'And she didn't tell you 'bout Bailey 'cause of the client patient thing,' Hawk said.
'Right. She told me she thought he'd done it because he was a bigot and a bully.'
'But she tell Valdez, and fuck client privilege,' Hawk said.
'That was love,' I said.
'Hot dog!' Hawk said.
'And it got him killed,' I said.
Juanita turned away, leaning against the jamb of the archway, staring into the unpeopled dining room.
'It's why I told you that Bailey Rogers killed him,' she said with her back to us. 'I knew Eric had approached him with the information.'
'Blackmail,' I said.
She nodded, still staring into the dining room. 'And Bailey must have killed him.'
'Had to,' Hawk said.
Juanita nodded again. 'Eric was young,' she said. 'He wanted to be a hero. He wanted a Pulitzer.'
Hawk didn't say anything. Neither did I. Juanita's shoulders hunched. The murmur of the next-door television was all there was to hear.
'So you pointed at Bailey and hoped I'd catch him without you getting involved.'
'Yes,' her disembodied voice echoed back from the empty room she faced.
'And I didn't catch him,' I said.
Juanita didn't say anything. Her back was motionless. The smoke from her cigarette wavered in the air above her head. We waited. Stillness.
Hawk walked softly across the room and past her into the dining room and turned and said gently into her face, 'And?'
She swung slowly away from him, rolling slowly toward me with her back against the arch frame. Her eyes were wide and unfocused and her face seemed almost dreamy, as if she wasn't paying much attention to Hawk or me or the intermittent snowfall.
'And I went to Felipe Esteva,' she said. 'And I told him.'
Chapter 33
When we went back to Caroline's, we brought Juanita with us. She wasn't exactly bad. But she sure as hell wasn't a force for good, and I wanted her where I could see her. She had no objection. She seemed emotionally dehydrated. When we went in, she wouldn't look at Caroline. She didn't really look at Susan either when I introduced them. Probably shouldn't have said Dr. Silverman.
We were all seated in a funereal circle in the living room. It had started to snow again, a little harder. I thought about Scotch with soda and ice in a tall glass. I thought about another one.
I said, 'Okay, we know, but we probably can't prove it, that Bailey killed Eric Valdez because Valdez tried to blackmail Bailey about his affair with Emmy Esteva, and his ties to the coke business. And we know, and might be able to prove, that Esteva killed Bailey after Juanita told him that he was having an affair with Mrs. Esteva. And then he killed Brett to cover his tracks.'
'Because you could connect Brett to the cocaine business,' Susan said.
'Yes, and I'll bet somebody in the police lab leaked it to him that we were testing the gun that Brett had gotten from him.'
'I don't understand that,' Caroline said. 'Why would he give Brett the gun that killed his own father?'
'This wasn't a business killing,' Hawk said. 'Have the kid get rid of the gun killed his old man.'
'Implicates the kid, too,' I said.
'We'll ask him about it,' Hawk said.
'Can you make a case out of what you've got?' Susan said.
'You mean a legal case,' I said. 'I don't know. If Juanita and Caroline tell the state cops all they know, I think we'll get their attention. Juanita tells Esteva about Bailey and Emmy, and shortly thereafter Bailey is shot. There's probable cause there, I think.'
'Will I have to testify,' Juanita said.
'Everybody will,' I said. 'Me too.'
'Almost everybody,' Hawk said.
'Almost,' I said.
'And it will all come out,' Caroline said. 'Bailey and the woman, Brett, everything.' I nodded.
'I will be destroyed in my profession,' Juanita said.
I nodded again.
'And Spenser,' Susan said to her, 'whom the police are going to kill?'
'I can't,' Juanita said. 'It's all I have.' Nobody spoke.
