The fact of the matter was, I loved having a new case. A new case is like a secret lover. You think about it. Plan for it. It infuses unrelated events with a sense of purpose. We ordered in Chinese food that night, and as we struggled with chopsticks, I found myself mentally composing witness lists. That’s how it’s supposed to feel. Mind and heart engaged, neither tripping over the other. I hadn’t been that happy in a long time.
G
od, Do We Look Like Morons
“Marcia, it’s crazy here!”
It was the delicate, nervous voice of Suzanne Childs on my car phone. I’m weaving in and out of lanes, trying to balance the handset against my cigarette. The damned window on the driver’s side won’t roll up. I’m struggling to hear her over the traffic.
“You won’t believe what’s going on!”
“Calm down, Suzanne. Just calm down.”
Suzanne is our conscientious and permanently agitated media relations director. This is her third call to me that morning, and every one has been urgent. The press was hounding Gil for details about the Simpson case, she said. Please—did I have any more info I could pass along?
“Geez, Suzanne,” I told her. “You probably know more than I do.”
Which was true. I’d caught some of the press coverage on TV the night before, and right there in my car, the drive-time radio waves were inundated with breathless news breaks about the double murder at the home of the famous former “football great,” as the
L.A. Times
described our suspect in a long page-one story. The alarming part of all this was that the news reports were telling me all sorts of things I didn’t know, turning up witnesses I hadn’t even heard of. That meant that every attention-hungry wannabe within broadcast range of L.A. was going to be coming forward with “evidence.”
When I reached the office about half an hour later, Suzanne was waiting for me. “Do you think you could call Phil or Tom?” she asked anxiously.
I already had. Several times. They weren’t calling me back. I motioned Suzanne to follow me into my office, tossed my purse and files on the floor next to my desk, and picked up the phone to dial RHD. No luck.
“Let’s talk to Gil right now,” I said to her, hoping that by pooling our information, we could stay abreast of events until I could get with the detectives. We walked to Gil’s office, which was unfortunately located right next to the pressroom. Frances, the guard who sat by the door to the D.A.‘s office, was staring at a gang of reporters who milled around with jittery energy. As soon as they sighted me, the vultures descended. I waved them off.
“Has it been like this all morning?” I asked Suzanne.
“They’re driving us nuts,” she moaned.
We’ve got to get a handle on this
, I told myself.
It’s gonna spin out of control
.
Gil was on the phone. When he saw me, he beckoned me in.
“Close the door,” he said.
Our first meeting on the Simpson case. I should remember it more clearly than I do. David was there; I know that. He stood with arms folded tightly, as he does when he’s under stress. Some of the brass were there, I believe. Frank Sundstedt and Bill Hodgman. Everyone looked agitated except Gil. He sat behind his desk, wearing his usual mask of composure. He looked toward me, a signal to begin the briefing.
Briefing. What a joke. I barely had more than the top-of-the-hour drive-time reports. But I plunged in gamely.
“Here’s what we know about the second victim,” I told them. “Ronald Goldman. Twenty-five years old. Would-be actor who works part-time as a waiter at Mezzaluna.”
I’d never been to Mezzaluna, but I’d noticed it driving through Brentwood. One of those trendy West L.A. bistros where tourists go in hopes of sitting next to Michelle Pfeiffer.
“The night of the murders, Nicole Brown—”
“Maiden name?” someone interrupted.
“Looks like it,” I replied.
To me, that fact spoke volumes. A woman who has children with her ex usually doesn’t choose to take back her maiden name unless she’s hell-bent upon reasserting her own identity.
David or someone put in that Nicole and her two children had eaten dinner at Mezzaluna, and Goldman happened to be on duty. She’d apparently dropped her glasses or something, and he went to her place to return them.
“Is that
all
he went there for?” I asked. No one had an answer. We’d have to check whether the two were lovers. I jotted this down on my legal pad.
“How about the search?” Gil wanted to know. “Did we find a weapon?”
Nothing yet.
Someone passed around a copy of the
L.A. Times
. It carried a report that Simpson had roughed up his wife one New Year’s Eve and that he’d pled nolo contendere, no contest. This is the standard plea a defendant cops to when he’s caught red-handed—and wants to save face.
