Presumption of Guilt

by Rachel Sinclair

  “Well, there’s one thing that is kind of odd about this chick,” Regina was saying.

  “What was that?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It didn’t seem that she was all that interested in the piano until she was about 14.” She nodded her head. “ I couldn’t see any musical lessons that she had been given or received when she was younger. Which might not mean nothing, because from what the story is about her, she was some kind of a genius. She started playing at the age of three or some shit, hell, maybe she was playing when she was a newborn. You know, the story is that she was a regular Mozart. You know in that movie, Amadeus, where Mozart’s a little kid and he’s playing the piano with a blindfold over his eyes? That’s Aria, if you want to believe the stories. But I ain’t buying it.”

  “You’re not buying it? And why is that?” I asked her.

  “Because, I told you I saw nothing in her background that told me that she was even playing the piano until she was 14 years old. And then, she turns 14, and all the sudden, wham! Chick’s playing Carnegie Hall.”

  “Are you being sarcastic? Or was she really playing Carnegie Hall at the age of 14?”

  “Not really. I mean she really was playing Carnegie Hall, but when she turned 16. I found a YouTube video of her and she was pretty goddamn good, and I don’t know nothing about piano music. So how is it that I can find no evidence of her playing the piano before she turned age 14? If she was that damn good? And the weird thing is that when she was 14, she started posting videos of herself on YouTube playing the piano. She had her own goddamn Channel at the age of 14. You know, she had 10 million subscribers at one time. She was making money hand over fist from that thing, which I guess is a good thing, because apparently her own dad refused to pay for her schooling at Juilliard. I mean, I know that she got scholarships and all, but it’s damned expensive to live in New York City. Anyhow, before the age of 14, she didn’t even put up a single video of her playing the piano.”

  I tapped my fingers on the table, trying to figure out what was going on. “Okay, so you’re saying that before the age of 14 that there was no evidence that she was even interested in the piano. And that at the age of 15, she suddenly started posting videos of herself. Now, that isn’t necessarily evidence that she didn’t start playing the piano before the age of 14. Maybe she was just shy, and didn’t want to post videos of herself playing piano, and then she suddenly decided that she wanted to. She got a little attention for it, and she just kept going. Just because she didn’t have a YouTube video posted before age 14 does not necessarily mean that she wasn’t playing piano before that.”

  “Yeah, but I couldn’t find any evidence that she had any kind of recitals before the age of 14. That’s what’s so weird. You know how it is, you’re playing the piano, you’re good at doing that, you’re gonna have recitals in front of people. Even crappy piano players have recitals. She’s some kind of a genius, some kind of a lady Mozart, the next coming of Beethoven, and she ain’t having recitals when she’s young? Not even one?”

  “Well, maybe she was a late bloomer,” I said. “Maybe she didn’t even know that she could play the piano until she sat down and started playing one day, and she realized that she was a natural. I know that the story was that she started playing at the age of five, but maybe that’s just the story.”

  Regina shook her head. “I’m not buying it. Somebody who’s good enough to be playing Carnegie Hall at age 16 does not just sit down at age of 14 and suddenly discover that they can play. You gotta be practicing for years before you’re good enough to play at Carnegie Hall, and somebody who has that kind of a talent is gonna know about it before she’s 14. There’s something that’s really off about this entire situation, and I don’t quite know what it is.”

  Christian came out with some plates, and I got up and got my martini shaker out. I was going to make everybody a dirty martini. I knew that that would not necessarily go with Thai food, but I was really craving the taste of olive juice. “Tell Christian what you told me. Maybe he has an idea about what’s going on.”

  I saw the two of them in there talking. I thought about what Regina was saying to me, and I knew that there were all kinds of logical explanations for it. Regina was a very intuitive person, and if she thought that there was something amiss, there probably was. There was something about the fact that Aria was not quite the piano prodigy that everybody had said she was. But yet, she was – if she was playing Carnegie Hall at age 16. There was no doubt about that.

  I got out my metal martini shaker, and poured some Grey Goose vodka into it. Then I poured some vermouth, and a whole lot of olive juice. I shook everything up, and put some green olives on some toothpicks over the top of each glass. Then I went into the dining room, and put the martini glasses in front of both Regina and Christian.

  “So, Christian, what do you think about what Regina was saying? Can you think of any reason why there’s no evidence of her playing piano before the age of 14?”

  Christian shook his head. “I don’t know. That’s really the strangest thing. But I’m kinda with you – maybe she was playing before the age of 14, but she was just shy about it. Or maybe she got hit on the head. You know, I’ve heard about things like that happening – people get hit on the head, and suddenly they wake up and they have abilities that they never had before. You ever hear about people who come out of a coma and are suddenly able to speak French or Mandarin Chinese? I listened to a podcast one day and they were talking about that. They were talking about people who have come out of a coma and suddenly were fluent in a certain language. Maybe she had an accident at the age of 14, and she went into a coma, and she came out of the coma playing the piano like Liberace.”

