Presumed Guilty (14 page)

Dallas turned into the driveway and noticed only a few cars parked in the lot. The lot itself appeared to form a horseshoe shape. She followed it to the far end and saw there was another driveway in the back.

And she saw the room. Number 105, at the very rear of the building, the dull silver numbers easily readable from the car.
She almost drove on. What good was this? What did she hope to accomplish?
To find something, anything, that would show Ron didn’t kill Melinda Chance. Jeff said they needed some evidence, and it wasn’t forthcoming. But maybe her eyes could see something here others had missed.
Didn’t that happen on the TV shows? Some CSI person would find a shell casing or carpet fiber or . . . who was she kidding? This was reality, and she was no trained forensic specialist.
But she could at least say she tried everything she could think of.
She pulled her car into the last spot in the lot, facing the street in back of the motel, and let the car idle. Finally she turned it off and got out and faced the building.
There was no car in front of the room, and no one appeared to be around. The news hounds had taken their fill of pictures. Curiosity seekers had no doubt driven by in the first few days after all the publicity.
Maybe this place would end up on a map someday, the kind sold by street hawkers in Hollywood, which showed tourists movie stars’ homes or famous crime scenes.
See where Charles Manson did his thing! See the room where Ron Hamilton offed that girl!
Dallas shivered then, even though the day was hot. There was evil here. Bad things going on behind closed doors.
She was vaguely aware of a grating sound, turned, and saw it was a boy on a skateboard, coming into the parking lot from the back street. He was Latino, around twelve. The lot was big enough that it probably made a nice track for skateboarders.
But instead of heading toward the lot, he came right up to her and stopped.
“That’s where it happen,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“The killing, you know? Right there.”
He pointed at room 105.
Dallas nodded. “I know.”
“Lots of people come by to look.”
“Sure. Do you live around here?”
He jerked his head over his shoulder. “There. So you want me to tell what happen?”
“I already know.”
“She was hot.”
“What? Hot?”
“Lady that got killed.”
Dallas almost jumped. “Did you see her?”
He shook his head. “My friend.”
“Your friend saw the lady that was killed here?”
The boy started to look a little nervous.
Easy. Back off a little.
“Go ahead. What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing.”
“Wait, you said you had a friend — ”
“I don’t know nothing.”
“But you said — ”
He turned and pushed off on his skateboard.
“Wait!”
He didn’t wait. Dallas took two steps after him, but he was fast. The sound of skateboard wheels on pavement was all he left her.
“Please!”
She watched helplessly as he disappeared around the cinderblock wall.
Something had scared him off. She had to know what it was. She ran to her car, started it, backed out of her space. A car horn blared at her.
She slammed on the brakes. She’d almost backed into a Lexus. The driver, a man in sunglasses, yelled at her, gesticulating with one arm.
Dallas gunned her car forward, almost scraping the wall. She actually burned rubber out of the driveway. She stopped at the road and looked both ways. No sign of the boy. There was a strip mall to the left and some housing to the right.
She chose right, drove, then caught sight of the boy a fair distance down a residential street. She stopped, backed up, and turned down the street.
What on earth was she doing? Chasing a kid on a skateboard? A scared kid at that.
It didn’t matter. He was a thread, a chance.
And what would she do when she caught up to him? Money. Give him a five or a ten, get him to tell her something, anything, to get her to the next step. Whatever that was.
She was only vaguely aware of the topography of the neighborhood. The homes were smallish, probably built around the same time as the Star Motel. There were manicured lawns next to fenced yards. Spare trees, testaments to faded glory, leaned against cracked curbs.
The boy disappeared up what looked to be a driveway. She followed into what turned out to be an alley. A wooden fence on one side, block walls on the other. City garbage cans lolled against the fencing.
And the kid had stopped and was talking to someone.
A group of someones.
Dallas stopped, saw the boy pointing at her. The one he was talking to was older, wore a white wifebeater and black jeans, and had a blue bandanna tied around his head.
He was about thirty feet away from her, but when he looked directly at her she saw everything she needed to know in his eyes.
It was more than enough to get her to put the car in reverse and start backing out the way she came.
Only now she couldn’t. Because a car had somehow come up behind without her noticing, and it was blocking her way. Purposely, she knew.
A moment later four doors flew open and young men who might have been wearing neon GANG signs poured out.
And started slowly walking toward her.

Jared stopped and looked at his reflection in the dirty window, darkened on the inside so the early drinkers could be shielded from sunlight. In the window he saw the same dumb face he’d seen for the last couple of years, staring back with eyes as dark as the pane of glass, as bereft as the hopes on the other side.

What were you thinking? You think you matter to a kid and some woman whose life is shot because that’s the way she wants it? What’re you after, idiot? Quit pretending that it’s going to get better. Go in, have a drink, get some cheap bourbon down your throat, feel the nice warm glow that comes out your nose when you knock it back neat, and maybe later you can grab some weed and get high before you decide where you’re going to head off to so you don’t bring your mom down anymore and make your sister crazy.

