RK02 - Guilt By Degrees

by Marcia Clark

  He sighed. “Maybe later. Right now I’d just like to forget about it for a while, if that’s all right.”

  Having been in that head space myself, I didn’t question him further. He’d tell me, if he wanted to, in his own time. We chatted about mutual friends, including Toni and J.D., but I broke off to enjoy the view when Graden turned up the narrow drive above Franklin Avenue and headed into the hills that would take us to Yamashiro. At the top of the hill, we entered the parking lot that wound around behind the famous restaurant and ended in front of the huge pagoda-style building that had one of the best views in town.

  Yamashiro was an atmospheric landmark and a paean to old Hollywood. The dining room to the left of the entrance was formal yet lush and cushy, with white-tableclothed circular banquettes that gave views overlooking the city. The bar on the opposite side was romantically situated at the front of the restaurant and took advantage of the panoramic view with wall-to-wall windows that looked down on all of Los Angeles. Between the bar and the dining area there was a huge, high-ceilinged room decorated with waterfalls, gardens, and quaint red-painted bridges that spanned ponds of roaming brightly colored koi. Kitschy but charming.

  The hostess took us to a table next to the window. I sat down and looked out at the glittering lights, neon signs, and vibrantly lit skyscrapers that outlined downtown L.A. From here, even the traffic looked beautiful, a moving river of red-and-white glowing beams. I exhaled with pleasure and saw that Graden too was entranced by the view.

  “May I interest you in a cocktail?” asked the waitress, who appeared at our table within seconds.

  Graden and I were both a little slow on the uptake, but the mention of drinks brought us back to earth. He looked at me.

  “I’ll have a Ketel One martini, very cold, very dry, straight up with a twist,” I said. It didn’t matter what the weather was like; there was only one way to have a martini, and that was icy cold.

  “I’ll have a Ketel One and soda with lime,” Graden said.

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said when the waitress left. “I’ll have the vodka soda and drive tonight. It’s only fair.”

  Graden waved me off. “I’m being impressively gallant,” he said with a grin. “Now tell me what’s going on with you.”

  I started to tell him about the John Doe case. But I’d gotten only a few words out when the waitress returned with our drinks. We gave her our dinner order: salads for starters, and a shared steak served on a heated salt plate. It’s an Asian restaurant, but their steak is amazing. Then we toasted to ourselves and an amazingly clear night.

  Now that we’d relaxed into the evening, I told him the story of my John Doe case.

  Graden sighed. “I guess there’s no such thing as an escape,” he said.

  I looked at him quizzically.

  “That DA, Brandon Averill, beefed Stoner to the skies,” Graden explained. “The whole chain of command is on the alert.”

  I shook my head and pressed my lips together in an effort to keep myself from saying what I thought. This wasn’t the place to get loud and profane.

  “Yeah,” Graden said. “And some managerial type named Phil Hemet jumped into the mix too.”

  Hemet too? That was more than I could stand.

  “Hemet is a talent-free jerkoff who brownnosed his way to the top, and Averill is a sniveling puke who thinks he craps flowers—,” I snapped, unable to help myself.

  “So what do you really think?” Graden said, laughing.

  I gave him a little smile, though I really was angry. The waitress brought our salads, and I let mine sit for a moment, my appetite gone. But even in the throes of pissitivity, I was able to appreciate the fact that Graden not only understood my upset but felt the same way. It was one of the great things about being on the same side.

  “What’s going to happen to Stoner?” I asked.

  “You can’t talk about this,” Graden said sternly. “Not even to Bailey.”

  “I promise,” I replied. “Have I ever snitched?”

  “No,” he admitted. “That’s why I’m going to tell you.”

  He took a bite of his salad and another sip of his drink. “I’m pushing to just let him off with some administrative leave. But there’re some in the department who think Stoner’s a hothead who needs a bigger paddling than that.”

  “Such as?” My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since…when? I couldn’t remember. I dug into my salad.

  “Maybe a transfer out of Homicide Special,” Graden said, his voice stern.

