Chapter 10

July 26, 1996

Friday noon

"Are you going for ineffective assistance of council?" I asked Lydia as we were sitting there in shock that he'd actually left. Karen took it in stride though, and was already making three copies of the file he'd brought.

"No," Lydia said. "It's always a weak argument. I just wanted him to stop blaming everything on not having an investigator. He did have an investigator available; he just didn't know how to direct them."

"How much of that are you going to pull into the deposition?"

"I don't know. I'm not even sure it's worth doing a deposition."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we have Anne saying that Larry wanted her to lie about the engagement. And Larry saying that his lawyer told him to hide his sexuality. That's all we have in our favor right now. Harris says he doesn't remember. I'm guessing there's a transcript of the phone conversation Anne and Larry had in which he mentions the engagement. That works against us. I'm not filing a writ of habeas corpus until this is stronger."

"What now?"

"Now we need to go over what he brought us. The three of us should spend the rest of the day on that."

"I have a five o'clock interview. The Karpinski thing."

"Okay, that still gives us plenty of time. We should order lunch. Does Dragon House still deliver?"

"Pick up only. I can go get it while Karen finishes the copying."

"No, she's almost done. Pizza?"

"That's fine."

Then she changed her mind. "No, you know what, the three of us should just go to Dragon House. We'll bring the file. Have a working lunch."

"Sounds good."

"My treat."

It took about half an hour to get everything together. I pulled out three more three-ring notebooks. Fortunately, we had a lot in our supply cabinet. When Karen was done, I started punching holes in the copies. Then we put two files together. Karen grabbed a bunch of tabs, while I grabbed one of the thick transcript notebooks to have with us if we needed to look at it. We took Lydia's BMW since there was room in the backseat for everything we'd decided to bring.

Dragon House was three doors down from Hot Times and right next door to Star of Siam. It was owned by a Chinese family named Long. Ronnie had explained that in Chinese Long meant dragon, so the Chinese symbols on the menu also meant Long's house. It was the family business, which was apt since the matriarch, Sue Long (whose Chinese first name was actually Shuye but—Americans…), ran the place with two sons in the kitchen and half a dozen granddaughters waiting tables.

The walls were red, adorned with gold sconces wearing little gold shades. The tables were covered in red tablecloths which themselves were covered with a circle of easily cleaned glass. The main dining room had booths on two sides and an open area for tables, double doors into the kitchen, and an ornately arched entrance into a second, roped-off dining room.

When we walked in it was crowded, but we were the only ones in the waiting area. Sue Long, small but imperious and in her mid-eighties, immediately came out from behind the cashier's desk. She knew me. I'd been in frequently with Ronnie, and sometimes with Junior and Ronnie, and a few times with Mai and Ronnie. She was famously thought to be psychic and once touched my arm and said, "There is much strife for you." She might have been reading my past, hopefully not my future, or—just as likely—the bumps and twists of my frequently broken nose.

That day, she noticed everything we were carrying and said, "Come. This way."

We followed her over to the roped-off second dining room. She pulled back the rope and sat us at the first large round table. It was set for six but could accommodate eight if necessary. She picked up three of the settings and we set down our notebooks in the now empty space. Before she left, she turned the lights on for that room, and said, "Lin will be waitress. Important work." Then she left.

Lydia asked Karen, "What did you think of him?"

"I think he's seen too many movies where stupid White men get everything they want."

Lydia looked at me. I said, "I'm not going to disagree with that. He's still a public defender, that means he's either a crappy lawyer or he's got a savior complex or both."

"We need public defenders. It's a decent thing to do. But you're right, the good ones don't stay long and the bad ones stay forever."

"You did really piss him off," Karen said.

"Was that your plan?" I asked.

"I had a feeling he might have memory problems."

Lin arrived. From a tray she took a pot of tea and three handle-less cups, setting them on the table.

Lydia said, "Could you bring us crab wontons and shrimp egg rolls? Two orders of each. And then we'll have the walnut shrimp, the crispy duck, and the scallops and peas."

