RK02 - Guilt By Degrees

by Marcia Clark

  “What?” I asked.

  A slow smile spread across her face. “Look,” she said, pointing.

  A patrol officer was staring into the newsstand machines in front of the spa, but after a few seconds I noticed that he wasn’t looking at the papers; he was looking around the street as though checking to see if anyone—like us, I supposed—was watching. After one more quick glance, he entered the spa.

  “Yamaguchi’s customer?” I said.

  The waitress was busy, so I headed for the register to cancel my order. Bailey walked with me as she kept her eyes glued to the door of the spa.

  “I’d rather be lucky than good,” Bailey said.

  “Who said you have to choose?”

  I nixed my order, and we did a fast trot back to the building.

  21

  We caught up with him at his massage bed. He’d just leaned down to untie his shoes when Bailey badged him.

  “Don’t panic,” she told him. “I just need a few minutes of your time.”

  The patrol officer stood up, his face—which had been red with the exertion of bending over—now white with fear. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and simply nodded. He shuffled out behind us, his shoes still untied.

  “Detective Keller,” Bailey said as she stuck out her hand.

  “Harley Sahagan,” he replied, taking it.

  “And this is Deputy District Attorney Rachel Knight,” she added.

  I held out my hand, and Harley gave it a weak shake.

  “I know this looks bad, but before you bust me, I want you to know I’m not just screwing off here. I got in a car accident on duty last year.” Harley, having found his voice, was talking fast. “Felony evasion, the guy crashed into a wall and we couldn’t stop in time. We rear-ended him hard. It messed up my back real bad. Riding in the squad car is killing me, but I used up all my leave, so I’ve gotta work. These guys”—he gestured over his shoulder at the spa—“saved me. I couldn’t afford a fancy spa, and insurance won’t cover a chiropractor. I was in really bad shape until someone told me about this place. I’m not cured, but at least I can deal.”

  “Harley, that’s a lot of information, but I’m not here to bust you,” Bailey said. “And I’m glad you’re better. We just want to know if you have a regular masseur here.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Harley replied uncomfortably. Then he nodded to himself. “So I guess he told you. Yeah, Ronald Yamaguchi was my masseur. Matter of fact, he was working on me when I got the call about that homeless victim.” He shook his head, his expression perplexed. “I’ve got to admit, I never figured him for the type to do something like that.” Harley sighed. “Guess you never know.”

  “Actually, in this case, you might,” I said. “The way the evidence is shaking out, we’re thinking he probably isn’t the killer. And you just helped confirm that by corroborating his story.”

  “Good to hear,” Harley said thoughtfully.

  “And just FYI: he never did give up your name.”

  Harley acknowledged this with a little smile. “Heck of a guy.”

  I had a feeling Ronald’s tips were about to get healthier.

  “By any chance, did you interview any witnesses at the scene?” Bailey asked.

  “Nah, just crime-scene control,” Harley replied.

  “Okay, we’ll get back to you if we have any more questions,” I said.

  “Glad to help.” He paused. “Uh…would you mind…?”

  “Yeah, go ahead. Have a good one,” Bailey said.

  Harley went back inside and headed for his massage bed. We went in and returned to the front counter, where we found the ponytailed masseuse deep in conversation with the older Asian woman. When we walked over to the young woman, she looked pointedly at her watch.

  I decided to play my hunch. It was a low-risk proposition at this point. I introduced myself and Bailey, then got right to it.

  “Wendy, I understand you and Ronald Yamaguchi are close,” I began.

  “Yeah,” she said, flipping her ponytail back. “So?” she asked with attitude.

  “He ever let you wear his jacket?” I asked.

  The question took her off guard, as it was meant to. She frowned at first, then shrugged.

  “Sometimes he lets me, other times I just take it,” she replied. “When I’m not working—it gets cold in here.”

  “Mind if I take a look at your arms?” I asked.

  Wendy looked at me suspiciously for a moment before answering. “Why?” she asked in a bitchy tone. “You want to bust me for killing someone too?”