  “Seriously? Just for decking that asswipe?”

  But I might be facing the same fate if Hemet decided to go after me. I filled Graden in on what Toni had told me about Hemet.

  The waitress arrived and gave us steak knives and set the salt plate between us.

  Graden started to say something, then stopped himself.

  “What?” I asked.

  A smile played on his lips. “I was going to say that it’s not the same, and that you have nothing to worry about because Stoner has a way of speaking his mind that ticks off the brass an awful lot,” he said wryly. “But it really is the same, isn’t it? I mean, short of the fistfight.”

  I had to smile. “I guess it kind of is.” I’d had more than my share of run-ins with both the office management and the judges. I called it “being direct.” They called it “confrontational and insubordinate.” Tomato, tomahto.

  “One of the many things I love about you, baby,” Graden said. He lifted his drink. “Here’s to mouthy women.”

  “And hotheaded men,” I said.

  We drank, then tucked into our steak. Graden told me about a trainee who’d been caught smoking dope in his squad car after his shift ended. I topped him with a story about a DA who’d been caught shooting heroin in his car. On a lunch break. During trial.

  After we finished, we turned to look at the view some more and sank back in our chairs, pleasantly relaxed. We rode to the Biltmore in a comfortable silence. Graden left the car with Angel and walked me to the elevator. I’d joked with Bailey about having sex with Graden, but the truth was, we hadn’t yet slept together. Though we’d kissed enough to know it would be something great when we did take the plunge. We reached my door, and he pulled me in for a long, slow, romantic kiss. If I’d had one more martini, I would’ve opened the door and tackled him. But I managed to restrain myself. Just.

  Graden stepped back and touched my cheek. “Call you in the morning?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I opened the door and paused to watch him move down the hallway. He had a smooth, long stride and a strong, athletic build. I caught myself mentally undressing him and quickly stepped inside before he could turn the corner and catch me staring. I decided a cold shower would slow my revved-up jets, but it took only a few seconds before I was shivering and dreaming of nothing more X-rated than hot water. By the time I got into bed, I’d calmed down enough to feel how tired I was. I stacked the pillows to prop up my aching neck and opened the murder mystery I was forcing myself to wade through. The only thing I could say for it was that it never failed to put me to sleep. For some reason, no matter how much I hate a book, I can never manage to just stop reading—I have to see it through to the bitter end. And the end is inevitably bitter, because I’m always paradoxically irritated at having wasted the time to finish it.

  The current offender that had the nerve to call itself a “thriller” lay open on my knees, but my mind wandered. Wasn’t it time to get over my past and let Graden all the way into my life—not to mention my bed?

  Maybe, finally, I was ready. If I’d had any energy left, that thought might’ve scared me. But exhaustion made my eyelids heavy, and my head dropped forward. I slid down and pulled up the covers, then turned off the light. As I moved onto my side, I vaguely heard the book fall to the floor. I left it there.

  19

  Sunlight streamed through the living room window. I’d forgotten to pull the drapes last night.
I rolled out of bed, pulled on my plushy microfleece robe, and went out to the balcony.

  The air was surprisingly balmy for a December morning. It would be a great day to get some fieldwork done, but I couldn’t do it alone. One of the cardinal rules of investigation, especially for a lawyer, is never talk to a witness alone. A lawyer can’t ethically testify in his or her own case. That means if a witness takes the stand and decides not to remember what he told you during a private interview, you’ve got no way to prove that he’s lying. I opened my cell phone.

  “Detective Keller, please. It’s Rachel Knight.”

  After about five ominous-sounding clicks and an inordinate amount of time, a voice told me to “hold for Detective Keller, please,” and I held some more. If I’d called the Kremlin it wouldn’t have taken as long. It cheered me to know that the cops weren’t doing any better with their support staff than we were.

  “What?” Bailey barked.

  “Feel like a massage?” I asked.

  “‘Happy endings’ included?” Bailey said, chuckling at her own joke.

