The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly [78]
I gulped down the rest of the martini and looked around for our waitress. I wanted another.
“Jesus Menendez goes off to prison a young man. I just saw him and he’s twenty-six going on forty. He’s a small guy. You know what happens to the little ones up there.”
I was looking straight down at the empty space on the table in front of me when an egg-shaped platter with a sizzling steak and steaming potato was put down. I looked up at the waitress and told her to bring me another martini. I didn’t say please.
“You better take it easy,” Levin said after she was gone. “There probably isn’t a cop in this county who wouldn’t love to pull you over on a deuce, take you back to lockup and put the flashlight up your ass.”
“I know, I know. It will be my last. And if it’s too much I won’t drive. They always have a cab out front of this place.”
Deciding that food might help I cut into my steak and ate a piece. I then took a piece of cheese bread out of the napkin it was folded into a basket with, but it was no longer warm. I dropped it on my plate and put my fork down.
“Look, I know you’re beating yourself up over this but you are forgetting something,” Levin said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“His exposure. He was facing the needle, man, and the case was a dog. I didn’t work it for you because there was nothing to work. They had him and you saved him from the needle. That’s your job and you did it well. So now you think you know what really went down. You can’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t know then.”
I held my hand up in a stop there gesture.
“The guy was innocent. I should’ve seen it. I should’ve done something about it. Instead, I just did my usual thing and went through the motions with my eyes closed.”
“Bullshit.”
“No, no bullshit.”
“Okay, go back to the story. Who was the second guy who came to her door?”
I opened my briefcase next to me and reached into it.
“I went up to San Quentin today and showed Menendez a six-pack. All mug shots of my clients. Mostly former clients. Menendez picked one out in less than ten seconds.”
I tossed the mug shot of Louis Roulet across the table. It landed facedown. Levin picked it up and looked at it for a few moments, then put it back facedown on the table.
“Let me show you something else,” I said.
My hand went back into the briefcase and pulled out the two folded photographs of Martha Renteria and Reggie Campo. I looked around to make sure the waitress wasn’t about to deliver my martini and then handed them across the table.
“It’s like a puzzle,” I said. “Put them together and see what you get.”
Levin put the one face together from the two and nodded as he understood the significance. The killer—Roulet—zeroed in on women that fit a model or profile he desired. I next showed him the weapon sketch drawn by the medical examiner on the Renteria autopsy and read him the description of the two coercive wounds found on her neck.
“You know that video you got from the bar?” I asked. “What it shows is a killer at work. Just like you, he saw that Mr. X was left-handed. When he attacked Reggie Campo he punched with his left and then held the knife with his left. This guy knows what he is doing. He saw an opportunity and took it. Reggie Campo is the luckiest woman alive.”
“You think there are others? Other murders, I mean.”
“Maybe. That’s what I want you to look into. Check out all the knife murders of women in the last few years. Then get the victim’s pictures and see if they match the physical profile. And don’t look at unsolved cases only. Martha Renteria was supposedly among the closed cases.