Michael Connelly - The Gods of Guilt

I nodded.

“Good question. I’ll ask the client when I see him before first appearance. I’ll also ask about the Town Car that picked her up. See if she had a regular driver. But there’s something about this…this video that is off. It doesn’t fit with this guy working for her. It’s like he knew there were cameras and he kept his hat on and his head down. He didn’t want to be seen on camera.”

“And him being there before she arrived,” Cisco added. “He was waiting for her.”

“He acted like he knew she’d be going up and coming right back down,” Lorna seconded. “He knew that there was nobody in that room up there.”

I stopped pacing and pointed at Cisco’s closed laptop.

“He’s gotta be the guy,” I said. “He’s Daniel Price. We have to find out who he is.”

“Um, can I butt in here for a moment?” Jennifer asked.

I nodded, giving her the floor.

“Before we get all hot and bothered about this mystery man in the hat, we have to remember that our client admitted to the police that he was in the victim’s apartment with her after this guy was or was not following her, and that he argued with her and put his hand around her throat. So rather than worrying about what was going on before he was in her apartment, shouldn’t we be worried about what La Cosse did or didn’t do when he was actually in the place?”

“It’s all important,” I answered quickly. “But it all needs to be vetted. We need to find this guy and see what he was doing. Cisco, can you widen the search a bit? That hotel sits right at the end of Rodeo Drive. There’s got to be more cameras out there. Maybe we can track this guy to a car and get a plate. His trail has not gone totally cold.”

Cisco nodded.

“I’m on it.”

I checked my watch. I needed to get moving toward downtown and arraignment court.

“Okay, what else?”

No one said anything, then Lorna timidly raised her hand.

“Lorna, what?”

“Just a reminder, today at two you have the pretrial conference in Department Thirty on Ramsey.”

I groaned. Another of my stellar clients, Deirdre Ramsey was charged with aiding and abetting a variety of crimes in one of the more bizarre cases to come my or any lawyer’s way in years. She first gained public attention the year before as the unnamed victim of a horrible assault that occurred during a takeover robbery of a convenience store. The first reports were that the twenty-six-year-old had been one of four customers and two employees in the store when two heavily armed and masked men entered to rob the place. The customers and employees were herded into a storage room and locked in while the gunmen used a crowbar to open the store’s cash deposit slot.

But then the gunmen reentered the storage room and told all the captives to turn over their wallets and jewelry and take off all their clothes. While one of the men stood guard over the others, the second man raped Ramsey in front of the whole group. The men then fled the store, taking a total of $280 dollars and two boxes of candy besides the personal belongings of the victims. For months the crime remained unsolved. The city council offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of suspects, and Ramsey filed a negligence lawsuit against the corporation that owned the store, alleging that the business did not provide adequate protection of its customers. Knowing that the last thing they wanted to see was Ramsey testifying about her ordeal in front of a jury, the corporation’s board of directors in Dallas voted to settle the case, paying Ramsey $250,000 for her troubles.

Money is the great destroyer of relationships. Two weeks after Ramsey walked away with the money, investigators on the case took a call from a woman inquiring whether the city council award was still available. When informed that it was, she told a surprising story. She said that the $250K settlement was the true goal of the robbery and that the rapist-robber was actually Ramsey’s boyfriend, Tariq Underwood. The rape was part of an elaborate and consensual scam, according to the snitch, a get-rich scheme concocted by Ramsey herself.

As it turned out, the caller was Ramsey’s former best friend—that is, until she felt she was unfairly left out of the riches bestowed on Ramsey. Court-ordered wiretaps ensued, and soon enough Ramsey, her boyfriend, and his partner in the robbery were arrested. The Office of the Public Defender took on Underwood’s defense, which put it in conflict with Ramsey’s, and so her file was shuttled to me. It was a low-cost, low-probability case, but Ramsey refused to plead it out. She wanted to go to trial, and I had no choice but to take her there. It wasn’t going to end pretty.

Being reminded of the hearing shot holes in the engine block of my day’s momentum. My groan did not go unnoticed by Lorna.

“You want me to try to postpone it?” she offered.

I thought about it. I was tempted.

“You want me to take it?” Jennifer offered.

Of course she wanted it. She’d take any criminal case I’d give her.

“No, it’s a dog,” I said. “I can’t do that to you. Lorna, see what you can do. I want to run with La Cosse today if I can.”

“I’ll let you know.”

Everyone was either grabbing a final doughnut or heading to the door.

“Okay, then, everybody’s got their assignments and knows what they’re doing on this,” I said. “Stay in touch and let me know what you know.”

I made another cup of coffee and was the last one out. Earl was waiting with the car in the back parking lot. I told him to head downtown to the courthouse and to stay off the freeway. I wanted to get there in time to talk to Andre La Cosse before they hauled him before the judge.

7

I had fifteen minutes with my client before he would be herded into the courtroom with several other custodies for first appearances before a judge. He was in a crowded holding cell off the arraignment court and I had to lean close to the bars and whisper so the other men in the cell wouldn’t hear.

“Andre, we don’t have a lot of time here,” I said. “In a few minutes you’ll be taken into the courtroom to see the judge. It will be short and sweet, the charges will be read and they’ll set a date for your arraignment.”

“Don’t I plead not guilty?”

“No, not yet. This is just a formality. After you get arrested they have forty-eight hours to put you before a judge to get the ball rolling. This will be very brief.”

“What about bail?”

“You won’t make bail unless that gold brick you sent us is just one of many. You’re charged with murder. They will set bail, but on the low end it will probably be two million, maybe two and a half. That’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bond. You have that much gold? You don’t get it back, you know.”

He slumped and pressed his forehead against the bars that separated us.

“I can’t stand this place.”

“I know, but you’ve got no choice right now.”

“You said you could get me into another module?”

“Sure, I can do that. Give me the word and I’ll get you on keep-away status.”

“Do it. I don’t want to go back there.”

I leaned in closer and whispered lower.

“Did something happen to you last night in there?”

“No, but there are animals in there. I don’t want to be there.”

I didn’t tell him that no matter where he was placed in the jail complex, he wasn’t going to like it. The animals were everywhere.

“I’ll bring it up with the judge,” I said instead. “Now I want to ask you a couple things about the case before we go in there, okay?”

“Go ahead. You got the gold?”

“Yes, I got the gold. More than we asked for but it will all go toward your defense, and if it doesn’t get used, the remainder goes back to you. I have a receipt for you if you want it, but I don’t think you want to carry around a piece of paper in Men’s Central that shows you’ve got money.”