“When was that?” I asked.
” ‘Eighty-nine,” David replied.
“Nothing more recent?”
“There may be, but we don’t have it.”
Now, the fact that O. J. Simpson had beaten his wife didn’t mean that he’d killed her. Not all the men who beat their wives end up killing them. But my years in law enforcement had shown me that men who kill their wives have often beaten or abused them in the past. Whether that was what we had here, I couldn’t tell. The fact that they’d been divorced for two years still bothered me. Do you carry a torch for an ex after the paperwork’s done? I remembered the photo of Nicole that Brad Roberts had pulled out from under Simpson’s bed. And I remembered the big glossy shots of her and the children mounted on the wall by the stairs.
Yeah
, I thought.
It could happen
.
“Any word from the cops?” Gil asked me.
“I’m on it,” I assured him.
For most of the morning, I’d been trying to reach Phil. After the meeting broke I put in a couple more calls. Finally, around noon, he rang me back.
“Phil, man. What is going on?”
He seemed flustered and apologetic.
“It’s the brass, Marcia. They don’t want us talking to you.”
I let loose a choice expletive.
Phil tried to placate me. “Listen, Marcia. It’s just temporary. I know we can work this thing out.”
I had a pretty good idea what this was all about. The brass at Parker Center had gotten their knickers twisted over Michael Jackson. What a fiasco that had been—a case of child molestation that went nowhere after Jackson’s lawyers reached a settlement in January 1994 with the father of the alleged victim. Not a surprising outcome when you consider that the father had been asking for money. But the cops blamed us, thinking we’d stepped in where we didn’t belong and botched a perfectly good case. Now that another celebrity suspect was in play, they were freezing us out.
There has never been any love lost between the D.A.‘s office and the LAPD. Invariably, there are disputes on the big cases, where everyone starts grabbing for turf. But never before had I encountered a flat-out stonewall. This could seriously damage our chances for prosecution, if and when we got there. The resistance wasn’t coming from Phil and Tom’s level. Nor did it seem to be coming from the office of the Chief. From where, then? The LAPD has such a labyrinthine hierarchy that it’s almost impossible to tell who’s accountable for any given order.
I wanted a showdown with the cops right then and there; so did some of the others. But Gil counseled restraint.
“Hang back,” he instructed us. “If the evidence is as strong as it sounds, they’ll have to pick him up in the next few hours.”
So we hung back, each of us working our private sources. I checked the police crime lab and found out they were testing blood samples. I sucked in my breath. Shit. Whenever I had a case requiring DNA testing, I tried to circumvent the Special Investigations Division, the semiautonomous agency under whose auspices the crime lab fell. Instead, wherever possible, I’d reroute samples to Cellmark Diagnostics in Maryland. Cellmark, a private lab, had done an outstanding job for me in that “no-body” case Phil and I had worked together. But now, stuck in hang-back mode, I was in no position to direct the Simpson samples anywhere. I knew the crime lab was doing a relatively simple DNA test called DQ alpha. I could live with that. With the suspect at large, it was crucial to get this screening test done quickly. If the preliminary markers linked Simpson to the crime scene, the police would have plenty of grounds to arrest.
Later that afternoon, we were huddling in the conference room, kicking around our options, when the call came in from SID. I took it. The blood on the walk at the murder scene matched O. J. Simpson’s.
Bingo! There was the evidence the cops needed to charge. I grinned jubilantly at David and Gil and held my wrists together, pantomiming handcuffs. I figured squad cars would be rolling toward Brentwood any minute now.
Like hell. O. J. Simpson remained at large.
And when I arrived at work on the following morning, Wednesday, June 15, he was
still
at large. The papers were filled with speculation about the case. Somehow the
L.A. Times
had gotten wind of the blood-test results. But we were still getting the freeze-out from the cops. Normally, we’d be getting witness statements and reports within twenty-four hours of a crime. This time, we hadn’t received so much as a single sheet of paper. Even Gil had realized it was time for a showdown, and he’d finally brokered a meeting with the cops for later that afternoon.
“So, what’s the deal?” I wanted to know. “Are they going to arrest?”
“I’m not saying that,” Gil replied. “Just go in there and meet with them.”
