Guilt by Association (4 page)

Toni nodded her agreement. “I can’t imagine a soul in the world who’d want to do him harm.”

Graden looked uncomfortable, and I thought he was going to just clam up and leave. But after a beat, he took a deep breath
and said, “Since you were close to Jake, you’re going to be questioned pretty closely, so you’d probably figure it out on
your own anyway.
But I need you to keep this to yourselves. There’s going to be a tight lid on this case for a while. Promise me you won’t
talk about this to anyone until there’s an official release.”

He paused, waiting for our nods of agreement.

“Jake wasn’t alone in that motel room,” he said quietly. “There was a young boy—school ID said he was seventeen years old.
We found a nude picture of the boy in Jake’s jacket. At this point, it looks like murder-suicide. Jake shot the boy, then
himself.”

I felt all the breath
go out of my body as the words sank in. Disoriented, I peered through the pouring rain at the clock on the Times Building,
then glanced at Toni. She was staring out into the hallway, looking like a punch-drunk fighter. I turned to face the lieutenant
to tell him it couldn’t be true, but my eyes wouldn’t track. Momentarily dizzy, I couldn’t find the words to put a sentence
together. The ensuing silence felt leaden. Suddenly the buzz of Toni’s intercom pierced the air.

For the second time that morning, we both stared at the phone, then Toni slowly picked it up.

The lieutenant turned to me, his expression of concern now deepened. “I’m sorry,” he said. Although I could see he felt awkward,
I mentally gave him points for not saying the usual dumb things like “I know how you must feel” or “Time will heal the wound.”
No one knows how I feel, and time doesn’t heal the wound. The wound just becomes a part of you.

I nodded, and the lieutenant glanced over at Toni, who was still on the phone and looking away from him, out the window. He
quietly said good-bye and left.

A few seconds later, Toni hung up. “Eric called for a unit meeting in his office ASAP.”

We exchanged a look. Neither of us was ready for a group appearance, but this wasn’t an optional invitation. Grim-faced and
dreading what was to come, we left Toni’s office.

On our way up the hall, we passed by Jake’s area and saw a cop approaching with crime scene tape. Toni and I exchanged another
look. We didn’t want to see that tape go up. We both veered off and turned into the hallway on the right to take the long
way.

As we detoured around Jake’s office, Toni gamely tried to distract us from the morbid reality. “He’s interested.”

“He who? And in what?”

“You. Couldn’t you tell?”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Who?” I repeated.

“Graden, the lieutenant. He’s interested.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Toni,” I replied sourly. The moment the words left my mouth, I wanted to snatch them back. I was in
one hell of a state if I was taking my upset out on her. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, I know,” Toni said, waving off the apology.

After five years of best friendship, we’d learned how to surf each other’s rough spots. As we headed toward Eric’s office,
I deliberately kept my eyes turned away from the end of the hall so I wouldn’t see the cop taping Jake’s door. Even from where
I stood, a strange stillness seemed to surround his office. The memory of all the nights I’d sat with him there, talking about
our cases, laughing about something a witness had said, was so vivid I could hear his voice, see him toss a mini-pretzel into
the air and catch it in his mouth. Never again. I couldn’t bear the thought. I picked up the pace as we continued down the
hall.

We marched into the anteroom of Eric Northrup’s office. Knowing what was going to be said about Jake, I felt raw and defensive,
ready for a fight. Melia Espinoza, the unit secretary who was also known as Gossip Central, was on the phone, her hand covering
the mouthpiece to muffle her words.

“We’re here to see Eric,” I said.

“Hang on a sec,” she said as she covered the phone, then looked up at us and replied, “He’s on the phone, and the rest of
the unit isn’t here yet, so…”

The look on my face told her not to tell me to wait, so she stopped the sentence just short of a trip to the hospital.

“I’ll have to call you back,” she said into the phone quickly, then hung up.

“You know the meeting’s about Jake, right?” she asked.

“No, but obviously you do.” My tone was no more inviting than my look.

“You know, I always thought he was nice—kind of nerdy, but you know… now this,
ay, Dios mío
. I don’t get what he was doing in a place like
that
.” She said it with a mix of accusation and distaste that made me want to slap her. Hard.

