Expert Witness (4 page)

 Recognizing this truth, allowing the second thoughts to run through his mind, he acknowledged the physical drain. Acknowledgment of a downturn made one stronger.  Even God said that. The trick was to stay on track and keep his eyes on the prize. For exactly five days he would anticipate that which could not be anticipated. He would choose the time and place of communications. Then he would lead the world here, they would recognize him as a superior human being. Those women would owe their lives to him, and he would own them forever. Timing was crucial. He would have to be smarter than smart; he would be more than brilliant. He would not be surprised or blindsided ever again.

He sat up. He was not sorry he lingered through the dawn because now he was refreshed and ready to finish. The pallet was gone. Pity no one would ever know what it had taken to build it or the lengths he had gone to dispose of it   The pieces were scattered so that they looked like a natural part of this God-forsaken place.  Maybe he would leave a note to be opened upon his death so people would know how darn smart he had been. Maybe not.  It would just be one more thing to do and his death was not imminent. There was plenty of time to pen just the right admission or, if it was more appropriate, confession. It was now time to run through his list even though he was sure he had left nothing undone.

Drinking water within reach.

Door closed and locked.

Guests immobilized and isolated.

Nothing of him left behind.

He was so pleased with it all.  But there was so much more to come. Now, though, he had to go. He mustn’t be late. He was sure the real show would begin today, and he wanted to be ready.

Burt’s By the Beach Restaurant, Hermosa Beach

Faye Baxter was visiting her daughter in San Diego, but a quick phone call confirmed she had neither heard from Josie nor was she privy to her full caseload. When they had decided to share office space but not form a partnership, the two women respected one another’s professional space. Faye hung up the phone promising to contact Archer or Hannah if she could think of anything that would help. The last thing Archer heard was that she would pray that everything would be okay.

Archer figured that couldn’t hurt. He’d done some praying of his own the night before. When Josie still hadn’t shown up by dawn, he knew he would have to rely on the resources he had at his fingertips.  The first stop was Liz. He hadn’t really expected her to jump on a missing persons’ report, but at least she was on notice.  The second step was to put out a call to Josie’s closest friends in the community. If need be, Archer would expand that circle but for now it was Burt, Billy Zuni and Hannah.

 Billy Zuni, Josie’s favorite underage, pro bono client, didn’t seem to have much to recommend him except a good heart. He surfed, was truant, and mooned after Hannah when she allowed it. He always had a lid, which was a crime, but would share his weed with anyone so people looked the other way. He was a poster boy for those lost to the sun, sand, surf and his single mom’s neglect. Today his bright-white grin was washed away by a wave of concern.

Burt, proprietor of Burt’s by the Beach, was Hermosa’s innkeeper. It was Josie who made sure Burt got what he deserved after a motorcycle accident left him close to crippled. George, the night man, was tending bar, so Burt could pow-wow on the matter at hand. He was neither as glum as Billy, nor as intense as Archer. He would be the Greek chorus, the devil’s advocate, the ear to bend, or the shoulder to cry on.

Hannah sat still as a statue. Her tendency toward self-protective defiance, self-mutilation and obsessive-compulsiveness would always be under the surface, but now all that was hidden behind a composed and beautiful face.

“Okay, then,” Archer said. “The cops are going to play wait and see, so it’s up to us to move things along. Burt? You’ve got half of Hermosa coming in here and they bring the rest of the South Bay with them. I’m thinking you can chat everyone up. Josie is well known in all the beach cities.  Do you still have that picture I took of her at the ATV tournament? The one she made you take down?”

“That I do, my friend,” Burt said, “and it’s going right back up until she makes me take it down again.”

Archer smiled. He had clicked the shutter just as Josie went for a spike. Baseball cap on backwards, she was every bit as graceful and cut as when she played volleyball for USC.

“Thanks, Burt.” He turned his attention to Billy. “You do the same but I want you on the sand. Go down near the pier and stick there at night if you can.  No panic, just conversation. You hear anything that sounds remotely interesting, it comes back to me. Any time. Day or night.  Don’t try to check it out on your own. You’ve got a cell, right?”

“Dude.” Billy proudly pulled a state of the art phone out of his pocket. Archer didn’t want to know where he got the bucks for it. “I’ll stay up all night if I got to.”

Archer gave him the upswing of his chin to let him know that he was grateful.

“I’ll wait for Angie at Josie’s office and get in to look at Josie’s desk,” he went on. “I think that about does it.”

Chairs scraped. Burt squeezed Archer’s shoulder as he went by.  Billy hung his head and gave Archer his hand.

“Dude,” he said again.

Archer shook it and pushed his chair back toward the table as they scattered. He was about to leave when he heard:

“What about me? What am I suppose to do?”

Archer hesitated. He hung his head.

Hannah.

CHAPTER FIVE:

They cut up Twenty-Second Street and went up a block, then turned left. Hannah walked ten steps ahead of Archer. While she ranted, Archer focused on the hem of her jeans. They were frayed and so long they almost engulfed her gold shoes.

“What did you expect me to do? Sit home with Max and wait until something happened? You even gave Billy a job, for God sake!”

“Hannah. Hannah! Hey, slow down.” Archer touched her shoulder. She pulled away. It was part reaction, but there was something personal in it, too. He backed off. “Right now it’s about information, and people in Hermosa don’t know you yet.  No one’s going to talk to you the way they would Billy or Burt or Faye.”

“You didn’t even ask me what I could do,” Hannah snapped.

