Marcia Clark - Guilt By Degrees

When we drew close, Gary leaned toward Bailey. “I was going to take that spot,” he said.

She gave me a smug smile.

“This is me ignoring you,” I said.

We moved up the walk, and Bailey knocked on the door. It was answered within seconds by a short, slender blond woman in her fifties, dressed in dark slacks and a long-sleeved cream-colored shirt. She had a kindly face-the sort you’d be glad to see if you’d lost your place in the world.

“Can I help you?” she asked. Bailey introduced us, and we showed our IDs.

“Come on in,” she said. “I’m Teresa Solis.”

Teresa ushered us into a front room with windows that faced the street. It was lined with photographs of women and children, singly and in groups.

“We’re looking for a man who was homeless and who might’ve stayed here a few months ago,” Bailey said.

She looked at us, her expression puzzled. “That’s not possible.”

“Because?” I asked.

“It’s a shelter for homeless women and their children,” Teresa replied.

Aha. Thus the photographs of women and children. But now it was my turn to be puzzled. Why did Simon have a brochure for a women’s shelter?

“Does anyone named Diane work here?” I asked, remembering the handwriting I’d seen on the brochure.

Teresa’s brows knitted, and she shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of, and I’ve been here for the past six years.”

I paused and stared over her shoulder at the photographs on the wall.

“Maybe someone named Diane lived here?” I asked.

“We do have a Diane living here. I’m not sure how long she’s been here, though. When were you thinking this man made contact?”

“I’m thinking sometime in the past couple of months,” Bailey replied.

Teresa turned from her desk to a short metal filing cabinet under the window. She put on a pair of green-and-black-framed reading glasses and opened the top drawer. She looked through a stack of folders and pulled out a slender red file.

“Diane Nguyen,” she read. “She and her daughter have been here for the past two months. Apparently she was also here four or five years ago.” Teresa read some more, then looked up. “She had a young boy with her back then.”

I got one of those chills you get when you just know an unexpected connection is coming.

“Is the boy’s name listed?” I asked.

Teresa looked down at the file and shook her head.

Bailey began to look around. She was feeling it too.

I knew this had to pan out somehow. I went at it another way. “Does it say about how old he was?”

Teresa looked down at the file again. “Fourteen.”

But boys, especially small ones, can look younger than their years. “Are there any photographs of them?” I asked.

“Not in the file,” she replied. “Sorry.” She looked at me sympathetically, then put the folder back in the drawer and took off her glasses.

“Is this Diane?” Bailey said, pointing to an Asian woman in a group photograph on the wall near the window.

Teresa and I both went over to the photograph. She put her glasses back on.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s her.”

Bailey and I looked at each other, then turned back to the photograph, where, next to Diane, the smiling face of Tran Lee beamed back at us.

We brieflyexplained who he was and what we were hoping to find.

“I’d guess Tran Lee was posing as her son so he’d have a place to stay,” Teresa concluded. “And you’d like to talk to Diane about it?”

“Yes,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ll take you up to her, but I can’t force her to talk to you. I hope you understand.”

Teresa led us upstairs to the living quarters. As we walked down the hallway, I counted the doors and saw that the house had been converted to make eight separate rooms, each one presumably for a separate family. Teresa stopped in front of the fifth door and knocked sharply.

“Diane?” she said. “Are you there? I need to talk to you.”

“Just a minute,” said a soft voice.

We heard some rustling and a drawer shutting, then a few light footsteps moving toward the door.

It was opened by a petite Asian woman.

“Yes?” she said, looking from Teresa to Bailey to me with a slightly alarmed expression.

“There’s nothing to be worried about, Diane,” Teresa said gently. “Nothing is wrong. These women just have a few questions for you. Do you mind if we come in for a moment?”

Diane’s face immediately relaxed. With a tentative smile, she stood aside and gestured for us to come in. The small room was neat as a pin and sparsely furnished with a bed, a dresser, a table, and chairs. But the colors were bright and cheery, which gave it a nice, homey feeling.

My heart was thudding loudly as I prayed that our theory would pan out, but I tried to act cool and calm so I wouldn’t spook Diane. Bailey and I introduced ourselves and reassured her again that she was in no trouble at all, and then I dived in.

“Did you ever know someone named Simon?” I asked.

Diane looked at me blankly. Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t know anyone by this name.”

This could not happen. I knew I was right. I could feel it. “Maybe you called him by a different name,” I suggested. I pulled out Simon’s photograph and showed it to her.

She took it from me and looked at it carefully. Then she smiled. “Oh yes,” Diane said. “But his name is Zack.”

I felt my scalp tighten. It made a weird, emotional kind of sense that Simon would use Zack’s name. “We think he might’ve given you something to hold for him. Does that ring a bell?”

Diane regarded us closely but made no response.

“Diane,” Bailey intervened, speaking gently. “Zack isn’t coming back. Someone…killed him, and we’re trying to find the person who did it.”

Her face froze and she sat perfectly still for several long minutes. Then tears slowly began to slide down her cheeks. I moved to put an arm around her, but she reflexively shrank back, out of reach. I’d forgotten who I was dealing with. The world was not a gentle place for anyone, but it was particularly harsh for a homeless woman. I sat down and waited, my hands clasped in my lap to keep them still. After a few more minutes, she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve.

Then she got up and went to her dresser. She took the clothes out of the bottom drawer and set them on the bed, then turned back to the drawer and retrieved a small yellow canvas tote bag.

“This is what he left with me,” she said, presenting the bag to me.

I took it, not even daring to breathe. I swallowed hard and steeled myself for disappointment. I could feel Bailey next to me, tension radiating from her body in pulsing waves.

I looked inside. And found it all. One shoe, one pair of prescription glasses, a police report-listing Lilah Rossmoyne as the victim of a car theft, a card bearing the address of this housing shelter, and a photograph of Tran Lee with Diane. Zack must have lifted the card and photograph out of the evidence locker before the reports were prepared. Who’d notice if something as minor as that went missing? After all, it was just a homeless crackhead who’d done a swan dive in a stolen car.

This was the evidence Simon had found, and it led him straight to this shelter. It took a Herculean effort to keep my reaction restrained.

“Diane, thank you so much,” I said.

She nodded and gave us a tremulous smile. “He was a good man,” she finally said. “I hope you will get his killer.”

Elated by the breakthrough, I was in a hurry to get outside and tell Gary that he wouldn’t have to endure days and nights of sifting through piles of papers. We trotted down the stairs behind Teresa and stopped just outside the reception room, where a young woman in frayed jeans and an army jacket was talking on a cell phone.