“If you were right about the money Drummond swindled from Constance Wright, and Robles knew about it, he might have thought he was protecting his sister and her husband. Not the most logical thing to do, but Robles had a mother of a rap sheet. He didn’t really have a tendency to do the smart thing.”
Rachel paced back and forth. Serrano could sense her mind was racing. She was scared. And based on his somewhat limited knowledge of Rachel Marin, Serrano couldn’t be confident that she would do the smart thing either.
“I need to get back to my children,” she said. “They have school.”
“We’ll have eyes on them throughout the day,” Serrano said. “You don’t need to worry.”
Rachel laughed nervously. “Let me ask you a question, Detective. How did those news vans get to the scene of Constance Wright’s murder so quickly the other night?”
“I don’t follow.”
“That night, you gave a statement to the media at two in the morning. A bunch of news trucks were already on-scene. Weird, right?”
Serrano could see where she was going with this.
“So how’d they know a woman had died? How’d they get to the scene so fast? It wasn’t dumb luck. My guess is their producers got tips from people in your department. Look at me and tell me I’m wrong.”
Serrano’s silence answered the question.
“So . . . let’s say there’s a cop or two in your precinct,” Rachel continued. “A deputy a little down on his luck. A watch commander getting cleaned out by her husband’s divorce attorneys. Isabelle Robles offers them some money. Real money, for information about the woman who put buckshot in her brother. Can you promise me they’ll say no?”
“It’s not your fault Robles is dead,” Serrano said.
“It’s my fault he was in the hospital to begin with.”
“Robles was a candle. Only a matter of time before he burned out.”
Rachel nodded. “Thanks, Detective. For apparently being one of the good ones.”
She walked back toward her room. Serrano followed her.
“These cops are good people,” Serrano said.
“Not all of them,” Rachel said. She opened the hotel room door. Eric was upside down on the bed, holding an iPad above him. Megan was crab-walking toward him, holding a pair of scissors, a mischievous grin on her face.
“Kids! Let’s go!”
They both popped up. Had Rachel waited thirty more seconds, Eric would have likely left for school missing either a lock of hair or an ear.
They grabbed their backpacks, jackets, hats, and gloves and trundled outside. Rachel grabbed her coat as well.
“Ms. Marin,” Serrano said. She held back a moment while her kids walked ahead. She turned toward Serrano.
“Find out who killed Constance Wright,” she said. “And Christopher Robles. Put them in jail or in the ground. That’s the only way I’ll know my kids are safe.”
The Marin family got in their car and drove off. Serrano took out his cell phone and dialed.
“This is Lowe.”
“Derek, it’s Serrano.”
“What’s up, Detective?”
“Who else knows where we’re keeping Rachel Marin?”
“Just you, me, Tally, Chen, Lieutenant George, and the watch commander.”
Serrano nodded. All people he could trust.
“Keep it that way.”
“Everything OK?”
“Yeah. Just don’t have a great feeling about all of this. Keep all information on the Marin family close to the vest. I don’t want anything happening to her or her kids.”
“You got it, Detective.”
Serrano hung up. He went back to the Crown Vic and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Let’s go talk to Sam Wickersham,” Tally said. “Find out why Constance Wright called the guy who helped break up her marriage and ruined her life.”
Serrano replied, “I spoke to the leasing office for the management company he rents from. Let’s just say Mr. Wickersham is living slightly above his means.”
Tally smiled as they turned onto the freeway.
But as they prepared to question Constance Wright’s alleged former lover, two things gnawed at Serrano.
First: he felt deep down that there was a connection between Christopher Robles’s death and Constance Wright’s murder. Second: he wasn’t entirely convinced that Rachel Marin wasn’t somehow involved in both.
CHAPTER 19
Samuel J. Wickersham lived in a condo complex on East Oakland Avenue in an upscale neighborhood just a ten-minute walk from Velos Strategies, the political consulting company where he had been employed since testifying to a prior affair with Constance Wright. Wickersham was twenty-seven years old, with shoulder-length black hair tied in a ratty ponytail, a thin face with high cheekbones, and skin so smooth and pale that Serrano wondered whether he’d ever shaved a day in his life.
He was skinny but not in shape and wore a white T-shirt just tight enough that a small belly protruded over his gray pajama bottoms. His three-bedroom apartment was modern and well furnished with a glass-topped round dining room table with four wooden upholstered chairs, a brown leather sofa, and several pieces of ornately framed artwork hanging on the walls.
A pair of walnut bookshelves bracketed a sixty-inch LCD television, packed end to end with books. Serrano, always drawn to bookshelves, went to check them out. A cursory look told him that none of the books had had so much as their spines cracked. And curiously, Wickersham seemed to own only copies of canonical titles. Nothing contemporary. They could have been the bookshelves of an English lit major who’d never been to class.
Middlemarch, Anna Karenina, Ulysses, Lolita, The Tin Drum, The Sound and the Fury, Brideshead Revisited.
In fact, Serrano was reasonably sure that Wickersham had simply printed out the Modern Library Top 100 and ordered a copy of each title. This wasn’t a bookshelf owned by someone who liked to read but someone who wanted people to think he liked to read. To Serrano, there were few greater sins. Maybe homicide. But that was debatable.
Two years ago, Samuel J. Wickersham, at the time a volunteer canvasser, had testified in open court that he’d carried on a ten-month sexual relationship with then mayor Constance Wright. He produced text messages, emails, and explicit photographs traded between them. Wright denied every word of it but couldn’t explain the dozens of outgoing calls and messages sent from her phone to his. Wright had left office in disgrace, a punch line. Wickersham had trundled off and taken a cushy job with Velos.
Serrano had to mask his contempt as he and Tally stood in Wickersham’s apartment.
Wickersham went into the kitchen and scooped coffee into a drip machine. “Can I make you guys a cup?” he said.
“No,” replied Serrano.
“Sure,” said Tally.
Tally’s response seemed to surprise Wickersham, but he tossed an extra two scoops into the filter. He took a gallon of Poland Spring from the fridge and used it to fill the tank, pressed “On,” and turned back to the detectives.
“I don’t have any doughnuts,” Wickersham said. He was met with silence. “You know. Coffee and doughnuts. Isn’t that a cop thing?”
“I prefer croissants,” Tally said.