Interest of Justice Read online

  “Well, I don’t know if I’ve heard it all. I’ve heard what’s been on the news. What do they have? Do they know who did this despicable thing? Do they have any witnesses, leads?”

  “No,” Lara said. “They have next to nothing.” She then gave her the cellular phone number and told her why she wasn’t staying at her own house. “What do you think, Irene? Tell me the truth. Do you think I’m in danger, that these crimes are related? Could it be the young man who threatened me?” Lara got the words out of her mouth just as Josh returned.

  “Obviously, it doesn’t sound good. Did you know that a man once stalked me? It was about five years ago. I had sentenced him to prison on an armed robbery. When he got out, he followed me home from the courthouse and parked outside my house. It was terrible. By the time the police unit would get there, he would flee. We finally got a restraining order. Then we had to wait for him to violate it. Eventually he ended up back in prison, but it was an agonizing ordeal. After that I bought a gun. I carry it in my purse everywhere I go now.”

  “I didn’t know that, Irene,” Lara said, and she really didn’t want to know it either. Sometimes a person just wanted to pretend everything was all right even when it wasn’t. “So, you don’t think I should go back to my house?”

  “No, certainly not,” she said. “Where are you now? You said you’re staying in Santa Ana in a condo? Possibly John and I can come by tonight. Why don’t you give me the address?”

  “No,” Lara said quickly, “but thanks.” She looked around and saw Josh standing there, practically breathing down her neck. “Tell you what, Irene, I’ll call you back later. I have my nephew here now. I can’t really talk.”

  “If we don’t come over tonight, we’ll come over tomorrow. I’ll bring you some food—some things you can heat in the microwave. That poor child. This is just so terribly sad.”

  “I’ll let you know. Hold on.” Lara turned to Josh and asked him if he could step into the other room a minute so she could talk to Irene privately. Once he was in the bedroom with the door closed, Lara carried the portable phone to the kitchen and whispered, “I need a good psychologist for my nephew. Maybe John can recommend someone?”

  “I know someone myself. Wait a minute…I have his number right here in my Rolodex. He’s a psychiatrist. That would be better, don’t you think? They can prescribe medication. His name is Dr. Frederick Werner.” She rattled off the number.

  “You know, Irene,” Lara said, cupping her hand over the phone and peeking around the corner to make certain Josh was still in the bedroom, “I’m at a loss with this kid. He’s bitter. He’s obviously disturbed. There might even be a slim chance that he was involved in this nightmare.”

  “What do you mean? Did he see the killer? Was he an eyewitness?”

  “No, I…” Lara paused and inhaled. “Maybe he killed my brother-in-law. It’s possible. He was killed with a dumbbell and it was Josh’s dumbbell. There was no love there, let me tell you.”

  Irene didn’t answer. At first Lara thought they had been disconnected. “Did you hear me?” she said.

  “Put that out of your mind, Lara. That’s a terrible thought. Just get him to a psychiatrist and pursue this boy who threatened you. Call me later and we’ll talk in greater detail.”

  Lara was about to tell her about Ivory’s occupation and the awful things they’d found in the crawl space when Irene said she had to return to the bench. Just as well, Lara thought. She didn’t really want anyone to know.

  Josh’s bike was leaning against the door in the entry-way. With the boxes and now the bike, the condo was beginning to feel no larger than a walk-in closet. She quickly contacted the psychiatrist and arranged for him to see Josh at six o’clock that evening. Then she clicked off the phone and leaned back on the sofa with her eyes closed. She might really have to do what she told Josh and see this man herself, she thought, maybe get some sedatives so she could sleep.

  She opened her eyes and looked at the boxes. It would take her forever to go through all those pawn tickets. Not only that, but she had no idea what she was looking for. Even if the poor kid hadn’t killed them, he might know a lot more than he was telling. There was only one way to find out. Start asking.

  “Josh,” she said, having told him to come out of the bedroom, “come here and sit down on the sofa with me.” She patted a place next to her. “Let’s have a little talk. There’s the sodas we bought in the refrigerator and some chocolate chip cookies on the counter. Why don’t you get them?”

