Try Fear (24 page)

“Make it fast, Mr. Buchanan,” said the judge.

“How much?” I asked Schneuder.

“A little over one hundred thousand, the last year.”

“What about now? What’s your salary?”

“Less than that.” He smiled.

“How much less?”

“I make a little over sixty thousand.”

“Quite a pay cut. Did something happen back in Phoenix we need to know about?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you get canned? Excuse me—fired?”

“No.”

“Contract not renewed?”

“We reached a mutual agreement. I wanted to come out to Los Angeles, and work with the best.”

“That was your sole motivation?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t it true that the L.A. County crime labs are horribly underfunded, compared to private outfits?”

“There are some budgetary restraints.”

“Which means our labs, as earnest as they are, are not the best.”

“I think they’re quality,” Schneuder said.

I looked at the clock. “Your Honor, if we could take our lunch break a little early, I think I can finish up with this witness
in another hour.”

“Any objection, Mr. Radavich?” said Hughes.

“No objection.”

“Then we’ll come back here at two o’clock.”

He admonished the jury not to talk, yadda yadda, and we were off.

I
DECIDED TO
splurge with Sister Mary again, and took her to Subway for lunch.

Over our BMTs and chips we looked at the
fifth
edition of Friedman and Lyle,
Forensic Detection,
scanning the index for anything related to smearing gunshot residue. That was a little tough, considering all the academic
verbiage we had to go through.

We took turns. One looked while the other ate, then back again.

I found a section on potential compromises to residue evidence, but nothing about intentional planting or smearing.

“You going to call him on it?” Sister Mary said.

“It’s tricky,” I said. “Most experts know enough about the material to dodge and weave. But I may give it a whirl. The jury
could be impressed with my research.”

“
Your
research? Who walked to the library?”

“Okay,
our
research,” I said. “Speaking of which, have you been watching the jury?”

She nodded as she took a bite of her sub. She put a finger in the air to indicate a pause, chewed. Then said, “Number seven
has been taking a lot of notes.”

Number seven was a retired pipe fitter from Baldwin Park.

“I think he’s pulling for us,” I said. “One working stiff to another.”

“And, I might add, number three seems rather smitten with you.”

That would be the elementary school teacher from Los Feliz. Single. Blond.

“I can’t turn off my natural charm,” I said. “It just seeps out.”

“I’m tempted to say, try to put a cork in it. Shouldn’t this be about the facts, and the truth?”

“My naïve little friend, every trial lawyer in the world wants to charm the jury. You need every advantage you can get. You
need to build up even the little things. It’s called the art of persuasion. You remember your Greek rhetoric, don’t you?”

“I must have missed that class.”

“Ethos, pathos, and logos,” I said.

“Weren’t they the Three Musketeers?” she said.

“Character, feeling, and reason,” I said. “All three are needed for persuasion.”

“I’m not persuaded.”

“Just keep hanging with me, and you will be.”

I smiled, but as I did she looked away. I thought there was a moment of sadness in her face then. I didn’t say anything about
it.

She turned back. “One more thing. I did a little Googling while I was waiting for the book. I Googled Schneuder.”

“And I know how painful that can be.”

She ignored me. “There wasn’t a whole lot on him, but I did find something interesting. An article in one of those free weeklies,
out of Phoenix. He was mentioned in a story about a local writer who wants to re-open the Robert Blake case. So I Googled
the writer. His name’s Troy Cameron.”

“Sounds like some beefcake from the fifties. Tab Hunter. Dash Riprock.”

“He seems to be a Phoenix gadfly. Always in the face of the local politicians. But he apparently has a true-crime book to
his credit. Might be self-published.”

“Troy Cameron, huh?”

“Can you do anything with it?”

“Maybe make our boy sweat a little,” I said. “Let’s try.”

B
ACK IN COURT
at two, I faced Schneuder. “Doctor, when we left off you had mentioned reliance on a text by Friedman and Lyle. That would
be
Forensic Detection,
correct?”

“Yes.”

“Fourth edition, I believe you said.”

