by Marcia Clark
Conrad shrugged. “Honestly, I can’t recall. It wasn’t one of my better cars, so I didn’t keep such good track of it. And like I said, I didn’t have very good security measures back then.” He shook his head.
“Did the police ever tell you they found it?” Bailey asked.
Conrad’s hefty brows knitted, creating a forest of unibrow. “No. That I would have remembered.”
“You make an insurance claim on it?” I asked.
“The car was here on consignment, so I didn’t carry insurance on it. You’d have to ask the owner about that.”
“What do you remember about the owner?” I asked.
“Whatever it says on that paper,” he said, nodding toward the printout.
“You remember whether it was a man or a woman?”
“Like I said, whatever’s on that paper,” Conrad said, his voice edgier. “I sell a lot of cars. You ask me about one, but it was nothing special, so…”
So I wasn’t going to get anything out of this guy. Whether he had it to give or not.
Conrad looked down at his watch. “Look, I’m always glad to help police, but it’s past my closing time, and my wife made dinner. She’s going to kill me if I’m late…”
“Okay,” I said. “But if we come back…”
“You’ll be welcome,” Conrad said quickly. “You know where to find me.”
“Yeah, we do,” Bailey said.
Conrad tried and failed to hide the look of alarm that crossed his face, then rallied and managed to wave to us before hurrying back to his office.
Bailey and I exchanged a look, then quickly walked to the car. She drove a half block away and parked on a side street. Less than a minute later, we saw the office lights go out and Conrad walk briskly to a late-model Mercedes that’d been parked at the side of the station. He got in and drove off, heading eastbound on Sunset Boulevard.
Bailey alerted our security to fall back, and we followed Bagram at a discreet distance. When he turned left onto Camino Palmero Street, she hung back in the shadows at the corner. Conrad pulled into the gated driveway of one of the apartment buildings, and Bailey drove past it so I could see the address. I gave it to her and she called it in, then we headed downtown.
Two minutes later, Bailey snapped her cell phone shut. “It’s legit,” she said. “He lives there.”
“But something’s not right with him,” I said. “He’s nervous.” I replayed the conversation we’d just had. “But he’s not worried. Whatever the story is with that car, he’s pretty sure we can’t figure it out.”
Bailey nodded grimly.
We were getting closer. I just didn’t know to what.
68
On Monday, I had an appearance on a double homicide that’d been languishing while the defendant played “musical lawyers,” hiring and firing them to delay the inevitable. Bailey went to the station to work the phones with a contact at the DMV and check out Alicia Morris and the stolen report on her red Audi.
The judge let the defendant substitute in his fifth new lawyer but put his foot down. “This marriage is going to last, Mr. Hamlin. No more divorces. Got it?”
Glad to have a go-date for the trial but worried about my burgeoning caseload, I hurried toward the courtroom door, too distracted to notice that someone in the gallery had stood up to intercept me.
“Rachel?”
I stopped and turned. Graden came out to the aisle. “Could I talk to you for just a second?”
My pulse stuttered at the sight of him. There was no denying it, the attraction was still as strong as ever. But the courthouse, where the whole world could see—and gossip—was not the place to hash anything out, even if I’d wanted to. Which I didn’t.
He saw my expression and shook his head. “It’s important.”
Not trusting myself to sound as cool as I wanted to, I nodded mutely and headed out to the corridor. We moved to a corner that was relatively quiet.
“I…first, how are you?” he asked.
Standing this close was distracting—the smell of his cologne, the warmth of his gaze…it was an effort to wall off my feelings. “I’m okay, and you?”
Graden looked at me closely. “I’ve been better. Look, I came to tell you about a weird thing that happened the other night.”
He told me about a woman who’d gotten “friendly” with him at a bar and tried to buy him a drink. At first I thought maybe he was trying to make me jealous. But by the time he’d finished, I stared out at the crowded hallway with eyes that were filled with the image of Lilah. There was not a doubt in my mind that that’s who had chatted Graden up at the bar, and I told him so.
“It fits.” He frowned. “But it’s very weird. And very dangerous.” He looked at me with a puzzled expression. “You don’t seem all that shocked.”
I wasn’t, though I couldn’t explain why. I shrugged. “She’s a strange duck—nothing she does would surprise me.”
But I had to admit, what she’d done made no logical sense. The woman had an alias and obviously didn’t want to be found. But she was stalking me, mucking around in my life? Whether she’d hoped to seduce Graden or not—and I had to admit I was impressed that he hadn’t taken the bait—somehow I knew her goal was to get at me. And though I wasn’t surprised, it did creep me out. The danger was less of a worry, thanks to my trusty security detail. How to let Graden know about bodyguard investigators without telling him I’d been banged up? But the conundrum solved itself.
Graden peered at my face, his expression worried. “What’s going on? Did something happen to you?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to deny it, but for some reason I couldn’t. I told him about how I’d been ambushed.
Graden raked his fingers through his hair and took a deep breath. “Jesus, Rachel. Why didn’t you…” He caught himself—we both knew why I hadn’t told him. “Please tell me you have security.”
