Guilt By Degrees

14

The only downside to a meeting at the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail was that I’d have to go to the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail. Entering the dank, sprawling concrete monstrosity, the largest county jail in the world, always made me feel like I was walking through the seventh gate of hell. The mixture of disinfectant, sweat, and misery lingered in my nostrils for days, and it took just as long to get the echoes of clanging metal doors and gates out of my head.

“You find out what Stoner’s done to identify our victim?” I asked Bailey. “I haven’t had time, since I kind of got stuck into this case headfirst-”

“It doesn’t count as got stuck when you do it to yourself.”

She was right, of course, so I ignored her. “You know anything?”

“Stoner ran the fingerprints through all databases, asked for DNA testing-”

“So we’ll get those results about six months after we get his killer,” I said dryly.

The crime lab was notoriously backed up. It was hard to get fast results even when we had a suspect set for trial. Getting them to do testing just to identify a victim-a homeless victim, no less-would go to the bottom of the pile.

Bailey nodded. “Yeah. Especially because we probably don’t even have his DNA on file. So far, his prints don’t show up anywhere.”

“A homeless person who’s never been busted? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Usually there’s at least a shoplifting or panhandling conviction. Either someone had dropped the ball and failed to print the guy, or this was one of the most unusual homeless people I’d ever encountered.

“Makes me wonder how long he’d been out on the streets,” I remarked. “What’d the coroner say about his physical condition?”

“Don’t know yet,” Bailey replied. “Haven’t had time to get the report since we ‘got stuck into this case headfirst.’” She shot me a meaningful look. I busied myself with a search for my badge at the bottom of my purse.

We crossed the lobby and held out our badges to the deputy sheriff behind the bulletproof glass.

“Drop ’em in the slot,” she said. “You carrying?” she asked Bailey.

Bailey removed her service 9 mm Glock while I fished out my.38 Smith & Wesson. She passed us a key, and we locked our guns in one of the boxes lining the wall behind us.

I paused to ask the deputy, “Did a public defender by the name of Walter Schoenfeld check in?”

“What am I, your friggin’ hostess for the day?” she asked. She pushed our badges back out to us and buzzed us in. “You wanna know if he’s here, go look.”

We moved through the metal detector and found Walter sitting among a throng of defense attorneys in the waiting area. Bailey and I walked over to him.

“They tell you how long for an attorney room?” I asked.

“Said about ten minutes,” Walter replied. He looked at his watch. “Twenty minutes ago.”

I sighed. Typical. With only five attorney rooms, the wait could easily take hours.

“I’ll go goose him,” Bailey said, and walked off.

No one gets better service in county jail than a cop. Within five minutes, the jail deputy called out for us to follow him. I deliberately avoided looking at the other attorneys who’d undoubtedly been waiting there for hours as we passed by. The room was silent as we all read our reports and got ready for the interview. Ten minutes later, Ronald Yamaguchi was being escorted down the glass-enclosed hall toward us in waist and leg chains. He clutched a notepad in his hands, which were cuffed in front of him, but his expression was surprisingly serene.

“You guys going to tape this?” Walter asked.

“Yeah,” Bailey said. She produced a small digital recorder from her jacket pocket and placed it on the table.

The door opened, and Yamaguchi was guided into the room and seated next to Walter, across the table from Bailey and me. I did a double take at the sight of Yamaguchi. I hadn’t really noticed in court, but between the olive complexion, jet-black shoulder-length hair, and well-muscled physique, Ronald Yamaguchi managed to rock that ugly orange jumpsuit. I had to hand it to him-though not at the moment.

Before his client could speak, Walter warned him that he was being recorded and pointed to the device.

“Good,” Yamaguchi replied.

An interesting reaction. I saw from Bailey’s raised eyebrow that she thought so too. She calmly read him his rights and he waived them, and we got down to business.

“What were you doing in the area that day?” I asked.

“I work in Little Tokyo,” he replied. “My bank’s on the street where it happened. I made a deposit and was on my way back to work when I saw the homeless guy.”

I made a mental note to get into the specifics of where he worked and banked later.

“What drew your attention to him?” I asked.

“What he did,” Yamaguchi replied. “He, like, almost jumped at that lady, and then he grabbed her. I thought he might hurt her.”

That wasn’t exactly what he’d said when he’d been interviewed at the scene-at least, according to the arrest report. Then again, it wasn’t completely different either. It was all a matter of emphasis, I supposed. Sometimes the truth can be elastic.

“Was she carrying a purse?” I asked.

Yamaguchi thought for a moment, then shook his head. “She might’ve been. I didn’t get a good enough look at her.”

“Could you describe what the man did when he reached for her?” I asked.

I was making sure to keep my questions open-ended so he wouldn’t be able to claim later that I’d “confused” or cornered him.

Yamaguchi stared at the wall over my shoulder for a moment before responding. “I was on the sidewalk, just outside my bank. I caught a fast movement out of the corner of my eye. He kind of lunged and grabbed the lady at the same time,” Yamaguchi said, frowning as he pictured the scene. “And he seemed pissed off-”

“Could you see his face?” I asked.

“No. But that’s what it felt like to me, so I guess maybe it was the way he reached for her. He grabbed on to her elbow like this-”

Yamaguchi tried to shoot his hand out to demonstrate, forgetting it was chained to his waist. The motion jerked the chain taut with a loud clank but stopped just a few inches from his waist. His face registered shock for a brief moment.

“Did he actually manage to put his hand on her elbow?” I asked.

“Yeah. That’s why I thought he might be trying to hurt her, so I knocked his arm down, like this.”

Yamaguchi did his best to show us what he’d done. As he carefully lifted his hand and brought it down in a karate-chopping motion, I could see the muscles in his forearm bunch and move. That would’ve been one powerful hit.

“Did you see any weapon on the homeless man?” I asked.

“No.” He shook his head emphatically. “For some reason, I never even thought about it. Stupid, huh?” he said, his expression puzzled. “The guy coulda shivved me right there. Matter of fact, I heard afterward that he had a box cutter-”

“But you didn’t see any box cutter at the time?” I said evenly.

This was a critical point. If he admitted he hadn’t seen the box cutter, he’d be hard-pressed to later claim that the killing was done in self-defense. I half expected Walter to jump in here and keep Yamaguchi from answering, but he sat quietly.

Yamaguchi said, “No, I didn’t. I just saw the guy grab that lady’s elbow, and I reacted. It wasn’t like I had a chance to give it a whole lot of thought, it was just a reflex, you know?”

“You have any training in martial arts?” I asked.

Walter stepped in. “I don’t see the relevance of that.” He turned to his client. “Ronald, I’m advising you not to answer that.”

Yamaguchi looked at Walter, confused. “Why? I thought the whole point was to be up front about everything. I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Walter paused for a beat, then nodded and sat back. He waved his hand. “Go ahead.”

Ronald continued. “I’ve got a black belt in tae kwon do.”

“I had a feeling,” I said. “Okay, so you knocked the guy’s arm down. What did he do? Did he turn on you?”

I was giving him another chance to claim self-defense.

“No.” He stopped and was silent for a moment. “I pretty much came at him out of the blue. He just stood there, like, in shock. But I don’t know what happened after that, because as soon as I saw his arm drop and I could see the lady was out of reach, I took off.”

If Yamaguchi was telling the truth, it meant that regardless of who the killer was, the stabbing certainly hadn’t been done to defend anyone. This was a murder.