by Marcia Clark
I supposed that made as much sense as anything else in this weird case. “Well, I think we’ve got the proof the cops wanted.” I sighed. “Let’s just hope they agree.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
The next morning, while Alex trolled the campus for the other boys who’d been serviced by Cassie, I cleaned up the statements we’d taken from Jason and Owen and typed up my interview with Cassie.
At eight thirty, Alex called to tell me that he’d been able to catch up with two of the other guys. “It’s almost the exact same story, Sam. Alex pimped her to some jock-asses to try and ingratiate himself, get invited to the hot parties. I can give you details, but there’s nothing new here.”
“No need. Just text me their names and contact information.”
By nine thirty, I’d e-mailed everything to Rusty and Emmons. It was out of my hands. Now all I could do was wait.
I went out to Michelle’s desk. “Can you set up a meeting with the Orozcos? Make it as soon as possible.” Michelle gave me a look of disbelief. “This might be the last time.”
She was wary. “Promise?”
How could I promise anything when it came to those scorpions? “There’s a hope.”
I went back to my office and distracted myself with work on my other cases. Ten minutes later, Michelle buzzed me. “They’ll be here at two thirty. Jeez, Sam. Don’t these guys have jobs?”
“Sure. Beating, stabbing, shooting, and selling dope. It doesn’t always pay all that well, but the hours are flexible.”
Michelle gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re not funny, you know. We’d better make sure Alex is back by then.”
In fact, when Michelle told him who was coming, Alex got back to the office so fast I thought he must’ve flown. I’d gone back to work, with an eye on my e-mail and phone, hoping to hear from the cops about Cassie’s deal. But by a quarter after two, I’d still heard nothing. I closed the file of the trial brief I was working on and prepared for my meeting with the wildebeests.
At precisely two thirty, the buzzer at the outer door sounded. Alex had insisted on escorting them in this time, so I stood up, my left hand hovering over the open drawer where my Smith and Wesson rested—locked and loaded.
As usual, they brought a dark cloud of malevolence with them. It felt like a slow, heavy mass around the older Ernesto but a fast-buzzing mini cyclone around Arturo. And now that they’d started to put me in their crosshairs, it was worse than ever. I could feel my breath catch in my chest, but I pasted on a cool, confident smile as I sat down and opened the file. “Gentlemen, I have good news. I’ve found your man.” I took out a photograph of a man in a sheriff’s uniform who was standing next to a custody bus.
Ernesto picked it up and studied it, then passed it to Arturo. “This is the driver you told us about?”
“No. He’s a deputy who works the local jails. Lazaro Estevez. He was working Twin Towers when Ricardo was there. But on the day Ricardo got bused to prison, Lazaro was working backup for the driver.” I waited for them to absorb this. “That means he had complete access to the custody list.”
Arturo dropped the photograph on my desk and gave me a skeptical look. “Why do we believe he’s the one?”
“Because of these.” I handed over three more photographs of the deputy, which showed him dressed in the typical gangbanger uniforms of tank tops and sagging jeans—and specifically sporting tats that said “SC” and “Creepers Forever” and the usual three dots that stood for “My Crazy Life.” Then I passed them two more photos that showed Lazaro throwing gang signs with a whole group of Southside Creepers.
Ernesto’s chin drew back into his neck; his eyes were slits of mistrust. “What is the date on these pictures?”
Stomach acid boiled up into my throat as I gave a shrug that I hoped was nonchalant. “I’d guess they were pretty recent. His face looks pretty much the same to me in those gang photos as it does in that photo with him in the sheriff’s uniform.”
Ernesto did not look convinced. “This is all you got?”
My throat was on fire; I cast a longing glance at my bottle of water. But I didn’t dare reach for it. I was afraid my hand would shake—or worse, that I’d choke if I tried to drink. “No. I also found this.” I took the last page out of my file folder and handed it to Ernesto.