“Oh, I’m loaded for bear.” I smiled. I told him about the investigators who’d been assigned to me and how they were dogging my footsteps. Seeing him smile and nod his approval reminded me of how good it’d been to be with someone who understood my world, because it was his world too. I’d missed him. But that didn’t mean we were good for each other.
“Will you promise to let me know if I can do anything?” he asked.
“Of course,” I lied.
Graden’s expression told me he didn’t entirely believe me.
“Well…thanks for the heads-up,” I said.
“I…sure.” He paused and gave me a searching look. He seemed to want to tell me something. I braced myself for whatever that might be, but then he said simply, “Take care of yourself, Rachel.”
I nodded and headed for the elevator. When I got back to my office, I found Bailey there waiting for me. I started to tell her about my visit from Graden, but when I saw the dark expression on her face, I changed course. “What happened?”
“The car registered to Lilah was found in Griffith Park about two weeks after it was stolen from Conrad Bagram’s lot.” Bailey paused and examined her notes. “The car had rolled down an embankment and crashed into a tree,” she said. “Young guy named Tran Lee was found in the driver’s seat. Dead. Lee was a meth head who presumably stole the car while he was high and crashed it.”
“And we would’ve known that if we’d finished running down the records on Lilah’s car before we hit Bagram,” I said.
We both fell silent. Something about this latest development didn’t feel right.
“I wouldn’t mind shaking out any paperwork Bagram had on that car,” I said. “At the very least, he must’ve written up some kind of consignment agreement.”
“Agreed,” Bailey said. “Rick Meyer must’ve investigated this at some point when he was getting ready for Lilah’s trial.”
“I would too,” I said. “There’s one way to find out…”
Bailey nodded, but she didn’t look happy. She abruptly shifted gears. “First, let’s get all we can on Tran,”
she said. “The reports should be at the Hollywood station.”
We threw on our coats, and Bailey went to tell the DA investigators they could take the day off. Five minutes later, we were in Bailey’s car and rolling. I told her about Lilah’s move on Graden.
Her eyes widened. “Oh man. Who is this psychobat?”
More than ever, that question burned in my mind. I’d spent more time researching her than I’d ever spent on any defendant. What I’d learned in terms of concrete facts was precious little. But I had a growing intuitive sense of her, especially after hearing about her interaction with Graden. It wasn’t something I could quantify or put into words, though, so I shorthanded my answer to Bailey. “She’s like no other. Nervy, nuts, and obsessive. A bad combination.”
“But now we know: she is still in town.”
“And can therefore kill us both at close range,” I said.
“You are such a buzz kill, Knight.”
I supposed I was. I sat back and tried to relax, but the morning traffic was brutal, and our halting progress was making me want to jump out the window, so I fished out my headphones and punched up “Soul Food” featuring Cyrus Chestnut on piano and James Carter on tenor sax, one of the finest players ever to lift the instrument. I defy anyone to feel bad when they listen to that song. I was swaying to the music when Bailey nudged me.
“Uh, excuse me, Ms. Daisy,” she said, annoyed. “There’s a way you could actually be useful.”
I hit pause and took off my headphones. “Already did it,” I said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“Yeah, I do,” I replied, enjoying the moment. I don’t often get the jump on Bailey. “While you were talking to the investigators, I called Scott and asked for Tran’s autopsy report.”
Unlike other recent requests I’d made of coroner’s investigator Scott Ferrier, this one hadn’t put him in the position of risking his job to smuggle out confidential material. I’d thought he sounded a little disappointed about that, but I could be wrong.
Bailey stared at me. “Put your headphones back on,” she said flatly.
I gave her a smug grin and returned to James Carter.
Back at the Hollywood station, it took very little time to find Tran Lee’s accident reports. The car had rolled down an embankment and hit a tree at the bottom. Tran Lee had been thrown through the windshield. A crack pipe had been found on the dashboard, and the coroner’s toxicology report showed his blood tested positive for methamphetamine. Cause of death was massive blunt force trauma. It’d been two weeks since the car was reported stolen, and the condition of the body indicated it had been lying there for some time when two hikers finally stumbled upon it. The coroner’s report would tell us how long.
“No witnesses,” I said, disappointed.
“And no next of kin,” Bailey added. “At least not in this country.” She continued to scan the final report. “But here’s something.” She read for another moment. “Tran Lee’s friends said he was supposed to meet them for dinner but never showed. And he didn’t turn up at the restaurant where they all worked as waiters either, which wasn’t like him. Apparently he was a pretty reliable employee. When no one had heard from him for a couple of days, they filed a missing persons report.”
I took the incident report from her with no great enthusiasm. It looked like another dead end. Some tweaker stole a car, got high, crashed it. Sad, but not all that remarkable. I set it aside, then picked it back up. Something had caught my eye. I scanned through the report again.
And then I saw it.
“You happen to notice where the dead guy was supposed to meet his buddies?” I asked Bailey.
“No, where?”
“Birds,” I said. “Mr. Lee stole a car on his way to dinner at a restaurant that’s just a few doors down from La Poubelle.”
