Guilt by Association (15 page)

On Monday morning
, I put in a call to the principal of Marsden High, then I phoned Bailey and asked her if she’d like to join me.

“I was just thinking how much I missed high school,” Bailey replied.

She agreed to meet me out in front of the building in ten minutes. Knowing it could take me that long just to get an elevator,
I quickly grabbed a legal pad and the page with the names of Kit’s partners-in-truancy and headed out.

As I pushed open the large glass door to exit the building, I could see the early promise of a sunny, clear day ahead. There
was a slight nip in the air, but the sky was a brilliant blue and the sunlight was starting to get thicker, in preparation
for spring. Typical L.A.—we’d only had a couple of chilly months, but the city was already giving up the pretense of winter.
I was glad I’d left my muffler at home.

The high school was on Sycamore, just west of downtown, in a bleak, low-rent stretch of concrete office buildings and family-run
grocery and liquor stores. The school looked as if it belonged on the East Coast: one monolithic two-story brick building
with a wide front walkway that led to two sets of tall glass doors. One of those doors was boarded over with plywood. They
needed to either switch to metal or make the glass bulletproof. All in all, it was an imposing
edifice. Making it even more so was the surrounding ten-foot fence and metal front gates. Bailey circled the school, looking
for a parking space, but the streets were packed with cars. We wound up parking four blocks away, next to a vacant lot. The
air was still chilly enough to let us see our breath as we hoofed it to the school.

At this time of day, the gates were open: as we passed through, I felt as if I were entering a prison. I had no doubt that
most of the student body felt the same way every single morning. A teenage boy with spiked, superblack hair, eyeliner, and
multiple piercings burst out of the school, banging open the front door, and I saw that there were metal detectors just inside.
I pulled out my badge so I could keep my gun, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Bailey do the same. It was comforting
to know that we’d be able to shoot our way out if we needed to.

We turned left down a cavernous hallway. “Nice place,” Bailey said sarcastically.

I replied with a grim smile. It was many things, but nice wasn’t one of them. The floor was brown linoleum, the walls last
saw paint when the Beatles were still touring, and the air smelled of rubber, sweat, and disinfectant. They say that about
40 percent of the California state budget goes to education, but you couldn’t prove it by the looks of Marsden High.

Juanita Esquivel, secretary to the principal, Colin Reilly, looked at us over the tortoiseshell frames of her bifocals. “Can
I help you?” she asked in a voice that managed to sound both stern and bored.

I wondered briefly how one was supposed to address a principal. By his title? Mister? I opted for the kiss-ass approach. “We’re
here to see Principal Reilly. Deputy District Attorney Rachel Knight and Detective Bailey Keller.”

“Oh,” she said with an expression like she’d just smelled spoiled yogurt in the mini-fridge. “Whyn’t you have a seat. I’ll
tell him you’re here.” She pointed a long red nail at uncomfortable-looking wooden chairs set against the wall next to the
door.

I remained standing—partly to annoy her and partly because I didn’t want to consider who or what else had last occupied those
chairs. Bailey stood, arms folded, with her back against the wall on the other side of the door. Her look said that Juanita
would be wise to make sure the principal met with us very soon. The secretary eyed Bailey nervously, showing a well-honed
instinct for self-preservation.

Five minutes later, we were seated in the spare, run-down, uninspiring box of an office that Principal Reilly called home.
A couple of dying miniature cacti in clay pots behind his desk were his only concession to interior design. The one thing
I could say for his office was that it fit in perfectly with the rest of the school.

“Call me Colin,” he said, shaking our hands and inviting us to sit. He reminded me of a beefy Irish patrol cop. Thick of limb,
heavy featured in an attractive way, he carried himself like he had a sap in one pocket and a throw-down gun in the other.
Working here, he probably did. “So what can I do for you?”

“We’re looking into some background information on Kit Chalmers.” I paused to see if the name rang a bell.

It took a moment to register. “The one that just got killed. Yes, sad business.” Reilly’s voice showed this wasn’t the first
time he’d lost a student to a violent death.

