“Hey, Haller.”
It was a voice from behind me. I didn’t recognize it but it was too crowded for me to turn around to see who it was.
“What?”
“Heard you scored all of Vincent’s cases.”
I wasn’t going to discuss my business in a crowded elevator. I didn’t respond. We finally hit bottom, and the doors spread open. I stepped out and looked back for the person who had spoken.
It was Dan Daly, another defense attorney who was part of a coterie of lawyers who took in Dodgers games occasionally and martinis routinely at Four Green Fields. I had missed the last season of booze and baseball.
“How ya doin’, Dan?”
We shook hands, an indication of how long it had been since we’d seen each other.
“So, who’d you grease?”
He said it with a smile but I could tell there was something behind it. Maybe a dose of jealousy over my scoring the Elliot case. Every lawyer in town knew it was a franchise case. It could pay top dollar for years – first the trial and then the appeals that would come after a conviction.
“Nobody,” I said. “Jerry put me in his will.”
We started walking toward the exit doors. Daly’s ponytail was longer and grayer. But what was most notable was that it was intricately braided. I hadn’t seen that before.
“Then, lucky you,” Daly said. “Let me know if you need a second chair on Elliot.”
“He wants only one lawyer at the table, Dan. He said no dream team.”
“Well, then keep me in mind as a writer in regard to the rest.”
This meant he was available to write appeals on any convictions my new set of clients might incur. Daly had forged a solid reputation as an expert appeals man with a good batting average.
“I’ll do that,” I said. “I’m still reviewing everything.”
“Good enough.”
We came through the doors and I could see the Lincoln at the curb, waiting. Daly was going the other way. I told him I’d keep in touch.
“We miss you at the bar, Mick,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’ll drop by,” I called back.
But I knew I wouldn’t drop by, that I had to stay away from places like that.
I got in the back of the Lincoln – I tell my drivers never to get out and open the door for me – and told Patrick to take me over to Chinese Friends on Broadway. I told him to drop me and go get lunch on his own. I needed to sit and read and didn’t want any conversation.
I got to the restaurant between the first and second waves of patrons and waited no more than five minutes for a table. Wanting to get to work immediately, I ordered a plate of the fried pork chops right away. I knew they would be perfect. They were paper-thin and delicious and I’d be able to eat them with my fingers without taking my eyes off the Wyms documents.
I opened the file Joanne Giorgetti had given me. It contained copies only of what the prosecutor had turned over to Jerry Vincent under the rules of discovery – primarily sheriff’s documents relating to the incident, arrest and follow-up investigation. Any notes, strategies or defense documents that Vincent had generated were lost with the original file.
The natural starting point was the arrest report, which included the initial and most basic summary of what had transpired. As is often the case, it started with 911 calls to the county communications-and-dispatch center. Multiple reports of gunfire came in from a neighborhood next to a park in Calabasas. The calls fell under Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction because Calabasas was in an unincorporated area north of Malibu and near the western limits of the county.
The first deputy to respond was listed on the report as Todd Stallworth. He worked the night shift out of the Malibu substation and had been dispatched at 10:21 p.m. to the neighborhood off Las Virgenes Road. From there he was directed into the nearby Malibu Creek State Park, where the shots were being fired. Now hearing shots himself, Stallworth called for backup and drove into the park to investigate.
There were no lights in the rugged mountain park, as it was posted CLOSED AT SUNSET. As Stallworth entered on the main road, the headlights of his patrol car picked up a reflection, and the deputy saw a vehicle parked in a clearing ahead. He put on his spotlight and illuminated a pickup truck with its tailgate down. There was a pyramid of beer cans on the tailgate and what looked like a gun bag with several rifle barrels protruding from it.
Stallworth stopped his car eighty yards from the pickup and decided to wait until backup arrived. He was on the radio to the Malibu station, describing the pickup truck and saying that he was not close enough to read its license plate, when suddenly there was a gunshot and the searchlight located above the side-view mirror exploded with the bullet’s impact. Stallworth killed the rest of the car’s lights and bailed out, crawling into the cover of some bushes that lined the clearing. He used his handheld radio to call for additional backup and the special weapons and tactics team.
A three-hour standoff ensued, with the gunman hidden in the wooded terrain near the clearing. He fired his weapon repeatedly but apparently his aim was at the sky. No deputies were struck by bullets. No other vehicles were damaged. Finally, a deputy in black SWAT gear worked his way close enough to the pickup truck to read the license plate by using high-powered binoculars equipped with night-vision lenses. The plate number led to the name Eli Wyms, which in turn led to a cell-phone number. The shooter answered on the first ring and a SWAT team negotiator began a conversation.
The shooter was indeed Eli Wyms, a forty-four-year-old housepainter from Inglewood. He was characterized in the arrest report as drunk, angry and suicidal. Earlier in the day, he had been kicked out of his home by his wife, who informed him that she was in love with another man. Wyms had driven to the ocean and then north to Malibu and then over the mountains to Calabasas. He saw the park and thought it looked like a good place to stop the truck and sleep, but he drove on by and bought a case of beer at a gas station near the 101 Freeway. He then turned around and went back to the park.
Wyms told the negotiator that he started shooting because he heard noises in the dark and was afraid. He believed he was shooting at rabid coyotes that wanted to eat him. He said he could see their red eyes glowing in the dark. He said he shot out the spotlight on the first patrol car that arrived because he was afraid the light would give his position away to the animals. When asked about the shot from eighty yards, he said he had qualified as an expert marksman during the first war in Iraq.
The report estimated that Wyms fired at least twenty-seven times while deputies were on the scene and dozens of times before that. Investigators eventually collected a total of ninety-four spent bullet casings.
Wyms did not surrender that night until he ran out of beer. Shortly after crushing the last empty in his hand, he told the cell-phone negotiator that he would trade one rifle for a six-pack of beer. He was turned down. He then announced that he was sorry and ready for the incident and everything else to be over, that he was going to kill himself and literally go out with a bang. The negotiator tried to talk him out of it and kept the conversation going while a two-man SWAT unit moved through the heavy terrain toward his position in a dense stand of eucalyptus trees. But soon the negotiator heard snoring on the cell line. Wyms had passed out.
The SWAT team moved in and Wyms was captured without a shot being fired by law enforcement. Order was restored. Since Deputy Stallworth had taken the initial call and was the one fired upon, he was given the collar. The gunman was placed in Stallworth’s squad car and transported to the Malibu substation and jailed.
Other documents in the file continued the Eli Wyms saga. At his arraignment the morning after his arrest, Wyms was declared indigent and assigned a public defender. The case moved slowly in the system, with Wyms being held in the Men’s Central Jail. But then Vincent stepped in and offered his services pro bono. His first order of business was to ask for and receive a competency evaluation of his client. This had the effect of slowing the case down even further as Wyms was carted off to the state hospital in Camarillo for a ninety-day psych evaluation.