by Marcia Clark
“Perf.” Barney’s Beanery was an old roadside diner on Santa Monica Boulevard, a biker-style bar where Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison used to hang. Great comfort food and a full bar. What more could you want?
Michelle went to answer the phone, and Alex came in with his iPad. “Should be easy to get to all of them today. They live pretty close together.”
Which figured, since they were all USC students. I’d asked Graham about Alicia’s college friends, but she hadn’t told him much—just said that they were “great.” Neither he nor his wife, Sandy, had ever gotten the chance to meet them. Alicia had moved out only three months ago. “I assume they all live in dorms?”
Alex shook his head. “Most of them live off campus. Three have a house together on West Thirty-Fifth Place. You want me to call them, set up an interview?”
That’d give them warning we were coming. “I don’t know how cooperative they’ll be. Let’s drop in on them, make it look casual.” I wanted to take a temperature check in person. I didn’t know how any of them felt about Roan, but if they were fans, they might not love the idea of talking to the lawyer who represented his potential killer—even though the conclusion at this point was that Roan had committed suicide.
Beulah, my not-so-trusty and very ancient Mercedes, was out of gas—as usual, because she guzzles about ten gallons per mile—so Alex drove. He gave me his iPad so I could navigate, and I took the opportunity to check out Alicia’s Facebook page to see what I could find out about her friends. But the postings didn’t tell me much. They all mourned her loss, talked about how “beautiful she was, both inside and out,” and how much they’d “miss her smile” and her “great sense of humor.” Sweet, but cookie-cutter stuff.
We made it to the campus in just half an hour—an amazing feat—and Alex navigated toward Thirty-Fifth Place.
The off-campus housing wasn’t much to write home about. Rows and rows of dull low-rise apartment buildings and small houses that looked like they’d seen better days half a century ago. But for a student, especially one who was getting her first chance to live out loud, it probably looked like heaven.
I asked Alex to drive us past Alicia’s place. She lived close by in a one-bedroom on Thirty-Sixth Place. It was a narrow, two-story beige building. Bicycles were locked into a stand at the side. I saw a maroon-and-gold USC banner in one of the upper windows. I wondered if it was hers.
Alex turned onto Thirty-Fifth Place and parked in front of a small, ramshackle-looking house that was completely festooned in USC colors, from the maroon-and-gold sheets draped around the doorway to the maroon-and-gold curtains hanging in the windows. That kind of rah-rah bullshit always nauseated me. “Looks like the vortex where school spirit smashed into psychosis.”
Alex had a sardonic smile. “Or a very cleverly ironic statement.”
I glanced at the maroon-and-gold riot and shook my head. “I’ll stick with my theory.”
“Anyway, that’s not the place. We want the one behind it.”
Behind it? I couldn’t see anything. Alex got out and led the way to a small, fenced-in walkway on the right side of the house. Sure enough, there was another house. It was about the same size as the first, which I estimated to be a two-bedroom at most. It was painted a simple light gray and had a brown roof, brown front door, and brown window trimmings. Not a particularly appealing color scheme, but at least it wasn’t a paean to all things USC.
I stopped and studied the place. “Who lives here?”
Alex looked down at his iPad. “Gayle Mortenson, Phil Luros, and Diana Hannigan.”
I made a shrewd deduction. “So it’s a couple and one girl?”
Alex shook his head. “Not from what I saw on the Facebook page.”
Interesting. Coed dorms I was used to. But coed living in tight quarters like these—with no romantic connection—was a new one to me. On the other hand, having a guy around made life safer for the girls. A significant upside—assuming Phil wasn’t a total slob.
A voice behind me almost made me jump. “Excuse me, can I help you?”
I plastered a warm smile on my face and turned around to find a voluptuous young woman in jeans and a tight black turtleneck sweater holding a bag of groceries. I recognized the long brown hair and lips—which she pouted Barbie style in just about every one of the photos posted on Alicia’s Facebook page. “Hi. You’re Diana, aren’t you?” I started to put out my hand, then realized hers were wrapped around the bag of groceries. “I’m Samantha Brinkman, a lawyer. And this is my investigator, Alex Medrano.”
