Try Fear (19 page)

“You’re very wise,” USC said. “The way hate crimes are these days. It would be my great pleasure to offer you lessons, gratis,
anytime you like.”

“How thoughtful.”

I said, “Are we almost finished here?”

USC flashed a look. “You, you can go now.”

“He’s with me,” Sister Mary said.

“He is?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said.

“He says he’s a lawyer.”

“Even harder to believe, huh?”

Sister Mary and the guy shared a laugh. Then the nun said, “We’re defending a man accused of murder, and it’s very important
to establish that he was here on a certain date, and our client said that a woman who works here with tattoos on her arm—”

“Christa,” the guy said.

I just stared at him.

“Is she here?” Sister Mary said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Up on number two. I’ll give her a call.”

C
HRISTA DID HAVE
tats, a floral arrangement with a gun motif, and hair just like Eric said she had. She was wearing a red T-shirt over a compact
figure, denim cut-offs, and mid-calf black lace-up boots. She looked like she expected trouble and was ready to give it back.

She looked at Sister Mary. “What’d I do now?” she said with a forced smile. “Am I in trouble with God?”

“No trouble,” I said. “My name’s Buchanan and this is Sister Mary Veritas, my associate.”

Christa looked at USC. He shrugged.

“It’s not an ordinary pairing,” I said, “but whoever thought Martin and Lewis would get together.”

“Who?” Christa said.

USC said, “You don’t know Martin and Lewis?”

“No, should I?”

“They don’t teach these kids history anymore,” USC said to me. To Christa he said, “They were big explorers back in the old
days.”

There was a pause in the room as education took a turn for the worse. I decided not to correct the record.

I said, “I wonder if you could take a look at this photo and tell me if you recognize this guy.”

I showed her the picture of Eric that Kate gave me.

“He looks familiar,” Christa said.

“He’s a big guy,” I said. “Six-five and wide. He would have been with his brother, same size.”

“Oh yeah! I got it now. They were big all right. I remember thinking you’d need an elephant gun to take ’em down.”

“Do you remember when this was?”

She looked up, as if trying to remember. “I don’t know. Couple months ago, maybe.”

“This would have been around the end of January. His name is Eric Richess, his brother’s name was Carl.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead.”

“Bummer. How?”

“Would you have a sign-in book or some sort of record?”

Christa put a hand on her hip. “What’s this about?”

“I’m representing Eric Richess. He’s on trial. And I need to confirm he and his brother were here.”

“So wait a second. Your guy killed his own brother?”

I shook my head. “He’s accused, that’s all, and I’m looking for the truth. And you can help me.”

USC said, “Let’s check the records.”

Christa shot him a nine-millimeter look.

USC spread his arms in a
What’s wrong?
gesture.

“Will I have to testify?” Christa said.

“I’d like you to,” I said.

“Cool! Will it be on TV?”

“Probably not.”

“Will there be one of those guys who draws the pictures?”

“You never know.”

“Close enough,” she said. “Okay, Andy, let’s check the records.”

They did. The records were in a black binder, loose-leaf. She opened the January tab and I looked at the ledger of names with
them. She found it. Carl Richess had signed in and paid for two on Friday, January 23, at eleven-twenty a.m.

It was confirmed. I almost did a dance.

I requested the page so I could make a copy, and promised to return it that same day.

Christa looked skeptical, but USC said, “I think you can count on the Sister, Christa.”

“Hey,” Christa said, “that sounds funny. Sister Christa. Think I’d make it as a nun?”

USC smiled. “You’d last an hour.”

She shot him another nine-millimeter look, then laughed.

“M
AYBE
I
WOULD
like to shoot,” Sister Mary said as we drove down from the hills.

“I don’t know. A nun packing heat? You do enough with a ruler.”

“I’m going to hurt you next time we play.”

“Why should next time be any different?”

There was a print shop just off the Angeles Crest Highway. We stopped to make a copy of the sign-in page, then drove the original
back to the range.

We left it with USC. Christa was out “kicking some butt,” he said. I did not ask.