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Did you kill anybody?”

  She rolled her eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “That’s not funny.”

  “I wasn’t joking,” I said flatly.

  She sighed again. “No. I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “In that case, I just want to see your arms.”

  “Why?” she asked, her tone now belligerent. “I’m not a junkie or nothing.”

  This was getting truly annoying.

  “Look, Wendy,” I said in a stern voice, “I don’t know many junkies who’re full-time masseuses, but assuming you’re one of the few, let me reassure you, I couldn’t care less. I’ve got a homicide to deal with that has very little to do with you, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with it. So how about you show me your arms and we’ll both get on with our day?”

  Wendy didn’t immediately respond, but eventually she rolled up the sleeves of her white uniform and showed me her arms, palms down.

  “Could you turn them over, please?”

  She complied, and there it was. A deep two-inch-long scratch on the inside of her wrist. “What happened there?” I asked as I pointed at the fresh-looking wound.

  “I took that silly bird”—she gestured at the parrot—“out of his cage and he lost his balance. He scraped me with his claw.”

  “You remember when that happened?” I asked.

  She thought for a moment. “Probably about two weeks ago.”

  “The day Ronald got arrested?”

  “Right around there,” she confirmed.

  A young woman in tights and leg warmers came in. Wendy waved to her. “Go on back, Riley. I’ll be right there.”

  Wendy watched her go, then looked at me. “You done?”

  “I am.”

  She started to go, then stopped. “Ronald didn’t do it, you know. You got the wrong guy,” she said defiantly.

  “I know,” I replied.

  This caught Wendy by surprise, and her eyes got big. “You know?” she asked, incredulous. “Then why don’t you let him out?”

  “We are,” I replied. I glanced at Bailey, who nodded. “Today, as a matter of fact.”

  “Oh.” She took a moment to regroup after the unexpected response. “Well, good,” she retorted. “Never should’ve arrested him in the first place.” And with another insouciant flip of the ponytail, Wendy went back to work.

  Bailey made the call to the county jail. I was supposed to get in touch with Eric. Instead, I waited for her to finish.

  “The minute I tell Eric we cut Yamaguchi loose, the case goes back into the hopper,” I said.

  Bailey agreed. “I’ll probably have to give it up too. I only got it because we had a suspect in custody and they needed someone to babysit it through the preliminary hearing.”

  “So it’ll wind up an unsolved, probably forever,” I predicted.

  Bailey nodded unhappily.

  I couldn’t drop this case into oblivion without a fight. John Doe deserved at least that much.

  “Technically, Yamaguchi’s still in custody, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Bailey answered slowly, guessing where I was going.

  “So technically I don’t have to give up the case just yet.” I glanced at my watch. “It’s not even noon. That gives us a whole day and night to do…something.”

  “That’s still not a lot of time. We need a tight game plan.”

  My loudly g
rowling stomach told me what we’d do first.

  Bailey heard it and smiled. “Since we need to regroup anyway, we may as well do it over lunch.”

  To save time, we went back to the coffee shop. I ordered a spinach salad with the dressing on the side, and Bailey, Queen Sadistica, ordered a cheeseburger and fries. They served us and we ate quickly. We had to pull a rabbit out of a hat in mere hours. At this point, we didn’t even have a hat.

  I finished my salad and began to pick at Bailey’s fries—an endearing sign of trusting friendship, as I’ve explained to her on many occasions. Bailey says it really isn’t so endearing, but I know she doesn’t mean it.

  “Other than nailing the perp, what’s the one thing you’d like to figure out before we have to let this case go?” I asked.

  Bailey thought a moment. “Why the hell you had to call me when you got it refiled?”

  “Close, but no,” I replied. “The burning question of the day is our victim’s identity.”

  “Yeah, that too.” Bailey took a deep breath, then blew it out. “But that’s a tall order, Knight. This guy shows up nowhere. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “But we have a clean photo of him from the coroner, don’t we?”

