Ipso facto. A phrase not of my generation, although I know what it means in this context. It means we’re screwed unless we get Salazar a better alibi than we have so far.
“Those goddamned underpants. Why the fuck did he hang on to them?” Joe laments for the umpteenth time.
“He says he didn’t put them there,” I remind him. My role is to play devil’s advocate. His is to be real.
“Here we go round the mulberry bush again,” Joe lashes out in exasperation. “They were there. In his truck. And stop already with the conspiracy stuff, you’re hurting my ears.” He’s fed up with our banging our heads against the wall.
“That’s all they have,” he says. “That one lousy piece of evidence. No DNA to connect him to them, no motive. They have no real proof, at least that we know of, that any of them knew him. No eyewitnesses putting him and any of them together.” He’s working up a head of steam, which is out of character for him—an indication of how frustrating this has become. “This should be a slam dunk for us, but it’s the opposite.”
He sticks a finger in his coffee to test for heat. Satisfied, he licks the digit and sips from his cup. This is office coffee he’s drinking, he does it for energy rather than flavor.
“Which is why we have to work the plant angle,” I argue. “It is conceivable.”
“Except—” Joe raises a finger in rebuttal.
“What?”
“No more murders since he was arrested.”
“I’ll grant you that.” I sip my own liquid refreshment. It’s tasteless. “But there was a lull between this last one and the ones that came before too,” I remind him. “If the real killer’s still at large, he could be changing his pattern. Or now that someone has been arrested, he backs off, lets Salazar take the fall. Isn’t that how it happened in the Zodiac case?” I had put that hypothesis to Cordova, during the earlier lag in the killings. It didn’t fit then; it probably doesn’t now either. But a possibility is a possibility even if the odds are basically zilch.
“They never managed to make any charges stick in that case,” Joe says. “This is different. They have their man, and they’re hanging on to him for dear life.” He makes a sour look as he drains the dishwater that passes for coffee from our machine. “We need something that absolutely clears him of one of these killings. Otherwise, we’re fried. And we better hope like hell nothing else comes out of the woodwork.”
He tosses his paper cup from three-point range toward the recycling basket. It clanks against the lip and spins out, onto the floor. Now even more irritated, he bends down to pick it up, squashes it in his hand before dropping it into the bin. “Those fucking panties. What the hell was he thinking?”
“Come in, please.” Cordova ushers the woman into his office. “Have a seat.” He shuts the door and sits down at his desk, opposite her. “You have something to tell me?”
She does. He listens until she’s finished. Then he picks up the phone and orders the suspect book to be brought up to his office. It arrives right away. He begins turning pages, slowly, so she can get a good look.
“Him,” she says, putting her finger on a photograph among others on the page. “This man.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
Cordova keeps a poker face. “Wait here, please.” He exits his office and motions for one of his senior deputies to come over. “This could be the big enchilada,” he says, his voice low but quivering with excitement—that’s how important this is. “Set up a lineup.”
Salazar and seven other men. They look pretty much alike—none of the old days of five blonds and a brunette, or five midgets and a giant. These men are all Latino, and all are about Salazar’s age and size.
“Take your time,” Cordova tells the witness.
She doesn’t need much time. “Second from the left,” she declares emphatically.
“Are you positive? Take your time,” he says again. Always err on the side of caution. “Make sure you’re certain.”
“Second from the left,” she repeats. “I’m sure.”
Cordova picks up the phone and calls Harry Loomis, the District Attorney’s number-one murder-trial lawyer, who is the lead prosecutor on this case. Cordova’s usual façade—the stoic, impassive, emotional armor of the career cop, which buttresses him against the too-true axiom that anything that can go wrong will go wrong—doesn’t hold this time.
This is what he says when Loomis comes to the phone: “Your ship just came in.”
“G
OD FUCKINGDAMNIT!”
Joe hurls the document to the floor as if it is radioactive, which, for our purposes, it is.
