In My Dark Dreams (38 page)

She reads it back. “Do you recall the last time we met face to face?”

Talbert looks grim. He doesn’t know where this is going, but he doesn’t like the prospects, whatever they are. “Yes. I recall it.”

“What was the occasion?”

“I was testifying in a trial.”

“Whom were you testifying against, Officer?”

Talbert points to Salazar. “Him.”

“Let the record show that Officer Talbert identified Roberto Salazar as the person he was testifying about in a previous case in which I was the defense attorney.” I slide my feet out of one shoe, then the other. Standing still is the hardest thing I’m going through. But this won’t take long, and the payoff will be worth it.

“Did that testimony have something to do with your having stopped Mr. Salazar’s truck on the night you mentioned?”

He nods. “Yes.”

“After you stopped Mr. Salazar, did you search his truck?”

“Yes,” in a tone like a growl.

“And what did you find?”

“A load of television sets.”

“Television sets,” I repeat. “Where did they come from? Did Mr. Salazar tell you?”

“He said he was taking them to a warehouse in the valley, for a friend.”

“Did you check that out? Was that a legitimate delivery?”

Talbert shakes his head emphatically. “His story was bogus. The television sets had been stolen from a container car in San Pedro.”

“And when you found that out, did you arrest him?”

He spits out his answer. “Yes.”

The jury is staring at us with fascination, their heads rotating back and forth as if they’re watching a tennis match.

“And Mr. Salazar went to trial, which was when you saw me, is that correct? I was Mr. Salazar’s lawyer, and I cross-examined you.”

“That’s right.”

I walk halfway to the jury box. “Would you please tell the court, Officer Talbert, what the verdict of that trial was?”

Talbert looks as if he’s been constipated for a week. “Not guilty.”

“Not guilty,” I repeat, looking the jurors in the face as I speak. “He was arrested for a crime, but he was not guilty of that crime. Is that correct?”

“The jury found him not guilty,” he says petulantly.

“They did,” I agree. “And fast. Within a couple of hours. They barely had time to fill out their ballots.” I turn back to Talbert. “Because, to use your word, they felt his arrest was bogus.”

He starts to come back at me, but Loomis catches his eye.
Keep your trap shut.
You can almost see the silent warning hanging over Loomis’s head in big, red, neon letters.

“Let’s go back to the night you arrested Mr. Salazar,” I carry on. “After you found out the television sets had been stolen, you arrested Mr. Salazar on the spot and brought him to jail, is that correct?”

He’s deflated now. “Yes.”

“What happened to his truck, and the contents of it?”

“It was towed to a police impound lot. The television sets were removed, to be used as evidence.”

“Who searched it?” I ask.

“Initially, I did,” he says. “Then the impound people did.”

“Did you do a thorough job?”

“As best I could, under the circumstances.”

“And the impound people, later. Did they?”

“Yes.”

“They’re good at that, aren’t they?

“Very good.”

“When you searched Mr. Salazar’s truck, and later on, when the detectives at the impound yard searched it, did they look for anything else that should not have been there? Guns, drugs, anything else that might have been used to further incriminate Mr. Salazar?”

Of course they would have looked for that kind of stuff. They would have gone over that truck with a fine-tooth comb. If they had come up with anything, especially drugs, that would have really nailed Salazar’s ass to the wall.

“No,” Talbert admits. “They didn’t find anything like that.”

I leave the podium and walk to the witness box. I rarely do that, I like to keep my distance. But sometimes, proximity is useful. When I am just out of what I hope is spitting range, I ask, “Did you or anyone else find a pair of women’s underpants in that truck?”

I don’t have to look behind to know that Loomis is cringing. It’s all there, in Talbert’s face.

“No,” he answers. “We did not.”

“Not when you arrested him, and not later. In fact, you never found a pair of women’s panties in Mr. Salazar’s truck, did you?”

He looks me in the eye and takes his medicine like a man. “No. We never found any women’s underpants in that truck.”