You gave it a shot, but let’s face it, boy, you are damaged goods, no use.
He turned back to the boulevard and thought maybe a fastmoving truck would be the best solution for everybody. All he’d have to do is jump in front and take a good thumping and that would be that. Unless he lived, of course, in which case things would be worse than ever and Mom would have way more to deal with than he would wish on anyone.
No solution, then, after all. Which spun him right back to the bar.
Go get that drink, fool, what’re you waiting for?
He started to go in when he heard someone call his name. He turned around and saw Joe Boyle walking toward him. Joe. They’d been in youth group together at church. Jared hadn’t seen him in years, hadn’t kept in touch.
“Thought I recognized you!” Joe threw his arms around Jared and gave him a hug. Jared let him but didn’t return the favor. “How you been, man?”
Joe looked a little more prosperous than he had in high school. He wore khaki slacks and a knit shirt and looked like he could be getting ready to go to the golf course and actually play golf, not get high like they used to, sneaking out at night.
“I’m fine,” Jared said.
“You just get back? From the Marines?”
“I been back a while.”
“Bummer about your dad.” Joe shook his head. “I don’t believe it, you know.”
“Thanks.”
“What are you doing now?”
Getting drunk at 11
:
00 a.m. How about you?
“Not a whole lot. You? ”
“Vista Ford. You know what? I really like selling cars. I mean, I’m good at it.”
“No doubt.” Joe had always been good at anything.
“Married too.” He held up his left hand, showing a gold wedding band.
“Who’d you end up with?”
“You mean who took my sorry self? Remember Rona Conroy?”
“Oh, yeah.” Very nice looking, as he recalled.
“Yeah, baby too. Little girl.”
Was he rubbing it in or something? “Cool. Congratulations.”
“Hey, I’m just stopping over at Wendy’s. Can I buy you a burger?”
“No, thanks. I got some things to do.”
“Well, let’s get together.” Joe took out a snap case and pulled out a business card. It had raised gold lettering on it. Joe was a
Sales Executive
.
Jared took it. “Sure.”
“I mean it.” Joe pointed his finger at him, gun style.
“Right. You bet.”
Joe gave him a slap on the shoulder. “See you. Call me.”
And he turned and walked back along the sidewalk, toward the Wendy’s a block away. Jared watched him, waited until he was out of sight, then went into the bar, crumpling the card as he did.

The kid with the blue bandanna was standing at her window now, the boy on the skateboard behind him. The others were around her car, two of them directly in front. She was going to have to talk, so it might as well be now.

“I was looking for . . . I don’t want anything, I just wanted to ask a question.”
“You scared or something?”
“Yes.”
“What, you think this big bad banger, he gonna mess you?”
She nodded. She could hear blood pulsating in her ears.
“I look like a banger to you?”
She nodded.
He smiled, showing perfect white teeth that fairly gleamed. On his neck were tattooed the words
Mi Vida Loca.
He slapped the top of her car, creating a popping sound that entered her ears like ice bullets.
Loca turned to the boy with the skateboard and said something in Spanish. The boy looked at Dallas and nodded. Loca turned back to Dallas. “So you come to see the place, huh, the place where the guy smoked her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
She could fudge around it or tell him. She could try to finesse her way out or lay it on the line. Something told her fudging could only lead to worse trouble.
Dallas opened the door so she could get out and face him. He let her. He was not very tall. She was eye to eye with him.
“My husband is the one they think did it.”
He gave her a long look, then said, “He musta been on something, huh?”
“He didn’t do it.”
“Yeah?”
“He didn’t. The boy said he had a friend who saw the woman.”
The gangbanger slapped the back of the boy’s head. The boy yelped.
“You got money?”
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
Dallas reached into the car and got her purse. She had twentytwo dollars and some change. She handed it over.
“Okay,” Loca said. “You did good. You come with me now.”

