by Marcia Clark
“I’ll go put the paperwork through,” I said.
“I’ll make sure the defendant stays in pocket.” Stoner turned to go, then stopped. “I may not be able to keep the case if that DA makes a stink about this. So…thanks,” he said. “In case I don’t get the chance to tell you later.”
“Glad to help,” I replied. “And thank you too. On behalf of those who didn’t get to see you in action.” I had a feeling there were many who would’ve danced in the streets if they’d witnessed Stoner bitch-slapping Brandon.
The detective nodded.
5
It took the better part of the morning for Sabrina to go from head-turningly gorgeous to invisible functionary, but the success of her efforts was undeniable. No one noticed the woman in the dull brown pantsuit with the flat-colored hair that lay in a low bun against her neck. She moved around the edges of the cocktail-wielding guests in tentative steps, blinking rapidly, nervously pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. A timid little mud bird, so inconsequential that even the security at the door hadn’t given her credentials more than a fleeting glance.
Not that the others around her exactly glittered. It was a low-key-looking bunch: pearls and tastefully small diamonds, navy blue and black, pumps and wing tips. But a word from any one of the men and several of the women in that room could shake Wall Street and rattle the NASDAQ. And, in fact, they had.
Sabrina was unaccompanied, but she was not alone. Now and then, she’d duck her head and offer a twitch of a smile to a man or woman passing by. They weren’t friends. Every single one of them worked for her. Sabrina moved from the fringes of one group to another, watching each individual with a fierce, penetrating intensity. That gaze would have been disturbing had it not been effectively masked by frequent sips from her drink—water disguised as vodka—and fidgeting with her glasses. Sabrina could “watch” like no other—it was one of the many unusual arrows in her quiver that made her the best at what she did. With the patience of a sniper, she surreptitiously tracked every nod, turn of the head, and gesture made by the key figures, but she made sure to take in the more peripheral figures as well: noting who spoke to whom, who leaned in closely to whisper, who left with whom. In that time, she’d seen what no one else would ever have noticed…and then some.
Finally, she signaled to a waiter (another of her employees), put her half-empty glass on his tray, and—shoulders hunched, head tilted obsequiously—approached the circle of suits surrounding the congressman, a tall, slender man whose blond head hovered above the crowd.
A lull in the conversation gave her an opening. “Congressman, it’s an honor to meet you.” She extended her hand. “Sabrina McCullough. I was wondering whether you intend to oppose the cap and trade bill?”
The congressman glanced at her, then turned a warm smile on the circle surrounding him. “That’s a complex bill. I never like to form any final conclusions until I’ve had the chance to consider all of the possible ramifications. But I’d love to hear what you gentlemen think of it.” Dismissing Sabrina completely, the congressman put his hand on the shoulder of a solid man with heavy jowls that swayed with every turn of his head. “Senator Beasley?”
Sabrina nodded, though she knew he wasn’t looking and didn’t care. Frankly, neither did she. She’d made the necessary contact with her target. Her employees, especially Chase, had pointed out the danger of these encounters, insisted they weren’t worth the risk. But Sabrina said that the personal contact, however brief, gave her unique insight. The truth that she didn’t admit, even to herself, was she craved the adrenaline rush of physical proximity to her targets—it was an addiction, not a choice.
Sabrina waited to find out if the congressman would say anything of interest. But after the senator “fumphed” his nonreply regarding the cap and trade bill, someone changed the subject to the congressman’s upcoming vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, which set him off on a journey of boring reminiscences about his boyhood summers on the Cape. Sabrina slowly melted out of the room. On her way down the stairs—she avoided elevators, which threatened tight proximity with too many eyes, not to mention the close-up security cameras—she took off her glasses and, masking her movements from any unseen surveillance, removed a small item from the frame. Just before stepping out into the lobby, she put on her sunglasses. One of the valets came to attention, and when she nodded, he ran to get her car. His tip came wrapped around Sabrina’s microcamera—which he quickly pocketed. Sabrina never traveled with anything that could be traced back to her job. The valet would send his intel about all of the guests, along with the camera, by a well-established secure route.
The next morning dawned bright and warm. Sabrina tossed her carry-on into the backseat and tilted her face up to the sun. Winter in Miami—there was nothing like it. Even California didn’t have it this good. She started the engine, pushed the button to roll back the convertible roof, and sped off to the airport, her long black hair a darkly glowing streamer in the wind.
She pulled out her cell phone and hit the number 1.
“’Lo?” Chase answered, his voice thick with sleep.
She’d forgotten she was three hours ahead, but she didn’t care. An early start wouldn’t kill him. “I’m done here.”
“When do we have to deliver?”
“Yesterday.”
Silence. Chase always got nervous with tight deadlines. But she knew he worked best under pressure.
“You find our friend yet?” she asked.
“No. But we know he’s not in any of the hospitals.”
“You saw him go down? You’re sure?”
“There’s no doubt,” Chase replied.
Sabrina nodded to herself. So far, so good. As long as he stayed down.
