by Marcia Clark
Diego made a dismissive wave. “The DA’s scared. He knows I’m going to put so many holes in that eyewitness, the jury’ll wonder what they’re doing there.”
The false bravado didn’t fool me. The truth was, the DA had an airtight case if Tracy didn’t go sideways. And no one would be afraid to go to trial against Diego Ferrara. He knew it, and I knew it. And that told me he also knew exactly why the DA was stalling.
I had no doubt whatsoever that Diego’s retainer would be doubled if he managed to find out where Tracy was before she got to court. And he wouldn’t give a damn what happened to her when he did.
Dale and I definitely had competition.
TWENTY-NINE
I told Diego I’d call him next week to arrange a meeting and talk further about merging our practices. He gave me a smile that said he liked the idea of merging in general. I tried not to roll my eyes and excused myself to go to the ladies’ room.
I’d intended to make good on my lie to Michy and really try to make some connections that might scare up some business, but after talking to Diego, all I could think of was Tracy Gopeck getting microwave ovened. I took the stack of business cards out of my clutch and left them on the receptionist’s desk.
I Ubered home and called Dale on my landline. I didn’t bother with “hello.” “We’ve got to move faster.” I told him about my chat with Diego.
Dale swore under his breath. “But I can’t say it’s a surprise. And being Maldonado’s lawyer, he’s got an inside track on what’s happening with the case.”
That was true. Since Diego was representing Maldonado, he was entitled to get discovery on an ongoing basis. That meant he had all the police reports. So we were running a lot blinder than he was. “Our only hope is that he doesn’t know what to do with what they’re giving him. But it’s sounding more and more like Tracy’s in protective custody.” I told him about Diego’s remark that the DA was stalling on giving him access to her.
I could hear Dale breathing. “It does. But I can’t get into the witness protection angle without getting noticed.”
That was going to have to be my move. “I’ll see what I can get from the prosecutor.” I paused. “Be nice if I could find a way to get him to give me access to her.”
Dale snorted. “How the hell do you think you’re going to do that?”
“I don’t know.” It was just wishful thinking. But you’ve gotta dream, right?
I heard the vacuum cleaner start up on Dale’s end. Our mutual go-to when we needed to solve a problem. “I’ll try and come up with something.”
“Me, too.”
We agreed to get together and brainstorm by Thursday if neither of us had any genius ideas before then. I spent what was left of the evening trying to come up with a brilliant lie that would persuade the prosecutor to take me to Tracy. The best I could come up with was to claim I’d been hired to deliver a hundred-thousand-dollar bequest from the deceased uncle Tracy never knew—and it had to be delivered to her in person. Pathetic. I looked at the clock. It was past midnight. I gave up and went to bed.
I’d hoped my brain would cough up a solution while I slept, but when I woke up the next morning, I still had nothing. My other hope was that Dale could line up someone for us to talk to, someone who could give us some daylight that’d help with our quest to get to Tracy, but I had no messages from him on my phone or in my inbox. I dragged into the office at nine o’clock, feeling like my legs weighed a hundred pounds each.
The minute I opened the door, I knew another bomb had dropped. The phones were ringing, and Michy was a ball of tension as she picked up one line and put the other one on hold. I waited for her to end the call she was on, then asked, “What the hell?”
“Did you listen to the news this morning?” I shook my head. “Dr. Cecil Mortimer came out with his report. He said Roan was murdered. His suicide was a setup. Mortimer claims he sat down with the county coroner to share his findings, and he’s sure that now the county coroner’s final conclusion will be that it was a homicide, not a suicide.”
“Exactly what I expected from that hack.” But I could feel my temples begin to throb. “Did the coroner respond? Or is it just Mortimer’s spin?”
Michy shook her head. “So far, it’s just Mortimer’s spin.”
