Guilt by Association (2 page)

“There is an undeniable symmetry to your contempt citations,” Toni observed. “What did Tynan do?”

“Just said, ‘I’m warning you, Counsel.’ ” I sighed, took another sip of my drink, and stretched my legs out under the desk.
“I wish I had all my cases in front of him.”

“Hah!” Jake snorted. “You’d wear out your welcome by your second trial, and you’d be broke by your third.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Jake shrugged. “Hey, I’m just sayin’…”

I laughed and threw a paper clip at him. He caught it easily in an overhand swipe, then looked out at the clock on the Times
Building. “Shit, I’ve got to run. Later, guys.” He put down his cup and left. The sound of his footsteps echoed down the hallway.

I turned to Toni. “Refresher?” I said as I held up the bottle of Glenlivet.

Toni shook her head. “Nah. I’ve had enough of county ambience for one day. Why don’t we get out of here and hit Church and
State? We should celebrate the hell out of this one.”

Church and State was a fun new restaurant in the old Meatpacking District, part of the ongoing effort to gentrify downtown
L.A. Though how a restaurant that catered to a hip, moneyed crowd was going to make it with Skid Row just two blocks away
was a looming question. I looked over at the stack of cases piled on the table where I kept my mini-fridge. I wanted to party,
and with that gnarly no-body murder behind me, I could probably afford to. But the trial had taken me away from my other cases,
and I always got a little—okay, a lot—panicky when I hadn’t looked in on a case for more than a few days. If I went out with
Toni tonight, I’d just be stressing and wishing I were working. I owed it to her to spare her that drag.

“Sorry, Tone, I—”

“Don’t even bother—I know.” Toni shook her head as she plunked her mug down on my desk and stood to go. “You can’t even take
time off for one little victory lap? It’s sick, is what it is.”

But it wasn’t news, as evidenced by the lack of surprise in Toni’s voice.

“How about tomorrow night? We’ll do Church and State, whatever you want,” I promised with more hope than conviction. I wasn’t
sure whether I’d be able to wade through the pile of cases and finish all the catch-up work by then. But I hated to disappoint
Toni, so I privately vowed to push myself hard and make it happen.

Toni looked at me and sighed. “Sure, we’ll talk tomorrow.” She
slung her laptop bag over one shoulder and her purse over the other. “I’m heading out. Try not to stay too late. If even your
OCD partner-in-crime took a powder,” she said, tilting her head toward Jake’s office, “you can spare a night off too.”

“I know.” I looked toward his office. “What’s up with that?” I laughed.

“Maybe his alien leaders told him to get a friggin’ life,” Toni said as she moved to the doorway. “And I’ve already got one,
so I am now officially exiting the OCD Zone.” She smiled and headed down the hall.

“Have fun!”

“You too,” she called back. In a loud stage whisper, she muttered, “Ya freak.”

“I heard that!” I yelled out.

“Don’t care!”

I leaned back to rest my head against the cold leather of the majestic judge’s chair. It was a tight fit at my little county-issue
prosecutor’s desk, but I didn’t mind. The chair had mysteriously appeared late one night, abandoned in the hallway a few doors
from my office. I’d looked up and down the hall to make sure the coast was clear, then whisked it into my office and pushed
my own sorry little chair out to a hallway distant enough that it wouldn’t be traced back. As I’d returned to my office, scanning
the hallway for witnesses, I wondered whether someone had “liberated” the chair straight out of a judge’s chambers. The possibility
made my score even more triumphant.

I turned to the stack of case files and pulled the first one off the top, but within fifteen minutes I felt my eyelids drooping.
I’d thought I’d had enough energy to plow through at least a few cases, but as usual I’d underestimated how tired I was. And
the Glenlivet hadn’t helped.

I listened to the last stragglers chatter their way out of the office.
As the door snicked closed behind them, silence filled the air. I was tired, but I wasn’t ready to go home. This was my favorite
part of the day, when I had the whole DA’s office to myself. No phones, no friends, no cops to distract me. I exhaled and
looked out the window at the view that never got old. The streetlights had blinked on, and the jagged outline of the downtown
L.A. office buildings glowed against the encroaching darkness. From my perch on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts
Building, I could see all the way from the main cop shop, the Police Administration Building, to the theaters at the Dorothy
Chandler Pavilion and all the streets and sidewalks in between. The irony of being in the middle of those two extremes still
made me smile. Just having an office with a window was a coup—let alone one with a spectacular view. But the fact that it
had come with my transfer into Special Trials—the unit I’d worked my ass off to get into for seven years—made it a delicious
victory.

