by E. E. Giorgi
Udall flashed his wisdom in the form of his peaceful smile. “In the eyes of the law they did nothing wrong.”
I swallowed the bitter aftertaste in my mouth. My head was throbbing. “What about the three murders?”
“It’s the only way to go. Indict for murder, if we can.”
“Medford owns a gun,” Satish said. “Though it doesn’t match the caliber of the bullets found in the victims’ bodies.”
“On the other hand he had plenty of motive,” I said, raising my voice.
“Given what you guys just told me, any religious fanatic out there had plenty of motive too,” Udall insisted.
“Then why did Huxley also end up dead? Think about it. What’s more likely: a lunatic entering the Tarantino home and whacking them both based on some who-knows-what biblical reason, or Tarantino turning into the weak link and needing to be rid of?”
“What about the first commandment note, then?”
“To set us on the wrong track,” I said. “Ideologies are out there to cover somebody’s ass. Whether they believe in them or exploit those who do.”
Udall exhaled through his nose. He drummed his fingers on the table and then slammed his palm flat on the surface. “Let’s see what Jerry White has to say on the matter. If he can give us a possible motive for the murders, we may be able to justify the warrants. But if we find nothing linking Medford with either the Tarantinos’ or the Huxley murders, then I’m afraid there’s very little we can do for those children.”
Hannah Kelson’s words rang in my ears: Justice is the exception, not the rule.
“If his lawyer will let him talk to us.” I pushed my chair back, got up and left the room. My future as a cop was in the hands and knife of a county coroner, while the people I wanted in jail for the rest of their lives were as immaculate as a baby in the eyes of the law. I needed a substantial dose of painkiller if I wanted to be at least half functional by the time White and his lawyer showed up.
CHAPTER 33
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Thursday, October 23
Cleanly shaven and beautifully packaged in an Armani suit and tie, movie director Jerry White’s appearance had quite improved since the first time I’d seen him down in Felony. Swept back, his longish hair showed the first signs of thinning around the temples. The earring shining from his right lobe enhanced a handsome profile, drawn by sharp, harmonious lines. Seated next to him, his lawyer scribbled a few words of slanted handwriting on a piece of paper, shoved it back into his briefcase, and let his booming voice hush the usual preliminary exchanges between Udall, Satish, and me.
“Let’s spare everybody’s time here,” he started. “My client’s keeping his mouth shut until we hear what’s on the table.”
I had the pleasure to meet Ray Epstein in the courtroom: husky, with a square face mottled by moles, and small eyes crowned by bushy brows. A man with an imposing voice and a passion for the spotlight. In court, a squint of his gray eyes could shrink you down to the size of a mosquito. Renowned for berating witnesses and demanding straight answers to convoluted questions, he had firm principles and pliable ethics. As for me, I could smell his acid reflux within four feet, which is why I still preferred to deal with him from behind the witness stand than in a small room, sitting at the same table.
“We’re out for the big fish, Mr. Epstein,” Satish said. “It would benefit your client to help us out.”
“You’ve got nothing whatsoever on my client,” Epstein barked.
“Au contraire,” I said. “We’ve got the victim’s blood in Mr. White’s car and his weapon on the scene.”
Epstein regarded me with the same interest granted to the cuticles of his pinky fingers. He jacked up one of his overgrown brows and smirked. “It’s all circumstantial.”
A ghost in his black suit, Jerry White seemed oblivious to the conversation. He stared at his polished fingernails for a few minutes, then at the cobwebs clinging on the ceiling. He scanned Udall’s striped tie, Epstein’s briefcase, Satish’s dark hands brushing the table. His gaze lingered on the yellow walls and on the linoleum floors. Under long lashes, White’s blue eyes leapt restlessly from one point to the next without ever crossing any of the stares woven around them.
How much do you miss her, Jerry? Does the silence ever scare you, the space around you voided of her laughter, of her hurried steps to the door to come greet you at the end of the day? Did you really think shooting Michael Conrad was going to drive all those ghosts away? You pulled the trigger on him, Jerry, because you never found the guts to pull it on yourself. The stupid mistakes you made throughout your life: the novelist career you wanted to pursue and never got to, the high school crush you let slip out of your fingers and never married, soon replaced by one relationship after the other, none too lousy to give you grief, and none too significant to cling to your life for the long haul.
