“You have no idea what this magic bullet was?” I asked Elliot.
“Just what he told me, that he found something that was going to blow the state out of the water.”
“That doesn’t make sense if on Monday he was talking about delaying the trial.”
Elliot shrugged.
“I told you, he just wanted more time to be prepared. Probably more time to charge me more money. But I told him, when we make a movie, we pick a date, and that movie comes out on that date no matter what. I told him we were going to trial without delay.”
I nodded my head at Elliot’s no-delay mantra. But my mind was on Vincent’s missing laptop. Was the magic bullet in there? Had he saved his plan on the computer and not put it into the hard file? Was the magic bullet the reason for his murder? Had his discovery been so sensitive or dangerous that someone had killed him for it?
I decided to move on with Elliot while I had him in front of me.
“Well, Walter, I don’t have the magic bullet. But if Jerry could find it, then so can I. I will.”
I checked my watch and tried to give the outward appearance that I was not troubled by not knowing what was assuredly the key element in the case.
“Okay. Let’s talk about an alternate theory.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that the state has its theory and we should have ours. The state’s theory is that you were upset over your wife’s infidelity and what it would cost you to divorce her. So you went out to Malibu and killed both your wife and her lover. You then got rid of the murder weapon in some way – either hid it or threw it into the ocean – and then called nine-one-one to report that you had discovered the murders. That theory gives them all they need. Motive and opportunity. But to back it up they have the GSR and almost nothing else.”
“GSR?”
“Gunshot residue. Their evidentiary case – what little there is – firmly rests on it.”
“That test was a false positive!” Elliot said forcefully. “I never shot any weapon. And Jerry told me he was bringing in the top expert in the country to knock it all down. A woman from John Jay in New York. She’ll testify that the sheriff’s lab procedures were sloppy and lax, prone to come up with the false positive.”
I nodded. I liked the fervor of his denial. It could be useful if he testified.
“Yes, Dr. Arslanian – we still have her coming in,” I said. “But she’s no magic bullet, Walter. The prosecution will counter with their own expert saying exactly the opposite – that the lab is well run and that all procedures were followed. At best, the GSR will be a wash. The prosecution will still be leaning heavily on motive and opportunity.”
“What motive? I loved her and I didn’t even know about Rilz. I thought he was a faggot.”
I held my hands up in a slow-it-down gesture.
“Look, do yourself a favor, Walter, and don’t call him that. In court or anywhere else. If it is appropriate to reference his sexual orientation, you say you thought he was gay. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Now, the prosecution will simply say that you did know Johan Rilz was your wife’s lover, and they’ll trot out evidence and testimony that will indicate that a divorce forced by your wife’s infidelity would cost you in excess of a hundred million dollars and possibly dilute your control of the studio. They plant all of that in the jury’s minds and you start having a pretty good motivation for murder.”
“And it’s all bullshit.”
“And I’ll be able to potshot the hell out of it at trial. A lot of their positives can be turned into negatives. It will be a dance, Walter. We’ll trade punches. We’ll try to distort and destroy but ultimately they’ll land more punches than we can block and that’s why we’re the underdog and why it’s always good for the defense to float an alternate theory. We give the jury a plausible explanation for why these two people were killed. We throw suspicion away from you and at somebody else.”
“Like the one-armed man in The Fugitive?”
I shook my head.
“Not exactly.”
I remembered the movie and the television show before it. In both cases, there actually was a one-armed man. I was talking about a smoke screen, an alternate theory concocted by the defense because I wasn’t buying into Elliot’s “I-am-innocent rap” – at least not yet.
There was a buzzing sound and Elliot took a phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen.
“Walter, we have work here,” I said.
He didn’t take the call and reluctantly put the phone away. I continued.
“Okay, during the prosecution phase we are going to use cross-examination to make one thing crystal clear to the jury. That is, that once that GSR test came back positive on you, then-”
“False positive!”
“Whatever. The point is, once they had what they believed was a positive indication that you had very recently fired a weapon, all bets were off. A wide-open investigation became very tightly focused on one thing. You. It went from what they call a full-field investigation to a full investigation of you. So, what happened is that they left a lot of stones unturned. For example, Rilz had only been in this country four years. Not a single investigator went to Germany to check on his background and whether he had any enemies back there who wanted him dead. That’s just one thing. They didn’t thoroughly background the guy in L.A. either. This was a man who was allowed entry into the homes and lives of some of the wealthiest women in this city. Excuse my bluntness, but was he banging other married clients, or just your wife? Were there other important and powerful men he could have angered, or just you?”
Elliot didn’t respond to the crude questions. I had asked them that way on purpose, to see if it got a rise out of him or any reaction that contradicted his statements of loving his wife. But he showed no reaction either way.
“You see what I’m getting at, Walter? The focus, from almost the very start, was on you. When it’s the defense’s turn, we’re going to put it on Rilz. And from that we’ll grow doubts like stalks in a cornfield.”
Elliot nodded thoughtfully as he looked down at his reflection in the polished tabletop.
“But this can’t be the magic bullet Jerry told you about,” I said. “And there are risks in going after Rilz.”
Elliot raised his eyes to mine.
“Because the prosecutor knows this was a deficiency when the investigators brought in the case. He’s had five months to anticipate that we might go this way, and if he is good, as I am sure he is, then he’s been quietly getting ready for us to go in this direction.”
“Wouldn’t that come out in the discovery material?”
“Not always. There is an art to discovery. Most of the time it’s what is not in the discovery file that is important and that you have to watch out for. Jeffrey Golantz is a seasoned pro. He knows just what he has to put in and what he can keep for himself.”
“You know Golantz? You’ve gone to trial against him before?”
“I don’t know him and have never gone up against him. It’s his reputation I know. He’s never lost at trial. He’s something like twenty-seven and oh.”
I checked my watch. The time had passed quickly and I needed to keep things moving if I was going to pick my daughter up on time.
“Okay,” I said. “There are a couple other things we need to cover. Let’s talk about whether you testify.”
“That’s not a question. That’s a given. I want to clear my name. The jury will want me to say I did not do this.”
“I knew you were going to say that and I appreciate the fervor I see in your denials. But your testimony has to be more than that. It has to offer an explanation and that’s where we can get into trouble.”