6
Paperwork in hand, I headed to the clerk’s office and got lucky to find Rosario, one of the more efficient filers, on duty. She let me in behind the counter, where I’d be able to avoid the usual obnoxiously long lines. Then I got even luckier and ran into Toni LaCollier—fellow denizen of the Special Trials Unit and one of my two “besties.”
I gave her the lowdown on my eventful morning.
“Girl, trouble and you are like white girls and Justin Bieber—one always chasing the other,” Toni said, shaking her head.
“Kind of like black girls and Usher?”
“We don’t have to chase,” Toni sniffed. “We just have to slow down.” She looked around and lowered her voice. “But, seriously, you need to watch out for that little tool, Brandon.”
“You know him?”
“I know of him.” The clerk passed Toni the complaint for her case—the initial charging document—and she signed it.
“From?” I asked.
“J.D.”
Judge J. D. Morgan was Toni’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. Perfectly suited for each other, they had all the bad and the good things in common. Since both were commitment-phobic, this meant that one or the other would inevitably back away after they’d been together for any length of time. And once they’d been apart for a while, one would eventually sidle up to the other. They were currently in one of their “on” phases.
“He tried a case in front of J.D.,” Toni said. “According to him, the guy was a showboat—without the boat.”
“That fits,” I replied. “And he’s got a big hard-on for Special Trials.”
“Want to know why?” she asked.
“No,” I replied.
Toni ignored me. “Guess who’s his boss and big angel in the office?”
“No clue,” I said, shaking my head.
“Phil Hemet,” Toni replied.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, stricken. “The idiot who lost the only case he ever tried?” I fished through my memory. “A caught-inside-the-car joyriding case.”
“A genius he ain’t,” Toni agreed. “But he’s a world-class brownnoser.”
“Right. Got promoted to director of central operations at one point, didn’t he?”
&
nbsp; “Yeah,” Toni snorted. “And on his way up, he headed Special Trials for about five minutes.”
“Thank God we weren’t around for that. But how did they let a fool like that run a unit like Special Trials?”
“How do they do anything around here?”
The clerk pushed the complaint for my case over to me, and I stopped to sign it.
“I will tell you this, though,” Toni said. “I heard that the deputies in the unit gave him endless shit. Refused to talk to him about their cases, never listened to a word he said, and if he called a meeting, no one would show. They’d all say they had to be in court.” Toni recounted the story with relish.
“Sounds like good, responsible lawyering on their part,” I replied.
“Most definitely,” Toni agreed. “But you know who demoted his ass?”
I shook my head.
“Your buddy, District Attorney Vanderhorn,” she said.
“Nooo!” I replied, truly shocked.
Toni held up her hand. “If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”
Vanderhorn and I were like oil and water. He thought I was insubordinate and unpredictable. I thought he was a boneheaded politico with no legal skills whatsoever. On any given day, we could both be right. But apparently he’d had a rare fit of good judgment where Hemet was concerned.
“Well, you know what they say…”
“Yeah, I do, so spare me,” Toni said, knowing what was coming.
I continued, undaunted. “Even a clock that’s broken is right twice a day.”
Toni walked out ahead of me, muttering to herself—something about gagging.
7
I knew the defense would jam me into the earliest possible date for the preliminary hearing, which meant I wouldn’t have much time to pull everything together. From what I’d heard in court, and the flimsiness of the file in my hand, there was still a lot of work to do, not the least of which was to figure out who my victim, currently listed as “John Doe,” was. So I turned down Toni’s offer to hit Little Tokyo for a sushi lunch and grabbed a no-guilt turkey-and-lettuce sandwich to eat at my desk while I worked.
By the time I settled in and spread out the file, the eighteenth floor was largely deserted. Quiet and empty, just the way I liked it. I shoved the murder book onto the table next to the window and tried not to look at the teetering pile of other murder books and case files that were starting to impinge on my treasured ninety-degree view. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, dropped my purse on top of the bottle of Glenlivet, and propped my feet up on the edge of the drawer.
I flipped open the slender file. My John Doe had been walking north on Hope—insert irony here—between Fourth and Fifth Street, when he lunged out and grabbed a woman’s arm. They struggled for a moment, and that’s where the narrative got murky. Either she broke free and then the victim fell to the ground, or he fell to the ground and then she got loose. The report quoted witness Charlie Fern as saying that the defendant, Ronald Yamaguchi, was standing right next to John Doe, so he had to have done the stabbing, though Fern hadn’t exactly seen it.
It was an interesting twist on what Fern had said in court. Not so much a contradiction as a difference in emphasis. The gap was right there in plain sight: he “hadn’t exactly seen” the stabbing. Why he’d shaved down his statement in court was anybody’s guess. Taking the oath can make witnesses nervous, but it was equally possible that Fern had exaggerated what he’d seen when he’d spoken to the cops. Regardless, the statement itself gave fair warning of a possible problem, and a prosecutor who was paying attention would’ve noticed that and either taken some time to interview Fern before the prelim or at least anticipated a possible snag on the witness stand. In other words, if “I could give a shit” Brandon Averill had been doing his job instead of his hair, he would’ve made sure the cop who took that report had his butt firmly planted in the seat next to him before he even thought about announcing “ready” in court.
