RK02 - Guilt By Degrees

by Marcia Clark

  I had one last question for Rick.

  “Did you know Zack?” I asked.

  “No,” Rick said, shaking his head sadly. “You going to ask me how those two wound up together?”

  I smiled. “Pretty common question?”

  “Most definitely,” Rick confirmed. “But I never did get a good answer.”

  43

  It was early evening by the time we finished with Rick. I hadn’t wanted to leave his charming aerie, but we’d run out of questions. Bailey navigated through the narrow streets of the trailer park and pulled onto Pacific Coast Highway, heading toward town. The highway ran parallel to the ocean, and I stared out the window, mesmerized by the vast expanse of gently undulating water that stretched to the horizon under the gray, cloud-filled sky.

  “Hungry?” I asked. I didn’t have the energy to return to work, and I wasn’t keen to get back to my room, where I’d have too much time to think about Graden.

  “Funny you should mention it,” Bailey said. “How about Guido’s?”

  In our last murder case, the body of the rapist/suspect had been found in his car, impaled on a tree branch, at the bottom of a ravine in nearby Malibu Canyon. One of the crime scene techs had told us about the warm, familial Italian restaurant that was just minutes away, on the land side of Pacific Coast Highway, but we hadn’t had a chance to get there at the time.

  “Perfect.”

  Five minutes later, Bailey pulled into the parking lot. Strings of white lights hung from windows facing the small inlet of water next to the restaurant, giving it a festive holiday feel. At six o’clock the dining room wasn’t yet busy, but the small, intimate bar near the entrance was packed with regulars, some talking, some watching the basketball game on the television that hung from the ceiling. The atmosphere was relaxed and convivial, and the manager greeted us like we were his favorite cousins.

  He guided us to a booth that overlooked the small inlet. A waiter, who introduced himself as Aris and talked as though we used to get stoned together in high school, brought us water, bread, and a plate of olive oil, and left us menus. I watched a family of ducks paddle serenely across the water as twilight gave way to the silvery luminescence of moonlit clouds. Beautiful.

  A busboy carrying a pitcher of water stopped by the table. “Want me to top you off? Or you afraid you’ll rust?” he asked, chuckling at his own joke.

  “Thanks, we’re good,” Bailey said.

  I smiled as I watched him move down the aisle to another table. “What is up with the staff here? I don’t know whether to invite them to the next family reunion or ask to borrow money.”

  Aris came back, and I ordered an arugula salad and grilled tilapia. Bailey chose the grilled salmon and vegetables. We ordered a bruschetta appetizer and a glass of Pinot Noir for each of us, figuring we’d be here long enough to burn through the alcohol. The second glass would determine who was driving back.

  “So,” Bailey said after the waiter had brought our wine, “how’re you doing?”

  Exactly the question I wanted to neither contemplate nor answer. “Okay,” I said, taking a sip of wine. I savored the rich, peppery flavor and hoped that’d end the topic.

  “I don’t know what exactly happened between you and Graden, and I’m not saying it’s any of my business.”

  “Here comes the but,” I said, leaning back in the booth.

  “Yeah, here it comes,” Bailey agreed. “But your welfare is my business. That means I’m supposed to at least say something when I think you’re making a big mistake. This breakup is a mistake. You are not yourself, girlfriend.” Bailey paused and looked at me meaningfully. “And, just for the record, neither is Graden.”

  I wanted to say I didn’t care what Graden was, but I knew Bailey would catch the lie. I said nothing.

  “You two were really good together and good for each other. You owe it to yourselves to make sure there’s no way to work it out—”

  “Please believe me, Bailey,” I said, my voice brittle even to my ears. “There isn’t.”

  “Rachel, a man can screw up once, learn from his mistake, and never do it again. I know you don’t believe that right now, but do me a favor—give yourself a date to think about it again, say, a week from now,” Bailey suggested. “Can you at least promise me that?”

  “Will you drop it then?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “I promise.” I picked up the bread basket, took a piece, and offered the basket to her.

