MQuinn 03 - Lethal Beauty Read online

  “My whole village saved up to send me here. This is not what I thought it would be.”

  Bitterness welled up in him. “Do you think it was for any of us? Besides, do you know what they’ll do if you keep this up? You’ll end up in a massage parlor or a nail shop.”

  She shook her head. “But I don’t know how to give massages or do nails.”

  The girl was as stupid as she was stubborn. “That doesn’t matter. You won’t be doing either of those things. You’ll be entertaining three or four men an hour, fourteen hours a day.”

  The one eye that wasn’t quite as bruised widened. “Please. You have to help me. You have to save me.” She raised the bandaged arm toward him, the one she had burned when he dropped the plate.

  Lihong still had the small white cardboard rectangle that Mrs. Scott had given him. The printing on it seemed to be letters and numbers, and he was nearly certain it held her address. He would go there, he decided, with a sudden surge of fear and daring. He would go there and she would use her magic phone and they would understand each other.

  And then she would help. Help free Ying from the dark basement. Help free Lihong from his days spent as a slave.

  CHAPTER 2

  Back home they had a saying. “Paper can’t wrap up a fire.”

  And, thought the man who had brought Lihong here, Lihong was a fire. He could no longer paper over the problems Lihong kept causing.

  If something wasn’t done, he would burn everything down.

  CHAPTER 3

  TUESDAY, TEN DAYS LATER

  Have you wondered what Dandan Yee’s last thoughts were before she died?” asked King County prosecutor Mia Quinn. As she spoke, she was careful to make eye contact with each juror in turn. That morning she had pulled back her shoulder-length blond hair so that no strand would fall into her eyes. She wanted nothing to distract from the picture she was about to paint.

  Mia had planned, she had prepared, but now she set that planning aside and let the words come from her heart. She needed the jury to see things through her eyes, and that wouldn’t come from a rote presentation.

  Sitting at the prosecution table behind her was the lead detective in the case, homicide detective Charlie Carlson. They had worked this murder together from the beginning. Now she could sense him willing her to get justice for Dandan Yee.

  The case should have been open-and-shut, but two things were not in Mia’s favor.

  First was that the defendant, David Leacham, had used a good portion of the fortune he had made in the dry-cleaning business to hire one of Seattle’s best criminal defense attorneys, James Wheeler. No crime, not even the murder of a teenage prostitute, was too low for Wheeler to take on. And Mia had to admit that he had done an excellent job, sowing confusion, countering every witness, and casting doubt and aspersions far and wide. Wheeler had even managed to get Leacham released on bail, despite Mia arguing that the man was a flight risk and could pose a threat to the community. Leacham had surrendered his passport, put up a million dollars bail, and walked out of jail with just an ankle monitor.

  The second thing that had hurt the prosecution’s case was that Mia and Charlie’s key witness had been a no-show. She was a street kid and sometimes streetwalker with the unfortunate name of Sindy Sharp (and it was her real name, too, according to Charlie). But Sindy had disappeared from her new foster home before she could testify that Leacham had been one of her regular customers, and that he had liked it rough.

  The massage parlor where Dandan worked turned out to have been rented under a false name. It never reopened after her death. The other girls gave the police fake names and addresses, claimed to have seen and heard nothing, and then disappeared.

  To convict Leacham, Mia now had to nail her closing arguments and make the jurors face the hard truth: that a defenseless young woman had been purchased, used, and then brutally murdered by a rich businessman who thought himself above the law.

  Mia continued, “Do you imagine that Dandan thought, Why are you stabbing me? I have already done what you wanted. I have already given you my body. Did she think, My whole life I dreamed of coming to America to be reunited with my mother, and now I am being murdered by this man?”

  Several jurors cut their eyes to Bo Yee, Dandan’s mother, who sat in her usual place in the front row, directly behind the prosecutor’s table. She had been here every day, wearing a long, shapeless black dress and tinted glasses, clutching a neatly folded handkerchief that she never used. Sixteen years ago, when Dandan was three, Mrs. Yee had paid smugglers to spirit her out of China. She had been granted asylum in the United States, but had not been successful in getting her husband and daughter to join her.