Her expression darkened. “What do you want?”
Damn, this looked like trouble. I spoke mildly. “Just to talk to you guys about Alicia. I’m looking into her murder.”
At that moment, a young man with shaggy, dirty-blond hair, dressed in jeans and sandals—in spite of the fact that it was cloudy and practically cold enough to see your breath—appeared behind her. His voice was harsh and bitter. “There’s nothing to look into. That fuckstick Roan killed her. Case closed.”
Diana nodded, and I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Her chilly reception was about Roan, not Graham. I’d found a sympathetic audience—a very rare experience for me. I’ve had doors from Bel Air to Boyle Heights slammed in my face. For some reason, most folks don’t love the idea of cooperating with the lawyer who’s defending a murderer. Go figure.
I introduced myself and Alex again, but now I added, “I’m representing Alicia’s father. You’re Phil, right?”
He shook my hand, his expression somber. “Yeah. He must be torn up.”
“He is. Do you have time to talk?”
“Sure.” He fished a key out of his pocket, and we followed him into the house.
FIVE
As I’d surmised, the house was a small two-bedroom, predictably cramped and cheaply furnished, with a battered brown sofa, an ancient Formica dinette table, and old black-and-navy beanbag chairs. But the flat-screen looked relatively new—someone’s birthday or Christmas present, I supposed.
And there was no mistaking that this was a students’ lair: textbooks on calculus, biology, and psychology were strewn around the living room and on the dinette table. And the contents of the makeshift bookcase—a typical boards-and-bricks styling—ran the gamut, from the Bhagavad Gita to Keynesian economics. A filmy, red beaded scarf hung over a lamp on an end table next to the sofa—a nod to “mood lighting” that I remembered from my own undergrad days.
But the place was sparkling clean. A real plus for me, because although I’m not a stickler for decorative touches—empty walls, empty space is just fine by me—I can’t stand disorder, dirt, or even dust. Makes me physically queasy. Michy thinks it’s a reaction to my chaotic childhood and a mother who never let me so much as choose my own bedspread. I don’t particularly care about the reason. I just know that sitting in a dirty, messy room makes me itchy.
Phil gestured for us to have a seat on the living room sofa, and Diana went to the kitchen—just ten steps away—to unpack the groceries. He dropped down into one of the two beanbag chairs across from us. “So is he suing the school or something?”
If only. “Well, she lived off campus so . . . no.” But that raised another question I’d had. “By the way, don’t freshmen usually stay in the dorms?”
Phil nodded. “Alicia screwed up and applied for the dorms too late. Gayle and I are juniors.”
Diana, finished with the groceries, spoke as she came in and flopped down on the beanbag chair next to Phil’s. “I’m a freshman, but I couldn’t afford the dorm. Gayle’s mom met my mom during orientation, and she hooked me up with this place.”
I detected a defensive edge in Diana’s voice. I guessed that she was the girl from the poor side of town in this crowd. “So how’d you guys meet Alicia?”
Phil flipped his long bangs to the side and pulled a joint out of his jeans pocket. “As neighbors. We all moved in about two weeks before school started, and we kept bumping into each other at the Trader Joe
’s on Jefferson. We wound up having coffee and found out she lived only a couple of blocks away.” Phil lit the joint, took a deep drag, and held it out to me.
I shook my head. “Thanks, but it’s just a bad trip for me.” Like really bad. Like screaming, rolling-on-the-ground bad. Such a drag.
Phil held it out to Alex, but he declined, too. “I’m a control freak.”
Diana smiled and took the joint from Phil. “No shade. More for us.”
I turned to Phil. “Would you say you guys were her closest friends?”
Phil sighed. “We were close. But I’d say Nomie was her real BFF.”
I remembered seeing a name that seemed close to that on Alicia’s Facebook page. “Naomi Dreyfus?”
Diana blew out a stream of smoke and handed the joint back to Phil. “Yeah. They were super tight. Nomie’s a freshman, but she lives in the dorm. I think she met Alicia in English.”
