Blood Defense (23 page)

FORTY-TWO

I
headed to Twin Towers,
which was just a couple of blocks away from Men’s Central Jail.

I had a fifteen-minute wait before they brought Dale up, so I texted Michelle and told her to keep an eye out for someone who said he was delivering a package from Scott Henderson. Then I went through my e-mail. I’d just finished deleting my cyber junk mail when they brought Dale out. He still moved a little slower than usual, but he looked much better now. He’d regained most of the weight he’d lost when he was in the infirmary, and his face had filled in somewhat. Just in time for jury selection.

I picked up the phone. “You look good.” I studied his neck and arms. “Still haven’t gotten those tats, though.”

Dale smiled. “My favorite artist got transferred out to Delano. I refuse to settle for anything less than the best.”

“And why should you?” I told him about the Marc witnesses—Golden, Julie, and Ashton—and that we were still trying to track down the photographer, Russell Kitson. “But if he’s not willing to meet in the next day or so, we might have to let that go.”

“Don’t sweat it. I never heard Paige mention him.”

“And I just got a call from someone out of the blue.” I told him about the burglar, Scott Henderson. “Even if he really has Paige’s old phone, I’m not sure we’ll find anything of value on it. But I have to check it out. Hopefully it’ll get dropped off today.”

Dale chuckled and shook his head. “I guess that’s the upside of a high-profile case. All the weirdos come crawling out of the woodwork.”

“How obnoxiously true. Everything okay?”

“So far.” Dale looked into my eyes. “I heard you met Bobbi.”

“She’s really cool.”

“She liked you, too.”

A rush of sadness made my throat tighten.

Dale had a look of concern. “What? Are you okay?”

I stared down at the counter. Meeting Bobbi had reminded me of the way I’d felt when I was a child. The sadness of meeting my friends’ mothers, wondering why I couldn’t have a mother like that—and inevitably feeling that somehow, it was my fault. I never told anyone about that. But now for some reason, I blurted out, “I guess I couldn’t help thinking . . . all the Bobbis out there, and I get Celeste.” I was shocked to hear the words come out of my mouth. “Please, just ignore my self-pity party. I don’t know what made me say that.”

When Dale spoke, he looked into my eyes, his voice low. “Why do you hate her so much? I’m pretty well aware of Celeste’s shortcomings. Believe me, I’m no fan. But it’s not like she abandoned you—”

In that moment, something snapped. A flame of anger seared through me. “How the hell would you know?”

Dale looked stricken. “What happened? Tell me. Please.”

I’d never intended to tell anyone about it. But for some reason, the dam that’d held back the memories broke. “I was twelve. I’d just finished seventh grade. That’s when Celeste met her ultimate dream guy. Sebastian Cromer. He owned a string of real estate agencies—Cromer and Associates. They’re all over Southern California—”

“I’ve heard of them. He sold her a house?”

“No. She was a real estate agent. She worked at the branch in Studio City. She was doing pretty well but not nearly well enough. You know Celeste; she wanted the huge bucks, not the ‘good enough’ bucks. And she’d never planned to work for it.”

Dale sighed. “I’m very familiar with her life plan.”

“So even though the guy was, like, a thousand years old and she was thirty-two, when he asked her out she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. I hated the guy from jump. I told Celeste there was something creepy about him. But she wouldn’t listen. She dragged me to his mansion in Bel Air practically every friggin’ weekend. And after just one month, we moved in.”

Dale lifted his eyebrows. “One month?”

I nodded. “In late August. I remember because school started two weeks later. I’d always been a straight-A student. But by November, I was flunking just about every class except art. I got busted three times for having ecstasy, pot, and Jack Daniel’s in my locker. But you checked my background. You didn’t see any juvie history on me, did you?”

Dale shook his head, his expression dark. “Sebastian bought you out of it?”

“Sure did. And I got sent home almost every other day for wearing ‘inappropriate attire.’ That went on through all of eighth and most of ninth grade.”

They were all the classic signs. Being a cop, Dale knew them well. He was squeezing the phone so hard I heard the plastic crack. “And she said nothing?”

“Nope.”

The knuckles on his hand holding the phone were white. He didn’t look at me. “Did you say anything to her?”

“No. I was afraid she’d dump me. Put me in foster care or something. His life, his money—that’s what she wanted. Not me. And I knew for sure that she’d blame me.”