A
GAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT,
I go see Mrs. Salazar in the hospital after court is adjourned for the day. Somebody has to report back to Salazar about his wife’s condition, and I’m the only candidate except for Amanda, who is making herself scarce. If word gets out, there could be nosy tabloid or television reporters lurking about, fishing for something juicy to titillate their customers, and she can’t handle that kind of publicity. But the place is devoid of the press, fortunately. It’s enough that I have to run that gauntlet every day at the courthouse. To see their jackal-like faces anywhere else would cause me to blow a gasket, which I can’t let happen. I have to stay calm. The baby doesn’t like turbulence, it’s a great governor for my emotions.

It takes me a while to find Salazar’s wife; County-USC is an enormous facility. Anyone who isn’t familiar with its layout would be well advised to leave a trail of bread crumbs to find the way out.

I finally locate her. She has been moved from an intensive care unit to a semiprivate room. She looks completely desiccated, as if the liquid has been drained from her body, and all that is left is dry flesh and skeleton. I’ve seen mummies in museums who looked healthier. The other bed is occupied by an old lady who is out of it; tubes and hoses are sprouting from every orifice of her body.

A couple of Mrs. Salazar’s friends are with her; two of the women who came to Salazar’s first trial. When Mrs. Salazar sees me, she cringes. “Oh, Mrs. Thompson, I am so sorry!”

It’s Ms., but I don’t correct her. “Sorry for what?”

“For causing all this trouble,” she keens. “For everyone.” Her voice is raspy and pinched.

Her friends sit on either side of her, holding her hands. They make clucking sounds, that are meant to be soothing and supportive. One of them puts a small ice cube in her mouth. She sucks on it.

“How are you feeling?” I ask.

She waggles her head, as if to say,
Not bad.
One of her friends answers for her, “She is tired, but she is much better now.”

“Who is watching your children?”

“Her sister,” the go-between tells me. Lowering her voice, she confides, “They do not know. They think she had a bad stomachache.”

Mrs. Salazar pushes herself up a little on her elbows. That small effort seems to take all her energy. She asks me, in a low, hoarse voice, “How is Roberto?”

I’m not going to baby her. Her husband is in a shitload of trouble, and this compounded it. “Not too good. He’s freaked out that he can’t come see you.” I sit down on the edge of the bed. “He counts on your support,” I tell her. “You need to get better fast, and start coming to court again.”

She nods; then she starts to cry. “I have no more strength for that. It is all too terrible.”

“It is terrible,” I agree, “but you have to get it together to be there for Roberto. However you manage to do it, but you must do it.”

Her visitors, uncomfortable with hearing me haranguing her, announce that they are going to take a break, but will be back soon. After they leave, I scoot closer to her.

“Why did you do this?” I question her. “You must have a reason, besides feeling overwhelmed.”

She turns her face away and stares at the wall. After holding her tongue for a moment, she says, still not looking at me, “I do not believe him anymore.”

That sends a tremor down my spine. “What do you mean?”

She turns back to me. Her mouth is quivering. “He goes out at night sometimes. He thinks I am asleep, but I am not.”

Shit. I didn’t need to hear this. But now that she’s broached the subject, I have to hear the rest of it. “How many times has he done that, that you know about?”

She shrugs her bony shoulders. “Five, six, maybe. I do not remember.”

“Do you remember when?” I take the plunge. “During the full moon?”

“I am not sure. Maybe.” She starts to shiver with agitation. “He comes back while it is still dark out and gets into bed. He pretends he was there all night, but I know he was not.”

Oy.
“Did you ever say anything to him about it? Ask him where he was?”

Her eyes widen. “No, no! I would never do that.”

Because you didn’t want to know where he was—getting it on with some floozy. A natural reaction. Since Jeremy dropped his bomb on me, I’ve had searing fits of jealousy, so I know the emotion.

I have to bring that fear into the light. Once you expose them you’re on the road to recovery. “You thought he was seeing someone.”

She bobs her head. The tears start flowing again.

Men of God are as human as anyone else, so of course that’s what she would think—what any woman would think. “Do you still believe that’s the reason?”

She chokes down her sobs. “I do not know what to think anymore. I don’t know if he …” She can’t finish the thought. She doesn’t have to. If he really is the killer. “I have lost faith in him,” she tells me. “Without him, what do I have to live for?”

Oh, you poor, wretched woman whose world has been turned so upside-down. “Your children.”