He glanced at it, then passed it to Arturo—as I’d expected. Arturo was the literate one. He scanned the page, then frowned at me. “This is from his Facebook page?” I nodded. He read it once to himself, then, his voice low and shaking with rage, he read aloud for his father’s benefit. “It says, ‘Homie, you put in great work on that Grape Street piece of shit. Respect.’”
Ernesto gripped the arms of his chair, and Arturo’s nostrils flared as the paper shook in his hand. His eyes bored into mine. “Where can we find this son of a puta?”
I took a moment to make sure my voice came out steady. “That’s the only problem. A month after Ricardo was killed, Lazaro took off. Said he needed sick leave. But no one’s heard from him since.” I sat back and slid my left hand across my desk, closer to the open drawer that held my gun. “Now you have a choice. I can certainly take this evidence to the sheriff’s department and ask them to look into Lazaro Estevez. But if I do, you run the risk that they’ll wash it out, claim he had nothing to do with Ricardo’s death. Or I can—”
Arturo jumped in. “No! You give this information to us. No one else.”
Ernesto glanced at Arturo and gave a slow, deliberate nod. “We will look into this. No disrespect, Señorita Brinkman, but we will check this out. We must make very sure before we send out soldados to find him.”
I mustered up a calm nod. “Of course. I understand. But I have confidence that this is your man. So as of now, I’ll consider your case to be closed.” I stood up and handed them the file folder so they could pack up the photos and Facebook page printouts. As always, I ended on a complete lie. “It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen.”
Arturo helped his father up, then looked down his nose at me, his gaze cold. “We’ll be in touch.”
Anger overrode fear. I wasn’t about to let that dickweed have the last word. “I’ll certainly be glad to hear from you”—I paused and met his gaze—“if you have new business for me.” I walked them out, and the moment the door closed behind them, I told Michelle to send out their closing bill, then I went into my office and collapsed on my couch. It took me a good ten minutes to get my pulse to ratchet back down to normal.
Michelle and Alex came in just as I was making serious plans to stand up and get back to my desk. Michelle looked at me lying on the couch like a beached whale and shook her head. “Are we sure that’s the last of them?”
I sighed. “As sure as we can be.”
“Nothing yet on Cassie’s deal?” Michelle asked.
I sat up slowly and put my feet on the floor. I shook my head. “They might be getting pushback from the captain.” I didn’t think the DA was the problem. Gideon had been worried about the case even before we found out that the murder weapon belonged to Tiegan.
But even so, Tiegan’s story wasn’t bad. She’d have trouble getting a jury to like her—juries don’t usually show pedophiles a lot of love. But she wouldn’t come off as predatory. If Cassie didn’t testify, there was a decent chance the jury would believe Tiegan’s story. So Gideon was probably in favor of the deal.
I didn’t really have the focus or the energy for more work. Between the Orozcos and my anxiety about the deal in Cassie’s case, my brain felt like it was filled with static. But I did my best, because the alternative was making myself queasy with nonstop pacing.
It was five o’clock before I heard back from the detectives—a terse e-mail saying, “Nothing yet. Should have word tomorrow.”
Dale and I had planned to have dinner tonight so I could tell him how the meeting went with the Orozcos. But I didn’t feel up to cooking, so I’d suggested we meet at Barney’s Beanery for dinner, then go back to my place, where we could talk safely.
We’d planned to meet at six, which meant I had about forty-five minutes to kill.
I did what I’d been doing ever since I first saw it: I pulled up the video of Cassie’s jailhouse confrontation with Tiegan. There was something about it that bugged me; I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I hit the play arrow and sat back to watch it again.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Dale and I both showed up early at Barney’s Beanery, and we made it a fast dinner—we couldn’t really talk there. But back at my place, I made us tequila sodas and held up my glass. “Kudos, Dale. You did a great job. Amazing, actually. Where’d you get all those computer skills?”
Dale waved his hand. “That was nothing. The hard part was finding a fall guy who fit our timeline.”
The truth was, Lazaro Estevez had never been involved with any gangs, let alone the Southside Creepers. And he’d actually died when he got hit with a stray bullet during the gang wars that ensued between the Grape Street Boyz and the Creepers after Ricardo’s death. He’d been off duty, visiting an aunt and uncle who happened to live on the outskirts of Creeper turf.
