I started out with the most pressing but least likely to be productive question. “Have you had any contact with Lilah since the verdict?” I asked.
“Nah,” he replied. “And I can promise you, no one else has either. She’s a stone-cold killer. You won’t find any fans in this shop.” Paul’s voice was hard with anger.
“What can you tell us about Zack?” I asked.
Paul relaxed back into his chair.
“Zack was pretty well liked around here,” he said. “He was a good cop, and a smart one. Always had his eye on the ball and a nice word for everyone-”
“So he was popular with the troops?” Bailey asked.
“Definitely,” Paul replied. “Plus, Zack wanted to make captain, and you know what they say about more flies with honey than vinegar.” He laced his hands behind his head. “Not to say it wasn’t genuine, but he was a pretty sharp guy, politically speaking.”
“How’d he meet Lilah?” Bailey asked.
Paul looked up at the ceiling. After a brief pause, he shook his head. “You know, I never knew, and never really thought about it.” He added, with a sour twist of his mouth, “With someone as hot as Lilah, you don’t wonder about something like that.”
“Did you know Zack before he met Lilah?” I asked.
“It’s a small department-everybody knew each other.”
“Did you go to his wedding?”
At that, Paul frowned. “They eloped. Didn’t want to waste money on a big wedding.” He shrugged. “Made sense to me at the time, though now I wonder…about everything.”
“Like what?”
“Like she was on track to be a big-time, fancy lawyer-not like you guys, no offense-”
“None taken,” I said, wondering how many more times I could possibly be reminded of my lowly civil-service status in a single day.
Taking me at my word, Paul continued. “I mean, what was she doing with a cop-even if he did manage to make captain? I could see why they’d hook up for a while. But married? It just didn’t fit. Don’t know why, but I never questioned it before.” Paul looked down at his desk, then added quietly, “Wish I would have.”
It probably wouldn’t have mattered if he had. When it comes to sex and romance, people are going to do what they want, no matter how ill-advised. Yet another topic I didn’t need to dwell on.
“Did you get to know Lilah at all?”
“No,” Paul replied. “Zack only brought her to a couple of the bigger wingdings, where no one really had a chance to talk.”
“Did they socialize with any of the other cops as a couple?”
“Nope,” he replied firmly.
“You know why that was?”
In my experience, especially in the smaller departments, officers tended to hang together when they were off duty. That usually meant the wives did too.
“Lilah wasn’t into it, you could tell,” Paul said. “On the rare occasion when she showed up, she’d be polite, but it was an effort.” He fell silent for a moment. “But to tell you the truth, I never heard of Zack trying to schmooze around with anyone either. He’d hang out with the guys, especially if any brass was around, but he didn’t go drinking, and as far as I know he never invited anyone over to his place.”
So Zack was a loner and a climber too. He and Lilah did have something in common after all, and it was not insignificant. Ambition had fueled the fire of many marriages-which made it only harder to see what Lilah’s motive was for murdering Zack. What Paul said next made it harder still.
“Got to say, it really rocked my world when I heard about them starting a family,” he said, shaking his head.
“What?” I asked, sure I hadn’t heard right.
“Yeah,” Paul said, his expression perplexed. “Came out in some article during the trial that Lilah had been seeing a fertility doctor. I’m sure the defense leaked it on purpose. You know, ‘How could she possibly have killed him if they were trying to have a baby?’ But it was the first we’d ever heard about it.”
This did not fit the profile for either of them, but especially not for Lilah. Babies and the partner fast track don’t mix.
“Did you believe it?” I asked.
“Article gave the doctor’s name,” Paul replied. “So I’d guess there had to be records to back it up.”
It was easy to check. Paul remembered that the article had been in the local Glendale papers, which explained why we hadn’t run across it during our first, cursory search. Bailey accessed the news archives and found the article. The doctor’s office was in Glendale. A phone call got us an immediate appointment with the doctor’s record keeper.
The promise of a formal subpoena duces tecum got us an informal chat with the nurse.
Sure enough, she confirmed that Lilah had been getting injections of Clomid, a fertility drug.
48
Bailey drove down Alameda Avenue toward the Golden State Freeway, which would take us back downtown. I’d wanted to interview some of Zack and Lilah’s neighbors who’d lived nearby, but it had been a long day and we’d both run out of steam. Not to mention the fact that the likelihood of finding a neighbor at this point who’d add anything of substance was pretty low. Door-knocking the ’hood was Standard Police Procedure 101, and Rick had hit every single house within a five-block radius. In short, the neighborhood interviews would keep.
But I did want to get a look at the murder house. I always had to see crime scenes for myself. Even in cases like this, where the crime was already years old and the exact site of the murder no longer existed-the new owners had filled the basement with concrete in an effort to wipe out all memory of its bloody history-I liked to at least see the area. It put the events in context for me.
“How about if we go to the house?” I suggested. “Just a quick drive-by.”
Bailey looked at her watch. “May as well. It’s already rush hour, so we’re screwed anyway.”
She made a U-turn, then took Glenoaks Boulevard to Louise Street and pulled to the curb across the street from the house. It was completely unremarkable. Roughly two thousand square feet, it had a fresh-looking coat of white paint and green shutters that framed the two paned windows facing the road. I could see that all the lots on the block were narrow but ran deep, providing a decent backyard for planting or playing. A great house for kids, as the minivan in the driveway attested.
“Did you know that real estate agents are required to tell prospective buyers if a violent crime was committed on a property?” I asked Bailey.
“Do now.”
“Would you buy a house if you knew someone had committed a murder in it?”
Bailey looked in her rearview mirror for traffic, then pulled away from the curb. “Doubt it.”
Bailey?Afraid of ghosts? “Bad vibes?” I asked.
“Nah. I just wouldn’t be able to stop looking for evidence.”
Of course.
Bailey merged with the barely crawling traffic on the freeway, and we inched along in silence as the weak gray light of day faded into darkness.
“I don’t know what to make of that fertility-drug business,” I said. “Even if she decided she didn’t want kids, there are a lot less drastic ways to avoid pregnancy than killing the guy.”
Bailey nodded. “But I also don’t buy the claim that it shows she didn’t do it either.”
“Not because of that, no.”
“‘Not because of that’?” Bailey asked. “You’re thinking she didn’t do it?”
“I’m just wondering,” I said. “The harder we look, the less I see. Seems like the evidence gets less and less compelling-at least from where I’m sitting.”
It was like watching the sand flow out from under your feet when the wave recedes.