Pisano: Where did he go?
Lew: Back toward the kitchen.
Pisano: Did you also go back to the kitchen at some point? Lew: Yes.
Pisano: Why?
Lew: There’s a movie theater next door and around midnight the last show gets out. Some people came in for a drink and Frank needed some more ice so he told me to have Jim bring him up some.
Pisano: Where is the ice kept?
Lew: In the walk-in — that’s the refrigerator — in the kitchen.
Pisano: About what time was it when you went back into the kitchen?
Lew: A quarter after twelve.
Pisano: Did you see Jim back there?
Lew: No.
Pisano: What did you do?
Lew: It’s hard… I…
Pisano: One step at a time, Ms. Lew, and we’ll get through this. He wasn’t in the kitchen. Then what?
Lew: I looked in the locker room. I looked outside, out the back door, but he wasn’t there.
Pisano: Was the back door unlocked?
Lew: Yeah.
Pisano: Okay. He wasn’t in the kitchen, the locker room, or outside. Then what did you do?
Lew: I looked in the walk-in. He wasn’t there. That left, the only place was the cellar. That’s where I went.
Pisano: I want you to describe the cellar, Ms. Lew.
Lew: There’s a big room where the wine’s kept. Then there’s two little rooms, one for the manager’s office. The other one is where we keep the hard liquor.
Pisano: Did you go into the cellar?
Lew: Yes.
Pisano: What did you find in the big room?
Lew: Nothing. I called Jim but he wasn’t there.
Pisano: What did you do then?
Lew: It was kinda creepy down there. I was going to get Frank’s ice myself but then -
Pisano: We’re almost done, Ms. Lew.
Lew: I’m sorry. The manager’s office was closed up. I saw that the door to the liquor room was open a little and the light was on. I went over and then — there was this noise, like a whimper. Like a puppy makes. I thought maybe Jim was lifting boxes and hurt himself so I went in.
Pisano: What did you see?
Lew: The first thing was just Jim. He was kinda hunched over and leaning against some boxes. There was a funny smell, like a bottle of liquor got broken so I looked down at the floor. That’s when I — saw him.
Pisano: Saw who, Ms. Lew?
Lew: Oh, God, I didn’t know at first. His face was all — but then it was the clothes Brian was wearing in the bar. There was blood. I looked back at Jim. He was holding one of the kitchen knives and his hands were bloody. There was blood on his shirt and his pants like he tried to wipe the knife clean.
Pisano: Did he speak to you?
Lew: No. I don’t know. I ran out of there and started screaming for Frank as soon as I was upstairs.
Pisano: Then what happened?
Lew: Frank came to the back and there was some other guys with him, from the bar, I guess. I told them what was downstairs. We piled things up against the cellar door and called the police.
Pisano: And when did they arrive?
Lew: Five, ten minutes. It seemed like forever before I heard the sirens.
Pisano: That’s all, Ms. Lew. Thank you.
The Court: Cross-examination, Mrs. Hart.
Hart: I have no questions of this witness.
The bloody images of Brian Fox’s murder remained with me even after I set the transcripts aside and made myself another cup of tea. Coming back to my desk, I picked a loose-leaf binder out of the folder Larry had given me and opened it up. Inside were press accounts of the Pears case from the day Jim was arrested to the day after he’d been held to answer. I flipped the pages until I came to a story that had a picture.
The headline proclaimed “The Tragic Death of Brian Fox.” Beneath the headline was a black-and-white of Brian that startled me for no better reason than his youth. I had cast someone older and sleazier for the role of the boy who tormented Jim Pears. Instead, I found myself looking at a handsome boy with light hair whose features had not yet set on his slightly fleshy face. His half-smile revealed either shyness or surprise. There was a caption beneath the picture: “His mother called him golden boy.”
I read the story. It consisted of lachrymose interviews with Brian’s mother, teachers, and fellow students. You’d have thought he was in line for sainthood, at least. I looked back at the face. No hint of sainthood there. Maybe the twist of the smile was neither shyness nor surprise. Maybe it was sadism. I wondered, would a jury buy that? Probably not.
I went back and read the stories in chronological order. Jim had not fared nearly as well as Brian. The only picture of him showed him lifting his handcuffed wrists to his face as he was led into court for arraignment. The first spate of stories were more or less straightforward accounts of what had occurred at the Yellowtail that night. They tallied with the cocktail waitress’s testimony.
Subsequent stories, ignoring the possibility of Jim’s innocence, dwelt on his motive for killing Brian. Much was written about what were termed Brian’s “teasing” remarks about Jim’s homosexuality. There were inaccurate reports of the parking lot incident. According to one paper, it was Brian himself to whom Jim offered sex. Another paper got most of the details right but the reporter termed Brian’s activities a “prank.” The upshot was that Jim was a psycho closet case with a short fuse that Brian accidentally ignited.
The last batch of stories was the worst. Oddly enough — or perhaps not — Jim’s father, Walter Pears, was responsible for these stories. Jim’s parents had resisted the media until just before the prelim. Then his father had talked. Walter Pears’s explanation for Jim’s crime was “demonic possession.” He announced that since Jim was apparently in the thrall of Satan, the best that could be done was, as the elder Pears said repeatedly, to “put him away for everyone’s good.”
The press took up the notion of satanism. There were rumors about the alleged disfigurement of Brian Fox’s body. A priest made the connection between homosexuality — an abomination before God — and worship of the devil by whom, presumably, such practices were tolerated. At length, the coverage grew so outrageous that the chief of police himself felt constrained to deny that any evidence of devil-worship or demonic possession existed in the case.
I reached the end of the binder. A first-year law student could predict the result of this case. Jim’s trial would merely be a way station on the road to prison. Keeping him off death row would be as much victory as anyone could reasonably expect. It was nearly three in the morning. I finished my tea and got ready for bed.
4
The storm that passed through San Francisco on Friday had worked its way through Los Angeles by the time I stepped off the plane on Monday. It was a distinctly tropical eighty degrees that last morning of September. I threw my overcoat into the back of my rented car and made my way downtown to the Criminal Courts Building.
The vast city was just awakening as I sped eastward on the Santa Monica Freeway. I had spent a lot of time in Los Angeles when I worked with Larry on the sodomy lawsuit two years earlier. I knew the city as well as anyone who didn’t live there could, and I liked the place. Between the freeway and the Hollywood Hills the feathery light of early morning poured into the basin and it truly did seem, at that moment, to be the habitation of angels. The great palms lifted their shaggy heads like a race of ancient, benevolent animals. Along the broad boulevards that ran from downtown to the sea, skyscrapers rose abruptly as if by geologic accident but were dwarfed by the sheer enormity of the plain.
I parked in the lot behind the Criminal Courts Building across from City Hall and walked around to the courthouse entrance on Temple. In the space between the entrance platform and the ground lay the charred remains of a campfire, with people sleeping in rags and old blankets. Inside, the walls of the foyer were covered with gang graffiti. After an interminable wait, an elevator picked me up and ascended, creaking its way to the floor where the Public Defender had his offices. I walked into a small reception room, announced myself to the receptionist and sat down to wait. The room was crowded with restless children and adults sitting nervously on plastic chairs. A little boy came up and stared at me with wide, black eyes.