Bailey sat back and folded her arms over her chest. Her thinking posture. I got up and paced. My thinking posture. One of us had a more annoying thinking posture than the other.
I thought out loud. “You couldn’t find any trace of her under any of her known names-”
“I’ve checked every database in every city, county, and state in this country. I’ve checked banks, jails, prisons, hospitals, even the morgue, I’ve checked-”
I held up my hand. “Enough. I get it. But she can’t just be No-Name. She must’ve gotten a new ID, right?”
“Right,” Bailey said. “Though that may not necessarily mean she’s up to no good. She’s got every reason to want to change her name and erase her past.”
True enough. “But even if she is into something shady, she can’t get by with no ID.”
And Lilah’s new name was the least of the unknowns that’d been plaguing me. Was she a cold-blooded murderer? Or was she the victim of a misguided investigation-someone whose life had been ruined by being falsely accused? If the latter, then what was she doing now? Why was she seemingly in hiding? I had a hard time believing she was cowering in a corner somewhere. I’d studied her on that surveillance footage too many times to count, and one thing was clear to me: that strong, confident stride didn’t fit with someone who’d disappeared out of fear or shame. But that single conclusion, based only on my intuition, left a world of questions unanswered. Every time I thought about Lilah, I wound up on this same circular path.
“No one gets by in this world without ID,” Bailey agreed. “And I didn’t see anything in her past that was helpful. Though I did think it was weird that she got a GED instead of finishing high school.”
“Especially since she’d just come back home after years of getting stellar grades in a boarding school.”
Bailey sat up. “When’d you come up with that?”
“A little while ago.” I shrugged. “Checked out her school records, talked to a few people. Seems she got into enough trouble to make the counselor recommend a boarding school for ‘problem children.’”
“She have a juvenile record?”
“No. And it seems the boarding school did straighten her out. By the time she left, she had a four-oh.”
Bailey looked at me intently. “You pulling all-nighters working on this woman, or what? And elementary school? How on earth’s that supposed to help us find her now?”
Until that moment, I hadn’t thought to question it. But now I wondered: What did I hope to gain by delving into Lilah’s personal history-especially that far back?
“I just wanted to fill in some blanks,” I said. “I needed to get some answers for a change, instead of questions that only led to more questions. It’s been frustrating, you know?”
Bailey nodded. Her puzzled look told me she wasn’t entirely convinced, but I didn’t have any better explanation.
I paused to look out the window at Pershing Square. The small park in the middle of downtown always sets up an ice rink in winter. A young girl wearing lighted reindeer antlers stumbled blindly around the oval rink. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Her wet jeans told me her efforts to stay upright hadn’t been a total success. Suddenly she slip-slided her way off the ice and into a roped-off area, where she dropped heavily onto one of the folding chairs. A rink official glided over and appeared to order her out of the area. When she unsteadily followed his directions, he sat her down at one of the public tables. Was she stoned? Or just new on skates?
I brought my thoughts back to the matter at hand and gave voice to an issue that’d been dancing around in my mind.
“How did Lilah and Zack meet anyway?” I asked.
“No one knows,” Bailey replied. “Even Zack’s parents were vague. At some party or something.”
I nodded, frowning, and turned back to the window.
The girl with the antlers duckwalked her way back onto the rink and began to bounce off the low wood barriers. This time, a tall, strong-looking rink official quickly skated up behind her, grabbed her under the arms, and steered her off the ice, then motioned for a nearby patrol officer. Stoned. Definitely not the skates.
I began to pace again. “If they did meet at a party, then how come no one has any details? Like when or where it was, or who threw the party?”
Bailey shrugged.
“It bugs me that they have no logical point of intersection,” I said. “Work? School? Church?” I turned another circle, thinking.
“Your pacing is making me nuts,” Bailey warned. “And dizzy.”
She had a point. The room was pretty small, so my circles were tight and fast. “Sorry,” I said. I resumed pacing but tried to make it look like a casual stroll. “Zack didn’t go to law school-”
“-so they didn’t meet there,” Bailey said. “And they didn’t meet at work. When she interned for the DA’s office, she was down in Orange County.”
“And no one ever said they were churchgoers-”
“She’d immolate on the threshold.” Toni emerged from the bathroom looking like a magazine cover.
Makeup, flawless. Hair, perfect. Clothes, chic. And if circumstances required, she could even do it fast. I was no slouch, but I was a mere grasshopper next to Master Toni.
I resumed pacing. “She went to law school, interned at the DA’s office, and got hired at a fancy law firm. None of that explains how she and Zack crossed paths.”
Bailey refolded her arms and stared down at the table. After a moment, she looked up. “If she did kill Zack, it wouldn’t be a big strain to believe Lilah had a shady past.”
I stopped pacing and looked at Bailey. “A hotshot corporate lawyer with a shady past? Impossible,” I said with a sarcastic smile. “So maybe they met at Zack’s workplace.”
“As in, Zack busted her for something?”
I shrugged.
But Bailey was frowning. “I don’t know. Men think with the little head and all that, but hooking up with a suspect…” She shook her head. “It’s a career wrecker if anyone finds out. And from everything we’ve heard about him, Zack was an ambitious guy. Cops who want to be captain-or more-don’t take those kinds of chances.”
“I agree,” I replied. “And if he did bust her for something, he must’ve hidden it, because she’s got no rap sheet, right?”
“None,” Bailey said. “But then again…we’re pretty sure she’s got an alias now, right? Maybe she had an alias back then…”
No cover-up would’ve been required.
“Or maybe he didn’t bust her,” Toni chimed in. “Maybe she was a witness.”
I nodded. “That might’ve given her a legit reason to have an alias…”
“Such as?” Bailey asked.
“She was hiding from an abusive boyfriend,” Toni said.
“If she did have an alias back then-for whatever reason-it’d be a lot easier to go back to it now than to get a whole new set of fake IDs,” I said.
Bailey sighed. “This means we’ve got to go through Zack’s arrest reports and see if we can find a witness or suspect who fits her description. Needle in a haystack.”
I nodded glumly. This time, I had no magnet.
63
“Records show they were married for two years, and according to witness interviews, they dated for about six months before that,” Bailey said.
“Then let’s go back a year before the marriage to be on the safe side,” I said. “Where was Zack working back then?”
“I’ll check,” Bailey replied, pulling out her cell.
“Well, I’ll leave y’all to it,” Toni said, giving her makeup a final check in the mirror next to the entry. When I’d first moved into this suite, I’d thought that was a weird place for a mirror. Toni showed me the error of my ways.
She looked outside and set aside her coat. “Got an extra scarf?” she asked. “Preferably gray,” she said, gesturing to her pale blush-colored blouse.