  It was almost lunchtime. Cookies and Coke would have to do. Tonight she’d try to find him something halfway healthy. Maybe she’d buy a roast chicken from the deli department at the supermarket before they went to see Dr. Werner. If the poor child had not shared her affinity for junk food, he would be starving to death. At least she didn’t have to worry about malnutrition yet. Not for a few days anyway.

  They were sitting side by side on the sofa munching cookies and sipping soda from cans. They weren’t looking at each other. Finally Josh said, “What do you want to talk about?”

  Lara sighed, a long one. “What were things like at home?”

  “What do you mean?” He set the sack of cookies aside and brushed his hair out of his eyes.

  “What were things like with your mom and Sam? Were they fighting? Was he drinking? Was your mother drinking?”

  “Dunno.” His back became rigid and he stared straight ahead.

  Lara touched his arm and he looked at her. “It isn’t going to work this way, Josh. You lived in that house. You’re a smart boy. You would have known if they were drinking or fighting.”

  He was silent and unresponsive. She could almost see the memories flashing in his eyes. They weren’t happy ones. That Lara knew for sure.

  “Please, Josh, for your mother’s sake, you have to help us. You were there yesterday. You saw what happened, what someone did in that house. I know you want them to pay as much as I do, as much as we all do.”

  “Sam was a bastard.”

  “You’re not going to get an argument from me on that one. Go on…there has to be more than that.”

  Lara had not opened the drapes in the condo and it was dark. Some light was filtering through from the small kitchen window behind them, but their faces were bathed in shadows. She started to get up and open the drapes and then thought better of it. Somehow it seemed to work better for both of them to discuss this in the shadows.

  “Sam drank at least a six-pack of beer every night. He’d get drunk and then start fights with us—Mom and me. They had fights over money, things like that. Sometimes Mom would tell me to go out somewhere on my bike. Then when I came back home, they’d be in the bedroom with the door closed. The next day they’d be fine.”

  “Josh, did Sam ever hit your mother? Did you ever see him hitting her or hurting her in any way? Did anyone else ever come over to the house? You know, strange men. Think hard. Anyone you didn’t know?”

  He looked sharply at Lara. “I don’t remember, okay? Everyone keeps asking me all these questions, and I just don’t remember.” He stood and looked at his bike by the door. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Can I go out on my bike?” His face was set, his lips compressed. She’d touched a nerve.

  “Wait just a minute and then you can go out. I’m not going to hold you prisoner here.” She paused. She’d have to let him out of the house. They’d go crazy for sure if they just sat hour after hour inside this dark hovel. Hopefully, if someone was out to harm her, they didn’t know about Josh or where they were staying. He was several feet away, standing by the door, his hands on the bike.

  No wonder he wanted that bike, Lara thought. It had been his only escape mechanism. When things got tough, he took off. Things were getting tough now. She spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, not wanting to emphasize her words. “Did you ever see anything that you didn’t understand? Maybe something relating to your mother?” The images from this morning flashed in her mind. Her eyes quickly retu
rned to Josh when she heard the door open and saw him pushing the ten-speed out the door onto the sidewalk.

  “Josh, wait,” Lara said, heading to the front door. “Stay right in this little area here by the condo. I don’t want you wandering off. And you have to help us, tell us everything you saw or heard.”

  He turned around and stared at her, his gaze intense, his eyes blazing with hatred. “You’re a fucking bitch,” he yelled. “Now you’re all concerned about my mom…about me. Now that she’s dead. You never gave a shit about us when she was alive. I’d rather go to juvenile hall than stay here with you.”

  Lara took a few tentative steps toward him. “You’re wrong, Josh. I always cared about you, about your mother.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, flipping his head back to get his hair out of his eyes. His voice went up several octaves. It was almost the little boy voice before going through puberty. His face twisted up like he was trying to keep from crying. “You used to come and see me, take me to the movies, buy me things. Then you just stopped coming…like we weren’t good enough for you. We were just trash to you. You—”

  His words stung. “Josh,” Lara pleaded, “listen to me. Your mother wouldn’t let me see you. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to…She got angry with me…It was her way to get back.”