Not that I’d minded working the routine felonies during my stints in the smaller Van Nuys and Compton branch courts. Seeing
the same defendants come back to the fold with a new case every couple of years gave the job a kind of homey, family feeling.
Sure, it was a weird, dysfunctional, and largely criminal family, but still. So it wasn’t as though I was miserable when I
worked the outlying courts. It just wasn’t for me. From the moment I’d heard of the Special Trials Unit, based in the hub
of the DA’s office downtown, I’d known it was where I wanted to be. I’d been warned by the senior prosecutors in the branch
courts about the long hours, the marathon-length trials, the public scrutiny, and the endless pressure I’d face in the unit.
I didn’t tell them that, for me, that was the allure. And being in the unit was even better than I’d imagined. On almost every
case, I got to work with great cops and the best lawyers—for both the prosecution and the defense—I’d ever seen. Far from
a detraction, the intensity of the job was exhilarating. Too often in life a
long-desired goal, once achieved, turns out to be much less than expected—as they say, “Be careful what you wish for.” Not
this time. Getting into Special Trials was all I’d hoped for and then some, and I savored that fact at least once a day.

I tried to drag my mind back down to the supplemental reports—updates on the investigation—that had been added to the case
file during the last month, but the words were blurring on the page. I leaned back in my chair, hoping to catch a second wind,
and watched the cars crawl down Main Street. The sky had darkened, and clouds were moving in.

I could tell my second wind wasn’t going to arrive anytime soon. I decided to admit defeat and pack it in for the night. I
got up, stretched, walked over to the table next to the window where I’d dropped my briefcase, and brought it over to my desk.
I threw in five of the files—wishful thinking, I knew—picked up my purse, and grabbed my coat off the hook on the back of
the door. I swung into my jacket and slung the strap of my briefcase over my shoulder, then reached into my coat pocket and
flipped off the safety on my palm-size .22 Beretta. Then I kicked out the doorstop and headed down the hall toward the bank
of elevators as my office door clicked shut behind me.

At this time of day I didn’t have long to wait. Within seconds, the bell rang and I stepped into a blissfully empty car. The
elevator hurtled down all eighteen floors and came to a shuddering stop on the first floor. It was a head-spinning ride that
happened only at quiet times like this. I enjoyed the rush as long as I ignored what it meant about the quality of the machinery
and my possible life expectancy.

As I walked through the darkened lobby toward the back doors, I stretched my eyes for better peripheral vision. I’d been walking
to work ever since I’d moved into the nearby Biltmore Hotel a year ago. It seemed stupid to drive the six blocks to the courthouse,
and I enjoyed the walk—it gave me a chance to think. Plus it saved me a
bundle in gas and car maintenance. The only time I had second thoughts about it was after dark. Downtown L.A. empties out
after 5:00 p.m., leaving a population that lives mainly outdoors. It wasn’t the homeless who worried me as much as the bottom-feeders
who preyed on them.

Being a prosecutor gave me an inside line on the danger in any area, but the truth was, I’d grown up with the knowledge that
mortal peril lurked around every corner. So although I didn’t have a permit to carry, I never left either home or office without
a gun. The lack of a permit occasionally worried me, but as my father used to say, “I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried
by six.” I’d never applied for a permit because I didn’t want to get turned down. There’d been a crackdown on gun permits
ever since a certain sheriff’s brother-in-law had fired “warning shots” at some neighborhood kids for blasting rap music from
their car. And, to be honest, permit or no, I was going to carry anyway. Besides, I was no novice when it came to guns. Being
my father’s daughter, I’d started learning how to shoot the moment I could manage a shaky two-handed grip. If I had to shoot,
I wouldn’t miss. I stood at the wall of glass that faced out toward the Times Building and scanned the parking lot and sidewalk,
as always, looking for signs of trouble. Seeing nothing, I pushed open the heavy glass door and stepped out into the night.

