She lowers her voice. “And do you understand that Dr. Beckert believes it was suicide?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Look,” she says, “I know it isn’t going to change anything, but I have to ask—”
Scott Kent holds up his hand. His eyes turn the color of cobalt. He looks at Rosie and says in a tone that leaves no doubt, “I’ve seen Dr. Beckert’s report. My father was an All-American football player at UCLA and an officer in the Marines. He got a Purple Heart in Vietnam after he rescued three men from a burning village. He always believed the mark of a true man was his ability to handle adversity with dignity.” His voice is starting to crack. “My father was a lawyer, a businessman, a soldier and a hero. He never panicked. I don’t care what Dr. Beckert says. He never met him. My father did not commit suicide. And there is nothing that he—or you—can do to convince me that he did.”
# # #
Rosie and I are still in Ward’s office. Scott Kent has left to catch his flight. Ward is still sitting behind her desk, and Lisa Yee has joined us. She drops a box of manila file folders on the table in front of me and says, “We made copies of everything we have: autopsy reports on MacArthur and Kent; police reports; crime scene photos; fingerprint analysis on the house, the car and the Oscar; information about the film and the studio project; background materials.” She shrugs and says, “See you at the arraignment.”
“Can we talk about this for a few minutes?” Rosie asks.
Ward responds for her. “There’s nothing to talk about. We’ll play out our respective roles the way we always do. Your client will plead not guilty and you’ll ask for bail. We’ll oppose it. The judge will set a date for a preliminary hearing. It will be over in fifteen minutes. Then we’ll go downstairs and plead our cases to the media. In my seven second sound bite, I’ll tell everybody we have an airtight case. You’ll proclaim your client’s innocence. The TV stations will try the case on the front steps of the Hall. We’ll get to see ourselves on the news. If it’s a slow night, we might even make CNN or Entertainment Tonight.”
I’m not sure if I’m more disturbed by Ward’s self-confidence, her cynicism or the fact that her description of what is likely to happen is probably dead accurate.
Rosie lowers her voice and says, “You didn’t mention the charge.”
“First-degree murder.” She hesitates and adds, “We’re thinking about special circumstances.”
Rosie scowls. “The death penalty?”
The posturing begins. “Absolutely.”
Rosie’s tone turns incredulous. “In a circumstantial case? On what basis?”
Ward remains defiant. “The old standby: one ninety-point-two-a-one.”
I’ve never been impressed by people who memorize and recite penal code sections. Ward’s triumphant expression suggests she’s hoping I’ll ask her for an explanation of the cite. She won’t get the satisfaction. Section 190.2(a) of the penal code contains a list of “special circumstances” where the death penalty may be imposed. It includes multiple murders, murders of judges or police officers and murders in connection with a robbery, kidnapping or rape. Section 190.2(a)(1) says the death penalty may be imposed if the murder was intentional and carried out for financial gain. I say, “This isn’t a murder for hire.”
“Maybe not, but the courts are willing to apply the statute to cases which involve other types of financial gains.”
It’s an aggressive interpretation. She may be bluffing. I won’t be able to talk her out of it, so I start fishing. “What financial gain?”
“I already told you. The proceeds of a million dollar life insurance policy and a substantial inheritance under her husband’s will. His death voided the terms of her prenuptial agreement. His assets must now be distributed under his will. She gets half of everything except the winery.”
I know, I know. Time to try a diversion. I ask, “What about MacArthur’s son?”
“What about him?”
“He had a huge financial stake. Under the will, he gets half of his father’s cash and securities, including half of the stock in MacArthur Films. He gets the winery.”
“So?”
“If you’re looking for people with financial motives, you shouldn’t rule him out.”
Ward feigns disbelief. “You think he killed his own father?”
“You should consider the possibility.”
“No way. Play it out. All he had to do was wait a few months for his father to divorce Angel. His father would have reworked his will to reinstate his son as the sole beneficiary. He could have just waited and he would have gotten everything when his father died.”
“Maybe he needed the money. Maybe his father had other ideas.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. There was no guaranty he would have made Richard the sole beneficiary.” I don’t want to mention the mistress in L.A. who might have gotten a piece of the action. It might suggest Angel had a motive to kill her husband in a jealous rage.
Ward is defiant. “Get real, Mike. Look at the facts before you start trying to deflect blame. Do you think any jury will believe Richard had this figured out? He couldn’t possibly have planned it. He didn’t know when everybody was going to leave. He couldn’t have known Angelina would pass out—if she did. We have no evidence that he drove her to the bridge.”
“I’m only suggesting you consider all the possibilities. For that matter, you certainly shouldn’t rule out Marty Kent.”
