by Paul Heald
They ate in silence and he recalled a surreal afternoon spent golfing on the afternoon of 9/11. Once his classes were cancelled, he could not face spending a day at home watching the disaster rerun over and over on the television, so he had detoured to the university golf course. The links were packed with like-minded escapists, none of whom said a word about what had happened in New York City earlier in the day.
He looked over at his wife and saw her take a bite and then make a face. “You should’ve known better than to order the Road Kill Taco.”
“It’s not that,” she replied when she was done chewing.
“What? Are you nervous about talking to the cops?”
“Not really.” She set the food down on her lap. “But I saw something at the banquet that I need to tell the police about.”
“What?”
“You know how I was watching people during dinner? I noticed Don lean over and whisper something in Jade’s ear. About five minutes later, I saw him get up and leave. And then Jade left a couple of minutes after that.”
“I’m sure a lot of people saw them leave the dais.” He wadded up his wrappers, stuffed them into his empty cup and jammed it in a paper bag.
“Yeah, and others probably saw him whispering to Jade too, but I still need to tell the police.” She grimaced and took a sip of her drink. “It makes me feel kinda slimy. Isn’t that stupid?”
“No,” he explained, “I get it. If you had to testify, it would make you part of a sleazy story carried on every network and cable news channel.” He reached out the window and tossed his garbage into a cactus shaped bin on the side of the parking lot. “If you think you feel queasy, don’t forget who supplied him with the murder weapon.”
“Oh Christ, you don’t think we’ll have to come back here for the trial, do you?”
“I doubt it. Would you take this case to trial if you were Don’s lawyer?”
With Stanley giving directions, Angela got the rental car to the station in less than twenty minutes. It was a stylish new building made of light colored brick and tile. Only the phalanx of police cruisers parked in front gave away that it was not a public library or an office complex. She parked behind the building, and they held hands as they walked around to the lobby. They passed through the metal detector one at a time and asked the guard for directions.
He pointed down the hallway to the left. Police officers, civilian employees, and lawyers bustled past them as they searched for the room. Once there, a female officer reached for the witness list and asked them their names.
“Professor Hopkins?” She gave Stanley a curious look. “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours. Hang on. Let me check with the detective.” Stanley looked over at his wife and shrugged his shoulders as the officer spoke on the phone. When she hung up, she sent Angela further down the hall and asked her husband to take a seat.
“Do you know what this is about?”
The sturdy blond officer shook her head. “All I know is that the prisoner has been asking for you.” She looked over his shoulder and nodded to someone behind him.
“Professor Hopkins?” A tall man in a dark brown suit was walking toward him. He was about fifty years old, broad-shouldered with graying hair. His ruddy face looked incapable of any expression other than disapproval. “I’m Detective McCaffrey. Do you have any idea why Mr. Johansson has been so insistent on seeing you today?”
“No, sir.” He normally never called anyone ‘sir,’ but the detective’s demeanor seemed to demand some kind of honorific. “Don’s an old friend from college. We just renewed our acquaintance when my wife and I came out to Los Angeles to do an academic study of adult film stars.”
McCaffrey raised his eyebrows, but offered no further comment before leading him out of the room and down another hall past a security check point. The holding tank looked more like a prison than a police station.
“We would have transferred him to the county lockup by now, but we’ve got a little bit of an issue,” he offered cryptically. “Were you at the banquet the other night?”
“Yes, my wife and I had a table at the back.”
“Did you see either the victim or Mr. Johansson leave the dais?”
“No. At some point I noticed Don was no longer up there, but I didn’t see either of them leave. Angela saw him whispering to Jade before he left.” McCaffrey nodded and made a brief notation in his note pad. They passed through another metal detector and walked to a small interview room. “Do you know what this is about?” He had to pass through so many doors, he felt like he was in the opening credits of an old Get Smart episode.
“Someone will be waiting outside. Just yell if you need help.” With that admonition, McCaffrey opened one more door and Stanley saw Don Johansson seated behind a table, hands and legs shackled.
The prisoner looked up with fevered eyes and a grim smile. “Boy, am I glad to see you.”
XI.
HAPPENSTANCE
Angela sat in the waiting room wondering how long the police would keep her husband. To her surprise, the interview with Officer Greene had taken the better part of an hour. Several other people had seen the porn director whisper to Jade before he had left the dais, so her story confirmed what the police already knew. The officer had taken far more time asking how she knew the suspect, why she and her husband had come to Los Angeles, and how the fraternity paddle had come to be in the suspect’s possession. He took notes slowly and deliberately as she spoke. When he looked up, his judgmental squint told her that decent people do not get mixed up in the murder of a porn star.
“So, your husband took the bat out of the attic and brought it to Eden Studio as some sort of a thank you gift?”
“That’s right, officer. He was grateful to Mr. Johansson for facilitating the interviews.”
“So, when we finish fingerprinting the paddle, we’re likely to find your husband’s prints on it too?” This question took her aback, but she realized it was likely that both their prints were on the murder weapon.
