Presumption of Guilt

by Rachel Sinclair

  “What’s her bond now?” he asked.

  “It’s $10 million,” I said. “And, well, I could try to get it reduced to $5 million or something, but it’s pretty much pointless to get it down to even that. Even a bondsman would have to charge her $500,000 in that case, because that would be 10%. For a woman like that, the bond might as well be a billion dollars.”

  Christian stood up and went to look down at the ground below. “Beautiful view,” he said. “You like living out here?” The sun was just now coming up, illuminating the beach and the tops of the waves that looked like glistening jewels, and the protestors down below.

  It was a Saturday morning, and, apparently, there were hundreds of people in the city with nothing better to do than harass me.

  “I love living out here,” I said. “It’s calming to sit on the balcony and listen to the water. It’s comforting hearing people on the beach at all hours of the night. When you can’t sleep, anyhow, you want to hear other people. It reminds you that the world hasn’t stopped. I love the old hotel across the street. It’s a treasure. Did you know that they filmed Some Like It Hot over there? And on that beach?”

  “I did,” he said. “That’s part of San Diego lore, you know. That and the fact that they filmed part of Top Gun at that Kansas City Barbecue Place.”

  I smiled. “I’m from Kansas City. They’re famous for their barbecue.”

  “And does that place measure up?”

  “Oh, yeah. It does. It does Kansas City justice.”

  “Good to know.”

  I stood up. “Well, if you’d like to get started with Esme’s case, we can get going right now. I’ll start the clock if you like.” I gestured over to the enormous file that was sitting on my dining room table. “What do you say?”

  “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 14

  Regina

  Regina drove down to Barrio Logan, which was where she had several contacts that she could talk to about the Esme Gutierrez case. She not only wanted to get some word on Aria Whitmore, to see if maybe she knew anybody on the street – she had a hunch that there was more to Aria’s story than what anybody saw – but she also wanted to get some word on Esme herself.

  Esme had presented herself as a complete innocent, but Regina knew better. That girl was tough. She had to be tough to survive what she did – the sexual assault, the witnessing people getting decapitated on the tracks, the forced abortions, the beatings. Regina had a good feeling that there was more than one person around the Barrio who would know something about both women.

  She started with Juan Castro. Juan was a Mexican immigrant who owned a garage that was right across the street from Chicano Park, a park that was located beneath the Coronado Bridge in the heart of Barrio Logan. He was a straight businessman, was not involved in any kind of drug dealing or gang-banging, but he knew just about everybody around. It was a combination of his being friendly and owning a business where plenty of gossip floated around about the goings-on in the neighborhood, that made him such a good contact for her.

  She had a dozen donuts in her hand, a kind of bribe for giving her information that she might need. Truth be told, he would talk to her even if she didn’t give him donuts, because he liked her and always was eager to help. But Regina was a firm believer that her contacts should be paid, even if they were only paid in donuts. And these donuts were the best in town – they were made by little Mexican ladies and sold on the street.

  He saw her coming up the walkway, and he smiled. He had a dirty rag in his hands, and his hands were dirty as well, but he went up to her and gave her a big hug. “Amiga,” he said to Regina. “Long time, no see, huh? Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

  “Working a lot,” Regina said. “And it hasn’t been that long. I think that we just talked a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Well, it seems like forever when I don’t see your smiling face. And your delicious donuts.” He took the box of donuts and put them over on a metal desk that was on the side of the garage. The metal desk had stacks of important-looking papers on it, and he put the donuts on top of these papers. He took one of the donuts out and bit into it. “Raspberry jelly, my favorite,” he said, the raspberry filling spilling out onto his chin. “Want one?”

  She went over to the donuts and picked one up and bit into it. It was a chocolate éclair. The chocolate icing was rich, buttery and sweet, while the insides had the perfect amount of sweet goo. The donuts were hot when she got them, and they were still somewhat warm. “Thanks,” she said.

  “No, thank you,” he said, leaning on a metal chair. “Now, what can I do for you?” His brown eyes danced with warmth, his thousand-watt smile on display. Juan was an attractive guy, and if he didn’t have a wife and three kids at home, Regina might have looked at him as a possible romantic interest. Not that she was in the market for a romantic interest – her feelings about men were still raw after the Michael incident – but if she were, she would have definitely thought of Juan in that way.

  She brought out a picture of Aria Whitmore. “Do you know who this is?” she asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at the picture. “That’s that chica who got strangled in her own guest home, isn’t she?” He nodded. “I knew her. Not well, but I met her a few times. Sad about her, though. Too young for what happened to her.”

  Regina’s heart skipped a beat, and she knew that her hunch was probably right. There was just something about Aria’s background that made her think that Aria had more going on than what people had thought. “Tell me what you knew about her.”

  Juan shrugged. “She went with Julian Rodriguez for a little while. I remember because she came in here with him a time or two when he was bringing in his cars to be serviced. He has a classic ’57 Chevy, worth more than his entire house by a long shot.” Then he screwed up his face. “Scratch that. I keep forgetting that houses out here start at 400 grand. Put it this way, if Julian lived in TJ, that car would be definitely worth more than a house out there. I loved to work on it, and it always needed a lot of fine-tuning. Oil changes, spark plugs, tire rotations, things like that. Not that he drove that car all the time, but when he did drive it a lot, he was bringing it into me to service it.”

