“No, not this one. Another case you handled. My name’s Jack McEvoy.”
I threw the paper towel I was drying my hands with into the trash can and offered my hand. Ruiz took it tentatively. I didn’t know if that was because of what I had said or the general awkwardness that comes with holding out a hand in a restroom.
“What other case?” Ruiz asked.
“I guess it’s the one who got away,” I said. “William Orton.”
I watched his face for a reaction and thought I caught a glimpse of anger flare before his face turned to stone.
“How do you know about that case?” he asked.
“Sources,” I said. “I know what he did at UCI. You didn’t put him in jail but at least you got him away from the students there.”
“Look, I can’t talk to you about that case. I need to get back to court now.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Ruiz opened the door and looked back at me.
“You’re doing a story about Orton?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Whether you talk to me or not. I’d rather it be after we’ve talked and you can explain why he was never charged.”
“What do you think you know about him or that case?”
“I know he may still be a predator. That enough?”
“I have to go back to court. If you’re still here after I’m finished, then maybe we can talk.”
“I’ll—”
He was gone and the door slowly closed.
After I returned to the courtroom, I watched the defense lawyer cross-examine Ruiz, but she scored no points that I could tally and made one large misstep in asking a question that allowed Ruiz to state that DNA collected at the hospital after the abduction and rape was matched to her client. This, of course, would come out anyway, or may have already come out through an earlier prosecution witness, but it’s never a good thing for the defense to reference the state’s key piece of evidence against your client.
After twenty minutes of questions gained little traction for her client’s cause she gave up and the detective was dismissed as a witness.
I left the courtroom and sat on a bench in the hallway. If Ruiz was going to talk to me he would come out. But when he did it was to collect the next witness, who was waiting in the hall on the next bench down. I heard Ruiz call her Dr. Sloan and tell her she was up. He walked her to the courtroom and when he opened the door for her he looked back at me and nodded. I took it to mean he would be back for me.
Another ten minutes passed and Ruiz finally came out of the courtroom again and sat on the bench next to me.
“I should be in there,” he said. “The prosecutor doesn’t know the case like I do.”
“That doctor, is she the DNA expert?” I asked.
“No, she runs the rape-treatment center at the hospital. She collected the evidence. The DNA expert comes next.”
“How long will the trial last?”
“We’ll finish tomorrow morning, then it will be whatever the defense puts on—which doesn’t look like much.”
“If it was such a lost cause, why didn’t he plead, get a deal?”
“Because a guy like that, we don’t give him a deal. Why are you here?”
“I’m working on a story and it’s taken me to Orton. We found out about the UCI case and I wondered why it never went anywhere.”
“Short answer: the DNA didn’t match. We had the victim’s ID, witness corroboration of checkable facts, but the DNA knocked our legs out. The DA passed. How is Orton related to what you’re working on?”
I could see what Ruiz was doing. He was trading. He’d give up information to get information. But so far he hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.
“I’m looking at the murder of a woman,” I said. “No direct link in the case to Orton but I think her DNA went through his lab.”
“At UCI?” Ruiz asked.
“No, this is after he left. His current lab, Orange Nano.”
“I don’t get the connection.”
“My victim was killed by a sexual predator. From what I’ve found out about Orton, he’s one too.”
“I can’t make that statement. We never charged him with a crime.”
“But you wanted to. It was the DA who wouldn’t go forward.”
“With good reason. DNA works both ways. It convicts and it clears.”
I pulled out my notebook to write down that line. It freaked Ruiz out.
“You can’t use anything from me. I don’t want to be sued by him. There was no case. The DNA cleared him.”
“But you had the victim’s story.”
“Doesn’t matter. The DNA threw a wrench into things. Made the case untenable. We didn’t proceed. End of story. Is this—do you work for the Times up there?”
“I work for a website that partners with the Times on occasion. How surprised were you when the DNA came back and it wasn’t a match to William Orton?”
“Off the record: very. On the record: no comment.”
I put my notebook down on the bench so he would not perceive it as a threat.
“Any theories on the DNA and where it came from?” I asked.
“Nope,” Ruiz said. “I just know it killed the case. It didn’t matter how credible our victim seemed. DNA from another man on her body killed the case.”
“What about the possibility of tampering?”
“I don’t see where. I took the sample from Orton with a court order. I delivered it to the lab. You accusing me of something?”
“Not at all. Just asking. There’s also the second sample Orton’s was compared to. Was there any kind of internal investigation of that?”
“Not beyond doing the test over and getting the same result. You are talking about a very sensitive subject. You know what the criminal defense lawyers in this courthouse would do with something like that? We’d get buried with appeals of every conviction that ever came out of that lab.”
I nodded. It was a case of looking into the matter but not looking too hard.
“How did the victim take it when you told her?” I asked.