I took a sip of my drink. “The only thing that worries me is the possibility that one of those Grape Street Boyz has some underground connect to a Creeper. A Creeper who’d take about ten seconds to figure out that Lazaro was never a compadre of theirs.”
Dale nodded. “Nothing we can do about that. But the sort of good news is that they’re still at war, so it’s not going to happen now. Probably not for some time. And Lazaro’s real Facebook page got taken down a while ago.”
I stirred my drink with my finger as I thought about that. “You know, with any luck, by the time their war’s over, the Orozcos won’t be a problem.”
I looked at Dale with a steady gaze to see whether he knew what I meant. He met my eyes and nodded slowly. We were on the same page. Excellent. Then I’d been right. I’d been waiting to see whether he’d press me again for an answer as to whether I’d set up Ricardo. He hadn’t. And he’d just helped me cover it up. Ergo, it was fair to assume that he knew I’d done it.
I’d been wanting to find out whether Dale would be willing to take matters a little—okay, a lot—further if the Orozco problem didn’t go away. Because if they figured out that we’d duped them, more drastic measures would be necessary. The kind that’d make Dale’s help come in handy. I hoped I’d guessed rightly that Dale’s reaction just now indicated he’d be willing to take that next step.
Of course, if it came to that, it’d mean letting Dale get further into my . . . personal form of justice. A dangerous proposition. But I’d wait and see what happened. No need to make any decisions now. Especially since the Orozco problem might have finally been solved.
And as I went to sleep that night, I savored the possibility that I’d seen the last of those cretins.
That possibility should’ve made for a great weekend. It didn’t. I worried nonstop about whether the cops would give Cassie the deal. I woke up at six on Monday morning, both dreading and hoping for the call from the cops. It came at ten o’clock.
“Meet us at PAB in an hour,” Emmons said.
“Do we have a deal?”
But the line was dead. Damn those guys. I told Alex and Michelle. “This is it, kids.”
Alex offered to go with me. “Just to make sure you and Rusty Templeton don’t wind up in a shootout.”
I thanked him, but I declined. “No restraints necessary. I think they’ve got to give me the deal, and that means I’ll get to have the fun of watching Rusty eat shit.”
“I hope you’re right,” Michelle said. “Okay, break a leg.”
“You mean theirs, right?”
But by the time I got to the PAB, I wasn’t so confident. With every passing minute, I worried about what might’ve gone wrong. What they might’ve discovered in the last forty-eight hours that I didn’t know about. I sat in the lobby, sweating it out, for almost half an hour before they brought me up to the captain’s office. Rusty and Emmons were standing against the wall; Captain Hales was sitting at his oversize desk.
He had the standard cop mustache and short blond hair. His dark eyes had the typical cop suspicious look under his thick eyebrows. He did not look happy. “Have a seat, Ms. Brinkman.”
I wanted to refuse, just for the hell of it, but my client’s life was on the line. I sat. “You’ve read my witness statements?”
Hales gave me a deadpan look. “No, I never bother with evidence.” He sighed. “Of course I read them, and we checked them out. They look solid.”
“Then we have a deal?”
His gaze was direct and hard. “I’m not dropping our murder investigation on your client. But for now, given what we know, I’ll agree to let her out with an ankle monitor. We’ll have a uni watching her, so let her know she needs to keep her act together and stay clean. If we can’t turn up anything new in the next month or so, we’ll go along with the deal. And the deal is, your client testifies against Tiegan Donner, and she pleads to accessory after the fact for low term.”
I shook my head. “She gets time served.”
Hales exchanged glances with Rusty, who gave him an “I told you so” look. “Fine. Time served. But she signs a binding agreement to testify.”
I nodded. “And she processes out today.”
Hales sat back. “To where? Her adoptive relatives won’t have her.” He shook his head. “She’ll have to go into foster care.”
I’d spoken to Cassie about this. She was adamant about not going back to foster care. “No foster care. Barbara Reeber said she’d take Cassie back.”
