Page 14 of The Proving Ground

I didn’t answer him. I looked around and saw a box of tissues on the bed within reach of Patel. I pulled out two.

“What are you doing?” Cisco asked.

“I just want to see what he was doing,” I said.

I came back around the bed, passed Cisco, and went to the dead man’s side. Using a tissue to guard my fingers, I pulled the phone from Patel’s grasp.

“Jesus, Mick,” Cisco said.

I ignored him and used a finger wrapped in tissue to depressthe button on the side of the phone. Nothing happened. The screen remained black. The battery was dead.

“Damn.”

“Just put it back, Mick. We go out and call the cops like the good citizens we are.”

I carefully put the phone back where it had been.

“Let’s look around,” I said.

I headed down the hallway to the front of the house. Cisco followed but cut through the kitchen while I went to the dining room. Using the tissue, I pushed around the stacks of documents on either side of the computer. They were all unpaid bills, final notices, and letters from collection agencies for power, cable, Wi-Fi, car payments, insurance, and rent. At the bottom of one stack was an eviction notice that had been served by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office just before Christmas. It gave Patel thirty days to vacate the property. I knew from handling evictions in the past that you could go nearly a year without paying rent before a landlord finally had you physically evicted. Patel was obviously at the end of the line.

“The side door is locked with a dead bolt. Nobody went out that way.”

I turned. Cisco had come from the kitchen. He was holding the pillow from the porch at his side, as the odor of death seemed far less intrusive at the front of the house. I had kept my pillow in place, hoping it would help me avoid retching. I turned back to the table and used a tissue-clad finger to touch the space bar on the computer keyboard. The screen lit up, but there was an empty password window guarding entry. I was not going to be able to see what Rikki Patel’s last work and messages were.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Call the cops, right?” Cisco said.

“Outside.”

“I guess you can cancel that court hearing today.”

“No way. I’m going to be there. On the day the judge rules Patel can be a witness, he ends up dead? I’m going to have something to say about that.”

“Mick, the guy’s been dead for days. You saw the body, you smelled it. That’s why you couldn’t reach him over the weekend. Besides, it’s an obvious suicide. The side door is locked from the inside and nobody could have left that note on the floor and then gone out the front.”

I nodded, but not in agreement.

“So?” I said. “The judge won’t know that. And neither will the media.”

7

CISCO AND Iwaited by the property’s front gate. I was hoping the sea air would chase the smell of death out of my nose. It was a losing battle.

The first to respond to my call to the LAPD were two patrol officers from Pacific Division. The female took information from me while her male counterpart went into the house to confirm the death. When he came out, he was talking into the radio mic on his shoulder, asking for a supervisor to arrive on scene. Another ten minutes passed before a patrol sergeant appeared and went inside the house to see things for himself. When he exited, he came directly to me.

“You found the body?” he asked.

“My investigator and I did, yes,” I said. I noticed that his nameplate saidFINLEY.

“‘Investigator’?” he said.

“I’m an attorney,” I said. “Dennis Wojciechowski is my investigator. The man in there was supposed to be a witness in a civil lawsuit I’m involved with. We were supposed to take his deposition today.”

Finley reared his head in recognition.

“You’re the Lincoln Lawyer guy, right? I’ve seen your billboards.”