So this morning we are busy pulling together the details, the few things that we think we know, how the police caught up with Katia in Arizona on a bus halfway to Houston, where she was headed. According to the newspapers, because the police have not officially confirmed it, they tracked Katia from a cell phone signal, a phone she had stolen from the man she was living with, her friend, the coin dealer who now is dead, along with his household maid. This is the basis for all this unpleasantness and one more reason why you might want to think twice before shopping for bananas on a Saturday morning in Del Mar.
I must admit that I never connected Katia by name with the crime until the police knocked on my office door. There is enough crime in this part of the state that one more murder, more or less, doesn’t always catch your attention, even if it’s blaring from the evening news. But after the cops left, I went diving for the papers, everything I could find in print since the night Emerson Pike was killed.
Using the public defender, Katia is to be arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder tomorrow morning. At the moment, I’m not sure that we can help her. The mountain of incriminating evidence seems almost overwhelming. Harry and I have consulted the public defender to ensure that we are not stepping on toes. We have established an attorney-client relationship for the purpose of evaluating whether we might take the case. For one of those nefarious reasons that lawyers sometimes seize upon, the public defender was quite happy to have us do this. Why? Because, if nothing else, it will keep me off the stand as a witness.
Katia’s lawyer can’t be sure what his client may have said to me the day we met or how such an innocuous and innocent episode might be dressed up or drawn out to look incriminating if I were forced onto the stand; the specter of another older man being hustled by the young, alluring suspect. The best way to inoculate Katia from this is to draw me into the case. Once I talk to her, even tangentially, as lawyer to client, my testimony is verboten. The prosecution probably couldn’t even get my business card into evidence.
Katia seems happy, even if surprised, to see me. Why she didn’t think to use my business card to call, I’m not sure. And I don’t ask.
“I guess we should start at the beginning, why you took the bus?” says Harry.
This isn’t exactly the beginning I might have started with, wondering instead how she met Emerson Pike and how their relationship developed. But I leave it to Harry for the moment.
“If you wanted to return to Costa Rica, why not fly?” says Harry. “There are direct flights to points south out of San Diego.”
“I couldn’t,” she says. “The first place Emerson would have looked for me was the airport.”
“Emerson Pike was dead,” says Harry.
“I did not know that. All I know is that he was alive when I left the house.” She looks at me on this. “You must believe me. I knew he would follow me. And the first place he would go would be the airport in San Diego. Besides, I didn’t have enough money to take a plane.”
“Let’s talk about that, the money,” says Harry. “Pike’s wallet, the one the cops found on the bed, had your fingerprints on it. Did you know that?”
She shakes her head no, and then says, “Of course. I am not surprised. I took the money from his wallet. I already told the police that. I needed the money for the, how do you say? The boleto.”
“The ticket,” I say.
“For the boose.” She is talking about the bus. “It was the only way I could get away from Emerson. He wouldn’t give me money. And he wouldn’t let me go.”
Harry is standing less than two feet from her, one foot on a chair, looking down at her. This is one of his favorite postures when he’s visiting someone in jail and wants answers. “Why wouldn’t he let you go?”
“I don’t know.” She looks at him, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. I asked him, over and over again. But he refused to tell me. He said he loved me. But I know that wasn’t true.”
My partner shoots me a cynical glance. Harry is thinking, older man, younger woman, the oldest reason on earth.
Katia’s darting eyes vacuum up Harry’s thoughts. “No. Es not that,” she says. “It’s something else. It’s something to do with the pictures. I’m sure.”
“What pictures?” I ask.
She spends several minutes telling us about the photographs taken by her mother in Colombia the year before and the fact that Emerson Pike seemed to be obsessed with these the moment he found them in her camera. She tells us that it was then that Pike first suggested they take a trip north to the States to stay at his house near San Diego, and about Emerson’s wizardry in obtaining a short-order visa for her, as if on demand.
Harry has a puzzled look. “How long did you say the visa took?”
“Three days.”
Harry makes a note. “Easy enough to check it out,” he says.
Katia tells us about her mother who, as far as she knows, is still down in Colombia, visiting relatives. Emerson was having Katia call home every day, checking to see if her mother had gotten home yet, back to Costa Rica. According to Katia, although she can’t prove it, she is certain that Emerson was not going to take her back to Costa Rica until Katia’s mother was back there, and maybe not even then. Emerson Pike’s captive. This may be the best defense she has, perhaps the only one.
“Why didn’t you go to the police, or the Costa Rican consulate?” I ask. “If you’d gone to them, you wouldn’t be in this mess now. They would have provided assistance. You know that.”
She looks at me sheepishly. “I couldn’t be sure of that. Emerson was a powerful man. He had a great deal of money. He would have friends in the police. Look at how quickly he was able to get the visa for me to come here.” She has every explanation in the book for not making two simple phone calls.
“Did he ever hit you?” Harry plumbs the depths and comes up empty.
“No.”
“Did he ever lock you up, confine you anywhere?”
“No. But I think he was going to. If he knew I was trying to leave.”
“But he never did it?”
“No. He would not let me have cash. He took money away from me whenever he found it. And then he would send money to my family in Costa Rica. It made no sense unless he was trying to keep them quiet and keep me here against my will.”
“Did you tell him you wanted to leave, to go back to Costa Rica?”
“Almost every day. Sometimes several times a day.”
“And what did he say?”
“He made excuses. Next week. Next month. Two weeks from now, and then he would change the subject.”
“Did you think of going to the police?” Harry knows this is the first question the prosecutor will ask if they get Katia on the stand.
“No. But if I had to, I would have. He knew it.”
“These pictures,” I ask, “the ones your mother took, why would they be of concern to Emerson?”
“That’s what I wanted to know. He wouldn’t tell me,” she says.
“Where are the pictures now?”
According to Katia, the police have them. They were in her bag the day they arrested her. She and Emerson had argued over the photographs the night she left. He had finally given them back to her and she had stashed them in her overnight bag before she left the house.
“That brings us to the bag,” says Harry. “What else was in there?” Harry already knows, but he wants to hear what Katia has to say.
“You mean the gold coins and the stubs from the pawnshop dealer? I already told them all about it.” Katia is talking about the police and her earlier statements to them.