Guardian of Lies: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  They asked specifically whether she had ever been to my office on a legal matter regarding business. I told them no. They asked if I’d ever been to the house where she was living with Emerson Pike in Del Mar. Again I told them no. So there was no lawyer-client relationship? No. That opened the floodgates. What did we talk about? They wanted to know every detail. When I explained the quixotic manner of my meeting Katia, in the market that morning two weeks ago, and our conversation over coffee immediately afterward, they seemed to back off.

  And that was the only time you met or talked with her? Yes.

  Of course, by then it didn’t matter. It was too late. Someone, somewhere leaked to the media that a lawyer’s business card identifying me by name was found in the suspect’s purse. It has been all over the local news for twenty-four hours, the breathless nonstory of the lawyer who may be involved. So now Harry wants to know what the cops know. It has become a game of lawyers’ tag, and for the moment it seems that I am It.

  So this morning we are busy pulling together the details, the few things that we think we know, how the police caught up with Katia in Arizona on a bus halfway to Houston, where she was headed. According to the newspapers, because the police have not officially confirmed it, they tracked Katia from a cell phone signal, a phone she had stolen from the man she was living with, her friend, the coin dealer who now is dead, along with his household maid. This is the basis for all this unpleasantness and one more reason why you might want to think twice before shopping for bananas on a Saturday morning in Del Mar.

  I must admit that I never connected Katia by name with the crime until the police knocked on my office door. There is enough crime in this part of the state that one more murder, more or less, doesn’t always catch your attention, even if it’s blaring from the evening news. But after the cops left, I went diving for the papers, everything I could find in print since the night Emerson Pike was killed.

  Using the public defender, Katia is to be arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder tomorrow morning. At the moment, I’m not sure that we can help her. The mountain of incriminating evidence seems almost overwhelming. Harry and I have consulted the public defender to ensure that we are not stepping on toes. We have established an attorney-client relationship for the purpose of evaluating whether we might take the case. For one of those nefarious reasons that lawyers sometimes seize upon, the public defender was quite happy to have us do this. Why? Because, if nothing else, it will keep me off the stand as a witness.

  Katia’s lawyer can’t be sure what his client may have said to me the day we met or how such an innocuous and innocent episode might be dressed up or drawn out to look incriminating if I were forced onto the stand; the specter of another older man being hustled by the young, alluring suspect. The best way to inoculate Katia from this is to draw me into the case. Once I talk to her, even tangentially, as lawyer to client, my testimony is verboten. The prosecution probably couldn’t even get my business card into evidence.

  Katia seems happy, even if surprised, to see me. Why she didn’t think to use my business card to call, I’m not sure. And I don’t ask.

  “I guess we should start at the beginning, why you took the bus?” says Harry.

  This isn’t exactly the beginning I might have started with, wondering instead how she met Emerson Pike and how their relationship developed. But I leave it to Harry for the moment.

  “If you wanted to return to Costa Rica, why not fly?” says Harry. “There are direct flights to points south out of San Diego.”

  “I couldn’t,” she says. “The first place Emerson would have looked for me was the airport.”

  “Emerson Pike was dead,” says Harry.

  “I did not know that. All I know is that he was alive when I left the house.” She looks at me on this. “You must believe me. I knew he would follow me. And the first place he would go would be the airport in San Diego. Besides, I didn’t have enough money to take a plane.”

  “Let’s talk about that, the money,” says Harry. “Pike’s wallet, the one the cops found on the bed, had your fingerprints on it. Did you know that?”

  She shakes her head no, and then says, “Of course. I am not surprised. I took the money from his wallet. I already told the police that. I needed the money for the, how do you say? The boleto.”

  “The ticket,” I say.

  “For the boose.” She is talking about the bus. “It was the only way I could get away from Emerson. He wouldn’t give me money. And he wouldn’t let me go.”

