Conclusive Evidence Read online

  After another thirty minutes, the police finished up and handed her a receipt for the items taken. She and I both signed it. The police drove away.

  Inside, I was impressed that they hadn’t torn the place apart. Carly joked that it was neater than when they’d come.

  Toby and Nicole joined us, and Carly fixed breakfast. The country-style kitchen was the best room in the house, with a wrought iron chandelier hanging from the rough beams of the ceiling. I cracked one window to let in the chatter of the nearby brook. It was a sound Carly would never be able to appreciate. The aroma of the frying bacon, however, was something we could all enjoy.

  My son had a short, scraggly beard and a faint mustache. Raquel and I had always worried about him because, unlike Nicole, his personality was a bit off-center. He’d exhibited dramatic mood swings from the moment he was born, though he attempted to hide them as he grew older. He had strange ideas about how the world worked and was rarely comfortable around others, even family.

  It turned out we shouldn’t have worried. He found his niche in nature photography and, against all odds, seemed able to eke out a living at it.

  I finished off a perfect piece of bacon and turned to him. “I was surprised to see you here, Toby. What’s up?”

  He started with spoken English, but quickly realized his mistake and switched to sign. “Oh, I don’t know. I just thought Aunt Carly could use some love and support. You know.”

  I glanced at Carly, but she was busy with the pancakes and hadn’t noticed the conversation.

  “I’m sure she appreciates that,” I said. “How’s business?”

  “Oh, it’s okay. I sold a photo to a guy in New York.”

  “Nice.”

  Toby had moved out when he graduated high school but still lived nearby.

  We all caught up with each other, ignoring for a time the worsening situation with the police.

  While Nicole and Toby cleaned up, Carly took me into another room and closed the door. If you want to have a private conversation in ASL, distance alone doesn’t do the trick.

  “I’m worried about Toby,” she said.

  “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “He showed up here at two in the morning. I’d gotten up to go the bathroom, and I saw a light on in the living room. I grabbed a baseball bat and went to look, and he was there.”

  I frowned and cocked my head. “Toby was in the living room?”

  “He was going through the books on the shelves. I watched for a minute. He’d take one out, page through it, and put it back. I flashed the lights and he jumped.”

  “You don’t lock your door?”

  She shook her head. “No one around here does.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Said he was looking for some passage he remembered. It was the inspiration for a photo. Or something. He was signing so fast, I could hardly keep up.”

  Carly couldn’t keep up? Impossible. “Okay, thanks for telling me. You’ve got enough on your plate; I don’t want you to have to worry about it. I’ll deal with it.”

  Chapter Five

  By mere chance, I was present when the police arrested Carly on the campus of Bizet University. We were there for a roundtable discussion about Bizet’s relationship to the community of Redwood Point. With the goal of getting reacquainted with my sister, I accepted when she’d asked me to attend.

  Detective Crawford apparently planned to maximize Carly’s embarrassment. I could see no reason for it beyond a petty desire for revenge. If so, he’d misestimated my sister. Her face flushed only slightly. She kept her anger hidden. We’d discussed the possibility of arrest, and I’d advised Carly about what would happen, but it still took me by surprise. Did they find something on her computer?

  “There’s no need to handcuff her,” I told the detective. Someone in the group translated my words to ASL. Handcuffing her was equivalent to putting duct tape over her mouth.

  “Standard procedure,” he replied.

  The uniformed cop snapped the cuffs on her wrists.

  Carly was well respected in the community, and the way she was being treated led to some yelling among the vocal members of the group.

  She turned around and fingerspelled, “It’s okay.” It was the first time I’d had to read fingerspelling upside down.

  Crawford had brought an interpreter, something required by law because the arrest had been planned. I walked backwards in front of her, reminding her of the things we’d discussed.

  “Don’t talk with anyone,” I signed.

  She gave me a look that said I was an idiot. I explained that they’d take a mug shot, take her property and clothing, fingerprint her, conduct a full-body search, and perhaps do some health screening. She was in for a shock, and perhaps knowing what to expect would help.

  Her composure broke right as they were putting her into the backseat of the squad car, but she took a deep breath and steeled herself. If anyone could handle this, she could.

  * * *

  In 2015, an appeals court held that lawyers and clients must be able to have physical, face-to-face meetings in jail. I got to the meeting room while Carly was still being processed. After forty minutes she arrived, looking small. The intake procedure had certainly been demeaning, but she was tough. She wore the standard orange pants and top provided to prisoners, and the clothing was surprisingly dirty. A closer look suggested they had been recently laundered but that the grime was too entrenched. They were permanently dirty.

  As soon as they removed her cuffs, she said, “Get me out of here.”

  I’ve mentioned that Carly doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and unfortunately many low-level civil servants fall into that category. Some deputies were assigned to work in the jail because they lacked the social skills to interact with the general public. They had no manners.

  “Unfortunately, they arrested you late on Friday so that you’ll have to stay in jail over the weekend. It sucks and it’s unfair. It’s Crawford’s doing, but we’re stuck with it. I’m sorry, sis. At least they didn’t arrest you on Christmas Eve.” The date was December 28.

