Howtown (8 page)

“Who is the investigating officer?” I asked.

“Dwight Morrow. Good cop.”

“Meaning what?”

“His arrests are clean and they stick.”

“Morrow,” I mused. “He’s the cop who got the search warrant, isn’t he? Good cop?” I shook my head. “I’ve never seen a search warrant issued on so little probable cause, and if you take away the money, all you’ve got are fingerprints. What kind of case is that?”

“So are you here to make a deal, or what?”

“No deals,” I said. “I want a straight dismissal or a trial.”

His attempt at gravity made him look like a pouting infant. “We take our crime a little more serious here than in the big cities,” he replied.

“Speaking of that,” I ventured, “I understand people were pretty upset when the charges were dropped against Paul in that child molest case a few years back.”

“You could say that,” he replied. “I was the DA on the case.”

“You nursing a grudge?”

“I’m strictly a nine-to-five kind of guy, Henry.”

“What happened on that case?”

“The judge wouldn’t drop the charges. Made us put the girl on the stand and threatened to hold her in contempt if she wouldn’t testify.”

“But she didn’t.”

“Nope. Just sat there, crying. Judge still wouldn’t dump the case. The DA had to come into court and ask for dismissal.”

“Who was the judge?”

“Burton K. Phelan,” he said. “Tough son-of-a-bitch.”

I pocketed the information. “Clayton told me the prelim’s in front of the same judge who issued the search warrant. Judge Lanyon.”

“Yeah, luck of the draw. Not lucky for you, maybe, but you know the prelim’s just a dog-and-pony show anyway.” He picked up his coffee cup, sipped, made a face.

“You know as well as I do that it’s unlawful for the same judge who issues a search warrant to hear the prelim.”

“Tell him.”

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

Cradling the cup between his hands, he said, “Like I said, Henry, we take our crime serious around here.”

“What about procedure? You take that seriously, too?”

“You ought to talk to a couple of defense lawyers before you plan anything fancy,” he said. “They’ll tell you that kind of stuff doesn’t sit well here.”

“Frontier justice, huh?”

He put the cup down. “You want to watch your attitude, too.”

I got up. “No offense intended, Dom. Thanks for the cooperation. Should I pick the stuff up from you?”

“Nah. Just go down to central and ask for Morrow. He’ll have it. Pleasure meeting you, Henry. Let’s have some fun with this case.”

“Pleasure meeting you, Dom,” I replied, and let myself out of his office.

After a final stop at Clayton’s office to pick up the packet of
Sentinel
articles about the case, I drove to the airport at the edge of town. Within the hour I was looking down at the baked landscape, declining a cocktail and wondering what I’d let myself into.

Morning found me at my office, a shabby suite of rooms in a nondescript office building on Sunset and La Brea I’d picked up cheap. Our only neighbors were a publicist named Ronnie Toy and an actors’ agent who called himself Marc-Alan. An
OFFICE SPACE FOR LEASE
sign was a permanent fixture on the door to the building; we were the commercial equivalent of the motels that lined that part of Sunset and rented by the hour to the prostitutes who negotiated their deals alfresco on the street below. My secretary, Emma Austen, a regal black woman, had once demanded a raise on the grounds that she was entitled to at least as much money per hour as the hookers made.

I was sitting in the conference room going over the
Sentinel
articles that Clayton had given me when I heard the radio start up in the next room. A moment later, Emma breezed in, swathed in a sort of filmy white caftan, her braided hair bright with blue and gold beads, carrying a mug of coffee in one hand and a stack of pink telephone message slips in the other.

“Are you trying to hide from me?” she asked, setting the messages at my elbow.

I glanced at the pile. “Make them go away.”

She placed the mug in front of me. “I can’t, honey, but I did bring you coffee to make them easier to swallow.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t go getting used to it,” she replied, faint traces of the South in her accent. She glanced over my shoulder. “What are you reading, Henry?”

“These are articles from my hometown newspaper about a case I’m taking.” I lifted the sheet I’d been looking at and handed it to her.