“We shouldn’t be kissing ass here!” I muttered to David and Bill as we walked the two blocks to LAPD Headquarters at Parker Center. “They should have kept him in custody. We should be looking at a filing. I think we should tell them we’re considering the grand jury.”
What I meant was this: if the cops wouldn’t arrest, we could unilaterally start an investigation of our own by taking the case to a grand jury. That way, the cops couldn’t stonewall us because we’d have the power to compel their testimony. Furthermore, if we took the case to a grand jury and got an indictment, the police would have no choice but to arrest Simpson. Still, going grand jury was risky. The cops would take it as an in-your-face insult. My guess was that the very mention of it would drive them crazy.
“Go easy,” David advised me. “Let’s just see what they have to say.” As we rode the elevator up to Robbery/Homicide, I tried to imagine what Bill Hodgman was thinking. He’d been the front man on the Jackson case, a role that had caused him to drop considerably in the LAPD’s popularity polls. But Bill was also a very sweet guy and the consummate diplomat. If anyone could soothe the cops’ hurt feelings, he could. My concern at that moment was focused more on the police brass—would they continue to hold out? Or would they put an end to this game and work with us?
The Robbery/Homicide Division bullpen was a large room with about twenty desks facing each other in two rows. Consequently, the homicide team that worked on the LAPD’s most sensitive cases had absolutely no privacy. Their notes and reports were in plain view of any clerk wandering through—it was Leak City. Tom Lange had repeatedly complained to his bosses about it. But nothing had been done.
I knew the bullpen pretty well. I had been there often to talk with my IOS, investigating officers. I liked it: bare bones; gritty; real cops working tough, nasty cases. I’d always get good-natured ribbing as I made my way through. That Wednesday afternoon, however, I nearly got frostbite.
Someone pointed us to a small room off the bullpen where the brass were gathered. There was Commander John White, chief of detectives; Lieutenant John Rogers, of Robbery/Homicide; and Captain William Gartland, head of RHD. And, of course, Phil and Tom. On the table in front of Tom was a stack of documents bound with a rubber band. Exactly what I’d been waiting for.
“Here’re the reports so far,” Tom told me. His tone was neutral. I glanced over at Phil, who was looking distinctly ill at ease. Our eyes met. Everything was still okay between us.
“Obviously, there’s a lot more to be done,” Tom said. “But this should get you started.”
“Thanks, Tom,” I said, not wanting to appear too eager, but itching to get my hands on those reports. We swapped some observations about the case, making nice. Nobody on the other side seemed willing to bring up the thorny issue of arrest.
So I hit it dead-on.
“When do you plan to bring this for filing?”
“We want to interview more witnesses,” Tom said slowly. “We were thinking maybe the early part of next week.”
Bill, David, and I were silent. The cops knew that this was not what we’d wanted to hear.
“Well, frankly,” I said, “we’re a little concerned about letting it go that long.” I paused to make sure they were paying attention. “We’ve been thinking about taking it to the grand jury.”
Gauntlet thrown.
“Well, that’s your prerogative,” Tom replied, looking to his superiors for support. “We can’t stop you. But we’d prefer to wait a little longer.”
They were not going to budge.
The fire escapes that lattice the exterior of the CCB were a favorite retreat of the smokers among us. The one I used offered a vertical-slatted view of Parker Center and the Federal Buildings. The narrow veranda was furnished with a couple of dinette-type chairs. Someone had dragged out one of those tall cylindrical trash cans, which was always overflowing. There was a broom propped in one corner in case anyone felt industrious and wanted to clean the place up. No one had for a while.
The fire escape is where I headed when I got back with my spoils from the LAPD. Documents and notepads in one hand, cigs in the other.
I took a chair, propped my feet on the other one, and began leafing through the slender sheaf of police reports. Until now, I’d had only a sketchy mental image of how the bodies at Bundy lay.
Now I learned that Nicole, upon whom death and the medical examiner had bestowed the designation “decedent 94-05136,” had been found at the foot of the stairs at the front gate. She was in fetal position on her left side, wearing a backless black dress. No shoes. Her arms were bent at the elbow, close to the body. Her arms, legs, and face were stained with blood. The coroner had found a “large, sharp force injury” to her neck.