Twisted lives, p.6
Twisted Lives, page 6
“No.”
“They don’t have to be professional medical photos. Just something you can show the D.A. or the jury.”
“I don’t have anything. To be honest, I’m not even certain that I blinded or scarred the guy.”
Again, Kent paused to think. “There’s a saying among criminal defense attorneys. A good attorney can land one leap, but only God can land two. You’re asking the jury to leap from Wang’s rage to Tanya’s murder. You can’t also ask them to leap from you spilling coffee to Wang being blinded and scarred. You need photos. Or a doctor’s report.”
“Wang’s in China. His doctors are in China.” I began to panic when the obvious hit me. “How about a police report? An Interpol report to be specific. Wang used his influence to have China issue a Red Notice for my arrest. That’s what cost me my job, because it means I can’t fly overseas.”
“Does the Red Notice document Wang’s injuries?”
“It does. Is that enough?”
Kent considered the question. “The wild card here is the China angle. For the most part, it works in your favor. China is America’s biggest rival at the moment, and as such it gets a lot of negative press. Plenty of jurors will be prejudiced against Chinese citizens. However, they’ll also be skeptical of any report coming out of Beijing, just like you.
“Your case will be much less risky if you’ve got pictures. Especially since killing Tanya wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction. It took serious planning. You need the jury to see what it is that makes this princeling so mad that he sought revenge in a very sophisticated manner.”
I saw Kent’s point. I’d work on getting a picture. Meanwhile, I had a thought that might help. “If you think about it, dreaming up a colder revenge would be difficult. At least one that didn’t directly involve the kids.”
“I agree. That is compelling, and it’s a great story. Juries love those. But do you believe it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If you don’t believe it, a jury isn’t likely to believe it. That said, you’d be a whole lot surer if you saw Wang’s blind eye and scarred face, right?”
“Yup.”
“So, you know what you need to do, right?”
“I do. But I can’t go to China. I can’t even leave the U.S. I’ll be arrested at passport control wherever I land and then hauled off to a Chinese prison.”
“As your letter proves, you’re a smart and resourceful guy, Felix. Figure it out.”
Chapter 13
Either Or
PLEASANTON POLICE DETECTIVE Beatrice “Beats” Dubrey reached for her In-N-Out Burger bag with one hand while the other gave the county coroner an acknowledging thank-you wave. She was exhausted, excited, and famished.
They’d been inside the Sparks house for over three hours while her lunch cooled and her hunger grew. Early in her career, Beats had made the mistake of wolfing down her food on the way to the scene where a dog had mauled a man to death. She had promptly contaminated the scene with two bean burritos and her own DNA. Beats had been avoiding both burritos and pit bulls ever since.
“Did you buy the note?” her new partner asked as he pulled their patrol car from the curb.
Beats turned from her burger. Detective Alan Tjahjadi—pronounced Zha-zha-dee—had transferred to Pleasanton from Napa after his own divorce. He had a face and figure fit for a recruiting poster, but word from Napa was that “Zsa Zsa” would never be confused with Sherlock Holmes. If true, that was disturbing. She needed a partner she could count on, not a partner she had to account for. But Beats had learned to take department gossip in small, discerning sips. People tended to diminish their more attractive or successful peers.
Seizing the moment, she decided to apply a bit of pressure to see if anything popped loose. Playing devil’s advocate was a great way to separate original thinkers from parrots. “Juries are supposed to presume innocence. As a detective, however, I find it effective to assume that everyone is guilty. That adds balance to the law-and-order equation.”
“So, you’re not buying Sparks’ story?” Zsa Zsa asked.
“I’d love for it to be true, because then we’d have ourselves a meaningful and serious challenge. But it’s not.”
“How do you know?”
Beats made three points punctuated by three bites of her burger. “One, it’s always the husband. Two, everyone lies when they feel guilty. And three, you saw the body and you saw the scene; who else could it have been?”
