Guilty Blood Page 9

He and Mo took turns exercising and keeping an eye on Los Reyes. They mostly stuck to their spot in the yard, which was ninety feet from Los Reyes territory and on the edge of the Tigres’ turf. Even though they weren’t technically inside the Tigre border, the Tigres asked them to pay rent of a quarter pound of sugar per month, which they agreed to. It wasn’t much, and it might give Brandon some protection if Los Reyes decided to attack him outside. Of course, Brandon had to pay the rent, but he was able to cover most of it out of his poker winnings.

  All in all, it was a tolerable existence. Not fun, but tolerable.

  “So, what are you gonna do when you get out?” Mo asked during a break in their workout.

  Brandon wiped sweat off his forehead and slicked back his wet hair. Daydreaming about the future felt risky. “I don’t know. Probably finish my degree. A construction company in Livermore offered me a job after I graduated. If the offer is still good, I guess I’ll go work for them. If not . . .” He shrugged. “How about you?”

  “Enjoy myself.” Mo leaned against the brick wall, closed his eyes, and turned his face to bask in the watery winter sun. “I’ll travel. Always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, so I’ll do that. Maybe go all the way to the bottom. I’ll see my brother in Philly and my mom in Florida. After that, Vegas. Love that town. Then maybe I’ll take the wife down to Mexico for a while. Her family is down there, and I love the food and the beaches. And the margaritas and daiquiris, of course. They make ’em different down there, and they’re awesome.”

  “Then what?”

  Mo shrugged. “Who knows, man. I’m gonna enjoy it for as long as I can. You never know how much time you’ll have on the outside. You need to take advantage of every minute.”

  Brandon glanced over toward the Los Reyes group. They were doing burpees while Tony Cruz barked orders at them. Brandon couldn’t help being a little impressed—the jump-and-push-up exercise was exhausting and unpleasant, but these guys were doing set after set without complaining. The man assigned to watch Brandon yawned and scratched himself.

  Brandon turned back to Mo. “What do you mean? Why do you have to come back in here?”

  Mo opened his eyes long enough to roll them, then closed them again. “Because I’ll get arrested again eventually. That’s what always happens.”

  “Why’s that? Just don’t hit your wife.”

  “Easier said than done, man,” Mo said with a laugh. “Especially when we’ve both had a few and she hits me first. But I’ll be back in here even if we never fight again. A guy like me can’t get honest work. So I do the work I can get. And sooner or later, I get busted and I’m back inside.”

  “I thought you were a mechanic.”

  Mo nodded. “One of the best. When I was in the army, I used to be an instructor. Not just cars either. Trucks, tanks, helicopters. You name it, I can fix it.”

  “So get a job as a mechanic,” Brandon said. “The shops are always looking. I know how hard it was to find someone around here who could fix construction equipment. It’ll be easy for you to find something.”

  “Easy?” Mo turned and gave Brandon a piercing look. “You think that would be easy? Dude, I’d kill for a job like that. The last time I was out, I applied to like a hundred different places. I got lots of interviews too—but as soon as they could ask about my record, they did. And the door slammed shut, every single time. That’s why I got drunk that night and Carmen and I got in a fight.”

  Brandon was silent for a full minute, thinking and remembering. “My dad used to hire a lot of ex-cons,” he said at last. “One of them killed him.”

  “Seriously?” Mo shook his head and sighed. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  “The guy came to work drunk one day and drove a bulldozer on too steep a slope. My dad was downhill from him. The dozer rolled over and killed my dad. I was sitting in class at college when my mom called to say they were taking him to the hospital. I ran to the parking lot and drove home, doing ninety the whole way. But he was dead by the time I got there.”

  Mo looked at him with compassion. “That sucks. I really am sorry. For what that idiot did to your dad and what he did to every ex-con in California.” He paused and pressed his lips into an angry line for a moment. “All it takes is one guy to ruin it for everyone. We’re not all like that.”

