by Marcia Clark
Bailey was frowning. “They find blood anywhere else?” she asked.
“There was a small blood transfer on the wall next to the staircase that led up to the bedroom,” he replied. “But not enough to do any kind of typing. We questioned Lilah about it, but she didn’t take the bait. Said she didn’t know how it got there.”
Once again, an indication that Lilah was cool under pressure. Suspects often can’t resist the urge to explain everything in an effort to show how innocent they are, and those explanations can be the best gift the prosecution ever gets. A provably false story shows the defendant’s not only guilty but also a remorseless liar.
“The way it sounds from the cheap seats, even with the neighbor dumping you out, the case wasn’t a slam dunk, but it was there,” I said.
“It was,” Larry agreed. “But the defense had a helluva hole card.” I could hear the anger in his voice. “Six months before Zack’s murder, the Glendale Police Department had been targeted by PEN1, Public Enemy Number One, a skinhead group affiliated with the Aryan Brotherhood. A lieutenant in Glendale had targeted them after they shot one of his officers during a pursuit. The Glendale cops made a lot of busts, mostly for meth, and that really messed up PEN1’s major source of income. So the skins declared war on the Glendale PD. They rigged a zip gun to the gate at the officer parking facility—just missed killing a sergeant. Redirected a gas pipe to shoot toxic fumes into the lunchroom, and then firebombed the evidence room.”
That was big-time…and outrageous. How come I’d never heard a word about it? Bailey looked equally shocked. As much as anything, the fact that we hadn’t gotten wind of this showed just how sprawling this county really was. But, intriguing as it seemed, I didn’t see how this tied into Zack’s murder.
“I get how the murder looked like the kind of overkill meth heads do,” I said. “But I thought you said Zack was a political player, not a big gun out in the field—”
“Yeah. No reason to think he got up in anyone’s face,” Larry confirmed.
“Then why Zack?” I asked, perplexed. “And why in his own home? I mean, it’s one thing to target the police at the station, but breaking into the man’s home and chopping him up in his own basement—”
“Is another,” Larry finished for me. “Which is, of course, what I argued.”
“Did the defense come up with anything to back up the ‘skinhead did it’ story?” Bailey asked.
“Sort of.” Larry sighed. “After they put the lieutenant on to testify about war with the skinheads, prison guards seized a kite between a couple of PEN1 inmates. Of course, the defense waved that puppy around the courtroom like it was their national flag. Which it pretty much was.”
A note between inmates could be pretty compelling evidence.
“What’d it say?” I asked.
“That PEN1 was getting the ‘credit’ for the hit and no asshole Nazi Low Rider better try and claim it—something to that effect. Rick’ll have the actual note if you want to see it.”
“No names mentioned?” Bailey asked.
“Nope,” Larry replied. “And it wasn’t even in code, which you know their stuff almost always is.”
That was significant. The white-supremacist gangs had an elaborate system of secret codes they used for all written communications. It usually took an FBI specialist to crack it. The fact that this note wasn’t coded was some evidence that it was just a couple of jerks bragging, rather than a real admission that PEN1 was behind Zack’s murder.
“And you let the jury know what that meant, I’m sure,” I remarked.
“Oh yeah,” Larry replied.
“Did you ever come up with any affirmative evidence to disprove that theory?” I asked.
“What was I going to do, put a bunch of skinheads on the stand to say they didn’t do it?”
I shook my head. “Probably only make the jury believe it more. Was there evidence connected to the scene that pointed to someone else being in the house besides Lilah?”
“Not really, but it played that way to the jury,” Larry responded. “There was a partial bloody print on the kitchen wall, but we couldn’t pin it to her. Insufficient ridge detail to rule anyone in or out—including Lilah. Basically, that print could belong to anyone. The defense went crazy with that.”
“Ouch,” I said.
Larry nodded his agreement. “Yeah. It hurt us. I remember thinking we were in trouble when the jury asked about that print during deliberations.”
A fingerprint in blood had the look of evidence that had to be connected to the crime. The failure to tie it to Lilah was a tough blow. That, plus the “blame the skinhead” defense, spelled big trouble for the prosecution. Then there was the neighbor who’d gone belly-up on the stand. No question about it, this was a tough case.
“Who represented Lilah?” I asked.
“Mike Howell. Know him?”
“Oh yeah.”
Mike and I had been hired at the same time, did Planning and Training together. But after packing in about a hundred trials, he’d decamped for the greater financial rewards and flexibility of private practice. Mike and I were still friendly, and it would’ve been nice to get his personal take on the case. But the attorney-client privilege lasts a lifetime—sometimes longer—so I knew there wasn’t much point in talking to him.
“The case had its problems, but even so, that defense probably never would’ve flown with another lawyer…” Larry trailed off.
We shared a look of understanding. Mike was one of the good guys who played it straight and fair, but he was unquestionably one of the best in the business. He knew how to zero in on every weak spot in the prosecution’s case, and how to play the jury. To call him a formidable opponent was like calling Bill Gates “comfortable.”
“And that’s not all,” Larry said. He reached out and flipped through the pages of the murder book in front of me to a single photograph.