“That was the guy’s point, right? It was a perfect set-up.”
“Are you telling me you believe him?”
“Not necessarily, but I think it’s worth considering.”
“For how long?” Beats asked.
“What?”
“How long do you think we should spend considering it?” She offered her new partner her fries as she spoke. Beats was still hungry, but cold fries weren’t worth the calories.
Zsa Zsa shook his head. “I don’t know. Until we rule it out.”
She crumpled the bag with the fries inside and dropped it to the floor of the patrol car. “What do you think the odds are that someone other than the husband who Tanya Sparks was divorcing strangled her to death while said husband was sleeping beside her?”
“Low.”
“How low?”
He shrugged. “One in a hundred.”
“All right. Well, there’s your answer. If that’s what you believe, then for every hundred minutes you spend investigating this case, it’s reasonable to devote one of them to pursuing other suspects.”
Her new partner considered that equation for a second. “Until evidence changes the odds.”
“Exactly,” she said with a smile.
“For example, he probably didn’t know she was divorcing him. Both sets of papers were still by the door in her bag.”
“Just because she hadn’t served him doesn’t mean he didn’t know.”
“You saw the roses. If he knew, why buy those?”
Beats smiled inwardly. “Maybe they’d discussed it. Maybe he looked in her bag. I’m not going to second-guess male psychology, especially when it comes to their treatment of women. I’m going with the odds.”
“Some might say our job isn’t to play the odds, it’s to uncover the truth.”
She was enjoying this. Zsa Zsa wasn’t a wasted badge. “You can’t find the truth if you’re looking in the wrong place.”
“Fair point. What do you think the odds are?”
“I don’t put a ninety-nine percent chance on anything related to human behavior. Ninety-five is the highest I go. I might even give Mr. Sparks another five percent based on what I saw in his office.”
“Are you referring to the drawings and book covers decorating his walls?” Zsa Zsa asked. Felix Sparks’ home office was festooned with beautiful, color illustrations of two cute girls in assorted silly situations.
“Exactly. The pictures were all so joyful. Hard to believe that they were produced by the man who strangled the girls’ mother. Still, everyone has their bad moments, and it only takes one violent minute in a million. That’s why it’s always the husband.”
“You’re right about the artwork,” Zsa Zsa said. “I hadn’t actively made a mental connection, but now that you mention it, those drawings definitely impacted my intuition. The clay figurines too.”
In addition to children’s book illustrations decorating the office, the Sparks home had elfin figures all over the place. Each of the tiny clay creations was unique and expressive, although the figurines’ oversized facial features ran the gamut from Disney characters to Hieronymus Bosch creations whereas the illustrations were exclusively upbeat. The abundance of artwork gave the whole home a lively feel, which was ironic, given the circumstances.
“So, we spend ten minutes out of every hundred investigating alternative suspects?” Zsa Zsa asked, bringing the conversation back around to the investigation.
“Yup.”
“Care to turn that into a bet? My $10 that he’s innocent against your $90 that he’s guilty?”
“Can’t do that. If Sparks’ lawyer finds out I was incentivized to find his client guilty, the defense wins and I’m back on patrol.”
“I heard you were intense.”
“I heard you were just a pretty face.”
“Touché. Okay, I’m actually with you,” Zsa Zsa said. “During my divorce, there were a hundred occasions when I wanted to strangle my wife. I’m not sure what gets into women during breakups, but Shakespeare had it right when he referenced a woman scorned.”
Agreeable without being a pushover, contemplative without being indecisive, and literate. Beats was liking this guy despite the nickname. “Plus Mrs. Sparks was a family law attorney. Imagine how frustrating it would be divorcing one of those.”
“I’d have been suicidal,” Zsa Zsa agreed before changing direction. “You married?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. You got a cat?”
He didn’t think so? What did that mean? “No cat.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“I got fish,” she offered, feeling defensive.
“Fish? Really?”
