A Checklist for Murder (26 page)

“Yeah. That sounds good. What if they ask more questions?”

“Beyond that, just tell them you don’t like talking about
it. Anybody who doesn’t back off after that deserves to get their feelings stepped on, you know?”

They talked for a while longer, trading a little news. But Victoria hung up feeling heartsick. She wondered if her advice to Tasha about hiding the source of her scars had really meant anything to her. This case seemed to constantly call upon her to exhibit abilities she wasn’t sure she had. She could only hope to have given Tasha something she could use.

“What are you doing here?”

The barracks guard didn’t look familiar to Tasha. He was glaring at her with his eyes full of suspicion. She knew that plenty of the enlisted men sneaked their girlfriends in for little visits. Apparently the guard knew it too.

She was dressed in nothing more than a T-shirt and panties and she blushed under his unwavering gaze. Her mind raced, trying to size up how much of the truth she was supposed to tell this guy. The guard flicked his quick gaze around the room and drew himself up to full height, working to impress upon her that she had better not try anything funny.

“Y’know, you could get your boyfriend bagged for having you in here.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Tasha retorted, then made a quick mental note to keep her voice friendly as she continued, “We’re actually married.”

“Interesting,” the guard replied, taking a good look at her long legs.

Her T-shirt felt like it had shrunk about three sizes. Why the hell hadn’t she put on a bra?

“No, really.” She smiled, trying not to shake. “We just got married and he’s at work now but we already have an apartment and as soon as he gets home we’re moving in over there because this is our last day here and I’m just—”

“Your last
what
? You mean to tell me you’ve been living
here in violation of policy,
misusing
Navy property in
complete
disregard for—”

“Look. We’re married.”

“Uh-huh,” the guard replied, not actually calling her a liar but getting his point across all the same. He ran his eyes down the clipboard in his hand. Finally he seemed to see something that relieved his suspicion a bit.

“Well, I see he’s moving
out
, all right. But he’s listed as being a single male until seventeen hundred hours today.”

“Hey, I can’t help what—” She stopped, dropped her voice, and started again. “I don’t know what’s on that list, but we got married last week and now we have a place to stay and he got permission from whoever. So can’t we just—”

“I suppose you must have some kind of proof, since you’re all legal and everything?”

“Well …” Tasha looked up at the small bag she had just finished packing. The marriage papers were in it, all right. And she had stowed it away neatly, high up on the top shelf of the tall wall unit.

“Well?” the guard asked, following her gaze.

“It’s way up there. Can you get it down for me?”

The guard put the situation together fast. Only a hint of a grin flashed before he replaced it with his special interrogator’s maybe-you’re-a-spy scowl. “You want me to climb up there and give you a chance to run off?”

“Why would I run off? This is all our stuff. And I haven’t done anything—”

“Y’know, I don’t
have
to stand here and argue with you.” He ran his eyes along her bare legs again. Slowly. Tasha felt the T-shirt shrink another couple of sizes.

But she thought about what it would mean to have her new husband come home and find that she had managed to get him into trouble by not handling this thing right.

“Fine.” She exhaled sharply, grabbed the chair, and, pulling it under the high shelf, climbed up.

“Fine.” The chair wasn’t high enough. She had to brace her foot on one of the lower shelves and climb another foot or two up over the delighted guard.

“Fine.” By now the T-shirt was down to about the size of a cloth necklace.

Just do it
, she told herself.
Just do it just do it just do it
.

And finally she was back on the floor holding the bag. In another second she had the marriage papers stuck under the ensign’s nose and felt no surprise when he hardly glanced at them.

“Well, okay,” he mumbled. “I’ll let it slide.”

The surprise came when she noticed he was blushing just a bit. She wondered if he felt guilty about this nasty little trick or if he was just getting concerned. Would the married lady talk? Put in a complaint? Run the old paper marathon and submit it to the cap’n?

Either way, he tore his eyes off her lower half and looked her straight in the face for the first time since he’d barged through the door.

“Whoa. Your husband do that to you?”

