by Marcia Clark
I’d been expecting to see that my car had been the victim of a hit-and-run, and I dreaded the damage. When I got within twenty feet of the car, I wished it had been a hit-and-run. Bright, splashy spray paint covered the hood, the trunk, the doors, and even the roof in writing that was amazingly clear. “Lil’ Loco” of the “Sylmar Sevens” had been here; my little econobox had been tagged within an inch of its life. And just in case I’d thought a quick paint job would handle the problem, the word “puta”—whore—had been gouged into the driver’s door so deeply it went right down to the tinfoil.
The Sylmar Sevens had to be Revelo’s gang. This was their way of warning me off their homie. Just beneath the disorientation and anger, I felt a thrill of victory. This meant we’d found our rapist. Densmore was right. Damn. I turned to Elan, who was taking pictures with a fancy-looking digital camera.
“Thanks for giving me the call first,” I said.
“Sure,” he said absently as he continued to click off photos of my car.
“You don’t have to do that for me. The cops’ll take care of it,” I said as I hit Bailey’s cell number.
Elan was viewing the series of photos he’d just taken, and it was a moment before he’d processed what I’d said. He looked up for a moment and replied, “These aren’t for you.”
I looked at him, hand on hip, waiting for the explanation I knew I wasn’t going to like. I wasn’t disappointed.
“It’s for a pictorial book I’m doing… L.A. scenes. My brother-in-law’s an agent. He thinks he can find me a publisher.” He began to circle my car again. It made me squeamish somehow, as if some pervert were taking creepy photos of a toddler.
At least he didn’t want to be a director. Bailey showed up a little later with a crime scene tech so bleary-eyed, I wondered whether we’d wind up with pictures of the ceiling. I turned my back to the tech and said to Bailey under my breath, “Put the squeeze on Elan for his photos. He’s got about a hundred.”
Bailey sauntered over to him as she pushed open her leather bomber jacket to reveal the gun on her hip. I figured Elan’s photos would arrive on her desktop in about five minutes. Along with some BS confidentiality agreement for her to sign promising not to publish the photos without his permission.
When the tech left, I assessed the damage to my now multicolored car. “I suppose it’ll still drive okay.”
“ ’Cept for the four slashed tires,” Bailey pointed out matter-of-factly. “ ’Course, the way you drive, it’ll handle about the same.”
In all the excitement I’d somehow missed the fact that my car was sitting a lot lower than it should’ve been. Now I looked and saw that the tires were indeed history. The paint was one thing—I could get the worst of it covered over fairly cheaply. But tires?
“How’m I supposed to afford four new tires?”
“You’re not. At least not for now. Until Luis Revelo’s locked up and we have a bead on his gang, you’ll be carpooling with me.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then abruptly closed it as Bailey’s words sank in. The reality was that the trashing of my car was meant as a warning and possibly a death threat. My earlier adrenaline rush was replaced by a cold pit of fear in my gut. They know where I live, I thought. They know what I drive. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket to hide the fact that they’d begun to shake, and my right hand instinctively searched for the comfort of my .22 Beretta, but then I remembered that I’d left it in the room. A sense of weakness and vulnerability suddenly washed over me—something I particularly detested. Ordinarily I would’ve balked at the loss of autonomy Bailey had suggested, but now I was ashamed to admit it felt like a damn good idea. Still, I didn’t want Bailey to report this—at least not yet.
“Do me a favor and don’t call this in right now.”
“Why?” Bailey asked, puzzled.
“Because if the office finds out, they’ll put a tail on me.”
Bailey nodded and finished the thought: “And that’ll be the end of any work on Jake’s case.” She paused for a moment, then nodded again. “It won’t be long before we hook up Revelo. Once we’ve got him and it’s a public thing, they’ll leave you alone.”
“Exactly,” I replied. Gangbangers could be dumb, but they weren’t stupid. The Densmore case was going to get some ink, and once Revelo got hooked up for it, there’d be no point in taking the risk of getting caught going after the prosecutor. If they scared off one deputy DA, the office would just assign another. Besides, the Sylmar Sevens had drug dealing and car thefts to attend to; they couldn’t be wasting precious time on a no-money proposition like chasing off a DA.
