her.”

  “Sure. But I never got an answer when I tried her parents. Want me to try t
he rest of the family?”

  “No. Do not make any phone calls to anyone. Just see what you can get on the Interweb. Got it?”

  Alex gave me a sober nod. “Got it. Research only. No contact.” He went back to his office.

  I’d just pulled up the trial brief I’d been working on when Michelle buzzed me. “We got some more discovery on Cassie’s case. Check your e-mail.”

  I did. “Looks like a sound recording and a transcript. Probably a witness interview.”

  “Mind if I listen?”

  “Be my guest.” I downloaded the attachments. Michelle came in and stood behind me. I hit play. My office filled with the familiar robot-sounding male voice, warning that the call was being recorded and monitored. A jail call. There was only one reason the DA would be sending it to me. “This must be Cassie.” And if so, it was bad news.

  A voice I recognized as Waylon Stubing’s said, “Hey, Cassie. How’re you doing?”

  Cassie’s voice was bitter and anxious. “It’s horrible in here. I’m scared all the time.”

  “Yeah, I hope your lawyer can get you out of this.” Waylon sounded halting, stilted.

  He clearly didn’t have much experience talking to prisoners. Or killers.

  “I need your help with something.” Cassie’s voice was low.

  There was a long pause. “Uh . . . okay. But what can I do?”

  “You need to tell my lawyer.” Cassie’s voice was so low I had to turn the volume all the way up. “Tell her about Abel molesting me. Anal and oral stuff. Tell her I made you keep it a secret—”

  Waylon sputtered a little. “B-but you—”

  Someone was yelling in the background. It sounded like a guard was giving orders.

  Cassie spoke again, her voice rushed. “I gotta go.”

  The line disconnected, and a dial tone blasted through the room. I hit stop. “Shit, shit, shit!” I pounded my fist on the desk.

  Michelle put her head in her hands. “Oh my friggin’ God.”

  Cassie had just tanked her case.

  “Do you realize what you did?” I gripped the phone and stared through the window at Cassie. I’d run straight downtown to find out what the hell Cassie had been thinking and whether there was any way to repair the damage.

  All the way to Twin Towers, I kept telling myself not to lose it with her, that she was just a kid. And in fairness, I’d had adult clients who’d said even dumber things on jail calls. You’d think the recording that plays every five minutes, warning them that the calls were being monitored, would clue them in to the fact that everything they were saying was being monitored. But no. Time and time again, the dipshits blab about “disappearing witnesses” and “dumping the evidence” and turn a perfectly defensible case into a slam-dunk no-brainer for the DA.

  Cassie looked at me with teary, sorrowful eyes. “I wasn’t asking him to lie for me! I’d made him promise not to tell before.”

  “But it was already public knowledge. You did an interview with a reporter, remember? It’s not a secret to anyone anymore. How could he not know it was okay?”

  “I had to make sure!” Cassie wailed. “What if he pretended not to know? You would’ve thought I lied about telling him.”

  I supposed it was the excuse I’d have to run with, though I still didn’t like it. In any case, like it or not, I had my answer. I searched for an upbeat subject to calm things down. “Has Tiegan been in to see you today?”

  Cassie’s face cleared like clouds that parted for the sun. “Not yet. But she said she’d be back this afternoon. Tiegan’s really been there for me. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Except for you.”

  That was a little—no, a lot—more gush than I’d expected. But okay. “I’m very glad she’s been there for you.”

  Now that she was softened up, I decided to take another run at Mr. Burner Phone. “We need to talk about this guy you were calling, Cassie. We know he lives in Atwater, and we know you called him that night. If he was with you, if he had something to do with . . . what went down, you have to tell me. It’s very admirable that you’ve been shielding him. But you need to face the fact that you could spend the rest of your life in prison. That call to Waylon looks bad. Really bad. It’s going to be an uphill battle now for me to get the jury to go for manslaughter. And even if I do, the judge could give you more than ten years in prison.” Cassie looked away and scratched at a spot on the wall next to the phone. “Cassie, look at me.” I waited for her to meet my eyes. “This guy’s not going to wait ten years for you. Trust me.”

  Cassie teared up, but she set her jaw. “I’m not letting you drag him into this! He’s got nothing to do with it.”

  I leaned in close and looked directly into her eyes. “You need to let me be the judge of that, Cassie. If you’re right, I’ll be happy to leave him out of it. But you have to let me talk to him and find out. There could be ways he can help you that you don’t know of.”