  Regina took a sip of her martini and then nodded her head in approval. “Well, now that you mention it, that’s another thing I found out when I did my investigation on Aria’s background,” she said. “She was in a car accident at the age of 14. Down in Mexico. I couldn’t find out much about it, except that they had a report of an accident involving her, and she went to the hospital down there. In fact, I went down to TJ, which is where the accident happened, and I went to the hospital to find out how long she had been there. I couldn’t find out much, because of confidentiality laws, but I did find out that she was in this hospital for six months.”

  I nodded my head. “There you go. She got into an accident at the same time that she suddenly started having piano abilities. Christian is right. I’ve heard of patients coming out of a coma being able to speak a language which they never even knew before. If that’s the case, certainly somebody can come out of a coma and have an ability such as playing the piano. I’m sure that that’s probably all it was.”

  “Maybe.” Regina did not look convinced. “That makes sense. I mean, I know it’s not a coincidence that she got into a car accident in the same year that she started playing piano, but I wonder if there’s something more. That’s all. I don’t quite know what, but there is something more to the story.”

  “Well, maybe there is,” I said. “But I think that that sounds pretty good to me. She got into an accident and she started playing the piano. That’s kind of logical. It wasn’t just a coincidence, was it?”

  Regina bit her lower lip. “I don’t know. My spidey sense is telling me that there’s something else that we’re not seeing. There’s something that we’re not seeing. I’m an investigator, and I go with my gut a lot of times. You’re an attorney. You look at facts and evidence, and you take those facts and evidence and you put together a working theory. That’s what you do. That’s how you win cases. I don’t know if your intuition is the same as mine. It’s probably not. You know, with all those years I spent on the streets, I’ve had to develop my sixth sense.”

  I took a sip of my martini. “Is there too much olive juice in these martinis?”

  Both Christian and Regina shook their heads. “ It’s good,” Christian said. “I like a lot of brine.”

  “I agree,” Regina s
aid. “I like a lot of olive juice as well. But, we need to talk about this. I’m not convinced that that accident had anything to do with her being able to play the piano.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, then turned around and saw that Aidan was coming through the front door.

  “Hey, everybody,” he said. “Man, I’m beat. I just want to take a hot shower, and get in my bed. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired.”

  “Why’re you so tired?” I asked him.

  “I think I’ve just been doing too much. Too much work, too much partying, too much school. Just too much. I gotta cut down on one of those things, and I can’t cut down on work or school. So looks like I’m going to have to cut down on the partying. But I see you guys are drinking dirty martinis, and I could be persuaded to have one of those.”

  “I got one with your name on it,” I said as I got up, and made Aidan his own dirty martini. I brought it into him, and he sat down at the table with us. “Listen, I know that you said that you just wanted to go to bed. And that you’re really tired. But it’s early on a Friday night. Something tells me that you going to bed early is not going to happen. Even though I know that you have to be at your job at Starbucks tomorrow morning at 6 AM, I know you’re going to be burning the night oil like you always do. And listen, you need to be here at the table to talk to us. We need to find somebody, and we need your help.”

  “Who you trying to find?” Aidan asked us.

  “ A guy by the name of Julian Rodriguez. He’s some guy who lived in the barrio, and he was hanging around with Aria, the victim in my case. And I guess that he has some mental issues. To say the very least. Regina tracked him down to his last known address, and ran into one of his neighbors. His neighbor said that the last she saw Julian, he was completely naked and running through the streets. The next thing she knows, he’s being put into a police car and taken away. Nobody else can tell us exactly where he is, but I would imagine that he’s probably in some kind of a long-term care facility. But we have no idea where he is. I mean, Christian is going to do some hacking into the databases of the mental hospitals all around town, and he can probably find his name in there. But, even if we do find him in a mental health facility, it doesn’t mean that any of us are going to be able to talk to him. I would have to get a court order for that, and it would be very complicated, to say the very least. I would have to show the judge exactly why he was a material witness for me. Plus, I wouldn’t be able to explain to the judge how I found out that he was in the hospital in first place. I certainly couldn’t admit to the judge that Christian hacked into databases. So, I won’t be able to legitimately speak with him. But he knew Aria, and I know that he has information that we need. So…”

  “So you need me to go on in there, and try to find him for you guys? Just because I’m working on involuntary commitment cases doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m gonna be able to get in there, either. Unless you’re gonna tell me something that I’m not seeing, I don’t see how I can possibly help.””

  “Aidan, how do you get those cases?” I asked him. “How do you get the involuntary commitment cases referred to you?”

  “They’re usually referred to us by a caseworker. A patient is held for 72 hours if he or she is showing acute psychiatric symptoms. If the patient needs to be held longer, they have a hearing. That’s where we come in. We represent them in the hearings. Sometimes the person is a danger to himself or others, and then they can be held an additional 14 to 30 days without a hearing. But they eventually have a hearing, and that’s where we step in. We represent them in court.”

  “Listen,” I said to Aiden. “Here’s the thing. You’re known at just about every mental health facility around town, aren’t you? Aren’t you pretty much on a first-name basis with people who staff these hospitals? Or don’t you know the people who run the mental health wings of the hospitals around town? What I’m getting at is that if we can figure out where he is, you’re gonna be able to sweet-talk your way into seeing him, aren’t you?”