  “You can’t afford me,” I said. “I meant—”

  “I’ll be there in ten,” she said, and then hung up.

  I called Melia and told her I’d be out interviewing witnesses.

  “Oh, uh…” Melia paused for so long I thought we’d been disconnected. “I think Eric wants to talk to you.”

  “Okay, have him call me on my cell,” I replied.

  “Uh, no. I think he wants to talk to you now.”

  “Then why don’t you ask him and find out for sure?” I said.

  This kind of lame exchange was vintage Melia. At least it wasn’t in person. I walked over to the dresser and pulled out a pair of black jeans—a compromise that’d let me look presentable if I had to go to the office later.

  “Um…hang on.”

  Seconds later, Eric’s voice came on the line. “Rachel?”

  “Hi, Eric. What’s up?”

  “You running on that John Doe case?”

  “Yeah. I’m checking out the suspect we’ve got in custody,” I explained. “It’s pretty shaky on him from what I’ve seen so far.”

  There was a beat of silence, then I heard Eric sigh. “Okay, I’ll give you today to get it sorted out. But if we have to cut this defendant loose, you’re going to have to let the case go back to a regular trial unit. This isn’t a Special Trials case, and your dance card’s already pretty full.”

  Something was fishy. It wasn’t like Eric to interfere with us about the cases we picked up. It took me a second, but I got there. “Hemet’s on the warpath, isn’t he?”

  “For some reason,” Eric admitted. “He got all worked up at the head deputy meeting last night. Said Special Trials deputies have been overstepping. We all knew he was talking about your John Doe case, so I told him it wouldn’t have happened if his deputy hadn’t dropped the ball—”

  Go, Eric. This was one of the many reasons I loved him. “Which he took real well, I’m sure,” I said dryly.

  “Not so much. He said that since I didn’t seem inclined to do anything about it, he’d talk to Summers.”

  “Which he was going to do anyway, Eric. It didn’t matter what you said or did.”

  “Yeah.” Eric sighed. “The feces is undoubtedly about to hit the whirling blades.”

  The only question was how hard and how fast. Fred Summers, the chief deputy, was officially the second in command to our fearless and witless leader, District Attorney William Vanderhorn. But in reality Vanderhorn was more political figurehead than boss. Summers was the real force to be reckoned with. And from what I’d seen and heard, he was generally a good guy with real smarts. Why he was giving an ear to Hemet was a mystery. I wondered if Hemet had some kind of dirt on him.

  “This is such petty bullshit, Eric,” I said heatedly. “It’s not as though Hemet wants this loser.”

  “No,” Eric agreed. “But I don’t need to tell you how the rest of the office feels about our unit. Vanderhorn keeps us in Pampers because he knows he needs you trial monkeys to cover his ass on the heavy cases, but he’s taken some heat about cherry-picking special unit deputies—”

  “Anyone who wants to call this case a cherry should be disbarred for incompetence—”

  “Of course, but the specifics won’t matter. It’ll be just another time he hears about a beef with a special unit—and this one in particular.”

  Because Special Trials got the most complex, high-profile cases, the deputies in that unit got all the “ink.” Some were smart enough to know this was no gift, but many who weren’t in the unit were bitterly jealous of the media attention.

  Eric continued, “If Vanderhorn gets the sense that we can afford to pick up cases at random, he’ll jump on the excuse to cut the unit down. And since yours will be the neck that’s sticking out…”

  I’d wind up trying meth-lab cases in Newhall for the rest of my career. “Okay. I’ll get this wrapped up by the end of business today.”

  “I’m sorry, Rachel,” Eric said. “But this is for your own good—and mine. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Thanks, Eric. I understand,” I said. “And I appreciate it.”

  “You know it wouldn’t happen if it were up to me. You did a good thing. We’re prosecutors. We go after the bad guy no matter who the victim is.”

  Not that it mattered to petty bureaucratic asshats like Hemet. But I could tell that Eric was feeling guilty for having to give me grief about the case, so I tried to dial myself back.

