To Casey he said, “All set?”
“I guess,” she said, dusting off her hands. “What a mess.”
“By the time you get back Sunday, it’ll be a showplace.” He grabbed a length of paper towels and wiped his face and arms. “Hot work.”
I said, “We just came to say good-bye.”
“Bye,” Mike said. Without touching her, he leaned forward to give her a chaste kiss. “Take care of yourself. You have my pager number. Need any heads ripped off, you call me.”
“So weird,” she tsk’ed. “You two finally get a weekend alone, and this is how you spend it. Very romantic.”
He laughed. “Ms. Wiseass, Junior. Don’t miss your plane.”
“Is Hector still here?” I asked as Mike walked us outside. “Couple of things I want to clear with him.”
“He’s on a beer run. What’s the problem?”
“No problem. I used some of the photos, and this and that, from the reports he gave me. Nothing from the reports themselves shows up. On camera.”
“If he has some objection, it’s too late to do anything about it. Right?”
“Yes.”
“So we’ll just wait until four before we panic.”
“Good idea,” I said. I kicked through a stack of cans. “Do me a favor and give a Breathalyzer to anyone who picks up a power tool.”
The tough guy said, “We know what we’re doing.”
“Bye,” I said. I kissed his damp, whiskered chin.
Casey had been smiling at us the way fond parents regard slow-learning children. “You two are so cute.”
Mike sneered, but he was flattered, I could tell. We left him standing on the curb waving to us.
On our way to the freeway, we drove through the first burger place we came to so Casey could refuel the carb levels and get a cold drink. All of her anxiety from the night before about going to Denver seemed to have vanished. I thought she seemed almost eager to get on the plane.
“Have fun,” I said when I kissed her at the boarding gate. “I’ll be waiting right here Sunday night.”
“Bye, Ma. It’ll be nice to get out of the heat for a couple of days. I’ll miss you.”
I said, “You better.”
She turned away and walked her ballerina walk down the ramp, with every male eye fixed on the rock-hard curves in her jeans. I felt like slapping every one of them.
When I got back to my office, Guido had tapes running on four screens at once with the sound off. I saw Hanna Rhodes under the flowered sheet, Tyrone Harkness in Juvenile Hall, James Shabazz walking around the war zone that had been a service station, Linda Westman in the studio upstairs. Occupied with the images on-screen, Guido handed me a slip of paper.
He said only, “She called.”
When I read what he handed me, I do believe I felt the skies open up and the sun shine through. She was LaShonda DeBevis and she had left a phone number.
I went to the phone and dialed. “When did she call?”
“Right after you left.” He was grinning evilly. “I told her you’d be back by five.”
I got no answer, and no machine. I said, “Damn.” Guido began to chuckle.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“She just went into the can. I had her come straight over.” LaShonda DeBevis, in the flesh, walked in from the bathroom.
“Miss MacGowen?” she said. “I understand you want to speak with me.”
The LaShonda in my mind was a scared little ten-year-old girl. Before me I saw a very grown-up, sophisticated-looking young woman. She was about my height, very slender, with cafe-au-lait skin and lightened, straightened hair.
“You were difficult to track down,” I said, offering my hand, holding on to hers when I caught it. “You seemed to have disappeared into the library system.”
“I guess maybe I did.” She had a slight southern accent, but had lost the ghetto-speak that appeared in her police interviews. “From out of nowhere, I got a transfer Friday. Before I went to my new assignment, I was notified I had been transferred again. With all the budget cuts going on, I didn’t question this circumstance very closely because I was just happy that I still had a job. But when the third transfer came, I knew something was wrong. No one had any answers for me. It just seemed that some computer wanted me moved around. The area supervisor gave up trying to figure it all out and sent me to work at the county media center in Downey until he could get to the source of the confusion. So, that’s where I’ve been, staying with an aunt in Downey, going to work every day.”
I led her over to the sofa. “I’m glad we finally connected. We have a lot to talk about.”
The subject matter was painful for LaShonda. I could see remembered grief and terror in her expressions as she told me what she saw the night Wyatt Johnson was murdered. She seemed eager to help us, as if, I thought, watching that nightmare night played out to its end might make it all finally go away.
Her memory of the night of the shooting was clear. Of course, she had been over those events many times. She gave us not only her perspective on the shooting, but also had a few things to say about other people we had interviewed, Etta and Shabazz among them.
LaShonda was very bright, and eager to be useful any way she could. We were short on time, and here was another set of hands and eyes. Guido put her to work.
At six, it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from Mike. There were several possibilities: he hadn’t found a television, the film had been dumped from the rundown again, he saw it but it was no big deal, or, he saw it and he was so angry he wouldn’t speak to me.
As a check, I turned on the news. The lead story was about the restive crowd of demonstrators outside City Hall demanding the immediate release of Charles Conklin. A smaller, angrier group had gathered at the corner of Normandie and Florence where the riots had begun a couple of years ago. There had been some bottle-throwing, someone had set a fire in the intersection before a phalanx of police in riot gear swept everyone away.
We were the follow-up story. The anchor was a handsome, well-known local. He gave the camera Look Number Four from the anchorman’s handbook, Serious Concern, as he introduced my film.
He read from the teleprompter, “At a press conference Monday, District Attorney Baron Marovich leveled charges against the police, alleging that undue pressure had been placed upon witnesses to a cold-blooded shooting of a police officer fifteen years ago, coercing those witnesses to wrongfully identify Charles Pinkerton Conklin as the killer.
“According to the district attorney, Charles Conklin should not have been sent to prison fourteen years ago. The case of Charles Conklin came to symbolize for our city, and for all of America, flaws in a justice system’s guarantee of equal protection to all. Again, in the spotlight, came disturbing evidence of police excess.
“While the community expressed its outrage over this matter, a second side of the case has come to light.
“Renowned filmmaker Maggie MacGowen, while working on a documentary for this station, came across information that not only casts doubt upon the district attorney’s version of the case, but also raises questions as to his motives in supporting Conklin’s claims.
“Here, in a network exclusive, we offer Miss MacGowen’s findings. We will let you, our viewing audience, decide.”
“Fuck,” I said. “I didn’t want to hear my name.”
Guido shushed me as my film faded in.
Ralph Faust owed me for his overuse of the Etta Harkness tape. I had taken repayment by lifting a healthy chunk from the SNN show he did with Baron Marovich, Jennifer Miller, and Leroy Burgess. I let Ralph Faust introduce the major players. On the screen, the four of them are sitting in a tight half-circle. Once their names and credentials had been established, I froze the frame, reduced it, and moved it up to the top right quadrant of the screen, a miniature like a postage stamp in the corner. Marovich alone, just his face, stayed behind to fill the remaining three-quarters of the screen.