  Harry is standing less than two feet from her, one foot on a chair, looking down at her. This is one of his favorite postures when he’s visiting someone in jail and wants answers. “Why wouldn’t he let you go?”

  “I don’t know.” She looks at him, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. I asked him, over and over again. But he refused to tell me. He said he loved me. But I know that wasn’t true.”

  My partner shoots me a cynical glance. Harry is thinking, older man, younger woman, the oldest reason on earth.

  Katia’s darting eyes vacuum up Harry’s thoughts. “No. Es not that,” she says. “It’s something else. It’s something to do with the pictures. I’m sure.”

  “What pictures?” I ask.

  She spends several minutes telling us about the photographs taken by her mother in Colombia the year before and the fact that Emerson Pike seemed to be obsessed with these the moment he found them in her camera. She tells us that it was then that Pike first suggested they take a trip north to the States to stay at his house near San Diego, and about Emerson’s wizardry in obtaining a short-order visa for her, as if on demand.

  Harry has a puzzled look. “How long did you say the visa took?”

  “Three days.”

  Harry makes a note. “Easy enough to check it out,” he says.

  Katia tells us about her mother who, as far as she knows, is still down in Colombia, visiting relatives. Emerson was having Katia call home every day, checking to see if her mother had gotten home yet, back to Costa Rica. According to Katia, although she can’t prove it, she is certain that Emerson was not going to take her back to Costa Rica until Katia’s mother was back there, and maybe not even then. Emerson Pike’s captive. This may be the best defense she has, perhaps the only one.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police, or the Costa Rican consulate?” I ask. “If you’d gone to them, you wouldn’t be in this mess now. They would have provided assistance. You know that.”

  She looks at me sheepishly. “I couldn’t be sure of that. Emerson was a powerful man. He had a great deal of money. He would have friends in the police. Look at how quickly he was able to get the visa for me to come here.” She has every explanation in the book for not making two simple phone calls.

  “Did he ever hit you?” Harry plumbs the depths and comes up empty.

  “No.”

  “Did he ever lock you up, confine you anywhere?”

  “No. But I think he was going to. If he knew I was trying to leave.”

  “But he never did it?”

  “No. He would not let me have cash. He took money away from me whenever he found it. And then he would send money to my family in Costa Rica. It made no sense unless he was trying to keep them quiet and keep me here against my will.”

  “Did you tell him you wanted to leave, to go back to Costa Rica?”

  “Almost every day. Sometimes several times a day.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He made excuses. Next week. Next month. Two weeks from now, and then he would change the subject.”

  “Did you think of going to the police?” Harry knows this is the first question the prosecutor will ask if they get Katia on the stand.

  “No. But if I had to, I would have. He knew it.”

  “These pictures,” I ask, “the ones your mother took, why would they be of concern to Emerson?”

  “That’s what I wanted to know. He wouldn’t tell me,” she says.

  “Where are the pictures now?”

  According to Katia, the police have them. They were in her bag the day they
arrested her. She and Emerson had argued over the photographs the night she left. He had finally given them back to her and she had stashed them in her overnight bag before she left the house.

  “That brings us to the bag,” says Harry. “What else was in there?” Harry already knows, but he wants to hear what Katia has to say.

  “You mean the gold coins and the stubs from the pawnshop dealer? I already told them all about it.” Katia is talking about the police and her earlier statements to them.

  Her plan was simple. When she flew into the country with Pike coming north, they landed and changed planes in Houston. She knew she could get back home from there. She also knew she had enough money from the cash in Pike’s wallet the night he was killed for a one-way bus ticket from San Diego to Houston. She had gathered the bus fare information off the Internet when Pike wasn’t looking.