Alex got her contact information. “Anyone else in your group?”
“Davey,” Phil said. “He’ll probably show up in a bit. Usually does. He’s a junior, lives on Denker.” He stood up. “Water? Or I think we might have some beer left.”
I thought I might be getting a contact high. I was thirsty as hell. And a little bit hungry. “Water sounds good.”
Phil looked at Alex, who nodded. “Water would be great, thanks.”
Phil brought back two bottles of Dasani. I took a long pull, then asked, “Did Alicia have any other possible enemies besides Roan?”
Phil answered emphatically. “None.”
Diana agreed, though less emphatically. “None that I knew of. She was so . . . sweet, you know? She was smart, really pretty, and she didn’t have to worry about money. I could see girls being jealous. But I didn’t know anyone who had it in for her. Other than that dick Roan.”
This opening was as good as any. “So you knew him?”
Phil put out the joint and snorted. “Unfortunately. He made the big push on Alicia in the first week of classes. Was always hanging around. I thought he was a freak from jump.”
“But a hot freak.” Diana pulled a cell phone out of her purse that lay on the floor next to her and scrolled, then held it out to us.
A photo showed a slender young man in low-slung jeans and a leather jacket leaning back against a brick wall with one of those sexy James Dean half smiles. He wasn’t just hot. He was fire. I saw Alex raise an eyebrow. “I get it.”
Diana nodded. “Right? But I smelled something ‘off’ about him. He was just so . . . intense. And he was all over her from the minute they met. It was way over the top.”
Alex looked puzzled. “But obviously, Alicia didn’t catch that. Did you guys warn her?”
“I think we all did,” Phil said.
Diana was exasperated. “The thing is, she was kind of naive, and she was super ready to cut loose. So I don’t think she appreciated anyone telling her what to do, no matter how right we might have been. I also think it was kind of an ego boost to have a guy act that nutso about her.”
Naive and ready to party. A very bad combination. And in this case, lethal. “So what happened? How did it all go downhill so fast?”
A flash of anger crossed Phil’s face. “He kept getting more and more demanding. He had to see her at least three times a week, then five, then every night—”
“And then he made her call him three times a day,” Diana said. “It was crazy. Plus, he was a junior, so he wasn’t navigating this place for the first time. It’s different when you’re a freshman and just figuring out how to deal with a huge campus, harder classes, and . . .” She waved a hand in the air. “A whole new everything.”
Phil spoke with sympathy. “And Alicia was really stressed. She had a crazy full schedule, and she said her folks would make her move back home if her GPA fell below a 3.5.” He shook his head. “So messed up to put all that on her.”
I had to agree. I got that Graham didn’t want her to throw keggers, but that really was a lot of pressure—even without a psycho boyfriend in the mix. “So she broke up with him?”
Diana rolled her eyes. “You’d think. But no, not really. She just told him she needed to focus on school for a bit, to take a breather so she could pull it together.”
Alex spoke quietly. “So he revenge porned her.”
“Yeah,” Phil said. “I mean, we didn’t know it at the time. I found out only after she . . .” His voice broke, and he paused for a moment. “I figure he had to have posted those photos just before he . . . he killed her.”
Diana nodded. “We think she must’ve confronted him, threatened to report it to the police.”
Confronting Roan sounded pretty gutsy—not something I’d have expected based on their descriptions of Alicia so far. “What makes you think Alicia confronted him?”
Diana gave Phil a puzzled look. “Didn’t someone say they saw her go to his place the night before she died? I thought I heard that.”
Phil nodded. “Me, too. But now I don’t know where.”
“Anyway,” Diana said. “I didn’t mean to give you guys the wrong impression. Alicia was naive and a really sweet person, but she was no cream puff. She definitely had the cojones to stick up for herself. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if she called Roan out for posting those photos. I know I sure would.”
And then he killed her. Because she’d threatened to turn him in? I couldn’t believe that was the driving motivation for her murder. Or at least, not the only one. If he’d been that afraid of getting busted for posting those photos, he wouldn’t have done it to begin with. My bet was he’d just lost his shit because she finally really dumped him for good after he posted those photos. Alex called himself a control freak, but Roan made Alex look like a jellyfish.
