Page 21 of The Happy Month

“I don’t know. I’d have to say the most likely person is still Larry.”

And that is why you don’t ask all the questions during the deposition.

CHAPTER SIX

July 24, 1996

Late Wednesday afternoon

After Anne Michaels left, Lydia called me into her office and said, “We have to do better. I can’t go into a deposition not knowing all the answers.”

I was sure she was talking about when Larry asked Anne to lie. Quickly, I said, “I’m sorry about that.”

“I’m not blaming you, Dom. I should have asked you about that. Ultimately, it’s my responsibility.”

“But I’m here to make things easier for you.”

Before we broke out in an argument about which of us fucked up more, she shifted, saying, “I don’t think I’m as over the shooting as I thought.”

“You’re safe,” I said.

“That’s not it. I keep thinking it through, trying to see where I went wrong. I keep seeing him with that knife at Karen’s throat, knowing it was my fault.”

It wasn’t her fault. It was Stu Whatley’s fault. But thatwasn’t what she was talking about. She was talking about responsibility. She’d taken Whatley’s case. He was innocent of the crime he’d been imprisoned for but had still been a violent rapist. She’d made a decision that had led to violence. I knew what that was like.

“You’re helping people. That can come at a cost.”

“We’re helping people,” she said. “The deposition still went okay. I’m pretty happy,” she said, getting back to the deposition. “I think we’ve got what we need. We need to get the rest of the discovery provided to Raymond Harris. Hopefully, he’ll have a transcript from that phone conversation. Also, notes from the interview Anne described with the police.”

“What should we do to prepare for meeting him Friday?”

“I need to get him to agree to be deposed on what he knows about Larry’s sexuality, and whether he said the things that Larry says he said.”

“And Anne,” I pointed out.

“Well, no. She didn’t speak to him directly. What she said is only what Larry said. Or what she’s worked out for herself. It supports his story, that’s all.”

The file Harris had sent over contained the letter of engagement Larry signed when he hired Harris, notes from two different visits to county jail which were cryptic and confusing, several newspaper articles about the murder, notes from an interview he’d done with Larry’s parents—his father seemed to believe he killed Pete, his mother wasn’t sure what to believe. And that was about it.

“You’ll probably need him to walk through his notes of his visits with Larry,” I said. “I haven’t been able to make heads or tails of them.”

“We’ll need to do that eventually, but I don’t know if there’s anything in there that will help us get a new trial.”

“If Larry said anything about his sexuality, that would help. And, when he said it. If Harris suggested he not let on that he was gay before he came up with the engagement idea—you know what, that engagement idea came from an article inThe Downey Ledgeralmost immediately after the murder. A source told the newspaper that Pete had recently become engaged, but there was no mention to whom. I’m pretty sure Sammy Blanchard was the source trying to throw suspicion in another direction.”

“Well, it worked,” Lydia said.

“It did.”

“We can’t prove that, though. A journalist is not going to want to give up their source. If anything, it hurts us. Anne was vague about when she spoke to Larry. The newspaper mention of the engagement was just a couple days after the murder, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“If their phone call happened after the newspaper article, then we have a problem we’ll need to solve. How did that end up in the newspaper before Larry and Anne cooked up the idea?”

“Should we talk to the journalist? You never know, they might tell us something.”

“Let’s try to establish when Larry and Anne had that conversation, and we’ll go from there.”