Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020)

by Connelly, Michael

  “It’s just that I feel like this is where we’ve come to,” I said. “Fake news, enemy of the people, the president canceling subscriptions to the Washington Post and New York Times. The LAPD thinks nothing of just throwing a reporter in jail. At what point do we take a stand?”

  “Well, this would not be the time,” Myron said. “If we’re going to take that stand then we have to do it when we are one hundred percent clean, so there are no comebacks from the police or the politicians who love seeing journalists thrown in jail.”

  I shook my head and dropped the argument. I couldn’t win and the truth was I wanted to get back to the story more than I wanted to take on the LAPD.

  “All right, fuck it,” I said. “What did Emily say she has?”

  “She didn’t,” Myron said. “She just said she got good stuff and was heading up to the office. I figure that after we finish here we’ll go meet with her.”

  “Can you drop me at my apartment first? My car’s there and I want to take a shower before I do anything else.”

  “You got it.”

  My phone, wallet, and keys had been confiscated during the booking process. When they had been returned upon my departure I stuffed them back into my pockets in a hurry because I wanted to get out of that place as soon as I could. It became clear that I should have looked more carefully at the key chain when Myron dropped me off in front of my building on Woodman. The key to the front gate was on the ring, as well as the key to the Jeep, a storage locker in the garage, and a bike lock. But the key to my apartment was missing.

  It was only after I rousted the live-in property manager from a post-lunch nap and borrowed the management copy of the key that I got into the apartment. Once in, I found a copy of a search-warrant receipt on the kitchen counter. While I was in a jail cell the night before, Mattson and Sakai were searching my apartment. They had most likely used my trumped-up obstruction case as part of the probable cause for the search. I realized that was probably their goal all along. They knew the case would get kicked but they used it with a judge to get into my home.

  My anger quickly returned and again I took their action as a direct assault on my rights. I pulled my phone and called the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division and asked for Mattson. I was transferred.

  “Detective Mattson, how can I help you?”

  “Mattson, you better hope I don’t solve this before you because I will make you look like the piece of shit you are.”

  “McEvoy? I heard they turned you loose. Why are you so mad?”

  “Because I know what you did. You booked me so you could search my place, because you are so far up your ass on this case you wanted to see what I had.”

  Looking at the search-warrant receipt I saw that they did not list a single item being taken.

  “I want my key back,” I said. “And whatever you took from here.”

  “We didn’t take anything,” Mattson said. “And I have your key right here. You are welcome to come by anytime and pick it up.”

  I suddenly froze. I wasn’t sure where my laptop was. Had Mattson taken it? I quickly reviewed the evening before and realized I had left my backpack in the Jeep when I decided to go up to the front curb to check my mailbox. I’d been intercepted there by Mattson and Sakai.

  I grabbed the search-warrant receipt and quickly checked to see if the search was authorized for my home and vehicle. My laptop was fingerprint- and password-protected but I assumed it would be easy for Mattson to go to the cyber unit and have someone hack their way in.

  If Mattson got into my laptop he would have everything I had and know everything I knew about the investigation.

  The search warrant was only for the apartment. I would find out in the next thirty seconds if there was a second warrant waiting in my car.

  “McEvoy, you there?”

  I didn’t bother responding. I disconnected the call and headed for the door. I went down the concrete steps to the garage and quickly crossed to my Jeep.

  My backpack was on the passenger seat where I remembered putting it the day before. I returned to my apartment with the backpack and dumped its contents on the kitchen counter. The laptop was there and it appeared that Mattson had not gotten to it or the case notes. The rest of the contents of the backpack seemed to have been untouched as well.

  The relief that came from not having my work and my emails rifled through by the police came with a wave of exhaustion, no doubt due to my sleepless night in jail. I decided to stretch out on the couch and catch a half-hour nap before going into the office to meet with Myron and Emily. I set a timer and was asleep within a few minutes, my last waking thought about the men I had been bussed to the courthouse with that morning, all of them most likely back in their cells now in a place where just closing your eyes made you vulnerable.

  17

  I was disoriented when I woke. I had been stirred from a deep sleep by the sound of a leaf blower outside. I checked my phone for the time but it was dead, having spent the night in a jail property room rather than on a charger. I had no doubt slept through my allotted thirty minutes. I didn’t wear a watch since I usually carried the time on my phone. I got up and stumbled into the kitchenette, where I saw it was 4:17 on the oven. I had been out more than two hours.

  I had to plug my phone in and wait for it to get enough charge for the screen to activate. I then texted Myron and Emily on a group text and explained my delay. I asked if it was too late to meet and the response was immediate: Come to the office.

  Twenty-five minutes later we met.

  The text Emily had sent Myron earlier was correct. She had gotten good stuff on William Orton down at UC–Irvine. We met in the FairWarning conference room and she laid out what she had found.

  “First of all, none of this is on the record,” she said. “If we want to use it we need to find independent verification—which I think will exist at the Anaheim Police Department, if we can find a source there.”

  “How good is your source at the school?” Myron asked.

