Guilt By Degrees

7

I knew the defense would jam me into the earliest possible date for the preliminary hearing, which meant I wouldn’t have much time to pull everything together. From what I’d heard in court, and the flimsiness of the file in my hand, there was still a lot of work to do, not the least of which was to figure out who my victim, currently listed as “John Doe,” was. So I turned down Toni’s offer to hit Little Tokyo for a sushi lunch and grabbed a no-guilt turkey-and-lettuce sandwich to eat at my desk while I worked.

By the time I settled in and spread out the file, the eighteenth floor was largely deserted. Quiet and empty, just the way I liked it. I shoved the murder book onto the table next to the window and tried not to look at the teetering pile of other murder books and case files that were starting to impinge on my treasured ninety-degree view. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk, dropped my purse on top of the bottle of Glenlivet, and propped my feet up on the edge of the drawer.

I flipped open the slender file. My John Doe had been walking north on Hope-insert irony here-between Fourth and Fifth Street, when he lunged out and grabbed a woman’s arm. They struggled for a moment, and that’s where the narrative got murky. Either she broke free and then the victim fell to the ground, or he fell to the ground and then she got loose. The report quoted witness Charlie Fern as saying that the defendant, Ronald Yamaguchi, was standing right next to John Doe, so he had to have done the stabbing, though Fern hadn’t exactly seen it.

It was an interesting twist on what Fern had said in court. Not so much a contradiction as a difference in emphasis. The gap was right there in plain sight: he “hadn’t exactly seen” the stabbing. Why he’d shaved down his statement in court was anybody’s guess. Taking the oath can make witnesses nervous, but it was equally possible that Fern had exaggerated what he’d seen when he’d spoken to the cops. Regardless, the statement itself gave fair warning of a possible problem, and a prosecutor who was paying attention would’ve noticed that and either taken some time to interview Fern before the prelim or at least anticipated a possible snag on the witness stand. In other words, if “I could give a shit” Brandon Averill had been doing his job instead of his hair, he would’ve made sure the cop who took that report had his butt firmly planted in the seat next to him before he even thought about announcing “ready” in court.

As a general rule, I don’t like to second-guess fellow deputies. No one but the trial deputy really knows what’s going on, and sometimes his smartest moves are the ones he doesn’t make. But there was no benefit of the doubt to be given here. Not after what I’d seen in the report. I had no doubt that Stoner was telling the truth and Averill had forgotten to issue the subpoena.

So how had Fern fingered Yamaguchi for the police in the first place if, as Fern claimed, he didn’t know Yamaguchi?

I quickly paged over to the arrest report. Apparently Yamaguchi had been in the crowd of gawkers who’d gathered when the police had finally been called to the scene. Charlie’d noticed him there and pointed him out. Odd. Why would Yamaguchi return to the scene when he’d gotten away free and clear? Then again, he wouldn’t be the first defendant to get off on watching the police work the crime scene he’d created.

And who was our John Doe, who lay alone and ignored on a filthy sidewalk while his life seeped away? I imagined a mother looking down at her newborn’s face, full of hopes and dreams.

I pushed aside the depressing thought and refocused on the report. John Doe’d had a box cutter in his pocket, and he’d grabbed that woman. It was possible the killer had stabbed John Doe in response to a threat. But if it wasn’t a self-defense killing, then I owed it to John Doe to make his murderer pay, or at least to give it a fair try.

The crime scene was just a short hike from the office and only a few blocks away from my home-a suite at the Biltmore Hotel, a grand historical landmark in the heart of downtown L.A. I’d been lucky enough to score a sweet deal as a long-term resident after getting a sentence of life without parole for the murderer of the CEO’s wife. Recently, the CEO had upgraded me to a suite with two bedrooms, claiming it wasn’t getting much use anyway. I’d been a little reluctant to be on the receiving end of even more of his generosity. But when he continued to insist, I caved in. It did make sense that my old room, being smaller and more affordable, was easier to book.

I picked up the phone and punched in Bailey’s number. Being at a crime scene always gives me a firsthand feeling for how everything went down-gives me ideas about where to look and what to look for. And it always helps to have the benefit of Bailey’s discerning eye.

“Detective Keller, please,” I said.

I gazed out at my view of downtown Los Angeles. Having a window office had thrilled me from the moment I’d landed here, in my dream job as a prosecutor in the Special Trials Unit. I made it a point to enjoy the spectacular view every day, no matter what else was going on. The wind was still wreaking havoc with skirts, hats, and hair. A young couple in jackets that were way too thin for the wintry cold shivered and clung to each other as they waited to cross Spring Street. An older woman-who’d unfortunately chosen to wear a wide skirt-awkwardly walked with one hand pressed to her thigh as she hugged the shoulder strap of her purse with the other hand. Behind her a teenage boy mugged for his friends, pretending to be Marilyn Monroe in the famous skirt-blowing scene. He pressed his hands to the legs of his jeans and puckered his mouth as the others snickered. Yeah, I thought, you try walking downhill in a skirt and heels in this wind, smart-ass.

My call was put through.

“Keller.”

“Knight here. Want to walk a crime scene?”

“John Doe stabbing?”

How the hell…?

“It’s all over the station, Knight. But how’d you wind up with this case? It’s not exactly Special Trials material.”

“The guy who had the case was a useless sack-”

“Who was gonna dump it, so you got pissed off and grabbed it. And, now that you’re in this thing up to your ears, it turns out the case is a dog.” Bailey sighed. “You know, I get your whole ‘justice for all’ thing. What I don’t get is why it means I have to be roped in.”

As if Bailey-or Toni, for that matter-was all that different from me. This wasn’t just a nine-to-five job for any of us. But given Bailey’s current attitude, not to mention the fact that she was right about the case being a dog, I decided now was not the best time to point that out. “Because you’ll get to give me hell about my lack of impulse control?”

“I can do that anyway, and besides, I’m in the middle of a report…”

I saw that I’d have to up the ante. “I’ll give you the blow-by-blow on what happened in-and out of-court.”

Bailey exhaled. “Where’s the scene?”

The lure of gossip. It seldom fails. I told her.

“Meet you in ten,” she said, and hung up.

It gets tiresome the way Bailey goes on and on.