  Brandon nodded. “I know.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Nate realized that it had been a couple of days since he heard from Sofia. He glanced at the clock on his computer screen. It was quarter after six in the evening, so she was probably gone for the day. Still, he could leave her a message asking for an update. He shut his door so he wouldn’t have to worry about Peggy walking by and overhearing him. He dialed her on his cell phone—and to his surprise, she picked up.

  “Hi, Nate,” she said, sounding as fresh as if she’d just stepped into the office in the morning. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was just wondering whether there had been any developments in the Ames case.”

  “Yes, there have. Sorry, I got busy and forgot to update you. First off, my investigator did a little digging and found out that Brandon’s girlfriend, Monica Lee, pled guilty to a misdemeanor count of having and displaying a forged driver’s license. She got caught using a fake ID to get into a bar, and then she lied to a cop about it.”

  Nate sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Are the impeachment rules the same in the criminal world as they are in civil cases?”

  “Yep. If we put her on the stand, the prosecution absolutely gets to bring that up. And I’m sure they will.”

  “They’d be fools not to,” Nate said. “It’s a pretty minor infraction, but they’ll be able to paint Brandon’s main alibi witness as a liar. Any other news?”

  “We also got the tracking records for Brandon’s cell phone. It was at Monica’s apartment between ten and midnight on the night of the murder—which helps corroborate Brandon’s alibi, of course.”

  “Unless he left his phone there when he committed the murder,” Nate countered, trying to anticipate the prosecution’s argument.

  “Which only makes sense if it was premeditated,” Sofia responded promptly. “I went back and took another look at the complaint and the disclosure statement—there’s nothing in there that gives any hint that Brandon knew Linc Thomas, let alone that he was planning to kill him. So, unless the prosecution is going to argue that this was some sort of weird thrill killing—zero evidence of that either—Brandon would have no reason to leave his phone behind if he were heading into Oakland. It’s not a slam dunk, but it’s a helpful fact.”

  “Quite helpful,” Nate said. “Though perhaps not enough to overcome the DNA evidence.”

  “Perhaps not is kinda generous. Almost certainly not is more like it. Juries love DNA evidence. Oh, and I’ve got something for you on that front. We finally got the prosecution’s DNA report today. I’ll send you a copy. It shows a match, but it’s a little, um . . . Well, to use a technical term, it’s weird.”

  Nate pondered that for a moment. “Define weird.”

  “Too long, for one thing. These reports are usually pretty standard. There’s a boilerplate description of the testing protocol and a few tables comparing the crime-scene DNA to the defendant’s—and that’s about it. The whole thing is usually like five pages long, and the only part that really matters is the tables. But this report is over twenty pages, and it includes a long memo from Janet Harkin talking about problems with the crime-scene sample. She says it must have been contaminated, but she’s pretty murky about how that supposedly happened.”

  “That sounds potentially promising,” Nate said. “Can you tell whether we’ll be able to argue that the DNA evidence isn’t as strong as Ms. Harkin made it sound at the PX?”

  “I hope so,” Sofia replied. “We’ll know better when we get our DNA expert, Hyram Byrd, on board. We should have the contract paperwork done this week—and I’ll stay on our office to make sure that happens. I’ve already sent the report to Hy so tha
t he can get going as soon as the contract is in place.”

  “Excellent. I’m impressed.” And he meant it. Aside from the preliminary examination—which he admittedly hadn’t completely understood—she had consistently performed at the level he’d expect from a trusted junior partner in his firm. He realized that the main reason he hadn’t asked for a status update earlier was that he wasn’t worried about what she was doing. He was starting to trust her to do the right thing without his input, so he focused his mental energy elsewhere.

  “Just doing my job,” she said.

  “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  She was silent for a moment. “Uh, go ahead.”

  “Why is this your job?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You could be working wherever you want,” he elaborated. “A big firm, a high-powered government job, Capitol Hill—I’m sure there were lots of open doors waiting for you when you left law school.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  “I saw the diplomas on your wall. Princeton and Yale. They’re not Harvard, but they’re not bad. Certainly good enough to land you whatever job you wanted.”

