Guilt by Association (34 page)

“That leaves a pretty open field of suspects,” she said. “I’d imagine lots of people had a motive to kill that scumbag.”

“Number one being revenge for Susan’s rape—which makes Mommy and/or Daddy look good for it…”

Bailey nodded. “Except how would they get to him?” she asked. “We have no known connection between Stayner and them.”

“I know.” I sighed.

“And it could be revenge for raping some other kid,” Bailey said. “Odds are Susan wasn’t his first.”

I nodded. “Or it could’ve been a falling-out with some other scumbag.”

As I paced, another possibility occurred to me. I started to voice it, but the small room had made my pacing circles a little
too tight for comfort. I was beginning to make myself sick. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

We walked toward the Pacific Coast Highway, and I took a few cleansing breaths. The ocean air felt good. I resumed pacing
and tried not to get distracted by the sparkling ocean view.

“If this is about revenge for molesting or raping someone else, we’re toast,” Bailey said grimly. “Without a known victim,
we’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Right,” I said. “But if our killer’s a pissed-off partner-in-crime, we should get a hit on any fingerprints they find in
the car,” I said. “They’re printing the car, right?”

“Every inch and everything in it,” she replied.

Another theory occurred to me. I stopped pacing and turned to Bailey. “What about a certain gang shot-caller? For example,
someone Stayner set up to take the fall for Susan’s rape?”

Bailey looked back at me. “Luis Revelo,” she said, nodding. “That could work.”

I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled to find his number, then hit send.

“Get him to meet us now,” Bailey said.

I nodded, and we moved toward the car.

“Senorita Knight,” Luis said. “Whassup?”

“I need you to meet me on the West Side,” I replied.

“What for?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“ ’Kay,” Luis agreed. “When?”

“Now,” I said.

There was a beat of silence before he answered. “Sounds good,”
he said slowly, his voice unusually warm. “But I’m kinda busy at the moment. How ’bout a little later? Say, tonight?”

I paused, puzzled by his tone. “No. Now. Meet me at Du-par’s,” I said. I gave him the address. The old-school diner-style
restaurant in West Hollywood was midway between Luis’s stomping ground and Malibu.

“We havin’ lunch?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied. I didn’t want to tip him off about the true reason for this meeting.

“Cool,” Luis replied and hung up.

“We’re on,” I told Bailey.

We got in the car, and she steered it back over the canyon, heading for the freeway.

“I could go for a tasty chicken potpie,” Bailey said with a sadistic smile.

I gave her a frosty look. “Why not complete the torture and order the pancakes?” I asked acidly. Du-par’s was famous for their
heavenly pancakes.

“Good idea,” she said. “Pancakes would be way better.”

I spent the rest of the ride thinking of a suitable revenge.

Bailey was halfway through
a stack of decadent butter-and-syrup-laden pancakes by the time Luis slid into the booth across from us. He shot a narrow-eyed
look at Bailey, then at me.

“I thought this was just gonna be you an’ me,” Luis said.

“Why?” I asked.

“ ’Cuz when you called, you said, ‘Meet
me,
’ ” he replied.

The reason for the warm phone attitude finally dawned on me. “Luis, you did not seriously expect to hook up with a DA,” I
said, trying to keep a straight face.

Luis gave me a sly smile. “Why not?” he asked. “Not the first time I gone slummin’.”

This was not the attitude of someone who’d just committed—or ordered—a murder.

“You mind telling us where you were last night?” I asked. I watched him closely, gauging his reaction.

Luis looked at Bailey, then looked back at me quizzically. “At my
tia’s,
” he finally replied. “It was my niece’s
quinceañera
.”

There wasn’t even a whiff of anxiety or nervousness in his attitude. Concerned, maybe, and curious, certainly—but not nervous.

“From when to when?” Bailey asked.

Her tone told me she’d noticed Luis’s demeanor too.

He shrugged. “Like, from six o’clock on. I helped them set up.”

“And you were there until when?” I asked.

“Until dawn, man. It’s a fiesta,” Luis said, annoyed. “I got at least a dozen homies an’ prally fifty of
mi familia
gonna—
going
to—tell you I was there all night.”