Lilah’s face stared up at me. Fair-skinned, with a shining cap of black hair and large, azure eyes, she wasn’t just a looker; she was a stunner. I compared that photo to the woman shown in the surveillance video. The differences were subtle and, I had a hunch, deliberate: the woman in the footage had much longer hair, and she seemed to be a little thinner. But if you looked closely, you could see that the shape of the face and head was unquestionably the same. A jury had spent weeks looking at that face and trying to match it up with a decapitation ax murder. The skinheads gave the jury just the excuse they needed to resolve the contradiction.
“She take the stand?” I asked.
“Oh, you bet,” Larry said bitterly.
“And she did well.”
“Well enough.” He looked out the window, and I saw his jaw muscles clench.
His grudging tone told me I should look elsewhere if I wanted to get an accurate read on her performance.
“Any idea where we might find her now?” Bailey asked.
Larry shook his head and stood, signaling the end of our conversation. “None. After she got acquitted, she pulled up stakes and took off. Hasn’t even been a sighting.” He laughed, a mirthless bark. “Until now anyway.”
He escorted us out of the office and through the reception area, then stopped at the door to shake hands. “Hey, you want to hear the kicker?” Larry asked.
I stopped and met his gaze.
“Lilah clerked for about six months when she was in law school,” he said.
“Why’s that a kicker?” I asked.
“Because it was in the DA’s office.”
29
Bailey and I walked out to her car in silence. When we’d first arrived, I’d found the stark landscape soothing. Now it just felt desolate. We drove past the open fields of Joshua trees, heading for the freeway.
“A former intern. This is a proud moment for the DA’s office,” I said sarcastically. “So she actually had some experience in criminal law.”
“Enough to know when to shut her mouth,” Bailey agreed.
“I’ll s
ee what we’ve got on her,” I said. “But interns don’t do anything heavy or sensitive, so we don’t spend a lot of time on their background checks.”
Bailey nodded, but neither of us was in a talkative mood.
I could well understand Larry’s reaction to the news of Simon’s murder. Though no victim is ever just a chalk outline to me, the colors unique to each one fill in slowly, over time, painted layer by layer with the memories and feelings of their loved ones, until ultimately a picture with depth and nuance emerges. More than his words, the emotion in Larry’s voice had shown me that Simon was a kind and gentle soul who’d been mortally wounded—long before his physical death—by his brother’s brutal demise and the injustice of the verdict. The image of the vase he’d left with Johnnie, its simple beauty and innocence of vision, made my eyes burn.
The freeway again wound through the low mountain passes, but now that the sun had sunk below the horizon, the valleys were shrouded in darkness and had taken on an ominous, forbidding look. When Bailey finally spoke, I could tell her thoughts had been running in a similar vein.
“We’re going to have to talk to the Bayers soon, you know.”
I sighed my agreement. “Do you know if they had any other kids?”
“They didn’t,” she replied tersely.
So they’d lost their only children to murder within the last two years. I had some idea of what they’d gone through.
It was twenty-seven years ago. I’d been just seven years old when my older sister, Romy, who was eleven, had vanished. It felt as though my soul had been wrenched from my body. Not only had I lost my best friend, but I believed it’d been my fault. I’ve heard some families grow closer after such a tragedy, but mine didn’t. We orbited farther and farther away from one another as we disappeared into our individual universes of agony. My father spiraled down into a bottle, and ultimately the oblivion he likely craved, when his car skidded off an icy bridge. My mother remained, but at first only in the most basic physical sense. For years after my father’s death, her mind wandered off as the world fell out of focus for her. I can still feel the panic at seeing her vague gaze and constant state of confusion. Those were dark years. I felt so isolated that I used to dream I was treading water, exhausted and alone in the middle of the ocean and about to go under.
Losing both children, and to murder, had to be an unendurable and unimaginable agony. I wished we didn’t have to ask the questions that would make the parents relive painful memories. But the story of Simon’s downward spiral could provide information critical to solving the case, and his parents were likely to be the best source.
As we rode on in silence through the darkening hills, I mentally replayed the meeting with Larry.
“Larry never said anything about motive,” I remarked.
“I noticed that too,” Bailey agreed. “Any possibility it involved money?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” I said, frowning. “She was the moneymaker. She probably wasn’t making a ton as a new associate, but if she hung in there, she stood to make a hell of a lot more than he did.”
“In which case, she would’ve had to pay alimony,” Bailey pointed out. “With Zack dead, she wouldn’t have to worry about that. Plus, if there was an insurance policy, she’d get it all.”
“I suppose,” I said, unconvinced. “But if that’s the way Larry went, you can see why it didn’t work. If the criminal doesn’t fit the crime, you’ve got to stick the landing when it comes to motive. He had a defendant who looked like a porcelain doll and a crime that looked like it was committed by Beelzebub on crack. So Larry had some serious explaining to do, and from the looks of things, he didn’t get there. I’m starting to understand why the jury acquitted.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t do it,” Bailey replied.
“No,” I said.