  “And you saw Aria with him a few times?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head. “Nice girl, really. Lived over in Coronado, so not too far from here. Not too far miles-wise, but an entire world away at the same time. But she saw him during her summer breaks. I guess she was studying at Juilliard. That’s what Julian told me. Told me that she was studying to be a classical pianist and also studying to be the next Hans Zimmer. But the female version, of course.” He got a faraway look as he got another donut out of the box and bit into it. “Come to think of it, there aren’t too many female composers around, are there? I can’t remember the last woman who won an Oscar for best original score. Huh.”

  That thought hadn’t occurred to Regina, either, but, now that he mentioned it, it did seem weird. “Well, maybe Aria was looking to break the glass ceiling on that,” she said. “But what did you know about her?”

  “Not much, just that Julian was proud of her. He told us that he was just friends with her, though. I don’t know, none of us could imagine the two of them together, but they seemed to like each other.”

  “Why couldn’t you imagine her with him?”

  “Well, Julian, he…has problems. I mean, he’s had big problems. Just a little bit loco in the head, but nothing bad. I mean, I don’t think that he’s a serial killer in his spare time or nothing like that, but he’s had his issues.”

  “What kind of issues? I mean, what do you mean by loco, exactly?” Regina asked.

  “Loco, crazy. Hearing voices and shit like that. I mean, not all the time, or nothing, but he’s had his episodes where he’s heard people telling him what to do. People on the radio and television, giving him instructions. Only to him. I think that he’s been in the nut house a time or two, but that’s just a rumor
. I don’t like to repeat these kinds of things, but, yeah, I think that he’s been in the funny farm.”

  “Hm,” Regina said. “Any drugs? Julian use drugs?”

  “No, not that I’ve heard. I mean, I think that he takes drugs, but the kind that his doctor gives him and stuff like that. I don’t know, I don’t think that he has schizophrenia exactly, but maybe something else. What’s that thing called when you get all hyper and wacko for a little while, and then you get all sad and depressed for a little while? Manic depression or something like that?”

  “Yeah, manic depression,” Regina said. “But I think it’s called something else right now. Bi-polar disorder or something of the sort. Did he tell you that that’s what he had?”

  “Well, no, but I do know that sometimes he came in here, talking a mile a minute, man. Talking all kinds of shit, too, like he would talk about running for congress or something like that. Would talk about how he was working with Aria on a symphony, that he was really the genius of the two of them. Stuff like that. Then, other times, he would come in and be all…” Juan slumped his shoulders and frowned, his brown eyes looking like a sad puppy, to show how Julian acted when he would come in depressed. “You know, I’d ask him how he was, and he wouldn’t say nothing. He’d be all sad and everything, he wouldn’t look me in the eye, and he wouldn’t say nothing. I asked his sister about all that, name’s Veronica, she told me that Julian had that manic depression and that he just started taking drugs for it. But I think that he’s been in the nut house for it, too.”

  Regina found this all terribly interesting, and knew that this conversation with Juan was going to prove significant. She just didn’t know how significant it would be, only that it was going to bear fruit. “And Aria hung out with this Julian dude, then?”

  “Yeah, but, like I said, Julian said that he was just friends with her. I didn’t know why a rich gringa like that would be palling around with Julian, but, well…” He shook his head. “Weirder things have happened, I suppose.”

  “Did Aria ever say anything to you that you can remember?”

  Juan looked into the distance and squinted his eyes, as if he was trying to think of something. Then he shook his head. “No, I really don’t remember her saying anything to to me that stood out. She was kinda quiet, kinda shy. She was a tiny little chica, very little and skinny and she always looked like she was kinda not wanting to be there. I don’t really know how to explain it except that she seemed to like Julian, but maybe she didn’t like getting dragged around town with him. I don’t know.”

  “What else can you tell me about her?” Regina asked.

  Juan shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing else, but I’ll be sure and give you a call if I think of something.”

  “Thanks. Uh, I’d like to talk to Julian, so, if you could give me his phone number, that would be great.”

  “Sure, just hang out here for a second, and I’ll get that for you.” He went over to a metal filing cabinet, then came over with a file in his hand. “Here it is,” he said, “619-555-0719.”

  “Thanks for that,” Regina said.

  “De nada. Well, I really have to get back to work, so…”

  “Of course, and thanks for your time,” Regina said.

  “Another donut for the road?” Juan said, holding out the box.

  “You got it,” Regina said, taking a bear claw out. “Man, these donuts are the best.”

  “My mama made them better,” Juan said with a smile. “But that was because I ate them fresh from the deep fryer. Anyhow, you take care, Regina, and I’m always around if you need to know anything else.”

  At that, a guy was coming in and bringing in a car to work on, and Juan greeted him while Regina left. She knew that she was going to have to talk to this Julian character as soon as possible. He was the one who actually knew Aria, so he might have a few answers about her.

