Guilt by Association: A Novel

by Marcia Clark

  “Don’ get me wrong. I wouldn’ a’ minded nailing that pendejo,” Luis said, his tone steely. “But after Hector fingered him for you guys, I knew you’d be sniffin’ around him. I’d be a fucking idiot to do anything right now.”

  Right now. It wasn’t exactly a comforting way to exclude Luis, but after all he was a shot-caller, not the Easter Bunny. I glanced at Bailey, who’d resumed eating her pancakes. I knew what that meant.

  “Okay, Luis,” I said. “You’re good to go for now.”

  He started to slide out of the booth, but then I remembered I had a message to deliver.

  “Susan asked me to tell you ‘hey,’ ” I said. “I think she hopes you’re still going to go for your GED.”

  “How’s she doin’? I been meanin’ to call,” Luis said.

  “She’s doing better every day,” I replied. “And I’m sure she’d be glad to hear from you.”

  Luis paused, nodding to himself. “Yeah, I kinda fell off my game with everythin’—everything— that’s been happenin’,” he said seriously. “I got to get back to the books.”

  Luis slid to the edge of the booth, then stopped and leaned toward me with a slow smile. “You ever want to check out the finer things in life, you just call. M’entiende?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you empty your pockets, and we’ll see if you get to walk out of here?” I asked.

  Luis stood up. “Jeez, I was jus’ jokin’,” he said indignantly. “You know what your prallem is? You got no sense of humor.”

  I had many “prallems” right now. A failed sense of humor was the least of them. Luis headed out. As I watched him go, I was reminded of another odd puzzle piece I couldn’t fit into the picture. I picked up my heretofore unused fork and turned to Bailey. “We always figured the rapist had framed Luis Revelo to take the fall for the rape,” I said. I took a forkful of the now-cold pancakes. They were still delicious.

  “Right.” Bailey nodded.

  “But what we’ve never been able to figure out was how Stayner knew Susan was tutoring a guy who’d look good for it.”

  “No,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Somehow he had to get close enough to Densmore to know as much as he did. Any bright ideas?”

  I lifted my fork again, and Bailey pushed her plate toward me. I took one more mouthful of pancakes and savored the sweet, soft morsels before I reluctantly put my fork down and tried to come up with said bright idea.

  “We checked out everyone who worked in or around the house,” I thought out loud. “But we didn’t get to all of Densmore’s health centers yet.”

  Bailey nodded again.

  “That’s about as bright as it’s going to get right now,” I said.

  49

  We managed to get to the Calabasas Children’s Health Center, a Spanish-style, tile-roofed building with a lovely courtyard, in record time. It was a small operation, and the few who worked there were all present and accounted for. Not one of them recognized Stayner’s picture. Not one of them gave me any reason to think he or she was lying about it.

  We worked our way east, toward the health center on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. This center was on the third floor of a large, dark-windowed office building. But the center was just as kid-friendly and freshly decorated as the others. The employees there didn’t recognize Stayner either. We continued on a southeasterly route to our last stop: the Hollywood center.

  When most people think of Hollywood, they picture stars set into sidewalks, the flashbulbs of paparazzi cameras… swimming pools, movie stars—to paraphrase an old sitcom. What they don’t know is that Hollywood is also seedy, run-down apartments, flophouse motels, buckled sidewalks, and urine-soaked corners. Where the homeless, the runaways, and the drugged-out converge in disharmony. The Yucca Street clinic was in that Hollywood.

  The small one-story building that housed the clinic had a parking lot marked STAFF ONLY at the rear. Bailey pulled into it and stopped. I checked out our surroundings. It was late afternoon, and a fair number of the residents in this neck of the woods were hanging out—at the curb, on the front steps of a small, dingy liquor store, and on the street corners.

  We walked into the waiting room and looked around. Surprisingly, it was nearly empty. The only occupants were a too-skinny, tattooed blond girl leafing listlessly through an ancient copy of People magazine and, across the room from her, a young Hispanic man who was bent over a sloppily bandaged hand. There was no one behind the counter at the reception desk. To the right of the counter was a gate that led to a corridor and, I surmised, the examining rooms. Presumably the gate was meant for security.

