Chapter 11

July 26, 1996

Friday afternoon

The food was delicious. I might have taken more than my share of the walnut shrimp. As I ate, I compared Anne Michaels' deposition to the interviews she'd given twenty years before. There were six interviews, two with the police and four with the district attorney. The interviews with the police were held at her house, and there were only the notes of the officers. I didn't bother much with the first interview, it was the second that was important. That interview took place after Larry tipped her off to say she was Pete's fiancée.

We had the notes of a Detective Jacobs. He'd typed them up. His original, handwritten notes were not included. The most important statement was "interviewee originally denied being victim's fiancée, but after questioning admitted the truth." That matched with what Anne said in the deposition. She had attempted to tell the truth but was not believed.

Then I looked through the file again to see if I could find a transcript of the jailhouse phone conversation. It wasn't there and it should have been. Even if phone conversations from jail weren't normally included in discovery, this one should have been. It was the reason detectives showed up at Anne's house. It's the reason they believed she was Pete's fiancée.

I took a bite of the duck. It was good, but not as good as the walnut shrimp. Unfortunately, that was gone. I scooped some of the scallops onto my plate and said, "The transcript for the phone call Anne described is not in the file."

"What?" Lydia said.

"I can't find it."

"That's not good."

"For us?" Karen asked.

"No. For them. If they didn't provide it, it could be a Brady violation."

"But there's nothing exculpatory in the conversation," I said.

"We don't know that for sure. We haven't seen it. All we know is what Anne said. Now it's an integral part of her recanting. We need that. I'll call Harris on Monday. What else?"

"The notes of the detective who interviewed her after the call support her version."

"Good. She tried to tell the truth but couldn't. That'll help a lot."

"Are we going to depose him?"

"Probably not. Let me read his notes and if they're strong enough we'll go with that. We don't want to risk him saying anything that won't help."

We ate for a moment, then Lydia said, "I read the Showalter boy's original statements. There are a number of inconsistencies which should have been brought out at trial. He confused Carson and Compton a couple of times. He messed up the price of the gun, going back between forty and fifty. And he originally said he went in the afternoon."

"Do you think he didn't get the gun in Compton?"

"The art he drew suggests he did. He could just be a kid who wasn't used to lying. What are you reading, Karen?"

"There are a couple of interviews with Paul Michaels. Boy is he a fool. Didn't know his wife was lying to him. Didn't know his brother was lying to him."

"Sometimes people know what they want to know and nothing else."

"Isn't that the definition of a fool?"

"More important than that," Lydia said. "Is that he's not going to be any use to us."

Karen shook her head.

Lin came over and asked if we'd like the rest boxed up to go home. Lydia said, "Yes, please." To us she added, "This way I won't have to make Dwayne dinner."

"Does he ever make you dinner?" I asked. I mean, really, she was my boss and an attorney. She shouldn't have to make dinner every night for a man whose big effort was reading a script.

"Dwayne is a disaster in the kitchen. Believe me, I cook in self-defense."

"Men are a disaster because we let them be," Karen said. "You need to tell that man he needs to learn to cook something. Anything. Spaghetti."

That was an awkward moment.

Karen said, "We have to go. You have a conference call with Larry at two thirty."

"I'm probably not going to be there," I said. "I have an interview at three. A woman named Sharon Hawley. She's bringing her sister who was in school with Sammy Blanchard."

Lin returned with our leftovers all boxed up. She put down the check, and a plate of three fortune cookies and some chalky mints. Lydia quickly gave her an American Express card.

After she was gone, Lydia said, "Take a cookie. Let's see what the future holds."

I broke mine open and read my fortune: Look over your shoulder, happiness is trying to catch you.

"Karen, you go first," Lydia said.

She had a sour look on her face. "Your ability to juggle many tasks will take you far."

"Well, that's certainly true."

"I wouldn't mind a frog I could turn into a prince."

"That's not a Chinese fairy tale," Lydia pointed out. "Dom, what does yours say?"

I told her.

"That's lovely. You deserve to be happy. Mine says, Eat chocolate to make a sweeter life."

Imade it to Hot Times about a quarter to three. At the counter, I ordered a latte with whole milk. I hadn't bothered looking around when I walked in. I wasn't expecting them to be there. While I waited for my coffee, there wasn't anything else to do but look around.

The place was about half full. There were a couple of guys working on laptops. One had decorated his with lots of stickies: a rainbow flag, a pink triangle, silence=death—which made me think he was older than he looked. In the corner there was a lesbian couple talking intently.

There were tables outside. Most of them were empty, but then I noticed two women in their later thirties. Two straight women. The sisters were here already. I'd walked right by them without seeing them. My name was called and I took my coffee, made in a gigantic teacup and nicely decorated with a milk tree, outside.

"Sharon?" I asked when I approached them.

Sharon, who was the older sister, thin, tall and fidgety. Her sister, Kelly, was several years younger and much more tentative. Both were bottle blondes with sharp features that betrayed their relationship.

"Yes. You're Dom?" She sounded surprised for some reason.

"I am," I said, putting my coffee on the table, and then sitting down.

"This is my sister, Dr. Kelly Wallpole."

Kelly blushed.

I said, "Thank you for coming. Did Sharon explain what I?—"

Sharon interrupted, "This is the gays neighborhood, isn't it?"

"Yeah. I mean, you don't have to take an entrance exam or anything."

