“What evidence?”
He pulled a clear plastic bag from his jacket pocket. The bag was sealed and marked, EVIDENCE. It also had a case number and the date written on it. Visible inside the bag was a small paper tag, like the price tag you’d find on a new article of clothing. Though the plastic I could see Roberts’s prison number printed on the tag in black ink-CDC # V-34560.
“The tag came from Roberts’s dress-out clothes,” the lieutenant said. “We found it at the scene. He probably didn’t even know they tag the clothes before they ship them to the prison. Record keeping.” He nodded and a hint of a smile appeared on his face. “I’ll bet when we run the prints found at the motel, Roberts’s will be among them.”
“Look, Lieutenant, Roberts didn’t do this. He couldn’t have. I know the guy. He’s no killer. I don’t know how his clothing tag ended up at the scene, but there has to be an explanation, and Greyhound screwed up when they said he never boarded the bus. Big companies make mistakes all the time. Hell, I’ll bet he’s halfway to New York by now.”
My eyes shifted, focusing on each detective one at a time. All three of them looked back at me as if I had a few loose wires dangling in my head. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was crazy, but somehow I knew Roberts didn’t kill that old woman.
After about twenty minutes the interview started to become repetitive.
I needed to get out of the smoke-filled room, get some fresh air and mull over what I’d learned from the cops. Plus I was dying inside, concerned about the firm’s finances. I had to call Mabel. I had to see if there was any fallout from Balford over being pulled off the Hicks case. I knew I wasn’t in trouble with the LAPD. But if the judge figured I was somehow involved with Hathaway’s murder, even by association, she’d eliminate my name from the list. With even a hint of complicity there would be no way I could talk her out of getting rid of me for good.
“Sorry, guys,” I said. “Hate to break up our little chit-chat, but I’ve got to check with my office. Is there a phone around here?”
“I have one more question before you leave,” Brodie said. “Tell me straight. Did you really take Roberts to the bus terminal, or maybe you dropped him somewhere else?”
“I’ll say it once more. I picked him up at the prison and took him directly to the Greyhound terminal downtown. I got him there in plenty of time to catch the bus.”
“Okay, I believe you. But I had to ask, and just for the record, is there anything else you can tell us about your meeting with Hathaway?”
“That’s two questions.”
I stood and walked to the interrogation room door, but stopped and thought for moment. The interview was being taped. I didn’t want to appear to be uncooperative. Why make it worse with Balford? I turned back to the lieutenant.
“There was something else, I said. “Has nothing to do with this, though.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Mrs. Hathaway had a big soapbox that she stored in a tool shed behind one of the bungalows. The box held papers and files dating back to the ’40s, insurance policies, phone numbers, that sort of thing. At first I thought the phone numbers might have some significant value, but when Roberts’s sentence was commuted I more or less dropped it.”
Brodie jumped out of his chair. “Make your phone call right now. Because when you’re finished, you and I are going to take a ride out to Los Feliz. I want to show you the crime scene and maybe you can verify a hunch.”
The lieutenant escorted me to a pay phone in the lobby and stood at a discrete distance, smoking a cigarette while I called the office.
“Mabel, I won’t be back this afternoon. Did anyone from Balford’s court call today?”
“No, no one called. But listen, we’ve got a serious problem here. You’ve got to take care of it right away.”
Christ, what now? “What’s the matter, Mabel?”
“Remember Rita’s client, the kid growing marijuana?”
“Of course.”
“Well, simply put, the five-hundred retainer check is no good.”
“What do you mean no good? Jesus.”
“I deposited the check in the bank, then mailed out a bunch of our bills, four-hundred and ninety seven dollars’ worth. And now all the checks I mailed, every frigging one of them, are going to bounce. I’m not going to jail for writing bad checks, no sir, not me. Goddamn it!”
“Calm down, Mabel. You’re not going to jail,” I said. “Let me figure this out. How could the retainer check come back so fast? It normally takes a few days for a check to be returned.”
“It didn’t bounce. The asshole put a ‘stop payment’ on it. He sent a message by courier, canceling our services.”
“Why?”
“He said he found out that you had some sort of trouble with a judge, your reputation is not stellar, blah, blah, blah. Then he said the five-hundred-dollar check had been stopped. Rita doesn’t even know yet. But I don’t give a damn about that. You’ve got to cover all those checks I wrote.”
“Look, Mabel, everything is going to be fine. Now do as I say. Call the bank and tell Mac what happened. Tell him I’ll be in tomorrow to straighten it all out somehow. None of our checks are going to bounce.”
“We’ll still need fresh money coming in.”
“I’m working on that, too.”
“How’s the new client, the one we got from Balford, working out?”
“He’s in good hands.”
“I hope she’ll give us a lot more cases.”
“I do too. Anything else going on?”
“No… Wait, there is something. It’s kind of funny.”
I could’ve used a laugh right then with all the crap that kept raining down on me.
“A telephone guy showed up this morning. Had thirty new phones. Wanted to hook them up. I said, “Do we look like a bookie joint?” I told him to take a hike. We didn’t order any goddamn phones. Big company like that botches their orders… I guess we’re not the only ones who goof up occasionally, huh?”
“Yeah, everybody screws up once in a while.”
Including Roberts, I said to myself.
“Wait, before you hang up, Sol called wants you to call him, said a guy named Bugliosi called-”
Lt. Brodie ground out his cigarette on the floor and started moving toward me. “Mabel, I gotta go. I’ll call Sol later.”
I felt a little relieved, certainly not about the retainer going bad. Those things happened. Fortunately, I had just enough left in the emergency reserve fund to cover the checks Mabel had sent out. So that wouldn’t be a problem. But more importantly, Balford hadn’t called and left a message saying I was toast. Balford was the firm’s primary source of income and it would be a disaster if she removed my name from the list again. The judge didn’t issue idle threats. She meant it when she said if she dropped me once more it would be permanent.
I hung up the phone and walked with Lt. Brodie to his car. I’d worry about Mabel’s checks, the bank, and Balford tomorrow. It would be too late by the time I returned from the motel to do anything about them today. I didn’t think Bugliosi’s information would help at that point, but I’d call Sol as soon as I had time.
We were driving north on the Hollywood Freeway, heading for the Hathaway motel when it dawned on me that I had missed my lunch date with Millie. I felt a tinge of guilt, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Obviously, I had a good excuse for standing her up, but I should’ve called her. I figured it’d be just one more problem I’d have to take care of tomorrow. I’d call her and explain the situation, right after I cleared up the mess at the bank. I was sure Millie would understand.
Twenty minutes after we left downtown, we pulled up in front of Dink’s Hollywood Oasis on Los Feliz Blvd. A single police unit was parked haphazardly in front of the motel. We got out of the car and ducked under the yellow police tape that marked the property as a crime scene.
No cars belonging to customers were parked in the lot. Except for the lone cop on guard, the place was deserted. The crime scene investigation team must’ve already completed their tasks and left. The coroner would’ve removed the body by now.