Guilt by Association (19 page)

When Olive had gotten the baby settled in with a bottle, she continued. “He was already fifteen years old and busted for prostitution
by the time I got him. CSSD called him a challenge. Still, I couldn’t
blame him, coming from where he did.” Olive shook her head sadly at the memory.

The Child Support Services Department used euphemisms like “challenge” to avoid stigmatizing a kid. I thought that was like
closing the barn door after the animals took off. “You know something about his mom?” I asked. If Kit’s mother was still in
the picture, she might lead us somewhere.

“All’s I know from the agency is that she was the usual meth-head loser and that Kit’d been passed around between foster homes
since he was a baby.” Olive patted the infant’s bottom comfortingly and looked down at him affectionately as he held his bottle
in a death grip. The sight made my heart ache for all the babies who’d never see a mother look at them that way. “Little ones,”
she said fondly. “You got to focus, or they get into some serious trouble.” Olive’s expression suddenly hardened as she said,
“Only damn thing those meth freaks can focus on is a pipe.”

“You know whether Kit still had any contact with his mom?” I asked.

“Not as far as I could tell. And not with his last foster parents either,” Olive said with a grunt of disgust. “What a bunch
of useless losers. Let him run the streets and just collected the checks. Like to see them get nailed for it.” She peered
at me skeptically. “Don’t suppose you could do anything about that either, right?”

I thought for a minute. “We might. We’ll definitely look into it.”

“As far as you know, was Kit still hooking when he died?” Bailey asked.

“He said he was working at Target, in the stockroom.”

“But you didn’t believe him.”

“I was born in the morning but not yesterday morning. I tried to tell him why it was bad to be throwing himself around like
that. But it was too late,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “Sometimes, when I get ’em at that age, they can still listen.
But Kit—that kid was one
tough case. He’d feed me a load of crap about what he was up to ’cuz he didn’t want me to toss him out like the others did.
I told him I’d never do that—but he didn’t believe me. Maybe if I’d had more time…”

She frowned, and the lines on her forehead and around her eyes deepened into crevices, a preview of the apple-doll face she
was going to have way too soon.

“Which Target did he supposedly work in?” I asked.

“Down on Santa Monica Boulevard, by La Brea.”

The location was on the outskirts of West Hollywood, affectionately known as BoysTown because it was largely a gay enclave.

“He hang with anyone you know of?” I asked.

Olive thought for a moment. “I seem to remember a couple of young guys, but they only came round a few times. And there was
a girl—had a weird name, Teecheetah, or… Janzy! Hey, girl! You remember that girl Kit used to hang with? What was her name?”

Janzy sauntered in, eating Jell-O out of a plastic cup. “You don’t gotta yell, Mom, I can hear you.” She turned to us and
said lazily, “I think she was, like, his girlfriend.”

The baby had finished his bottle, and Olive placed him on her shoulder to burp him.

Janzy reached out for the baby. “I can do that, Mom.” Olive handed him over, and Janzy settled the baby on her shoulder and
began to gently thump his back. “Her first name was T’Chia—I can’t remember her last name, but you can find her easy. She
works at that Target on Santa Monica, and she’s real short, orange hair in spikes, pierced nose, spider tatt on her neck.”

Anywhere else, that description would be enough to pick her out in a crowd. Not in L.A. But at least someone really worked
at Target.

“Did Kit ever say anything to you about the DA they found him with, Jake Pahlmeyer?” I asked.

“No.” Olive shook her head slowly. “Not that it means anything.
That kid never told me much, and what he did tell me was mostly lies. But I’d sure like to know what really happened. I know
this’ll sound bad, but I can’t say I’m real surprised. Kit was hell-bent on disaster—I could see that from a mile away.”

Janzy chimed in. “He wasn’t, like, evil or anything. He was just trying to make it, find a place in the world, but it never
worked out. Like, he wanted to be normal, but he just didn’t know how. He’d bring home stuff for the kids when he could, play
with them sometimes. But then he’d be gone—we wouldn’t see him for days.” She paused, remembering. When she spoke again, her
voice was angry. “Anyways, he didn’t deserve what happened to him, you know?” She paused the burping to roughly brush away
a tear, then tossed her hair back with a flick of her head and walked out of the room, toward the rear of the house.