  A few weeks earlier, her daughter had gotten off a plane with a fake Indonesian passport, then promptly disappeared into Seattle’s bustling Asian population. After she died, Bo Yee’s name and address were found in Dandan’s few belongings, but the two women had never reconnected. No one knew why. Had Dandan been unable to find her? Or had she been ashamed that the only job she had been able to find was as a prostitute?

  All Mia and Charlie knew for sure was that less than two weeks after her arrival in America, Dandan had been stabbed to death by a client, David Leacham. Who then had the gall to claim self-defense.

  Mia gave Bo a small nod before turning back to the jury. “Mr. Wheeler has tried to tell you that the whole thing was a terrible misunderstanding. That Mr. Leacham walked into a massage parlor”—she emphasized the last two words—“expecting to get a massage and nothing more.”

  A juror named Sandra, a secretary close to retirement, shook her head in disgust. Her caramel-colored hair didn’t budge. Jim, a balding accountant, pressed his lips together.

  Mia had the jury, she could feel it. When she took two steps to the right, their eyes followed her like magnets.

  The only juror who avoided her gaze was Warren, a twenty-eight-year-old electrician with an unfortunate two-toned mullet. He had seemed checked out for the duration of the trial. Every time Mia tried to make eye contact, he was chewing his thumbnail or worrying at his cuticles. During jury selection he had been much more engaged. Now the only person he paid attention to was another juror, Naomi, a twenty-two-year-old student with a penchant for wearing three shades of iridescent eye shadow and tight sweaters.

  “Mr. Leacham is forty-seven years old. Old enough to know that legitimate massage businesses do not have neon signs out front. Old enough to know that when you are given your pick between three pretty girls, what will be happening in that back room is a lot more than a back massage.”

  As she spoke, Mia briefly looked each juror in the eye. Naomi listened with a curled lip. As Mia had hoped during jury selection, she seemed to be relating to the victim.

  “The defense has tried to cast this poor girl in an unflattering light, when it’s a story as old as our country. A young girl arrives in America, the land of dreams, hoping to make a new life for herself, even though she is penniless, with no skills and nonexistent English. That’s what happened to Dandan, at which point her dreams ran right into harsh reality. Mr. Wheeler tried to make you think that Dandan was a hardened criminal, but she wasn’t. It’s just that when she came here, she was so desperate that she was forced to sell the only thing of value she had—her body. And unfortunately for her, one of her clients turned out to be David Leacham.”

  Mia’s mouth had gone dry. She turned back to the prosecution table, thinking to get a glass of water, but Charlie had already emptied the plastic pitcher. He gave her a guilty twist of a smile. She didn’t let the pause break her stride.

  Mia shifted her story into the present tense to help the jurors feel how immediate and urgent it was. “And it isn’t enough for Mr. Leacham to have sex with this poor girl. It is far from enough. We will never know what his sick reasons are for stabbing Dandan, but we do know that’s what he does and it is no accident and it is not self-defense.

  “But after Mr. Leacham kills Dandan, he realizes he has gone
too far. So he makes up a story and sets about trying to alter the facts to match it. He gives himself a few tiny cuts. Then he puts the knife in that poor dead girl’s hand and hightails it out of there.”

  Mia spoke through gritted teeth. “If a witness hadn’t noticed his car and the first few digits of the license plate number, he might never have been caught. But the story he made up doesn’t make any sense. Mr. Wheeler expects you to believe that after their encounter, Dandan pressed a knife against David Meacham’s throat and attempted to rob him.”

  The ridiculous theory had been picked up by a tabloid, which ran a photo of Dandan under the headline LETHAL BEAUTY?

  “Why would Dandan do that? It defies logic. First of all, Dandan is five foot one and one hundred five pounds. Mister”—Mia gave the word a sarcastic spin—“Leacham is five foot eleven and two hundred fifteen pounds. And yet he is claiming that she is the one who attacked him, who threatened him.” She raised a skeptical eyebrow and was rewarded with frowns from both Pete, the retired pharmacist, and Connor, the college student. Yes! The tension in her chest loosened.

