“Yeah, that’s what I thought. And also, I wanted to say sorry if it seems like I’m being a dick.”
“No, you aren’t. It was your story. I get it.”
I nodded.
“Thanks for understanding,” I said. “So if you want to go down with me to find Ruiz that would be fine. It was your lead.”
“No, I’m fine to stay up here, actually,” she said. “I was thinking that while you do that, I’ll see what I can come up with through the feds. I’ll start with the FDA.”
“They’re not doing anything on this,” I said. “They’re still in the ‘thinking about it’ enforcement stage.”
“Yes, but we need to get that on the record and ask why it is and when it’s going to change. The government is behind the curve and that’s a big part of the story.”
“Right.”
“So, I’ll do that and you go down to Orange County.”
“I’ll try to set something up with Orton through Rexford PR. I’ll let you know.”
She smiled. Somehow it made me think that I was still being a dick about things.
“So we’re good?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Let’s see where things are tomorrow.”
I nodded and she spoke as I turned to leave.
“I would never apologize for being protective about my story, Jack.”
I looked back at her.
“You saw something and went after it,” she said. “You have every right to keep it.”
“Okay,” I said.
“See you tomorrow,” she said.
18
Rachel was already at the bar at Mistral when I got there, her martini glass half full. She didn’t see me enter and so I stood back and looked at her for a few moments. She had her eyes down on the bar, reading a document. She reached for the stem of the martini glass without looking and then took a small sip. My interactions with her had spanned nearly twenty-five years and had been hot and cold, intense and distant, intimate and strictly professional, and ultimately heartbreaking. From the beginning, she had left a hole in my heart that could never quite heal. I could go years without seeing her but I could never stop thinking about her. Thinking about where she was, what she was doing, who she was with.
I knew the moment I decided to visit her the day before that I was buying myself another round of hope and hurt. But some people are fated this way, fated to play the same music over and over like a scratched record.
The moment was ruined when the bartender saw me standing by the door and called out her version of my name.
“Jacques, what are you doing?” she said. “Come in, come in.”
Elle, whose last name I did not know, spoke with a French accent. She knew me as a regular, though she put a French twist on my name. Still, it was close enough that it caused Rachel to look up and see me. And my moment of reverie and hope ended.
I walked to the bar and sat next to Rachel.
“Hey, been here long?” I asked.
“No, just ahead of you,” Rachel said.
Elle came down the bar to take my order.
“The usual, Jacques?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
Elle went back down the bar to where the bottle of Ketel One was and started preparing my drink.
“Ze use-you-well, Jacques?” Rachel whispered mockingly. “You know that accent is fake, right?”
“She’s an actress,” I said. “The place is French.”
“Only in L.A.”
“Or maybe Paris. So, what brings you over the hill to the Valley?”
“Trying to hook up a new client and today we had the dog-and-pony show.”
“Background searching?”
“Our meat and potatoes.”
“So you go in there, flash the former-FBI credentials, and tell them what you can do and they give you their business?”
“That’s a little simplistic but, yeah, that’s how it works.”
Elle brought my martini over and put it down on a cocktail napkin.
“Voilà,” she said.
“Merci,” I said.
Elle moved back down the bar, smart enough to give us space.
“And this is your hang?” Rachel said. “The bartender with the phony French accent?”
“I only live a couple blocks away,” I said. “I can walk home if I get into trouble.”
“Or you get lucky. Gotta get them home before they change their minds, right?”
“That’s a low blow, and I wish I hadn’t even told you that yesterday. That is the one and only time that ever happened to me here.”
“I’m sure.”
“It’s true, but it’s beginning to sound like you’re jealous.”
“That’ll be the day.”
We broke off the conversation there for a few moments and I had the feeling we were both reviewing memories of our checkered history. It always seemed to be me who blew it. Once during the Poet investigation when my own insecurities caused me to doubt her in a relationship-stunting way, and the last time when I put my work ahead of our relationship and put her into an intolerable position.
Now we were left to meet at a bar and trade coy remarks. What could have been was killing me.
“I have to say I am jealous about one thing,” Rachel said.
“That I live in the Valley now?” I said.
I still couldn’t get away from the coy remark. Jesus.
“No, that you’re on a case,” she said. “A real case.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “You have your own business.”
“Which is ninety percent sitting at a computer and doing background searches. I haven’t worked a real … I’m not using my skills, Jack. And if you don’t use them you lose them. You coming in yesterday just reminded me of what I don’t do anymore.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s all on me. Your badge, everything. I fucked everything up for a story. I was so blind and I’m so sorry.”
“Jack, I didn’t come because I need your apology. The past is past.”
“Then what, Rachel?”
“I don’t know. I just …”
She didn’t finish. But I knew this wasn’t going to be a quick drink and goodbye. I held two fingers up to Elle at the other end of the bar: two more.