“That’s right.”

I went to the counsel table. Sister Mary handed me the book. I took it and placed it on the rail of the witness stand. “Showing
you now a book, Dr. Schneuder. Can you read the title for us?”

“
Forensic Detection.
”

“What edition?”

He looked a little closer. “Fifth.”

“That would be the most up-to-date version, would it not?”

“I believe so.” His eyes flashed.

“The one you said you referred to was the fourth, wasn’t it?”

“I might have been mistaken.”

“Your whole testimony might be mistaken.”

Radavich said, “Objection.”

“Sustained. Next question, Mr. Buchanan.”

“Why don’t you find the section in the book that backs up the
smear theory,
” I said.

He blinked once, but I thought it was audible.
Clack.

“That would take awhile,” he said. “I mean, I’d have to research it a little.”

My point was made. I took the book. “I’ll withdraw the request at this time,” I said. “Let me ask if you know Troy Cameron.”

Schneuder’s Adam’s apple bobbed a couple of times. “I know him, yes.”

“He’s a writer of some kind, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

Now was time to take a stab. “Isn’t it true that you’re writing a book with him?”

Schneuder said, “There’s no law against that.”

Defensive. This was great. “And that book is about the Robert Blake murder trial, isn’t it?”

“I’d rather not say…”

Better still.

“… because it’s still in the writing stage.”

“It might have been nice for the jury to know this before you started your testimony,” I said.

Objection. Sustained.

I left it at that. In cross, you don’t want to ask one question too many, giving the wit a chance to eel out of a corner.
I’d caught the doc hiding a little factoid about his book-writing career, which confirmed my theory that he was a celebrity
wannabe. The jurors wouldn’t like that. They want experts to be objective and up front.

R
ADAVICH WANTED SOME
questions on re-direct.

“Did you find any fingerprints on the gun, People’s Exhibit Six?”

“We did find the victim’s prints on the butt and barrel of the gun, yes.”

“Was there anything strange about that?”

“Not really. But there was something strange about the print on the trigger.”

“Explain that, please.”

“Well, it was smudged, but we did manage to indentify it as a partial. It matched the victim’s right index finger, between
the first and second joints.”

“In other words, you’re not talking about the pad of the finger, what we normally associate with fingerprinting.”

“That’s right. This was the area between the first and second joints, where one would come in contact with the trigger when
firing a gun.”

“And what did you find strange about that?”

“It’s simple. If someone places the barrel of a gun in the mouth, the trigger would be pushed with the thumb, not pulled with
the finger.”

“No more questions.”

“Re-cross?” Judge Hughes said.

This was not good for me, and there was nothing I could say to make it good, so I said, “No further questions,” and tried
to look like Phil Ivey holding aces. No expression one way or the other.

Radavich put on a couple of witnesses—guys who testified about overhearing Eric and Carl having a heated argument in a bar
the night before the killing. They did not testify about the content of the argument, so my cross was only one question to
each: “You do not know what this alleged argument was about, do you?”

No and no.

A
LL IN ALL,
it hadn’t been a bad day in court, and I was feeling guilty about Subway.

So I insisted on taking Sister Mary to dinner at Little Luigi’s, an Italian place the legal community frequents, a short drive
from the courthouse. When I was with Gunther, McDonough I used to go there whenever I had a matter downtown.

So it wasn’t a surprise to be greeted at the front by Luigi himself, a well-girthed, old-school Sicilian.

“Mr. Buchanan!” He pumped my hand. “Been too long.”

“Hello, Luigi. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, actually my investigator, Sister Mary Veritas.”

Luigi smiled broadly. “Sister, I am so glad to have you. We need a little class around this place. All I get is the lawyers
and the riffraff, and sometimes—what’s the difference, eh?”

“Glad to meet you,” Sister Mary said.

To me, Luigi said, “Where you been? Can’t remember the last time you was here. You still with that big fancy place on the
west side?”

“No, going solo.”

Luigi whispered, “That because of the little trouble you were in?”

