Blind Justice (21 page)

COURT BROKE FOR the weekend, giving me a chance to think things over. Only I couldn’t think about them. My mind was split into too many segments.

Largest segment—my daughter. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt not to see her. I thought I would be able to stand it for awhile, at least until after the trial, when I could go and fight for custody. I figured I could wait that long. But I couldn’t. It was torture.

On Saturday I went into the office. It was usually deserted there on the weekends, and I could at least pretend I was doing some legal work. I could also drink in peace.

My office was too cramped, so I spread out my stuff on the conference table in the library. Gil Lee kept a pretty good stock of legal books there. He even had a computer set up for his tenants, and for a small fee, we could do online research.

In about two minutes the conference table was covered with legal papers, notepads, transcripts, and discovery items. There was no order to the material, fitting perfectly with my state of mind. A man’s desk, someone once told me, reflects his inner life. At this moment, I had to agree.

Was there anything in this jumble that could possibly help me? Something I hadn’t seen before?

I remembered the supplementary medical report, the one that concluded Rae Patino had been three months pregnant when she died. Where was that? I couldn’t remember ever seeing it. Surely I would have remembered something that important.

I found a copy of the report. It was two pages long. And there, in the middle of the second page, was the information that had surprised me at trial.

The report was signed by Chester A. Riordan.

For five minutes I looked at that thing and tried to recall when I’d received it. I could not. No memory. Blank screen.

Could I have seen it and not remembered? A scary thought hit me. Maybe my short-term memory was damaged in some way. Worse, maybe I hadn’t registered this in my memory at all, being juiced at the time I first got it.

Alone and lost in the library, I shook. If there had been another L.A. earthquake, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

To calm myself, I took a swig from the bottle I’d brought with me. It was warm and soothing, like always. I knew I would be comforted soon.

Next thing I knew I was being jostled awake by a hand on my shoulder and a voice repeating my name. Slowly, like a boat being dragged out of mud, my mind came back into reality.

“You sleeping on the job?” Triple C said. “That why you don’t answer your phone?”

I rubbed my eyes and looked at my watch. I’d been out for forty-five minutes. “I must have dozed off.”

“Yeah, right,” Trip said, holding up my half-empty bottle. “I got a mind to smash you over the head with this.”

“Maybe it’d do me some good.” My temples were pounding, and my neck was sore.

“You’re losing it.”

“Is that why you tracked me down?”

“No, I was actually doing some work for you, though for the life of me I don’t know why.”

Trip took off his shoulder bag and sat in a chair on the other side of the conference table. He was wearing his signature Hawaiian shirt. “My dad was a drinker,” he said. “He ended up on a slab at sixty, with no liver and a heart like Kleenex.”

“Don’t lecture me.”

“Don’t do this to yourself.”

“Do we have a chance?”

“For what?”

“To win.”

Trip took a long time before answering, watching me from behind his sunglasses. “All you need is one,” he said, referring to the possibility of a hung jury.

“Have I got that?”

“Probably not.”

I couldn’t disagree.

“You putting Howie on the stand?” Trip asked.

“I don’t see as I have a choice.”

“That’s tough. Tolletson might take him apart.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.”

Tapping his sunglasses with a finger, Trip said, “You’re
hoping?
What’s that all about?”

Amazingly, I had thought through this part of my case pretty clearly. “I want Howie to be taken apart,” I explained, “because I want him to crack up in front of the jury. I want them to see just how much of a fruitcake he is. I want him babbling away about God’s will, so the jury can see this is not the kind of guy who would plan and then carry out a murder. And this is the one way I’m going to get in some of Rae Patino’s background. Since Howie’s state of mind is an issue, he can tell the jury just what he thought about Rae.”

After a pause to reflect, Triple C nodded. “You really can think when you give yourself a chance.”

“Yeah, maybe. Anyway, this is my last chance.”

“Why?”

“I’m through after this.” Until I said those words, I had not made any decision like that. I was almost surprised to hear this coming out of my mouth. But it made perfect sense to me. “This is my last trial.”

