Try Fear (14 page)

She stood and greeted us each with an embrace. Sister Mary took her by the arm and sat down with her. It looked like they
were going to pray.

So I went inside to wait.

I knew the courtroom well. I had been arraigned myself here once. I knew what it was like to be stuck in the box where Eric
now sat in his prison jumper.

They knew me here, too. The same commissioner was on the bench. Commissioner K, as he was known. Kenneth Khachatoorian. He
still looked like he should be playing second clarinet in the high school band.

Kate and Sister Mary came in and sat in the back row. I nodded at them and waited as the arraignment calendar meandered along.

When K finally called Eric’s case and I stated my appearance, he smiled. “Well, well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t the celebrity.”

Of course, when he said that, all the other activity stopped at the DA and PD tables, where the churning of files was going
on.

“Nice to see you again, Commissioner,” I said. “Under better circumstances.”

“How right you are. You’re doing criminal now?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“I guess you can relate to your clients, huh?”

Some chuckles from the DA side.

“Right you are,” I said. “Speaking of which, my client is right over there, Mr. Eric Richess. We waive a reading of the complaint
and statement of rights. Ready to plead.”

Commissioner K looked at Eric, who was standing in the box. “Mr. Richess, has your lawyer explained the charges against you?”

“Yeah,” Eric said.

“Do you understand your constitutional rights?”

“I think so.”

“Did your lawyer explain them to you?”

“I think so.”

I winced. Commissioner K winced, too. We were like synchronized swimmers.

“Let’s not think so, shall we?” Commissioner K said. “You are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah.”

“You have the right to a speedy trial. You have the right to a preliminary hearing ten court days from now. If you are held
to answer, any information must be filed within fifteen days, and a trial sixty days after it is so filed, unless you agree
to waive time. Do you understand those rights?”

“Sure.”

“Are you ready to enter a plea?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re charged with violation of Penal Code Section 187, one count of murder. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty,” Eric said.

“All right, let’s set this for preliminary hearing.”

I looked at the arraignment deputy for the DA’s office. He was looking at his PDA.

“We are not going to waive time,” I said, and watched the DDA’s face go into spasm.

“Well then,” Commissioner K said, “since I just told your client about his rights, we’ve got ten court days. Bail is five
hundred thousand.”

Outside the courtroom, I explained the bail situation to Kate. There was no way she was going to be able to come up with fifty
grand, the amount of a bond. I told her I’d front her the money, but she refused. Said she’d come up with it if she could.
I told her she didn’t have to, but she insisted, saying it was a matter of principle with her. She hugged me and I hugged
her back. I wanted to win for this woman more than any other case I’d ever handled.

W
HEN WE GOT
back to St. Monica’s, Sister Hildegarde was shuffling outside the office, as if she was waiting for us.

“Top of the day to you, Sister,” I said.

She did not crack a smile. Her face was like a concrete overpass. “You may report to the kitchen,” Sister Hildegarde said
to Sister Mary. Dutifully, Sister Mary nodded and went off without a word. I had to admire her for that. I would have snapped
off a few one-liners.

I don’t think I’d make a good nun.

“Mr. Buchanan,” Sister Hildegarde said, “I fear you are distracting Sister Mary from her duties.”

“Actually, she’s been helping me pursue justice, and I—”

“Please, Mr. Buchanan.”

“You have one of the best examples of Christian charity in Sister Mary,” I said. “And you—”

“We have had this discussion before, Mr. Buchanan. You are not of our faith. You cannot possibly understand what goes on here.”

“I don’t know if I agree with you. Fairness is fairness no matter where you are. And character is character. I’ve seen enough
religion to know that it doesn’t always translate into someone’s daily life. Sister Mary’s does. You should be glad she’s
part of this place.”

“I am glad for every member of the community, Mr. Buchanan.”

“Would that include me?”

“And I’m glad that you brought that up. I’ve been wanting to talk to you again about how long you plan on staying.”