  Bailey accepted and we both dipped our bread in the olive oil.

  “Do we have appointments with anyone tomorrow?” I said, liberally salting the plate.

  “Thanks for the side of hypertension,” she said, grabbing the saltshaker from me. “I’ve got us set up to see the hiring partner at the law firm.”

  “We’ll hit the younger associates on the fly?”

  Bailey nodded. “And the secretaries.”

  She took another piece of bread and swiped it around the plate of salty olive oil, then popped it into her mouth and chewed with relish.

  Bailey thought a moment, then reached across the table for the saltshaker. “Needs more.”

  44

  Chase closed his laptop and pocketed the flash drive. “Bottom line? You were right. Our esteemed CEO got his start by selling nonexistent homes.”

  Sabrina nodded absently but didn’t immediately reply. Chase frowned. Her increasing distraction over the past few days had begun to worry him. He saw her pull her attention back to him with effort. Yet when she spoke, it was clear she’d heard and analyzed every word he’d said.

  “No one ever exposed his bullshit excuse about the construction company having stolen the money.”

  “Not as far as I can tell.”

  She drummed her fingers on the arms of her chair. “Find out why no one sued or took their claims to the police. There’s a fix in here somewhere, and I’d bet the fixer is higher up on the food chain. I want to bag the CEO and his fixer. We’ll save the evidence on the fixer for future use.”

  Chase nodded, relieved that, wherever her mind had been—and he had a feeling he knew—her priorities were still in place.

  Sabrina pushed away from her desk, stood up, and stretched. She hit the button that opened the window coverings, and they parted to reveal moonlit clouds in a night sky. She shivered.

  “You cold?” Chase asked.

  “I’ve just been sitting too long. I’m going to get a sweater.”

  Chase waited until she left the room, then quickly went to her desktop and tapped some keys. He’d meant to sneak a quick look before she came back, but what he saw was so upsetting, he forgot the time. She caught him red-handed.

  “What the hell—?”

  Chase gestured angrily to the monitor. “We agreed I’d handle this, Lilah!”

  “Sabrina!” she hissed.

  “We’re alone, Lilah! You’ve got to stop it. We can’t afford to leave a trail.”

  “Back off, Chase.”

  He heard the steel in her voice and knew he’d get nowhere with her tonight. He shook his head, his shoulders sagging with defeat. “I just…worry…”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” she said coldly. “Go home. Get some sleep. You’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.”

  A thick knot in his gut told him there was trouble brewing. Big trouble. But he knew that when Lilah obsessed, there was nothing he could do to stop her. She’d do what she wanted to do. He’d just have to hope for the best. Chase slid his laptop into the case and left.

  Lilah walked over to the window. She usually found the lights of the downtown skyline soothing. Not tonight. Not any night since Chase had told her they were looking for her. It felt like her brain had gone into a sort of hyperdrive, and her body vibrated constantly with a nervous jangling energy that gave her no peace. Only action gave her some momentary relief.

  Like in her encounter with Lieutenant Hales. Lilah hadn’t particularly wanted to get Hales into bed. There was no reaso
n—nothing she needed from him. She’d just wanted to reach in and touch something in Rachel’s world. Lilah’d considered the possibility that Rachel might be there with him. If she had been, Lilah had planned to fade into a corner and watch them from a distance. But she’d gotten lucky. Graden Hales was alone and seemingly miserable, which was probably why he’d shown so little interest in her. And that had irritated her. That’s likely what made her take the risky step of tipping her hand with that last line. But she’d needed to get a reaction out of him, even if she couldn’t stick around to see it.

  And she knew she’d succeeded. Hales was too smart to miss the little heat-seeking missile she’d fired. At first, she’d been annoyed with herself for letting her temper make her pop off that way. But the more she thought about it, the more certain she’d been that there was no downside—in fact, there was a considerable upside. Because once the import of it all hit him, he’d tell Rachel. And then Rachel Knight would begin to have some idea of who she was dealing with. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

  Her Rachel Knight campaign had just begun. And it promised to be even more satisfying than the destruction of Brenda Honesdale.

