“Matter of fact, assuming she wanted to dump his ass, why not just wait for the statute of limitations to run out? What is it, six years?”
“Something like that.”
“Not so long to wait. And once the statute runs, she’s in the clear; they can’t prosecute her.”
I nodded. “And, being a lawyer, Lilah would’ve known that…”
“So maybe she really didn’t kill Zack.”
I dropped my arms and leaned back in my chair. I had the feeling we were missing something. But what? I knew we were on the right track; the Tran Lee hit-and-run figured into all of this somehow. I turned the problem over, trying to see it from different angles. It’d always seemed odd that Zack and Lilah wound up together. Though it was true they both appeared to be climbers, she was on the partner fast-track in a high-dollar corporate law firm. What could a cop-even an upwardly mobile one-do for her career? Nothing. In fact, in her crowd, it’d be a hindrance, make her look déclassé. And from what I’d seen, Lilah wasn’t the romantic type who’d throw it all away for love. My thoughts looped back to the hit-and-run…Zack as the investigator…
And suddenly I knew. It was foul, depraved, and sickening, but I knew I had it. I turned to look at Bailey-she was going to like this even less than I did.
“What if Zack didn’t destroy the evidence?”
Bailey sat forward and looked at me intently. “And Lilah knew it?”
We exchanged a long look.
“Zack was blackmailing her,” I said. “That’s how he got her to marry him.”
71
It was a monstrous thing to contemplate. It was awful, but not impossible, to imagine a cop burying evidence of a homicide so he could blackmail the killer. But to use that to force someone to marry him, and keep her hostage with the threat of a murder rap hanging over her head…forever? Even though I was the one who’d raised the possibility, I found it hard to believe.
Bailey shook her head, stricken. “I don’t know…it’s so…”
“Pathological?”
She nodded, her expression troubled. “From every angle. Not only because it’s a sick thing to do to begin with, but jeez, like we just said, once the statute ran, what’s to stop her from nailing him for hiding the evidence? Doesn’t that seem more than a little crazy to you?”
“No, or rather, yes. But not for the reason you think. First of all, even after the statute ran, there’s no way Lilah could ever afford to turn Zack in. Remember, he didn’t falsify that report alone. She’s in it up to her ears. If he goes down for that, then so does she. The only thing she skates on is the manslaughter. And when it comes out that she committed the hit-and-run and then conspired to hide the evidence, even if she somehow beat the criminal charges, her big, fancy career would be toast with a capital T. No law firm will hire someone with a record like that. Second, I think Zack was more than a little crazy-not that she’s a model of sanity-but he was obviously willing to take the risk that she might not be as predictable as he thought. He had to have considered the possibility that she might just decide being free of him was worth the downside. But I think he was willing to go down as long as she did too. It was a game of power and control, and he had it rigged so her only choice was either to live with him and endure or to ‘out’ him and wave good-bye to her future.”
As I said those words, I envisioned Zack and Lilah locked in a macabre tango, nose-to-nose, neither of them able, or willing, to look away, hands clutching each other’s throat. Had the dance finally pushed Lilah over the edge, into murdering Zack?
Bailey blew out a breath. “Damn.” Then, echoing my thoughts, she said, “Then killing him would’ve been the only way out.”
“Yeah, but is there any case that gets investigated more thoroughly than a cop killing? How could she be sure she’d get away with it? Talk about your risks. That’s the mother of them all.”
“True that.”
We fell silent. I knew we had the hit-and-run piece of the puzzle in the right place, but Lilah’s role in Zack’s murder was still an open question. I looked back at Bailey, who was staring down at the floor.
She peered up at me, her expression perplexed. “It’s just so hard to wrap my head around. Especially because the mom and dad…hell, even Simon, seemed so…well, normal.”
“Yeah.” I frowned. It was tough to swallow. “But there is one bright side: if there really is evidence out there, and we can find it, we’ll have a good shot at nailing Lilah for not only Simon’s murder but the hit-and-run too.”
It was the only positive note I could find, but Bailey didn’t look all that cheered.
I stared out the window. Something about what I’d just said tickled the back of my mind. Frustrated, I struggled to grab ahold of it. Simon…his murder…the evidence…It was there somewhere. I began to think out loud.
“Simon winds up on that sidewalk at the same time as Lilah. Too weird to be a coincidence.”
“There had to be a reason,” Bailey agreed.
“On the videotape, it looks like Simon was there to attack Lilah. And he was armed and ready. But how could he know she’d be there at exactly that time?”
She sat up and frowned. “They’d planned to meet?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.” I paused. Suddenly the thought that had been circling just out of reach floated up to the surface. I stared straight ahead, mentally probing for the flaw as I pursued my new theory with a question. “And if that’s true, what’s the one thing Simon might’ve had that could make Lilah want to meet him?”
“The evidence,” she said softly.
We exchanged a long look.
“If we’re right that Zack hid the evidence of her hit-and-run, and Simon found out about it, that’d give Simon one hell of a great way to lure her out, wouldn’t it?” I asked.
Bailey nodded. “Explains why, after disappearing once, she ended up on that sidewalk with him,” she said. “But, as I recall, Simon didn’t have anything on him and the surveillance footage shows the stabber didn’t take anything off him.”
“Simon didn’t bring it. He wasn’t completely crazy. But his murder proves that the evidence is still out there. Or, at least, that Lilah believes it is.”
Bailey stared out the window. “And the only reason she would’ve had to believe that is because Zack told her so.”
“Which he would have done in order to use it as blackmail. The evidence must still be out there. It’s the only explanation that answers all the questions: how Zack and Lilah met, how they wound up married, maybe why she killed Zack, and why Lilah was just feet away when Simon got stabbed to death.”
Bailey drove us back to the Biltmore. Though she was in no mood for fun, she had a date with Drew and didn’t want to cancel at the last minute.
With a solid working theory in place, I was too keyed up to stop, so I holed up in my room and spread out the crime scene photographs of Tran Lee.
I’d looked through the autopsy report again, hoping to find some anomalous injuries-evidence of antemortem blunt force trauma that couldn’t be explained by the car crash. But the body had been out in the elements for two weeks. Between decomposition and animal and insect invasion, there wasn’t much left to work with. The coroner couldn’t do any better than say what was already obvious: Tran had died due to blunt force trauma. Not helpful.
I noticed that one photograph showed an officer pointing to a key in the ignition of the car. So it hadn’t been hot-wired. I got excited for a moment. That could be proof the car hadn’t been stolen. But then I remembered that Conrad Bagram claimed the car was stolen off his lot. He probably told the cops he kept the keys in the cars, or had a Hide-A-Key stashed in the wheel well. It might even be true, but I made a mental note to check anyway.