And then Gaya happened. Beautiful, innocent Gaya. An undeserved gift, or maybe you didn’t see her as such, maybe to you she felt like another Oscar night where you get the standing ovation for all the hard work. Don’t all artists think of their creations as their children? Did you think of Gaya as your best masterpiece, for which you had to do a little extra, and pay a little extra, but wasn’t she worth every bit? Fate took her away from you, though. Not even fate—human mistake. Who did you hate the most, the ones who fooled you, or yourself for letting them fool you? Tell me, Jerry: if you really had the guts, would you still point the gun at Conrad, or would you rather press it against your temple? To put an end to all those mornings when you open your eyes and it’s right there in front of you, your shame, your foolishness, your regrets… Your inability to go back and start over, do things the right way, this time.
“Mr. White,” I called.
He winced, his thoughts fluttering off his head like flakes of dandruff.
“It wasn’t only Gaya,” I said. I spoke slowly and kept my voice low, until the jabbering lawyers quieted down. “Twelve kids, Mr. White. Twelve lives cut short. Maybe more—others who haven’t developed the disease yet. All based on an empty promise. What did they promise you? Academic brilliance? Longevity? Perfect beauty?”
Epstein shifted in his chair. “Detective—”
“I just want the truth,” I prodded.
Jerry White kept his lips pursed. I said, “Conrad was a visionary, but his murder won’t avenge your daughter. It’s the fools who gave him the money to do what he did I want to get my hands on. Not just for Gaya. For the other eleven kids who died like her.”
For a moment, the silence around me was deep, lulled by the AC vent above our heads. Epstein scratched his opinionated brow. “Don’t say anything, Jerry.”
“Do you think your lawyer has Gaya’s interest at heart?” I challenged.
“Detective—”
“I don’t blame you for gunning a man who deceived you, Mr. White—”
“Enough, Detective!” Epstein spat. Both Udall and Satish tried to say something at the same time, and it all overlapped in a rattle of different pitches clashing together. Satish slid across the table Huxley’s letter to Tarantino. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘Proteus kids,’ Mr. White? The woman who wrote this letter lost her life because she believed it’s what killed your daughter.”
I leaned forward and pressed a finger on the piece of paper. “This woman was about to prove that when Chromo promised you the perfect child, they also sealed her death sentence. These are the people who ruined your life. They should pay for what they did.”
It was the winning stroke. I saw it in the man’s eyes, as they rose from the letter and stared at me. They were clouded with hurt. He tightened his jaw and a vein pulsed across his temple. “They never promised—”
“Jerry, be careful—”
White bristled. “Shut up, Ray. What the hell do you know about what Gaya went through? What do you know what it was like to watch them stick a needle into her arm and tell her, ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be over soon?’ And
she believed it. She smiled, the little angel. She smiled and nodded, and it never was over, the shivering, the vomiting, her teeth rattling in the middle of the night. Her bones crackling as I picked her up.”
His voice broke. Nobody interrupted this time. He hid his face in one hand and sobbed. “She was the joy of my life, that little girl of mine.”
Udall shifted in his chair and exhaled. Sadness overrode the dolphin smile. Epstein pulled down the outer corners of his brows. He propped a hand on White’s shoulder and shook his head. “My client spent nine months by his dying daughter’s side. You can take your circumstantial evidence and ditch it in a landfill. No jury is going to indict when they hear what the child had to go through.”
“I can think of three different motions to prevent any testimony pertaining Gaya White from entering the courtroom, Ray,” Udall said.
“I want to tell them, Ray.”
Finally what I wanted to hear.
“What?” Epstein’s jaw twitched with a hint of irritation.
“You heard me. I want to tell them what those bloody bastards did to us. They ruined us. And you are wrong, Detective,” he added, pointing a finger at me. “They’re not going to pay, no matter what you do.” His eyes were red and spiteful. “Do you know what would be fair pay, Detective? To make them go through what I went through and watch their own child die the way mine did.”