He led her down the alley, the others following. Was she being a complete fool to go with him?
Yes.
But two things kept her going. Instinct and faith. She had the idea that she could trust this guy, and being in the daylight helped. But she also had faith that she was protected and she had to step out in that, had to at this moment in time because she’d come this far.
Near the end of the alley was an open garage. Only this was done up like a room, with posters and shelves and secondhand carpet over the cement. At the back of the garage was a mattress, and on the mattress sat a rotund teenager. His white T-shirt was too small for his frame, and an ample portion of stomach protruded out over his jeans. He held a comic book in one hand and looked up nonchalantly as Loca entered the space.
“Hey, this lady wanna talk about the lady you saw at the motel, huh?”
The kid slowly looked at Dallas with a dark moon face.
“You don’t got to be afraid, man. Talk to her.”
Dallas sat on a crate, tried to speak calmly. “Will you tell me what you saw?”
Loca kicked him, half playfully, half rebukingly. “Go on, Ratón. Tell her.”
“She was hot.” The words came out of Ratón slow and childlike. Coupled with the detached look in his eyes, Dallas concluded that he was mentally challenged.
“Where did you see her?” Dallas probed.
Ratón was silent.
Loca said, “He hangs over there at the place. He likes to watch the people. It’s like his TV. Crazy, huh?”
“He watches the motel?”
“And the 7-Eleven. That’s how he changes channels.” Loca laughed.
Ratón laughed, looking at Loca as if taking his cues from him.
The strangeness of the scene coalesced around her. Gangbangers, a kid on a skateboard, a handicapped kid on a mattress who may have seen something, may not have. But why stop now? “Please tell me what else you saw.”
“The man.” Ratón looked at Loca. “Should I say about the man?”
“What man?” Dallas said.
“Yeah,” Loca said, sounding like this was news to him too.
Ratón licked his lips. “He was fast. He ran fast. Went into that place.”
Dallas said, “You saw a man go into a room?”
Ratón nodded.
“What did this man look like?”
“Black.”
“He was a black man?”
Ratón frowned and shook his head, then rubbed his hands on his T-shirt. “All black.”
“You mean he was dressed in black clothes?”
Ratón nodded quickly.
Dallas considered the information. A fast man dressed in black. That did not sound like Ron. He wouldn’t dress that way if he was just meeting with Melinda.
“Did you see this man go into the room?” Dallas asked.
Ratón squinted. “I think. And then he came out, ran away.”
This was such a thin thread, even if she could believe what he said. But it was the only thread she had in hand.
“What else?”
“Huh?”
“What else did you see?” She couldn’t temper the desperation in her voice.
Ratón’s eyes widened, and he made a little squeaking sound in his throat. He looked at Loca.
Loca said, “He’s getting a little nervous. Maybe you should go now.”
“Please,” she said. “I have to know everything.”
“That’s it.”
“No, tell him to tell me. Please.”
Loca shook his head, took hold of her arm, and pulled her up. “You can go now. And don’t come back.”
She pulled her arm away. “You don’t seem to understand.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I’m not an enemy.”
Loca shook his head. “You’re not a friend, neither. Now get in your car.”

She drove immediately to Jeff Waite’s office in Encino. She knew he often worked on Saturdays and took a chance. It paid off. The security guard in the building called him and then sent her up.

Jeff was in casual clothes when he met her coming off the elevator. “What brings you down here?” he said.
“Jeff, listen, where can we talk?”
“Come on.” He walked her into the suite of offices on the fourteenth floor. They went into the library, which had a table in the middle of the room. Papers and open books were spread out there.
“Just doing a little research on the admissibility of a victim’s past. We need to show that Melinda Perry was not exactly running with a good crowd. Meaning there were others who could have done this.”
“Can you show this?”
“It’s iffy. What we’d be saying is that we have an alternative theory, and the courts have held we need to provide some factual basis for it.”
“Can we?”
“Not yet. We need something that connects Melinda and her background to something in this case, like the motel.”
Dallas’s breath accelerated. “What if you had a witness who could do that?”
“Witness?”
“That’s what I came to tell you. I was just in Pico Rivera, I went to the Star Motel, a kid was skateboarding there, and I followed him” — she didn’t care how wild this sounded — “and, long story short, I was talking to another kid who saw someone at the motel that night, someone who was not Ron, and when I — ”
Jeff put his hands up. “Whoa, slow down. First, who is this guy?”
“His name is something Spanish, Ratón.”
“Mouse?”
“That’s what this other guy called him.”
“What other guy?”
Dallas huffed. “It’s a little involved, a gang member — ”
“
Gang
member? Dallas, what the heck — ”
“Listen to me. This kid I was talking to, he saw something. He’s just a little . . .”
“A little what? ”
“Mentally slow. But he knows what he saw, he — ”
“Dallas! First of all, what are you doing going around investigating things? I have people who do that for a living.”
“I know. It was spontaneous. I just had to do something.”
“Yeah, and if you do the wrong thing it could blow Ron’s case up, did you consider that? Did you consider you might chase away information?”
“I’m sorry, Jeff.”
“And this alleged witness, you’re telling me he’s got mental problems. You know he might not even be competent to testify.”
“You should at least talk to him.”
“You’ve got a very unreliable witness here. The DA will take him apart.”
“But what about the truth?”
Jeff dropped into a chair. “Dallas, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s not the truth that matters. It’s the evidence. It’s what the jury is allowed to see. If we thought trials were about the truth we’d hook everybody up to lie detectors and let the judge sort it out. But it’s not. It’s about who’s got the best evidence and who can bluff the other side into the best deal. If the evidence is roughly equivalent, we go to trial.”
“So now we have evidence.”
“That doesn’t make it equal. Like I said, the DA will kill this witness’s credibility. And he has all the physical evidence he needs.”
“Jeff, I can’t give up on him. Maybe I should, but I can’t. He’s still my husband, and he’s still not guilty of murder.”
“I want to believe that.”
She looked at him hard. “You don’t? Jeff, you honestly don’t?”
He said nothing, and that was answer enough.
“I don’t know what to do,” Dallas said. “But it’s got to be something.”
“We’ll try.”
“There is no try. Only do.”
“Huh?”
“It’s an old saying.”
Jeff smiled at her, then nodded. “You’re quite a doer when you put your mind to it. All right. I’ll have you talk to Harry.”