“No. It was … a car wreck. Are we through yet?”

“Right. Sure.” He ran his gaze over her scars one more time and whistled softly.

“Just keep away from the windows and don’t make any noise until both you guys are gone.”

“That’s what I was doing.” She stood quietly and met his gaze until he dropped it and turned for the door.

“Okay, then. Be careful.” And then the door closed again and he was gone.

Be careful
? she wondered.
Oh, right
. There were plenty of other guards around. And who could tell how horny some of
them
might be?

•   •   •

The apartment was furnished with a futon, a bed, a television, and not much else. Her insurance money had been run down to barely over two thousand dollars by the deposits and initial expenses, but she had helped to pick out the place herself. It was small, and on days when the elevators went out there was a twenty-story climb up from ground level.

But it was hers, and it was safe.

Her very first, on-your-own, dirty as you can stand it, pay for it yourself, don’t let anybody inside who you don’t want to, hang out and look as ugly as you feel like, make as much noise as your neighbors will tolerate, very first place.

CHAPTER

18

T
he unending noise inside the Los Angeles County Jail is a soundtrack from hell’s lowest levels, stuck on continuous replay. A thick sour stink coats everything like a layer of nasty paint. By early November Robert Peernock was seething in his four-man cell, desperate to find a way to stop his daughter and her attorney from denying him access to his money, poisoning his attempt to mount the best possible defense.

His own money
. That phrase kept coming up, over and over as he poured handwritten motions out of his cell.
His own money
. As an example of the way his civil rights were being trampled, he frequently pointed out in his motions that he was not allowed decent legal supplies and was forced to write his motions with a one-inch pencil stub, sharpened by rubbing it back and forth over the cell’s concrete surface. Clerks began to say that it must have been a Magic Pencil; it sent countless pages rolling into the court clerk’s office, laying out his years of struggle and introducing all who would read them to a tale of conspiracy as grand as the libretto to a jailhouse opera.

Lyle, a convicted child molester, entered L.A. County Jail around November 1. His prior conviction had been for sexually abusing his young daughter, and he was now back in jail for a repetition of the same offense.

Lyle happened to be assigned to the cell right next to Peernock’s. They couldn’t help but notice each other. Both were
conspicuous as white men in a jail system dominated by Latinos and African-Americans.

It’s a good idea to seek company behind bars if you can; the L.A. County Jail is an angry and overcrowded place. The simple act of strolling into the declared space of the wrong group can get a homemade knife jammed between your ribs. One wrong glance can touch off brawl like a match at a gas pump. So Lyle and Robert did as other Anglos do, lining up together for mealtime and recreation, following the unspoken tradition.

It was a loose affiliation. The two didn’t talk much at first. Still, even before Lyle knew what charges Peernock was facing, he noticed that Peernock didn’t seem to belong in jail. At the age of fifty, Robert Peernock was too well maintained to have the look of a regular customer. He was free of jailhouse tattoos and the low-lidded fuck-you shuffle common to seasoned institutionals. Lyle realized that the man was a complete newcomer to the system. This meant that as a middle-aged Anglo with an education, Peernock would be dead in no time if somebody didn’t pass him a few facts of life. But Lyle also knew jail life well. He knew about keeping your distance and about the value of staying to yourself. So even as they hung close physically, he kept his personal distance from Peernock. Lyle just did quiet time, leaving the strange newcomer to twist in the wind while Lyle sized him up.

Besides, Lyle had plenty to keep quiet about. Child molesters, especially the Anglos, get eaten for breakfast by the angry “minority” inmates who easily surpass the numbers of their lighter-skinned colleagues. Molesters don’t fare much better with their own race. All of them tend to do their time peacefully and avoid undue attention.

But before long Lyle had to admit that he liked Peernock’s style. Lyle recognized the man as a true jailhouse lawyer, with his cell space crammed with boxes of legal documents
and bits of evidence concerning his case. Plenty of inmates try to buck the system single-handed, but after two months in captivity Peernock had focused himself on the quest for freedom like a man possessed.