“Did you do anything with what we talked about yesterday?” Rachel asked.
“I did,” I said. “I got some really good stuff and would have continued today but then I ended up staying all night in jail.”
“What? Why?”
“Because the LAPD guy on the case is scared. Scared I’m ahead of him on this, so he grabbed me on a trumped-up obstruction thing last night and I spent all night in Metro and then half the day in court and riding jail buses back and forth.”
I finished my martini just as Elle delivered a new one.
“Je vous en prie,” she said.
“Merci,” I said.
“Gracias,” Rachel said.
Elle went away.
“Hey, we forgot,” I said.
I held my fresh drink up.
“To the single-bullet theory?” I asked.
Maybe that was going too far, but Rachel did not balk. She held up her glass and nodded. It was a reference to something she had told me years before: that she believed everybody had somebody out there in the world who could pierce their heart like a bullet. Not everybody had the good fortune of meeting that person, and not everybody could hold on to that person if they did meet.
To me there had never been any doubt. Rachel was the one. Her name was on the bullet that pierced me.
We clinked glasses. But then Rachel moved on before any more could be said on that subject.
“Were you charged?” she asked.
“The deputy city attorney kicked the case as soon as she saw it,” I said. “It’s just a new form of harassment in the era where reporters are viewed by some as lower than scum. These cops think they can get away with everything.”
; “You really think you’re out in front of them on this case?”
“I do. Have you changed your mind about—”
“What have you gotten?”
I spent the next twenty minutes telling her about Jason Hwang, William Orton, and how my partner on the story, Emily Atwater, had made further strides with a source at UC–Irvine. Rachel asked several questions and offered bits of advice here and there. It was clear that she felt I was onto something that was right in her ten ring. She had once hunted serial killers with the FBI; now she was doing background searches on job candidates. We drank another round of martinis and when the talking ended there was a decision to be made.
“You just leave your car here?” Rachel asked.
“The valets know me here,” I said. “If I’m walking home because I’ve had one too many, they’ll give back my keys. Then I just walk back up in the morning and get my car.”
“Well, I shouldn’t drive either.”
“You can walk with me to my place. We can come back for your car when you’re ready to drive.”
There it was. A half-assed invitation. She gave it a half-smile in return.
“And what if that is not until the morning?” she asked.
“Three martinis … I think it’s going to take at least that long,” I said.
I paid the tab with a platinum American Express card. Rachel saw it.
“You still getting royalties, Jack?”
“Some. Less every year but the books are still in print.”
“I heard that every time they catch a new serial, he has a copy of The Poet somewhere in his possessions. It’s also a popular book in every prison I’ve ever been in.”
“Good to know. Maybe I should’ve had a book signing in Metro last night.”
She laughed loudly and I knew she’d overdone it with the martinis. She was usually too much in control to laugh out loud like that.
“Let’s go before we both pass out,” I said.
We slid off our stools and headed for the door.
The alcohol continued to loosen her tongue as we walked the two blocks.
“I just want you to know that the maid at my place has been on vacation for about a year,” I said.
She laughed again.
“I would expect nothing less,” she said. “I remember some of your places. Heavy on the bachelor.”
“Yeah, well, I guess some things never change,” I said.
“I want in,” she said.
I took a few unsteady steps without responding. I wondered if she was talking about our relationship or my story. She made it clear without my asking.
“I’m making tons of money but I’m not … doing anything,” she said. “I used to … I had a skill, Jack. Now …”
“That’s why I came to see you yesterday,” I said. “I thought you would be—”
“You know what I did today? I presented to a company that makes plastic furniture. They want to make sure they don’t hire any illegals, so they come to me and guess what? I’ll take their money if they want to give it to me.”
“Well, that’s what the business is about. You knew that when—”
“Jack, I want to do something. I want to help. I can help you with your story.”
“Uh … yeah, I thought maybe you’d want to profile this guy—whoever’s doing this. Also, the victims. We need—”
“No, I want more than that. I want to be out there on this. Like with the Scarecrow.”
I nodded. We had worked hand in hand on that.
“Well, this is a little different. You were an agent back then and I already have a partner on—”
“But I can really help you on this. I still have connections in the federal government. I can get things. Find out things you can’t.”
“What things?”
“I don’t know yet. I would have to see but I still know people in all the agencies because I worked with them.”
I nodded. We had gotten to my building. I couldn’t tell how much of what she was saying was the alcohol talking but she seemed to be talking from the heart. I fumbled with the keys to open the gate.
“Let’s go in and sit down,” I said. “We’ll talk more about it.”
“I don’t want to talk anymore tonight, Jack,” she said.