I could see he was feeling dissed for being challenged this way. And I also had no doubt that, true or not, he’d have a ten-page
list of alibi witnesses who would not just “prally” but would certainly say he was with them. So the alibi was less significant
to me than his attitude, which was way too cavalier for a recent murderer. Luis might be good, but he wasn’t
that
good.

“You gonna tell me what the deal is?” he asked.

I couldn’t see any reason not to at this point, so I told him.

Luis sat back and looked at us with a disbelieving smile. “You gotta be kidding me,” he snorted. “No, ain’t no friggin’ way.”
He shook his head firmly. “Tha’ don’ make no sense at all.”

Luis was so incredulous at the notion that he’d killed Stayner, he’d abandoned any attempt at grammar. But I knew what he
was getting at. In gangland, payback requires that a message be sent, and that message cannot be delivered by setting up an
accidental death. I’d still ask to have his and his homies’ prints checked against whatever they lifted from Stayner’s Escalade.
But, all things considered, I was ready to let Luis go for now.

“Don’ get me wrong. I wouldn’ a’ minded nailing that
pendejo,
” Luis said, his tone steely. “But after Hector fingered him for you guys, I knew you’d be sniffin’ around him. I’d be a fucking
idiot to do anything right now.”

Right now. It wasn’t exactly a comforting way to exclude Luis, but after all he was a shot-caller, not the Easter Bunny. I
glanced at Bailey, who’d resumed eating her pancakes. I knew what that meant.

“Okay, Luis,” I said. “You’re good to go for now.”

He started to slide out of the booth, but then I remembered I had a message to deliver.

“Susan asked me to tell you ‘hey,’ ” I said. “I think she hopes you’re still going to go for your GED.”

“How’s she doin’? I been meanin’ to call,” Luis said.

“She’s doing better every day,” I replied. “And I’m sure she’d be glad to hear from you.”

Luis paused, nodding to himself. “Yeah, I kinda fell off my game with everythin’—
everything—
that’s been happenin’,” he said seriously. “I got to get back to the books.”

Luis slid to the edge of the booth, then stopped and leaned toward me with a slow smile. “You ever want to check out the finer
things in life, you just call.
M’entiende?
”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you empty your pockets, and we’ll see if you get to walk out of here?” I asked.

Luis stood up. “Jeez, I was jus’ jokin’,” he said indignantly. “You know what your prallem is? You got no sense of humor.”

I had many “prallems” right now. A failed sense of humor was the least of them. Luis headed out. As I watched him go, I was
reminded of another odd puzzle piece I couldn’t fit into the picture. I picked up my heretofore unused fork and turned to
Bailey. “We always figured the rapist had framed Luis Revelo to take the fall for the rape,” I said. I took a forkful of the
now-cold pancakes. They were still delicious.

“Right.” Bailey nodded.

“But what we’ve never been able to figure out was how Stayner knew Susan was tutoring a guy who’d look good for it.”

“No,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “Somehow he had to get close enough to Densmore to know as much as he did. Any bright
ideas?”

I lifted my fork again, and Bailey pushed her plate toward me. I took one more mouthful of pancakes and savored the sweet,
soft
morsels before I reluctantly put my fork down and tried to come up with said bright idea.

“We checked out everyone who worked in or around the house,” I thought out loud. “But we didn’t get to all of Densmore’s health
centers yet.”

Bailey nodded again.

“That’s about as bright as it’s going to get right now,” I said.

We managed to get
to the Calabasas Children’s Health Center, a Spanish-style, tile-roofed building with a lovely courtyard, in record time.
It was a small operation, and the few who worked there were all present and accounted for. Not one of them recognized Stayner’s
picture. Not one of them gave me any reason to think he or she was lying about it.

We worked our way east, toward the health center on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. This center was on the third floor
of a large, dark-windowed office building. But the center was just as kid-friendly and freshly decorated as the others. The
employees there didn’t recognize Stayner either. We continued on a southeasterly route to our last stop: the Hollywood center.

When most people think of Hollywood, they picture stars set into sidewalks, the flashbulbs of paparazzi cameras… swimming
pools, movie stars—to paraphrase an old sitcom. What they don’t know is that Hollywood is also seedy, run-down apartments,
flophouse motels, buckled sidewalks, and urine-soaked corners. Where the homeless, the runaways, and the drugged-out converge
in disharmony. The Yucca Street clinic was in that Hollywood.