Lyle was finally pulled into Peernock’s comer of the world when Cowboy, one of Lyle’s cell mates, sneaked into Peernock’s “house” while he was asleep and stole some cash out of the money belt Peernock kept under Ms shirt. When Peernock awoke and discovered the theft he went ballistic. Lyle was stunned to see this fifty-year-old white man charge into Lyle’s group cell and accuse the
wrong man
, demanding that the money be returned before the day’s end.

After Peernock stomped back to his own cell, Lyle listened uneasily while the outraged inmate blustered out threats of reprisals for the insult. A major fight was brewing; at the best it would involve injury between these two men, at the worst a full race riot.

Lyle quickly took Peernock aside and explained, in effect, Hey, bozo, unless you’re
real
tired of living, you just don’t put out that kind of shit in here. To lay it out plain, you broke a strict jailhouse code by offending a man in front of his friends. Now you better go apologize and try to mend the situation before somebody gets seriously hurt. And you better hustle.

Maybe if Lyle had spent more time observing Peernock by this point, he wouldn’t have bothered to suggest backing down. Peernock’s outright refusal to play willing victim to the theft convinced Lyle that the next best thing would be at least to hire some protection before mixing it up across racial lines. So a Latino named Speedy was paid twenty dollars to hold back any others who might want to jump in and make it a family affair.

And that was when Peernock, who would later protest to the court that his “back condition” made it impossible for him to have carried Natasha and Claire from the house to
the car, headed back into Cowboy’s cell and beat the living shit out of him.

Speedy already had his twenty bucks, though, and he didn’t do a thing to protect the naive newcomer who had hired him. Lyle watched the spectators getting increasingly ugly at the sight of a frenzied whitey hammering on one of their home boys. A major battle was about to erupt.

With no other recourse left, Lyle began deliberately making enough spectator noise to draw a guard and bring in the authorities in the hope of quelling the situation without taking the risk of identifying himself as a snitch.

He got his wish. The guards showed up in time to break up a brewing full-scale brawl; Peernock successfully exacted revenge for having his space violated.

And two unhappy men found themselves in the springtime of a budding jailhouse relationship. Now that the ice was broken, both reluctant residents of taxpayer accommodations began to sidle up closer.

Lyle wasn’t eager to discuss his case or try to explain why he had been compelled to sexually pursue his daughter, especially after having been convicted for it once already. But in the days since his arrest he had found himself suffering a major attack of remorse over the harm he had caused in his past; he would later say that somehow the act of taking another man under his wing and showing him a few things about keeping out of harm’s way while behind bars was an act of kindness that he needed to perform even more than Robert Peernock needed a jailhouse mentor. On that basis the friendship quickly grew. He became Peernock’s confidant, trusted as much as anyone was going to be at this stage in Robert’s life.

This is either great news or terrible news, depending on whether you side with the prosecution or the defense.

Because after a certain number of hours spent swapping the usual jailhouse b.s. and hanging out watching the stud
boys shoot hoops, the new buddies’ conversations slowly zeroed in on more personal territory. Finally Lyle gave out enough information about himself to freely complain that his girlfriend was taking all his money and that he wished she were dead. He now claims it was merely jailhouse trash talk, just a way of blowing off macho steam.

But Lyle was caught off-guard by Peernock’s reaction to his remark about wishing his girlfriend dead. He seized on the concept like a horny lifer snatching up a new arrival on the cellblock. Before long, whenever the two new pals could capture a moment of privacy, Peernock was exploring the idea of eliminating the opposition.

At first Lyle just played along as Peernock repeatedly broached the topic of hiring someone to kill “that bitch Doom” and Peernock’s teenaged daughter, who was “lying her ass off to get at her father’s money.” Lyle kept telling himself that lots of people talk about revenge in the joint; most of it drifts away with the next hit of smuggled weed. But this Peernock guy was pressing the subject, such as, did Lyle know anyone who could set it up? And how much would it cost to
actually do it
? Not only was it becoming harder to steer Peernock away from the subject, Lyle soon realized that his was not the only doorbell Peernock was ringing.