  “Mr. Wheeler would also have you believe that when this girl saw the money in Mr. Leacham’s wallet as he paid one hundred for the use of her body, she decided to steal it. But why would someone who has risked everything to come to America jeopardize that for just $380? At a minimum, Dandan would have lost her job. She would have put her ability to stay in America undetected at huge risk. Even if she had taken those few hundred dollars, where would she have run to, with no English and knowing no one else in America besides her own mother? How far would she have gotten?” With her voice, Mia made her own answer clear. Not very far.

  “As for those so-called defensive wounds, they are so shallow they barely amount to scratches. And you heard the testimony of our expert witness. Since the defendant was right-handed, any defensive wounds should have been on Mr. Leacham’s right hand and forearm. But there weren’t any, were there? These marks only make sense when you realize that it is precisely because Mr. Leacham is right-handed that he gives himself a single shallow cut on his left palm, as well as a scratch on his throat no deeper than a shaving nick. And then he sneaks off like a dog into the night.

  “And you know what the defense boils down to? They want you to think that this man cannot be a killer. That everything that happened was Dandan’s fault. Their argument is that you must have a reasonable doubt, because how can you believe that someone like Mr. Leacham”—she made her voice faintly mocking—“someone who’s so successful, who’s so nice-looking, who’s so intelligent, who has such a wonderful family, how could you believe that someone like that could commit a murder like this? That’s what they’re really saying: that you have to have reasonable doubt because he doesn’t look like a killer.” Mia was in the zone now, the jurors’ eyes riveted on her.

  “But you don’t have to look at the defense’s theory very closely before you see even more flaws. A second problem with their story is something no one disputes: that before he stabs Dandan, Mr. Leacham has sex with her. This man, whom the defense claims to be happily married, has sex with a girl two years younger than his own daughter.”

  David Leacham’s wife, Marci, was glaring at Mia from her seat in the courtroom directly behind her husband. Her face had been wiped of all expression, but her eyes still gave her away. If looks could kill, Mia knew she would be six feet under.

  “And as the medical examiner has testified, Dandan had fresh bruises on her wrists. Now ask yourself, which is more logical—that she attacked him or that he attacked her?

  “All the evidence and all the facts in this case point to one idea: that David Leacham deliberately murdered Dandan Yee.” Mia made eye contact again with each juror. “We ask that you find him guilty.”

  CHAPTER 4

  A different kind of person might have sat back and enjoyed the show James Wheeler was putting on as he gave the closing arguments for the defense, but Charlie Carlson was not that kind of person. Not when, at the end of the day, a man might get away with murder.

  “Every living creature understands self-preservation,” Wheeler was saying. His thick, silvery hair made him look leonine. “As human beings we go through life avoiding danger, hoping we will never be forced into a position where we must defend ourselves. But if we are threatened with death, our instincts take over and we do whatever we must in order to protect ourselves. And that is exactly what happened here.”

  By sinking his teeth into his tongue, Charlie managed to maintain a neutral expression.

  “The evidence is clear: Ms. Yee was an illegal alien and a prostitute who came very close to killing David Leacham in a botched robbery attempt.”

  When Mia talked about the dead girl, she was always Dandan or occasionally Miss Yee, but whenever her name came out of Wheeler’s mouth, it was always “Ms. Yee.” It was a tiny detail, but telling. Wheeler was trying to get the jury to think of the dead girl as older, more sophisticated, and the Ms. was just one more piece of that mosaic.

  Charlie wondered how many of the jurors didn’t like illegal aliens, or thought that a prostitute deserved whatever happened to her. Mia had tried to uncover any underlying prejudices while the prospective jurors were being questioned in her voir dire, but since most people know what the “right” answers are, they often give them.

  “My client is not a worldly man. He works long hours at his dry-cleaning business, talking to customers, fixing machines, and even cleaning and pressing clothes.”