“I gotta agree with her there,” Olive said. “Whatever he was, an’ I know it wasn’t great, dyin’ in that motel room wasn’t
what was comin’ to him.”

I thought Olive was probably right on all counts.

I usually leave my card
with witnesses so they can call if they think of anything they forgot to mention. But since neither Bailey nor I was supposed
to be there, I just told Olive we’d be in touch, mentally prayed she wouldn’t mention seeing us if the FBI talked to her,
and headed for the car.

We pulled away from the curb. “Target?” Bailey asked, looking straight ahead.

“Yep.” We didn’t know when T’Chia was working, but since we were sort of close by, I figured we might as well give it a shot.

I don’t know whether I’d rather be lucky or good, but it was definitely nice to get lucky. T’Chia Arendt was there, and when
we told her why we’d come, she agreed to spend her break talking to us in the fast-food court at the front of the store. Bailey
and I commandeered one of the small, molded plastic tables and waited for her. The pizza smelled like it’d been there for
hours, but it made me hungry anyway. The trout I’d had for lunch had been tasty but not filling. And pizza always makes my
mouth water—even the stale, cardboardy specimens in the glass case.

“What’re we going to say if someone from the task force sees us here?” Bailey asked.

I was watching what the shoppers in the checkout line were
buying to see if there was anything I just had to have. I’ve found some amazingly good deals there in the past. A pair of
comfy-looking white capris had snagged my attention, so it took me a moment to refocus.

“We tell ’em we heard about a great sale on bras?”

“Sure,” Bailey said dryly.

T’Chia hurried over and pulled out a chair. Janzy’s description had been right on the money. Just over five feet, T’Chia wasn’t
so much plump as roundish. Her hair was black at the roots, and it shot out from her head in orange spikes. The spiderweb
tattoo, replete with resident spider, spread across her neck, from which she’d hung a skull necklace. So far, so good—or at
least consistent. But she’d taken a different tack from the neck down, with a pink bolero sweater, a short plaid skirt, and
half-laced black Doc Martens. I’m completely on board with fashion as an expression of individuality, but T’Chia seemed to
be expressing several individuals.

I tried to make my smile friendly and suppressed the chuckle that wanted to bubble up. “Thank you for making time for us.
We really appreciate it.”

T’Chia gave us a polite nod and got right down to business. “I don’t know if anyone told you this, but Kit and I, we were
totally in love. People talk all kinds of shit—” She stopped abruptly, her eyes round with alarm at having used a swearword
in front of us.

There was something sweet about that.

“Please don’t worry about that… shit,” I said with a smile. I am so cool.

She nodded, relieved. Probably didn’t know how to get through more than a few sentences without hitting a four-letter-word
bump. I could relate.

T’Chia leaned in, her expression intense, earnest. “They say he was, like, sketchy, and I know he was into some nasty shit,
but he was good inside, you know? No one knew him like I did.”

The lines were delivered with maximum heartrending angst. Teens can wring drama out of the way paint dries, but having been
in love with a boy who’d been killed under strange and mysterious circumstances was the jackpot of teen tragedy. Unless he
then turned into a vampire.
That
was the megajackpot.

“How long had you been together?” I asked. T’Chia had made it sound like they’d been sweethearts since their sandbox days.

“Three months.”

Three months?

T’Chia continued, unaware of how this answer might have undermined her profession of eternal love. “But we kind of hung around
for a couple of months before that, since the semester started,” she added.

Oh. Five months, not three. Now it all made sense.

Abruptly, she stood. “I’m going to get a drink. You want anything? I can get it for you. I get a discount.”

It was a gracious offer, but we declined. It was bad enough we were talking to Kit’s girlfriend; we didn’t have to compound
it by accepting freebies from her.

She returned in a jiffy, big plastic cup in hand, and sat back down.

“You guys ever hang out after school?” I asked.

“Yeah, but he’d mainly visit me here. I didn’t have a lot of free time, between school and work.”