That was good, but still. Hack or no, the media would definitely run with Mortimer’s report. And it was bound to ratchet up public opinion against Graham. I made a mental note to have Alex dig deeper into Mortimer and find something specific we could use to shred his credibility as I went to my office and turned on the television. The local Channel Four news was playing a clip that showed Audrey Sutton standing outside a house—hers, most likely—and talking to a group of reporters. She was full of righteous indignation. “. . . I said all along that Roan would never kill himself. And I was right! Now it’s time for the police to do their job and arrest Graham Hutchins!”
I changed the channel to see if I could find any clips of Dr. Mortimer or the county pathologist, but there weren’t any. They’d both probably just issued statements.
If the coroner did wind up agreeing with Mortimer, the cops would be on Graham’s doorstep in a heartbeat—at the very least to ask for another voluntary interview. I didn’t think they’d have enough to get a warrant—yet. But Mortimer’s challenge might provoke the coroner into working overtime to see if he’d missed anything. If he came up with something new and compelling enough, Graham could wind up in handcuffs. I needed to think of some moves, and fast. But first I had to call Graham and tell him about this, on the off chance he hadn’t already heard.
He had heard, and he was scared. “Can they arrest me now?”
“No. Mortimer’s just a hired hand. The cops aren’t going to do anything based on what he says.”
“But what if the coroner agrees with him?”
I could hear the panic rising in his voice. I made mine doubly calm even though that was my worry, too. “Even if he does, they don’t have enough to make an arrest. All they’ve got is that witness who claims she saw you knocking on the door earlier in the evening. And she wasn’t that solid.” I paused. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. If so, now’s the time to come clean.”
He cleared his throat. “N-no. There’s nothing. I swear.”
They always swear. And then I get blindsided. But Graham wasn’t my usual gangbanger / drug dealer / burglar. He was a lawyer, and he knew the importance of being honest with me. There was no point wasting my breath on a lecture he’d probably given to clients himself. “Okay, it shouldn’t happen, but if the cops ask you to come in for questioning, you refuse. You remind them that I’m your lawyer and that they need to go through me. Since they don’t have probable cause to arrest you, they can’t make you go anywhere. And you aren’t giving them any more statements.”
“But won’t that make me look guilty?”
“You let that be my problem.” He was right. Some people would definitely think so, no matter what I did. But I’d weed them out during jury selection. “And now more than ever, you need to watch out for reporters. Stay close to home and don’t go out unless you have to. And I don’t need to tell you to stay off the airwaves, do I?”
Graham sighed. “No. Maybe I should leave town.”
For a lawyer, he had alarmingly bad judgment about how to handle PR. But I guess corporate lawyers don’t usually have to worry about this kind of bad press. “No. Do not leave town. The press will have a field day. Just sit tight and let me do my job.”
When I ended the call, I went out and told Michy to give the press our usual party line: my client is innocent, and we intend to prove that he had nothing to do with . . . in this case, Roan’s death. “Is Alex in?”
The phones had finally slowed down. Michy sighed. “So in. He was already here when I got in at eight. Not that he doesn’t always work hard, but what is up with him?”
I’d noticed it, too. “I know he was working on tracking down the owner of the webs
ite where Laurie’s photos were posted, but that wouldn’t have taken him this long.” I shook my head. “He must be up to something.” I just hoped that if it was illegal, he wouldn’t get caught. He’d only just completed probation. “But whatever he’s doing, he’ll have to stop. We need to move a lot faster now. Graham might be just inches away from getting arrested.”
Michy was alarmed. “But I thought I heard you tell him the police didn’t have enough on him?”
“They don’t. But that could change any minute. And who knows what the coroner’s going to say?” Or what Graham might be hiding from me?
I went to Alex’s office and knocked. This time I didn’t even try to joke around. He called out for me to come in. When I opened the door, his grim expression told me he’d heard the latest news.
Alex said, “The only thing I can think of to do right now is to go see that strip-club owner.” He looked at his watch. “But it’s only nine thirty. I doubt he’ll be in before three or four.”