  Glaring at her, he jumped on the seat and pedaled away, slamming the door to the condo behind him.

  Lara went back to the sofa and sat there in the dark, leaning over onto her knees, her head in her hands. She’d had no idea that those earlier visits had actually meant something to Josh, that he’d missed her, even thought she’d abandoned him. He’d been a skinny, aloof twelve-year-old then. She’d always assumed he was bored silly on their little outings. She was wrong. He was bitter. Bitter at Lara, his mother and stepfather, the miserable world in general. Just how bitter she couldn’t judge. Hopefully, she prayed, not bitter enough to become a killer.

  For a long time she just sat there in the dark. She tried to think. She tried to rationalize. Her mind was so muddled that her thoughts were racing in a million different directions at once. She finally stood and went to the bathroom, thinking she’d take a shower, hoping it would help. Tossing the bedspread back on the bed, she saw something sticking out from under the mattress. She bent down and pulled it out. It was a backpack. She vaguely recalled Josh walking in with it last night. Starting to drop it back where she found it, she instead dropped to the edge of the bed and began rummaging through the contents. There were three textbooks, some notebook paper, a few pens. She took them all out and placed them on the bed. Then she saw it.

  In her hands was a rolled-up T-shirt that had been shoved in the bottom of the backpack. On the T-shirt was blood.

  Still holding it in her hand, she ran to the front door and flung it open. Why, she didn’t know. Then she slammed it and went into the bathroom, sitting down on the toilet seat and staring at it. “No, God,” she cried. “It can’t be. It just can’t be.” She was shaking; her heart was pounding. Her palms were sweaty and she felt cold, really cold. She spread the T-shirt open all the way and tried to estimate how much blood there was. It wasn’t much, just a long red streak. For a second she thought it might be paint. She held it to her nose and sniffed it. Then she tried to flick some of it off with her fingernails. It wasn’t paint. It was blood.

  She walked out of the bathroom and started pacing inside the bedroom. She felt like she was walking upside down. The room kept spinning and moving. Visions of Josh bringing the dumbbell down on Sam’s head kept flashing in her mind. What was she going to do? She couldn’t turn her own nephew over to the police, yet she couldn’t allow him to get away with murder. No matter who Sam was, or what he had done, he was a human being. There was no way to reconcile herself to murder.

  She thought of all the possible reasons for the bloody T-shirt. He could have fallen off his bicycle. That made sense. It could even be an animal’s blood, like a dog’s or a cat’s. A lot of teenagers were into Satanism and cutting up cats. Suddenly a thought came to mind and she grabbed the textbooks, quickly reading the spines and then tossing them back into the backpack. Maybe he took biology, she thought, and he had dissected a frog. There was no biology textbook.

  She was completely panicked.

  Glancing at the door, she realized he could walk in at any moment. If he saw her with the T-shirt, he could even kill her. He was big enough. He could beat her to death, strangle her, suffocate her like Ivory. Terrified, she rolled up the T-shirt as she had found it and replaced all the items back in the backpack.

  The phone rang and Rickerson started speaking. She’d left her new number with the switchboard operator at the San Clemente P.D.

  “The S.O. just called and they lifted a few sets of prints from your house in Irvine. One set we can’t match yet, probably one of your friends, but the others come back to a lowlife hoodlum by the name of Packy Cummings. He’s got a record a mile long and even did a stint at San Quentin. He’s been listed as a suspect on several homicides in the past. He’s a bad actor, Lara. We’re trying to pick him up now. No prints at the murder scene, though. They must have worn gloves.”

