by Marcia Clark
His expression told me I was going to like this. “How’re you going to top that?”
“I’m not. But I am giving him a dose of his own medicine. I Photoshopped his fugly face onto a great body—nude, of course—and posted the pics plus all his addresses on a bondage-and-discipline porn website with an invitation to bring whips and chains.”
Michy and I laughed. I had to admit, it was poetic justice. “You plan to tell him you’ll take it down at some point?”
Alex nodded. “As soon as he takes down his website. I have a feeling once he sees he’s not making any money, he won’t mind. But I’m going to make sure he understands that I’ll be tracking him for the rest of his life—just in case he thinks he can start up again under another name.”
I gave him a fist bump. “I friggin’ love it.”
Michy gave him a high five. “Laurie’s going to be so happy. You’ll have a fan for life.”
Alex’s smile softened. “I’m planning to tell her the minute his website goes down.” He looked at his fancy-shmancy watch. “We should get going. I told Davey we’d meet him at The Good Karma at ten thirty.”
I risked another bite of my doughnut. So far, my stomach seemed to be on board. “How come I didn’t know about this? And what’s The Good Karma?”
Alex looked confused. “I left you a message at home. It’s a café on West Thirty-Fourth, right by the school. Is something wrong with your phone?”
Damn. “No, just my head.” I remembered that I’d noticed the yellow message light blinking that morning, but in my post-adrenaline, fuzz-brained state, I’d forgotten to check. I tossed the remains of my doughnut—no sense pushing it—into the trash. “I’m ready.”
Michy put the cover on my cup of coffee and handed it to me. “For the road. What time do you think you’ll be back?”
I looked at Alex. “Around one?”
Alex nodded. “Maybe earlier.”
It had to be. Dale and I were supposed to see Tiffany later today, and I didn’t want to postpone the meeting. We couldn’t afford any more delays.
Alex grabbed a jacket, and we headed out. Alex drove, and we talked over our strategy for the interview. I told him I thought he should ask the “boy questions,” i.e., how Davey felt about Alicia.
Alex wasn’t so sure. “I’ll start. But I have a feeling he’ll be more open with you.”
Interesting. Alex was pretty good at reading people. “What makes you say that?”
Alex paused for a moment. “You know, I’m not sure. Just one of those vibe-y things.”
It was cloudy and windy, and although we only had to walk a couple of blocks, by the time we got to the restaurant, I was frozen to the bone. Davey was already there. He’d tucked into a lemon meringue pie. I was still hungry after having bailed on my doughnut, and the sight of it made my mouth water. I waved to him as I walked over. Alex stopped at the counter to get iced tea for himself and a hot tea for me.
I sat down. “Hey Davey, thanks for making the time.”
He pointed to the pie. “Thank you for a great breakfast—or actually, brunch, I guess.”
Alex came over with our drinks and asked Davey how his life was going. We chatted about that for a few minutes, then got down to business.
Alex told him that we’d heard Alicia played the field before hooking up with Roan. “We were wondering whether you ever went out with her?” Davey looked a little taken aback. Alex added, “I’m only asking because we’re looking for more insight, trying to figure out what was going on in her life apart from Roan.”
That seemed to satisfy him. “I never went out with Alicia. I mean, she was pretty and all, but I loved her like a friend. I felt kind of . . . protective of her.”
Alex gave a little nod. “Like a big brother.”
Davey’s tone was earnest. “Exactly. Alicia always knew she could come to me with any problems, and I’d always be there for her.”
Alex probed a little further. “What kinds of problems did she have?”
Davey’s mouth opened, then closed. He seemed flummoxed. “Oh, ahh . . . well, she sometimes partied a little too hard, and she’d get into sort of dangerous situations.” He shook his head. “Frat boys. I had to carry her out a couple of times.”
Alex told him we’d heard a few people say Alicia was a bit off the chain. “Would you agree?”
Davey gave a little shrug. “I guess. But a lot of kids go kind of nuts in the beginning of their freshman year.”