  According to Katia, the gold coins she took from Pike’s study were to cover the cost of an airline ticket from Houston home to Costa Rica. The exact cost of the airfare was less certain. She couldn’t be sure. But she knew one thing. She needed time to cash out the coins. According to Katia, the bus ride would give her that time, all the while putting distance between herself and Emerson Pike. While he was searching the airport for her, she would be gone. She fenced some of the coins at a pawnshop in a small town in western Arizona just hours before the police caught up with her. The pawn tickets were still in her purse, along with the cash. When they stopped her, Katia thought she was being arrested for theft.

  One thing was clear, if anyone should be in jail it was the pawnshop owner. Katia had no idea of the value of what she was selling. According to expert appraisals, she had pawned more than thirty thousand dollars in rare coins and had received just over fourteen hundred dollars in cash, far less than the gold content of the coins she’d sold.

  “What happened to the rest of the coins?” says Harry.

  “They were in my bag,” she says.

  “No. No, I mean the other two hundred and eighty-six coins. That’s what the police are estimating is gone, the ones from the drawers. The ones you broke into.”

  Katia gives me a puzzled look, then back to Harry. “I didn’t go near any of the drawers. I didn’t need to. I took only what was on the desk. There were nineteen coins and twelve others in two plastic sheets. I counted them carefully on the bus when no one else was looking, down inside my bag. I am sure. This is not a question. I took no other coins,” she says.

  According to the police there was almost half a million dollars in coins missing from Emerson Pike’s study the night he was murdered. “You’re sure you don’t want to think about this?” says Harry. “Where you might have put them?”

  “I am sure.” Katia looks at him, indignant. “I know what I took and what I didn’t take.” She looks at me, imploring. “That proves it, don’t you see? Someone else was there. Besides, I didn’t have time to take anything more even if I’d wanted to.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Emerson was in the shower. I could hear the water running. I knew he would be coming out any moment. I didn’t have time to take anything else. It was all I could do to grab the coins on the desk and write the note. I barely got out the door as it was.”

  “What note?” I ask.

  She looks at me, puzzled. “I already told the police about it. The note I left for Emerson, the one on his desk. I told him I was taking some coins, but only enough to get back home to Costa Rica, and please not to follow me. I told him that if he did I would go to the police.”

  This leaves Harry and me looking at each other. We have a list of items found by investigators at the scene, supplied by the police to the public defender’s office, part of early discovery. Harry flips through the list, running his finger down each page. When he finishes the last page, he looks up at me and shakes his head.

  “There was no note, Katia. The police didn’t find any note,” I tell her.

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “Has anyone explained to you what the investigators found at the scene?”

  She shakes her head. Katia is in the dark. Even the public defender hasn’t told her everything.

  “They found Emerson Pike’s body on the floor in the study. The maid, did you know her?”

  Katia nods.

  “She was stabbed to death downstairs. They found her body at the foot of the stairs, near the dining room.”

  “Poor lady. Emerson called her to come to work that evening,” she says, “to clean up after I cooked. It was late. She didn’t want to be there. You remember?” She looks at me. “The plantains.”

  “Yes.”

  “I prepared the meal that afternoon. The guests came and left. Only two couples. Emerson wanted her to clean up.” Katia’s talking about the maid. “I told him it could wait until morning. But he refused, said no, and he called her.” She slumps back into the hard metal chair, realizing for the first time the enormity of what has happened.

  The police have questioned the guests, but according to the reports, they know nothing.

  “There were fourteen drawers of coins.” Harry eases off the subject. “The locks on the drawers were broken, and according to the police all of those coins are missing.”

  “I didn’t take them,” she says.

  “I know.” Harry is starting to believe her. It’s the problem of there being almost too much evidence, when all the ducks line up too neatly.

  “Both Pike and the maid were stabbed with a knife from the kitchen downstairs,” he says. “The police found it. There were no fingerprints on the weapon. Whoever used it washed and dried it, then left it on the sink. There was just a single tiny spot of blood near the handle. What they call a trace. The blood matched that of the maid.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “The police are assuming that whoever killed Emerson fled down the stairs and ran into the maid. They may not have wanted to kill her, but they panicked. They had to kill her in order to escape.”