I pick the offending pages up and place them on Joe’s desk: an eyewitness’s statement linking Roberto Salazar to one of the murder victims. The witness has positively identified Salazar—first through his picture in the cops’ suspect book, then by looking at him in a lineup—as someone she saw the victim with on the same night the victim was murdered. Her ID of him is 100 percent sure, no equivocation. And according to what is transcribed on these pages, his contact with the victim wasn’t happenstance; they obviously knew each other. Reading between the lines, a sexual relationship is a possibility. The D.A. will try to make that supposition explicit.
We just got the document today, as part of the discovery process. The police have had it for more than a month, but they took their sweet time forwarding it to us. The usual MO—withhold as long as possible. Sometimes we don’t get important material until we’re actually in trial. It was misplaced, lost, they had a brain cramp. The courts will rap their knuckles, but rarely will a judge throw out anything. Mistakes happen. That should not blur the bigger picture, that justice be served. If the defense plays the game the same way, though, they hear about it, loud and clear, particularly if our office is conducting the case, because we don’t have the clout to fight back strongly. Our clients are poor, anonymous, and disadvantaged. No one gives a shit about them except us. They’re guilty anyway, so why split hairs?
We will investigate her to see if there are chinks in her armor. Sometimes there are. Eyewitnesses are notably undependable. There can be intrigues—jealousies, resentments, slights, gamesmanship—that color the supposed impartiality of the truth. The blindfolded lady sometimes sneaks a peek. The witness won’t talk to us, but we can learn a lot about her without her cooperation.
“A month to go,” Joe says, flipping pages on his desk calendar. “These last days are going to fly by like minutes.” He sighs heavily. “The odds are always against us, Jessica, but this one eats it on a stick. Not one damn alibi witness worth a shit, nothing that can help us with reasonable doubt.” He picks up the new material. “And now this.” He crams the pages into his already overstuffed valise—his reading material for tonight. Snapping the case shut, he smiles and shrugs, a
what, me worry?
gesture of futility. “Whatcha gonna do? You do your best, that’s all you can do. Am I right?”
“You’re right, Joe.”
“Don’t lose sleep over this.” He glances at my extended belly, which is swelling more by the day. “You’re sleeping for two.”
“And eating for four,” I crack. In the past month I’ve had these ravenous cravings, like in the old jokes about expectant mothers. To my shock, they’re true. If I didn’t have stupendous willpower, I’d eat a pint of ice cream every night, scarf a bag of tortilla chips, wolf down two double-doubles from In-N-Out Burger—don’t hold the fries. I succumbed to the god of temptation and had one last week; it was delicious. From now on, I have to avoid those places like the plague.
We leave the office, take the elevator down to the ground floor, and walk to the parking lot. The sun is still high, the air hazy—as if the sky were covered with brown gauze. I wave goodbye to Joe, get into my car, a laborious feat in itself now, and head for home. I have a ton of material to read through tonight, and I tire more easily, so it’s a struggle. But I have to do it—if I ever start letting things slide, that will be the day I pack it in. I’m tempted sometimes to do that: let this shit go and practice another type of law, where your emotions aren’t engaged, but I’m not ready to do that; not yet.
I wonder how I’ll feel when this trial is over.
I’m loaded down with shopping bags. I have just come out of the Whole Foods market on Gayley, in Westwood. I’ve gone organic, an insurance policy against the poisons that I am convinced are inherent in regular food. And it tastes better. I should have made this change earlier, when I was in training. I might have shaved those precious seconds from my marathon time.
“Jessica?” The voice comes from behind me. I freeze, but my legs shake involuntarily. Slowly, I turn. Jeremy and I stare at each other from a distance of ten feet, like two animals in a zoo, each on our respective side of the bars. It’s the first time we’ve laid eyes on each other since our violent breakup. His nose has healed, but it’s a bit flatter than before, not as refined. That makes me feel good.
His jaw drops as he takes in my new body. “Jesus. You’re pregnant.”
Immediately, I’m pissed off. “Like you didn’t know?”
“I mean …” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his long, swanlike neck. I never noticed the resemblance to Ichabod Crane before, but it’s definitely there.
“That I’m going to have it? I told you I was.”
He looks at me with incredulity; or maybe it’s an unwillingness to face reality. “Aren’t you awfully big for how far along you are?”
Oh, Jeremy, you always say the exact right thing, you schmuck. “Huge. I’m going to have a brontosaurus. It will be in
The Guinness Book of World Records.