“I suppose. You might find mine too. I think I touched it before Stan left.” He looked at Angela as if witnesses did not usually confess to having their fingerprints on murder weapons. When he was done, he gave her his card and asked her to call him if she remembered anything else. She walked back to the lobby feeling every bit as tainted as she had feared.
Stanley stood and stared at his former friend. The producer seemed to have aged ten years over night. The wrinkles around his eyes were no longer just laugh lines, but deep creases of pain and confusion. The professor sat down across the table and wondered what he should say. Despite the circumstances of the crime, his first impulses were civility and sympathy. Nice lobster at the party. Do you think it’s going to rain tomorrow? Did you really do it?
“Thanks for coming.” Johansson gasped with relief and leaned toward his visitor. “You’ve got to help me.”
“Help you?”
“Yes.” The prisoner looked exhausted, yet his eyes were burning brightly. Stanley wondered, just as he had days before, whether this intensity was a sign of fierce intelligence or some sort of unhinged mania. “You’re the best hope I have left.”
“Don, what are you talking about?”
“You’re the only one who can get me out of here. You’ve got the smarts to—”
“What the hell are you talking about? Don, have you talked to your lawyer yet?”
“My former lawyer, you mean?” He gave a bitter little laugh. “Oh yeah, I’ve talked to him. The guy comes in here, we talk for a while, and then he explains how after some maneuvering we might be able to plead the charges down to second degree murder or manslaughter. He’s a public defender burn-out with a caseload of two hundred felonies. Two hundred! How much time do you think he’s going to spend on a case where his client is found holding the murder weapon?”
“Public defender?” Stanley sat straight up in his chair and asked skeptically. “You were talking to the public defender?”
; “Yeah. I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on him. I’d think I was guilty too, if I were him.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“What does your own attorney say? Why are you even talking to the public defender? Why haven’t you called in the dream team?” Stanley waited for an explanation.
“That would be nice,” came the wistful reply. “My attorney told me that once I pay him the seventy-five thousand that I currently owe, he’ll be quite happy to help. But there’s no chance of that. I’m leveraged up to my eyeballs. Without the money from the distribution deal for Babes, Eden Studio is bankrupt. And so am I.”
“What about your house and car?”
“Both rented.” He took a deep breath. “I gambled and lost. The kind of pictures that I wanted to make, the kind of studio that I wanted to run . . . well, it’s a very expensive proposition. I needed the influx from Babes to pay off my debts and show investors that my business model can work. I was going to take the studio public sometime next year.” He clenched his fists and ground them into his thighs. “Now, regardless of what happens to me, Eden Studio is done.”
“I’m sorry, Don.” He could see the desperateness of his friend’s situation. His life was as messy as a laundry basket in a nursing home. On the other hand, if he had killed Jade Delilah, then he deserved whatever he got. “I see.” Stanley finally put two and two together. “You’ve got no choice but the public defender. And he, uh . . . doesn’t inspire much confidence.”
“That’s not my only choice.” He looked up and stared hard at his friend. “I’ve fired him. Tomorrow at the arraignment, I’m going to exercise my right to represent myself.”
“Are you crazy? You don’t know anything about the law!”
“Hey, I watch Law and Order every week.” He gave an ironic snort. “But I’m not counting on going to trial and outwitting the prosecutor. The real killer has to be caught before the case ever gets to trial.”
Although the evidence pointed to the man sitting right before him, Stanley played along. “How are you going to find the killer when you’re stuck here?” It occurred to Stanley that the public defender probably had the right idea about trying to plead to a lesser offense. With the prime suspect found passed out, evidence of premeditation might be hard to come by. He may have worked summers in corporate firms, but criminal law and procedure were his best subjects in law school.
“That’s why I need your help.” Johansson’s request sounded as casual as if he were asking to borrow a pencil. “You can help me do some digging.” He leaned forward and pleaded with his friend. “I can’t afford a private investigator, and you already know some of my employees and competitors. You’ve studied the industry. You’re a skilled interviewer, and you have a law degree. Shit, interviewing people is your profession. I can’t think of anyone else better qualified to figure out who did this.”
Stanley was too shocked to object immediately. Even if he were comfortable with the insane proposition, which he most assuredly was not, this did not seem like a crime requiring much research. He studied the prisoner and tried to see even a single hint that his friend was not guilty. He resisted the conclusion that the tears running down the face of the accused were exculpatory.
“Don,” he let him down slowly, “you’ve got to think this through more clearly. You need professionals to help you with this mess. Isn’t there some way you could raise the money?” Tears didn’t prove anything, but Stanley hated to see anyone look so hopeless.
The prisoner sat, shoulders slumped, drained of the energy that had animated him just minutes before. “My parents disowned me. My competitors are not going help me out. It’d just make them look bad, not to mention that it’s not in their best economic interest.”
“Don’t you have any friends?”
“Apart from you?” He managed a weak smile. “Stan, any of my friends who have enough money are in the business. To all outward appearances, I just killed one of their own. I don’t think they’ll be organizing fundraisers for my defense anytime soon.”