When we got back to St. Monica’s we went to the “war room,” which was a funny thing to call the little table in the library
of St. Monica’s. But this was where we were going to do trial prep, and lay out strategy for the trial.

I had a packet of discovery from Radavich that I spread out on the table. It included a witness list, police reports and lab
reports, and a CD with digital photos of the scene taken by the SI team. Attached to one of the police reports was an itemization
of the contents of Carl’s apartment. I slipped this over to Sister Mary and asked her to look through it.

After an hour or so I said, “Your main job will be to watch the jury.”

Sister Mary looked up from the papers in front of her. “Watch them do what?” she said.

“Everything. From the moment the panel walks in, I want you looking at them. Do it casually. Don’t get caught. But notice
what they’re reading, what their expressions convey. Get an overall impression.”

“Shouldn’t
you
be watching them?”

“They don’t like being studied by the lawyers. If they think a lawyer is sizing them up, they get suspicious. Even before
the trial begins you’ve got a couple strikes against you. You blow your first impression, you can never get that back. You
have to work harder just to get back to square one.”

“So then how do you pick the jury?”

“You don’t.”

“What?”

“You unpick a jury.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You have no control over the names that are called to sit in the box. That’s random. We can’t put people in, we can only
get them out, using challenges. There are challenges for cause and peremptory challenges.”

“What’s the difference?”

“If you can show some kind of bias, then you can challenge a juror for cause. If he’s made up his mind about the case already,
or has some kind of prejudice where he can’t keep an open mind. That’s hard to show. There are other challenges for cause,
but they’re rare. With peremptory challenges, you don’t usually have to give a reason.”

“You can just kick off whoever you want?”

“Almost. You can’t systematically exclude jurors based on race, gender, sexual preference, or religion. I couldn’t kick all
the nuns off my jury, for example.”

“And there are so many of them on juries these days.”

“Then after we have a jury and start the trial, keep watching them. Watch how they react to the evidence. And especially when
I’m cross-examining a witness, watch who they look at.”

“What’s that do?”

“It makes you the Crossometer.”

She shook her head.

“That’s what I call it,” I said. “It’s a gauge of what they’re thinking. Here’s how it works. If they’re looking at the witness,
that means they’re really trying to figure out if he’s telling the truth. If they’re looking at me, they’re wondering what
I’m up to. If they’re looking at our client, that means they’re making up their minds he really did it.”

“That works?”

“It does. And it doesn’t cost a thing.”

Sister Mary held my eyes for a beat, then quickly looked down at the table. “Let’s talk about the inventory of Carl’s apartment.”

“What about it? Something on there catch your eye?”

“It’s what’s not on there. There’s no computer. Everybody has a computer now, don’t they?”

I shrugged, then remembered something. “Morgan Barstler said he and Carl were in touch by e-mail. There’s no PDA or anything
like that listed, is there?”

Sister Mary looked at the report. “No.”

“Good catch,” I said. “I’m really getting my money’s worth here.”

“Excuse me?”

“Lawyers can spend tens of thousands of dollars on fancy jury consultants, but that’s just money down a hole. One sharp nun
is all anybody needs.”

She laughed. It was lilting and simple and pure. That transparency and ease made her face incredibly attractive just then.
I knew that was not a good thing to be thinking. The emotion of working close in an intense situation—and there’s nothing
more intense than a murder trial—had to be watched.

Fortunately I could almost feel the eyes of Sister Hildegarde on me, ever watching, holding a rubber mallet.

“Enough flattery,” I said. “Let’s get back to work.”

We worked for another hour when I got a call from Sid, B-2’s computer whiz.

W
E SNUCK HIM
into the office. This was where Sister Mary handled a lot of the abbey business, being the nun computer expert. It’s also
where Sister Hildegarde was liable to show up at any time, unannounced.

But Sid installed the program and said it was triggered to send him an alert when it caught a whiff of our intruder.

And then we’d see.

It was all a holding pattern now. Like the way everything else in my life seemed frozen in time.

I had to get some things moving.

