CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Balboa County Public Defender’s Office was a utilitarian concrete slab of a building, conveniently located a few blocks away from the Sheriff’s Department in downtown Neptune. Veronica arrived at 1:00 p.m. the next afternoon with lasagna from Mama Leone’s and a smile and took the elevator up to the sixth floor, where Cliff McCormack’s office was situated.
Cliff and her dad had been friends for almost twenty years now, and Mars Investigations had cleared more than a few of his clients of wrongdoing. Of course, evidence gathered by Mars Investigations had also put a handful of his clients away—but that was life in the seedy underbelly of the criminal justice system. Sometimes you had to defend the indefensible.
As far as she knew, there wasn’t another McSomething working for the Public Defender’s Office. Which meant that Cliff, the low-rent local lawyer near and dear to her heart, was her best shot at getting access to Willie Murphy’s statement. But as cynical as Cliff pretended to be, he sometimes got a tiny bit hung up on ethics—especially on sticky little issues like attorney-client privilege. Veronica hoped the piping hot lasagna currently turning the white bag translucent would coax him toward a moral gray area.
His door was open, but she knocked lightly on the frame. Cliff looked up from his desk, where he sat thumbing through the contents of a manila folder. When he saw her, his eyebrows furrowed.
“I brought lunch” she sang, dangling the bag tantalizingly in front of her. “Fresh from Mama Leone’s”
“How cheap do you think I am?” His nostrils flared. “Don’t answer that.”
She took a few steps into his office, closing the door softly behind her. It was a windowless closet of a room with walls painted in a soul-killing greenish gray. A heavy bookshelf took up the greater part of a wall, covered in dusty law books and three-ring binders. The desk was a disaster site, strewn with manila folders and stray scraps of paper, interspersed with sandwich wrappers and a half-eaten box of Cheez-Its. She sat down in a stiff-backed chair across from him.
“You’ve been dodging my calls, Cliffy.”
Cliff scowled. He was a tall, rangy man, his dark hair slicked with pomade. His lips were always on the verge of a sour smile, his brows expressive and skeptical. He watched warily as she uncovered a to-go portion of lasagna, stuck a plastic fork in the still bubbling cheese, and handed it across the desk to him.
“Contrary to what you and your father may think, I do have a life.” Cliff closed his eyes for a moment to inhale the savory aroma, then frowned. “It just so happened that I had plans yesterday.”
“Was it double-coupon day at Les Girls already? My, time flies.”
“If you must know, I was at a winery, with a friend. A lady friend. And it turns out lady friends are much less friendly when you interrupt a date to answer a call from a perky young blonde. Especially a perky young blonde who has a habit of asking for favors.” He gave her a pointed look, picked up the loaded fork, and took a large bite.
“What are favors between old friends?” She cocked her head to the side.
“What do you want, Veronica?” His mouth was full as he spoke, sauce spattering along the length of his ten-dollar tie.
“I heard you lost a client on Saturday.” She nibbled a piece of her own lasagna. “Any idea why?”
“At a guess? Probably because someone wanted him to win his case.”
“Someone … like the Gutiérrez cousins?”
“Someone like that, yes.” He set down his fork. “Honestly I’m glad. Cases where stupid people do stupid things are really more my forte. Like this guy.” He picked up a folder from the mess on his desk. “He updated his Facebook account from inside a house he was robbing. Classic Cliff McCormack material. I’ll leave the murderers to someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“So you think he did it?” Veronica leaned forward. “You think Willie Murphy killed those girls?”
Cliff counted off on his fingers. “Well, let’s see. He was at the parties where both victims were last seen; he tried to pawn the property of the first victim; and strands of the first victim’s hair were found on the passenger seat of his car. Add that to the fact that the guy has priors and that he had a pharmacopoeia of narcotics in his bloodstream the night of his arrest, and all signs point to—”
Veronica sat up straight. “He had Hayley Dewalt’s hair in his car?”
“They’re still waiting for the lab tests to confirm it, but it looks like a perfect match with hair found in her brush.” He shrugged. “Sometimes, if it looks like a murderous duck and quacks like a murderous duck … well, you know.”
She laced her fingers together and rested her chin on her hands, frowning. Cliff’s eyes narrowed. “It scares me to see you thinking that hard.”
“Something about this just isn’t adding up, Cliff.”
Cliff shook his head. “Look, kid, I’m no fancy Columbia-educated profiler, but I’ve worked with the ‘ethically challenged’ for a long time. They call it ‘deviant behavior’ for a reason—it’s hard to predict and doesn’t make a lot of sense. Believe me. If you’d heard the guy’s story your bullshit detector would be—”
“So you got his story?”
He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. “Yes. I got his story. And no, I can’t tell you anything about it.”
“Sure, of course, I know that. Attorney-client privilege.” She scooted her chair forward confidentially. “I did go to law school, after all.” She paused. “I’m just wondering if he said anything about what he did with the girls. Because you know as well as I do that if Lamb can get a conviction, he’ll consider that the end of it. He doesn’t care if we find the bodies.”
She sat on the edge of her chair, watching him. Some sort of battle seemed to be raging in his face. His jaw tensed. His eyes locked on hers and then looked away thoughtfully. After a few seconds, his face relaxed, and he sighed and stood up.
“Well, this has been a fun conversation, but I have a meeting in just a few minutes.” She started to stand up, an argument leaping to her throat, but he held up a hand. “Hey, I know your administrative skills are probably rusty after all this time, but if you wanted to really do me a solid you could clean up my desk. Since we’re talking favors and all.” He looked at her from under heavy, exasperated brows. “I’ll just close the door so no one comes in to bother you. Lock it on the way out.”