It was the most generous—and perhaps the most realistic—observation I’d heard yet. I wanted to nail down a suspicion I’d had. “Davey, do you think people are exaggerating the wild-child bit because of how she died?”
Davey paused for a moment. “You mean, like that might explain her . . . her murder?” I said yes. He nodded. “Very possible.”
The more we heard her friends spin tales of Alicia’s exploits, the more I’d begun to think that we might be getting an exaggerated account—and that there could be an aspect of self-preservation to it. It’d be reassuring to the others if they could point to something she did that might’ve led to her murder. That’s not to say she didn’t do a little swinging from the chandeliers. But I’d detected a tinge of melodrama in some of the descriptions. I’d wondered whether it was the somewhat typical adolescent tendency to romanticize the death of a peer—a kind of James Dean-ization that turned a mildly reckless, but largely just unlucky, friend into a larger-than-life rebel and glamorously edgy renegade. But as I’d mentally replayed our interviews with Alicia’s friends, it’d occurred to me that the answer might be much simpler and more elemental: her friends might’ve just needed an explanation for her murder that would make them feel safer.
I had another question. “Did Alicia ever tell you she thought someone might be stalking her?”
Davey looked upset. He pushed away his pie, unfinished. “She did.”
“Do you think it was true? I heard she pretty much dusted it off after a while.”
Davey frowned. “I totally thought it was true. From what she said, the guy showed up everywhere—too much to be a coincidence in my opinion. I think the only reason she eventually shrugged it off was because he never approached her or did anything bad. And she knew if her folks found out, they’d make her move back home. That was a very big deal for her.”
Davey seemed to be the only one who’d taken her fear seriously at the time. “Did you tell her to go to the police?”
He sighed. “I talked to her about it, but there wasn’t much to report. He never spoke to her, never threatened her, and she didn’t get any weird notes or anything. Like she said, it’s not a crime to follow someone.”
“Did you ever see him?”
Davey shook his head. “I never did.” He squinted at a point over my right shoulder. “I think she said he was medium height and he had . . . short hair?” He gave a frustrated sigh. “I can’t remember. Her description was so generic.” Davey’s expression was bereft. “He could’ve been anyone.”
I turned the questioning over to Alex, and he asked Davey whether he’d seen Alicia with any other guys or knew about any other men she might’ve dated, but Davey had no clue. He didn’t even mention Barth, the Italian cinema professor. That didn’t surprise me.
He may have been a big brother to Alicia, but there are some things a girl will only tell another girl.
As Alex was wrapping up, I got a text from Dale: We’re on to see our friend at 5:00 p.m. Meet me at my place.
A tiny sprig of hope grew in my heart. If Tiffany could give us a line on her sister, I wouldn’t have to go to the DA. That’d be great.
Because the move I’d finally come up with to pry information out of the prosecutor was risky as hell.
THIRTY-TWO
Dale lived in Porter Ranch. If I wanted to get there in time to make it to Redlands by five, I’d have to leave the office the minute we got back.
But I couldn’t tell Alex or Michy what I was really doing, so when we were abo
ut ten minutes away from home, I pretended to get an e-mail from the prosecutor on a robbery case in the San Fernando branch court. I waited until Alex pulled into the garage, then said, “I’ve got to go back out. Looks like the DA might be willing to cut me a deal on the Dobov case. Traffic to and from’s going to be a bitch, so tell Michy I’ll probably go home after that.”
Alex steered into his parking space. “Got it.” But he paused, one hand on the driver’s side door handle. “Say, what’d we decide to do about Professor Barth?”
I’d sort of tabled that angle. The fact that he had no alibi for the night of Roan’s death was intriguing, but I had no real reason to think he had a motive to kill Roan. His feelings for Alicia didn’t seem to run that deep. Still, we were under the gun, and nothing else seemed to be panning out. “Get what you can on him, see if you can find any threads to pull.”
He opened his door. “Will do. Oh, and I might have something for us on Dr. Mortimer.”
“Great.” I wanted to hear about that, but I had no time. I told him I’d call and check in when I was done, then I got into Beulah and headed for Porter Ranch.