I saw that Bailey was yawning. Now that the excitement had died down, I was starting to feel it too. Yawns being the contagion they are, I covered my mouth as I felt a jaw-splitter coming on.
“Want to crash upstairs?” I asked. “Toni’s on the foldout, but we can push her over.”
Bailey nodded. We rode the elevator up to my floor, and when I opened the door, we found Toni still asleep, snoring and oblivious. Bailey and I shared a smile. I whispered, “ ’Night,” moved into my bedroom, and quietly closed the French doors.
I placed breakfast orders. “And add an extra order of bacon,” I said into the phone. After all that action I figured I could afford it.
17
“How on earth did I sleep through all that?” Toni asked as she offered up the second pot of coffee.
Bailey declined; I accepted with gusto.
“You could sleep through the Apocalypse. Remember that trip to Vegas?” I asked.
Toni shot me a hard look. “I was tired, and we’d been at the crap table all night.”
I laughed, remembering. “Couple in the room next to ours really got into it,” I said to Bailey. “From what I could hear, someone had lost more than they were supposed to. The screaming went on for an hour, then they started throwing things. Then they started throwing each other. That seemed the propitious moment—”
“Propitious?” Bailey said, an eyebrow cocked. “Isn’t it a little early for that kind of talk?”
“She’s getting her ‘lawyer’ on,” Toni remarked dryly.
“The propitious moment to call the manager. Turned out everyone in that wing had heard it, that’s how loud it was.” I paused and tipped my head toward Toni. “Ms. Thang over here slept through it all.”
Bailey chuckled as Toni threw a piece of bagel at me. I ducked just in time and heard it hit the wall behind me. I snaked my fork over to Bailey’s avocado, turkey, and swiss omelet and speared a bite. It was delicious.
“Speaking of getting my lawyer on, Bailey,” I said. “Now that we’ve probably got our prime suspect for the rape, we should finish ruling out the others.”
Bailey nodded. Even if we lucked out with a good DNA match, we couldn’t stop the investigation now or the defense would make it look like we went for the most obvious, convenient suspect and let the “real” culprit get away.
“I don’t have a solid alibi for that weird security guy yet,” Bailey said. She saw me raise my fork a second time and pulled back her plate defensively. “Tell you what: you let me eat my own damn food, and I promise I’ll do some more checking into him.”
“ ‘Weird’ and ‘security guy’—isn’t that redundant?” Toni remarked.
“Kind of,” I said, now turning my attention to Toni’s French toast. I surreptitiously picked up a piece with my stealth fork.
“Are you ever goin’ to live with what you order, girl?” Toni asked with mock exasperation.
I ignored the rhetorical question. “What about that gardener with the prior for statutory rape?” I asked Bailey.
“Still checking on his alibi,” she replied. “But I did find out that the case got busted down to a misdemeanor. She was sixteen going on seventeen, he was barely eighteen, blah, blah, blah—you know the story.”
I did. Sometimes things are less than they seem.
“But I’ll run it down, just to be on the safe
side,” Bailey assured me.
“So where’re you at with Jake’s case?” Toni asked as she put her napkin next to her plate and pulled out her compact mirror and eyelash curler. Even though it was Saturday and Toni was likely headed for nothing more exciting than her laundry, she always looked fantastically perfect. My makeup “routine” tended to consist of whatever I had patience for at the moment, so the results on any given day could be unpredictable.
“I’m at a dead end for now with Jake’s background, so I’m going to go after Kit. Starting with his school records,” I replied. Bailey gave me a questioning, skeptical look. “What? I know people—I can’t make some calls?”
“Just let me know what you find out,” Bailey said, then tossed her napkin onto the table and headed for the bathroom, where I kept her extra toothbrush and comb.
