Interest of Justice

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

  Chapter 9

  Screeching into the parking lot and taking up two spaces, Lara rushed to the condo and threw open the door. Then she hurried to the bedroom. “Are you all right?” she asked. “I left you a note. I had to go out and take care of some things.”

  Josh sat up in the bed, rubbing his eyes. They were swollen and red.

  “How did you sleep?” She wanted to take that back. How did she expect him to sleep?

  He glared at her. “I slept.”

  “Okay, this is the plan,” she said, trying to act like this was a normal day, a normal situation. “You go for breakfast across the street at McDonald’s and I’ll take care of some things at my office. Get a pen and write down the number. If you need me, you can call me from the pay phone on the corner. I’ll be home by lunchtime.” She tried not to let the strain show in her voice. It took a concentrated effort.

  “I don’t live here, remember?” he said sarcastically. “I don’t know where a pen is?”

  “I left one in the kitchen. Forget it, I’ll write it down for you.” She headed to the kitchen and then thought better of her plan. She needed to keep an eye on him. She went back to the bedroom. “Listen, scratch that plan. You’ll go with me to my office.”

  “What for?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Take a shower now. I have some clean clothes.” Again she searched his face, his eyes.

  “My clothes?” He was standing up by the bed now, holding the sheet around his waist. He must have been sleeping in his briefs. He wasn’t wearing any other clothing.

  “I went to the house and picked up some of your things.”

  His eyes expanded. “Did you get my bike?”

  “No, I didn’t. Take a shower.” They were a pair to draw to, as Pop would say. She wasn’t very wordy herself. Even though she wanted to get to the bottom of this kid, she actually didn’t mind his brevity. It made things easier right now.

  She glanced at his sinewy chest. She’d have to get him a robe. This wasn’t appropriate. He was too big to walk around half naked. She threw the handful of clothes at him, and he headed to the bathroom. She was thankful that at least there were two bathrooms. While he was showering, she ran to Emmet’s and called Phillip.

  “It was on the news last night. Everyone’s been calling. The phone’s been ringing off the wall ever since I walked through the door at seven-thirty. They all send their condolences.”

  “Has Evergreen called?”

  “Not yet. What can I do?”

  “Call Evergreen. Explain to him what’s happened and tell him that I’ll need my calender covered for at least three days, possibly five. They’ll have to get someone in there today. Maybe a pro-tem.” A pro-tem was a local attorney willing to sit on the bench when the need arose. Since they had several judges out on vacation, it would be a mess. “Do that first and I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  Once she hung up, she turned to Emmet and let her shoulders fall. “I can’t talk now,” she told him. “But I’ll try to come by later this evening.”

  “What…can…I do?” he said, his head rolling to one side in his wheelchair, gazing at her through his thick glasses.

  “Just be my friend, Emmet. That’s all anyone can do right now.”

  She left him sitting there by the window and ran back to the condo. Josh was on the sofa, dressed and waiting. He was fast, she thought. It didn’t take him an hour to take a shower and put on his clothes like a lot of people.

  “Are you going to your court like that?” he asked her.

  She looked down at her clothes and blanched. She was still wearing the sweatshirt and jeans. An unusual feeling filled her stomach, and she reached over and impulsively threw her arms awkwardly around Josh’s neck. His body was stiff. “That was nice that you mentioned that to me. I would have looked like a fool.” She stepped back and looked down at her feet. “You should never let people see you when you aren’t in control, not at your best. Not if you can help it. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yeah,” he said, a blank look on his face.

  She went to the bedroom to get dressed. It took her only five minutes and she looked about the same as she did every day: a hint of lipstick, her hair tied back at the base of her neck in one of the identical black bows, a simple blouse and skirt, practical shoes. “Better, huh?” she said, attempting a smile. It didn’t work out well. The concrete of her face cracked only a hair.

  “No,” he said. “You look the same to me.” He raised his shoulders and then let them fall.