  “It’s okay. I get it. I’ll be in tomorrow, I promise.”

  We ended the call, and I grabbed my coat and purse and flew out the door. Bailey was probably fuming by now. Fortunately, when I ran out through the lobby and reached her car, I saw that she was swaying in her seat to the rap classic “Changes” by Tupac Shakur and seemed to be in a good mood. I slid into the passenger seat. “Sorry I’m late.”

  She waved me off. “It’s all good.”

  “You’re white, Keller,” I said, pulling my seat belt on. “Deal with it.”

  She started to say something, then stopped herself. “You okay?”

  I filled her in on my conversation with Eric.

  “That was fast,” she remarked.

  “I take it you’ve already heard about Stoner?” I asked.

  She nodded. “They made it official this morning. He’s confined to quarters until they decide what to do with him.”

  “It makes me sick that a jerk like Hemet can rain crap on everyone for no good reason.”

  “Well, Stoner did deck that deputy DA,” Bailey said philosophically.

  “He had it coming,” I replied, wishing I’d gotten in a good kick or two myself.

  20

  We pulled around the corner from the tiny storefront spa and parked in a loading zone.

  “I’ve got the results on the blood on Yamaguchi’s jacket,” Bailey said.

  “And?”

  “It doesn’t match our victim,” Bailey replied.

  “Huh,” I observed brilliantly. “Is it Yamaguchi’s?”

  “Nope.”

  “Damn.” I shook my head. “You ever find out how big the stain was?”

  “Yeah, not big. About so,” Bailey said, making a dime-size circle with her thumb and forefinger.

  I thought for a moment, nursing a hunch. “Let’s go talk to some spa workers, shall we?”

  An oldish Asian woman with baggy eyes sat at the counter that was just three feet inside the door. Incongruously, a brightly colored parrot sat in a cage that hung from the low ceiling. If I hadn’t believed Yamaguchi before, I did now: this definitely was a real spa. A curtain of hanging beads separated the counter from the rest of the business, but we could clearly see that the entire room was filled with massage beds—all out in the open, no closed doors. Several of those beds were occupied by customers who were clothed in at least tank tops and shorts, if not more, and were being attended to by white-coated massage therapists.
>
  We stepped up to the counter that was just big enough to hold a register and a bowl of wrapped peppermint candies, and I pulled out my badge. “We’re here to talk to you about an employee of yours, Ronald Yamaguchi.”

  The woman peered at my badge and the photo on the opposite side, then narrowed her eyes at me. “Hair look different,” she remarked.

  “Yeah, it was longer back then,” I replied.

  “Better now,” she observed.

  And maybe the parrot wanted to weigh in on my makeup?

  “Were you here the day he got arrested?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she replied in a voice that quavered with a mixture of high and low notes. “He no kill that guy. Ronald no kill anybody.”

  “But he did go out to the bank that day,” I said. “And the murder happened right outside that bank.”

  She shrugged. “I not there. I just know.”

  Fair enough. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion, but I needed evidence.

  “Is he friendly with any of the other therapists here?” I asked.

  The woman turned around to look at the workers behind her. After a moment, she pointed to a small ponytailed Asian woman at the back. “Wendy. She and Ronald friends. Eat lunch together.”

  “You know when she’ll be done with her customer? We won’t take long. We just have a few questions for her,” I said.

  The woman looked up at the ’50s-style clock—probably less an effort at retro chic than simply the one she brought from home—that hung on the wall. “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Tell her not to leave when she’s done with the customer,” I said. “We’ll be right back.”

  Bailey looked at me, puzzled, when we got out to the sidewalk. “Why aren’t we waiting in there?”

  “Because I didn’t have time to order breakfast, and I’m starving,” I said testily. “You can join me if you want.” I pointed to the coffee shop on the corner.

  “You’re such a pleasure right now, why wouldn’t I?”

  I’d just placed my order with a tired-looking waitress at the counter when Bailey suddenly leaned forward and stared intently in the direction of the spa.