I wanted to ask whether he’d been visited by the FBI, but if he hadn’t, I didn’t want to give him reason to question what
we were doing here. The fact that he didn’t ask led me to conclude that the FBI probably hadn’t contacted him yet. This made
me feel superior and insubordinate all at once. It was shaping up to be a very good day.

“I’m looking into a truancy bust about two months before he died, and I’d like to talk to the kids he was busted with,” I
said.

“They’re Marsden students?” he asked. I nodded, and he turned to his computer.

I gave him the names.

“I show them as still enrolled. Morning attendance reports aren’t in yet, so I can’t say whether they’re here today. According
to our records, when they got the truancy bust, they were loitering at the mini-mart a couple of blocks away, smoking and
panhandling,” he said matter-of-factly.

“So you wouldn’t remember any details, I take it?”

He shook his head with a small smile. “That’s not exactly a standout event around here.”

“You have a yearbook we could look at?” Bailey asked.

He reached behind him to the metal bookcase against the wall and pulled out a large hardcover book emblazoned with
MARSDEN HIGH SCHOOL
and the picture of a marlin. Marsden Marlins—I had to admit, it had a ring to it. He handed the book to Bailey. She took
out her digital camera, then opened the book and began turning pages.

“Mind if we borrow that copy?” I asked.

“Nope, just bring it back. It’d look bad if the principal didn’t have a copy of the yearbook.” Reilly glanced at his watch.
“Anything else?”

“Do you have any property Kit may have left here, by any chance?” I knew it was a long shot, but I had to ask.

“I know we cleaned out his locker. Nothing there but textbooks and some old weed that was mostly seeds,” he said. “I can check
with his counselor, though.”

“That’d be great,” I replied.

I joined Bailey in scanning the yearbook while Reilly called the counselor. When he hung up, he said, “She confiscated his
cell phone the last time he was in school.”

A cell phone. The way kids lived on them, this should be the Fort Knox of information. “She still have it?”

“We’ll find out. She’s on her way over.”

Ms. Wilder, the counselor, whose curly brown hair made her
look so young I thought she was a student, showed up less than a minute later. Her hands were empty.
Damn.

We introduced ourselves, and she said, “I want to help any way I can. I’m a little uncertain, though,” she said hesitantly.
Then she reached into the pocket of her thick knit cardigan and pulled out the Holy Grail: Kit’s cell phone. I held on to
the arms of my chair to keep myself from knocking her down and taking it from her.

“You mean about letting us see his phone?” I asked as I began to mentally list all the reasons she should. I watched her eyes
dart around the room, considering the issue. “Is it a privacy thing?”

She looked at me gratefully. “Yeah, I sort of feel like… like I owe him this sort of respect, you know?”

I nodded and gave her my most sincere “I’m on your side” look. “I do. And I’d feel the same way,” I said, my nose growing.
“But I think Kit would want us to get into his cell phone if it meant finding out who killed him, don’t you agree?”

“Well, we already know who killed him, don’t we?” she asked tentatively. She was a tentative sort of person—I could tell.
The kind who was uncomfortable with declarative sentences.

“Not necessarily,” I said, giving her my most heartfelt “I wish I could tell you the whole story” look. “There are still a
lot of questions,” I replied.

“Oh.”

I could feel Bailey next to me inwardly gagging, and I knew she was losing patience with this dance. I didn’t blame her, but
I sensed that the heavy-handed approach would backfire with this young woman.

“Would you feel better if we just borrowed it for a little while and only used it to find friends who might know something?”
I asked.

She wrinkled her forehead, then replied, “I think… that might be okay. Like I said, I want to help, I just…”

“Well, then, that’s what we’ll do,” I said, and held out my hand.

She reluctantly dropped the phone into it. I was careful not to look triumphant.

Relieved of the burden of the cell, she pulled out a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “If I’d known it was going to be the last
time I ever saw him, I’d have told him how special I thought he was.”

“How special was he?” I asked.

She looked at me suspiciously, unsure whether I was making fun of her, but when my expression remained neutral, she relaxed.
“He was smart, and he was a dreamer. If he’d had any kind of family support, he’d have been headed for college and maybe an
acting career. He was really very handsome.”