This relationship was sounding less and less like Romeo and Juliet and more and more like Fagin and Oliver Twist—Kit cadged
free drinks and food, and T’Chia got to pretend she had a boyfriend.

“You know who his friends were?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He didn’t really hang with anyone all that much. Maybe Eddie and Dante. He brought them here a couple of times.”

The kids we’d spoken to in the school cafeteria. We’d have to push harder on them. From what I’d seen so far, they seemed
to be the only real connection Kit had.

“What about the DA guy they found him with? You ever hear Kit talk about him?” I asked. It stung to call Jake “the DA guy,”
but I didn’t want to let on that this was a personal thing for me.

“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head, thinking. “But he once told me he knew someone important who always had his back. Maybe that
was him?”

An interesting wrinkle, and maybe a glimmer of light. If it was Jake, then maybe it was an innocent thing and Jake was just
being kind to a kid with a rough life. Then again, it might also mean Jake was being much too “kind.” I steeled myself for
the answer to my next question.

“You think he might’ve been, uh, involved with that person?”

T’Chia’s face suddenly reddened and her eyes teared up. “Kit was not gay! Those asshole FBI guys tried to say the same thing,
but it’s not true. I knew Kit was into some weird stuff—I’m not stupid! But deep down he was good and sweet, and I’m friggin’
tired of people saying that shit about him!”

“I’d be pissed off too, T’Chia,” I said. I meant it, but I had the ulterior motive of needing to calm her down. If she had
any more information, I needed to get it fast and get out of there. I was becoming increasingly nervous about sitting out
in the open with her.

“Did Kit talk to you about coming into money soon? Any big score?”

“Not that I remember,” she said. “I mean, he talked about making it big all the time, but that was just, like, win-the-lottery
talk and stuff.”

But I’d seen her eyes flicker away as she answered. I knew I’d hit on something. I knew if I pushed her to answer right now,
I ran the risk that she’d lie to get rid of me, and I didn’t have enough information yet to call her on it.

I needed to dig around so I could come back with enough ammunition to keep her honest. For now, I’d let her think she’d pushed
me off. But I’d be back to get the answer. No matter what it was.

I woke up the next morning
feeling refreshed. I’d ended the day before with a decent workout and a dinner of grilled veggies, then fallen into bed early.
The clean and healthy respite had done me good, and I was in an energetic mood. I made my usual vow to make a habit of this…
and pretended that this time I meant it. I slipped a Herbie Hancock CD into the player to accompany my morning preparations
for the day and hummed along to “Driftin’ ” as I finished my coffee standing in front of my closet, trying to decide what
to wear.

I had no expectations of seeing anyone I cared to impress—I resolutely refused to admit to myself that “anyone” meant Graden—and
since I didn’t have to be in court, I opted for comfort. It was another sunny day so far, but I could see clouds to the west
that might roll in quickly. Toni had returned my new red V-necked sweater, so I pulled it on, along with a pair of black wool
gabardine slacks and medium-heeled short boots. And, of course, the hated vest. Maybe I’d eventually get attached to that
thing and want to wear it everywhere. I pulled my lined black leather jacket over it awkwardly. Maybe not. Then I had a change
of heart. Since I had to wear it anyway, why not make the best of it? I took off my jacket, walked over to the mirror, and
turned from side to side. I squinted
and tilted my head to the left. Viewed from that angle, the vest almost made me look hot. If you liked flat, boxy women. It
was all a matter of perspective.

At this point Herbie was wrapping up “Watermelon Man.” I pulled my jacket back on, slipped the .357 into my purse, and headed
for work.

Fifteen minutes later, I was taking the long way around the hallways to avoid Jake’s office. I knew I’d have to get over this
at some point, but it didn’t seem to have happened yet. I looked down the hall and noticed that Toni’s door was open. It was
an unusual but welcome treat for her to be in this early. I walked over and leaned in the doorway. Toni was engrossed in a
file, so I knocked to let her know I was there.

She glanced up, and I noticed that she was looking particularly stunning—perfectly coiffed and made up in a jade-green blouse
and tight beige skirt.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I’m in trial on that double homicide I picked up from Jake.”