Dale’s place was a charming Spanish-style house—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and it had an enclosed courtyard in front. He’d echoed the Spanish theme with ochre-colored tiles around the entrance on the outside, and on the inside he’d replaced the carpeted floors with matching ochre-colored tiles, thick throw rugs, and a chunky wood coffee table and end tables with black iron frames. The high ceilings, skylight in the living room, and the sliding-glass doors that led out to the small patio let in plenty of sunlight, so the overall feeling was airy and spacious.
And he kept it sparkling clean. Not just well dusted and dirt-free. I’m talking neat freak, perfectionist, T-squared positioning of the coffee table books, clean. Me, I’m into clean. I scrub floors and counters and all that jazz once a week. But I don’t mind leaving the occasional books, papers, or files lying around. On the rare occasion Dale visited me at my place, it made him nuts. So I made it a point to never straighten up before he came. It was my selfless contribution to helping him overcome his obsessive-compulsive issues.
Dale came out the moment I pulled into the driveway. He’d dressed down for the occasion and wore jeans and a long-sleeve black Henley. I’d be willing to bet he had the same philosophy I did: dress for your audience. Dale had said Tiffany was on welfare and had two small children. It’d be off-putting to wear a suit or a sports jacket, like he was some government worker looking for a reason to cut her benefits. That’s why I was similarly dressed in jeans and a blue pullover sweater.
Dale pointed to the garage, which was open and empty. “Go ahead and park there. We’ll take my car.”
He drove a white Lexus. It was, of course, sparkling clean. As I belted up, I asked, “You just buy this?” It still had remnants of that new-car smell.
Dale backed out of the driveway and headed for the freeway. “About two years ago. Why?”
This kind of neat-freak-itis just had to be a sign of some kind of personality disorder. “No reason.”
As he steered onto the 101 Freeway, we talked a little about what tack we should take with Tiffany and what we hoped to get from her. Then I filled Dale in on Graham’s case. “Any word on when we’ll get Roan’s official autopsy report?”
Dale moved into the diamond lane and pushed us up to more than eighty miles an hour. Cops are some of the most insane drivers simply because they can be. They know they’ll never get a ticket. “I’d say within a week or so.”
Just as I’d thought. I hoped Alex was coming up with something good on Dr. Mortimer. Or something bad on Professor Barth. I was anxious about Graham’s case, but at least—unlike the search for Tracy Gopeck—it didn’t pose the threat of death. I could tell Dale and I were both tense about our upcoming meeting with Tiffany, so I decided to lighten the mood. “How’d your date go the other night? You still trolling for talent among your crime victims?”
Dale had met—and begun dating—one of the two women he’d later been accused of murdering after he’d responded to her burglary call. I’d thought it was a bad idea to date crime victims, and I told him so at the time. And now I never miss a chance to slip in a dig about it.
Dale threw me a sidelong glare. “I know you think that never gets old. But it did. About two years ago. And I’d say you’re on pretty shaky ground here. Tell me, how’s your love life going?”
I was busted. I supposed I could brag about Niko, but two dates—actually more like one and a half—were nothing to brag about. “It’s going great. Never been better.”
Dale’s voice was sarcastic. “I’m very happy for you.”
It was a little past five when we got to Tiffany’s house, and the sun was almost gone. The neighborhood looked a lot like her mother’s—sadly. The tiny tract homes were run-down, the small patch of land in front of them that passed for a lawn was dirt, weeds, and random garbage—one old baby shoe, a shredded bicycle tire, an empty milk carton.
But unlike her mother’s ’hood, the cars parked in the driveways and on the street—though all compacts and subcompacts—were, for the most part, well tended. It was a common phenomenon in Southern California, where people are judged by the cars they drive.
The car parked in Tiffany’s driveway—a green Toyota Tercel—was no exception. It gleamed in the fading sunlight. Her house, on the other hand, looked like it hadn’t been painted in decades; sheets were tacked up in the front windows; and a rusty tricycle, a broken Hula-Hoop, and fast-food wrappers littered the weed-choked front lawn.
