And the Sea Will Tell (25 page)

She seemed reluctant to pick up the pad.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to concentrate all day at work.”

“Do it when you get home.”

“I like to relax then.” It was that little girl I hadn’t seen for several hours.

“Jennifer, the charge against you couldn’t be more serious. You’ve already been convicted of the theft of the boat. If you’re going to have any chance of getting a not-guilty verdict on the murder charge, you’ve got to work hard, very hard.”

“I know,” she said, but her tone suggested no real concern. She casually reached for the pad as she stood up.

A bit unnerved, I escorted her to the elevator. When I returned alone to the office, I went back into the library and sat down. Everyone had long since departed the suite I shared with two other attorneys. The only sound was the soft tap-tapping of my pencil eraser against the tabletop as I contemplated the exotic story Jennifer Jenkins had begun to tell.

Apart from the mystery of the case (and the fact it seemed almost fictional and was completely different from any of the other murder cases I had ever handled or knew of, most of which fall into routine categories and have familiar settings), I was immediately struck by the terrible irony of Mac Graham, reportedly (per the newspapers) wanting to get away from a big-city life that was becoming increasingly unsafe by going to a peaceful, idyllic South Sea isle, ending up brutally murdered and left at the bottom of a lagoon, a worse end than could have ever happened to him in San Diego.

What unimaginable hell exists right here on earth. Had the woman I just spoke to been responsible, along with her boyfriend, for the horrors that had befallen the Grahams in the summer of 1974?

Although I don’t feel I’m particularly adept at judging people—especially early on—to me, Jennifer had not acted like a guilty person. I have interviewed and/or cross-examined many individuals who were guilty of serious crimes, and not one has ever been as matter-of-fact and detached as she. Guilty minds are normally beset with fears and suspicions that have a way of surfacing. I saw nothing but casualness and openness in Jennifer. On the other hand, neither did she act like an innocent person accused of committing the most heinous crime of all. Such defendants are usually angered by the cruel twist of circumstances that has them “standing in the dock” facing untrue charges, and they can’t wait to prove their innocence to the world. Since Jennifer did not act entirely like either a guilty person or an innocent one, what it came down to on my first meeting with her was a simple visceral feeling that she was not involved in the murders. But obviously I still had my doubts. These would have to be addressed in many other meetings with her before I could make up my mind whether or not I should represent her. I also reminded myself of what an old-timer at the DA’s office told me early in my career about a French adage:
Une femme ne révèle pas sa culpabilité aussi facilement qu’un homme
.—A woman does not reveal her guilt as easily as a man.

There was something in particular that bothered me. I did not realize what it was until the following morning, when I reviewed my notes over a cup of coffee in our sunny kitchen at home.

Although she had repeatedly expressed sadness at the deaths of Mac and Muff Graham, Jennifer did not talk as if
murder
had taken place on Palmyra, only two terrible accidental deaths for which
no one
was responsible. I confronted the issue head-on at our next session as soon as she, the loyal Puffer, and I were once again settled in the law library.

“Jennifer, it’s clear that Muff was murdered. And undoubtedly Mac was, too.”

She raised her dark-brown eyebrows in surprise, gazing at me as if I had offered a novel thesis. “As I said, they went fishing and never came back. We found their overturned dinghy. I’ve always thought they drowned or were attacked by sharks.”

“The bones of drowning victims or people eaten by sharks don’t show up seven years later in a metal box.”

She shrugged. “Len Weinglass says they don’t know
for sure
that Muff was ever in the box.”

“Jennifer, please. Obviously, Mac and Muff were murdered, and no bluebird did it. We’re not going to get anywhere shadowboxing with reality. Only four people were on the island. Either Buck and you did it together, or Buck did it alone. The circumstances simply don’t permit any other reasonable conclusion. At this point, I’m willing to assume you weren’t involved. Which makes Buck the lone killer.”