I put the silver cover over my plate of half-eaten egg whites and moved to the mirror in the living room. I shoved my hair into a ponytail, threw a black muffler around my neck, and pulled on my wool-lined black trench coat. Black on black, I was Rachel Knight, Sexy Spy. With just a dab of syrup on her cheek, I noticed.
“Rache, you got a coat I can borrow?” Toni asked. “I’m gonna freeze my hindquarters out there.”
Clouds had gathered, and it was looking overcast and brisk outside. I gave her my peacoat. Bailey came back, looking disgustingly fresh, and held the door as I pushed the room-service table into the hallway, then we all headed out.
“Want me to run you back to the office?” Bailey asked.
“That’d be lovely,” Toni said. She’d left her car at work when we’d gone to Charlie O’s last night, and she wasn’t the type to enjoy the hike the way I did. I suspected the strappy sandals she was still wearing had something to do with it. Toni had packed yesterday’s work clothes into a laundry bag and had put on my new V-necked red sweater.
“That looks so good on you I might not want it back,” I told her.
Toni tossed her head as if she were in a hair commercial. “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” She laughed. “You’d rock this sweater too, girl. It’s a good red.”
I took a step back and looked at her. It was a good red. I loved that Toni knew things like that.
We all got into the elevator. Bailey turned to me. “Where’re you headed?”
“Not far,” I said. “Just the Hall of Records.”
“Hall of Records. On a Saturday?” Toni asked.
The elevator opened onto the lobby, and we all moved toward the front door. “I’m meeting Kevin,” I said. “I’ll explain later.” I didn’t want to discuss my mission in public.
I wanted to walk. It would help to clear my head and calm my nerves. But even with my fully loaded .357 in my purse, I was still unsettled by last night’s events. Bailey dropped me at the corner of Temple and Broadway, and I got out and waved good-bye. As I entered the Hall of Records, I admitted to myself that the probable death threat the Sylmar Sevens had issued weighed heavily on me. Clearly I was not going to get any party invitations from them. I consoled myself with the knowledge that it wasn’t personal. After all, they didn’t know me. With a little bit of luck, they soon would. Then they’d really hate me. That thought cheered me as I rode the elevator up to Kevin’s office.
Kevin Jerreau, a buddy from our baby DA days, now a deputy in charge in Juvenile, had agreed to meet me at his office. He was surprisingly surfer-boy handsome for a prosecutor, and all the girls in my newbie training group had had a crush on him. It had cracked me up to watch them angle to sit next to him during classes or at lunch, because I could see what they apparently couldn’t: Kevin was gay. And we took to each other on sight. Given the lousy track record I’d had with men, even back then, I found his company relaxing. Kevin, on the other hand, had been glad not to have to deal with yet another panting female he’d have to disappoint. He’d turned me on to hip-hop music, prompting me to call him the straightest gay man I’d ever met. In exchange, I’d turned him on to jazz—which prompted him to take up with a tenor-sax player.
He waved me over and took the sheet of paper I handed to him. “This the kid they found with Jake?” he asked as he swiveled away from me to type on his computer.
“Yeah, and I’ve already been flicked for nosing around the case, so if you—”
Kevin waved me off. “When you asked me to come in on a Saturday, I knew what it meant,” he said, squinting at the screen, then sighed and put on his reading glasses. “Marsden High,” he said.
Kevin looked at me sideways. “You know Marsden High?”
I shook my head.
“Very tough school, high dropout rate.” He turned back to the computer. “Your kid was a junior. Never made above a D on anything.” Kevin continued scrolling. “Oh, now shut me up for the liar I am, he got a C in Auto Shop. Go, Kit.”
“Any disciplinary actions? Suspensions? I need a thread to pull here.”
Kevin leaned forward. “Five million tardies,” he said as he continued to scroll. “And… one bust for truancy.”
Bingo. I sat up. “When?”
“Two months ago.”
“Yes.” Now for the money shot. “Was he with anyone?”
Kevin turned back to the screen. “Two other kids, both from the same school.” Anticipating my next request, he wrote down their names on a legal pad next to the keyboard, then tore off the page and handed it to me.