“What are you talking about?” Trip said. “What else could a washed-up hack like you do besides practice law?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. I only know I haven’t got anything to hold me here anymore. I can’t see my own daughter. I owe my landlord money. I’m getting my butt kicked in a little podunk town. Why should I hang around?”

“Don’t ask me. I’m no doctor. But I have tracked down my share of skips in my time, and I can tell you this. You don’t find the answers by running.”

“Ah.” I waved my hand in the air in the universal sign of dismissal.

“Let’s forget about that for the moment,” Trip said. “I just thought you’d like to know something.”

“How generous.”

“Not. I’ll bill you for the time.”

“So, what is it?”

“It’s that podunk town. You remember I told you I felt weird about it?”

“Yeah.”

“I think I know why.” Trip finally took off his shades and threw them on the table. “You have any idea how the little town of Hinton got its start?”

I shook my head.

“I spent yesterday afternoon in the Hinton Municipal Library.”

“They have any books?”

Snorting, Trip said, “Several. Anyway, I asked the librarian for a history of the place. She got me one. The Chamber of Commerce actually published a history of Hinton on its centennial, back in 1990. The official version of the story is that the land that is now Hinton County was won in a poker game in San Francisco. The man who won it was a ne’er-do-well who’d been chased out of polite society in the East. You know what his name was?”

“Gandhi,” I said.

Trip shook his head. “Come on, man. You need to hear this.”

“Sorry.”

“The man’s name was Solomon Hazelton.”

“Hazelton Winery?”

“Not then. Not yet.”

Now Trip had my attention. One thing he knew how to do was tell a story. He’d baited the hook, and I was biting.

“The unofficial version,” Trip continued, “is that Solomon Hazelton killed a man to get that land. Whatever happened, he moved down here and started building a town. By the twenties the place was thriving, and Solomon Hazelton was a very rich man. He owned most of the land in the county, and everything was great up until 1929 and the crash. Solomon Hazelton died, and his son took over the crumbling family holdings. The son’s name was Victor. Victor is the father of Warren, better known as Captain Warren.”

“The winery guy.”

“The very same.”

“Who looks to have revived the family fortune.”

“He’s done well.”

I shrugged. “Sounds like a typical American success story.”

“That ain’t all.” Trip smiled mysteriously, the way he did when he was about to tell something he’d uncovered through dogged detective work. “As I was reading this book, an old guy comes up to me. He’s not smelling too good, and his clothes are from the Salvation Army. I figure him for one of these guys on Social Security who hangs out in the library because it’s cool inside. He says to me, ‘I heard you ask about the history of Hinton. You want the real story?’ Well, I’m a PI. I don’t turn down any offer of information. I say, ‘Sure,’ and he takes me outside. . . .”

The old gentleman, whose name was Morris, asked Trip for a cigarette. Trip told him he didn’t smoke. Morris said he would not reveal what he had unless he got a nail. So Trip walked him around the corner to a liquor store and bought him a pack of Camels. That was all it took for Morris to get started.

He told Trip he had once been a city councilman, back in the sixties, which was the heyday of Hinton. He also owned a restaurant downtown, a place frequented by the power players of the time.

The most powerful of the bunch was Captain Warren Hazelton. He was called Captain because of his fondness for racing yachts, two of which he had docked in the Ventura Marina. The appellation had a dual significance. He was a man who not only liked sailing the ocean but was used to giving orders.

His other passion was wine, and he had built Hazelton into the best winery in the region. Naturally, he expected the local establishments to carry a full stock of Hazelton wines.

“But I wouldn’t do it,” Morris told Trip, “because he wanted to overcharge me. Told him I’d run my place my way. He didn’t like that. He said he’d ruin me. And he did.”

Morris took a deep drag on his cigarette and looked at the hills above Hinton. “I could have been up on that mountain instead of him, but he unloosed the powers on me.”

“What powers?” Trip asked.

Squinting through the languid smoke, old man Morris said, “The powers of darkness.”