“I just can’t see Buck killing Mac and Muff. They were so nice to us—especially Mac. He was a prince of a man. He was always coming over and giving us fish he’d caught. He kept Buck in cigarettes. We played chess together.” Her arguments seemed to summon up vivid memories. “They were
good people
, Vince.”

“Yes, they sound like they were.”

“Buck wouldn’t have—” Her voice cracked. It was her first display of emotion.

She rose from her chair and nervously circled the table, running her finger along a row of law books as she passed in front of them.

“Last summer, at a hearing in Honolulu,” she began, “I sat next to Buck in court. I hadn’t seen him in years.” (During our first session, Jennifer told me that she hadn’t even heard from Buck since he’d written her from prison several years earlier. She said she did not answer his letter and assured me she no longer had any emotional attachment to him.) “Before court started, we had a chance to talk. I told him I had never believed anything different had happened to Mac and Muff other than they went fishing and had an accident. Buck said that’s what he always thought had happened, too.”

Finished with her brief tour of the room, she scratched Puffer behind the ear and sat back down. “I asked Buck how he could explain that Muff’s body had
apparently
been put in a metal box. He said, ‘Maybe Mac did it.’”

She looked up expectantly, perhaps waiting to see how that idea played with me. But I kept quiet.

After the slightest pause, she went on. “I told Buck that didn’t make sense. If Mac wanted to kill Muff, he could have waited for us to leave the next day. They would have been alone on the island, and he could have done whatever he wanted. He could have reported to the authorities that Muff had fallen overboard in the ocean. He could have spent the rest of his life sailing the seven seas on the
Sea Wind
.”

“What was Buck’s response?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything. He just…shrugged, or something.”

“Did you talk about anything else?” I asked.

“Well…” She looked a little embarrassed. “I asked him if he’d go first this time. See, he had asked me to go first during the theft trials, and I did. I was thinking he might want to return the favor this time.”

“What did he say?”

“His exact words: ‘I’m not sticking my neck in no chopping block.’ The judge took the bench then, and we had to keep quiet. I haven’t talked to Buck since.”

“So, after you heard about Muff’s remains being found along with the box, you
did
begin to suspect that Buck had murdered Mac and Muff?”

“No, not really. It just—confused me. I still don’t believe Buck killed them. You have to understand, Vince. I loved Buck very, very much. More than any man in my life, before or since. And I knew the real Buck, the hidden Buck, better than anyone else did. Besides, I was with him every day on Palmyra. I just don’t know how he could have done such a horrible thing right under my nose without my knowing it.”

I leaned back in my hard wooden chair and watched her closely. Guilty suspects typically try, of course, to put the hat on someone else in order to lift suspicion from themselves. But Jennifer would not do that to Buck, even though I had given her the opportunity. She didn’t even make any effort to distance herself from him. And somehow I didn’t sense she was using clever reverse psychology on me.

“What have you written down on your note pad since we last met?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She was back to being breezy.

Somewhat testily, I suggested that she keep the pad and make time to do the homework I had assigned her. I then asked her to continue her story where she had left off at our previous meeting.

In all, it would take three sessions for Jennifer to tell me her complete version of everything that had happened from the moment she had met Buck through all of the events on Palmyra, and on up to the present. In the meantime, I confirmed with Len Weinglass that Jennifer had indeed taken a polygraph examination. In fact, two. The first one had been judged by the examiner to be “inconclusive,” but everyone agreed that one of the key questions had been ambiguously phrased. The second test, Len assured me, was a clear “pass.”

By this time, although Jennifer had done everything possible to convince the world she was guilty, I was coming to believe she was innocent of murder. She was certainly guilty of having loved the wrong man, and she had shown bad judgment in a number of other ways. But I was moving in the direction of concluding that she was one of those rare criminal defendants who is not guilty as charged. Yet, because of one of the most unusual sets of circumstances I’d ever seen or heard of in a murder case, I knew that only a tremendous uphill legal battle would save her from being convicted.