  Bailey nodded, knowing where I was headed. “Yeah. But showing it around and hoping for an ID is like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “Except I just might happen to have a magnet.”

  22

  Bailey raised an eyebrow. “Which would be?”

  “Cletus.”

  Bailey blinked. “What’s a Cletus?”

  “My homeless buddy. Used to be a minor-league pitcher.”

  “And he wound up homeless, how?”

  “He tore a rotator cuff and had to stop playing for a while,” I said. “Then his wife decided it was a good time to find another man, and Cletus decided it was a good time to find a bottle.” I gestured toward the street. “Now he lives out there.”

  “You know where to find him now?”

  “On Wednesday nights, he’s usually on Hill Street or Broadway.”

  “This is Thursday,” Bailey pointed out.

  “Thus, our dilemma,” I admitted.

  “You ever run into him on any other days?”

  I thought back. Had I?

  “I think I remember seeing him on Spring Street on a Monday. Or was it Main?” I shook my head. “I’m not sure. But doesn’t it seem likely that he’d be staying somewhere nearby?”

  In my experience, the homeless aren’t completely so. They don’t usually stray far from a familiar circumference.

  “So what’re we going to do, just start walking up and down the streets looking for Cletus?” Bailey asked.

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Yeah. Tell Eric you need a few more days and wait till Wednesday, when you know where to find Cletus,” Bailey retorted.

  “Won’t happen.” I shook my head. “It’s now or never.”

  Bailey sighed. “Okay.” She threw down her napkin and stood up. “Better get the lead out. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  “And while we’re at it, we can show around our photo of John Doe,” I said. “See if someone recognizes him. Since this is our day for long shots, we may as well go for broke.”

  “In for a penny…,” Bailey agreed.

  We decided to start in Skid Row, home to one of the largest stable homeless populations in the country and just a little more than four square miles. It was within walking distance from the courthouse. Skid Row dwellers aren’t allowed to sleep on the sidewalks during daylight hours, but the street is their home, so the area is always filled with people sitting, eating, talking…surviving.

  It makes me nervous to drive through there—I’m always afraid of hitting someone—but walking the area is far worse, though for a completely different reason. It’s heart-wrenching to see so many human beings living so hard. The streets are perpetually littered with crushed cans, broken bottles of cheap alcohol, fast-food wrappers, cracked glass vials, and used needles. The stench of urine permeates the alcoves and sides of every building, and the air is thick with the mix of old grease, cheap food, unwashed bodies, and dirty clothes. The feeling in the air is more than abject poverty. It’s the sense of overwhelming despair and defeat. On Skid Row, people didn’t even aspire to living; they struggled merely to exist.

  As we walked the streets, I fought to keep from sinking into the misery of it all. Back and forth we walked, up one street and down another, looking for the familiar pile of blankets I knew as Cletus, asking if anyone had seen him, showing the photograph of our John Doe to anyone who looked relatively alert.

  We approached a short, squat woman of indeterminate age and race who wore a knitted cap with ears and unlaced army boots. She pushed a full shopping cart.

  “Don’t know no Cletus, and I ain’t never seen that dude, nohow. Nohow, no way…” She wandered off, continuing to mutter to herself.

  A middle-aged black man in glasses and a torn overcoat seemed fairly together, so we showed him the photograph of our John Doe. “Do you recognize this guy by any chance?”

  He looked at the photo carefully. Hope rose in my chest.

  “He doesn’t look like any chance to me,” he replied. “Does he look like a chance to you? I see no chance. No chance in France, and not in pants.”

  My heart sank back down. “Thank you, sir.”

  We walked on. After another two hours, feeling defeated, footsore, and tired, I was beginning to concede that this was a fool’s errand. It was five o’clock and we were losing light. Pretty soon, it’d be too dangerous for two women—even two like us—to be out here.

  “I’m sorry, Keller,” I said. “It was a lame idea. I guess it’s time to pack it in.”