“He committed suicide.”
“I’m not convinced. Neither is his son.”
“Rod Beckert is. You’re not the chief medical examiner.”
“He never met Marty Kent.”
She still isn’t persuaded. “He was depressed and under a lot of pressure.”
“He was a lawyer and ex-Marine who knew how to handle it. Just because he may have killed himself doesn’t rule him out as a suspect.”
“There isn’t a shred of evidence.”
I feel the back of my neck getting red hot. “Sure there is. His fingerprints were on the steering wheel of MacArthur’s car. He could have hit him, put Angelina in the car and driven to the bridge.”
“Just because he touched the steering wheel doesn’t mean he was involved. It was a new car. Maybe MacArthur let him take it out for a drive.”
I’m not giving up. “And maybe he killed him and drove Angelina to the bridge.”
“Get us some evidence and we’ll look into it.”
“What about the other fingerprints on the Oscar?” I say. “You told us earlier they were still trying to identify them. Did you find Kent’s?”
She hesitates for an instant before she answers, “Yes.”
This helps. “So his fingerprints were on the murder weapon. That should be enough to consider him a suspect.”
“Not unless you find some other evidence.”
This gets a glance from Rosie, who says, “Whose fingerprints did you find on the Oscar?”
Ward locates the file containing the fingerprint analysis and opens it to page four. She hands it to Rosie and says, “There.”
Rosie’s eyes get wider. “It says here you’ve identified eight people whose fingerprints were found on the Oscar.” In addition to Big Dick and Angel, she rattles off the names of Kent, Little Richard, Petrillo, Ellis, Crown and Springer.
“So?”
“You’ve identified Kent’s fingerprints on the murder weapon and the car. You’ve identified Little Richard’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. How can you rule them out?”
Ward points a finger at me and says, “Everybody—including your client—confirmed they passed the Oscar around while they were drinking champagne. That’s how they got their fingerprints on the statue. There isn’t another shred of evidence to connect anybody else to the attack on Big Dick MacArthur.” She taps the desk with her pencil and adds, “No fingerprints, no footprints, no blood—nothing.” Ward holds up her hands and begins to stand.
Rosie isn’t fini
shed. “Come on, Nicole,” she says. “Your case has a lot of holes. You’re going to be embarrassed if we start pointing them out in open court.”
Ward acts unimpressed. It’s her turn to probe. “Like what?”
“There wasn’t any blood on Angelina’s arms or clothing. How could she have hit her husband with an Oscar and not been covered with blood?”
“She washed the blood off her hands. Then she got rid of her bloody clothing.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere between the house and the bridge.”
“Have you found it?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t she get rid of the Oscar at the same time?”
“I don’t know.”
We act out our respective roles for a few more intense minutes. Ward remains firm. Rosie rifles through the file folders. She points out that Angel, Little Richard, Petrillo, Ellis, Crown, Springer and Kent were all at the house late into the night. “Surely,” she says, “you must have considered the possibility that somebody may have come back?”
“Of course. There is no evidence to connect anybody to MacArthur’s death.”
It’s a standoff. We aren’t going to get the charges dropped in Ward’s office. I’m about to respond when I see Rosie lift her hand slightly. It’s time to regroup.
As we’re leaving, I look at Lisa Yee and say, “Can I see you for a minute?”
She darts a quick glance toward her boss and says, “I think Nicole should be there if it involves this case.”
“It involves a drug charge against a young man named Benjamin Taylor.”
Yee steals another look at Ward, who nods. Yee says, “I’ll meet you in my office in five minutes.”
*****
Chapter 23
“My Hands Are Tied”
“Our office has put a high priority on prosecuting drug dealers. We intend to take a hard line to try to stem the flow of the hallucinogenic known as Ecstasy.”
— ADA Lisa Yee. San Francisco Chronicle. Monday, June 7.
Rosie asks, “So, what did you think?”
We’re standing in the hallway just outside Lisa Yee’s office a few minutes later. Yee is still with Ward. “About what?” I ask.
“Scott Kent.”
“I think he’s a decent guy who is going through a tough time. I’d like to believe him. It must be difficult to consider the possibility that his father committed suicide.”
Rosie nods. “But?”
“We have to take what he says with a certain amount of skepticism. Put yourself in his shoes. Your father’s body was found the day before yesterday. You’re having enough trouble dealing with his sudden death. The last thing you want to do is try to come to grips with the fact that he may have killed himself.” I reflect and add, “I saw it when I was a priest. People won’t acknowledge that possibility until they’re confronted with solid evidence. It’s human nature.”