Thinking he’d been conned out of a pack of Camels by some homeless nut, Trip was about to leave. But there was something in the old man’s eyes that made him stop—a depth of feeling that told Trip either the guy was telling the absolute truth or else believed absolutely that he was.

“They practice the magic arts,” Morris said. “They call on the powers of darkness.”

Trip thought immediately of the Scottish play. “You mean like witchcraft?”

Morris nodded with a wry smile. “You want to see?”

“He starts leading me,” Trip said, “and I thought about getting out of there, but something kept me going.”

“Your morbid curiosity?” I said.

“Maybe your skin,” he answered. “Why I do these things for you, I don’t know.”

“So what did you find?”

Morris led Trip to a dilapidated guest house on the back property of a shabby house in the less desirable section of town. The railroad tracks were literally across the street. Scrub brush sprouted from every crack in the sidewalk, and the eucalyptus trees lining the street were in various stages of decay.

Morris’s place was a one-room, windowless shack that might have originally been designed to store tools. Now it was lined, floor to ceiling, with the detritus of a lifetime.

Old man Morris was a classic pack rat. Books, newspapers, vinyl record albums, shoes—including two pairs of red and white bowling shoes, Trip noted—closed the quarters into a bizarre theater-in-the-round, with a small living space in the middle. A solitary mattress with an old Army blanket was the only piece of furniture, if one could call it that. The air inside was stale and heavy.

“Sit down,” Morris said.

“Where?” said Trip, looking around.

“Right there.” Morris motioned to a stack of newspapers bound with twine. “On 1977.”

Indeed, the top newspaper, a
Hinton Valley News,
was dated August 16, 1977. Trip noticed the headline and realized he was about to sit on top of the death of Elvis Presley.

Fitting, he thought.

Morris was digging through a pile on the opposite side of the room. “I’ll have it for you in a minute,” he said.

“Some filing system,” said Trip.

“I know where everything is,” Morris said. “I know where the bodies are buried.”

For a moment Trip wondered how many bodies were buried inside, or underneath, this freakish hovel. But he reasoned Morris must be speaking figuratively. He hoped he was.

“Ah!” Morris said, returning to Trip with a shoebox. Trip saw it was filled with newspaper clippings, a haphazard jumble of yellowing paper. Morris started sifting through it, like a mouse scratching for hidden cheese.

Presently, he pulled out a clipping and held it up. “Take a look at that!”

Trip took it. The story, dated September 15, 1968, described the nuptials of Warren Hazelton and one Heather Epstein. The accompanying photo showed Hazelton with a young woman who appeared to be about twenty years old. She wore a garland of daisies in her hair in the classic “flower child” style of the time. Her smile was bright and hopeful, yet also, it seemed to Trip, a touch naive. Warren Hazelton was not smiling.

“So, this is Mrs. Hazelton?” Trip asked.

Morris nodded. “Now take a look at this.” Morris handed Trip another clipping, this one some sort of feature story from the mid-’70s, a local profile of Heather Hazelton. Her marriage to the Captain had apparently bestowed on her instant social standing. Yet, she retained her hippie pedigree, the story noted, especially with regard to her love of the earth.

“I’m into the Goddess,” she was quoted as saying. “The Mother of All was first, and I merely practice an ancient form of religion that worships Mother Nature. I use visualization, chants, candles, amulets, and meditation to tap into my power. It’s wonderful. It’s really what this whole generation is searching for.”

“Do you see that?” Morris said, pointing to that section of the story with a yellow-stained index finger.

“So?” Trip said. “A lot of hippies were into weird stuff back then. It was pretty harmless.”

“Harmless! Look at me!” Morris shouted. “You think I brought this on myself? Do you?”

“Look, man—”

“I’m giving you the whole story right here!” Morris held up a clutch of clippings in his fist and waved them around.

Trip started to fear the old coot would grab a gun and start shooting. But just as quickly as it had come on, the outburst passed. In a suddenly quiet voice, Morris said, “They cast a spell on me. That’s when I lost everything. That’s when the fire broke out.”