  “They put me in a cell with an inmate who is deaf and who signs. I don’t know her, however—”

  “No!”

  “No, what?”

  “Did you talk with her?”

  “A little.”

  “I told you not to speak with anyone. Not a word. Maybe I wasn’t clear. Did you think they put her in with you to be nice?”

  Carly said nothing.

  “What did you talk about?” I demanded.

  “Nothing to do with the case. Just small talk.”

  “Like?”

  “She’s from Southern California. We just talked about the weather, the deaf communities here and there.”

  I didn’t like it. “From now on, don’t communicate with her at all. Tell her your lawyer prohibits it. Is that clear?”

  * * *

  My impossibly young tech consultant brought a new MacBook Air to the office early on Saturday morning.

  “This is essentially a clone of Carly’s machine,” he said, tapping the laptop, “At least as of yesterday morning. She did a full image backup, and I was able to restore it to this.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It was mine. It’s yours now; I’ll buy myself a new one.”

  I smiled. “And you’ll put it on my tab.”

  “Plus a handling fee, you got it.” On his way out, he winked at Jen, who was standing in the doorway to my office.

  She came over and gave me a kiss. Smack on the lips.

  I jerked my head back. “What the hell was that?”

  She pointed up. Apparently, before Christmas someone—Nicole!—had taped a sprig of mistletoe to the ceiling over my desk.

  I laughed, but Jen just looked at me with her poker face.

  I said, “Is it tiring being inscrutable all the time?”

  That got a tiny smile from her. I’m not sure where the stereotype of Asians be
ing inscrutable came from, but with Jen, it fit. When she wanted to, she could make her face a mask of neutrality—the visual equivalent of no comment.

  Twenty-eight years old, Jen’s serious expression worked well with her deadpan humor. She uses that to her advantage in the courtroom, detonating the occasional zinger with deadly effect. Also when I need to be knocked down a peg. I’m okay with that.

  When she’s in the office, she lets her dark hair fall down to her shoulders, tucked behind her ears. In court, she twists it up into some kind of bun. She usually wears jade earrings that look like green pearls. She told me they were handed down from some distant ancestor and have mystical properties. She didn’t smile when she said that. More deadpan humor? I couldn’t tell, but she’s too down-to-earth to believe in anything supernatural.

  She has a delightful face, dominated by piercing eyes and little doll lips that carry lipstick only during trials. In her photograph on the Goodlove and Shek website, her eyes follow you around if you move your head. There’s no escape.

  I’d rescued her from the public defender’s office, where she’d carried twice the caseload of anyone else and had the highest acquittal rate in the department’s history.

  “Pull up a chair,” I said. “Let’s see what’s on her machine.”

  Jen dragged a chair over from the conference table. “Should we wait until Carly can be here while we look?”

  “Nah, she gave me permission.”

  I started with Carly’s browser history, the first place the police would look. I chose History/Show All History from the Firefox menu—I know my way around computers. The browser had recorded over 4,000 sites visited each month.

  I started by entering “cliff” into the search bar for the history entries. I held my breath.

  “What’s your thinking?” Jen asked.

  “I’m just starting. If she’d searched for ‘how to push someone off a cliff’ or ‘death by falling off a cliff,’ it would be bad.” There were no entries like that. I didn’t tell Jen that I had researched similar topics myself when depressed.

  “Try ‘kill,’” Jen suggested.

  That made more sense.

  Aargh. The top result was “16 steps to kill someone and not get caught.”

  “I was afraid of that, but we can explain it.” I filled Jen in.

  “Now, or save it for the trial?”

  “Tough question. Let’s see what they have at the preliminary hearing.”

  I visited the site, and one of the sixteen steps was “Don’t take your cell phone.” I made a note to check whether Carly had her phone with her on the day of Angelo’s death. If so, the police would have a full record of exactly where she’d gone and when.

  Jen pointed to my note. “You can check that now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here, let me drive.” Jen pushed me to the side and typed in “maps.google.com.” She brought up the Google menu and chose “Your timeline” then selected the date of the incident.

  My jaw dropped. “Wow!”

  “What?”

  “I had no idea that was going on.”

  “Big Brother is watching,” she said. “You can go back years and see where you went on any given date.”

  She zoomed the map in and put Tepona Point in the center. “Good news. She was nowhere near Tepona Point.”

  “But she said she walked from Clam Beach to home. Right by Tepona Point.”

  “Well, either she lied or she didn’t have her phone with her. I’m guessing the latter. I take my phone running, but only because—”

  “You listen to music.”

  “Right.” Jen sat back and aimed her laser eyes at me. “So, if she did it, it’s lucky she didn’t have her phone.”

  “But if she did have her phone, it could have exonerated her. The case could be dismissed Monday. You think she did it?”

  “I said, ‘if she did it.’”

  That took my mind back to the book ghostwritten for O.J. Simpson: If I Did It. I persisted. “But what do you think?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I think; it only matters what the jury thinks, something yours truly has said many times. You may be getting too personally involved here.”