She nods, but doesn’t say anything.
I ask, “What about Little Richard? He had a material financial stake.”
“He would have been entitled to more if he had waited for his father to get divorced.”
“Maybe he has some pressing obligations. And it wasn’t a particularly warm and fuzzy father-son relationship.”
“You and your father didn’t have a particularly warm and fuzzy relationship, either. That doesn’t mean you would have killed him.”
“This is different. We should be looking at every possibility. At the very least, I think we should pay him another visit.”
Rosie agrees with me.
I ask, “What did you think about Nicole’s decision to ask for special circumstances?”
“I expected it.”
“Do you think she’s serious?”
“Probably. It’s also a negotiating ploy. She’s trying to put more pressure on Angel. We’ll have to deal with it.”
I see Lisa Yee coming toward us. I turn back to Rosie and say, “I’m going to talk to her about Ben’s case. Do you have time to sit in with us?”
“No. I have to make a couple of calls. Then I need to talk to Angel.”
# # #
“Benjamin Taylor is a drug dealer,” Lisa Yee says to me. She’s sitting behind a beat up metal desk in the windowless office that she shares with another young ADA. She adds, “I get paid to prosecute drug dealers.”
“He’s a kid, Lisa. He’s never been arrested. He’s never even had a traffic ticket.”
Mountains of paper cover her desk and her mismatched file cabinet. Her dry cleaning hangs in a cellophane bag on a nail hammered into the back of her heavy wooden door. An overworked fan is losing the battle against the eighty-five degree heat. A brown bag lunch sits in her open briefcase on the linoleum floor. Her diploma from Hastings hangs on the wall just above her desk. She graduated with highest honors and could have landed a job with any firm in town. She’s sitting in this stuffy office because she wants to put the bad guys away. She tugs at the cotton blouse that is sticking to her skin and says, “He was selling Ecstasy, Mike.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“We have an eyewitness.”
“Whom you’ve granted immunity to testify against him.”
“It’s part of the process. We’re trying to slow the distribution channels. Do you have any idea what a serious problem we have with this drug?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. It’s dangerous stuff.” I opt for a tone of reason. “Look,” I say, “he’s prepared to admit he had some in his possession, but he wasn’t selling. You’ve got a shaky case. A wobbler at best.” In the vernacular of the Hall, a “wobbler” is a case that falls in the gray area between a misdemeanor and a felony. The DAs make the final call. “You’ll never get a felony charge to stick.”
Yee isn’t buying. “He was carrying a plastic bag with a hundred tablets.”
“They were in a backpack somebody handed to him right before the police arrived.”
She smirks. “Promise me you’re going to come up with something better than the old line about your client having been left holding the bag.”
This isn’t going well. “If he was selling, why did he have only twelve dollars in his pocket?”
“He wasn’t a good salesman. Besides, it was early.”
“It was three in the morning.”
The corner of her mouth turns up. “That’s when most raves are getting started.”
I feel old.
“Besides,” she adds, “Ecstasy is cheap. You have to sell a lot of it to make real money.”
It’s true. That’s one of the attractions of the drug. I try again. “And you really intend to charge a nineteen-year-old kid with a felony?”
“Yes.”
I take a deep breath. I hold up my hands and say, “Lisa, how are we going to fix this?”
She strokes her chin and says, “We can’t.”
“Be reasonable. Charge him with possession. Put him on probation. I’ll convince him to do some community service.”
She repeats, “We can’t.”
I don’t like her tone. “What’s this all about?”
She’s less than convincing when she repeats, “It’s our job to put away drug dealers.”
“Lisa,” I say, “this is just between us. You must have more interesting things to do with your time than to prosecute first-timers. What’s really going on here?”
She points toward her door and says, “Shut it.”
I do as I’m told. The room can’t possibly get any stuffier. I wait.
Her eyes turn serious. “This stays in this room.”
“Understood.”
She points toward the ceiling and says, “This comes from above.”
“Nicole?”
“Higher.”
There is nobody higher in the Hall. “Who?”
“The mayor.”
What? “Since when does he get involved in prosecutorial decisions?”
“He did in this case.”
�
��Why?”
“He’s taking a lot of heat. The Chronicle did a series about how we’re supposedly soft on drugs. They said we’re running a halfway house and not a prosecutor’s office. It’s an election year. The mayor got all hot and bothered and called the chief. He called Nicole and told her to tighten the screws—particularly in cases involving raves and late-night parties. Anything involving coke, heroin and Ecstasy is getting prime time play. The kids who were picked up last weekend are going to get their chops busted.”
MD03 - Criminal Intent Page 26