As I walked toward the stairs that led down to street level, I heard the sound of sirens, distant at first but rapidly getting
louder. Suddenly the air was pierced with the whooping screams and bass horn blasts of fire engines. They were close, very
close. Police cars, their sirens shrieking, seemed to be approaching from all directions, and the night air jangled with wild
energy. I watched intently, waiting to see where they were headed. The flashing lights seemed to stop and coalesce about four
blocks south and east of the Biltmore, in the middle of a block I knew was filled with junk stores, iron-grilled pawnshops,
and low-rent motels. I’d never seen this much action at
a downtown crime scene. My usual “neighbors”—druggies, pimps, hookers, and the homeless—generally didn’t get this kind of
“Protect and Serve” response. My curiosity piqued, I decided to find out what was going on. At least with all those cops around,
I wouldn’t have to worry about muggers.

Within minutes,
I could see that the hub of the action was on the corner of 4th and South Broadway, just around the corner from Pershing
Square—at one of those seedy pay-by-the-hour motels. I brilliantly deduced from the hose snaking in through the front door,
and the fact that there was only smoke and no flames, that the firefighters had gotten on top of it already.

Sliding through the scraggly bunch of lookie-loos who’d gathered on the sidewalk, I got as close as the police line allowed
and looked for a familiar face to ask what was going on. As another plume of smoke wafted out through the front door of the
motel, the seen-better-days coroner’s van pulled up. I peered through the haze and saw a head with a short crew cut pop out
from the driver’s side of the van. It was followed by a short, square body dressed in high-water pants, a blue Windbreaker,
and Nike sneakers.

I was in luck. “Scott!” I yelled out. Scott Ferrier was a coroner’s investigator. He’d become my buddy when I’d pulled my
first homicide case, back in my baby DA days. He waved and trotted over.

“Does your mommy know you’re out after dark?” I asked. Scott cut me a look. “This is a lot of firepower for a pimp fight,
don’t you think?”

Scott nodded. “Yeah, it’s weird. If you want to hang around, I’ll go see what I’ve got and fill you in.”

“Okay if I wait here?” I gestured to his van.

“Yeah, just don’t steal it,” he said with a snort, knowing he’d have to pay someone to take the beat-up corpse jalopy off
his hands.

Scott turned and wove through the throng of police and firemen and made his way into the motel. I slid into the driver’s seat
and tried not to think about the “passengers” that’d ridden around in the cargo space behind me.

A few more clouds of smoke drifted out as firefighters began to emerge from the building. One of them was rolling up the hose
as he walked. They’d been here only a few minutes; if they were already wrapping up, this couldn’t have been much of a fire.

I watched the hunky firefighters at work and was pondering the truth of the old saying—that God made all paramedics and firemen
good-looking so you’d see something pretty before you died—when a deep, authoritative voice broke my concentration.

“Miss, are you with the coroner’s office?”

I’d been sitting sidesaddle in the van, facing the motel. I turned to my left and saw that the owner of the voice was somewhere
around six feet tall, on the lean side but tastefully muscled under his blue uniform, his dark-blond hair just long enough
to comb. His eyes were a gold-flecked hazel, and he had wide, pronounced cheekbones, a strong nose, and a generous mouth.
The bars on his uniform told me he was brass, not rank and file. His nameplate confirmed it:
LIEUTENANT GRADEN HALES
. His skeptical look annoyed me, but his presence made an already weird scene even more so. What the hell was a lieutenant
doing here? I mustered up my best “I belong here” voice and replied, “I’m a DA, but I’m waiting for Scott.”

I expected that my status as a prosecutor would end the discussion. Wrong.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave,” he said with a steely firmness. “Only crime scene personnel are allowed right
now.”

High brass chasing me off a low-life bust? Something was really off here, and now I wasn’t just curious—I had to find out
what was going on. “Well, I have to wait for Scott. He’s my ride.” It was a lie, but I figured that would push Lieutenant
Officious out to greener pastures. Wrong again.

“I’ll arrange for one of the patrol units to take you home. Where do you live?”