“The
Los Robles Sentinel
,” she read. “ ‘Windsor Arrested in Killing of Kiddie Porn King. Suspect Is Brother of Developer; Was Once Arrested for Child Molestation.’ ” She shook her head, beads clattering. “Oh, my. ‘Paul Windsor, brother of developer Mark Windsor, was charged with the brutal murder of John McKay, a dealer in child pornography who was found bludgeoned in a motel room early Monday morning.’ ” she read. “ ‘Windsor, 32, was arrested at his home in exclusive River Park yesterday. Four years ago, he was arrested in a child molestation case that was dismissed when the victim, a 15-year-old girl, refused to testify, allegedly due to the pressure of the Windsor family.’ ” She handed me the paper. “Who is this creep?”

“The brother of a boyhood friend of mine,” I replied.

“Exclusive River Park home,” she said. “Are you doing this for the money?”

“I’m doing it as a favor to my sister. Paul’s wife is a friend of hers.”

“Wife?” she said, incredulously. “Poor woman. Did he do it, Henry?”

“I don’t know. He’s not admitting to it and the case is weak. His creep quotient is pretty high but that doesn’t make him a killer.”

She sat down. “Did he molest the little girl?”

I nodded.

“He should have had his balls cut off,” she said, decisively.

“Speaking as one who knows,” I replied, “sexuality doesn’t originate in the balls. It starts here.” I tapped my head.

Rising, she said, “Then he ought to have his head chopped off. Or examined, anyway.”

Her remark gave me an idea. “Do you remember that psychiatrist we used in the Castillo trial?”

“Uh-huh, the gorgeous one, Nick Trejo?”

“Find his number, would you? I’d like to talk to him.”

“Sure,” she said. “Why are you reading these articles? You already know what the case is about.”

“There’s some question about whether Paul can get a fair trial in Los Robles with all this publicity,” I said. “If it gets that far.”

“I’ll call Nick,” she said. “Mmm, that man. Even his voice is good-looking.”

“He’s gay, Emma.”

“Any man that pretty would have to be.”

The fact that there hadn’t been much hard news about Paul’s case hadn’t deterred the
Sentinel
one whit. The stories quickly branched out to other transgressions by the Windsors, culminating in a three-part article called “An American Family.”

“American Gothic” would have been an apter title. I learned a lot about the Windsors, most of it damning, none of it relevant to the murder charge against Paul. In exposé style, the writer informed his audience that, among other things, their mother, Lydia Windsor (“nee Lydia Smith”), was an alcoholic, Herb Windsor was a strikebreaker allegedly with ties to “the underworld,” and Mark had been twice divorced and the defendant in a paternity suit, and, of course, dwelt on Paul’s prior arrest for child molestation, repeating allegations that the Windsors had somehow pressured the victim into refusing to testify. Side by side with the last installment of the article was a front-page editorial urging the voters to approve Proposition K, the no-growth ordinance, necessary, the editor opined, to curb the excess of unscrupulous (and unnamed) developers.

I put the articles back into the folder. Over the years, I’d seen more and more of this kind of sensationalism in the media’s coverage of criminal cases. “The court of public opinion” had become more than just a First Amendment platitude. It was actually the forum in which many serious criminal cases were tried and, usually, lost. So, as deplorable as the
Sentinel
’s coverage was, in any other city it might not be enough to persuade a judge that it had effectively tainted the minds of prospective jurors. Los Robles wasn’t just any other city, however. In the first place, the
Sentinel
was the only general circulation paper in the entire county. In the second place, the
Sentinel
was doing more than just prejudging Paul’s case. It was deliberately using his arrest to promote its editor’s political agenda on the no-growth issue, which was one of the great public controversies in California.

Maybe the combination of things would be sufficient to convince a judge that Paul could not get a fair hearing in Los Robles. This assumed we could find a judge in Los Robles who’d give us a fair hearing on whether we could get a fair hearing.

I ran through the rest of my notes and saw the question about McKay’s rap sheet. Reaching for the phone, I called my investigator, Freeman Vidor. A moment later I was explaining the situation to him.

He said, “The Los Robles PD don’t seem too interested in the victim.”

“He’s definitely a bit player,” I agreed. “Paul Windsor seems to be the star.”

“You got a plan?” he rumbled.

“Plan A is to get him off at the prelim,” I said.

