“Of all the trucks in all of Los Angeles, the
real killer
(Joe leaned heavy on the sarcasm) picks yours. Man, what a piece of bad luck that was for you.” In other words, forget about it.
Salazar didn’t have a comeback for that.
So we’re stuck. Salazar insists he didn’t kill any of the women, and didn’t leave the panties in his truck. He also made the point, as proof that he isn’t the killer, that the police hadn’t found any articles of underwear from the other murdered women. “If I kept one pair of underpants, like they say I did,” he demanded, “why didn’t I keep all of them?”
That was another easy pigeon to shoot down, which Joe did, and not gently. “Because she had just been killed, and you didn’t have time to get rid of them. That’s the logical answer, which the D.A. would throw in our face,” he bluntly told our client. “Leave this alone, for now. We have other matters to deal with.”
We are going to do our best for Salazar. We always do. But this is going to be a brutal case to defend, and we are not going to let ourselves look like fools or jerks. Whatever defense we decide to put on, it will be as logical and reasonable to the twelve men and women who will be on our jury as we can make it.
So here we are, in the present. “We got your appointment book back,” Joe tells Salazar, reaching into his hand-tooled leather briefcase, which his wife gave him for his tenth anniversary in the office (twenty years ago). He takes out a dog-eared notebook, the kind with the dappled black-and-white cover used by kids in elementary school. This beat-up appointment book, which Salazar carried with him, had been taken from him at the scene, along with everything else. Joe smoothes a hand over the frayed cover as if to buff up the contents, like a genie rubbing a magic lamp, hoping for three wishes. “The police made a copy, and if there is incriminating material in it, they’ll use it against you. There’s nothing we can do about that. But hopefully, we’ll be the ones who can use it to your benefit, and not them.”
Several of the pages in the book have been marked with Post-its. The date on the first flagged page conforms to the night the first victim was murdered. The coroner had pegged the time of death between two and five in the morning, so Salazar’s whereabouts between midnight and dawn that day are critical. The same holds true for all the other days when one of the murders was committed. Salazar is only being tried for the latest crime, because that’s the one that has direct evidence linking him to the victim, but in reality, he will be on trial for all of them, because it’s a given that the murders were the work of a single man. If we can prove that he could not have been where one or more of those crimes were committed, that will be a huge boost for us.
We already have one strike against us in that regard, a big one, because of Salazar being in the vicinity of one of the earlier murders the night he was arrested with the stolen television sets. So far, the police haven’t proved he was near any of the other killings on the days and dates they occurred, but we know they’re working their butts off to find another connection. If they do, it will be more gasoline they can throw on the pyre.
“Let’s get started,” Joe says. “We have a lot of ground to cover.” He dives into his briefcase again and pulls out a large manila envelope. He sets it on the table next to Salazar’s appointment book, opens the flap, and pulls out a stack of eight-by-ten color photos of the murdered women. Details about each one, including where she lived and where her body was found, are stapled to the backs of the pictures. They have been stacked in sequence, from the first victim to the last.
Joe lays the top picture in front of Salazar. “Do you recognize her?” he asks. “Take your time.”
Salazar scrutinizes the photo carefully. Then he looks up. “No.”
“You’re positive?” I ask him. I’m suspicious now of everything he tells me, no matter how innocuous. I wish that weren’t the case, but I can’t help it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I’m not going to be hoodwinked again.
“You’ve never laid eyes on this woman?” I pick the picture up, turn it over, and scan the information. “She lived on Medio Drive. Do you have any clients on Medio?”
I pick up his logbook to look for myself, but he stops me. “Yes,” he says. “The Shapiros. Sixteen-twenty.”
“You know the address by heart?”
“I know the addresses of all my clients,” he says with a proud voice. “Over fifty of them.” He taps his temple with a finger. “I don’t need the book to tell me where they live.”
“So you might have seen her,” I press. “If only in passing.”
His forehead wrinkles in concentration. “I suppose so,” he grudgingly allows. “But I don’t remember her.”
Joe and I exchange a concerned glance. If the prosecution hasn’t already made this connection, they will.
