“So Zack’s passing was pretty devastating for him too,” I said gently.
“It completely destroyed him,” Fred replied, his voice for the first time showing real signs of anger. “Until then, he’d been a pretty happy guy. Had a nice girlfriend-what was her name, Claire?”
“Angie,” Claire chimed in. “She was an artist too. A painter. She hung in there with him for quite a while after Zack’s…murder.” She stumbled over the word, still unable to put it next to her son’s name. She took a shallow breath. “Lord knows it wasn’t an easy thing to do. Simon got obsessed with the case; it blocked out everything else. Angie believed he’d get past it when the case was over. But when Lilah got acquitted, Simon totally shut down. For weeks, he didn’t eat, didn’t speak, wouldn’t even get out of bed.”
“And so she left him?” I asked.
“No, God bless her,” Fred said. “She tried to stay and take care of him. It was Simon. He pushed her away, then he pushed her out.”
“Only thing he’d do was sit in front of the computer. Got one of those LexisNexis accounts, read up on the law,” Claire said, shaking her head. “That’s when he came up with the idea of taking the case to the federal court.”
“And once he latched on to that idea, he was like a man possessed,” Fred said. “He’d write to the federal prosecutors every day. Took a while, but they finally wrote back. Thanked him for his interest, but said the case didn’t fit their guidelines.”
It wasn’t high-profile enough and it wasn’t a slam dunk. And it took only one of those problems to knock it out of the running.
“That set him off but good,” Fred continued. “After that, he started going to the Federal Building downtown.” He stopped and looked down at his hands, which were clasped together between his knees.
“How long did Simon keep that up?” I asked.
“I’d say a good six months,” Claire said, her expression pained. “But then one day, he got a little too…agitated. We got a call saying he’d been arrested for causing a disturbance.”
Bailey and I looked at each other. There was no record of this.
“Did they book him?” Bailey asked.
“We went down and spoke to the arresting officer,” Fred said. “Explained the history, what had happened with Zack’s case and all. Turned out the officer knew about the case. Felt bad for Simon. Just made him promise not to come back and cut him loose.”
“So did he stay away from the court after that?” I asked.
“He stayed away from everything after that,” Claire said, her mouth turned down at the corners. “One week later, he disappeared. No phone call, no e-mail. He left his studio wide open.”
Fred coughed, covering his mouth with one big hand, then dropped it back into his lap. “We went crazy trying to find him,” he said, his voice weary from just the memory of the ordeal.
“Did you file a missing persons report?” I asked.
“Of course,” Claire said. “But they didn’t find him. He came back on his own two weeks later, looking like hell. Filthy, sunburned, skinny; he looked half dead.”
Her eyes welled up.
“We got him to a hospital, they fixed him up,” Fred said. “It was mostly dehydration. We brought him home, got him to stay here for a little while. Even got him into therapy-”
“Then one day, he just up and left again,” Claire said. “That time we were a little more prepared for it. But he was gone longer, for a few months, and we just didn’t know if…”
“Did that keep happening?” I asked.
Claire nodded.
“And how was he”-I searched for a gentle way to say it-“mentally?”
“I didn’t want to see it at the time, but the truth was, Simon wasn’t himself from the moment Zack died,” Claire said, shaking her head, her expression etched with grief. “He surely went downhill after the verdict, but by the time he went to the street, he was sliding fast-”
“His memory was all screwed up,” Fred said, tapping his head. “He’d have days where he seemed okay, and then something would just…slip, and he’d make no sense. Talk gibberish, or not talk at all.” He dipped his head and brushed away a tear.
“He’d rant about the government,” Claire added. “Said you couldn’t trust anyone, they were all liars, and on and on…”
“I know you’re wondering why we didn’t just commit him.” Fred sighed. “We thought having him locked up like that would really be the end of him. And after that damn jury, and then the Feds turning him away…well, I guess he didn’t seem all that crazy to me,” he admitted. “I think he just lost all faith, you know?”
I certainly did know. I’d felt that way for a long time after losing Romy. It had a lot to do with why I became a prosecutor. Even if there was no justice for my sister, I could believe it still existed if I could find justice for someone else.
“And was that a consistent theme for Simon?” I asked.
Claire nodded sadly. “But the last time he came back, he looked better,” she said, a smile passing briefly across her face, sun momentarily breaking through clouds. “He was still too skinny and leathery. But for the first time in two years, he seemed normal-almost upbeat.” Claire turned and patted Fred on the knee. “We had a great visit, didn’t we, Fred?”
Fred nodded silently, his gaze fixed on the coffee table.
“But a week later, he was gone again,” she said. “A week after that, he…” Claire covered her eyes for a moment. “I know I should’ve been ready for this, the way he was living.” Her voice trembled. “But…”
I could finish the thought for her. There’s no way a parent can prepare for the death-let alone the murder-of a child.
Much less two.
34
It wasn’t quite noon by the time we left the Bayers, but I felt like it was past midnight. I always come away from a session with a victim’s family feeling a bone-weary exhaustion.
I buckled myself in and pulled my coat tight, knowing Bailey wouldn’t allow me to turn on the heater.
“You know what I could use?” I asked.
Bailey raised an eyebrow. “A stiff drink? I know I could.”
“I was thinking of a real distraction. As in some nice, intriguing, and-dare I say?-helpful evidence.”
“What’ll it be, DNA? Fingerprints? Just say the word, princess,” Bailey replied.
I looked at her stone-faced. “I say it’s time we go pound on the coroner,” I said.
“Oh, good idea.” Bailey steered onto the freeway. “I especially like the sound of that at lunchtime.”
I folded my arms around my body for warmth and looked out the window at the nearby cars. As usual, we were doing all the passing. Driving with a cop is fun. We got to the coroner’s and caught a double shot of lucky. Our pathologist, Dr. Sparks, was in, and he was free.
I could never look at Dr. Sparks without seeing Woody Allen: rail thin, no taller than me, with thick glasses, a beak of a nose, and a nasal, reedy voice. The first time I’d had him on a case, I’d been worried about his ability to connect with a jury. But his halting, careful manner on the stand had come across as thorough and precise. The jury loved him.
His tiny office was so cluttered we couldn’t even find the chairs that I knew were across from his desk. But Dr. Sparks immediately picked up two sizable stacks of books and files and lugged them over to an already groaning table. He then scurried around behind his desk, adjusted his glasses, and opened the file on Simon.
“So our John Doe-,” he began.
“Is now known to be Simon Bayer,” Bailey interjected.
Dr. Sparks nodded vaguely without looking up from the file.
“Homeless, but not for terribly long,” he said, scanning the paperwork. “Not that much to say about cause of death, other than it was sharp force injury. Not news to you, I know,” he continued, putting the autopsy photographs on the desk and turning them toward us. “See how tight and clean that is?” He pointed to a photograph of Simon’s upper abdomen that showed a neat, precise slit that looked more like an incision made by a surgeon in an OR than a knife wound inflicted on a city sidewalk. “That means he used a very sharp-”