Page 41 of The Happy Month

“Let’s not let this wonderful food go to waste. All this talk is getting in the way. How about we read and eat? We can talk afterward.”

And that’s what we did.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

July 26, 1996

Friday afternoon

The food was delicious. I might have taken more than my share of the walnut shrimp. As I ate, I compared Anne Michaels’ deposition to the interviews she’d given twenty years before. There were six interviews, two with the police and four with the district attorney. The interviews with the police were held at her house, and there were only the notes of the officers. I didn’t bother much with the first interview, it was the second that was important. That interview took place after Larry tipped her off to say she was Pete’s fiancée.

We had the notes of a Detective Jacobs. He’d typed them up. His original, handwritten notes were not included. The most important statement was “interviewee originally denied being victim’s fiancée, but after questioning admitted the truth.” That matched with what Anne said in the deposition. She had attempted to tell the truth but was not believed.

Then I looked through the file again to see if I could find a transcript of the jailhouse phone conversation. It wasn’t there and it should have been. Even if phone conversations from jail weren’t normally included in discovery, this one should have been. It was the reason detectives showed up at Anne’s house. It’s the reason they believed she was Pete’s fiancée.

I took a bite of the duck. It was good, but not as good as the walnut shrimp. Unfortunately, that was gone. I scooped some of the scallops onto my plate and said, “The transcript for the phone call Anne described is not in the file.”

“What?” Lydia said.

“I can’t find it.”

“That’s not good.”

“For us?” Karen asked.

“No. For them. If they didn’t provide it, it could be a Brady violation.”

“But there’s nothing exculpatory in the conversation,” I said.

“We don’t know that for sure. We haven’t seen it. All we know is what Anne said. Now it’s an integral part of her recanting. We need that. I’ll call Harris on Monday. What else?”

“The notes of the detective who interviewed her after the call support her version.”

“Good. She tried to tell the truth but couldn’t. That’ll help a lot.”

“Are we going to depose him?”

“Probably not. Let me read his notes and if they’re strong enough we’ll go with that. We don’t want to risk him saying anything that won’t help.”

We ate for a moment, then Lydia said, “I read the Showalter boy’s original statements. There are a number ofinconsistencies which should have been brought out at trial. He confused Carson and Compton a couple of times. He messed up the price of the gun, going back between forty and fifty. And he originally said he went in the afternoon.”

“Do you think he didn’t get the gun in Compton?”

“The art he drew suggests he did. He could just be a kid who wasn’t used to lying. What are you reading, Karen?”

“There are a couple of interviews with Paul Michaels. Boy is he a fool. Didn’t know his wife was lying to him. Didn’t know his brother was lying to him.”

“Sometimes people know what they want to know and nothing else.”

“Isn’t that the definition of a fool?”

“More important than that,” Lydia said. “Is that he’s not going to be any use to us.”

Karen shook her head.

Lin came over and asked if we’d like the rest boxed up to go home. Lydia said, “Yes, please.” To us she added, “This way I won’t have to make Dwayne dinner.”

“Does he ever make you dinner?” I asked. I mean, really, she was my boss and an attorney. She shouldn’t have to make dinner every night for a man whose big effort was reading a script.