  Charlie wondered how much of that was true. He also wondered if Leacham was into fixing things other than machines. Since dry cleaning was often a cash business, it made the perfect front for money laundering.

  Wheeler continued, “Mr. Leacham thought Ms. Yee was what she claimed to be, a massage therapist. He had a backache, and the pain became so intense he wondered if a massage might help. This is a man who has worked hard his whole life and who has built a successful business from scratch. A man who is still married to his high school sweetheart and who does not have a single criminal conviction.”

  While investigating the murder, Charlie had found Sindy Sharp, who painted a picture of a very different man. Then, just before the trial began, she left her foster home with nothing but her purse and never came back. The girl did have a long history of running away. Charlie just hoped that was what had happened.

  “When Ms. Yee began to flirt with him,” Wheeler said, “he was surprised and flattered. He lost his head.”

  Yeah, Charlie thought sourly, at about the same time he lost his pants.

  At the defense table, David Leacham bit his lip and looked down at the table. His eyes shone with unshed tears. Just how hard had the man had to bite, Charlie wondered, to make those tears flow.

  “Afterward, when he came out of the bathroom, Ms. Yee suddenly attacked him, demanding his wallet. She pressed the knife against his throat until she drew blood and said, ‘Do it or die!’ ”

  Charlie tried to imagine it, the tiny woman attacking the much bigger man who sat at the defense table. Judging by the expressions on the faces of the jurors, they were having a hard time as well.

  “Mr. Leacham is not familiar with violence, with people who will steal and lie and cheat and even kill.” Wheeler raised his chin and pressed the blade of his right palm against his neck as if it were a knife. “But after Ms. Yee cut him, he could feel the hot blood trickling down the skin of his neck.” The fingers of Wheeler’s other hand traced the contours of his throat. His eyes darted, as if he were panicking, then he dropped both hands and addressed the jury. “Mr. Leacham knew it would take only a little bit more pressure for her to cut his jugular vein. And he was also sure, deadly sure, that either way, she would still kill him. So he knocked her arm away. He did what we all would have done and tried to protect himself. To allow himself to get away to safety. But instead of backing away, his attacker became even more enraged. She came at him again, and they wrestled for the knife. Suddenly, David Leacham was fig
hting for his life.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie watched Mia’s lips become a thin, white line as Wheeler piled on lie after lie.

  “You’ve seen the photographs of the cut on his throat, the slice on his hand he suffered when he tried to defend himself. The cut on his throat is from her initial attack, when she told him that he was going to die if he didn’t do what she said. The other cut is on his left hand because that hand was closest to the knife. Thankfully, he snatched it back as soon as he realized it was slicing into him, and it didn’t sever blood vessels and tendons. Then he tried to grab her, to stop her from killing him, and their feet became entangled. That’s when David Leacham got lucky. He got lucky because he did not sustain that third, killing wound this woman was determined to give him. Instead, they hit the ground, landing in such a way that the knife entered her body with his weight directly on top of it. Afraid that she would attack him again, he took that heaven-sent opportunity to escape.”

  Wheeler managed to proclaim this convoluted story with a straight face. Behind him, Leacham blinked, sending tears running down his red face. In the silence he took a loud, ragged breath.

  “Because of chance or providence, Mr. Leacham was able to escape and he is still alive. And while it is very unfortunate that Ms. Yee lost her life, under these circumstances our laws recognize that Mr. Leacham did not commit a crime. Instead, this was a justifiable homicide.”

  Justifiable homicide was something Charlie had been forced to do a time or two. With a badge on his belt and a city-issued firearm. Not against a tiny woman who had been bought and paid for.

  “You saw the prosecutor put these people on the stand who claimed to be experts in their fields.” Wheeler sighed. “I am just one man against the government. I don’t have a vast army of employees and fancy equipment.” It took a mighty effort for Charlie not to roll his eyes. “All I have”—Wheeler thumped his chest over his heart, or at least where his heart would be if he had one—“is the truth.”