“Big old saltwater aquarium. I find it calming. Plus, it’s no big deal if I’m away for a few days, and I don’t have to come home to an empty house.”
“You’re single and you have a house?”
“Figure of speech. I got an apartment in Concord.”
“Me too. Had my parents’ old house but lost that in the divorce. You name the fish?”
“Sure.”
Zsa Zsa shook his head. “Fish…”
“Watching them helps me think. You might say everyone’s living in an aquarium of sorts. There are virtual walls around us all, constraining us, redirecting our moves. Watching the life in my tank reminds me to define the forces at play in my cases. The limited resources. The unavoidable confrontations. The invisible barriers. How do you destress?” she asked, shifting the spotlight back his way.
“You don’t know?” he asked.
“How would I know?”
Zsa Zsa gave her a sideways glance while popping the last bite of burger in his mouth. “Ballroom dancing.”
“You’re a dancer? Oh. Zsa Zsa isn’t just for Tjahjadi. But wait, wasn’t Gabor an actress?”
“She started as a dancer. And a beauty queen,” he added with a wink. “Now you’ll never look at me the same again.”
Beats couldn’t argue with that. With the illustrator, sculptor, and now dancer, it was turning into fine arts day.
“Can I use some of those ten minutes now?” he asked.
It took Beats a second to reorient. “Sure.”
“Suppose you found yourself in the picture Sparks painted, as far-fetched as that might be. What would you do?”
“That’s the genius of his tactic. It puts us in his shoes and forces us to acknowledge the wisdom of his moves. We need to defend against that manipulation by remaining focused on the science: the statistics and the forensics.”
“Detective Dubrey, you sound excited.”
Beats realized that in fact she was. “It’s hard to hone your detective skills when your adversaries are always either amateurs or morons.”
“So you do like the note?”
“It’s more than that. Sparks is both a Federal Air Marshal and a children’s book author. That odd combination implies that he’s imaginative yet practical, soldierly yet scholarly, combative yet affectionate.”
“A Moriarty to our Watson and Sherlock Holmes.”
“Exactly! That’s exactly right. Think about it. At the very least, we’re up against a guy with the skills of a trained anti-terrorism agent and the creative mind of a professional illustrator. If we’re really lucky, one in ten lucky, we’re up against a guy smart enough to brilliantly frame a man like that for murder.”
“Play that through for me,” Zsa Zsa said with a mischievous smile.
“What do you mean?” she replied, smiling herself at their role reversal.
“The killer is counting on us to be lazy. If it is Felix, he’s hoping we won’t put in the leg work to overcome the reasonable doubt he’s busy creating. And if it’s not Felix, the killer is counting on us coming to the obvious conclusion. Either way, we catch the killer by becoming pit bulls.”
“Ooh. Don’t use that analogy.”
“Why not?”
“Long story.”
“Okay…. We can get to that bit of history another time. Answer me this: do you think he’d have gotten bail if he hadn’t run?”
“No. As an attorney, Tanya Sparks was considered an officer of the court. The D.A. will likely be going for capital murder, so bail would be a long shot.”
Zsa Zsa raised his eyebrows and his intonation. “You’d have written the note.”
“No comment.”
“I thought so. Tell me this, why do you think Sparks’ attorney sent the note to you rather than the tip line?”
“I have no idea.”
“Do you know Tierney?”
“Never met him.”
“There had to be a reason.”
“You can ask him.”
“Shall I drive us there now?”
“Nope. Our first stop is Dublin.”
“Dublin. What for?”
“We’re going to inform the next of kin, the victim’s mother.”
“What! Why not leave that joy to Dublin PD?”
The first disappointing question, Beats thought. “It’s the smart way to kick off our investigation.”
“Sounds to me like a great way to dump rain on our day. What are you thinking?”
“First of all, there’s a chance we’ll find Felix hiding there. It’s slim, but we’d be fools to lose it.”