  “Oh,” Lara said, thinking that he had expected her to walk out looking gorgeous, as his mother had when she was alive. It must be hard for him. There were resemblances, but not many. Ivory was lovely, almost glamorous without really trying. Even if her clothes weren’t expensive, they were always colorful and flattering. Lara was pretty but plain, unnoticeable in a crowd. Her sister was always smiling and laughing, at least in the past, before Charley died and Sam Perkins took over her life.

  She wasn’t smiling now.

  “We’ll go through the drive-thru on the way to the office. McDonald’s okay?”

  He nodded. They left.

  Returning to his home in San Clemente before his boys awoke, Rickerson dropped a sack on the kitchen counter and took out a loaf of bread, some lunch meat, a container of fresh orange juice, and a sack of apples that he had purchased on his way home. He threw open the freezer and removed some hamburger meat so it could thaw for dinner. Then he went to the sink and rinsed off a few dishes, placing them in the dishwasher. “There,” he said, wiping his hands on a paper towel and looking around at the kitchen. He’d have to get one of the kids to mop the floor this week, but otherwise the place looked pretty good. Joyce had thought they would fall apart without her. They missed her, no doubt about it. But they were not about to fall apart. Not if he had anything to do with it.

  Walking down the hall, he took his fist and banged one time on each boy’s door. “Time to get up,” he said. “Rise and shine in there, guys.” Rushing back to the kitchen, he started a pot of coffee. Then he went to the laundry room and tossed a load of laundry in the washing machine.

  His seventeen-year-old son, Stephen, stuck his head in the door yawning. “Got any clean underwear in here, Dad?”

  Rickerson opened the dryer and yanked out a pair of Jockey shorts, tossing them to his son. “Be sure to turn on both the dryer and the dishwasher when you get home today.”

  “Sure,” he said. He was a tall, muscular redhead like his father. He was also an outstanding student, under consideration for a full scholarship at Stanford and a member of the varsity golf team at his high school. “Hey, did you just get home or what?”

  Rickerson leaned back against the dryer and rubbed the thick stubble on his chin. He was about to drop on his feet. “Yep, you got it, bud. Caught a bad one yesterday. It’s going to be rough sailing around here for a while.”

  Stephen stepped into the doorway. “How ‘bout a clean shirt? Anything like that in there?”

  Rickerson took the entire load of clothes out of the dryer and dumped it on the tile counter behind him. “Be my guest. Looks like we mixed the whites again, kid. Got to be more careful in the future.”

  Looking down at his underwear, Stephen started laughing. They were a pale shade of blue. Not only that, but everything else in the load of laundry was blue. His fourteen-year-old brother had washed his brand-new Levis with all their underwear. “I kind of like it, you know. At least it’s not pink like last time.” He started to walk away and then stuck his head back in the door again. “Don’t worry about anything, okay, Dad? I’ll keep a lid on things around here for you.”

  Rickerson smiled at his son. He loved this kid. Without him, he would have never made it after Joyce moved out. But together they were doing a pretty damn good job, if he did say so himself. “I might not be home tonight. Just put that hamburger meat in the Hamburger Helper and read the instructions on the box. And make sure your brother doe
s his homework.”

  “No problem,” he said from the hall. “If he doesn’t, I’ll kick his butt.”

  Rickerson made his way down the hall to the master bedroom, his shoes clanking on the hardwood flooring. Sunlight was filtering in through the blinds, and the entire house had a warm yellow glow. He fell face first on the bed and then rolled over onto his back, staring at a streak of light and the minute dust particles dancing in the air. It wasn’t such a bad house. It was small and it needed work, but for many years it had been a comfortable home. The kids had ridden their tricycles right outside on that sidewalk. They knew every single person on the block. They had watched the trees grow from tiny saplings to towering oaks.