Dale rubbed his temple. “So no one else knew?”

“Lettie, the housekeeper, did. I think she suspected for a while. But she found out for sure when she caught Sebastian ‘tucking me into bed’—with his tongue down my throat and his hand up my blouse. She called the police, God bless her.”

His voice was raw. “So he got arrested.”

I could hear the bitterness in my voice as I answered, “No, of course he didn’t get arrested. The Sebastian Cromers of the world never get arrested. Mommie Dearest told the police it was a misunderstanding, that Lettie had been mistaken. And she made Lettie back down and lie to the cop. I felt like a piece of shit for not telling that cop that Lettie had been right. But I could tell he was a big fan of Sebastian’s. He was all, ‘Of course, Mr. Cromer. So sorry to disturb you, Mr. Cromer.’ Lettie left that night and never came back.”

“So Celeste didn’t do anything about it?”

The look of horror and disgust on Dale’s face was like salve on an open wound. Finally, someone believed me. And cared.

“She refused to believe Lettie—or me. But one month later, she saw it with her own eyes. He came after me while I was in the shower—”

“How? Didn’t you—”

“Lock the door?” Dale nodded. “I couldn’t. He disabled all the locks on my doors.”

Dale’s face and neck had turned bright red. “
Then
did she believe you?”

“No. She accused me of trying to seduce him, of setting him up. I told her I couldn’t take it anymore, and that if she didn’t get me out of there, I’d report him to the school police. And I’d tell them that she’d known about it all along and wouldn’t stop him.”

Dale’s eyes bored into mine, his gaze burning hot. “What did she do?”

“She knew the school police probably wouldn’t bow down to King Sebastian. And I think some part of her lizard brain knew he’d do it again—and that eventually, he’d get caught by someone who wouldn’t let it go. Then she’d be on the hook, too. So she finally moved us out.”

Dale stared at the counter as he slowly shook his head, his chest heaving. Suddenly, he pushed back, his face flushed a dangerous red. He screamed as tears gathered in his eyes. “That sick fucking bitch! Goddamn her to hell!” He banged the phone down on the counter—and kept banging it again and again. Plastic shards flew as the phone disintegrated. Spittle flew from his mouth, and his eyes were wild as he shouted over and over, “That goddamned whore! That filthy piece of shit! I’ll kill them both!” By the time the guards came running, the receiver was nothing but a mouthpiece and wires.

They yanked him up by his waist chain and threw him down on the floor. I jumped up and pounded on the glass. “Stop! Let him go! It’s not his fault!”

But they never even looked at me. They trussed him up and dragged him out. I stood there staring after him, my hands still on the glass. Dale’s fury was a wild, terrifying thing. I didn’t want to think about what it meant.

But I couldn’t deny that when I saw his rage unleashed—for me, for what they’d done to me—a part of me had rejoiced.

FORTY-THREE

W
hen I got back to my car,
I sat there for a few minutes. I needed time to recover. I couldn’t stop seeing the image of him pounding that phone receiver on the counter with wild-eyed fury. As much as I feared what it meant, I loved that fury. It was
my
fury, and I’d carried it by myself for so many years. And now, finally, there was someone else who felt it, too, someone who knew I told the truth, who believed me. I felt vindicated. I felt strong.

But I knew that was the face of a man who
could
stab two innocent women to death. As much as I wanted to believe he was innocent, the evidence kept stacking up against him.

After a few minutes, my head cleared enough to drive. Ordinarily, I hate the drive from downtown. It’s long and monotonous. But now, the boring normality of it brought me back down to earth. Freeway therapy. By the time I passed the Hollywood exits a half hour later, I was feeling pretty steady. But I knew I couldn’t talk about what’d just happened. I’d regained my balance, but only just. If I had to relive any part of it now, it’d totally derail me. So I did what I’d always done since childhood: I shut it all out. I spent the rest of the ride back thinking about what else I had to get done before the trial started.

When I got back to the office, Michelle smiled and held up a hand for a high five.

“You know I hate high fives, Michy.” Because when I miss, it feels so lame.

“Oh, cope.” We slapped hands and I managed to hit hers pretty squarely.

“What are we celebrating?” Other than the fact that I’d nailed the high five.

“Russell Kitson will talk to you if you get out there right now. He’s in the Valley.” Michelle handed me a Post-it with the address.