I put the picture aside, pick up the next one, and put in front of him. “What about her?” I ask.
Salazar looks at this picture with the same intensity with which he viewed the previous one. “No,” he says firmly. “I don’t recognize her, either.”
I check the information on the back of the picture. “South Marino Avenue, in Brentwood. Do you have any clients who live there?” I ask.
“No,” he answers. But before I can relax my guard, he says, “but I have two clients on Alta Avenue, around the corner. The Steins and the Lomaxes.”
“So it’s possible you had seen her, too,” I state. “And she, you.”
He shakes his head in exasperation. “Yes, it is possible,” he admits. “But I do not remember her. When I am working, I am not looking at people walking up and down the street. I don’t have time to sightsee. Besides, I am a married man. I don’t look at other women that way.”
“What way is that?” Joe asks.
“Checking them out,” Salazar says in exasperation. “Which is what I would have to do to remember them.” He picks up the picture, stares at it. “She is a pretty woman …”
“Was,” Joe corrects him. “She’s dead. She was murdered.”
“Sorry,” Salazar says. He sounds as if he’s really contrite. “Was. But what I was going to say is, she is not special looking. You would not remember a woman who looks like this unless you actually knew her. Which I did not,” he states emphatically.
“If you say so,” Joe gives in. Like me, he’s skeptical. He’s also worried that if Salazar is lying about knowing these women, it could backfire on us. “Let’s move on,” he says, dismissing this line of inquiry, for now.
Salazar does not admit to knowing any of the murdered women. This is important, because the cops’ main witness stated that it appeared to him that the victim knew the man she was talking to, shortly before she was murdered. The man who may well have been her killer.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that all the victims lived, and were killed, in proximity to one or more of Salazar’s gardening clients. He was in their space on a steady basis, whether he ever actually saw them or not.
As far as we know, the police only have that one witness. An old man who thinks he saw a man and a woman talking, late at night, on a dark street, from a full block away. That’s not going to hold up well in court. I don’t know if the prosecutors will even use him. He certainly can’t identify Salazar—they’ve already tried that. They brought the old gent in and showed him Salazar’s picture, along with other men who fit Salazar’s general description. To his credit, the man would not give them even a maybe.
One for our side. But in the overall scheme of things, not very important.
Joe’s and my fear, which we have discussed at length, is that another witness will emerge who will more clearly link Salazar to one of the murdered women. If that happens, we’ll really be screwed.
“Let’s go back to the night before you were arrested,” Joe says, as he puts the pictures of the slain women back in the envelope. “From the time you left your house.”
“We’ve been over this a million times,” Salazar complains. “I’ve told you everything I can remember.”
“So we’ll go over it again,” Joe scolds him. “What, you have something better to do?”
Salazar scowls. “Funny.”
“That’s me, the class clown,” Joe says. He puts his tape recorder on the table, turns it on, takes out a notebook, and opens it to a clean page. I do the same, and lead off with our first question, the same one I asked him the last time: “What time did you get up?”
Salazar’s commitment to his businesses, rather than being a positive, is turning out to be a huge thorn in our side. He often stayed up late and woke early, doing his bookkeeping or other obligations, which means that most of the time his wife was asleep when he got into bed, and was still asleep when he got up. Often he was gone from the house before she and their kids were awake. So she won’t be able to verify his schedule.
At least she’s still in her husband’s corner. I’ve seen marriages shipwrecked on rocks far less treacherous than these. I think of my own situation—a single woman, newly pregnant, whose longtime relationship has collapsed. If Salazar’s wife had bailed on him, I would not have blamed her. But despite everything, she’s still behind him. He has declared his innocence and that is good enough for her. No matter what happens to him, they have a lasting marriage. I’m jealous.
“I woke up at four-thirty.” His voice is weary with repetition and with the strain of having to cope with being in jail.
“You’re positive,” I challenge. I look at my notes from our previous session to check his answer.
“Yes.”
“Because?”
“I looked at the clock.”
Same answer as before, which is good. He has to be consistent in every detail. If one little item turns out to be contradictory, everything he says will be suspect.