  But she pressed her lips together and shook her head. I knew she was lying. This guy was important. I wanted to reach through the glass, shove my hand down her throat, and yank the name out of her. But short of that, there was nothing I could do.

  I just had to wait for her to crack.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Frustrated by Cassie’s maddening—and puzzlingly self-defeating—refusal to give up Mr. Burner Phone, I needed to find a way to relax and let go, or I’d lose it and ram my car into a wall. So on the way back to the office, I tuned in to a jazz station and let my mind float.

  As “Night Dreamer” played on the radio, thoughts of other cases began to weave through my mind in no particular order. And somehow, without my even being aware of what I was doing, I came up with a plan. One that could help me kill two birds with one stone. It wasn’t a great plan, maybe not even a good plan, but it was all I had. A lot would depend on my delivery. And if it didn’t pan out, I’d have a very dangerous enemy for life. But I already had so many of those, what was one more? Let him take a number.

  I called Kevin Hausch and told him I had some good news. “I’m close to downtown. If you can get away, I can meet you this afternoon. How about the Blue Cow on Grand?”

  It was as public as you could get—all windows, on a main drag, and close to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Hausch said he could make it in half an hour. Perfect.

  Hausch was already there when I arrived. I was glad to see that he’d taken a table next to the windows that faced Grand Avenue—nice and public. I noticed he’d put on a little weight in the short time since I’d last seen him. The buttons on his shirt strained a little harder around the belly, and his jowls seemed to hang a little lower. Apparently being a mass murderer and a stooge for the MS-13 could weigh on a person.

  He’d ordered coffee, and I saw that a few empty sugar packets on the table in front of him had been folded into little accordions. That, and his grim, no-smile, no-handshake greeting told me something was very wrong in his world. For someone who’d just been promised good news, he sure didn’t look happy. I sat down, and the waiter came over with a menu. I ordered coffee and asked Hausch, “You hungry?” He shook his head. When I told the waiter we didn’t need the menu, he didn’t look happy, either. I wanted to take a minute to do a temperature check, so I asked, “How’ve you been?”

  Hausch shrugged. He turned his little square coaster of a napkin around and around, as though he were working a two-dimensional Rubik’s Cube. “I’ve been better. That jerk Julio went missing. Witnesses said he got dragged into a car by MS-13 bangers.”

  One theory confirmed. Sadly. “How’s that bad for you?”

  Hausch pushed the napkin aside and stared out the window. “Because he’s been claiming all along that I was connected to MS-13. When IA heard they’d snatched him, they decided to dig into it. So if you’ve got some good news for me, now would be a great time to hear it.”

  This was the first I’d heard that Julio had linked Hausch to the MS-13. But I’d gotten all the paperwork from Hausch,
so I wasn’t surprised he’d held back what he didn’t want me to know. And this new development gave me even more reason to believe my plan would work.

  I looked directly into his eyes and took my shot. “Actually, come to think of it, this might be good news for both of us.” I asked whether he remembered the story about the ten illegals who’d died from heat stroke in the back of a semitruck. “Remember how there were two survivors who’d disappeared?”

  I studied his face, his body language. An innocent man would say, “What the hell does that have to do with me?” Or, “Yeah, I remember that. I was working near the border myself back then; we all heard about it. But I don’t remember anything about there being any survivors. Where’d you get that from?” Because no one had ever acknowledged that any of the men in that truck had survived. But Hausch said nothing. He’d come to a complete stop. No more folding empty sugar packets, no more fiddling with his spoon, and no more playing with his napkin. Hausch put his hands on his knees and glared at me under his heavy brows, like a bull about to charge. The air around him buzzed with a dark, violent energy.

  I pretended not to notice and continued in a light tone, a half smile on my lips. “So I decided to see if I could find those survivors. And damned if I didn’t get lucky and find one. Well, in a way both of them, but the other one’s dead. Killed by the MS-13, as a matter of fact.” I paused for effect, then continued. “Did you know they were brothers?” No answer. “Anyway, Louie Trujillo—FYI, not the name he’s using anymore—says a cop told the truck driver that the price for smuggling illegals had just gone up. And when I asked him who the cop was, you’ll never guess who he identified?” I dropped the half smile and gave him a cold stare. “Now here’s your good news. I’m not a cop, and I don’t care about getting you busted. What I do care about is getting paid. But I know you’re not rolling with the fat stacks, so I’ll be reasonable. A hundred and fifty grand. Pretty cheap when you consider you’re buying your way out of ten life sentences.”