I paced in front of his desk. I didn’t want to wait. I needed to do something . . . anything. Now. But Alex was right. A club owner wouldn’t be in until the afternoon. “Is there anything on the Internet about Mortimer’s statement?”
Alex shook his head. “Nothing beyond what they’ve been reading on the news.”
I told him to go granular on Mortimer’s past. “I need something simple and graphic that’ll make him look like the clown he is.” I paced some more as I tried to come up with some other ideas. Much as I hated it, the only other thing I could think of to do right now was call Dale. “I’m going to see if I can squeeze any more information out of Dale. Speaking of which, what have you been working on night and day?”
He shrugged. “Just following up on some ideas.”
I should’ve known better. Alex didn’t like to let anyone see his work in progress. He’d let me know when he’d finished whatever it was, and it was polished, shining, and perfect. Until then, I could ask till I was blue in the face, and he’d just stonewall. “Okay, pick me up around two thirty and we’ll head out to The . . .” I made a face. “Pink Palace.”
Alex rolled his eyes with disgust. “I mean seriously. Why such a tacky name?”
I sighed. “Because they can.”
I went back to my office and called Dale. He answered on the first ring, his voice tight. Now, because of Cabazon, whenever we called each other, we both got edgy. I told him I was just calling to ask whether he had any skinny on Graham’s case.
He spoke in a low voice. “You can’t know this.” I promised I’d keep it to myself. “They’ve got touch DNA on the rope and on Roan’s body.”
Oh shit. Touch DNA—it comes from the skin cells people shed whenever they touch anything—could really ratchet up the pressure for us. The cops would be banging on Graham’s door to get a DNA swab any minute. “Where on his body?”
He whispered, “I don’t know. I just overheard Rusty telling the captain about it.”
I started to whisper, too. “Is the coroner going to cave and say it was a homicide?”
His voice got even lower. “I haven’t heard anything about that.”
This was bad. Really bad. “Are they talking about making an arrest?”
His voice suddenly returned to normal. “Not yet. So anyway, thanks for the call. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.
Someone must’ve just walked into his cubicle.
I paced around my office as I thought about this new intel. Foreign DNA on the rope—especially since it was touch DNA, as opposed to DNA from a bloodstain—didn’t necessarily mean anything. It could’ve come from anyone who’d used it in the past. Possibly even the person who’d sold it. Same thing with the DNA on Roan’s body. No matter where on his body they’d found it—even if it were on his neck—it could’ve come from anywhere. A scarf he’d worn after someone else borrowed it, a razor he’d shared with someone else—even his own hand: all he’d have to do is touch someone else’s skin, then touch his own neck.
But if any of that touch DNA wound up matching Graham . . . no question about it, he’d be toast. He wasn’t a friend of Roan’s. They didn’t hang out, share scarves, or share razors. It’d be hard to come up with an innocent explanation for finding his DNA anywhere on Roan’s body. So I had to make sure the cops never got the chance to take a DNA swab from Graham.
The possibility that a DNA comparison might get Graham off the hook was a nonstarter. Sure, he could be telling me the truth—he might really be innocent. But I didn’t win cases by assuming my clients were innocent.
No, the safest thing to do right now was to keep Graham quiet and out of harm’s way. And hope that either I could come up with a viable suspect or the cops would tag someone else for Roan’s murder. If they did come for him with an arrest warrant, I’d have to hope for the best.
But I needed to face facts. I was running out of time. If the coroner did change his preliminary findings and conclude this was a homicide, he’d probably take a little while to make it look good—but not long. I’d guess not more than a week. And the minute he made his change of heart official, the cops would be running hard to dig up probable cause to arrest Graham so they could get his DNA sample.
I was anxious to get moving. I looked at my skull clock. The little hand was hovering over its left eye socket. It was only ten thirty. But there was nothing else I could do on Graham’s case until it was late enough to go to that strip club, and pacing around my office wasn’t helping anything. For the time being, the best thing I could do was clear the decks and finish the most pressing work on my other cases. I had a sentencing memo and a trial brief on a ten-count burglary case that didn’t seem likely to settle.