Stanley sensed that he was right. A notorious pornographer accused of brutally killing a beautiful woman was unlikely to generate much sympathy anywhere. He wracked his mind for another way to convince Don that the plan to use a sociology professor as a criminal investigator was preposterous. “Was the public defender really that bad? You said yourself, from an outside perspective, getting the charges pleaded down to a lesser offense would be a rational strategy.”
“I didn’t do it.” He waited for Stanley to meet his gaze. “Look at me,” he insisted. “I didn’t do it.”
He refused to look away, holding the professor’s eyes for a long moment. This is crazy, Stanley thought. He’s probably a sociopath who can lie more convincingly than regular people can tell the truth. Nonetheless, the pleading brown eyes begged to be believed, and he cursed the gene that made it so hard to say no to his parents, siblings, teachers, colleagues, wife and friends. He was determined to deny the crazy request, but Don’s abject declaration of innocence demanded that Stanley at least hear the full story. He felt a sudden and unexpected resurgence of an ancient love for the law and asked his friend what had happened.
* * *
Angela was standing and stretching when Stanley finally returned, her posterior sore from two hours on the unforgiving wooden seats in the waiting area. She jammed a nearly finished paperback into her purse as he walked slowly toward her, hands in his pockets, pensively biting the corner of his lip. Of one mind about escaping the station as quickly as possible, they slipped out of the room and the building without a word.
“They sure kept you long enough,” she put a concerned hand on his shoulder once they were in the car. “What the heck did they want?”
“Huh? Oh, I only talked to the detective for a couple of minutes.” He was looked out the window back at the jail. He rapped the glass with his knuckle before replying. “I spent the whole time with Don.”
“Are you kidding me? Is that why the cops were looking for you?”
“Yeah. He wanted to talk to me.”
“But why?” She did not like the thought of him alone with the man who had bashed Jade Delilah’s face into an unrecognizable pulp. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Probably not. Didn’t we see a donut shop around the corner when we drove in? Let’s talk there. I need some caffeine.”
In true California fashion, they drove the two blocks down the street and parked on the shady side of the familiar franchise. The business was decorated in bright pink and green, normally a garish affront to Angela’s aesthetic sensibilities but now a welcome relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the police station. Apart from the young Indian girl behind the counter and an elderly man reading a newspaper, they were alone. She resisted the urge to order a Bavarian cream donut with her coffee and gave herself a mental pat on the back.
When they were finally seated in a window booth, with iced coffees in hand, Stanley recounted the bizarre meeting with Don. She listened intently and with increasing disapproval.
“Don claims that he was starting a new muscle relaxant and pain killer for his back on the night of the party. He can’t remember exactly how many glasses of wine he had, but he began feeling woozy and nauseous on the dais, so he went back to his office. He remembers opening the door but nothing else until he was being hauled away by the security guards.”
“Well, that’s convenient.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. Her own reconstruction of the crime was quite different. Don had whispered an invitation to Jade to come talk in his office. He came on to her there and she rebuffed his advances once again, maybe offering a nasty insult to his manhood. In a drunken rage, he had given in to his first violent impulse, and the result was a dead porn star flat the floor.
“The memory lapse is not necessarily convenient for him,” Stanley explained. “If he had seen someone else in the room, he could point the finger at them.”
“So, he says he�
�s innocent, even though he has no memory of what happened?” Sometimes her husband could be truly dense. “Isn’t the most generous explanation, even if you believe his story, that the drugs and booze pushed him over the edge?”
“Pain killers, muscle relaxants, and alcohol are all depressants, Angie. Passing out is just as possible as rage, especially with someone like Don who’s not naturally a violent person.”
“But the first story you ever told me about him was violent! He beat up your frat brothers over that girl.” Getting her husband to admit the obvious could be a challenge sometimes.
“That was righteous anger, not homicidal rage, and that story is fundamentally about treating women with respect, not killing them. Before last night, I would have thought that he was incapable of committing this kind of crime. Why should I change my opinion now?”
“Well,” she explained as if he were a third grader, “maybe because he was found next to a dead woman with a bloody bat in his hand.” Stanley was silent, and she checked out the traffic backing up on the boulevard before turning back to him. “Do you really think there’s a chance in hell that he didn’t do it?”
“I don’t know, but he wants me to help him find out.”
“Find out what?”
“Who killed Jade Delilah.” She searched for any sign that he was joking and saw none. He drained the last bit of his coffee and leaned back. “He wants me to find the real killer.”
She laughed. “Did you tell him to look in the mirror? Or maybe he should ask O.J. for help.” He did not respond to her barb, so she reminded him of some facts that he conveniently seemed to have forgotten. “Are you seriously thinking about helping him? Don’t you remember what Ginger Porsche told us? He was in love with Jade but she wouldn’t give him the time of day. If there’s a more common motive for murder, I’d like to know what it is. Did he admit to you that he loved her?”
“Yeah,” he answered, “he said he loved her and that she didn’t love him. He said she had some problems in her childhood that needed working through before she could really be with any man.”