”
“I didn’t mean …” He’s stammering and backtracking like a schoolboy caught peeking into the girls’ locker room.
“That I’m not svelte and sexy, the way you like me?” I set my bags down on the sidewalk and spread my arms wide. “Take a look. This is who I am now. A woman who is pregnant …” I pause for dramatic effect. “With your child.”
He shrivels before my eyes. “Look, Jessica …” His eyes dart back and forth, as if he’s looking for an escape from this nightmare.
“
You
look. Look hard. This is what a pregnant woman looks like, Jeremy.”
People are stopping to watch us, a freak show on the sidewalks of Westwood, Los Angeles, California. Jeremy summons up the courage to face me head-on. “You look beautiful,” he says. “I could never visualize you being pregnant, but you look fantastic.”
My antagonism melts. “Really?”
His head bobs up and down. “The most beautiful pregnant woman I’ve ever seen.”
Where do I go from here? “How are you?” I ask.
“Okay. Getting along.”
“Are you still …” I can’t finish my sentence.
He nods stiffly. “Yes.”
I bend over and pick up my plastic grocery bags. They feel as if they’re stuffed with bowling balls. “Good luck with her. I hope it works out for you.” I hope you catch the plague, too.
He takes a baby step toward me. “Can we get together, Jessica? We have to talk.”
I back away. I can’t let him into my space, I’m too vulnerable. My hormones control me now, not the other way around. “I’m busy. Work, planning for the baby, the rest of my life. Maybe later.” Or maybe never.
He doesn’t press me further. “I hope we can.”
“We’ll see.” I heft the bags in my arms. “I have to go.”
“Do you need any help?”
He means carrying the groceries to my car, not any help I really need. “No. I can manage.” The way I always do, you weasel.
“It’s good to see you, Jessica.”
I don’t reply. He stands in place, not knowing what to do next. Finally he says, “Take care of yourself.”
Who else will? Certainly not you. “You, too.”
Another awkward moment; then I turn away from him and walk toward my car. I want to look back to see if he’s still there, but I force myself not to.
W
E ARE HAVING A
skull session, one of the last ones before the trial starts, which is coming at us like a freight train without brakes. Joe and I along with Adrian Pakula, Siobhan Flynn, another lawyer who is our office’s DNA expert, and Tori Higgens, our investigator. We have reviewed the prosecution’s case ad nauseam. There don’t seem to be any surprises. They don’t need any; they have enough evidence to get their conviction without pulling any underhanded bullshit, as they sometimes do when their case is shaky. That the victim’s panties were found in Salazar’s truck is their hole card, but they can also place him close to where and when another of the murders took place. And they have two eyewitnesses: the old man who saw a victim with a man who fit Salazar’s basic description, which by itself would be worthless, but in the mix will have an effect, and most important, their other witness, the woman who saw a victim talking to Salazar the night she was killed. The witness had picked Salazar out of a legitimate lineup. We will have tough sledding trying to challenge that with any success; the police bent over backward to go by the book.
What we can offer in rebuttal is pathetic: Salazar’s friend Carlos, who will tighten the time frame of one of the killings (but by itself, not tightly enough); the lack of DNA evidence linking Salazar to the evidence; some character witnesses; and Salazar himself. We are not going to have as strong a character-witness presence as in his previous trial—most of them have been scared off by this latest accusation and will not come forward. I don’t blame them. There is a huge difference between speaking up for someone who may have been sandbagged on a charge of transporting stolen television sets and saying a good word for someone who may be a mass murderer. We will not use Salazar’s wife, for the same reasons I didn’t use her in the first trial.
Putting Salazar on the stand runs the risk of convicting him through his own words and actions. The D.A. will treat him like he’s an Inquisition heretic. But unless a miracle happens, we won’t have a choice. He’ll have to speak in his own defense. The jurors, along with public opinion, will demand it.
The purpose of this meeting is to finalize who’s going to do what. We have our game plan. This is one more review to make sure we are all absolutely, positively in synch. Joe is the lead attorney and I’m his second, but I’m going to play a more active role than what is normal for a lawyer of my experience.