“You better have a plan B,” Freeman said, knowing as well as I did that virtually all preliminary hearings, the purpose of which was simply to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to support the charges against a defendant, were pro forma.

“Plan B is to argue that the prosecution can’t make reasonable doubt,” I said, referring to the requirement that the prosecution prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. “As long as they can’t prove Paul did it, it doesn’t matter who killed McKay. But I have a bad feeling about the way they do justice in my hometown, so I want a plan C. I want to know if there’s anything in McKay’s background I could use to argue that someone had it in for him.”

“Someone else besides Windsor, you mean,” he said.

“That’s my first preference,” I replied, dryly. “Of course, if it turns out to be Paul, that’s also useful information.”

“You think he’s lying to you.”

“Being lied to is a way of life in this business.”

“I’ll be in touch,” Freeman said.

From her desk, Emma called, “Henry, Nick Trejo is on line two. He wants to talk to you.”

“One second,” I said, giving myself time to collect my thoughts before talking to the psychologist. “Nick?”

“Hello, Henry. Emma was telling me about this case you have. Another winner?”

She was right about Nick’s voice. It was good-looking.

“The bills have to be paid.”

“So, what do you want to know?”

“My client is a self-proclaimed pedophile. I guess I want to know if a pedophile is more likely to commit a crime of violence because of his pedophilia.”

“Does he have a history of violence?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied, making a note to find out. “On the other hand, he’s really very aggressive about his pedophilia, and he was also real quick to shift the blame to other people for what was happening to him. It made me think that here’s a man who lives by his own rules. Could it be that murder is not outside of those rules?”

“Tell me everything you know about him,” Nick said.

“He’s the younger of two sons,” I said. “His brother, whom he hates, has always overshadowed him. The mother was an alcoholic, the father a very successful businessman.” I thought for a moment. “He was very quiet as a kid.”

“Is this someone you knew?”

“I was friends with the older brother,” I replied. “Paul was the kind of a nuisance I never paid much attention to. He’s evidently pretty bright. Articulate. Married a woman much older than he is. She told me he was desperate to get married.”

“What’s she like?” he asked.

“A victim, a drinker.”

“What about his pedophilia?”

“Paul was arrested for molesting the daughter of their maid. It went on for several years until he got her pregnant. She wouldn’t testify against him so the charges got dropped. The man he’s accused of murdering was a dealer in child pornography. Paul said the guy offered to sell him a little girl, that’s why he went to see him the night he was killed. Paul says the guy turned out to be a fraud. I’m afraid that’s pretty much all I know. What do you think, Nick?”

Nick hesitated. “You know I don’t like making this kind of spot analysis but off the top of my head, I’d say there’s a lot going on with your guy. Between an alcoholic mother and a go-getter father, there probably wasn’t much attention paid to the kids. If his brother was the star, your guy—Paul?—probably didn’t even get any of that. It would be interesting to know what his sexual experience was as a child.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, scribbling notes.

“The one truism about pedophiles is that almost every one was himself molested as a child. Let’s assume that Paul was pretty isolated and ignored as a kid. That would make him a ripe target for sexual abuse.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Kids want attention, Henry. They need it and if it doesn’t come from their families, it puts them at risk.”

“Wouldn’t a kid draw the line at sex?”

“Not necessarily,” Nick said. “If a kid’s very young he might not understand what’s being done to him. If he’s older, he may decide it’s just part of the bargain.”

“That comes awfully close to saying he’d consent.”

“ ‘Awfully close’ isn’t the same thing. Let’s say he puts up with it, even if he feels it’s wrong. You can imagine the kind of damage that does.”

“Paul’s not exactly guilt-ridden about his preference for little girls,” I remarked.

“Haven’t you heard of rationalization? Particularly if he’s bright, he’ll have learned to mask his pain.”

“His what?”

“Pain, Henry,” he repeated, quietly. “Wouldn’t you feel hurt if you woke one day and realized that you’d been used by someone you thought cared for you? Inside, Paul may still be trying to make sense of it.”

“By molesting little girls?”

Nick said, “He acts out what happened to him as a way of giving himself power over a situation where he was powerless. Plus, kids are a lot less critical than other adults. He can feel in control.”