19
I had never been to the courthouse in Santa Ana, nor had I ever driven from the San Fernando Valley down to Orange County on a weekday morning. I left at seven to make sure I got there before nine. That was after I walked up the street twice to Mistral to retrieve my Jeep and then Rachel’s BMW. I parked hers in front of the building, in the same spot Mattson and Sakai had used to arrest me. I then returned her key to the table next to the bed where she slept. I wrote a note asking her to call me when she woke up and left it with two Advils on the bed table.
Rachel might find waking to an empty apartment upsetting, but I wanted to get to Detective Digoberto Ruiz before the trial started.
Best-laid plans. After tie-ups on both the 101 and 5 freeways, I rolled into the parking garage at the Criminal Courts Building in Santa Ana at 9:20. Proceedings in the trial of Isaiah Gamble were already underway. I slipped into the back row of the gallery and watched. I was in luck. It took me only a few minutes to realize that Detective Ruiz was the man on the witness stand giving testimony.
The gallery of the courtroom was empty except for me and a woman in the front row on the prosecution side of the room. The case apparently had drawn no attention from the local populace or media. The prosecutor was a woman who stood at a lectern between the prosecution and defense tables. The jury was to her left: twelve jurors and two alternates, still alert and paying attention in the first hour of the day.
The defendant, Isaiah Gamble, sat at a table next to another woman. I knew that it was part of the sexual-predator playbook to go to trial with a female lawyer. It forces the jury to ask: If this man really did what they say he did, would a woman represent him?
Ruiz looked close to retirement. He had a gray fringe of hair circling a bald dome and permanently sad eyes. He had seen too much on his job. He was recounting just one episode of many.
“I met with the victim at the hospital,” he said. “She was being treated for her injuries and evidence was being collected.”
“And was she able to provide you with other evidence or information?” the prosecutor asked.
“Yes, she had memorized a license plate that was in the trunk of the car with her.”
“It wasn’t on the car?”
“No, it had been removed.”
“Why was it removed?”
“Probably to help the suspect avoid being identified in case someone saw the abduction.”
The defense attorney objected to the detective’s answer, saying it was conjecture. The judge ruled that Ruiz had more than enough experience in rape cases to form the opinion he had voiced and allowed the answer to stand. It also emboldened the prosecutor to take the question further.
“You have seen this before in cases?” she asked. “The removal of the license plate.”
“Yes,” Ruiz said.
“As an experienced detective, what does that indicate to you?”
“Premeditation. That he had a plan and went out hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Looking for a victim. For prey.”
“So going back to the victim being in the trunk, wasn’t it too dark in the trunk to see the plate?”
“It was dark but every time the kidnapper hit the brakes the taillights lit up part of the trunk and she could see. She memorized the plate that way.”
“And what did you do with that information?”
“I ran the plate on the computer and got the registered owner’s name.”
“Who was it registered to?”
“Isaiah Gamble.”
“The defendant.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do next, Detective Ruiz?”
“I pulled Gamble’s photo from his driv
er’s license, put it in a six-pack, and showed it to the victim.”
“Please tell the jury what a six-pack is.”
“It’s a photo lineup. I put together six photos, including the shot of Isaiah Gamble and five other men of the same race and similar age, build, hair, and complexion. I then showed it to the victim and asked if any of the men in the photos was the man who abducted and raped her.”
“And did she identify any of the men in the photo lineup?”
“Without hesitation she identified the photo of Isaiah Gamble as that of the man who had abducted, raped, and beaten her.”
“Did you have her sign her name under the photo of the man she identified?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And did you bring that six-pack with you to court today?”
“I did.”
The prosecutor went through the steps of introducing the six-pack as a state’s exhibit and the judge accepted it.
Twenty minutes later Ruiz had completed his direct testimony and the judge took the morning break before the defense’s cross-examination would start. He told the jurors and all parties to be back in fifteen minutes.
I watched Ruiz intently to see if he would leave the courtroom for a restroom or coffee break, but at first he stayed seated in the witness box and small-talked with the courtroom clerk. But then the clerk took a phone call and turned her attention away from the detective. After another minute Ruiz stood up and told the prosecutor he was going to the restroom and would be right back.
I watched Ruiz walk out the door and then followed him. I gave him a one-minute lead time in the restroom before I entered. He was at the sink washing his hands. I went to a sink two down and started doing the same. We saw each other in the mirror over the sink between us and both nodded.
“That must feel good,” I said.
“What’s that?” Ruiz asked.
“Putting sexual predators away for a long time.”
Ruiz looked at me strangely.
“I was in the courtroom,” I said. “I saw you testify.”
“Oh,” Ruiz said. “You’re not on the jury, are you? I can’t have any contact with—”
“No, I’m not. I’m a reporter, actually. Down from L.A.”
“For this case?”
Fair Warning - Jack McEvoy Series 03 (2020) Page 13