T
HE NEXT DAY
I drove over to the Ezzo Cement Company. It was on the back end of Brazil Street in Glendale, on the east side of the 5 Freeway,
across from the Griffith Park Golf Courses.

It was like a different country on this side of the 5. Brown and dusty, it could have been a set in a Mexican caper movie.
Over on the green of the links, it was a golfer’s paradise.

I went into the front office of the pre-engineered steel building and found a gaunt, smiling man sitting at a desk, holding
a fly swatter.

“Hey hey,” he said.

Hey hey?
“How you doing,” I said, going with the mood.

He laughed and nodded his head. Then swatted something on the desk.

I assume it was a fly. But now I’m not sure.

“Do for what?” he said. Thick accent. Russian?

“Is the boss around?” I said.

The Swatter laughed and nodded. “Yea boy.”

I laughed and nodded.

He swatted something else.

“So can I talk to him?” I said.

“More chesty,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

He laughed and nodded.

“Maybe I’ll just go find him myself,” I said. I didn’t know where I’d go, but anywhere but here seemed a step in the right
direction.

“Sit, sit,” he said. He got up and waved his swatter like a baton, presumably showing me to sit.

I laughed and nodded.

He went out a back door. A few minutes later he was back with a goateed man, tall, in a long-sleeved shirt with purple and
red stripes, and jeans. About forty, younger than the Swatter.

“Help you?” he said.

“My name’s Buchanan,” I said. “You are?”

“Mike Ezzo.” He did not offer his hand.

“I wanted to ask you about Carl Richess.”

“Why?”

“I’m representing his brother.”

“So?”

“Carl worked for you, right?”

“So?”

“If I could ask you some questions—”

“Carl Richess was a troublemaker,” Ezzo said.

The Swatter laughed and nodded.

I said, “So that means he might have had some people mad at him. People like Nick Molina, say.”

Ezzo squinted at me. “What’ve you been doing, snooping around?”

“Look, friend, I’m just doing my job, like you do your job. I’m not out to make any trouble for you or anybody else. I just
want to know what happened.”

“You are making trouble. I don’t have time for this.”

“Why was Carl a troublemaker?”

“Because he made trouble,” Ezzo said.

“Hey hey,” Swatter said.

I gave Ezzo my card and said I’d appreciate a call if he changed his mind.

“Don’t hold your breath,” he said.

I laughed, nodded, and left.

I
SPENT THE
rest of the day putting in calls to a couple of forensic labs. I’d need an expert or two in my pocket.

I got back to St. Monica’s around four and headed straight to my home at the northeast corner. Father Bob was watering some
flowers he’d planted outside his trailer.

“She got another one,” he said.

I knew he meant an e-mail. This one was a full-on assault. Another graphic description, another drawing of a nun that looked
like Sister Mary, and a couplet of sexual rhyme.

“She doing okay?” I said.

“She is, but Sister Hildegarde is about to bust a gasket.”

“Is that a Catholic thing?”

“It does not bode well for any of us, Sister Mary especially.”

I went into my own trailer. Hoping to hear from Sid about the e-mail. I microwaved some macaroni and cheese and read some
of my Jake Ehrlich book. I liked the guy’s attitude. I liked his approach to trial work. Stay on offense. Find the lie.

You can always find the lie, he said, especially in cross-examination.

When I looked up it was dark outside. I had dozed off. Someone was knocking on my door.

I opened it.

Kimberly Pincus stood there, lit by moonlight and holding a bottle of wine. “Busy?” she said.

“I
T’S NOT EXACTLY
the Ritz,” I said. “But I call it home.”

Kimberly sat at the kitchenette table and started opening the wine with the corkscrew she’d brought. “Quaint,” she said.

“I’ve designed it in early Desi Arnaz. How did you find me?”

“Darling, this is Kimberly.” She pulled the cork. “Have you got wineglasses?”

“Sure.” I snagged two white foam cups from the package on an open shelf. “Don’t drop them.”

She poured white wine in the cups and we thudded them, then sipped.