“She was more surprised than me, I’ll tell you that,” Ruiz said. “She insisted then and still does that there was no other man. Just Orton.”
“Did you ever talk to him? Interview him, I mean. Maybe when you took his swab?”
“Not really. We started to get into it but then he lawyered up and that was it. You know, you were right about this one. What you said.”
“What did I say?”
“About him being the one who got away. The motherfucker’s a rapist. I know it. And the DNA doesn’t change that. That’s off the record, too.”
Ruiz stood up.
“I need to go back in,” he said.
“Two more quick questions,” I said.
He gestured for me to go ahead. I stood up.
“Jane Doe’s lawyer, who was that?”
“Hervé Gaspar—I recommended him to her.”
“What is Jane Doe’s real name?”
“You should be able to get that from your source at the school.”
“Okay, then what about the lab report on the DNA? Where can I get that?”
“You can’t. All that got destroyed when the case wasn’t filed. The lab report, the records. His arrest was expunged after his lawyer got a court order.”
“Shit.”
“You’re telling me.”
Ruiz turned toward the courtroom door and took a few steps, but then stopped and came back to me.
“Do you have a card or something? In case.”
“Sure.”
I opened a zipper on my backpack, dug out a business card, and handed it to him.
“Call anytime,” I said. “And good luck with this one.”
“Thanks,” he said. “But with this one we don’t need luck. He’s going down.”
I watched him go back into the courtroom to take care of business.
20
When I turned my phone on after leaving
the courthouse, I had a message from Randall Sachs, head of public relations for the Rexford Corporation. With the two-hour time difference in Indianapolis working in my favor, I had called him on my drive down. It was early my time but he was well into his day and I told him that I needed to get into Orange Nano and interview William Orton. I made it clear that if he turned down my request, I would wonder what they were hiding at Rexford, a publicly traded company, when I could not speak to a board member and top researcher. I told him that I would be in the vicinity of Orange Nano later in the day and would love to make the visit then.
The message was that my photographer and I had a two-o’clock interview with Orton that came with a hard stop at three. I immediately called Sachs back to confirm and he gave me the lowdown on who I should ask for on arrival and reminded me that the interview would last no more than an hour. He implied that Orton was against the interview but he, Sachs, had been able to make him see the light.
“We are a transparent company,” Sachs assured me.
I thanked him, disconnected, and immediately called Emily Atwater.
“How fast can you get down here?” I asked. “We have a two o’clock with Orton.”
“I’ll leave right now and should make it in time for us to work out a script,” she said.
“Okay, good. Don’t forget the camera. You’re the photographer and I’m the interviewer.”
“Don’t be a dick. I know what I’m supposed to be.”
“Sorry. You get anything out of the feds?”
“The FTC was good. I’ll tell you about it when I’m down there.”
“Now who’s being a dick?”
“Touché. Leaving now.”
She disconnected.
I had time to kill so I went for an early lunch at Taco María in Costa Mesa. While I ate arrachera tacos I thought about the best approach to Orton. I knew that it might be the one and only time to get an audience with him. Would Emily and I maintain the cover of the story we had told Rexford PR we were doing, or would we confront him?
Based on what I had heard from Detective Ruiz, I was pretty sure that Orton would not bend if confronted. It was likely that a direct approach would only get us shown the door. Still, it might be useful to see how he would react and possibly defend himself against the accusations leveled against him while he was a professor at UCI. Or what he would say if we asked if the DNA from the four dead women at the center of our story had ended up in the lab at Orange Nano.
The tacos were excellent and I was finished with ninety minutes to go before the appointment with Orton.
As I was walking through the parking lot my phone buzzed. It was Rachel.
“Did you just get up?” I said.
“No, I’m at work, thank you,” she said.
“Well, I thought you’d call sooner. Did you see my note?”
“Yes, I saw it. I just wanted to get to work and start my day. Are you down in Orange County?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I talked to the detective who handled the Orton case.”
“What did he say?”
“Not much, but I think he wanted to talk. He asked for my card and that usually doesn’t happen. So we’ll see.”
“Now what?”
“I meet Orton at two. His corporate sponsor set it up.”
“I wish I was there. I could give you a good read on him.”
“Well, the other reporter is coming down. Three would be a crowd, and I’m not sure how I would explain who—”
“I was just saying, Jack. I know it’s not my story or case.”
“Oh, well, you could always give me a secondhand read tonight.”
“Mistral?”
“Or I could come over the hill to you.”
“No, I like Mistral. I’ll be there. After work.”
“Good. I’ll see you then.”
I got in my car and just sat there for a long moment thinking. Though the feelings and senses of the night before had been fogged by alcohol, they were nonetheless wonderful to me. I was with Rachel again and there was no better place in the world to be. But it was always hope and hurt. Hope and hurt. With her, there had never been one without the other, and I had to prepare myself for the same cycle again. I was riding on the high now but history and the laws of physics were clear. What goes up always comes down.