“You came to me for help.” Archer threw up his hands. “If there was something you could do, I figured you would have told me.”

“I didn’t know what it was. Now I do.”

“And I didn’t know you’d been working for Josie,” Archer cried. “And I’m sorry. I should have. Okay?”

Hannah stuck out her hip, the little ring piercing her bellybutton glinted and Archer tried not to look at it. If Hannah was his daughter she wouldn’t be dressing like that, but she wasn’t his daughter or Josie’s and her outrage was that of a grown woman. Heaven help the man who hooked up with her in a few years. Since there was nothing he could say to appease her, Archer did the only thing he could think to do. He walked past her and up to the door of the bungalow that Faye Baxter had converted into a law office.

Hannah caught up with him and moved him aside with a look. She flipped her hair over her shoulder as she bent forward and announced triumphantly.

“I’ve got the key.”

The San Diego Freeway, South

Damn. Damn.

The traffic was stopped. The freeway south should have been clear this early. He’d made the run five, maybe ten times in preparation, and nothing like this had ever happened. Nothing.

He raised his hand to hit the steering wheel to relieve some of the pressure that was building, but beside him was a car and in the car was a woman who was looking directly at him.  He knew it even though her eyes were hidden behind her Jackie-O sunglasses. He couldn’t blame her for being interested. There was something about him that drew attention. Any other day he would have reveled in her interest, but today he didn’t want to be recognized so he simply draped his wrist over the wheel. Yep, draped that wrist,let his hand casually swing a little,and offered her a smile that said ‘isn’t this traffic a bitch?’

She turned her head as if she found him distasteful.

Traffic, he decided, wasn’t the only thing that was a bitch.

He looked back to the four lanes of cars at a dead stop. He should have left right after everything was done. It was unseemly to gloat like a drunken frat boy after a messy conquest. That was a mistake he wouldn’t make again. He shifted, starting to get nervous. If traffic didn’t start moving soon, and the wheels he had set in motion started to turn, he was screwed. Game over before anyone really got to play.

He lifted his fingers and stretched them. He still wanted to hit something.

Law Offices of Faye Baxter & Josie Bates, Hermosa Beach

“When did you start working for Josie?”

“Three months ago.” Hannah turned on the lights.

The place was exactly what someone would expect of a California bungalow converted to office space. The living room was a reception area with a desk for Angie. File cabinets were nestled into an alcove where a breakfront probably stood when this was still a home. A bay window looked out onto a porch. In front of that were two loveseats and a table with magazines arranged neatly on top.  An arched doorway led to the old dining room, now the conference room. Archer knew what kind of meetings were conducted around that table: women stunned to find themselves part of a divorce action, parents looking for help with a troubled kid, small businesses being sued by legal spammers, property disputes, parking violations, wills. Every once in a while Josie’s previous life – that of a high priced, high risk defense attorney – would rear its head, and draw her back into problems that were just a little bigger than this place. He thought those days were over. Now Archer had to assume something had come down the road that was a little more serious than a DUI.

“Come on.” Hannah brushed by him and led the way down the hallway.

The three bedrooms had been turned into offices. Faye had knocked out a wall between the first two and created a modest suite for herself. Easy chairs were covered in muted fabrics, flowered pillows were plumped on a small couch and bucolic paintings hung on the walls along with a formal portrait of the man who had been both husband and partner. There were photographs of her daughter and grandchildren peppered over a credenza behind her desk. Clients who walked into this room felt like their mom would make everything right.

At the end of the hall Hannah flipped on another light, and Archer paused in the doorway of Josie’s office. Clients who walked into this room would feel empowered. The desk was sleek and the color of sand, like the exposed wood floors. Behind the desk were white-shuttered windows and in front of it was a black and white rug. The painting on Josie’s wall was white and blue. There were no family pictures on the desk, and the file cabinets were lined up in an alcove that used to be a closet. There was a coffee table and chairs to the left of her desk. Hannah opened the shutters. Late morning light flooded in.

“I checked her personal answering machine. Angie might have other messages but all that’s on this one is a call about the South Bay Bar dinner and a man who only left his number. No message.”

“What’s his name?”

“It sounded like Cuwin Martin. He didn’t spell it. I took the number and left the message on the answering machine. He was black,” Hannah said.

“Are you profiling?” Archer asked.

“Just talking about a brother,” Hannah said just to bug him.

Archer moved around the desk, but Hannah took Josie’s chair before he could. He pulled up another.

“She wasn’t in the last two days. She was down at the Torrance courthouse day before yesterday, and then yesterday she said she was going to the San Pedro women’s center. I don’t know where after that. I called them, and they didn’t know either. They said she left around two.  When she’s not here I come in and file, input invoices into the computer, and other stuff.”

Hannah pulled a file out of the desk drawer.

“This is where I keep the back message slips until the end of the month, and then I archive them and take out the oldest month. There’s supposed to be six months of messages in here all the time, but I haven’t been here long enough to do that yet. Her calendar is on the computer and it’s synced with her phone.”

“Do you save the phone records?”

“Yes.” Hannah answered. “But it won’t have the last three weeks.”

“I’ll call the phone company,” Archer said.

“I can get it online. I have her password.”

“Okay.” Archer was going to point out that Tug-o-War was for picnics, but he held his tongue. “What’s in the boxes?”

“Old case files. She had me bring them from storage. She has a lot of stuff in storage.”

“She defended a lot of rich scumbags before she came to her senses.” Archer muttered as he scooted over to the boxes and opened them.