She sat on the edge of the toilet-bowl lid, her forehead pressed up against the cool marble window sill, a warm breeze from the open window blowing on the wet wad of toilet paper she had packed on the back of her neck.
‘Is it passing?’ Latarrino asked, looking awkwardly around the bathroom.
‘Yes,’ she said into the wall, swallowing one last good gulp of air. ‘I’m fine now, thankyou. I think may be I’m coming down with something.’
‘Oh. Okay.’
She hoped her legs wouldn’t twitch when she stood. Or at least that he wouldn’t see them twitch. ‘I can see the rest of the house now,’ she said, looking up.
‘You’re still a little pale. I think you should stay down for another minute or two. You know, this happens all the time,’ Latarrino said with a shrug. ‘It’s a tough scene, even with the bodies gone.’
She decided not to say anything. And she didn’t get up.
‘If you don’t mind me asking, how’d you get on this case?’ he asked, leaning up against the sink, hands in his pockets. ‘I mean, I haven’t seen you before at the State Attorney’s, and I know that Bellido’s definitely keeping this one in Major Crimes. Plus, he’s not the type to share the glory. So are you a lateral hire from a different SAO, or have they been hiding you up in Legal?’ Legal was the specialized division of brains at the SAO that assisted trial attorneys with the more complex legal questions and appeal issues.
Julia sat up stiffly, feeling the prickly hairs rise defiantly on the back of her neck. ‘I’m in Judge Farley’s division. Rick Bellido and Charley Rifkin asked me to be second seat on this case this morning.’ Not entirely true, but Rifkin was there when the decision was made.
He nodded. ‘I’ve had a few cases go in front of Farley. He’s so friggin’ old, I think everyone has. Is he still an asshole?’
She caught herself smiling. The pricklies died down just a little. ‘Yes. And like a bottle of cheap wine, rest assured he’s only gotten worse with age.’
‘I thought wine got better with age.’
‘The cheap ones turn to vinegar.’
Latarrino shrugged. ‘I’m a beer drinker myself. I thought Karyn Seminara was the DC in Farley’s.’
‘She is.’
‘Oh. Then who are you? The A?’
Her back arched once again. ‘I’m the B.’
‘The B? Wow,’ he said with a low whistle, ‘you must really be something special, then. I’ve worked with Bellido. He’s got high standards for everyone, and like I said, I don’t remember him sharing the limelight.’ He looked at her, but differently for a second, as if he had just figured something out. Call her cynical, but that something, Julia figured, was probably that she was a woman, and ergo must have used her feminine wares to climb the company ladder.
The rush of defiance and pride eradicated the nausea and rejuvenated her. She rose from the toilet seat, took the soggy, bunched-up paper wad off her neck, flushed it down the toilet, and closed the window. ‘Why does everyone think it’s him?’ she asked, smoothing her skirt and quickly changing the subject. ‘The dad, David Marquette. Why is everyone so sure it’s him?’
‘Well, for one, units arrived within about six minutes of the call and gained entry within another twenty. The alarm was still set. No one else was found in the house, and there was no evidence of a break-in.’
‘Why did it take them so long to enter?’
‘Good question. One I’m sure the boys will be asking themselves for a long time to come. They thought it was a prank, there were no previous domestics at the residence, no sign of trouble outside. Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty, Counselor.’
‘Oh,’ she said, pausing. She didn’t want to sound like an idiot again and say the wrong thing, yet she couldn’t help but think of the case of JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old from Boulder, Colorado who was taken from her bed and murdered in her home Christmas night, 1996, with her parents and brother sleeping just down the hall. The police and district attorney had instantly focused on the parents, but the murder was never solved. The Ramsey detectives were criticized for having tunnel vision, theorizing that while police focused solely on Mom and Dad, critical evidence was destroyed, other leads ignored, and the real killer long gone and on the loose. ‘Could a killer have gotten in some other way, without setting off the alarm?’ she asked. ‘Through an open window, perhaps? Maybe the screens weren’t wired …’
‘Now you’re playing defense attorney.’
‘Someone’s going to.’
‘There were no other signs of forced entry. The father was supposed to be speaking at some medical conference three hundred miles away, and he shows up here. He’s the sole survivor in a scene out of a horror movie. He’s got a knife stuck in his gut, but even though that sounds really bad, he surprisingly has relatively minor injuries when the rest of his family went through a bloodbath. We’re pretty sure that when we dig, we’ll find out some other interesting info. We always do.’
‘Like a girlfriend?’
‘Or girlfriends. Domestic strife. Money problems.’