  She laughed. “Spoken like a true Harvard man. Especially one who didn’t get into Yale.”

  Awkwardly, that happened to be true of Nate. “We’re getting off topic,” he said. “With all those options, what made you pick the Public Defender’s Office?”

  She laughed again, but then grew serious. “A big reason is that most of my classmates went to Wall Street firms or USDOJ jobs,” she said. “So did a lot of people I knew who went to Harvard, Stanford, and the other top twenty law schools. They all wanted jobs with fat paychecks or impressive titles and addresses. Even the ones who went to work for nonprofits mostly did it because they wanted to work on some epic case where they’d be arguing in the Supreme Court or something like that. But no one seemed interested in doing the sort of work that most people need. I mean, if a banker is convicted of securities fraud, he might get a million-dollar fine and lose his job. If a bus driver is convicted of murder, he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Which one usually gets the best lawyer?”

  “Very altruistic,” Nate said. “I am again impressed. Not many new lawyers would be able to turn down the salary of a big-firm associate, particularly with the student loans most of them have to pay back.”

  “Um, don’t be too impressed. My family owns a few restaurants, and I didn’t have to take out any loans. And another reason I’m here is that I knew I’d get to try cases my first year. How many big-firm associates get to try cases—ever?”

  “Fair point,” Nate responded. B&B associates hardly ever got to open their mouths in court. In fact, a number of B&B litigation partners had never taken a case to trial. And B&B was pretty typical. The types of cases that justify big-firm legal fees almost always settle before trial—there’s simply too much at stake for either side to risk putting their fate in the hands of a judge or jury. He wondered how many B&B clients knew they were paying a thousand dollars an hour or more for a lawyer without a minute of trial experience.

  “Hey, do you mind if I ask a personal question of my own?” she said.

  He didn’t particularly enjoy answering personal questions, but he couldn’t say no after asking her one. “Not at all.”

  “What keeps you going? I mean, you’ve been practicing for almost thirty years and you’ve won pretty much everything there is to win—big cases, bar awards, whatever. But you’re still working nights and weekends. Why is that? Do you ever, you know, stop and smell the roses?”

  “Of course. My assistant brings in a fresh-cut bouquet daily and puts them on the side of my desk so I can sniff them while I work.”

  She laughed. “If you’d rather not talk about it, that’s totally cool.”

  He’d rather not, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “I love my job. I’ve tried having hobbies, but I always find myself wishing I was back in the office. I know that sounds a little sad.”

  “I don’t know. There are definitely sadder things.”

  There were indeed. And he knew it all too well.

  CHAPTER 27

  Jessica knew the news would be bad as soon as she saw the look on Susan Kingston’s face. Susan worked at the East Bay Women’s Shelter—the place where one of Linc Thomas’s dates had once stayed. The woman’s name was Yang Chenguang, but she went by Amber Yang, at least among English speakers.

  Susan hadn’t known Amber Yang, but she did know the shelter director, who knew Amber. Susan had told the shelter director that Jessica would like to talk to Amber and had explained why, and the director had agreed to pass along the message.

  “I’m sorry, Jess,” Susan said. “Amber isn’t willing to talk about Linc Thomas. It’s not you. She says she won’t talk to anyone.”

  Jessica sighed in disappointment. “Did she say why?”

  “She said she doesn’t want to get involved.”

  Disappointment kindled to anger in Jessica’s heart. “But if it were her son, wouldn’t she want other people to get involved?”

  Susan’s face wore a look of weary compassion. “I’m sure she’d want it, but I don’t think she’d expect it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I never met Amber Yang, but I’ve met other women who make their living on the streets. It’s dangerous to get involved in other people’s problems. One woman came into the shelter with a half-healed six-inch stab wound in her stomach. She got it from a friend’s ex-boyfriend. The boyfriend beat up her friend one night, so she left and showed up at this woman’s apartment, begging for a place to stay. The boyfriend tracked down the girl and stabbed the woman she was staying with. When she showed up at our shelter, she was at least as mad at her friend as at the boyfriend. She told me that when she got into trouble, she wouldn’t even think of asking friends for help. She’d handle it on her own or come to the shelter.” Susan paused and gave Jessica’s arm a squeeze. “It’s a different world.”