“Hey, Alex,” I called.

He came out of his little room. “You don’t have to shout. I’m only nine feet away.”

“Let’s go hit up the photographer.” He went back to his office to pack up. “Did anyone come by with that phone?”

“Not yet. But it’s only three thirty.”

I decided I’d asked enough of Beulah for one day and let Alex do the driving. As he headed up the onramp to the freeway, the sky was a dull gray. But as we moved north and east, the sun broke through, and by the time we made it to the San Fernando Valley, the sky was almost completely blue. Just a few wispy clouds floated above us.

Alex got off the freeway at Winnetka and headed north for another five miles. He made a series of turns into a bland, suburban neighborhood and finally pulled up in front of a two-story Tudor-style house set at the top of a steep driveway. As we hiked up to the front door, I noticed that the large picture window was covered with a heavy blackout drape.

When a young woman in heavy makeup, a kimono short enough to wear to the gynecologist, and stiletto heels answered Alex’s knock, I knew what kind of photographer—or, rather, videographer—Russell was. The girl ushered us in and pointed to a man sprawled on the couch near the front door. He stood up when we walked in. Russell was at least six foot four and thin as a Flexi straw, with long, greasy black hair. A nose ring with a real-looking diamond rested on his left nostril, and several chains with a variety of medallions hung around his neck, which was covered in multicolored tats. When we shook hands, I noticed he wore leather bracelets and heavy silver rings on every finger. The word
overkill
probably never came out of his mouth.

We followed him past the set—a dungeon that featured a rack suspended from the ceiling, a chair equipped with leather straps, the requisite four-poster bed—with handcuffs, of course—and I even spotted a red rubber ball on the pillow. A man in an executioner’s costume—leather head covering and all—sat in a rocking chair next to the bed, scrolling on his cell phone. Two women in G-strings and nothing else watched a cooking show on the television a few feet away. Just another day in a sleepy bedroom town.

As we took seats in the dining room, I saw Russell check me out. There was nothing lascivious about it. He was just scoping out the inventory. He offered us a drink, but I declined. I didn’t even want to risk bottled water here. Russell looked more than a little stoned, with eyes at half-mast and a voice that sounded like a tired lawn mower.

I thanked him for meeting with us and jumped right in. “How’d you meet Paige? I assume you knew her before you met Marc.”

“Yeah. I’ve known Paige for about five years. Back then I only did print ads, online ads, that sort of thing.”

“She never did porn?”

“No. I tried to bring her over. It’s good money. But she wasn’t into it.” He pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his vest pocket and held it out to us. We shook our heads. He lit up and took a deep drag. I could practically hear his lungs screaming.

I was hoping he could give us a line on who Mr. Perfect was, so I asked if he knew of any boyfriends who were married—and generous.

He shook his head. “Uh-uh, Paige didn’t do the married-man thing. At least not that I ever knew. Only guy I ever saw her with was a guy in the industry. Used to pick her up at the shoots sometimes. Drove a motorcycle.”

“You happen to know his name?” I asked the question with zero hope.

Russell tipped his head back and stared through the smoke that circled up toward the ceiling from his cigarette. “It was weird . . . like, Cloud . . . Rain . . . no. Storm. Yeah, that’s it. Storm . . . Cooper.”

At last. I couldn’t believe I’d finally gotten a name. But . . .
“Seriously? Storm Cooper?” He nodded. I looked at Alex and we did a mental fist bump. “Did you know him at all?”

He pulled on his cigarette like it was a joint, holding in the smoke till the very last second. “Not really. We didn’t talk. Maybe like ‘Hey’ and ‘See ya.’ I just remember because I dug the name.”

I asked a few more questions about Paige, and a couple about Marc, but we’d gotten all there was to get from Russell. I thanked him for his time. He took another drag and stood up. “Not a problem. Well, gotta get back to the salt mines.” Russell gave us a salute. “The porn must go on.”

I tried not to make a face. As he walked us to the door, one of the girls was getting hoisted onto the rack. Another girl in thigh-high black-vinyl boots picked up a whip.

Russell opened the door. “Such a bummer what happened to her. Never would’ve thought someone that sweet could end up that way.” He shook his head. “Fuckin’ world we live in.”

A whip cracked behind him. “Yeah, what a world.”