I put the address of the lab into my GPS app and drove by Orange Nano a few times before pulling over on MacArthur Boulevard and using the cell to look up and call the offices of Hervé Gaspar, the lawyer who had represented Jane Doe. I identified myself as a reporter who needed to talk to the attorney for a story that would be posted by the end of the day. Most lawyers wanted their names in the media. It was free advertising. As expected, I was transferred to his cell phone and could tell I had caught him in a restaurant, eating.
“This is Hervé Gaspar. What can I do for you?”
“My name’s Jack McEvoy. I’m a reporter for FairWarning up in L.A.”
“What the hell is a FairWarning?”
“Good question. It’s a consumer-protection news site. We watch out for the little guy.”
“Never heard of it.”
“That’s okay. There are many who have, especially the charlatans we expose on a regular basis.”
“What’s it got to do with me?”
I decided to jump over all the buildup.
“Mr. Gaspar, sounds like you’re eating so I’ll get to the point.”
“Taco María, ever been here?”
“Yeah, about twenty minutes ago.”
“Really?”
“Really. And now I have a two-o’clock interview with William Orton. If you were me, what would you ask him?”
There was a long silence before Gaspar responded.
“I would ask him how many lives he’s ruined. You know about Orton?”
“I know about the case involving your client.”
“How?”
“Sources. What can you tell me about it?”
“Nothing. It was settled and everybody signed NDAs.”
Nondisclosure agreements, the bane of a reporter’s life.
“I thought no lawsuit was filed,” I said.
“There wasn’t, because we reached a settlement.”
“And you can’t share the details of it.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Is there anyplace where this settlement would be recorded?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me your client’s name?”
“Not without her permission. But she can’t talk to you either.”
“I know that, but can you ask her?”
“I can but I know the answer will be no. You’ll be at this number?”
“Yes, it’s my cell. Look, I’m not looking to put her name out there publicly. It would just help me to know it. I’m interviewing Orton today. It makes it hard to go at him on this if I don’t even know the victim’s name.”
“I understand and I will ask her.”
“Thank you. Going back to my first question. You said you would ask how many lives he has ruined. You think there were more than just your client?”
“Put it this way, the case I handled was not an aberration. And that’s off the record. I can’t talk about the case or him at all.”
“Well, if we’re off the record, what did you think about the DNA report? Detective Ruiz said he was pretty shocked by that.”
“You talked to Ruiz, huh? Yeah, it was a big fucking shock.”
“How’d Orton get around it?”
“When you find out, let me know.”
“Did you try to find out?”
“Of course, but I got nowhere.”
“Was tampering involved?”
“Who knows?”
“Can someone change their DNA?”
Gaspar started laughing.
“That’s a good one.”
“I didn’t mean it as a joke.”
“Well, put it this way, if Orton invented a way to change hi
s DNA, he’d be the richest asshole in California, because a lot of people would pay big bucks for that. You could start with the Golden State Killer and work your way down from there.”
“Last question,” I said. “Does the NDA you and your client signed cover the records of your investigation, or could I look at what you’ve got in your files?”
He laughed again.
“Nice try.”
“What I thought. Mr. Gaspar, I would appreciate it anyway if you would give my name and number to your client. She can talk to me in confidence. I will promise her that.”
“I’ll tell her. But I will also advise her that she risks breaking the agreement if she does.”
“I understand.”
I disconnected and sat in my car thinking. So far my trip down to Orange County had produced nothing that pushed the needle or made any connection between the four deaths that I was ostensibly investigating and William Orton or Orange Nano.
My phone buzzed and it was Emily.
“I just got off the 405. Where are you?”
I gave her directions to where I was parked and she said she’d be there in five minutes. I got a text before she arrived. It was from the 714 area code—Orange County.
Jessica Kelley
I assumed that the name had come from Gaspar and he had used a burner phone that could not be traced back to him. This told me a number of things. First, that he was concerned enough about Orton to break the NDA, but to do it in a way that gave him protection. It also said he was the kind of lawyer who used burner phones, and that could be useful down the line.
I texted a thank-you and added that I would be in touch. No reply came. I added the number to my contact list, assigning it the name Deep Throat. I was a reporter because of Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post duo who took down a president with the help of a confidential source they had given that nickname.
I saw Emily’s car pull to the curb in front of me. It was a small Jaguar SUV and it was nicer than my Jeep. I got out with my backpack and got into the passenger seat of her car. I checked my phone and saw we still had time to kill.
“So,” I said. “Tell me about the feds.”
“I talked to a guy I had worked with on other stories,” Emily said. “He’s with Federal Trade Commission enforcement, which used to have oversight of the DNA industry until it got too big and the FTC turned it over to the FDA.”
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