“I sort of hope I’ve been an asset here. You might call me the legal arm of St. Monica’s. Here you have the fruitcake arm,
the prayer arm, the ministry-to-the-poor arm, and me, the arm of the law.”

“I appreciate your helping those in our parish. But I also have to be concerned for what happens within these walls. It is
what I have been given charge of. I would ask that you’d consider setting a goal for when you might leave us. Will you think
about that, Mr. Buchanan?”

This was her joint, as it were. I didn’t need to be a jerk. “Yes I will, Sister. Thanks for your hospitality.”

She gave me a quick nod and headed back toward her office.

I headed back to my trailer, which I was sort of getting to like.

I told myself not to get to like this place, or anybody in it, too much. I sensed that I was setting myself up for a fall.

I
WAS REPRESENTING
a man on a charge of murder. It was time to get serious about trial preparation. I ensconced myself in my trailer and started
exercising my head.

Lawyers vary in their approach to trial prep. But the best trial lawyer I ever saw—Art Goldstein, who was my mentor at Gunther,
McDonough—showed me how to do it his way. I have never varied from it.

“You start with the closing argument,” Art said. “A trial is a story. Doesn’t matter if it’s murder or shoplifting, insider
trading or a dispute about the back fence with your neighbor. The jury wants to know what the story is, and your closing argument
is the story. Everything you do up to that point is material for the story. You need to know where you’re going before you
can get there.”

I opened up a new file on my Mac laptop. Back at the firm I had assistants, associates, and various worker bees to do a lot
of this work for me. Now it was just me and a computer, and organizing a trial notebook.

The first document I titled
Theory of the Case
. That’s basically the core of what Art told me, the theory—or story—of what happened. It has to be logical, understandable,
likely, and persuasive. It must be supported by the evidence. This would become my ongoing story document, subject to change
as discovery came in and facts were elicited at trial. But the goal is always to keep the story from changing too much. The
template was going to be as permanent as possible.

I would take an aggressive approach. Too many lawyers wait for discovery from the other side to determine their opening moves.
That’s giving too much power to the opponent. I’d start to form up my theory and then go out and look for the facts supporting
it.

I opened other documents titled
Opening Statement, Voir Dire, Law & Motions, Witnesses, Jury Instructions, Exhibits, Memoranda,
and
Closing Argument
.

I would go over these documents every day, brainstorming, adding things that were relevant to each area, depending on what
my investigation turned up.

In my
Theory of the Case
document I wrote the following:

1. Eric did it.

2. Eric didn’t do it.

Under number 1, I put the following subheadings:

a. With malice aforethought

b. In the heat of passion

c. By accident

d. In self-defense

e. With mental impairment

Under number 2, I wrote:

a. Has alibi

b. No alibi, but misidentified

c. Carl committed suicide.

d. Somebody else killed Carl.

Now, with every fact I discovered, I would determine the most likely place it would go. I had to know the prosecution’s case
as well as my own. At this point I had a minimum of prosecutorial discovery—police reports, the autopsy report, some crime-scene
photos, and a few witness statements. I had the distinct feeling they were holding something back, to be revealed at the prelim.
For now I had to try to anticipate what they would present at both prelim and trial. “Half of all trial work,” Art used to
say, “is heading them off at the pass.”

I spent about an hour jotting random thoughts and thinking about the case, getting my mind in the right frame for a trial.
I guess that’s how the old gladiators of Rome would do it, before heading into the arena. They were trial lawyers, all of
them. There just wasn’t enough legal work to go around, so they went into the Coliseum and beat the caesar salad out of each
other.

One thing was odd about the facts as I knew them. How could a big man like Eric get into the apartment building, then Carl’s
apartment, shoot him, and get out without being seen? That would be a good thing to argue to the jury. Like the dog that didn’t
bark in the Sherlock Holmes story.

When I looked up from my work I saw it was an orange-sky night. People have this idea L.A. is nothing but a smog blanket with
citizens underneath, hacking and wheezing.