“Okay,” I say, looking at Joe, who nods that he’s satisfied. “Then what?”
He got dressed. He went into the kitchen and read through his appointment book, to make sure there weren’t any changes to his schedule he had forgotten about—there weren’t. He drank a glass of apple juice and a cup of instant coffee that he heated in the microwave. He washed and dried the glass and cup and put them away. He turned on his computer, which was in the kitchen nook, and skimmed his e-mail in case he had a last-minute message from a client. There weren’t any. He checked the voice mail on his cell phone. No messages.
Five-fifteen. He went into his children’s bedroom, kissed them good-bye, but didn’t wake them. He went outside, got into his truck, which was parked in the driveway (the small garage is used for storage), and drove off. He took the 60 to the 10 west, exiting at Barrington. He drove north to Wilshire, then west to the McDonald’s near Bundy, where he got an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee to go. His first job was nearby, but he couldn’t start work that early, so he ate his fast-food breakfast and read his Spanish-language newspaper while he waited until he could start. He was at his first job, minding his own business, when he was arrested.
Joe signals the jailers that we are done. They unlock the door, come in, cuff and shackle Salazar. They are not tender with him, but they aren’t abusive, either. They wouldn’t be with his lawyers present.
“Is there anything we can do for your family?” I ask as they are leading him out.
His composure breaks, and he starts to shake. “Get the world off their backs,” he pleads. “I don’t know how much more hurt they can take.”
Joe pays for our lattes at the Starbucks down the block from our office. I offer to kick in for mine, but he declines—for three dollars he’ll be a big spender.
We sit at a quiet corner table and compare notes. “We’re spinning our wheels,” Joe says. He’s not being overly glum, just realistic. That there has not been another killing since Salazar was arrested lends more weight to him really being the killer. That there had been an earlier, similar lull in the murders is considered to be an unimportant anomaly.
Something’s been eating at me, and I finally figure out what it is. “From the little we know,” I say, thinking out loud, “the victims knew the killer. At least one of them did. That’s what the eyewitness said.” We have the police report.
Joe gives me a look that says don’t go chasing in blind alleys, but I press on. “And let’s assume Salazar really didn’t know them, as he claims. And for the sake of argument, let’s say he isn’t the killer. So, what if the panties weren’t put in the truck that morning, but sometime earlier, when an opportunity presented itself? They could have been there for weeks. Salazar is in and out of his truck all day long, and he doesn’t lock it. If the killer knew the victim, he could have taken a pair of her undies long before he killed her.”
Joe doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t shoot me down, either.
“The police got an anonymous call at six in the morning, tipping them off to Salazar,” I continue. “Doesn’t that seem the least bit suspicious to you? Pretty damn coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”
Joe ponders the ideas I’ve thrown at him for about a second. “It’s still a molehill. We can’t base our defense on wild suppositions.”
“But at least it’s a hill, it isn’t completely flat ground.” Another idea comes to me. “We need to find out if these women knew one another. And we also have to find out if they all knew some John Doe in common, even if they didn’t know one another.”
“How are we going to do that?” Joe asks me. It’s a reasonable question.
“Talk to people who knew the victims, for starters.”
“We’re defending the man who’s accused of killing them. We’re the last people they’re going to want to talk to.”
“They will be reluctant, yes.” Like climbing the Berlin Wall. “But some might, if we—I—can convince them that maybe Salazar isn’t the killer, and the real one is still out there.”
Joe smiles. “You’d better polish your tongue.”
“I will. But it’s possible,” I argue. I’m trying to convince myself of that as much as I’m trying to sway him. “Woman to woman. It could have been one of them.” I sip my latte. “It could have been me. I was out late in those neighborhoods some of those nights.”
“You would have outrun him,” Joe says. He’s chiding me, but underneath, we’re both serious. “But what the hell. Give it a shot,” he gives in, knowing I’ll grind him down until I get my way. “We have to try everything.” He finishes his latte. I point to his upper lip. He wipes off foam with a napkin. “You actually think there’s a chance this guy is innocent, don’t you.” It’s a rhetorical question.