He widened his nostrils and banged a hand on the table. “Except it wouldn’t be true justice, either. Because there would be another innocent life wasted away just like my Gaya’s. No child should ever endure any of that.”
Epstein shot to his feet. “This meeting is over. My client and I need to confer—”
“Shut up, Ray. One more word and you’re fired.”
The lawyer dropped back in his chair.
“Did they promise you the perfect child, Mr. White?” I asked. “Is that why Gaya had to be conceived in vitro?”
White frowned, taken aback. “What? No, that was—that was to avoid the cystic fibrosis gene.” His lips stretched upwards and he gave out to a long, bitter laugh. “No, no. It’s a lot subtler than that, Detective. You’ll have a ball proving this one.”
I sank back in my chair, failing to understand.
“Conrad,” White said. The name came out of his mouth like a spit of venom. “Professor Conrad. Hannah was enthused by him. ‘He’s so smart,’ she’d say. ‘He really understands the stuff.’ He wanted to play his game, prove he was a genius. Oh, yeah. I shot him good. In the face, I did.”
Epstein jumped out of his chair looking as if an ant had just bitten his ass. “Jerry, as your lawyer, I advise you not to—”
“I shot him, Ray,” White spat. “He deserved it. The son of a bitch screwed up. ‘You’re done playing almighty creator,’ I told him. ‘Start over with your own life, instead of playing with others.’”
Epstein scratched his wide forehead. His mouth opened as if about to say something, and then shut again, following his very own advice.
I asked, “If it wasn’t the perfect child, what did Conrad promise you? Why did you blame him for Gaya’s death?”
Jerry White inhaled. He drank from the glass in front of him, clonked it back on the table, then stared at it as if his whole life had been written in it. “It was the cool thing to do back in the late ‘nineties—Chromo’s one-million-dollar idea. Scientifically proven to work thanks to that Conrad genius. That’s what all those parties at the Horowitz’s were about—to sell us out on Chromo’s fountain of youth deal.”
Satish let out a whistle. “Did you say fountain of youth?”
White nodded. “One hundred percent safe gene therapy, guaranteed to keep you looking twenty-five well into your sixties. The price my child had to pay.” He raised his eyes to me and they were sad eyes. “I can’t prove it, Detective, but I know”—he beat his chest with a closed fist—“I know it in my heart that’s what killed my Gaya. The stupid gene therapy that made us look twenty years younger stole my Gaya’s life. Proteus was the code name for the gene therapy treatment.” He snorted. “Proteus was some immortal god, wasn’t he?”
The genes Diane found in the monkey virus.
It finally came together. Even in her death hour, Tamara Tarantino looked way younger than her forty-eight years of age. Same with Kelson, and Medford’s wife, too. They all looked younger thanks to the Proteus therapy—the gene therapy Diane had discovered when looking at the virus in the dead monkey.
Satish rapped his fingers. “Let me get this straight. You and your wife received the youth treatment, not Gaya, correct? Yet you claim that’s what caused your child to die of leukemia?”
“Don’t you see? It screwed up our genes. They gave us shots, one million a pop. That was in 1998, for about six months. Then we decided we were going to have a child, so we stopped. The in vitro thing—it wasn’t just the cystic fibrosis we feared. Hannah was afraid the therapy might’ve messed up some genes. So she went back to her friend Conrad. He reassured her everything was fine. ‘Just do in vitro fertilization and everything will be fine.’ My ass.”
Chilled silence fell in the room. Epstein’s knee rattled impatiently under the table.
So much for wanting to do everything right, Hannah.
I swallowed. “Does Chromo have more of your embryos?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Then we may be able to prove it, Mr. White.”
Embryos. Huxley’s data, to be delivered in the cryogenic tank Tarantino had promised her. It shattered in her own hands, scattering glass shards and perlite all over her, probably as she dodged a bullet from her attacker.
It was empty, Jennifer. They fooled you.
“How many others received the treatment?” Udall asked. “Any chance Chromo would have other embryos besides yours?”