  Not even Chase knew about Brenda. The “best friend ever,” the girl who made her feel like she belonged when she’d come home from boarding school in her sophomore year and entered the local high school, a loner and a stranger. Lilah’d experienced for the first time what it was like to have a crowd of friends who were normal kids, and to be accepted as one of them. It was something Lilah’d never known before, and she’d believed her new friends would be hers forever—especially Brenda.

  Until the night of the party. When Brenda and all her minions were revealed to be liars and traitors—and Brenda a monster. Lilah never did know what they put in her drink. She only knew that she’d woken up sick and battered, inside and out. She’d stumbled home on wooden legs, clutching her blouse together. Her mother had stared at her coldly—the unspoken accusation heavy in the air. Lilah’d declared that she was never going back to that school. And Pam—Lilah never again called her Mother—was happy to let her earn her GED with a home tutor. The sooner Lilah graduated, the sooner she’d go to college and get out of the house.

  Lilah spent years planning and waiting. Waiting for Brenda to have something she cared about, something to lose. Something Lilah could take away. Eventually she got her wish. Brenda married William Sharder, a successful local politician from a wealthy family. And they had a baby. Brenda and William enjoyed a sparkling life filled with luxury, privilege, and power.

  Lilah moved in slowly, and—patiently, bit by bit—she began to dismantle Brenda’s life. Rumors of Brenda’s blackout drinking and prescription-drug abuse began to circulate. No one knew how or when they started. And at first the rumors were just a vague worry—no one really believed them. But on more than one occasion Brenda was seen staggering home, with no memory of where she’d been. Then she got into an accident while driving home from a fund-raiser. The police received a tip that a person driving a car similar to hers had been weaving erratically, so they took her in for a blood test. Though she claimed she’d only had one glass of wine, the drug test showed high levels of OxyContin in her blood. She denied having taken any drugs. By that point no one believed her. On the advice of her lawyer, Brenda pled guilty to drunk driving.

  And while Brenda was doing community service picking up trash on the freeway, Lilah just “happened” to run into Brenda’s husband, William, at—of all things—a prayer breakfast. They’d gone out for mimosas afterward and wound up in Lilah’s bedroom. In the warm afterglow, Lilah told him that she’d lovingly preserved the memory of their tryst on videotape. A young politician with big dreams can’t afford scandal, and Lilah kept her demand simple: give her a junior associate position in his white-shoe law firm. He’d been happy to oblige.

  The rumors of Brenda’s alcohol and drug abuse were now rampant and largely believed. The following year, she was shopping in the local mall when a security guard, acting on a tip, found drugs tucked into the bedding in her toddler’s stroller. That led to a felony conviction for possession of methamphetamine. By then Brenda’s husband, who was aiming for state office, found he could no longer afford to be married to her—or leave her alone with his child. He left with the baby, taking with him everything in the world Brenda had lived for.

  Lilah had been gearing up for the next round and would likely have gone on for many rounds to come, but Brenda thwarted her. She drew a bath and slit her wrists.

  Lilah sat down at her computer and pulled up the screen she’d been viewing. Rachel Knight would be a much more challenging target than Brenda. Lilah began to read. It was an obituary. As she scrolled to the end of the obit, she found a photograph. Lilah stared with gritted teeth at the image of a smiling Rachel Knight, arm in arm with her adoring mother.

  45

  The next morning dawned gray and brittle, a perfect accompaniment to the day’s planned festivities: a visit to Lilah’s law firm. Spending the day in a law firm—any law firm—was not my idea of fun. But I hoped someone could give us a line on where Lilah might be now, or at least tell us something more that would help us find this cipher of a woman. So far all I’d managed to do was add to the list of questions about her that’d been running through my mind on an endless loop. I put on my “lawyer clothes” and reluctantly left my firepower at home.