  A world that was probably a lot like the one Brandon was trapped in right now. Jessica couldn’t leave him there. No matter what it took.

  “Hello, Sofia Acuña here,” the public defender’s voice said.

  “Sofia, this is Jessica Ames,” she said into her cell phone, one hand on the wheel of her parked SUV. “Could you give me the address for Amber Yang?”

  “What? Why do you want that?”

  “Because I heard from a friend who volunteers at the shelter where Amber once stayed, and I think the best approach would be to talk to her directly.”

  “Okay, but I’m about to go to trial in another case, so I’ll be tied up for the next couple of weeks.”

  “That’s fine, I can talk to her on my own,” Jessica said.

  The line was silent for a few seconds. “You sure you want to do this by yourself?”

  She was sure she didn’t want to wait for two weeks. “Yes. In fact, it might be better this way—she may be less intimidated if only one person is there.”

  “Well, okay, then. Hold on a sec.” Jessica could hear typing and clicking in the background. “Okay, she’s in Oakland. Her address is 9805 110th Avenue, apartment G. Good luck—and be careful, that’s not a great neighborhood. I wouldn’t stay there after dark.”

  “Thank you.”

  She hung up and turned on the ignition. She had figured that she would need to be done before dark in any event because Amber Yang would be on the streets after that.

  The sun hung low in the sky, forcing Jessica to squint as she drove west on I-580. It was a little after four o’clock now, so she would arrive around half past. Would Amber Yang be home? Jessica didn’t know anything about the life of a streetwalker, but she guessed that they would work through the night and then sleep during the day. So presumably Amber would get up in the middle of the afternoon, which meant now would be a good time to catch her at home.

  As she drove, Jessica tried to plan her conversation with Amber. It was har
d. Jessica had so little idea of what Amber would be like. She came from a different world, one Jessica had never visited and knew very little about. How could she connect with her?

  She wanted Amber to feel empathy and understand how important it was that she revealed anything she knew. Should she try offering to take Amber out for coffee or an early dinner? Try to get to know her and build a rapport before making her request? Or just get straight to the point, since it would be obvious why she was there?

  She reached 9805 110th Avenue and parked. It was a drab, two-story building in a low-end residential neighborhood. Small houses on weedy lots alternated with graffiti-decorated light-industrial buildings and the occasional apartment building. Young men lounged on doorsteps, watching the traffic pass. The cars on the street were mostly older models that clearly had a lot of miles on them.

  Jessica scanned the sidewalk and didn’t see anyone coming, but she had her right hand in her coat pocket, clutching a canister of Mace. Just in case.

  She walked up to the door and found a list of names next to buttons. A speaker grille was to the left of the buttons. There was one button with no name, which Jessica guessed belonged to Amber. She hesitated. What if Amber wouldn’t talk to her either? What if she didn’t answer? What would Jessica do then?

  She’d figure something out. She had to.

  She took a deep breath and pushed the button.

  A moment later, a sleepy and heavily accented woman’s voice said, “Hello? Who is this?”

  “Hi, is this Amber?”

  “No, I get her.”

  A moment later, a different but equally sleepy female voice said, “Hello?”

  “Hi, Amber. I’m sorry to disturb you. My name is Jessica and I need to talk to you about an urgent family crisis. It will only take a few minutes of your time.”

  “Who family?” the voice from the speaker demanded. “My family? Your family?”

  “My family,” Jessica replied. “My son.”

  “Your son? Who your son?”

  “His name is Brandon. He’s a wonderful young man, but he’s been accused of a crime he didn’t commit. I’m just trying to find out what happened, and . . . and I was hoping you might be able to help me.”