Her sigh sounds like a death rattle. “I know. What I did was wrong.
Stupido.
I was not thinking.”

Social worker is not part of my job description, but there are times you have to enlarge your portfolio. “You need to get out of here, go home, and be with them.” I take my card out of my purse, scribble my cell phone number on it, and hand it to her. “Call me tomorrow. I’ll put you in touch with someone you can talk to about this. Free of charge,” I add. She won’t go if she has to pay. She might not go anyway, but I’ll push her; she needs professional help. “Someone who speaks Spanish, if you would prefer that.”

She looks at my card, then lays it on the bedside table. “All right,” she says in a small voice, falling back on her pillows. She’s wiped out. And I’ve learned all I need to know—more.

“And once you feel better, you have to come back to the trial,” I nag her again. “Even if you don’t want to. The outcome might depend on your being there.”

She lowers her eyes. “I will try.”

That’s all I can ask for.

Omar Chatterjee, M.D., is the coroner’s office DNA expert. Although he came here from India thirty years ago, he still speaks with an Indian-British accent. He knows his stuff cold, and unlike the celebrity pathologists who hog the headlines, he doesn’t trumpet his knowledge. His word is impeccable. I’ve never known him to mess up.

Siobhan Flynn, our DNA specialist, is at the defense table with Joe and me today. She’ll do the cross-examination. Chatterjee puts on a pair of latex gloves and takes the evidence—the panties that were found in Salazar’s truck—out of the evidence bag.

“Are these the woman’s undergarments that were certified as belonging to the victim, Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz?” Arthur Wong asks. Cheryl Lynn Steinmetz was the Full Moon Killer’s last victim, the one whose underpants were found in Salazar’s truck.

“Yes,” Chatterjee answers. He’s a man of few words.

“Is there any doubt at all that they could have belonged to someone else?”

“No. These are Ms. Steinmetz’s panties. The DNA evidence confirmed it.”

Siobhan and I have gone over the test results very carefully. The panties were compared to DNA taken from the corpse at the autopsy, and they matched. These panties belonged to the last Full Moon victim. We won’t contest that evidence, it is beyond question.

Wong asks a few more questions to cement the fact that the panties found in Salazar’s truck belonged to the victim, and that there is no possibility they could have been anyone else’s. He puts the panties back in their container and returns it to the evidence table.

Siobhan replaces Wong at the podium. This will be her only appearance at the trial, unless something else about DNA comes up. “Besides finding Ms. Steinmetz’s DNA on those panties, did you find anyone else’s?” she asks Chatterjee.

Chatterjee is direct and explicit. “No.”

“Not Mr. Salazar’s?” Siobhan sounds surprised. I look at the jurors. They seem a bit surprised, too.

“No.”

“What about fingerprints? Did you find Mr. Salazar’s fingerprints on the panties?”

“No.”

Siobhan looks even more surprised. “Isn’t that unusual? If Mr. Salazar took them and put them in his truck, wouldn’t his fingerprints be on them?”

“Not necessarily. Not all materials pick up fingerprints,” Chatterjee explains. “That’s a common fallacy. Or they may be smudged so that they cannot be identified. Or Mr. Salazar could have used gloves to pick them up. If he was the assailant,” he adds. A careful scientist, he deals with facts, not suppositions.

“There are several plausible reasons why his or anyone else’s fingerprints weren’t found on those panties.”

“Were the victim’s?”

“Yes. But they were her undergarments. She would have handled them many times while wearing them, such as pulling them down to go to the bathroom. Touching an article multiple times increases the possibility of leaving prints.”

Siobhan nods, but looks skeptical. She picks up the Ziploc bag containing the panties from the evidence table and holds it up, squinting like a jeweler examining a gemstone as she looks at it. “Let me ask you something else, Doctor. Can you tell how recently Ms. Steinmetz’s DNA was left on these panties? Was it definitely on the night she was killed?”

“Not necessarily,” Chatterjee answers firmly. “That would not be possible to know, because DNA lasts a long time. Months, even years. Although once the panties had been washed, the traces would be gone, so you would assume the samples were recent. But to specifically answer your question, the answer is no, we can’t pinpoint when the DNA was deposited onto them.”