  But Joyce didn’t want to live here anymore. She had said she wanted more from life. Evidently that meant more than he could give her. At first she’d insisted she only wanted a career, an education, and pleaded that if he could just bear with her until she graduated from Long Beach State with her degree in mechanical engineering, then they could start a new life. He didn’t understand what was wrong with their old life. There, he thought, right there, that’s where she had completely lost him. They’d raised two fine young sons. They owned their own home and had managed to save enough money for their children’s education. He had his pension with the department, and when he retired, he could enter private security. They had planned their whole life from start to finish, and she had simply tossed it away.

  “Dad,” Jimmy said from the doorway, “can I talk to you a minute?”

  Rickerson sat up and swung his feet to the floor. He wanted to light up a cigar, but he never smoked in the house. The boys hated it. “Sure, guy. Come here. Have a seat. What’s on your mind?”

  “When is Mom coming home?”

  Rickerson draped an arm around his younger son, and they both leaned forward over their knees on the edge of the bed. Whereas Stephen looked like his father, Jimmy looked exactly like Joyce. He had her sandy blond hair, her full lips, her clear skin. And like Joyce, he had a tendency to put on weight. “Jim-boy, I wish I could tell you, but I just can’t.”

  “But she’s been gone three months now, and we never see her.”

  “Well, she’s in college and she’s working hard. One of these days you’ll be in college, and you’ll see how hard it really is.”

  “Is she ever coming back?”

  Rickerson sighed. He asked himself the same question at least fifty times a day. “I just don’t know, son.”

  “Are you going to get a divorce?”

  About eighty percent of all the cops in the department were either divorced or remarried. Rickerson had always thought he would be different. His parents had been married for sixty years. In some ways he was old-fashioned. He thought marriage meant forever, thick or thin, rich or poor, until death—all that sappy stuff. “Divorce? I-I don’t think so, but we can’t rule it out.

  Whatever your mother decides, we’ll just have to accept. But look, if we do get a divorce, she’s divorcing me. She’s not divorcing you.”

  His son cleared his throat and stood. “I’m going to be late to school. Are you coming home tonight?”

  “Maybe not for dinner, but I’ll try to stop by before you go to bed.”

  Jimmy stood there for a moment. He was a sensitive child. He had such a full face and soft, expressive eyes, it was almost a baby face. “Be careful, Dad,” he said.

  Rickerson stood and ruffled his hair. Then he pulled him roughly to his chest and hugged him. “I’m always careful. Now get the hell out of here and let your old man get some sleep.”

  He slept until about noon and then leaped out of bed when the alarm sounded. The house was quiet, the kids at school. He felt stiff as a board and ached like hell.

  Years ago, he’d been writing a speeding ticket alongside the highway when a car came along and plowed into him, pinning him between the two vehicles and breaking his back and right leg. He could have retired on disability, but he had wanted to stay on. In retrospect, he considered it the worst mistake of his life. Now, no matter how much he complained, they’d never give him disability. He’d proven that he could work with the pain.

  The number of homicides that occurred in San Clemente were nominal. This one, he thought, staggering to the bathroom, was surely going to kill him, both emotionally and physically. He hated to see women and children exploited. It did something to him, made him absolutely crazy. No matter how long he worked at the job, there were some things a person just couldn’t stomach.

  How many loans had that guy Perkins made anyway? Would there be thousands of tickets to dig through and try to track down? It would take them years to even make a dent. And now with the woman working the trade, turning tricks, and the implications of child pornography or sexual exploitation, the possibilities seemed endless. Judge Lara Sanderstone had demanded that every man in the department sink their teeth in this case, but that just wasn’t going to happen. Someone had to cover the streets, the stolen cars, the drunk drivers, the injury accidents. The department wasn’t that big, and this was a humongous case.

  He stood under the shower, letting the hot water pound his aching back. All the bending and stooping last night and this morning had taken its toll, and it was only the beginning. By the time he waded through the pawnshop, he’d be hurting so bad that he would barely be able to stand upright.