  “Hello?” Bailey called out.

  “Just a minute!” replied a female voice. Precisely one minute later, a woman appeared in a nurse’s uniform, with black, wiry, shoulder-length hair and glasses on a chain around her neck.

  “You’re the detectives?” she said, sounding surprised.

  “Well, she is,” I said. “I’m a DA. Rachel Knight.”

  “And I’m Bailey Keller.”

  “Sheila Houghton,” the woman said. “Glad to meet you.”

  She briefly scanned the waiting room, then looked back at us. “It’s just terrible what happened to Susan,” she said quietly. “I hope you get that monster soon.”

  Bailey said we hoped so too and got right down to business. She held out Stayner’s photograph. “Ever see him around here?” she asked.

  Sheila put down her clipboard, slid on her glasses, and took a look. “Yeah,” she said, pulling her glasses off again. “He brought a lot of the teenagers in here. Usually runaways,” she replied. “Carl… something, I think.”

  I nodded neutrally, careful not to show she’d hit a bull’s-eye. “Was it mainly girls or boys?”

  “Both. But more boys. Said he worked at one of the local runaway shelters,” she said. Her brows knitted for a moment. “I can’t remember which one, though.”

  It didn’t matter. It was probably a lie anyway. I had a feeling I knew why Stayner was bringing kids to a clinic, and it wasn’t because he was working for a shelter.

  “When was the last time you saw him around here?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” Sheila thought for a moment. “Not long ago—maybe a few weeks?”

  So probably sometime before the rape.

  “Sheila, would you mind if I looked around a bit?” I asked. I was actually more interested in having a quick—and private—word with Bailey than in a view of the clinic. I’ve learned from hard experience that the less witnesses know about what we’re thinking, the better. Witnesses like to talk—and usually to all the wrong people.

  “Be my guest,” she said. Then she turned to the waiting area. “Mr. Flores?” she called out. “Come on in. Let’s take a look at that hand.”

  The doors to the examination rooms were open, and as I passed the first one, I looked inside. A young Hispanic woman with a sizable diaper bag on her shoulder was strapping a toddler into a stroller. She looked up and smiled at me briefly. I returned the smile, and then she wheeled the stroller out of the room. The area was clean, but it wasn’t the spiffy state-of-the-art place that the other clinics were. It had an old-fashioned feeling to it: an aging scale in one corner, a height-measuring chart on the wall next to the table, and some beat-up-looking wooden toys in a bin near the door. Even the predictable child-friendly poster—Thomas the Tank Engine—was out-of-date.

  Exam room two was empty. So was exam room three. They were all in the same condition: clean but old, no-frills. Looking at the rooms, I could feel something tickle at the back of my brain, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I heard Sheila approach and saw that she was heading for exam room two with Mr. Flores, so I didn’t have time to think about it. I quickly pulled Bailey into exam room three.

  “My guess is Stayner was pimping the kids and bringing them here for checkups,” I said.

  “Yep,” Bailey agreed. “And I’m thinking maybe one of those kids decided he didn�
�t appreciate the job opportunity so much anymore.”

  I nodded. “But if it was a kid, there’s less chance we’ve got his prints in the database.”

  Bailey sighed unhappily. “Exactly.”

  “Great,” I replied. “Perfect.”

  We headed out and waved good-bye to Sheila, who was busy bandaging Mr. Flores’s hand in exam room two.

  Bailey edged the car out into the near-standstill traffic on Hollywood Boulevard.

  “So we’ve got good news and bad news,” I said. “Bad news: our list of suspects is now the size of a phone book. Good news: we can at least eliminate Luis and Nurse Sheila.”

  “Fantastic,” Bailey said sarcastically. “We’re almost there.”

  We rode on in silence. With nothing good to say, we found it was best to say nothing.

  After a while, Bailey broke the stony silence. “Home?”