I worked straight through the next four and a half hours and took only a brief break for lunch when Michy brought in Cobb salads for everyone. I was just putting the finishing touches on my trial brief when Alex came to get me at four o’clock. I’d thought we were going to leave earlier.
I picked up my coat. “Kind of late, don’t you think?”
“Actually, no. I doubt he’ll be there much before five, and I didn’t want to waste time waiting for him to show up.”
I told him Beulah was still in the shop, and he said he was very happy to drive. I ignored his insultingly eager tone. As we headed out, I told Michy we probably wouldn’t be back till six-ish and not to stay past five thirty. She promised she wouldn’t stay a minute later.
It was one of those pale-gray days, when the sky feels like an old, threadbare blanket and the sun never really appears. I hate days like that. I like the weather to make up its mind. Give us either bright sun or pouring rain—the in-between stuff depresses me. I brought Alex up to speed on what Dale had told me about the DNA—and the coroner’s likely decision to call Roan’s death a homicide.
He gripped the steering wheel and hit the gas a little harder. “Then we’ve got to come up with something pretty soon if we’re going to keep Graham out of jail.”
“Right.” Just hearing him say that made my stomach clench. I channeled my anxiety into the mission at hand. “What do you think about Alicia pole dancing? Assuming Phil’s right about that.”
Alex looked perplexed. “I get the whole ‘good girls gone bad’ thing and how she was spreading her wings or whatever. But it seems kind of over the top if you ask me. I mean, that can really be dangerous. What do you think?”
I was a little less skeptical about that than Alex. “I think Alicia was up for anything, the more risqué the better—to a point. So taking a pole-dancing gig for a little while does kind of make sense to me. Especially if she was only going on the nights when Diana was dancing, too. That’d make her feel safer. It’s like the Oxy. She had some pills, but she wasn’t addicted or even doing it very much. So, yeah. To me it all fits. It’s just another—more fun—way of cutting.”
Alex tapped the steering wheel. “That’s right. I’d forgotten about that.”
Twenty minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of
a run-down-looking building at the edge of the industrial section of Glendale. It used to be bright pink with a black door. Now, both colors had faded, and it was a very pale pink with a grayish door. The I in PINK had succumbed to time and weather, and the blank space made it look like “The Punk Palace.” I liked that name better.
It was five thirty, and the place was open, but no one was there. A jukebox was playing “Last Child” by Aerosmith. Great song. We found the owner behind the bar, getting the cash register ready for business. As we took in the cheap wooden tables and chairs, and the obligatory stage and pole, he called out to us in a thick Armenian accent. “Can I help you?” We walked over and introduced ourselves. He was a stout five foot eight, with a wispy comb-over, a black collared shirt that was open almost to his hairy Pooh Bear belly, a gold cross on a long necklace, and heavy gold rings on seven of his fingers. He said his name was Armand Bedigian. I told him we were there to talk to him about Alicia.
He reared back with a frown. “I can’t tell you anything about that poor girl’s death—may she rest in peace.” Armand set his jaw. “I run a clean shop, and I keep my girls safe.”
So she had been dancing here. Score one for the home team. I assured him we weren’t interested in making any complaints. “We just wondered if anyone here gave her a hard time.”
Armand counted out a fistful of five-dollar bills. I marveled at his confidence. We could’ve come here to rob him for all he knew, and we outnumbered him. Then I saw the shotgun next to the register. He finished counting, made a note, then put the money into a drop bag. His tone was less confrontational now that I’d assured him we weren’t here to blame him for anything. “She never told me anyone was bothering her.”
Alex sat down and leaned forward, his forearms on the bar. “But I bet you watch your girls pretty carefully. Did anyone catch your eye?”
Nice job, Alex. Way to feather in a compliment to grease the man’s memory.