"We parked over in that park—" She pointed to Bixby Park. "The signs. They'll really arrest you if you drive by the same spot three times?"

"I don't know. I've never put it to the test."

She gave me a funny look at then asked, "Are you gay?"

"Sharon!" Kelly exclaimed. "You're being rude."

"Why is that rude? It's just a question."

"Yes, I am. Are you?"

She laughed at the question. "Of course not. Is this why you're helping Larry Wilkes? Because you're both gay?"

To be honest, it was. At least a little bit. I'd paid a little more attention to his case than I might have otherwise. My way of leveling the playing field, just a tiny bit. I didn't tell her that though.

"We help all sorts of people at The Freedom Agenda. How do you know Larry Wilkes is gay?"

"Rumors."

"While you were in high school?"

"No one was gay in high school. It was afterward. And you know it makes sense. I remember Anne Whittemore. It never made sense that someone would kill over her."

Rude. I decided it was best ignored. I looked to her sister Kelly and asked, "Do you remember Sammy Blanchard?"

"Um, yeah."

"Were you ever friendly with her?"

"Of course she wasn't. Our parents would never have allowed it. I mean, she was being abused by the health teacher."

"She married him," Kelly said.

"He was an old man. He's dead by now, isn't he?"

"He's in a home," I said. I didn't elaborate.

"Really gross," Sharon said.

"I'm asking about before all that happened. Did you know Sammy at all?"

"No," Kelly said. "I mean, I knew things about her. Her parents were never around so some of the kids would go over and drink out of their bar. They never noticed so Sammy never got in trouble."

"Kelly was a good girl in high school."

Kelly blushed again. Maybe not as true as Sharon thought.

"She had a car too. It was small and she used to pack kids into it, eight, ten. It was kind of crazy."

"Do you remember what kind of car it was?"

Kelly shrugged.

"A sedan or a fastback?"

"It was two doors, definitely. I don't think it was a fastback."

"It was a Chevy Pinto," Sharon said. "I remember her driving it into the parking lot. Even the seniors were jealous."

"Ford Pinto or Chevy Vega?" I asked.

"Vega," Kelly said.

"What color was it?"

"White," Sharon said.

"Yellow," Kelly said at the same time.

"It was definitely white."

I tucked that away. "What else? It sounds like Sammy was popular?"

"No. She wasn't," Kelly said quickly. "She was never popular. She just had things kids wanted. It was kind of mean, actually."

"So, I'm confused," Sharon said. "I mean, Larry Wilkes was gay. So, obviously, he had some kind of obsession with Pete Michaels and killed him. What does that have to do with Sammy Blanchard?"

"I can't really talk about that," I said. Then I asked, "What do you remember about Pete Michaels?"

"That I had a huge crush on him. A lot of girls did. He was so sweet and funny and such a good athlete. Yeah, most girls go for the football players, but… tennis players in those little white shorts. Oh my God."

"What about Andy Showalter? Do remember him?"

Sharon shivered. "Creepy. Now that would make sense. If you told me he's the one who killed Pete, I'd think, ‘Yeah, absolutely.'"

"He killed himself."

"I guess he did the world a favor."

Cold, even under the circumstances.

"What about you, Kelly? Do you remember Pete?"

"Yeah, my sister wouldn't shut up about him."

That was all I had. Even though I was only part way through my coffee, I stood up, ready to leave. "Well, thank you. I appreciate you talking to me."

Ignoring that I was trying to say good-bye, Sharon said, "You know, the gays are so free. I'm jealous."

"Yeah, nothing says freedom like being illegal in twenty-six states."

She smirked and said, "That's not true."

I just walked away. Sometimes people were too stupid to bother with. My car was on 2nd Street, a couple blocks east of Junipero, close enough to my house that I just walked by it. Another block and I could see my front yard. There were people standing on it. One of them was Mai, Ronnie's mother. She was a little younger than me and had probably been a beauty in her youth. It had been a while since I'd seen her. She wore impeccably pressed slacks and a bright silk blouse. Her makeup was flat in a way that made her look like a mannequin. Ronnie stood on our porch glowering at her. Next to her was a guy close to Ronnie's age. I didn't recognize him. This couldn't be good.

As I crossed Molino, Ronnie saw me. He smiled which drew Mai's attention to me. She did not smile.

"What's going on?"

"It's not your business. You're not our family," Mai told me.

I was about to say anything that happened in my front yard was my business, but Ronnie said, "I'm not your family, so what are you doing here?" To clear up any confusion, he said to me. "She's here to tell me I'm disowned, and this is her new son."

"You're shitting me."

"Arthur is good boy. He will honor his elders. We will find him a good wife and he will be a rich man when I die."

Arthur looked mortified but held his ground. Ronnie's anger was covering the hurt I knew was there.

"Do you know the word cruel, Mai?" I said.

"My English is perfect."

"Good. You're being cruel. If you don't want Ronnie in your life, we can live with that. But don't come around here. Stay the fuck away."

Her face turned white under her makeup. People didn't speak to her like that. I walked up to the porch and Ronnie. When I turned around, she and her protégé were climbing into her BMW.

Ronnie leaned toward me and said, "You know what's funny? I know that guy. He started working for us right before I got my real estate license. I caught him in the back once sucking off a customer."

"You didn't fire him?"

He shrugged and smiled in a way that made it clear he'd done the same thing.

"Oh."

"By the way, you are so getting laid tonight."

"You won't get an argument from me."