  “Abso-freaking-lutely, I’m taking it personally. You should be first chair on this thing, no matter what Carly says. I’m out of practice for criminal defense.”

  She patted my knee. “We’ll do it together, boss. We have complementary skills.”

  We continued through Carly’s browsing history. “How to kill someone and get away with it,” “How to commit the perfect murder,” “The only murdering guide you’ll ever need,” and so on.

  Crawford would have wet dreams over that.

  Chapter Six

  Louella met her former partner Vince Rolewicz at the Larrupin’ Cafe, twenty miles north of town. It was a miracle he’d agreed to meet with her—she was now batting for the opposition. But even if they were seen together, they could just say they were getting together for old times’ sake. She’d mentored him for years, from the time he made detective to the day she retired.

  Looking like a farm boy—he was, in fact, the son of a dairy farmer—he had a freckled complexion and light brown hair. His teeth were even, at least by Humboldt standards, and a faint scar ran from one side of his mouth to his ear.

  They both ordered the barbecued brisket, Louella asking the waiter for the pieces that were so fatty they’d normally be discarded. “The key to my slim figure,” she said.

  “That and the smoking.” Vince raised his beer glass.

  “Smoking helps you lose weight, one lung at a time.”

  “Mark Twain?”

  Louella shook her head. “Alfred E. Neuman.”

  “Who dat?”

  “Great scholar. Before your time, Vince. How’s the department?”

  “Better now.”

  “Ever since I retired.”

  He dropped his jaw theatrically. “Huh. Now that you mention it …”

  The waiter brought the food, and they dug in, enjoying their meals along with the cozy atmosphere and the soft jazz coming from the speakers in the ceiling.

  “So, you’re working with Goodlove, huh?” Vince asked. “I thought he went whacko or something.”

  Louella finished her bite. “For a while. Depression. He’s okay now. Any inside dope on the Romero case?”

  “Ah, jeez, you know I can’t talk about that.”

  “So you’re happy with the way Crawford is handling the case?”

  Vince looked out the window.

  “He’s not getting any better, is he?” Louella said.

  “Worse.” He turned back to look at her. “Okay, here’s the story. He’s been wanting to get back at Carly Romero ever since 2011. The protest.”

  “The guy is famous for his grudges.” Louella sipped her wine, thinking about Crawford’s history. Seven years earlier, he’d shot an unarmed civilian. His police car’s dashcam had recorded most of the incident.

  A report had come in concerning a black man in a neighborhood where, according to the caller, “he didn’t belong.” It was late afternoon. Had it been dark, the incident might have been avoided, since the car’s headlights would have announced its presence.

  The squad car rolled slowly behind the man. Over the loudspeaker, Crawford ordered him to stop and put up his hands. The man ignored the command. Crawford’s partner said he thought the man was carrying a gun, followed by the prescient words, “What, is he deaf or something?”

  Unfortunately, the partner’s question didn’t start the wheels turning in Crawford’s head. Redwood Point has an unusually high percentage of deaf residents. Many who graduate from Bizet elect to stay in the area. Once you get a taste of the uncrowded life, it’s hard to go back to a big city. Getting out, Crawford again ordered the man to stop. Crawford and the suspect got out of range of the dashcam, but the last words picked up were spoken by the partner: “Hey, maybe he really …” There was a big argument in the he
aring about whether the inaudible words were “is deaf” or “does have a gun.” The partner insisted it was the latter, and no one was able to shake him on that.

  No more of the interaction appeared on the dashcam, but three shots rang out in the recording. Crawford testified that the man had spun around and seemed ready to bring a gun to bear, but no weapon was ever found, only a larger than normal smartphone.

  The civilian died at the scene. It turned out he lived in that neighborhood, renting a house with four other Bizet University students.

  The internal investigation, which the public saw as a whitewash, cleared Crawford of wrongdoing, but his advancement to detective was delayed. Carly led a protest over the incident, which went national, and apparently Crawford focused his frustration on her.

  The insult that added to his injury came a year later, when he was back on active duty. Crawford was assigned to break up a sit-in, one unrelated to any police misconduct. His vindictive nature led him like a guided missile to Carly. Caught on cell phone video, he sent an orange stream of pepper spray directly into her face. She sat there stoically despite the pain. Crawford then attempted to yank Carly to her feet, but he lost his grip on her sweater. What followed was a hilarious slapstick routine in which he stumbled backwards with windmilling arms. Just when it seemed he’d regain his balance, he tripped over another protester and landed on his butt. It had become a viral YouTube sensation set to the Benny Hill theme song or with a farting noise dubbed over each of his steps and jumps.

  “What’s so funny?” Vince asked.

  “The video.”

  Vince laughed. “It never gets old, does it?”

  If that wasn’t bad enough, Crawford saw that his performance was being filmed, and he stormed over to the videographer, demanding her name. The woman knew her rights. Refused to provide it. Crawford gave up only when his supervisor told him to stand down—also caught on the phone’s camera.

  “You got to hand it to him for sticking around, though.” Louella turned her wineglass on the table. “If that had happened to me, I’d have resigned and moved to another state. Or country.”