“So, what’s the deal?” I wanted to know. “Are they going to arrest?”
“I’m not saying that,” Gil replied. “Just go in there and meet with them.”
“We shouldn’t be kissing ass here!” I muttered to David and Bill as we walked the two blocks to LAPD Headquarters at Parker Center. “They should have kept him in custody. We should be looking at a filing. I think we should tell them we’re considering the grand jury.”
What I meant was this: if the cops wouldn’t arrest, we could unilaterally start an investigation of our own by taking the case to a grand jury. That way, the cops couldn’t stonewall us because we’d have the power to compel their testimony. Furthermore, if we took the case to a grand jury and got an indictment, the police would have no choice but to arrest Simpson. Still, going grand jury was risky. The cops would take it as an in-your-face insult. My guess was that the very mention of it would drive them crazy.
“Go easy,” David advised me. “Let’s just see what they have to say.” As we rode the elevator up to Robbery/Homicide, I tried to imagine what Bill Hodgman was thinking. He’d been the front man on the Jackson case, a role that had caused him to drop considerably in the LAPD’s popularity polls. But Bill was also a very sweet guy and the consummate diplomat. If anyone could soothe the cops’ hurt feelings, he could. My concern at that moment was focused more on the police brass-would they continue to hold out? Or would they put an end to this game and work with us?
The Robbery/Homicide Division bullpen was a large room with about twenty desks facing each other in two rows. Consequently, the homicide team that worked on the LAPD’s most sensitive cases had absolutely no privacy. Their notes and reports were in plain view of any clerk wandering through-it was Leak City. Tom Lange had repeatedly complained to his bosses about it. But nothing had been done.
I knew the bullpen pretty well. I had been there often to talk with my IOS, investigating officers. I liked it: bare bones; gritty; real cops working tough, nasty cases. I’d always get good-natured ribbing as I made my way through. That Wednesday afternoon, however, I nearly got frostbite.
Someone pointed us to a small room off the bullpen where the brass were gathered. There was Commander John White, chief of detectives; Lieutenant John Rogers, of Robbery/Homicide; and Captain William Gartland, head of RHD. And, of course, Phil and Tom. On the table in front of Tom was a stack of documents bound with a rubber band. Exactly what I’d been waiting for.
“Here’re the reports so far,” Tom told me. His tone was neutral. I glanced over at Phil, who was looking distinctly ill at ease. Our eyes met. Everything was still okay between us.
“Obviously, there’s a lot more to be done,” Tom said. “But this should get you started.”
“Thanks, Tom,” I said, not wanting to appear too eager, but itching to get my hands on those reports. We swapped some observations about the case, making nice. Nobody on the other side seemed willing to bring up the thorny issue of arrest.
So I hit it dead-on.
“When do you plan to bring this for filing?”
“We want to interview more witnesses,” Tom said slowly. “We were thinking maybe the early part of next week.”
Bill, David, and I were silent. The cops knew that this was not what we’d wanted to hear.
“Well, frankly,” I said, “we’re a little concerned about letting it go that long.” I paused to make sure they were paying attention. “We’ve been thinking about taking it to the grand jury.”
Gauntlet thrown.
“Well, that’s your prerogative,” Tom replied, looking to his superiors for support. “We can’t stop you. But we’d prefer to wait a little longer.”
They were not going to budge.
The fire escapes that lattice the exterior of the CCB were a favorite retreat of the smokers among us. The one I used offered a vertical-slatted view of Parker Center and the Federal Buildings. The narrow veranda was furnished with a couple of dinette-type chairs. Someone had dragged out one of those tall cylindrical trash cans, which was always overflowing. There was a broom propped in one corner in case anyone felt industrious and wanted to clean the place up. No one had for a while.
The fire escape is where I headed when I got back with my spoils from the LAPD. Documents and notepads in one hand, cigs in the other.
I took a chair, propped my feet on the other one, and began leafing through the slender sheaf of police reports. Until now, I’d had only a sketchy mental image of how the bodies at Bundy lay.
Now I learned that Nicole, upon whom death and the medical examiner had bestowed the designation “decedent 94-05136,” had been found at the foot of the stairs at the front gate. She was in fetal position on her left side, wearing a backless black dress. No shoes. Her arms were bent at the elbow, close to the body. Her arms, legs, and face were stained with blood. The coroner had found a “large, sharp force injury” to her neck.
Ron Goldman, “decedent 94-05135,” had been found to the north. He’d fallen or been pushed backward and was slumped against the stump of a palm tree. He was wearing blue jeans and a light cotton sweater. Lying near his right foot was a white envelope containing a pair of eyeglasses. Goldman had injuries to the neck, back, head, hands, thighs. He’d apparently put up a fierce struggle.
I absorbed the contents of these reports without emotion. Over the years, I’d learned to do that. I imagine that emergency-room physicians approach their work the same way-first treat the symptoms; only after the bleeding stops, notice the human beings. I knew with painful certainty that if I caught this case for keeps, the deaths described in these pages would become personal. And, like it or not, I would begin to grieve for the victims. Just as I’d written to Rebecca’s mother, Danna Schaeffer, once you start letting yourself feel, the misery is endless.
But at this moment, the facts were all I needed or wanted.
Cause of death? “Sharp force injuries from some kind of knife or bladed instrument.”
I hated that. With a bullet you can match striations to the barrel of a gun and be 99 percent sure that you have the murder weapon. Blade wounds are usually sloppy. The injuries often can’t be traced to a single instrument.
Murder weapon? No sign of one yet. The cops had checked trash receptacles and luggage lockers at LAX and were in the process of searching the fields around O’Hare. They apparently had a line on a German hunting knife that Simpson had bought at an establishment called Ross Cutlery close to the time of the murder. Promising, but a long shot. Barring some anomaly-like some pattern on the handle that got pressed into the victims’ skin-we would never get a 100 percent match.
Time of death? Coroner still working on that.
Suspect? I lit up a Dunhill and took a deep drag. Then, on a clean sheet of yellow notepaper, I wrote: “O. J. Simpson.” And after that, “ALIBI?”
During the first couple of days after the murders, Simpson’s attorney, Howard Weitzman, had been telling reporters that Simpson was en route to Chicago at the time of the murders. Weitzman put it at eleven o’clock. Turns out, however, that the red-eye left LAX at 11:45 P.M.
When was Nicole Brown last seen alive? I skimmed a report taken from the bar manager at Mezzaluna. She’d seen Ron Goldman leave the restaurant at about 9:30 or 9:45, on his way to Nicole’s house. Goldman had been talking to Nicole on the phone a few minutes earlier, so it was probably safe to say that she was still alive at around 9:45 P.M. O. J. Simpson’s plane is lifting off at 11:45. That’s a lot of time in between.