The small one-story building that housed the clinic had a parking lot marked
STAFF ONLY
at the rear. Bailey pulled into it and
stopped. I checked out our surroundings. It was late afternoon, and a fair number of the residents in this neck of the woods
were hanging out—at the curb, on the front steps of a small, dingy liquor store, and on the street corners.

We walked into the waiting room and looked around. Surprisingly, it was nearly empty. The only occupants were a too-skinny,
tattooed blond girl leafing listlessly through an ancient copy of
People
magazine and, across the room from her, a young Hispanic man who was bent over a sloppily bandaged hand. There was no one
behind the counter at the reception desk. To the right of the counter was a gate that led to a corridor and, I surmised, the
examining rooms. Presumably the gate was meant for security.

“Hello?” Bailey called out.

“Just a minute!” replied a female voice. Precisely one minute later, a woman appeared in a nurse’s uniform, with black, wiry,
shoulder-length hair and glasses on a chain around her neck.

“You’re the detectives?” she said, sounding surprised.

“Well, she is,” I said. “I’m a DA. Rachel Knight.”

“And I’m Bailey Keller.”

“Sheila Houghton,” the woman said. “Glad to meet you.”

She briefly scanned the waiting room, then looked back at us. “It’s just terrible what happened to Susan,” she said quietly.
“I hope you get that monster soon.”

Bailey said we hoped so too and got right down to business. She held out Stayner’s photograph. “Ever see him around here?”
she asked.

Sheila put down her clipboard, slid on her glasses, and took a look. “Yeah,” she said, pulling her glasses off again. “He
brought a lot of the teenagers in here. Usually runaways,” she replied. “Carl… something, I think.”

I nodded neutrally, careful not to show she’d hit a bull’s-eye. “Was it mainly girls or boys?”

“Both. But more boys. Said he worked at one of the local runaway shelters,” she said. Her brows knitted for a moment. “I can’t
remember which one, though.”

It didn’t matter. It was probably a lie anyway. I had a feeling I knew why Stayner was bringing kids to a clinic, and it wasn’t
because he was working for a shelter.

“When was the last time you saw him around here?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Sheila thought for a moment. “Not long ago—maybe a few weeks?”

So probably sometime before the rape.

“Sheila, would you mind if I looked around a bit?” I asked. I was actually more interested in having a quick—and private—word
with Bailey than in a view of the clinic. I’ve learned from hard experience that the less witnesses know about what we’re
thinking, the better. Witnesses like to talk—and usually to all the wrong people.

“Be my guest,” she said. Then she turned to the waiting area. “Mr. Flores?” she called out. “Come on in. Let’s take a look
at that hand.”

The doors to the examination rooms were open, and as I passed the first one, I looked inside. A young Hispanic woman with
a sizable diaper bag on her shoulder was strapping a toddler into a stroller. She looked up and smiled at me briefly. I returned
the smile, and then she wheeled the stroller out of the room. The area was clean, but it wasn’t the spiffy state-of-the-art
place that the other clinics were. It had an old-fashioned feeling to it: an aging scale in one corner, a height-measuring
chart on the wall next to the table, and some beat-up-looking wooden toys in a bin near the door. Even the predictable child-friendly
poster—Thomas the Tank Engine—was out-of-date.

Exam room two was empty. So was exam room three. They were all in the same condition: clean but old, no-frills. Looking at
the rooms, I could feel something tickle at the back of my brain, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I heard Sheila
approach and
saw that she was heading for exam room two with Mr. Flores, so I didn’t have time to think about it. I quickly pulled Bailey
into exam room three.

“My guess is Stayner was pimping the kids and bringing them here for checkups,” I said.

“Yep,” Bailey agreed. “And I’m thinking maybe one of those kids decided he didn’t appreciate the job opportunity so much anymore.”

I nodded. “But if it was a kid, there’s less chance we’ve got his prints in the database.”

Bailey sighed unhappily. “Exactly.”

“Great,” I replied. “Perfect.”

We headed out and waved good-bye to Sheila, who was busy bandaging Mr. Flores’s hand in exam room two.