“You’re the best, Kev,” I said as I looked at the page, then folded it up and shoved it into my coat pocket.
“Damn right I am, though this is definitely not the reason why.” Kevin sat back in his chair and folded his hands across his middle as he looked at me thoughtfully. “How come you haven’t asked?”
“Asked what?”
“Whether or not I knew Jake was gay.”
“Because if he was involved with Kit, he’s not gay. He’s a pedophile,” I replied flatly.
Kevin nodded with a sad smile. “Thank you.”
We exchanged a long look, and I was struck by how hard it still was to be different in this world. Somehow Kevin had always made it look easy.
18
On Monday morning, I put in a call to the principal of Marsden High, then I phoned Bailey and asked her if she’d like to join me.
“I was just thinking how much I missed high school,” Bailey replied.
She agreed to meet me out in front of the building in ten minutes. Knowing it could take me that long just to get an elevator, I quickly grabbed a legal pad and the page with the names of Kit’s partners-in-truancy and headed out.
As I pushed open the large glass door to exit the building, I could see the early promise of a sunny, clear day ahead. There was a slight nip in the air, but the sky was a brilliant blue and the sunlight was starting to get thicker, in preparation for spring. Typical L.A.—we’d only had a couple of chilly months, but the city was already giving up the pretense of winter. I was glad I’d left my muffler at home.
The high school was on Sycamore, just west of downtown, in a bleak, low-rent stretch of concrete office buildings and family-run grocery and liquor stores. The school looked as if it belonged on the East Coast: one monolithic two-story brick building with a wide front walkway that led to two sets of tall glass doors. One of those doors was boarded over with plywood. They needed to either switch to metal or make the glass bulletproof. All in all, it was an imposing edifice. Making it even more so was the surrounding ten-foot fence and metal front gates. Bailey circled the school, looking for a parking space, but the streets were packed with cars. We wound up parking four blocks away, next to a vacant lot. The air was still chilly enough to let us see our breath as we hoofed it to the school.
At this time of day, the gates were open: as we passed through, I felt as if I were entering a prison. I had no doubt that most of the student body felt the same way every single morning. A teenage boy with spiked, superblack hair, eyeliner, and multiple piercings burst out of the school, banging open the front door, and I saw that ther
e were metal detectors just inside. I pulled out my badge so I could keep my gun, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Bailey do the same. It was comforting to know that we’d be able to shoot our way out if we needed to.
We turned left down a cavernous hallway. “Nice place,” Bailey said sarcastically.
I replied with a grim smile. It was many things, but nice wasn’t one of them. The floor was brown linoleum, the walls last saw paint when the Beatles were still touring, and the air smelled of rubber, sweat, and disinfectant. They say that about 40 percent of the California state budget goes to education, but you couldn’t prove it by the looks of Marsden High.
Juanita Esquivel, secretary to the principal, Colin Reilly, looked at us over the tortoiseshell frames of her bifocals. “Can I help you?” she asked in a voice that managed to sound both stern and bored.
I wondered briefly how one was supposed to address a principal. By his title? Mister? I opted for the kiss-ass approach. “We’re here to see Principal Reilly. Deputy District Attorney Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller.”
“Oh,” she said with an expression like she’d just smelled spoiled yogurt in the mini-fridge. “Whyn’t you have a seat. I’ll tell him you’re here.” She pointed a long red nail at uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs set against the wall next to the door.
I remained standing—partly to annoy her and partly because I didn’t want to consider who or what else had last occupied those chairs. Bailey stood, arms folded, with her back against the wall on the other side of the door. Her look said that Juanita would be wise to make sure the principal met with us very soon. The secretary eyed Bailey nervously, showing a well-honed instinct for self-preservation.
Five minutes later, we were seated in the spare, run-down, uninspiring box of an office that Principal Reilly called home. A couple of dying miniature cacti in clay pots behind his desk were his only concession to interior design. The one thing I could say for his office was that it fit in perfectly with the rest of the school.