There was a knock on the door, and Phil went to get it. A blast of cold November air blew in. Normally, it would’ve made me cringe. I’m not good with cold weather. But the pot smoke still hung heavily in the air, and I badly needed to take a full breath. I gulped in the fresh—by downtown LA standards—air and felt my head clear.
A tallish young man in a gray pullover hoodie, jeans, and sandals—what the hell was up with these guys and their sandals in the middle of winter?—walked in. Phil introduced him. “This is Davey Moser.”
I introduced myself and Alex again and told him why we were there. Davey had light-brown hair that he wore short and neatly trimmed, and it framed a square-jawed face and brown eyes that tilted down at the corners, reminding me of a young Treat Williams. His initial polite smile dimmed with a look of worry when I explained I was representing Alicia’s father.
“What for?” Davey asked. “Is he in trouble?”
I’d given some thought to how I should answer that question. There was probably no point in being coy. When the cops identify a “person of interest”—whether they officially identify the party or not—it always manages to leak out. I’d lose their trust, and more importantly, their cooperation if I didn’t level with these kids. And since the universal attitude toward Roan seemed to be “nuke ’im,” I thought it was probably safe to tell the truth and hope they’d go the extra mile to help us out.
I shook my head. “Not yet. But the coroner hasn’t confirmed that Roan’s death was a suicide, so they’re not ruling out murder. And Graham has a pretty strong motive for killing him.”
Davey set his jaw and spoke with some intensity. “Don’t we all?”
That was certainly what I planned to tell the police.
SIX
Davey, who was a junior, said he had transferred to USC from Loyola Marymount because he eventually wanted to get an MBA, and USC had a much better program. “To be honest, it wasn’t so much about the education for me. It’s that everyone says you can get better business connects here.”
That squared with what my stepfather, Jack, had told me about USC. Davey’s views of Alicia and Roan pretty much echoed those of Diana and Phil. But he seemed to know Alicia pretty well, so I pressed a little further with him. “Is
it possible Alicia also broke up with Roan because she wanted to see other guys?” If so, and Roan knew it, that’d add to his motive to kill Alicia. But another guy in the mix might give me another suspect for Roan’s death.
Davey pulled one of the metal chairs from the dinette table next to Phil’s beanbag. I couldn’t help but think that chair would really hurt on a cold, early morning.
He paused for a moment before answering. “That wouldn’t surprise me. Alicia was like a cat that’d been kept in a cage all its life. She wanted to cut loose and do everything, just drink it all in. So, yeah. There might’ve been someone else. Maybe more than one. She is . . .” His face sagged, then he continued. “I mean she was so pretty.” He looked at me, his pain sincere. “But it wasn’t just that. She was a good person. And for real. Not, you know, syrupy-sweet.”
Phil clapped him on the back. “True story. When we first got to be friends, my mom had a heart attack, and my car was in the shop. Alicia not only drove me to the hospital, she stayed with me, held my hand the whole time during my mom’s operation.”
Diana nodded. “I got the flu over Thanksgiving break, and everyone else was gone. I don’t know how she even found out I was sick, but she came over and took care of me. Did my laundry, cleaned up the place, brought me chicken soup and meds.”
In memoriam stories always anoint the dead with saintly qualities, so I took these with a grain of salt. But one thing was perfectly clear: Alicia had no enemies here.
In any case, lovely as these stories were, they didn’t help me. I needed some specifics about Alicia’s actions in the days just before the murder. I threw out a question to the group. “Did any of you see Alicia in the last day or two before her . . . before she died?”
They exchanged bleak looks before Phil finally answered. “No. That’s mainly what we’ve been talking about. How she dropped off the radar completely for a couple of days before . . .”
Diana cleared her throat. “I saw her the night before she left the message for Roan about taking a break.” She paused and looked at Davey. “And you, too, Davey, right?” He nodded. “She told me what she really wanted to do was break up, but she felt bad. She thought maybe she should give him a chance to change, and she wanted to run it by me, get my input—”