69
According to the witness statements, Tran Lee and his buddies all worked at a diner on Fairfax called Josie’s. Although it was a little early for lunch, I’d learned from hard experience: better too early than too late. We got back into the car and headed for Josie’s. I called my security people and reported our destination.
“When can we get crime scene photographs of the crash site?” I asked.
“This is Robbery-Homicide,” Bailey said pointedly. “We’ll have ’em by this afternoon.”
“Can we pull the original paperwork on the consignment of Lilah’s car to Bagram?” I asked.
“Already requested it,” Bailey replied. “If there’s something off, I’m betting that’s where we’ll find it.”
“Could be he just fudged on the sales price to save sales tax,” I suggested.
“He wouldn’t be the first,” Bailey agreed.
She pulled to the curb in front of Josie’s, a small, no-frills restaurant with a counter on one side and wooden tables and chairs in the remaining space. Waiters were taking the chairs down off the tables and getting the place ready for lunch. When Bailey knocked on the glass door, one of them, a skinny kid in black jeans with short blond hair, held up his hands and shouted, “Not open yet!” Bailey showed her badge, and he shielded his eyes with his hand to see, then trotted over to the door. After fumbling with the lock for a few seconds, he managed to get it open and let us in.
“C-come in, Officers,” he stuttered anxiously. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing recent, so don’t worry,” Bailey reassured him. She introduced herself.
I did the same and showed him my badge. I didn’t have to do that, but people take you more seriously when you have a badge. A gun’ll do that too, but I’ve found that sometimes a gun makes them take you too seriously and they forget how to talk.
The young man said his name was Duncan Friedkin.
“Did you happen to know someone who used to work here, name of Tran Lee?” I asked.
The young man’s face fell. “Tran,” he said, and sat down heavily in one of the wooden chairs. “Yes.”
“What can you tell us about him?” I asked.
“Tran was a good guy. I mean, you probably already know he was kinda into drugs…”
I nodded.
“But he wasn’t a thief,” Duncan said sadly.
“So you don’t believe he stole that car,” I said.
“No,” he replied, then sighed. “But I guess nothing’s impossible. Not if he was high.”
Duncan stared off.
“He didn’t have a car of his own?” I asked.
“No,” Duncan replied. “He didn’t have a license.”
“What about an ID card?” I asked. An ID card would have his photograph and personal information.
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Maybe.”
On a hunch, I pulled out Lilah’s photograph. “Ever see her before?”
Duncan’s eyes widened. “No. Wow.” He recovered himself, then repeated, “Uh, no. Why?”
I didn’t have a good answer. “Just checking into some possibilities.”
I wasn’t 100 percent sure where I was going with this, so I hoped he wouldn’t ask.
We bumped around like that for a few more minutes, but we really didn’t have any more questions. All this kid knew was that his friend went missing and then his friend was dead.
“You have a picture of Tran, by any chance?” I asked. I wanted to see what he’d looked like when he was alive, just in case he didn’t have an ID card.
“No, sorry,” Duncan said.
Bailey and I stood. “Thanks for your help. If you—”
“Oh, wait,” Duncan said. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through an impressively large collection of photographs. “Yeah, here you go. It’s our Christmas photo. We take group pictures here every year.” Duncan pointed to a young man in a photograph featuring a small chorus line of waiters and waitresses in their uniforms. “That’s Tran.”
I saw a young Asian with a wide smile and bangs that jutted straight out from his forehead. He didn’t look li
ke a tweaker, but he might not have been at it long enough for the damage to show.
“Do you know anyone else who was friendly with Tran?” I asked.
“A couple of the other guys who worked here,” Duncan replied.
Bailey jotted down the names and as many phone numbers as Duncan could remember. We thanked him and left.
Back in the Hollywood station, I parked myself at the vacant desk we’d been using and waited while Bailey went to see if the crime scene photographs had been found. When she came back, she was smiling and carrying a manila envelope.
She sat down next to me and pulled out a stack of photos. The first pictures were establishing shots of the area. It looked vaguely familiar to me.
“Is this near the Griffith Observatory?” I asked.
Bailey nodded.
We sifted through the photographs. The embankment wasn’t all that high, but it was steep. When the car drove off, it had gathered enough speed to hit the tree with real force. Tran had been propelled straight through the windshield and rolled down to the bottom of the ravine.
I stared at the report for a few moments, then went back to the crime scene photographs and pulled out the ones that featured Tran.
“Remember the photo Duncan showed us?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Notice anything different here?” I pointed to the crime scene photographs of Tran.
Bailey looked for a moment. “No glasses. He was wearing thick ones in Duncan’s photo.”
“They could’ve been thrown when he crashed.”
“But then they should’ve been found at the scene,” Bailey replied. “Evidence report,” she muttered to herself, then shuffled through the papers again and pulled out a two-page report. We carefully scanned the pages, going entry by entry.
No glasses were listed.
“Do we know if he had an ID card?” I asked.
Bailey nodded and gestured to one of the reports. “It was in his personal effects.”
She woke up the computer and began tapping keys.
Thirty seconds later, Tran was staring back at us. The same wide grin, the same firecracker bangs.