She'd just ordered the most expensive things on the menu. Probably because Sue Long had given us a private room. She looked at us and asked, "We'll share. Is that okay?"

Karen and I nodded. Then Lydia added a dragon fried rice to the order, the fried rice with everything in it. Lin asked if we wanted egg flower soup or hot and sour soup. When we'd chosen, she left.

Pouring us all tea, Lydia said, "Let's find the report from the first officer on the scene."

Karen and I began flipping through the materials Harris had brought that morning. She beat me.

"Found it. Officer Jared Kelly. Arrived at 7815 Via Amorita at twelve-twenty-five. He finds Mr. and Mrs. Michaels standing outside the house. They tell him to go inside where Larry Wilkes is holding the body of Pete Michaels. Sobbing. He kept saying, "He's dead. He's dead. How can he be dead?"

"Got it," Lydia said.

I was still looking for it.

"There's nothing here about remorse. The first thing Officer Kelly did was look for the gun. He found it just by the door."

Finally, I found the report, too. As I started skimming, I asked, "What's the relationship between where the gun was found and where Pete Michaels died?"

"There's a drawing on the next page," Karen said.

I flipped the page. The drawing was of the living room. The furniture was sketched as boxes, there were X's for Larry and Pete. They were on the floor at the far end of the sofa. There was a small drawing of a gun right next to the front door.

"How far do you think they are from the gun?" I asked.

"If the living room is twenty feet, they're fifteen feet away," Lydia estimated.

"How would that happen?" I asked. "The DA is saying Larry came to the door. He would know that Pete lived with his parents and his brother. He wouldn't know where they were, so he would have knocked or rang the doorbell. Pete would have been shot very close to where his body fell."

"Are there photos?" Lydia asked.

"Copies," Karen said.

"Xerox copies?"

"Yes."

"That scum bag. We're going to need actual photographs."

"The copies are about ten pages back from the officer's report," Karen said.

Lin arrived with the appetizers. I asked for a Coke. The tea was a bit thin for me. I kept my eyes on the copy of the crime scene photo. The quality was terrible. I could make out Pete's body in a pool of blood. But then, most of the carpet was very dark. I couldn't tell if there was a trail of blood leading across the room. I flipped through the photos. There was something I didn't see.

"If he was shot at the door, there would be blood on other parts of the carpet, and they would have taken specific photos of those stains. And there aren't any."

"So he couldn't have been shot at the door and then walked over to the sofa," Lydia said, munching on a wonton.

"How close was the killer when Pete was shot?"

"The coroner and the ballistic expert both testified within a few feet."

"So, the killer is allowed into the house. They walk deeper into the living room. They may have talked for a short period and then Pete is shot. The killer then wipes the gun clean and leaves the house, dropping the gun next to the door. But their version is that Larry wiped the gun clean, dropped it by the door, and then returned to Pete's body."

"I've got the ballistics report," Karen said. "It says they found smudged fingerprints, none that could be identified. Oh, wait, they did find a fingerprint on the barrel. There was a fingerprint guy who testified, right?"

"Yes," Lydia said. "That fingerprint does not belong to Larry or Andy Showalter. They assumed it belonged to the person who sold the gun to Andy."

"It could belong to Sammy Blanchard," I said.

Karen asked. "Is that the girl in the sketches?"

"Yes," I said, then asked. "How did Harris handle that at trial?"

"Badly," Lydia said. "He could have suggested the fingerprint as proof of another killer but didn't. He just accepted the prosecution's theory about its being the seller's fingerprint."

I picked up a wonton and set it on the tiny plate Lin had brought. I spooned on some of the delicious sauce that was mainly sugar and red dye. Taking a bite, it was wonderful, as I knew it would be. Chewing, I flipped through to the witness statements. Karen and Lydia were discussing whether the size of the fingerprint could tell you whether it was a sixteen-year-old girl. Lydia had never heard of anything like that; Karen said she'd research it.