The air’s actually not as bad as it was fifty years ago, so they tell me. Back then dirt and fog would sit in the bowl they
call the Los Angeles basin and it could get so thick you could walk across town on it. Kids, swimming during hot summers,
would get out of pools coughing like they were three-pack-a-day smokers.

Sure, there’s stuff in the air, but there’s one benefit. As if the universe couldn’t stand leaving us in the muck without
a little compensation. The benefit is how the sun, dropping into the Pacific horizon, gives a bright, burnt-orange hue to
the sky. And a deep purple just before night.

On nights like this I think of Jacqueline, and how she loved driving down to Paradise Cove, off Pacific Coast Highway, to
catch a sunset.

Once when we did that, sitting on the sand, a blanket around us as the wind blew in cold, I thought it was the happiest moment
of my life. A wheelhouse where everything had finally come together for me.

It was all ripped away a few weeks later, when Jacqueline was killed.

I went outside and walked to the parking lot of St. Monica’s. I looked down at the Valley, past the 118 Freeway, at the buildings
of Warner Center, tall in the oncoming gloom. It’s a view people pay millions for and I had it for free.

I sat on the curb and watched dusk become night, aching for Jacqueline and a blanket and a breeze.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I drove into Hollywood to the job site Carl had worked on before he died. Boss Hildegarde had Sister Mary delivering some
of St. Monica’s signature fruitcakes to victims—I should say customers, but I won’t—at locales around the Valley. So I was
on my own, which I didn’t really want to be. I liked Sister Mary’s eyes on the people I questioned.

The dig was, ironically, just a beer can’s throw from the Hollywood station where Carl was booked that December evening, and
where I got to cool my jets after sparring with Knuckle Face on the boulevard. But I wasn’t getting sentimental about it.

The site was also right around the corner from the field office of City Councilmember Jamie MacArthur, the up-and-coming L.A.
politico with the square chin of George Clooney and a showstopping wife. This project, everyone in L.A. knew, was MacArthur’s
baby, because he made sure everyone knew.

I found a place on the street and walked over to the site. It looked like they’d leveled a whole city block for this. A line
of concrete trucks was snaking along the street. They were taking turns feeding the beast—the giant snout of the snorkel boom
that spat wet concrete for the pad.

A team of rubber-booted workers guided the pour, one with the snout in hand, five others rodding it out with a two-by-four.
Another guy was tamping with a handheld, and there were even a couple of workers with trowels. Some things you still had to
do with basic tools and muscle. I like that. There’s too much comfort in technology these days. A kid can thumb an iPhone,
but can he change a tire?

I stood at the entrance of the temporary fence and waited around. Finally, a couple of Hispanic workers, with heavy-duty knee
pads and yellow hard hats, came out together, chatting. The larger of the two had a black mustache.

I said, “Hi.”

They stopped for a second.

“You guys know Carl Richess?” I said.

They looked at each other, then back at me. The one with the mustache said, “Don’t think.”

“Big guy.” I indicated mountain size with my arms.

The shorter one thought about it, then nodded.
“Sí, con Ezzo.”

Mustache shrugged. “Maybe with Ezzo.”

“Who’s Ezzo?”

He turned and pointed down at the pad. I saw a couple of trucks with
Ezzo Cement
on the side.

“Thanks,” I said.

They nodded and walked by me. I let myself in through the gate and walked down a dirt path to the large trailer with the sign
that said
Dragoni Associates, Inc.
I didn’t bother knocking. I went right in and saw a couple of men standing behind a desk, looking down at some papers. One
was middle aged and bullish, dressed in a polo shirt and slacks. The other was younger, leaner, and wore a denim shirt over
Levi’s.

They looked up at the same time.

“Help you?” Polo Shirt said, in that I-don’t-really-want-to-help-youbut-I-have-to-say-it tone.

“Are you Mr. Dragoni?” I said.

“I’m Dragoni,” he said. “You are?”

“I’m here on behalf of the Richess family,” I said. “Carl Richess was part of the cement work, or was supposed to be.”