  Aidan sighed. “Are you really going do this to me, sis? Are you really going to ask me to do something like this for you?”

  “Damn right. What am I really asking you to do, except to just try to talk to this guy and find out how he knows our victim? I’ve never been inside one of those institutions, and I don’t think that Regina has either. Neither has Christian. None of the staffs in these institutions know any of us from Adam. But they know you. So yes, I want you to just to go in there and talk to him. That’s all.” I raised my eyebrow. I knew that he knew what I was thinking – he was staying here on my dime. I wasn’t charging him anything to live in this beautiful beach condo. He owed me. This was the least that he could do.

  “Okay,” he said. “If it that’s important to you, I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” I said. “Now, I’m going to put Christian to work in hacking into the databases for all the mental health facilities around town. I’m going to have him start with the ones in La Mesa, because that was the last place where Julian lived. And then after that, he’s going to be looking at the mental hospitals around the San Diego area. When he finds him, I want you to go ahead and go down there and see him. I don’t think that Christian’s going be able to get the codes for the patients. I don’t know if these codes are in the database, so you just are going to have to go down there and ask for him by name. They’ll let you see him, just because they know that this is the kind of work that you do.”

  Aidan rolled his eyes and then flopped on the couch. He picked up a football that was laying next to the couch and tossed it up in the air, again and again. It was a sure sign that he was annoyed, because he always tossed around that damned football when he was pissed. “Sure thing, sis. I’ll do what you want me to do, but just because I don’t want to become homeless.”

  “I’m quite sure that you wouldn’t be homeless,” I said, “even if I kicked you out. Not the way you look. Some woman would take you in for sure.”

  Aidan gave me a look that said are you really going to go there? Then he shook his head and threw the football up in the air again. “Whatever.”

  At that, I sent Christian into the bedroom to get on my computer.

  An hour later, Christian came out to see us. “Well, I found him. He’s at the Alvarado Behavioral Health System in La Mesa. Over on Parkway.”

  The doorbell rang, and I went to get it. It was the Uber driver with our Thai food, and I took it from him, and gave him a five dollar tip. “Good. We know where he is, and now, Aidan, you just need to go down and see him.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’m gonna have to. When do you want me to do it?”

  “As soon as possible. We need to figure out what this guy knows. From there, I’ll be able to do the rest of my investigation.”

  All of us ate our Thai food as we brainstormed some more about the case. We were getting closer to getting a missing puzzle piece, and I was feeling better about the case by the second.

  Chapter 21

  Aidan

  Aidan went down to the Behavioral Health Institute the very next day. It was a nondescript one-level building in a residential neighborhood, with a small abandoned building that used to be a used car lot right next to it, and a church right behind it. Just like his big sister said, he was a well-known person in this particular place. He had had quite a few patients who he had represented who were housed in this facility, because it was a long-term care facility, so he had no doubt that he would be able to go ahead and see this Julian Rodriguez person.

  He brought a list of questions to ask him, but he preferred to freewheel it, especially when he was dealing with somebody who was perhaps in the middle of an acute mental breakdown, of some sort.

  He went into the place, and saw Sally at the front desk. “Hey,” she said to him. He was happy that it was her at the front desk, because she was perhaps the friendliest with him. “Aidan. Long time no see, huh?”

  “Too long,” he said to her. “Way too long. Anyh
ow, I’m here to see a client of ours. His name is Julian Rodriguez.”

  She nodded her head. And she got on the computer. “He’s in the east wing, I’ll buzz you back there.” Then she wrote down the number of his room on a piece of paper and hit the buzzer. “Don’t be a stranger for so long next time, okay?”

  Aidan smiled and nodded his head. “I won’t. At least I’ll try not to. Hey, Sally, it’s good seeing you.”

  “You too.”

  Aidan went down the hall to the room, which was 135. On the way there, he said hello to some of the doctors and nurses who were on the floor, all of whom knew him well. After all, he had been working for this law firm, off and on, for the past three years. And, the entire time he was working for them, he was working on involuntary commitment proceedings. He was a well-known person to every psych hospital and wing around town.

  He knocked on the door to the room, which was open. He saw that Julian had a typical hospital room. He had a roommate, who wasn’t there at that moment, and he himself was sitting in a chair and watching television. His hands were clasped in front of him and he was staring at the TV intently. In fact, he didn’t even notice when Aidan came in.

  Aidan went over to the bed, and sat next to him. Julian finally noticed him, looking right at him. “Who are you?” he asked Aidan.

  “My name is Aidan Collins,” he said to the man. “I’m assuming that you are Julian Rodriguez?”

  Julian nodded his head. “Why are you here?”

  Aidan knew what he was supposed to say. He was scared to death that this guy was going to complain about his visit, and that word of this unauthorized visit would get back to his firm, which would inevitably lead to his firing. It would also draw an ethics violation against him. All because his sister wanted him to do something that was a little bit shady. Not that doing shady things was necessarily out of his repertoire. It was just that he was sitting for the bar in just a matter of months, and he really didn’t need any kind of a report on his record. So he had to finesse this delicately.