The mountains were behind us now, and the freeway forded a sea of ranch-style tract houses. The San Fernando Valley spread out around us, a vast expanse of low-rise suburban life. On my right, the sight of the familiar golden arches made my stomach rumble, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten in a while.
“You in the mood for dinner?” I asked.
“I’m ready to eat my own hand,” Bailey replied.
“How about the Tar Pit?”
“Perfect,” she said with a smile. “We haven’t been there in a while. It’ll be a nice change of pace.”
30
The cozy, art deco–style restaurant and bar on La Brea had great food and amazing drinks. Though I was kind of a purist when it came to booze, anyone who was even slightly more adventurous raved about their cocktails, like the Fashionista and the Warsaw Mule.
The waiter showed up the moment we were seated and asked what we’d have to drink.
“You go ahead,” Bailey offered. “I’ll be the designated driver tonight.”
Still, friends don’t let friends watch them get hammered all alone. I ordered a glass of the house Pinot Noir and chicken à la king, and made a mental note to use this sacrifice as leverage with Bailey at some later point. Bailey ordered an iced tea and the wild boar mushrooms.
“Chicken à la king?” she asked, incredulous. “Since when do you eat like a real person?”
The rich sauce was one hell of a splurge for me. “It’s been a rough few days. I seem to be needing lots of comfort food.”
“No need to sell me. I’m totally fine with it. For the first time in months, I might actually get to have my meal to myself. Hell, I might even take a bite off your plate for a change.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” I warned, aiming my fork threateningly.
The waiter brought our drinks, and I tasted my wine. Nice and dry. I nodded at her glass. “Your iced tea all you hoped for?” I asked with a smirk.
“You think this is a good time to poke the bear?”
It was almost always a good time to mess with Bailey, as far as I was concerned, but I moved on to the second-most pressing issue of the evening.
“I was thinking about where to look for Lilah—,” I began.
“I started the hunt this morning,” Bailey replied.
I paused and looked at her with disbelief.
“You already knew she’d been an intern in our office and didn’t tell me?”
Bailey smirked. “I wanted to drop that bomb on you myself,” she said, taking a sip of her iced tea. “Damn Larry beat me to it. It was on her résumé that she’d clerked with the DA’s office, but it didn’t say where exactly. I figured that’d be an easy one for you—”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Anyway,” Bailey continued, “the law firm dumped her right after she got arrested.”
“And didn’t hire her back after the acquittal, I take it?”
“Not from what I could tell,” she replied. “Big surprise.”
It wasn’t. A high-dollar corporate law firm couldn’t afford even a whiff of scandal, let alone an associate who’d been on trial for murder—acquittal or no.
“Where’d she wind up after that?” I asked.
“That’s the thing,” Bailey said. “The trail dies there.”
How could that be? A lawyer has to provide current contact information to the State Bar. “You check the State Bar website?”
“She let her bar card lapse—”
“Damn,” I said, frowning. “Can’t anything in this case be easy?”
“No,” Bailey answered. “And she’s not in any other database either—not under her married name or her maiden name.” She sighed.
“It seems pretty obvious this woman doesn’t want to be found,” I observed.
Bailey nodded.
After the epic hassle we’d gone through to learn Simon’s identity, this was the last thing we needed.
“Want to talk about our stabber?” Bailey asked.
“Please.” I was glad for the change of subject. “I’d like to take another look at the video to make sure it’s a man,” I said. “But assuming it is, the guy could’ve
been a Good Samaritan—”
“Who just happened to be armed and ready,” Bailey interjected dryly.
“And didn’t stick around to tell the police he’d been defending a damsel in distress. It is a little ridiculous,” I agreed. “But it is possible he was just protecting her and didn’t call the police because he had his own problems.”
“Why take the risk if he can get away clean?” Bailey thought for a moment. “It’s possible. Not likely, but possible.”
“And if that’s true, then it’s also possible Lilah had nothing to do with the killing,” I replied. “In which case it’s iffy that she’d even be able to ID the guy…assuming we find her in our lifetimes.”
Bailey frowned. “But from what I remember of the video, it seems to me the killer couldn’t have known that Simon had a box cutter. Simon grabbed Lilah with one hand, the other hand was in his pocket.”
“Right. In which case, the killer definitely targeted Simon—”
“Which means he and Lilah are in cahoots,” Bailey said, finishing the thought.
“Cahoots?” I said with a pained expression.
Bailey started to defend herself, but at that moment the waiter brought our dinners, and the mouthwatering aromas wafting up from our plates brought an end to all rational thought. Silence reigned for the next several minutes as we ate, until finally I came up for air and took a sip of my wine.
“So, best guess, given what we know at this point, is that whoever killed Simon was with Lilah,” I said. “That means he did it either because she told him to or because he knew Simon posed a threat to her.”
“Physical or legal?” Bailey asked.
“Either one,” I replied. “Simon was unhinged. If he’d given up on the legal system, he might’ve been willing to settle for street justice and take her out himself.” I paused and thought a moment before continuing. “Or Simon might’ve uncovered something new on Zack’s murder. Something good enough to get the Feds interested in the case.”