  After a short conversation with the medical examiner last night, they were both of the opinion that two separate killers could have been involved. It didn’t make sense to bash in one person’s head and not bash in the other’s as well. Two distinct m.o.‘s usually meant two killers. The manner in which a person committed a crime was almost as exclusive as their fingerprints.

  It was simple, exactly like he’d told Lara Sander-stone. Kid came home from school, found the stepfather in the bedroom with his mother’s body, and then smashed the fucking hell out of him with his twenty weight. He’d outright admitted that he hated the man, and it looked as though he had good reason.

  Or, he thought, maybe after years of abuse Josh had simply gone over the edge and killed them both. All they had to do now was prove it, and once they did, the kid would probably get off with little more than a slap on the wrists and Rickerson would finally get his promotion to lieutenant.

  There was no forced entry—another fact that pointed the finger at the boy. Even though Josh had said there was a hidden key, it was doubtful if they entered that way, using the key, killing the two people and then being cool enough to remember to put the key back exactly where they found it. If that was the case, he’d be dealing with a sophisticated killer, one he’d probably never catch, more than likely a person who did this type of thing for a living.

  The biggest problem was the kid’s clothes. Not a speck of blood on them. It was the first thing they’d checked. They’d torn the house apart and didn’t find any blood-stained clothing. No one could beat someone as savagely as this man had been beaten and walk away without a speck of blood.

  He grabbed the towel, wrapped it around him, and studied his image in the mirror. Seeing a blemish, he stood close and picked at it. Then he chastised himself. The dermatologist had told him years ago that the scars he had were from picking at his face. Old habits die hard, he thought. He smeared shaving cream on his face and started shaving.

  Of course, the kid could have killed them and then buried or tossed the stained clothing somewhere before he called the cops at four o’clock that afternoon. They’d have to search the entire area on foot. Then they’d have to check with his school and determine if he was actually present in the last class of the day. Once they had the established time of death, they could start formally building the case. He needed help. He’d have to go to the chief today and get every possible body they could find.

  They were wasting their time with the pawnshop. The boy had been exploited, sucked into the life-style of his mother and her new husband more than likely as a money-making proposition. Whether the boy was aware that they
were selling his photographs or not was up for grabs, but Rickerson bet they were. With everyone cracking down on child pornography from local authorities to the feds, perversion of this type must have a high price tag.

  They might have been selling more than just Josh’s photographs. They could have been selling the boy himself.

  Lara had Josh situated down the hall in the law library. She’d tossed a stack of magazines on the table and left him there. He’d talked her into ordering a Sausage McMuffin for breakfast, and it was burning a hole through her abdominal wall. Besides, she was running now on adrenaline: tense, shaky, but flying. And she was running on a razor-sharp edge of bitterness toward whoever had committed these heinous acts.

  “Did you find Evergreen?” she asked Phillip. “Is my calendar covered?”

  “Finally,” the young man said, looking Lara in the eye. As soon as their eyes met, he pulled his away. “He’s sitting for you himself.”

  In her chambers, she went over what she thought she wanted for the funeral with Phillip. “Call the morgue and find out when they’re going to release the body.” She gave him the name of the cemetery where she’d bought the other plots for Charley and their parents. “Buy two cemetery plots instead of one.” She paused, sipping her coffee, scanning the spines of the books on the shelves in front of her, looking at anything but Phillip’s face etched with sympathy and concern. This was so hard. He was staring at her and she felt like melting in an oily puddle all over the floor. Anything, she prayed, anything but tears. More tears she couldn’t stand. The extra plot wasn’t for Sam Perkins, it was for her. She didn’t feel the need to explain that to Phillip, but she and Ivory would one day be side by side, next to Charley and their parents. Ivory would like that. just like she knew Ivory would like a white casket with brass fittings. She liked pretty things. “I want a white casket with brass fittings. As lone as it’s under ten thousand, buy it. Do that and come back when you’re finished.”