After the arrest, the log continues for several pages as Mike and Jerry helped the district attorney put together an evidence package for Conklin’s arraignment. They ordered Wyatt’s autopsy photos and reports, asked for an aerial photo of the crime scene to be made, searched through DMV files for any records on the green Bonneville. They stayed in contact with their witnesses and tried to milk more from them, tried to find others who might suddenly remember something that happened that night.
Mike logged in receipt of a lie detector test administered to the snitch in an unrelated case. I found the photocopy of the test report. The results were inconclusive. In the opinion of the examiner, the snitch did not register appropriate physiological responses, suggesting he was an accomplished liar.
One year and two months after the murder, Charles Conklin was held to answer the charges at a preliminary hearing. A trial date was set. During the three-week interim, Mike and Jerry served subpoenas and held their evidence and witness package together. During the trial, they chauffeured witnesses, ran errands for the D.A., and testified.
The trial lasted five days. The jury convicted Charles Pinkerton Conklin to life in prison for the murder of Officer Wyatt Johnson. End of file.
As I read the detective reports and the witness interviews, my mind’s eye saw it all as if it were on a big, color screen. While I was trying to figure an angle that would let me use the file without getting Hector into trouble, I was vaguely aware of a lot of movement on the other side of the curtain. I never heard Dr. Sadgopal leave.
When the curtain was drawn open again, Guido was alone, dressed in the same soiled shirt and jeans he had been wearing when I brought him in the day before. He bowed to me and said, “Ta da.”
“You’re a mess,” I said. “Stay put for twenty minutes. I’ll go find you a clean shirt. Maybe the gift shop has something.”
“Don’t bother. Get me out of here.”
The heat, the bright noon sun, drug residue all conspired against Guido. He had been enervated when I told him about the office break-in. He smelled quick money from tabloid TV and talked about expanding my tape to fit their format. The money interested me, but not as much as reaching a big audience did. We were going to spend the afternoon working on something. But by the time I turned up his street, he was worn out, ready for a nap.
I went inside with Guido on the pretext of needing to use the bathroom. I wanted to make sure that no one had been there tampering with his tapes or equipment.
My techno friend, Guido, living alone in the woods without close neighbors, had installed a very sophisticated video-based security system. None of the cameras had been tripped or tampered with. I know, because I checked every one of them. Feeling something of an alarmist, a relieved alarmist, I double-checked that everything was reset before I left him.
I was at the studio during the editorial meeting, but I was upstairs, holed up again with a couple of production staffers, making some changes in the tape.
Chapter 20
Network facilities are notorious for leaks, so I prefer working either on the street, or in private. But without Guido, and without time, I had to accept the network’s largesse.
On that day, the big studio name worked for me. Beth Johnson, Wyatt’s widow, overcame her reluctance to talk to me when I threw in an offer of coffee in the network commissary. She left work and came right over.
Beth rode up to the sound stage in an elevator with her favorite talk-show host. I’m not sure whether he was her favorite when he stepped into the elevator or acquired the status during the ride. He certainly had her all atwitter by the time she stepped out on the fifth floor.
Beth’s robust happiness surprised me. I don’t know what I had been expecting, a grieving young widow I suppose, because all that I knew of her came from a single newspaper story about her husband’s funeral. An old newspaper story, I had to remind myself. To me, the shooting of Wyatt Johnson was new information, part of a situation that was still developing.
Beth Johnson was no longer the sylphlike woman in black in the news photo. She was now plump, still very pretty, a feminine woman dressed in a flattering bright pink and turquoise silk suit. Her hair and makeup were perfect. I was flattered she had taken some extra effort on my behalf. From what I knew of her, I calculated her age to be around thirty-seven, though she looked much younger. Her skin was beautiful and unlined.
“My name isn’t Johnson anymore,” she said when I introduced myself. She tried to seem blase, but she glowed with excitement. She spoke with a pleasant southern drawl. “I got married again a couple years after Wyatt died. I’d just as soon you don’t use my husband’s name. You can still call me Johnson.”
“Johnson would be less confusing for the viewers,” I said.
The set we were given to use belonged to a morning talk show, looked like a big farmhouse living room. The space was too big, so I had asked the crew to move a couple of high-back chairs, a lamp, some silk plants over in front of a fake window that looked out into a tempera-paint garden; an illusion a million light years away from the cement and asphalt real world outside.
Beth seemed to enjoy the fuss with microphones and lights, held up her face for the woman who came to powder some shine off her chin. I gave myself over to the same makeup woman, let her paint over the circles under my eyes, add a little sunshine to my cheeks, mousse up my flat hair.
When everything was set, I put my hand over Beth’s, felt the nervous tremor. I said, “Just relax and talk to me. In a few minutes you’ll forget all these people are here eavesdropping.”
“I’m used to it,” she smiled. “I have the nosiest neighbors in the world.”
I laughed to be polite, thought I sounded artificial. “Tell me about your life now, Mrs. Johnson. What sort of work do you do?”
“Same as always. I work in a bank, in the loan department. I’ve been there since I married Wyatt and moved to California.”
“You have one child from your marriage to Wyatt Johnson. Tell me about him.”
“Wyatt Junior, he’s in college now. A good boy. We had our rough times, like everyone does bringing up kids, especially a widow woman. But he’s a good boy. A serious boy, like his daddy. A good, Christian boy.”
“How old was he when his father died?”
“He was a baby. Not even four years old. He never remembered his daddy at all. Sometimes when I think of all Wyatt missed out on, watching his boy come up, well, it breaks my heart all over again.”
“Tell me about Wyatt Senior. What sort of man was he?”
“Like I said, he was serious. He was real smart, too. Wanted to be somebody. His folks couldn’t afford to send him to college, so he went into the army for a couple of years to get his GI Bill. That’s when I married him-when he was stationed at Fort Polk in Louisiana. Soon as he got his discharge, Wyatt came home and joined the police. For a boy without an education, it was the best job he could get. Better than the post office.”
“Did he enjoy police work?”
She frowned. “Not very much. They were hard on black officers back then. Said a lot of racial things to him. But with what they paid, and all the benefits, he couldn’t hardly quit.”
“He worked part-time jobs to supplement his income,” I said.
“Yes he did. Wyatt grew up in Willowbrook. He wanted something better for his family. So we bought a new house outside the city, out in Cerritos. Then we had the baby and I could only work part time-with the cost of baby-sitters, clothes, transportation and all, I saved money every day I stayed home when the baby was little. It was nice being at home-we had a real nice house. But that house payment…” She waved her hand as if something smelly had passed by. “It nearly killed us. Wyatt wanted to go to college, maybe go to law school at night later on. But he spent all his time working extra security jobs just to keep our heads above water.”