As a general rule, I don’t like to second-guess fellow deputies. No one but the trial deputy really knows what’s going on, and sometimes his smartest moves are the ones he doesn’t make. But there was no benefit of the doubt to be given here. Not after what I’d seen in the report. I had no doubt that Stoner was telling the truth and Averill had forgotten to issue the subpoena.
So how had Fern fingered Yamaguchi for the police in the first place if, as Fern claimed, he didn’t know Yamaguchi?
I quickly paged over to the arrest report. Apparently Yamaguchi had been in the crowd of gawkers who’d gathered when the police had finally been called to the scene. Charlie’d noticed him there and pointed him out. Odd. Why would Yamaguchi return to the scene when he’d gotten away free and clear? Then again, he wouldn’t be the first defendant to get off on watching the police work the crime scene he’d created.
And who was our John Doe, who lay alone and ignored on a filthy sidewalk while his life seeped away? I imagined a mother looking down at her newborn’s face, full of hopes and dreams.
I pushed aside the depressing thought and refocused on the report. John Doe’d had a box cutter in his pocket, and he’d grabbed that woman. It was possible the killer had stabbed John Doe in response to a threat. But if it wasn’t a self-defense killing, then I owed it to John Doe to make his murderer pay, or at least to give it a fair try.
The crime scene was just a short hike from the office and only a few blocks away from my home—a suite at the Biltmore Hotel, a grand historical landmark in the heart of downtown L.A. I’d been lucky enough to score a sweet deal as a long-term resident after getting a sentence of life without parole for the murderer of the CEO’s wife. Recently, the CEO had upgraded me to a suite with two bedrooms, claiming it wasn’t getting much use anyway. I’d been a little reluctant to be on the receiving end of even more of his generosity. But when he continued to insist, I caved in. It did make sense that my old room, being smaller and more affordable, was easier to book.
I picked up the phone and punched in Bailey’s number. Being at a crime scene always gives me a firsthand feeling for how everything went down—gives me ideas about where to look and what to look for. And it always helps to have the benefit of Bailey’s discerning eye.
“Detective Keller, please,” I said.
I gazed out at my view of downtown Los Angeles. Having a window office had thrilled me from the moment I’d landed here, in my dream job as a prosecutor in the Special Trials Unit. I made it a point to enjoy the spectacular view every day, no matter what else was going on. The wind was still wreaking havoc with skirts, hats, and hair. A young couple in jackets that were way too thin for the wintry cold shivered and clung to each other as they waited to cross Spring Street. An older woman—who’d unfortunately chosen to wear a wide skirt—awkwardly walked with one hand pressed to her thigh as she hugged the shoulder strap of her purse with the other hand. Behind her a teenage boy mugged for his friends, pretending to be Marilyn Monroe in the famous skirt-blowing scene. He pressed his hands to the legs of his jeans and puckered his mouth as the others snickered. Yeah, I thought, you try walking downhill in a skirt and heels in this wind, smart-ass.
My call was put through.
“Keller.”
“Knight here. Want to walk a crime scene?”
“John Doe stabbing?”
How the hell…?
“It’s all over the station, Knight. But how’d you wind up with this case? It’s not exactly Special Trials material.”
“The guy who had the case was a useless sack—”
“Who was gonna dump it, so you got pissed off and grabbed it. And, now that you’re in this thing up to your ears, it turns out the case is a dog.” Bailey sighed. “You know, I get your whole ‘justice for all’ thing. What I don’t get is why it means I have to be roped in.”
As if Bailey—or Toni, for that matter—was all that different from me. This wasn’t just a nine-to-five job for any of us. But given Bailey’s current attitude, not to mention the fact that she was
right about the case being a dog, I decided now was not the best time to point that out. “Because you’ll get to give me hell about my lack of impulse control?”
“I can do that anyway, and besides, I’m in the middle of a report…”
I saw that I’d have to up the ante. “I’ll give you the blow-by-blow on what happened in—and out of—court.”
Bailey exhaled. “Where’s the scene?”
The lure of gossip. It seldom fails. I told her.
“Meet you in ten,” she said, and hung up.
It gets tiresome the way Bailey goes on and on.
8
I called Melia, the unit secretary, and told her I’d be going out to a crime scene. Then I pulled on my coat, reached into the pocket for my .22 Beretta, flipped off the safety, and headed out.
I found Bailey standing at the corner of Hope and Fourth Street, her short sandy-blond hair barely ruffled by the heavy wind. Only the tall and lean Bailey could pull off a midcalf-length camel-hair coat. The day was cold enough to make even the weatherproof detective wrap a scarf around her neck, and its jewel-toned colors brought out the green in her eyes. If she weren’t one of my besties, I’d hate her guts.
“According to the report,” I said by way of greeting, “our John Doe was slightly more than halfway between Fourth and Fifth when they found him.”
We headed toward the spot.
“I didn’t leave my cozy cubby just to walk a scene with you. What the hell happened in court?”
I filled her in.
“Jeez,” she said with a sigh when I’d finished. “Poor Stoner. He’s had it rough lately.”
“So you know him?”
“We worked together in Hollywood Division a while back. Really good guy, and a great cop.”