M
ARCH
19, 1982

S
INCE ALL
of the case files were there, my first meeting with Leonard Weinglass was at his office in the Old Bradbury Building, an 1893 historical landmark located in a declining area near the L.A. County Courthouse. This five-story building, complete with an open courtyard, exposed elevator cages, and ornamental rails and banisters, was the kind of place you’d expect to see a gumshoe like Sam Spade hang up his shingle.

When I arrived, Weinglass was on the phone, so I took a seat in his waiting room. Close to hand lay the latest copy of
Mother Jones
, the self-proclaimed “magazine for the rest of us,” a liberal, nonprofit publication based in San Francisco. I smiled…of course.

In addition to the Chicago Seven and Pentagon Papers cases, Weinglass had defended Symbionese Liberation Army soldiers Bill and Emily Harris, and also been involved in the Wounded Knee defense, a Native American
cause célèbre
.

In a long article on him in the
Los Angeles Times
two years earlier in which he was referred to as one of the top trial lawyers in the country, “the Weinglass commitment” was summarized as a “brand of easy-riding radicalism that embraces both a concern for the underdog and an absolute certainty that capitalism is dying.” The forty-eight-year-old barrister was described as anti-nuke, anti-MX missile, anti-big oil, anti-macho interventionist foreign policy, and anti-death penalty.

I couldn’t imagine what Weinglass might think of my prosecutorial background—particularly, the notoriety I had received during some of my death-penalty cases. I suspected he was as incredulous as I that we might end up on the same side in a court of law.

When Weinglass appeared, he greeted me by my first name, suggesting I call him Len, and warmly grasped my outstretched hand. Tieless and bearded, he had long gray-streaked brown hair, with a neat round bald spot at the crown, a kindly smile, and a pleasant voice.

As we settled into his sparsely furnished office, I noticed a large framed sketch of Clarence Darrow on the wall behind him. (Weinglass had been selected as the first recipient of the Clarence Darrow Award in 1974.) To his right was a small bust of Ho Chi Minh.

Since our backgrounds were poles apart, I casually tried to soften the image he might have of me. I explained that as a prosecutor I always abided by the old 5th Canon of Ethics of the American Bar Association that the primary duty of a public prosecutor is to secure justice, not a conviction, and only if a conviction was justice would I have anything to do with a case, and then, only by prosecuting in a fair manner. I was proud, I said, of having been called a “prosecutor with a heart” by one of the leading underground newspapers.

Hoping I wasn’t sounding patronizing, I added that I was in sympathy with the civil rights causes he’d been fighting for throughout the years.

Len, with his smile in place, said he appreciated that. I was amused that he made no effort to toughen any image I might have had of him.

I remembered from the
Times
article that Len was content leading “a simple life,” taking cases that did not violate his principles, and getting by on ten to fifteen thousand dollars a year.

It is said that the principal element that distinguishes a profession from a business is that in a profession, one’s primary obligation is to those he serves, not to himself. In this day and age, where the pursuit of dollars has become the top priority of so many lawyers, and where unconscionable fees as well as overbilling (for example, working one hour and billing for two or three, or billing at the lawyer’s hourly rate for work which, unbeknownst to the client, the lawyer has the paralegal do) are commonplace, Len Weinglass is among the last of a dying breed.

“I imagine you’ve represented, along the way, quite a few people without a fee,” I said.

His smile broadened. “That’s true,” he said, “but I’ve never gone without a meal.” He had a lot of friends around the country, he explained, who happily provided him with room and board when his legal travels took him to their town.

“Allard Lowenstein lived the same way,” I said.

I had come to know Lowenstein, the brainy, inexhaustible former Congressman and lawyer from New York, when he asked me to handle the legal proceedings in his group’s attempt to reopen the investigation into the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. A close friend of the Kennedys, Lowenstein himself was later murdered. He’d become, I knew, kind of a cult figure. A movie was reportedly in the works on him, and it has been said that Lowenstein probably influenced more young people to become political activists in the 1960s than anyone else. Definitely a member of the “left,” Lowenstein is believed by some to have actually triggered the downfall of Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War by giving a stirring call-to-action speech at a massive rally in New York City.