  “May as well,” I said glumly. “Feel like a drink?”

  “Or ten.”

  It wasn’t that either of us minded the fact that Stayner might’ve been murdered—he was no big loss to the human race. But his death deprived us of a lot of answers. The only person left who might be able to give us those answers was his killer. And, with each passing minute, that killer might be slipping farther away.

  I watched the outline of the downtown skyscrapers draw near as office lights flecked the darkening night sky like fireflies.

  50

  Bailey and I hit the Biltmore bar in a grouchy mood. Neither of us was herself… or anyone better. Drew poured a round of martinis.

  “How’s it going, ladies?” he asked.

  “Like shit,” Bailey said, abruptly taking the olive out of her martini as though it had deliberately gotten in her way. She took a long pull from her drink.

  Drew raised an eyebrow at me. “Bad day?”

  I rolled my eyes, picked up my drink, and considered draining it. I restrained myself—barely—and took a healthy sip instead.

  Bailey, looking distracted, tapped her fingers on the bar nervously.

  “Anything I can do?” Drew asked.

  “You just did it,” she said tersely, nodding toward her drink. She took another sip and resumed tapping.

  “Okay,” Drew said, tilting his head toward the other end of the bar. “I’ll just be down there.”

  “Wise move, Obi-Wan,” I said.

  “I’m a survivor,” Drew said smoothly. He moved to the service end of the bar, where a waiter was trying to decipher the drink order he’d written on a small notepad.

  When I turned back, Bailey was scrolling through her e-mail on her cell phone.

  “Any word on the print run?” I asked.

  “They promise results first thing Monday morning,” she said, frowning.

  “Coroner?” I asked.

  She scrolled for a few more seconds. “Also sometime on Monday. Preliminary results only.” She shoved her phone into her pocket and turned back to her drink.

  “Look, it is possible that Stayner drove off that cliff by himself, Bailey,” I said. “Accidents do happen.”

  “Yeah, just like coincidences,” she said acidly. “And we both know what you think of those.”

  This was true. I considered offering her a platitude about things looking better after a good night’s sleep, but I had a feeling neither of us was going to get one. We drank our martinis in silence, as if they were medicine. Which I guess they were. After one more dose, we were both ready to call it a night.

  “You’re not going to drive home, are you?” I asked.

  “I was,” Bailey replied.

  Drew, who’d been standing nearby, leaned toward her. “No. You wasn’t,” he said. “Either crash with her or wait for me.”

  “Crash with me,” I said quickly. I knew that if Bailey waited for Drew in her current mood, nothing good would come of it.

  “Fine,” Bailey said, resigned. Drew patted her hand, and she gave him a tired smile.

  “Call me tomorrow,” he said.

  Bailey nodded, and we headed up to my room. I helped her make up the sofa bed, then went and took a long, hot shower. I didn’t realize how tired I was until I got into bed. But the moment my head hit the pillow, my whole body sank in, and I was gone. That’s what too many suspects and not enough evidence will do to you. That, and a few martinis.

  Sunday passed without incident; Bailey found her way home before I even awoke. By the time I got up Monday morning, I’d recovered most of my sleep and then some. It was 7:30. I showered, brushed and combed, and went out to look at the day. The sky was blue and the sun was shining; the air was a friendly, medium temperature. I hoped this was a good omen. I went over to my closet to make my wardrobe choices. I didn’t know what the day would hold—I just knew I didn’t have to be in court. So I dressed casually in slacks and a sweater.

  Did I still need to wear the vest? Whoever had killed Stayner—assuming we were right and it wasn’t just an accident—was still out there. But that person didn’t seem dumb enough to go after me. Take me out, and there would be a million more in my place. I decided I was safe enough with just my .22-caliber Beretta and left the vest in the closet.

  I felt good, if a little naked. And I could move a heck of a lot faster. Within minutes, I was climbing the stairs to the back doors of the courthouse building. I’d just stepped inside when my cell phone rang.

  “Where are you?” Bailey asked.

  “Heading for the elevator.”