When Dale knocked on the door, I heard a baby squall. A woman called out in an irritable voice, “Just a minute!”
It took about that long for her to come to the door. The woman, whom I assumed was Tiffany, looked at us with weary eyes, the squalling baby on her hip now subdued by a pacifier. She blew a wisp of ink-black hair off her face and looked us over. Her eyes landed on Dale. “You the guy who called the other day about that program?”
Dale nodded and introduced me. We’d decided to use the same cover story we’d given Shelly, this time saying that we needed to talk to as much of the family as possible to determine whether Shelly qualified for our counseling services.
Tiffany invited us in and led us to the living room couch, which was just ten feet from the front door and covered in baby clothes, bottles, and pacifiers. The small, cluttered room smelled like burned SPAM and old milk. Bags of pretzels, Doritos, and an impressive array of empty beer bottles filled the small coffee table. “Excuse the mess,” Tiffany said over her shoulder, her tone casual. She cleared enough space for us to sit down on the couch and took a seat across from us in an armchair that was stained and worn.
She wore a bland expression that reminded me of her mother’s, but where Shelly’s seemed soft and hazy, Tiffany’s just seemed numb. She rocked the baby absentmindedly, as though she was on autopilot. Evidence of a hard life was etched on her weary face. She looked a lot older than any twenty-one-year-old I’d ever known.
I was surprised to see very little resemblance between Tiffany and what I’d seen of Tracy in the photos. Where Tracy had a soft, round baby face and straight blonde hair, Tiffany had high cheekbones, a strong chin, and wavy black hair. I noticed a slight resemblance in the almond shape of their eyes, which looked like Shelly’s. But whereas Shelly’s and Tracy’s eyes were hazel, Tiffany’s were brown. I looked around to see if there were any photographs of Tracy. The only ones I saw were of Tiffany with a toddler—who didn’t seem to be home right now—and Tiffany with a Hispanic man I assumed was her boyfriend.
I let Dale handle the preliminary routine questions about her family that went with our cover story. So we found out that her boyfriend, Jesus Jimenez, was a truck driver who was currently between jobs. He’d just taken their older daughter, Erin, out to the park. And we learned that Tiffany had moved out to live with him before she got pregnant.
That got my attention. I’d assumed the pre
gnancy was what made her move out. I saw Dale’s antennae go up, too. I stepped in. “Then you were about sixteen when you moved in with Jesus?”
Tiffany looked at me, then let her eyes slide past me. “Yeah.”
“How’d your mother feel about that?”
The bland look subtly hardened. “She didn’t have a say in the matter.”
I got the feeling that Tiffany and I had a lot in common. The question was, would she be willing to talk about it? I moved in slowly. “Had Benjamin moved in with you guys by then?” Tiffany nodded, and I could see she knew where I was going. I had to be careful not to push too hard or too fast. “I guess it got pretty crowded.”
The baby began to cry again. This time, Tiffany draped a small blanket over her shoulder, opened her blouse, and lifted a breast into the baby’s mouth. “Yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting it.”
I again offered her an opening. “What’s another way of putting it?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “That my home turned into fucking hell.”
I nodded. “Was it Benjamin?”
Tiffany took a deep breath and looked from me to Dale. “I’m only telling you this so the other kids can get some help.”
I had to squash the pang of guilt as I nodded again. “I understand, and I appreciate that.”
Tiffany exhaled and closed her eyes for a brief moment. “Benjamin was an asshole, but he didn’t try anything. At least not with me. It was his douche-bag son Ronnie. From the time they moved in, I never had one night of peace.”
My hands had curled into fists, and I was squeezing them so tightly my knuckles hurt. “I assume you didn’t feel like you could call the police.”
Tiffany’s voice was bitter. “You assume right. When I told my mother, she got into it with Benjamin, said Ronnie had to move out. But Benjamin took Ronnie’s side, of course. He said I was the one who came on to Ronnie. That I was just pissed because Ronnie turned me down.”
Such a familiar lie. Molesters—and their apologists—always put the blame on the victim. “What happened?” I asked. “Did your mother back down?”