  It was a typical white-shoe law firm, occupying the upper floors of a skyscraper in Century City. An elevator dedicated solely to the law office opened onto a glass-encased lobby with thick carpets and window treatments in earth tones. The obligatory modern art hung on the wall behind the predictably coiffed mannequin of a receptionist. She was seated at the epicenter of a semicircular marble counter. “May I help you?” she asked skeptically.

  Neither Bailey nor I had the down-at-the-heels look (i.e., scuffed-up shoes and dull, boxy suits) of the stereotypical civil servants. I wore a gray cashmere turtleneck sweater and black blazer, and Bailey wore a black turtleneck and slacks under her camel-hair midcalf coat. Not bad, but not nearly luxe enough to be clients of this place. And the receptionist’s greeting showed she knew it.

  “We’ve got an appointment with Lyle Monahan,” Bailey said, handing the woman her card. I handed her mine as well.

  “Have a seat, please,” the receptionist said dismissively.

  She waved her hand at the plush beige leather sofa that was as far away from her desk as you could get without falling through the floor-to-ceiling window.

  “I feel banished,” I told Bailey after we’d crossed the ten feet to our destination. “Did you see that look she gave us?”

  “I think Botox has something to do with her expression,” Bailey said. “Don’t take it personally.”

  We cooled our heels for a good fifteen minutes before a baby-faced young man in an expensive navy-blue suit and wing-tip shoes ushered us into the sanctum sanctorum: a huge corner office with windows that spanned two walls, providing a commanding view of the city that stretched all the way to downtown. It was sparsely furnished with a high-tech glass table mounted on a steel sculpture at one end of the room; at the other was an ivory-colored leather sofa and matching barrel chairs. A putting green would’ve fit nicely between the two groupings. The young man planted us in the ergonomic ecru leather chairs that faced the desk, said that Mr. Monahan would be right with us, and left.

  “Notice how he didn’t even ask us if we wanted anything to drink?” I remarked.

  “You thirsty?” Bailey asked.

  “No,” I admitted. “But it’s the principle. I think we should threaten to take him downtown for questioning.”

  “We just got here. I don’t feel like going back downtown,” Bailey pointed out. “Besides, I don’t think that kid knows anything.”

  “I meant Lyle Monahan,” I said with an exasperated sigh. “I think we should make him sweat.”

  “You watch too many cop shows,” Bailey said as she took a leisurely lo
ok around the office.

  “Tell me you don’t sweat people.”

  “I don’t sweat people,” she replied, deadpan.

  Clearly I’d have to do the sweating myself.

  The desk was sparklingly free of anything that resembled work. However, there was a miniature Japanese Zen garden on the desk. The pretension of this tickled me, and I’d just picked up the tiny rake to draw a very un-Zenlike message in the sand when the man himself strode into the office.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Lyle Monahan.

  His tone told me the sentiment wasn’t entirely sincere.

  He was a beefy Irishman with thinning reddish hair who was trying very hard to look like a Calvin Klein model in a black silk V-necked sweater, charcoal blazer, and slacks. Looking at him was like seeing Beverly Sills sing hip-hop.

  He extended his hand, first to Bailey, then to me. It was a professional handshake: just enough squeeze and pause to make you feel noticed but not so much that you’d get the idea you were actually friends.

  “I understand you want to talk to me about Lilah Bayer,” he said evenly as he rounded the desk and sat down in the ivory leather chair that I’d bet was custom-made for his very special derriere. “I’ve got a meeting in”—he glanced at his watch, a Patek Philippe, of course—“ten minutes, but that’ll probably be enough, because there isn’t much I can tell you. The extent of my knowledge of Lilah was that she did excellent work and was particularly good with the complex contract cases. A very bright young woman.”

  “But bringing her into this firm was pretty unusual, wasn’t it?” I asked. “You only hire from the Ivy League schools.”

  Lyle gave me a cold look.

  “Actually, it wasn’t that unusual,” he replied. “We make it a point to integrate young lawyers of diverse backgrounds in this law firm in order to offer a more comprehensive breadth of life experience—providing they have the grades.”