  “I’ll be there in ten,” she said, and hung up.

  Nine minutes later, she strode into my office. I held up the cup of coffee I’d bought for her at the snack bar.

  “Thanks,” she said, sitting down in front of my desk.

  “And?”

  “Print run is mostly done,” Bailey replied. “Just about everything’s got Stayner’s prints.”

  “Just about?”

  She nodded. “One item did not. The tech found a set of clear but unidentified prints on it.”

  “Unidentified?” I repeated. “You mean it didn’t match anyone in the criminal database?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  That ruled out Luis for good and probably eliminated some other scumbag crime partner of Stayner’s.

  “Where were the prints found?” I asked.

  “On a pack of Quench Gum,” Bailey replied.

  I frowned, thinking it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. But it was better than nothing. “It’s a thread to pull,” I said. “Since we got no hit on the criminal database, we’ll have to assume for now that whoever put those prints on the gum isn’t a criminal.”

  “For now,” she agreed. “But if we eliminate the criminal element, the motive we’re left with is—”

  “Susan’s rape,” I finished. “And the only noncriminals we know who’ve got the motive to kill Stayner because of Susan’s rape are Susan—”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and say we can rule out the little girl,” Bailey interjected.

  “A bold move, but all right,” I said. “Which leaves Mommy and Daddy.”

  “But this one’s tricky,” Bailey said. “We need more than a hunch before we take a run at them. They’ll go straight to my captain—”

  “And Vanderhorn—”

  “—in a heartbeat,” Bailey finished.

  I thought for a moment. “Aren’t doctors’ prints on file?”

  Bailey tilted her head. “Not sure,” she said. “But I can find out pretty quick.”

  She made calls while I waited nervously.

  “You nailed it, Knight,” she said appreciatively. “They’re accessing Densmore’s prints as we speak. We should have the answer within the hour.”

  “And Densmore will never have to know.”

  51

  It was one hell of a tense hour. Bailey didn’t want to leave the office because she thought she might wind up in a bad cell area and miss the call. I wanted to get out because I needed to move around, and my office doesn’t ha
ve enough room for even minor pacing. But I felt I had to be there when Bailey got the call. So I sat, pinned to my seat, and waited.

  An hour and twenty minutes later, Bailey’s cell phone rang. She listened and said “uh-huh” a few times, then “Thanks,” and hung up. She looked at me deadpan.

  “Do not torture me,” I warned.

  Not one to be threatened, she waited another beat before speaking. “We’ve got Frank Densmore’s prints on the gum.”

  “Boo-yeah!” I shouted.

  Bailey laughed, and we high-fived.

  “You know, it does fit, doesn’t it?” I said. “Quench Gum didn’t exactly seem like Stayner’s style.”

  Bailey nodded. “As soon as you mentioned that Densmore’s prints might be on file, I remembered that’s what I chew when I’m bike-riding.”

  Right. Densmore was a cyclist. “You didn’t say anything,” I remarked.

  Bailey shrugged. “I wanted to wait till we got the prints back,” she said. “I didn’t want us to get fired up just to crash down.”

  After our mood a couple of nights ago, I couldn’t blame her. I thought for a moment about where we stood. “It’s all good so far, but it’s not enough to get a warrant,” I said. “It’d be easy for Densmore to claim that Stayner picked up the gum at a clinic.”

  “Or even that Stayner found it outside Densmore’s house,” Bailey said, “now that we know Stayner was floating around the hood.”

  “But working on the theory that Densmore’s our killer—”

  “A fair bet.”

  “That means Densmore lied when he claimed he didn’t know Stayner,” I concluded.

  Bailey nodded. “Or else he wouldn’t have known how to find him.”

  “That means it was probably Densmore himself who gave Stayner access to his home, his family,” I added.

  We both mulled over that unsavory thought, then Bailey voiced the million-dollar question. “Why?”

  I shook my head. “We don’t even have enough to venture a good guess yet. But let’s not jump the gun. First we need to nail down Stayner’s murder. Then we can see where we stand.”