“We don’t know the story yet, Melia,” I said, angry at the way she was so quick to believe the worst. I hoped the lieutenant
was right about keeping a lid on the sordid details. The location of Jake’s death alone would raise enough nasty speculation,
and I knew there’d be plenty of it. I needed to start getting used to it now or I’d wind up going postal.

Melia raised her eyebrows, then looked at me sympathetically and said, “I’m sorry,
mija,
I know he was your friend, but you didn’t hang with him, right?”

Hang with him, meaning outside the office. “No, but—”

“Sometimes people have dark sides you don’t know about.”

I stared at her for a moment, waiting for the inanity of what she’d just said to sink in. Fortunately I managed to bite back
several remarks that would’ve ensured all of my messages would be lost for at least the next year. Further opportunities for
disaster were averted, as the rest of the deputies appeared in the anteroom. Eric opened his door and, cradling his phone,
motioned for all of us to come in, and Toni and I filed inside with the others.

As Head Deputy, Eric had a “corner pocket” office with a conference table, lots of space, and a panoramic view. The furniture
was still the usual government-utilitarian ugly, but Eric had warmed it up with photographs of his wife and toddler twin boys.
The boys’ artwork hung on the wall next to his desk. I’m a fan of kid art. The largest piece depicted a Santa Claus and a
fire engine. I supposed an argument could be made for a thematic link between the two subjects, but I strongly suspected the
connection more likely lay in the artist’s access to the color red. Years of training afforded me these astonishing insights.

Eric, who’d been on a call when we all filed in, hung up as we got seated. Looking as though he’d just lost his own son, Eric
ran his hand through his permanently mussed hair, rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, and got right to it. “I know everyone’s
heard about Jake by now. I’m going to ask all of you to withhold any judgment until the investigation is complete,” he said,
looking at each of us one by one. He did not appear optimistic, and I couldn’t blame him. But I liked him for making the effort.

Eric continued, his voice gruff with emotion. “For now, I want to say that I’ll really miss him. He was a great lawyer and
a great person, and an asset to this unit.”

As I glanced around the room, I was pleasantly surprised to see the look of devastation on the faces of my fellow deputies.
It was one of those rare occasions when my low expectations of others went unfulfilled. Then again, they didn’t know that
Jake had been found with that kid’s picture in his pocket.

Eric paused to collect himself. “I have the unfortunate duty of having to deal with the business end of things,” he said,
clearing his throat with obvious discomfort. “As you all know, Jake carried a heavy caseload. He has ten open cases that I’ve
got to assign. The good news is that only four of them really need to be worked up.”

He began to hand out the case files, one or two to a deputy. He
got to me last. “Rachel, I’m giving you the one that probably needs the most work-up.” He handed me the file. “You’ve got
the Densmore case.”

Densmore—the name was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

Eric filled me in. “Victim is a minor, her father is a big-time doctor, pediatrician. Very influential. We’ve got no suspect
in custody, and Daddy’s pushing us to make an arrest and wrap up the case.”

Then it hit me. “Jake just got this last week, right?”

Eric nodded. “Vanderhorn specifically asked for you or Jake. You were in that no-body murder trial, so…”

Jake had told me about it. When the DA himself assigns a case, it’s serious. It was only a single-count rape case, not the
high-profile murder cases we usually handled in Special Trials. In fact, when Jake gave me the rundown, I found that I couldn’t
even remember when I’d last had a live victim. I’d asked him what made the case Special Trials material. Now the conversation
came back to me:

“Guess.”

“No,” I said.

“Come on, just one guess,” Jake teased.

I sighed, feigning annoyance, but the truth was, we both loved playing the riddle game. “Okay, fine. Densmore is Vanderhorn’s
baby-daddy.”

Jake gave me a disgusted look. “Biological impossibility—an unworthy effort, Ms. Knight.”

I crossed my arms and waited. Seeing that I wasn’t going to keep playing, Jake finally relented.