  Chapter 15

  Homeless Woman

  The woman coughed while she lay in her sleeping bag. She managed to sleep in a tent in the Presidio Park, because she found an abandoned campsite in a different area of that park, and she took everything that she found there. In the abandoned camp was a roll of toilet paper, a half-eaten bags of chips and a new sleeping bag. She couldn’t believe her luck when she came across this treasure-trove one day when she was looking for a place to sleep for the night.

  She didn’t think that she would get lucky enough to actually stay in the park for more than one night, so she planned on moving on that same day. The tent actually folded down and fit into a small bag that she could fit into her backpack, which was another find on another day.

  She was on the move, because she had to be. She would come back to this park later on, after she did what she had to do, but she first had something important on her mind.

  She packed up her new tent, her new roll of toilet paper and her new half-eaten bag of chips. She saw that there were two men who were approaching her, and she immediately wanted to run. She had a feeling that these men were the rightful owners of the tent and all the items that she found, and she didn’t want to give these things up. For the first time in a long time, she kept out of the rain. San Diego didn’t typically get a lot of rain, but, for some odd reason, the past few months had been extremely wet. Most of the time, she slept in the rain. She didn’t like to go underneath highway overpasses, because these were well-patrolled. She knew that lots of people who slept next to her on the sidewalk had tents, but she never spoke to anyone else on the streets, so nobody ever offered to share their shelter with her.

  This tent held a ton of possibilities. For one, she could go down to the beach and pitch it, and she could blend in with everyone else, because everybody had some kind of tent or shelter on just about every beach in town. As it was, she knew that she stood out like a sore thumb on the beach, because she was always dressed in jeans and a long t-shirt or sweater, and her hair was completely ratty. Everyone else was in shorts and bikinis and swimsuits. Plus, she always got burned when she went to the beach, because she inevitably fell asleep – the sound of the ocean waves lulled her – and she always woke up as red as a cooked lobster. But, with this tent, she could go down to the beach and hang out, and fall asleep all she wanted. She now even had a second sleeping bag to go with her own sleeping bag, and she could roll it up into a pillow.

  Just the thought of being able to fall asleep on the beach without waking up with red blisters on her face made her happy, maybe for the first time in a long time. But these men, who were coming up to her, made her afraid that she was going to lose her new booty to them. They probably were the rightful owners of the tent and all the belongings, so she kept on walking, faster and faster. Then she started to run, leaving the trail that led to the parking lot, and running directly up the rocks and grass, desperately climbing and hoping that these men couldn’t catch her and take her stuff away.

  She made it up the hill, and then ran into the women’s bathroom. The men were still around. She could hear them outside the bathroom. She was surprised that she was able to outrun them, but she knew that the sheer adrenaline that was coursing through her veins powered her through to run faster than she had ever run before.

  “Where did she go?” one of the guys said.

  “I don’t know, but she took our shit,” another one said.

  She sat on the cold metal toilet, with her backpack on the soaking-wet cement floor, and held her breath. She could feel hot tears streaming down her face as she realized just how much these meager belongings meant to her. It meant that she could maybe hop a bus to Coronado and lay on the beach and hope that maybe, just maybe, she could get a glimpse of her. The golden child who she thought about just about every day of her life. She messed things up with her son. He apparently got too many of her genes and not enough of her ex-husband’s. She felt badly for him, knew that he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t control what had happened. He was gone forever, but her daughter wasn’t.

  Her daughter thought that she
was dead. She wanted it that way, because, as far as she was concerned, she really was dead. As good as dead. She never wanted her daughter to know the truth about her. She wanted to always be in her daughter’s thoughts just as she was before – a beautiful, trim, fit blonde woman who was bubbly and social and fun. She wanted her daughter to think of her as the woman who baked her birthday cakes from scratch, using food dye and small cake pans to make the cake out of layers that went with the colors of the rainbow. One layer was red, the next orange, the next yellow, the one after that green, then blue, then indigo and then violet. Just like a rainbow. Then she decorated it with little roses and tulips that she created out of molds. She wanted her daughter to remember her as the woman who would blow bubbles with her on the lawn, flew kites with her on the beach and dressed up with her on Halloween.

  She hadn’t seen her since she was 14 years old. That was the year that she broke. A tragedy happened that year, one that her mind simply could not fathom or handle. It was still something that she couldn’t come to grips with, so much so that she had repressed it. If she tried to remember what had happened that year, she couldn’t. If somebody asked her, she would say that she didn’t know, and that would be the truth.

  She later found out, after her first hospital stay, she was suffering from late-onset schizophrenia. She was s35 years old when she was diagnosed, and before that year, she had never had any kind of episodes that made her think that she was mentally ill. Had never heard voices, never had hallucinations, never even had extended periods of depression. But that year, she had a breakdown that was brought on by a tragedy so horrible that her mind snapped. It was then, after she was in the mental hospital for six months, and her schizophrenia had gone into remission, that she found out that sometimes serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia don’t show up until later in life. That was just how it was sometimes, she found out – you go through life without showing any kind of signs of illness, and then, wham! A tragic incident, and the stress from it, brings it on.