  “She’s an assistant dean now,” Emily said. “But four years ago when all of this went down she was the assistant to the coordinator of the Title IX unit. Do you know what Title IX is, Jack?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the sexual violence and harassment protocol for all schools that get federal money.”

  “Correct,” Emily said. “So my source told me off the record and on deep background that William Orton was suspected of being a serial abuser of his students, but they never got the goods on him. Victims got intimidated, witnesses recanted. They never got a solid case against him until Jane Doe came along.”

  “Jane Doe?” I asked.

  “She was a student—a biology major—who took classes from Orton and claimed he had roofied her and then raped her after a chance encounter at a bar in Anaheim. She came to naked in a motel room and the last thing she remembered was the drink with him.”

  “What a creep,” Myron said.

  “You mean what a criminal,” Emily said.

  “That too,” Myron said. “What happened? Jane Doe change her mind?”

  “No, not at all,” Emily said. “She was solid. And smart. She called the police that night and they got a rape kit and took blood. Orton used a condom during the assault but they got saliva off her nipples. They were building a solid case against this guy. The tox on Jane came back with flunitrazepam, better known as Rohypnol, the date-rape drug. They had a solid witness in the victim and they were good to go with a case. They were just waiting on the DNA.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The DNA typing was done by the Orange County Sheriff’s Lab,” Emily said. “The saliva came back as no match to Orton.”

  “You’re kidding,” Myron said.

  “I wish,” Emily said. “It killed the case. It cast doubt on her story because she had said under questioning that she had not been with another man for six days. An investigator with the District Attorney’s Office down there then dug up a number
of prior sex partners Jane Doe had been involved with. It all added up to the DA passing. They wouldn’t touch it without the direct DNA link.”

  I thought about what Jason Hwang had said about the DRD4 gene. The Orange County DA had dismissed Jane Doe as promiscuous and therefore not believable enough to support the case at trial.

  “You said it was a chance encounter,” I said. “Was there any more on that? How did they know it was a chance encounter?”

  “I didn’t ask that,” Emily said. “They just said it was random, you know. They ran into each other in a bar.”

  “Did the saliva match anybody else?” I asked.

  “Unknown donor,” Emily said. “There was a rumor going around at the time that Orton, being a DNA researcher, had somehow altered his own DNA to prevent the match.”

  “Sounds like science fiction,” Myron said.

  “It does,” said Emily. “According to my source, they ran the test at the sheriff’s lab a second time and it came back again as a negative match.”

  “What about tampering?” Myron asked.

  “It was suggested, but the Sheriff’s Department stood by the lab,” Emily said. “I think any indication that there was an evidence-integrity problem would endanger every conviction that relied on that lab for evidence analysis, and they weren’t going to go down that road.”

  “And Orton walked away,” I said.

  “To a degree,” Emily said. “There was no criminal case, but there was enough smoke because of Jane Doe’s unwavering story, even in the face of the DNA, for the school to go after Orton under the employee-conduct policies. Their mandate wasn’t criminal. They needed to protect other students at the school. So they quietly negotiated his exit. He kept his pension and a cloak of silence was dropped over the whole thing.”

  “And what happened to Jane Doe?” I asked.

  “That I don’t know,” Emily said. “I asked my source whom she dealt with at Anaheim PD and she could only remember that the detective who handled it had a perfect name for a detective: Dig.”

  “First or last?” I asked.

  “She said first,” Emily said. “She described him as Latino so I am assuming the first name is Digoberto or a variation of that. It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.”

  I nodded.

  “So,” Myron said. “Orton gets shown the door at UC–Irvine and just sets up shop in a private lab down the road. He got off easy.”

  “He did,” Emily said. “But like my source told me, their big concern was getting him out of the school.”

  “What about that rumor about changing his DNA?” I asked. “Is that even possible?”

  “I did a little bit of research while waiting for you to show up,” Emily said. “Gene-editing technologies are advancing every day but they are not at the point—and certainly not four years ago when this happened—where you can change your entire code. What happened with the Jane Doe case is a mystery. According to my source, Jane Doe had a lawyer ready to sue Orton and the school. His office conducted its own testing on the sample and got the same result. No lawsuit was ever filed.”

  All three of us were silent for a moment before Myron spoke.

  “So what’s next?” he asked.

  It was my story and I wanted to be protective of it, but I had to acknowledge that Emily Atwater had moved it along in a big way.

  “Well, one thing we have to remember is that William Orton is a shady figure, but what Jack is pursuing does not touch him—yet,” Emily said. “It bears further reporting but let’s look at where we are. The four victims we know about were GT23 participants. It is possible but not yet proved that their DNA could have been sold to Orton’s lab for his research purposes. Now add in that Orton appears to be a sexual predator and it all gets more interesting. But we have nothing concrete that connects one with the other.”

  “Exactly,” Myron said. “I’m wondering how far we go with this without a stronger connection.”

  Myron looked at me, which I took as a good sign. It was still my story and he wanted to hear from me.