“Densmore’s a real piece of work. I said, ‘Hello, I’m—,’ and didn’t even get my name out before he started telling me what
a big Vanderhorn supporter he was. Then I did the math, all by myself in my little head, and guess what I realized?”

“It’s a reelection year,” I groaned.

“Clichés are clichés because they’re true, right?” Jake laughed, shaking his head. “So, big shock, Vanderhorn wants daily
updates on our progress—”

“Jeez,” I said disgustedly. “I feel your pain, Jakie, I do. But I cannot lie—I’ve probably never been happier to be unavailable
for duty.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have minded letting you take the fall on this one either,” Jake admitted with that impish grin of his. “Guess
it’s my turn in the barrel, but feel free to try and buy your way out of any guilt trips you may be having.”

“Not a problem,” I joked. “I’ll stock up on pretzels and mustard.”

“Actually, I was thinking you’d want to offer to take the next dog that comes along,” he replied.

“It’s a guilt trip, Jake, not psychosis.”

We both laughed.

The memory made my heart ache, and I felt hot tears spring to my eyes. Alarmed—though Eric would’ve understood, I’ve never
liked to get emotional in public—I swallowed rapidly to recover and flipped open the file. The first thing I saw was that
the investigating officer—the detective in charge of the case—was Hughes Lambkin. Not so fondly nicknamed “Useless.” He was
a notoriously dumb load. Nothing could have sobered me up faster.

“Can I pull my own IO?” I asked.

Eric looked at me silently for a beat. “I’ll back you, but don’t get your hopes up,” he said, his tone broadcasting what I
already knew: getting the captain to approve a change in investigating officers was a fantasy. But I’d never get the case
off the ground with Useless, so I had to try.

Eric adjourned the meeting, and we all trooped out with our
newly assigned case files. I’d noticed that Toni had flipped through hers and read the summary Jake had prepared while Eric
was doling out the rest of the cases, so as we walked down the hall, I asked, “What’d you get?”

“A double. You’ll love this: three-defendant case, all illegal Russian immigrants. They wasted the guys who brought them over
to do a credit card fraud scam, then they dug the bullets out of the bodies so the ammo couldn’t be traced to their guns—”

“Smarter than the average bear so far,” I remarked.

“Right, so you’d think they’d know better than to leave behind the knife they used to dig out the bullets.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “And the cops made their prints on the knife.”

Toni nodded and grinned. “Sounds like you got something special too.”

“A one-count rape, no defendant in custody, a worthless sack for an IO, a father who’s in bed with Vanderhorn,” I said.

“So it’s a lot like mine, except without the evidence and with lots of pressure,” Toni remarked dryly.

“Exactly.” I seemed to be on a roll for getting cases with no evidence. “Maybe I should start a new unit: Crimes withOut Witnesses—COW.
It’ll be a small unit, consisting of just me, but I’d get to be the boss. What do you think?” I paused. “And no milk jokes
allowed.”

“I think you must still be hungover.”

That was a fair guess. Back in my office, I sat down at my desk with a
whump
and picked up the phone. I’d tried to make light of it, but this case was going to be serious trouble. I’d have to solve
it and win it… with the victim’s daddy and the DA breathing down my neck.

“This is Rachel Knight. Can I have Bailey Keller, please?”

Bailey Keller was one of the best detectives on the force. From
day one in the academy, she’d shown a rare combination of athleticism and brilliance that had foreshadowed a meteoric rise
to the rank of detective and an assignment to the Major Crimes Division of the LAPD. The fact that on her third day of training
she’d walked into a mom-and-pop liquor store to buy a Red Bull and wound up single-handedly busting a trio of gangbangers
who’d been in the process of robbing the owners hadn’t hurt her prospects either. On top of all that, she was the kind of
natural pretty that didn’t need makeup, and she had the obnoxious ability to be able to eat whatever she wanted without gaining
an ounce. Toni and I regularly plotted to kill her for that particular gift. During our first case together, involving a serial
killer who specialized in older women, Bailey and I had become fast friends. But it was her professional help that I needed
now.

Bailey let herself be found.

“A little early for drinks, isn’t it, Knight?” she asked. “Not that it’s a problem.”