‘Insurance policies …’
‘Now you’re thinking on the right side of the law, Ms Prosecutor.’
‘Please, call me Julia.’ She paused again. ‘So it was a suicide attempt?’
‘Maybe. Murder and attempted suicide. Wouldn’t be the first. I’m thinking maybe it was supposed to be just a murder. The suicide attempt came after he realized his daughter had called the cops on him and he was running out of time with an alibi that was still some three hundred miles away.’
‘Where was he found?’ she asked.
Latarrino looked around the bathroom. ‘Right here.’
She followed his stare to a corner of the slate-tiled bathroom next to a glass-enclosed shower.
‘Crime Scene cleaned it up. Shower was still wet. He was unconscious and naked, nothing but a towel beside him on the floor.’
‘What were his actual injuries? I know he had to have surgery.’
‘A collapsed lung and a carefully placed abdominal stab wound. Lots of blood. Could have been fatal, I suppose, but it wasn’t. A pulmonary embolism he threw last night was what required emergency surgery.’
‘Sounds serious.’
‘He’ll be fine.’
‘And you obviously think the wounds are self-inflicted?’
‘Definitely. They’re too neat for what went on in this house.’
She paused again. ‘What I don’t understand is why. If suicide was an afterthought, like you’re thinking, why would he do this to his family? To his wife? His kids? Jesus Christ, to a little baby? I mean, the man’s a doctor …’
‘Don’t let the MD blind you, Counselor. There have been plenty of cold-blooded murderers throughout history that were smart enough to go to college. Matter of fact, the smarter they are, the more likely it is they might get away with it.’
‘Fine. I’ll try not to let his profession impress me. But you said it, Detective Latarrino, that’s not just a crime scene in there – that’s a bloodbath.’
‘Let us finish the investigation. Maybe we’ll find you your why. But I have some bad news for you, Julia,’ he said, making sure he emphasized her name. ‘Welcome to the Big Time, where there’s not always an answer that makes sense. That’s why the law doesn’t make us prove why. Look, people are messed up, and sometimes they just snap. Especially in domestics. I’m sure I’m not the first to point out for you that fine line that exists between love and hate. When someone crosses it, nothing’s gonna prep you for what he or she is capable of. Nothing.’
She could hear the clatter of kitchen noises even behind the closed swing doors, the friendly, mindless table-chatter all around her. The warm smells of fried bacon and freshly cooked waffles and brewing coffee filled the air. Sunday-morning sounds and smells that were normally so comforting were now anything but. The ordinariness of everyone else’s morning made her want to scream.
‘Some people are just not made right, Julia,’ Uncle Jimmy said quietly while Aunt Nora cried softly in the booth seat next to him. ‘Only God knows why they do what they do. It’s best for all of us not to try and understand, ya know? Because we won’t. We can’t, ya know? It’s too horrible to think somebody could … It’s all just too awful to be real …’
His thoughts broke off as Rosey, their waitress, approached the table to tell them the daily specials.
The room suddenly felt like it was shrinking, the grisly information collapsing in on her, like heavy bricks in a wall. She took a deep breath and pushed the pieces of paralyzing memories out of her head, focusing instead on trying to count to ten. Her lungs felt as if they were being slowly shrink-wrapped, and her heart began to race. Deep breath and get to five. Deep breath and get to six. It had been years since she’d had a panic attack. Please, God, not a full-fledged one now. What she had to do was stay focused. Recognize what was happening to her and get out. ‘Well I hope you can dig up that interesting info, Detective Latarrino,’ she said slowly, her breath catching. ‘Because a jury’s going to want to know why, too. I wouldn’t want us to later be accused of tunnel vision.’
The detective seemed mercifully oblivious, his back to her as he looked around the bathroom. ‘So don’t say the word JonBenét and I won’t hear it. Trust me, no one here wants to fuck this up. Especially me. Assuming David Marquette wants to talk, we’re gonna try. Just as soon as the docs at Ryder give us the green light. No one is looking for the easy way out. By the way, Julia,’ he said, turning back to face her, ‘call me Lat, please. Or John. Anything but Detective Latarrino. Save that for the stand.’
She nodded. She felt her heartbeat slowly returning to normal, her lungs expand, breaking the shrink-wrap, filling finally with air. She continued to count off numbers in her head, adding one more to each count as she clenched and unclenched her fists and pretended to still look around the room. ‘Ready?’ she asked when a few more moments had passed, in a voice she thought sounded smooth and steady.
‘After you,’ he replied, eyeing her carefully. Then he finally opened the door.