  “I think it’s part of throwing out the net,” I said. “We have to see what comes up. I think the thing to do is try to get inside Orange Nano and talk to Orton. Maybe get a feel for him from a direct contact. I’m not sure how to do that, though. I don’t think we should call up and say we’re looking into the murders of four women. We need another way in.”

  “I was thinking about that,” Emily said. “Again, waiting for Jack today I was looking around for anything I could find on Orton and I found one listing for him in an annual report for the Rexford Corporation. He’s a member of the board.”

  “What’s Rexford do?” I asked.

  “Primarily, it’s hair products for men,” Emily said. “With an emphasis on alopecia—hair loss. It is on the rise in both genders and within five years is expected to be a four-billion-dollar industry.”

  “Orton’s trying to cure it,” I said.

  “My guess, too,” Emily said. “If he can discover or create the genetic therapy that cures it or even slows it down, then just think what that would be worth. He’s on the Rexford board because the company is funding his research and that could be our way in.”

  “We say we’re looking into hair loss?” I asked.

  “We follow the money,” Emily said. “Billions are being spent each year but there is no cure—not now. We go in with the consumer angle: How many of these treatments are worthless and where are we on the genetic cure? We play to Orton’s ego, say we heard that if anybody is going to make the breakthrough, it’s you.”

  It was a good plan, only marred by my wish that I had thought of it first. I said nothing and Myron looked at me.

  “What do you think, Jack?” he asked.

  “Well, this alopecia research is new to me,” I said. “Jason Hwang told me that Orton was studying addiction and risky behaviors. Going bald is not connected with either—as far as I know.”

  “That’s how these researchers work,” Emily said. “They get a ride on a Big Pharma ticket to do research in one arena and it funds their other research, the stuff that really holds their interest. Rexford is paying for the research they want but funding the research Orton wants.”

  I nodded.

  “Then I think it’s a good idea,” I said. “That’s our way in. Maybe we go through Rexford first. Get their corporate PR people to set it up, make it harder for Orton to say no—especially if he’s got something hinky going on down there.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Emily said. “I—”

  “I’ll call first thing in the morning,” I said. “Try to get it set.”

  “Tell them there will be two of you on the interview,” Myron said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I want you both to go down there,” Myron said.

  “I think I can handle it,” I said.

  “I’m sure you can,” Myron said. “But for security reasons I want you both to go. Emily, take the Canon and you can take photos.”

  “I’m not a photographer,” Emily protested.

  “Just take the camera,” Myron said.

  “What about Anaheim PD?” Emily asked. “You want us to tag-team that too?”

  “I was going to go down there tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll find Detective Dig.”

  Emily said nothing. I was expecting a protest, with her claiming it was her lead, but she didn’t make one.

  “Okay, fine, you go, Jack,” Myron said. “But listen, I don’t want this to be a competition. Work together. I’m devoting half our staff to this. We can’t waste time. Find out if there is something there and if not, get out and move on to the next story.”

  “Got it,” Emily said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The meeting broke up after that and we returned to our respective work stations. The first thing I did was call the Anaheim Police Department and try to get a line on Dig. This turned out to be easy. I asked for the detective bureau and asked the
woman who answered, “Can I speak to Dig?”

  “I’m sorry, Detective Ruiz is gone for the day. Can I take a message?”

  “No, that’s okay. Will he be working tomorrow?”

  “He is, but he’s signed out to court all day. Do you want to leave a message?”

  “No, I guess I’ll see him at the courthouse. That’s the rape case?”

  This was an educated guess based on Ruiz working the Jane Doe/Orton case.

  “Yes, Isaiah Gamble. Who can I tell him called?”

  “That’s okay. I’ll see him there tomorrow. Thank you.”

  After disconnecting, I pulled up the Orange County District Attorney’s Office website and plugged the name Isaiah Gamble into the search window. This led me to an extract on the case—abduction and forcible rape—and the courtroom it was assigned to in the courthouse in Santa Ana. I would be good to go in the morning.

  I was writing the information down in a notebook when I was interrupted by a text from Rachel Walling.

  You want to get a drink tonight?

  It came out of the blue. I drop in on her unannounced for the first time in more than a year and the next day she wants to have a drink. I didn’t wait long to reply.

  Sure. Where? What time?

  I waited but there was no immediate reply. I started packing up for the day, shoving into my backpack everything I might need in Orange County the next day. I was about to get up and leave when I got the return message from Rachel.

  I’m in the Valley. I could meet now or later. How about that place you met Christina? I want to see it.

  I stared at my phone’s screen. I knew that she meant Mistral. That seemed a bit weird but maybe there was going to be more to the meeting than a drink. Maybe Rachel had changed her mind about my proposal to her. I texted back with the name and address and told her I was on my way.

  I went by Emily Atwater’s cubicle on my way out. She looked up from her screen.

  “I located Dig,” I said. “His last name is Ruiz. He’s going to be in court tomorrow on another case.”

  “That’s perfect,” Emily said. “You should be able to get to him there.”