Q: Three two one. This is Homicide Inspector Sergeant Glen Taylor, badge fourteen ten. Case number 003-114279. It is three-thirty in the afternoon, Tuesday, March 4th. I am at the residence of Mark and June Ropke, 2619 Irving Street. With me are the Ropkes and their son, Lanny, caucasian juvenile aged seventeen. Lanny, would you describe your relationship with Andrew Bartlett.
A: He was, is I mean, my best friend.
Q: And how do you know him?
A: He's in my class at school. We're juniors at Sutro.
Q: Did you also know a Mike Mooney and a Laura Wright?
A: Yeah. Mr. Mooney was my English teacher, and Laura was Andrew's girlfriend.
Q: Okay. Did Andrew talk to you about them?
A: Yeah. He was a little jealous.
Q: Andrew was? Of Mooney?
A: Yeah.
Q: You want to tell me about it.
A: All right. Him and Laura, Andrew and Laura, I mean, had been going out for about a year, something like that, a long time anyway. Then they got in a fight just before Christmas break and broke up.
Q: Do you know what the fight was about?
A: I think it was sex.
Q: Did Andrew tell you that?
A: Kind of, yeah. I guess he was coming on pretty strong and she told him she wasn't ready for that yet, so he got all pissed off- sorry, mad, I mean- and said she was just being a tease, leading him on, what was she making out with him for if they weren't getting to that? Anyway, it was a big fight and they broke up, but then a couple of weeks later, maybe a month before she got killed, they got back together.
Q: Did Andrew tell you why?
A: He didn't have to. It was obvious. But he did tell me he couldn't stand not being with her, sex or no sex. He was really in love with her.
Q: So what happened with Mr. Mooney? How'd he get into this?
A: He was directing the play, and Andrew and Laura were both in it. They're… I mean she was, both of them were into drama. So they started going over to his place together at night to do their lines and rehearse, you know. Mooney's. Anyway, one night Laura told Andrew that she wasn't driving back with him. She was going to stay on awhile and do some more rehearsing and Mr. Mooney would take her home.
Q: And what was Andrew's reaction to that?
A: At first, you know, not much. But after it happened again a couple of times, pretty bad. Really bad, I guess.
Q: In what way?
Q: (female voice) It's okay, Lanny. There's no hurry.
Q: (male voice) Just tell him what you've told us. It's all right.
A: He brought a gun to school.
Q: Did you see it?
A: Oh yeah, he showed it to me. It was in his backpack. It was a real gun, and loaded.
Q: Did he tell you what he was planning to do with it?
A: Yeah, but he wasn't sure exactly.
Q: What do you mean?
A: Well, he was carrying it around for a week, maybe two, I think just seeing how it felt, you know. He talked about killing himself mostly at first.
Q: But that changed?
A: It just… I don't know. He told me he was going to find out for sure if something was going on with Mooney and Laura. This was while they were broken up. And meanwhile, he sees her and Mooney goofing at school, all these little jokes they had with each other. So basically, it was this jealousy thing. It was eating him up, the thought of her maybe having sex with him, after only teasing with him for so long. I mean, Mooney's a grown-up and Andrew didn't believe they'd only be making out. So he decided he had to find out for sure.
Q: And how would he do that?
A: He was going to hang around after he told them he was leaving, maybe make up some excuse, and come back and catch them at it.
Q: And then what what was he going to do?
A: Well, he said he hoped he'd find out Laura wasn't lying, but if he caught them at something, he hoped he could handle it. He said maybe it would be a good idea if he didn't have the gun with him. If he didn't, maybe he wouldn't kill them on the spot. He hoped he wouldn't do that.
Q: He said he hoped he wouldn't kill them?
A: That's what he said.
Although it was clear and sunny outside, it wasn't warm by any stretch. The small visiting room at the YGC felt to Wu like a refrigerator. She was gauging her client's reaction to his friend's testimony, and it seemed to have hit him pretty hard. Andrew was sitting back, slumped in one of the hard wooden chairs at the table this time, one elbow on the chair's arm and his hand over his mouth. Now he wearily dropped the hand, shook his head.
"This is bad."
She nodded. "Correct."
"He told me the cops had come and he'd talked to them, but he never mentioned anything about the gun. You think Lanny would have been smart enough… Nobody had to know about the gun. It's makes it look…"
Wu knew what it made it look like. She asked, "You want to talk about the gun?"
"What about it?"
"Well, the gun's kind of an issue. You bring it to school and show it around…"
"Not around. Just to Lanny."
"Okay, just to Lanny, although he's enough. He'll testify that you said you were thinking about killing Laura and Mooney, and maybe yourself. The gun is what you presumably would have used to do that. So what were you thinking when you took it? It was Hal's gun, is that right?"
His expression grew sharp. "I never said that."
"No, I know you didn't. But another one of the interviews in here"- she patted the folder that held Lanny's transcript-"is a discussion with your stepfather about when Sergeant Taylor asked him if he owned a gun and he said yes, then went to get it and couldn't find it. Didn't Hal ever ask you if you'd taken it?"
"Yeah, he did."
"And what did you tell him?"
Andrew gave her the bad eye.
"Okay, then," she said, "let me tell you. You denied it, maybe even pitched a little fit of indignation that he'd accuse you of anything like that. Am I close?" She leaned in toward him over the table. "Let me ask you this, Andrew. Why didn't you just put it back from where you'd taken it? If you'd done that, and if you in fact hadn't committed these murders, don't you realize that you wouldn't be here right now?"
His eyes weren't quite to panic, but they flicked to the wall behind her, then to the corners of the room before they got back to her. "Why is that?"
She noticed that he didn't bother with the pro forma denial of the crime this time. She let herself begin to believe that her strategy was working- he was getting used to admitting the basic fact of his guilt. "Because if we had the gun, we could test ballistics with the slugs they recovered from the scene and prove that it wasn't the murder weapon." She gave him a minute to digest this critical information, then pressed on. "You told me you got rid of the gun."
"I did."
"Do you think you could find it again?"
"No. I dropped it off the bridge."
"That would be the Golden Gate?"
"Yeah."
Wu checked a laugh. Perfect, she thought. "I don't understand, and I don't think a jury will understand, why you did that if you didn't kill anybody with it."
"I freaked out, is all. I told you. When I got back to Mike's- Mooney's- and saw it there, I figured the cops would be able to trace it back to Hal and I'd be screwed."
"And why is that?"
"I mean, if it was the murder weapon." His miserable look seemed to plead for her to understand. "I had to get rid of it."
"But it wasn't the murder weapon, was it?"
"I don't know. I mean, it might have been."
Wu straightened up in her chair and faced him head-on. "Let me get this straight. Your theory of the crime, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that while you were out taking a stroll and memorizing your lines, somebody- you don't know who or why- knocked at Mooney's door, saw your father's gun conveniently sitting out on a coffee table, grabbed it and shot anybody who happened to be standing around. That's it?"
"I don't think that."
"Good. That would be a dumb thing to think. But otherwise, why get rid of the gun?"
"I told you!" Andrew again cast his eyes around the walls. Wu could almost feel his panic, searching for escape, any escape. Finally, he exploded, slamming the table between them with the flat of his palm, coming to his feet, turning around, trapped. "I already told you that!" he screamed. Don't you get it? Aren't you listening to me? I was freaked out. I knew it was a mistake the minute I let it go."