  “What does this have to do with me? I didn’t go out that way. I went out through the garage, down the back stairs. I had to use the remote control from Emerson’s car to open the gate.”

  “And how do we prove that?” says Harry.

  “My fingerprints. They must be on the door to the garage,” she says.

  “Unfortunately, your prints are all over the house,” says Harry. “You lived there for several weeks. Even if we found your prints on the back door, there’s no way to prove when they were placed there. It could have been that night, or it could have been two weeks earlier.”

  You can see the hope as it dies in Katia’s eyes. Then another spark: “The remote,” she says. “The one for the gate out in front. I threw it into some bushes off the road. We can find it,” she says. “It will prove that I went to the garage, into the car.”

  “Even if we could find it, all that proves is that you left by the gate,” says Harry. Harry knows, as I do, that the state’s theory of events following the murders will be highly malleable, sufficiently pliable to embrace a number of different avenues of escape. They will have already identified several problems with the evidence. Not only was the murder weapon, the knife from the kitchen, cleaned and lying on the counter for the world to find, but no fingerprints were found on the front door, just smears of blood around the doorknob. This is in fact not uncommon at bloody crime scenes. In a frantic headlong escape a clear, readable print is more often the exception rather than the rule.

  And it gets worse. Emerson Pike’s body was found with two major wounds, one in the back that was by all accounts fatal, causing shock and massive bleeding. The second wound is the problem. Harry tries to explain this to Katia, who seems dazed by the details, all of which seem to drift in a vicious circle ultimately coming back to point at her.

  “The second wound,” says Harry, “was postmortem, inflicted, done after Pike was already dead. The police are saying this second wound was the result of anger on the part of the killer.”

  “I don’t understand,” she says.

  “They have to explain
to the jury why anyone would bother to stab a person who is already dead,” I tell her.

  “It’s sick,” she says. “A person who would do that es loco, crazy.”

  “We can hope but I don’t think the DA will go quite that far,” says Harry. “They might go as far as angry, maybe mad as hell, but crazy is one we’d have to prove ourselves. What is more likely is that their shrink is going to say the killer was trying to send a message to the dead by leaving one of Pike’s expensive toys sticking out of his chest.”

  Harry gives her a moment. He stands there watching her, waiting to see, if given this mental image, she might suddenly crack and come clean.

  She shakes her head, shrugs a shoulder. “Cómo se dice ‘shrink’?” she says.

  “A psychiatrist,” I tell her.

  “Ah.”

  “Head doctor,” says Harry. “You understand that the police will put one on the stand to testify?”

  “I see. Yes.”

  “Well. He may tell the jury that in his opinion the second wound was intended as an angry message to Emerson Pike after he was dead that he had too much money. That perhaps he wasn’t sharing enough of it with his killer.”

  She sits there, eyebrows furrowed and a puzzled expression. If Harry is touching any sensitive nerves, you wouldn’t know it.

  “There is nothing you want to tell us?” says Harry.

  She shakes her head, looks at me.

  “Okay.” Harry expels a big sigh. “The weapon the police found sticking out of Emerson Pike’s chest was a very expensive dagger,” says Harry. “Word is, he used it as a letter opener.”

  With this Katia’s face lights up like a lantern. “Yes, I remember it,” she says. “It was on his desk.”

  “Is that where it was the last time you saw it?” I ask. “On the desk?”

  “Yes.” But as she says this, a dark expression crosses her face.

  “The police found a set of latent fingerprints on the dagger’s handle,” says Harry. “Guess who they belong to?”

  “No. No. No—no.” Frantic eyes, Katia looking first at Harry, then back to me. “No.” As if by saying it enough times she can make the dagger and the prints vanish. For several seconds she seems to struggle for breath. One hand to her stomach, as if Harry’s words have squeezed every ounce of air from her lungs, like a bellows.