“Okay. I buy that,” Zsa Zsa said. “I’ve arrested more than one person for stupidity. Then again, we just agreed Sparks is smart. What’s your main reason?”
“I want to see the mother-in-law’s face. I’m thinking that if her intuitive reaction is, He finally killed her, that gives us a pretty good read on the Sparks’ domestic situation. On the other hand, if she already knows her daughter is dead because Felix informed her before skipping town, that opens a whole different avenue of insights.”
“Go on.”
“Put yourself in the mind of the guy who wrote that letter. If he was telling the truth, then he’s a loving husband and father who got shocked, scared, and shattered by the world’s worst surprise. What’s his first impulse going to be?”
Zsa Zsa glanced over at her face. “Blame someone else and run like hell.”
“No. That’s exactly wrong. With his wife gone, the first impulse of a guy like that would be to look out for his kids, not the way mothers do, with soft words and sweet hugs, but rather the way fathers do, by providing for their future.”
“You’re assuming a lot.”
“True, but stick with me,” Beats said. “Suppose that instead of that scenario, he’s actually a lying murderer looking for some extra slack while he slips away. He knows he’ll never see the kids again. So why would he delay his escape to add risk and misery to his morning by delivering the bad news?”
Zsa Zsa mulled that over for a minute as they sped toward Dublin. “Maybe he hates his mother-in-law. A guy who enjoys strangling his wife might get off on telling her mother she’s dead.”
“That’s a fair point, but if accurate it’s inconsistent. Being cruel to the mother-in-law would be tactically foolish, as her testimony would negate the scenario he’s trying to paint.”
“So you think he’s telling the truth?”
“I didn’t say that. There’s a third option.”
“What’s that?”
“Rather than looking out for the kids or taunting his mother-in-law, Mr. Sparks might be thinking ahead to swaying a jury toward reasonable doubt.”
“By putting on a show for Grandma.”
“Exactly.”
Tjahjadi took both hands off the wheel and snapped his fingers. “That gets my vote too.”
“If he told her,” Beats stressed.
“Right. If he told her. So where’s your money? Did he tell Grandma and the kids that Mom was dead?”
Beats didn’t venture out onto that limb. “No need to speculate. We’ll know for sure the moment Grandma answers the door. If she’s been crying, Felix Sparks is either an innocent man in an impossible situation or a very clever killer.”
Chapter 14
Stalin’s Shadow
DETECTIVES BEATRICE DUBREY and Alan Tjahjadi paused in the hallway outside Vera Antonova’s apartment to check each other’s outfits. Delivering a bereavement message with a mustard-stained shirt would be very bad form. Once her partner approved, Beats knocked more peacefully than was her on-duty norm.
She knew they had the right apartment the moment the door opened, not because of the look on the owner’s face, but rather the look of it. Tanya’s mother bore a strong resemblance to her daughter. The same broad Slavic jaw. The same perky point to her nose.
Rather than inviting them in, Vera stepped out and closed the door behind her. “The girls are napping.”
Beats studied the petite, elderly Russian for a second before speaking. Her eyes were red and puffy, while the rest of her face seemed to hang like a flag on a windless day. Clearly, she’d gotten the news. “Did your son-in-law inform you about your daughter?”
Vera nodded while wiping at her face.
“We’re so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you,” Vera whispered.
“Did Felix tell you in person, or did he call?”
The question seemed to surprise the elderly woman. “He called.”
“How long ago was that?”
Vera looked up with a dazed expression. “What time is it?”
“It’s 3:55 p.m., Mrs. Antonova,” Zsa Zsa said.
“So late. I’ve lost track of time. He called while the girls were watching cartoons. That was probably around 11:00 a.m.”
An hour before the lawyer alerted the police, Beats noted. “Is there someplace private we could sit and talk without disturbing either the girls or the neighbors?”
“It’s a small apartment and the doors are far from soundproof. We’d wake the girls.”