The Downey Police Department had canvased the neighborhood and taken statements from the Michaels' surrounding neighbors. There were eight reports. I was able to quickly determine that three of those neighbors had not been home. Two others were home but didn't notice anything. There were three valuable statements: two on Irwingrove Drive, 7812 and 7816, behind the Michaels house. Each heard what might have been a gunshot around a quarter to twelve. Neither called the police, uncertain of what they'd heard.

The most helpful of the three was from a Celia Wickers, who lived at 7816 Via Amorita directly across the street from the Michaels. She was in her front yard gardening. Planting sweet peas. I was pretty sure that was a flower rather than a vegetable. She was asked specifically about Larry Wilkes and shown a photo. She said he arrived in a large brown car at noon. The officer quizzed her about the time, but she stuck to her guns, saying she took a pill every day at noon. She went into her house for a few minutes and when she came out the Michaels car was in the driveway. Then, about twelve thirty the police arrived. The officer asked whether she'd heard a gunshot after the brown car arrived, but she hadn't. Then she said a little yellow car had driven up around eleven thirty with a very young girl inside. She was pretty sure the girl went into the Michaels house. She'd gotten busy with her gardening, gone behind her house to get a shovel and didn't see the girl leave. In blue pen, the officer made a note in the margin of the report. He was certain Mrs. Wickers was hard of hearing.

I came up for air, grabbing an egg roll just as the soups and my Coke arrived. We still had more than half the appetizers to eat. I took a big bite of my egg roll waited until Lin left and I'd finished chewing before I could say anything.

Lydia and Karen were back talking about the gun. It was a Smith Wesson that had been stolen from a couple in Alhambra about two years before the murder. It had been traced to an attempted murder in Carson prior to it showing up in the Michaels murder.

"I just read the statements from the neighbors. The woman across the street saw Larry arrive around noon. The neighbors behind the Michaels heard a gunshot about twenty minutes earlier."

Lydia looked at me suspiciously. Of course, her suspicions weren't directed at me. "The woman across the street, her name was Wicker, right?"

"Wickers."

"Okay, at trial she said she heard a gunshot after Larry arrived."

"But she was inside," I pointed out.

"She said the door was open."

"And she said she didn't hear a gunshot in her statement."

"Did Harris challenge her?" I asked. I must have read her testimony, but I couldn't remember. I grabbed another bite of my egg roll and a sip of my Coke.

"I can't remember," Lydia said. Now I didn't feel too bad. Karen grabbed the transcript I'd brought and began flipping through it. "I don't think so though."

I swallowed. Hard. Then, "The officer taking her statement made a note that he thought she was hard of hearing. And she was inside the house when she supposedly heard the noise. Or didn't hear the noise."

"It could have been the Michaels closing a car door," Karen suggested. "She might have misremembered."

Lydia looked at her strangely. "Karen, you know how loud a gunshot is?"

And of course, she did.

"I don't know what a gunshot sounds like from across the street if you're half deaf. And she probably didn't either."

"Point taken."

I tried the soup. It was okay, but nothing compared to the wontons. I grabbed two more of those. I was ready to dig in when Lydia said to me, "We might need to interview this woman."

"She was probably pretty old if she was going deaf." I pointed out. "I don't know if she'd still be alive."

"We're going to have to check. Karen, can you look to see if she's still in that house? If she's dead, maybe there's a son or daughter who remembers what she said at the time."

"What about the other neighbors. Did either of them testify for the defense?" I asked.

"Hold on, I'm writing this woman's name down," Karen said.

"I don't remember any other neighbors taking the stand," Lydia said.

"So we need to ask Harris why he didn't put them on the stand to refute the Wickers woman's testimony. Since they both heard the gunshot fifteen minutes earlier."

"And about that yellow car," Lydia said. "I know Harris didn't bring that up."

"No," Karen said definitively. "Neither of the neighbors who heard the gunshot earlier were put on the stand. And yes, I'll find out if they still live there."

And then the entrees arrived with bowls of white rice and more plates for us to use as we shared. As soon as Lin walked away, I said, "Can I make a suggestion?"

"Go ahead," Lydia said.

"Let's not let this wonderful food go to waste. All this talk is getting in the way. How about we read and eat? We can talk afterward."

And that's what we did.