“If you call being accused of murder a little trouble, then yeah. I just thought it was time to take a look at what I was
doing, and that reminds me. There’s one thing I haven’t done in a long time.”

“And what is that, my friend?”

“Eat your veal Parmesan.”

“Good to have you both. I got a booth just for you.”

He took us to a booth of the color of red wine, near the back, semiprivate. It was a little before five o’clock, and the place
was just starting to get the after-work crowd. The bar was stuffed with coatless professionals with loosened ties and elevated
voices. I recognized a couple of lawyers from Sheppard, Mullin, one of the city’s powerhouse firms, sitting at the bar. They
were hoisting and laughing about something.

Next to them was a bottom-feeding criminal defense lawyer named Stambler who was about seventy-five and never met a deal he
didn’t like. He was a grinder, doing volume pleas and never fighting it out in court. But it kept him in fine suits and single-malt
Scotch. He was drinking alone.

It was like bookends of the legal profession. And somewhere in the middle was Tyler Buchanan, attorney-at-law.

“I feel like I’ve come to some sort of forbidden land,” Sister Mary said.

“You have. This is the realm of the overinflated ego. There are no egos larger than those of lawyers and none larger among
lawyers than those of trial lawyers.”

“Is this a confession?”

“An admission, let’s say.”

“I haven’t seen that in you.”

“But you’ve only known me since I’ve been severely humbled by circumstances beyond my control. Slowly, I’m coming back to
full-fledged self-centeredness.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think you’re going to be the same. You like to help people. I can see that at the Ultimate
Sip.”

“I’ve been trained to practice law. There’s not much else I can do. I could go back to playing drums, and go on the road with
Father Bob. Would you like to be our singer?”

“Only if you do ‘Ave Maria’ as a closer each night.”

“Done. What shall we call ourselves?”

“How about Sacred and Profane?”

“I like it, but which one am I?”

“Let’s think about it,” she said. “We may be able to figure it out.”

Luigi came back to the table with a basketed bottle of Chianti. “Compliments of the lady,” he said.

“Lady?” I followed Luigi’s motion across the restaurant and saw Kimberly Pincus at a table by the far wall. She was sitting
with two other women. She smiled at me.

In the soft light she looked like a movie star from the 1950s. Technicolor and CinemaScope were made for Kimberly. The restaurant
seemed too small.

I nodded my thanks.

“She’s beautiful,” Sister Mary said.

I snapped back to the present. “I don’t think she has a jump shot, though.”

Luigi was uncorking the bottle.

“She doesn’t need a jump shot,” Sister Mary said.

Luigi poured some wine in my glass and I went through the ritual of the cultured wine connoisseur. I almost swirled some out
of my glass, like the untrained wine doofus. I tasted, and tried to come up with some clever adjectives. My mind shut down
like a Teamster at four-thirty.

I gave Luigi the wine dork’s thumbs-up. He poured and left us.

“Is she a lawyer?” Sister Mary said.

“A prosecutor. City attorney’s office.”

“Ah.”

I raised my glass. “To the best investigator in the business.”

“At least the room,” Sister Mary said. We clinked and drank. And some indefinable sadness filled me. It seemed like it would
only get worse if I didn’t do something.

“I’ll introduce you,” I said.

All the eyes in the place seemed to follow my investigator and me. I was used to it by now. I didn’t guess Sister Mary was.

When we got to the table Kimberly was on her feet.

“Thanks for the wine,” I said.

“My pleasure, Ty.”

“This is Sister Mary Veritas, my investigator.”

They shook hands. Kimberly introduced us to her companions. I forget the names.

“How do you like the work?” Kimberly said to Sister Mary.

“I like it.”

“Do you keep him in line?”

“I try. It takes much prayer.”

They shared a laugh.

“I’m glad you two are enjoying yourselves,” I said.

“We are, aren’t we?” Kimberly said.

“Definitely,” Sister Mary said.

Kimberly turned to me. “How’s the trial going?”

“Every day in every way,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll try to catch your closing argument. Give me a call the night before.”