“I know we weren’t the only ones. A lot of people signed up during those parties, and a lot were convinced to do in vitro fertilization if they decided to have a child.” That bitter laugh, again. “Would you say no if somebody offered you eternal youth?”
His eyes met mine.
Your child will never see her youth.
I passed him pen and paper. “Write down the ones you know.”
White took the pen and started scribbling. I glimpsed a few familiar names: a plastic surgeon, a few lawyers, more names from the showbiz industry, including Horowitz’s.
Epstein straightened up and slammed a stocky hand on the table. “You got what you wanted, gentlemen. Manslaughter, two years of probation, no jail time.”
“Come on, Ray,” Udall said. “We’re talking murder!”
“Before you guys start dancing on your haggling toes,” I interjected. “Mr. Udall, I want your signature on a search warrant to turn the Chromo lab inside out. No matter how many embryos they have in there, I want to pluck them out one by one.”
“You’ll have it by tomorrow.”
“Will you testify it in court, Mr. White?” Satish asked.
Jerry White jotted down the last name, put away the pen, and pushed the notepad towards me. “It won’t bring my Gaya back. And it will never do justice to her, to the other kids, or the woman you mentioned who lost her life. And yet it’s still better than rotting in jail and watching the bastards get away with everything.”
* * *
I drew the curtains and closed the door. I sat on the floor, my back against the wall, and an empty bottle of Corona next to me. And I stared. A penknife, an empty shell, a leather wallet, a house key. Carmelo’s silver case. And now a watch. Fake leather and plastic—a cheapie. And it wasn’t even my trophy—a bullet to the head killed the piece of scum, not the round I’d blasted into his shoulder.
Will finished his dinner and came rasping at the door.
I rolled the watch in my hands and ignored him.
Gomez had called me minutes after I’d gotten home. The SID field unit canvassing the arroyo behind Diane’s property had found a slug—a rimless .40 Smith and Wesson. If the M.E. fishe
d a 10mm caliber bullet out of the ex-con’s skull tomorrow I was out of the woods: I had .357 Mags in my revolver and my Glock hadn’t fired a single round last night. Of course, Gomez didn’t put it so nicely.
Somebody wanted Diane dead. They paid an ex-con and when the ex-con failed they drilled a bullet in his skull to make sure he kept quiet. A 10mm caliber, I thought. Same as the bullet drilled into Tarantino’s head.
I picked myself up, put everything back in the tin, and the tin underneath a wood plank in the closet. Not the watch, though. The watch I brought to the garage, smashed it with a hammer, and tossed the pieces in the garbage.
I went to the fridge and grabbed another Corona. The evening breeze made the blinds in the living room flutter. It carried a new spice in the air.
The King hopped down his windowsill and fled through the pet door.
Get the door…
I didn’t.
The doorbell rang. I didn’t move. And then I did.
“You haven’t talked to me all day,” Diane’s opening line. Flustered, tired, and heavenly smelling.
I stood at the door and winced. “What do you call what we did at the meeting?”
“Work.” She glared, my words stinging. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”
Her scent was pungent and enticing, sweet and spicy like an Indian chai tea, the sweetness drawing me in, and the spicy burning my tongue.
Watch it, Ulysses, said a voice in my head.
Will shoved himself between Diane’s legs and licked her all over.
“Aw, isn’t he a sweetie?” Diane cooed. “Unlike his human,” she added, sending me a sideways glare.
“Don’t blame him. He’s tried very hard to train me. Beer?” I offered, lacking anything better to say. She shook her head and paced inside, her eyes darting around my place, my one-man refuge, my cave. I should’ve worried about the molehills of crumbs scattered on the rug, or the coffee table ringed by espresso cups like a puddle under the rain. Details I never cared about jumped at me: empty beer bottles lined on the floor by the recliner, a gun holster carelessly left on the mantel, old stains on the couch cushions, a black sock dangling off a bookshelf from the last time I’d been desperate for a bookmark. CDs sprawled next to an old player, a few issues of Game & Fish piled on top of it. Did my armpits smell, did my feet stink, did my breath—Diane turned abruptly, her face blank, unimpressed. Without praise or blame.