Hales raised an eyebrow. “For how long? Is she planning to adopt the kid?”
“Not that I know of. But Cassie can stay there until we’ve at least had the chance to find the right foster home.”
Hales didn’t seem to like it. The muscles in his jaw bulged as he stared at the paperwork on his desk. Finally, he spoke. “She stays with Reeber for now. But she gets into any kind of trouble, she gets foster care.” He pushed the papers toward me. “Your client can start processing out after she signs and initials.”
I took the plea forms and headed to Twin Towers.
Cassie was so ecstatic she dropped the phone and jumped out of her chair. “You saved me! I can’t believe it!”
I waited for her to calm down and pick up the phone. “Remember, though, you have to testify against Tiegan.”
Cassie nodded, but she didn’t look all that perturbed. She’d already moved on to the next issue. “Where am I going to go? Am I going to stay with you? Please?”
I shook my head. “Sorry. Not an option.”
Cassie gave me a pleading look. “Why? I know how to cook, and I wouldn’t bother you, I promise!”
“Barbara Reeber’s agreed to let you stay with them—”
Her face was anguished. “No! I hate it there! Please don’t make me go there!”
I waited for her to calm down. “You can always stay here. I’m sure the cops wouldn’t mind.”
That sobered her up. She dropped her head. “Okay. I’ll go to Barbara’s.”
I waved to the guard to pass the plea forms to Cassie for her signature. Once she’d signed and passed them back to me, I told her what the captain had said about keeping her nose clean. “A uniformed officer will be watching you. And you can’t get in any kind of trouble. That means you can’t litter, you can’t jaywalk, and you can’t cross the street on a Don’t Cross light. Got it? Squeaky clean from here on out.”
Cassie gave me a solemn nod. “Got it.”
I called the guard to say we were done. Cassie hugged herself and pointed to me, giving me a hug through the glass, and hung up. I watched as the guard led her away.
I asked Alex to drive Cassie to Barbara’s house that night. I didn’t want to give Cassie a chance to start in again about living with me. But the case was over. And I’d won. When Alex got back, we all shared a drink—courtesy of the minibar I kept in my bottom drawer—to
celebrate our victory.
FIFTY-NINE
For the next several days, I worked on my other cases and managed to pull in a couple of new ones—a twenty-two-count credit card fraud case that screamed “plea bargain” and a case involving a woman who’d killed her abusive boyfriend that screamed “sympathy verdict.”
A few of the child victim groups who’d supported Cassie asked me to speak at their functions. I turned them down. But I hadn’t stopped thinking about the case. And I still had some unanswered questions. Those never sit well with me, but they’d especially gotten under my skin this time.
In short, I knew I wasn’t finished. So I kept digging, quietly—and way under the radar—but steadily. One thing that’d always bugged me was Tiegan’s story about the knife. Tiegan had claimed Cassie liked to steal things from her. She’d insisted that Cassie must’ve stolen the knife during one of her visits. I’d thought that was pretty far-fetched at the time. Now I wasn’t so sure.
But I thought of a way to check out Tiegan’s story. I called Fred and asked him to have Tiegan look over the photographs of the items seized from Cassie’s room. Tiegan identified a pair of earrings, the sweater she’d mentioned during her interview, and a bracelet. Then, I had Alex track down Tiegan’s friend Shana—the one in the photograph. She’d confirmed that the items had all belonged to Tiegan. Was that proof positive that Cassie had stolen the knife? Not necessarily. But it showed Tiegan’s story wasn’t as far-fetched as I’d initially thought.
Two weeks later, I got a phone call that resolved another doubt—one I’d had for some time. It was from Waylon Stubing’s mother. “I’m sorry this took so long,” she said. “I only just heard about it from Marina’s mother last night.”
Apparently, Waylon had unburdened himself to his new girlfriend, Marina. Marina had told her mother, and Marina’s mother had called Waylon’s mother. I went to see Waylon that same day. We met in his living room. His mother sat next to him on the couch, her expression stern. When she spoke, her voice was angry. “Tell her everything.”