Ms. Wilder sighed, then looked at her watch and said she had to get back to her office. Eager to examine the cell phone that
was burning a hole in my jacket pocket, I said my good-byes and thanks to Principal Reilly. It was almost noon, and when we
stepped out into the hallway, the rising disharmony of a throng of teenage voices rose up and swelled over us. I looked in
the direction it seemed to be coming from, then looked at Bailey.

“Shall we?” I asked.

The sound led us
to a cafeteria the size of a football field, populated with hundreds of adolescents in the act of grazing through the offerings
in the glass-shielded food carts that lined the perimeter of the room. Acned faces, multihued hair, piercings, and tattoos,
with a small smattering of those who in my day would’ve been labeled preppies.

I scanned the crowd for the faces of Kit’s fellow truants, but it was like playing
Where’s Waldo?
with moving figures. I thought about how to make use of this moment. Then I pulled out the cell phone and powered it up,
hoping the battery still had some charge. There wasn’t much, but it was enough for what I had planned. I searched through
the dialed numbers. When I’d found the three that recurred the most, I hit the send button for the first one. It was hard
to hear over the din, so I watched the room and tried to pick out the movement I was looking for. I didn’t see anything. Bailey
shook her head—she hadn’t either. I dialed number two and watched again. This time I saw a ponytailed Asian kid among a group
of young males reach for his cell phone. On a hunch, I dialed the third number.

And got lucky. A black kid with a retro ’fro standing next to the Asian kid pulled out his cell phone. “Yo,” he answered.

“You missing Kit?” I said.

I thought I saw his face go slack, though from where I was standing across the room, I couldn’t be sure. I kept the phone
to my ear, waiting for an answer as I pointed him out to Bailey. We circled around so we’d come up behind him. As we got closer,
I could see he was still holding the phone to his ear, but no words were coming out.

Finally he asked, “Who is this?”

By the time I was about ten feet away, I told him, “Turn around.”

He turned and took one look at Bailey and me, then tugged on the Asian kid’s shirt. They both started to back away. Before
they could bolt, I called out, “Don’t do it.” They kept backing slowly, so I added, “I’ve got your names. We can find you
whenever we want.”

The kids close enough to hear us fell silent and watched intently. These students weren’t the kind to be easily intimidated
by authority. If the two boys put up a fight, they’d likely get some support, and this was not the place for us to pull out
guns. “We’re not here to bust anyone. We’re here to investigate. Nothing more.”

The two stopped moving and watched us, and especially Bailey, warily, but they stayed put and let us approach. The other students
slowly turned back to their groups, though they continued to dart surreptitious looks at us.

“You’re Eddie,” I said to the Asian kid, “and you’re Dante,” I said to the black kid. My “gaydar” told me Eddie was on the
team, but Dante had the vibe of a straight kid. It wasn’t an obvious thing—they dressed like all the other teenagers milling
around us. It was more a matter of the way they stood and moved.

They wouldn’t commit to their names and looked back at us, impassive.
Prove it.
Were kids in general that much tougher now? Or just these kids?

“You ever hear about Kit having something going on with a DA?” I asked.

That got a reaction. They immediately shook their heads, and Dante asked, “You’re talking about that guy that killed him,
right?”

“Right,” I said, biting back the urge to go on the defensive for Jake. This wasn’t the time. “You ever hear Kit talk about
someone named Jake?”

They again both shook their heads without hesitation.

“No,” Eddie said.

“Never,” Dante echoed.

There was nothing equivocal about the way they’d responded. They really didn’t know—about a prosecutor, or about Jake.

“You know whether Kit had any ‘regulars’?” The likelihood that they’d share that kind of information with me was slim—assuming
they even knew—but what did I have to lose? I watched their reactions carefully. Dante stared off toward the window that faced
the street and said nothing, but Eddie slowly shook his head.

“If he did, he never told me about it,” Eddie replied. Then, in an arch bitchy-queen style, he added, “Probably didn’t want
the competition.”