  Lara’s breath caught in her throat and she couldn’t speak. She hadn’t heard half of what the detective had said. She couldn’t tell him about what she had found. She wanted to, but she just couldn’t. Not until she was sure. She owed her sister at least that much. They’d drag the poor kid back down to the station and give him the third-degree; the press could even get wind of it and Josh would be tried and convicted even if it turned out to be nothing. Lara knew too well how these things happened. Once they accused a person in print, even after a full trial and acquittal, the rumors and innuendos sometimes persisted for the rest of their lives. “I…I’m sorry,” she said, “repeat what you just said.”

  He did. She listened and then something seized her. The name Packy Cummings. “Wait, Rickerson, don’t hang up. What’s his full name? Is it Packard Cummings?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You know the guy?” Rickerson was a little shocked on that one, unless she knew him from the courts. He sure hoped he wasn’t one of her boyfriends. That would be downright absurd.

  “He was on my calendar…I think it was the day before Ivory was murdered. He’s an informant on a narcotics case working with a local agency. I don’t know which one, but I can find out.” Lara had all these crazy thoughts in her mind right now, like maybe they had somehow confused her house with that of a drug dealer’s. The investigating officer had said it appeared they were looking for drugs. Things like that did happen. Several times the LAPD had gone out with their battering ram, a big tank, and destroyed an innocent person’s house.

  “Nan,” Rickerson said finally, “this guy isn’t working for anyone inside the law. One of the people he was suspected of knocking off about seven years ago was an undercover cop. They’d be out of their minds. Who told you that?”

  “Leo Evergreen. You know who Evergreen is, don’t you? He’s the presiding judge.”

  The line was silent. Rickerson was thinking. The sheriff’s department had called him about this guy. They knew nothing about him. A drug case, of course, could mean the DEA or some other agency, but to use a man like this as an informant? Not unless he could help bust the Colombian drug cartel or something. Even if the man had been working as an informant, what was he doing breaking into houses?

  Rickerson could smell something, and it was as rotten and foul as they came.

  “I’ll have to make some phone calls and get back to you.”

  “Look,” she said, “why don’t I just call Evergreen and ask him which agency the man is working for? They called him and asked him to release Cummings O.R. as a professional courtesy. I didn’t want to do it, but he pressed. It could be a mistake, you know. Some type of crazy mistake.”

  Again Rickerson was quiet, reviewing things in his head. Judge releases a guy O.R. one day and the next day he pays her back by ransacking her house. Didn’t make sense.
“Lara, I don’t like the way this thing is stacking up. Not one little bit. I’m sending my man back over there to watch your place, and believe me, I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t feel you were in danger. The chief’s gonna have a fit when he finds out. We need every warm body to work this case, not sit around in a parking lot.”

  “What about Evergreen?” She looked at the door, thinking Josh would come back any minute, truly frightened now. She’d released this man. This man who had broken into her home. And her own nephew had a bloody T-shirt hidden in his backpack. What else could possibly happen? She was beside herself now. She wanted to throw herself on the floor and scream. “Look,” she told him, talking fast, “I don’t really care who broke into my house. What I care about is who killed my sister.”

  “If they are one and the same, then…”

  Right now she prayed that they were one and the same. Anything or anyone but Josh. “Is that possible? You know that this Cummings man is the murderer?”

  “Anything is possible,” he said. “Keep this to yourself until I get back to you. Don’t tell anyone anything. You know even at the top, things get around. Let’s just keep a lid on this until I check some things out. And listen, Lara, I had to call Social Services. They’ll probably be contacting you about the kid today.”

  “Ted, tell me something. When you picked up Josh from the neighbors’ house the night of the murder, was he carrying anything?”

  “I don’t recall. Another unit drove him down to the station. Why do you ask?”

  “Forget it,” Lara said quickly. Rickerson hung up and she just sat there, listening to the dial tone. Surely the police would have searched his backpack looking for evidence. But then they might not have considered him a valid suspect at the time, and with all the confusion, searching his backpack might have slipped by them.

  She’d let them take him, she decided. Then she wouldn’t have to deal with him. In a way, she was relieved. Her breath was starting to come slower. If additional evidence surfaced that Josh was involved, then she’d come forward with the T-shirt.