  “It is a lame idea, but we knew that going in,” Bailey agreed. “Let’s give it another half hour down here, then head over to your usual meeting place with Cletus. It’s on the way home.”

  It was times like this that I thought I didn’t deserve a friend as good as Bailey. “Thanks,” I said gratefully. Bailey waved me off.

  In the next half hour, the sun sank along with our hopes of finding a lead on either John Doe or Cletus. Time to give up. “I’m pulling the plug, Bailey. It’s getting really stupid now.”

  She nodded reluctantly. “I’m sorry, Rachel. We tried.”

  “Yep, we did,” I agreed dejectedly.

  We headed back down San Pedro to Fourth Street. At the intersection, I noticed an older man with a dog. The dog lay at the man’s feet, his leash tied to the shopping cart. Maybe it was the dog, I don’t know, but I decided to take one last shot and show him the photograph of John Doe.

  “Nope. Don’t know ’im.”

  “Do you know a guy named Cletus?” I asked.

  The man frowned, creating a forest of eyebrows, and puffed on his stub of a cigarette. “You talking about the pitcher?”

  I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice. “Yeah.”

  “He in trouble?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “He’s a friend.”

  The man snorted. “Of yours?”

  I looked at him steadily. “Yeah, of mine. You know where I can find him tonight?”

  “Maybe,” the man said, squinting at me through a haze of cigarette smoke.

  I wasn’t thrilled about pulling money out in this place, but I figured between Bailey’s .44 and my .38, we probably had enough firepower to handle any comers. I fished out a ten-spot and held it up. “Take us to Cletus, and you’ll get this.”

  The man took another drag on his cigarette and blew an enviably crisp smoke ring. Back in my smoking days, I’d tried to do that. My rings always came out wobbly and messy.

  “Deal,” he said. With that, he turned and headed up Fourth Street.

  We followed, wary of ambush by the predators who come out at night to stalk the homeless. But I noticed we were moving toward Spring Street and Pershing Squ
are. Safer territory by far than where we’d been. We crossed Spring Street and were approaching Broadway when the old man stopped and pointed. Sure as hell, there on the sidewalk in front of the Bradbury Building was the familiar pile of blankets. Close enough to his usual stomping grounds; far enough that, without help, I could’ve searched all day and night and never found him.

  I thanked our guide, paid him…and threw in an extra few dollars for dog food.

  He took the money, saluted, and walked off, a cloud of smoke floating behind him, his dog trotting alongside.

  I slowly stepped up to the pile of blankets. As usual, they were crowned by a well-worn Lakers hat. “Cletus?”

  A thick mop of graying hair poked up, and his eyes glittered in the darkness. “That you, missy? What you doin’ here? What you doin’ here?” The deep, ragged voice sounded as if it had scraped the words from the belly of the earth. It was music to my ears.

  I smiled. “Yeah, it’s me, Cletus. And I know it’s not ‘our’ night. But I need your help.”

  With effort, he pulled himself up to a sitting position. “Cletus is always glad to help.”

  He coughed, an alarming hack.

  “Are you okay, Cletus? You don’t sound great.”

  He coughed again but waved his hand. “Just a cold. Always get ’em this time of year. What you need?”

  “You recognize this guy?” I held out the photograph.

  Cletus took it and stared for a long minute. I held my breath.

  “No, missy. I do not. I don’t. Sorry.” He handed the photograph back to me.

  Cletus had been my last hope. Deflated but grateful for his effort, I replied, “It’s okay, Cletus. I appreciate you trying.” I dug into my wallet and pulled out a twenty.

  He looked at it. “I didn’t do it for no money, missy.”

  “I know that, Cletus. I just want you to have it,” I said.

  He slowly took the twenty-dollar bill and tucked it into his pocket. “You know, I been around here a long time. If I haven’t seen this guy, probably means he ain’t living in this part. But you seen him here?”

  “Yeah. So I thought…” I trailed off. It was truly hopeless if John Doe hadn’t been living in the area.