“I’m sorry. I got excited when you asked all the right questions in the press conference and I got back to the newsroom and sort of exaggerated things. I said we were working on it together. Prendo told me to start writing.”
“Is that when you suggested to Prendo that we work together on my other story, too?”
“I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When I got back, he told me we were on it together. I take the killer and you take the victim. He also told me it was your idea.”
Her face colored red and she shook her head in embarrassment. I had now outted two liars. Angela I could deal with because there was something honest about her lying. She was boldly going for what she wanted. Prendo was the one that hurt. We had worked together for a long time and I had never seen him as a liar or manipulator. I guessed he was just choosing sides. I was out the door soon and Angela was staying. It didn’t take a genius to see that he was picking her over me. The future was with Angela.
“I can’t believe he ratted me out,” Angela said.
“Yeah, well, I guess you have to be careful who you trust in a news-room,” I said. “Even your own editor.”
“I guess so.”
She picked up her cup and looked to see if there was anything left, even though she knew there wasn’t. Anything to avoid looking at me.
“Look, Angela, I don’t like how you did this but I admire how you just go after what you want. All the best reporters I have known are that way. And I have to say your idea of doing the double-profile of both killer and victim is the better way to go.”
Now she looked at me. Her face brightened.
“Jack, I’m really looking forward to working with you on it.”
“The one thing I want to get straight right now is that this started with me and it ends with me. When the reporting is all done, I’m the one who is going to write this. Okay?”
“Oh, absolutely. After you told me what you were working on, I just wanted to be a part of it. So I came up with the victim angle. But it’s your story, Jack. You get to write it and your name goes first on the byline.”
I studied her closely for any sign that she was dissembling. But she’d looked me sincerely in the eye as she had spoken.
“All right. Well, that’s all I had to say.”
“Good.”
“You need any help with today’s story?”
“No, I think I’m all set. And I’m getting great stuff from the community off that angle you brought up at the press conference. Reverend Treacher called it one more symptom of racism in the department. They create a task force when a white woman who takes her clothes off for a living and puts drugs in her body gets killed, but do nothing whenever one of the eight hundred innocent residents in those projects gets killed by the gangbangers.”
It sounded like a good quote but it came from the wrong voice. The reality was that Treacher was an opportunistic weasel. I never bought that he was standing up for the community. I thought he was usually just standing up for himself, getting on TV and in the papers to further serve his celebrity and the benefits it brought. I had once suggested to an editor that we do an investigation of Treacher but was immediately shot down. The editor said, “No, Jack, we need him.”
And that was true. The paper needed people like Treacher to voice the contrarian view, to give the incendiary remark and get the fire burning.
“Sounds good,” I said to Angela. “I’ll let you get back to it and I’ll go up and write up a budget line for the other story.”
“Here,” she said.
She slid the short stack of papers across the table to me.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing, really, but it might save you some time. Last night before I went home I was thinking about the story after you told me what you were working on. I almost called you to talk more about it and suggest we work together. But I chickened out and went on Google instead. I checked out ‘trunk murder’ and found there is a long history of people ending up in the trunks of cars. A lot of women, Jack. And a lot of mob guys, too.”
I turned the pages over and looked at the top sheet. It was a printout of a Las Vegas Review-Journal story from almost a year earlier. The first paragraph told me it was about the conviction of a man charged with murdering his ex-wife, putting her body into the trunk of his car, and then parking it in his own garage.
“That’s just a story that sounded a little like yours,” she said. “There’s some others in there about historical cases. There’s a local one from the nineties where this movie guy was found in the trunk of his Rolls-Royce, which was parked on the hill above the Hollywood Bowl. And I even found a website called trunk murder dot com, but it’s still under construction.”
I nodded hesitantly.
“Uh, thanks. I’m not sure where all this might fit in but it’s good to be thorough, I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”
She pushed her chair back and picked up her empty cup.
“Well, okay, then. I’ll e-mail you a copy of today’s story as soon as I have it ready to send in.”
“You don’t have to do that. It’s your story now.”
“No, your name is going on it, too. You asked the questions that gave it good ol’ B and D.”
Breadth and depth. What the editors want. What the reputation of the Times was built on. Drilled into you from day one, when you came to the velvet coffin. Give your stories breadth and depth. Don’t just tell what happened. Tell what it means and how it fits into the life of the city and the reader.
“Okay, well, thanks,” I said. “Just let me know and I’ll give it a quick read.”
“You want to walk up together?”
“Uh, no, I’m going to get a coffee and maybe look through all this stuff you came up with.”
“Suit yourself.”
She gave me a pouty smile like I was missing something really good and then walked away. I watched her dump her coffee cup into a trash can and head out of the cafeteria. I wasn’t sure what was happening. I didn’t know if I was her partner or mentor, whether I was training her to take over or she already had. My instinct told me that I might only have eleven days left on the job but I would have to watch my back with her during every one of them.
After writing up a budget line and e-mailing it to Prendergast, and then signing off on Angela’s story for the print edition, I found an unoccupied pod in the far corner of the newsroom where I could concentrate on the Alonzo Winslow transcript and not be intruded on by phone calls, e-mail or other reporters. The transcript had my full attention now and as I read, I marked with yellow Post-its pages where there were significant quotes.
The reading went fast except in places where there was more than the back and forth of ping-pong dialogue. At one point the detectives scammed Winslow into a damaging admission and I had to read the passage twice to understand what they did. Grady apparently pulled out a tape measure. He explained to Winslow that they wanted to take a measurement of the line that ran from the tip of his thumb to the tip of his first index finger on each hand.
Winslow cooperated and then the detectives announced that the measurements matched to within a quarter inch the strangulation marks left on Denise Babbit’s neck. Winslow responded with a vigorous denial of involvement in the murder and then made a big mistake.
WINSLOW: Beside that, the bitch wasn’t even strangled with anybody’s hands. Motherfucker tied a plastic bag over her head.
WALKER: And how do you know that, Alonzo?
I could almost see Walker smiling when he asked it. Winslow had slipped up in a huge way.
WINSLOW: I don’t know, man. It must’ve been on TV or something. I heard it somewhere.
WALKER: No, son, you didn’t, because we never put that out. The only person who knew that was the person who killed her. Now, do you want to tell us about it while we can still help you, or do you want to play it dumb and go down hard for it?
; WINSLOW: I’m telling you motherfuckers, I didn’t kill her like that.
GRADY: Then tell us what you did do to her.
WINSLOW: Nothing, man. Nothing!
The damage was done and the slide had begun. You don’t have to be an interrogator at Abu Ghraib to know that time never favors the suspect. Walker and Grady were patient, and as the minutes and hours ticked by, Alonzo Winslow’s will finally began to erode. It was too much to go up alone against two veteran cops who knew things about the case that he didn’t. By page 830 of the manuscript he began to crack.
WINSLOW: I want to go home. I want to see my moms. Please, let me go talk to her and I’ll come back tomorrow to be with you fellas.
WALKER: That’s not happening, Alonzo. We can’t let you go until we know the truth. If you want to finally start telling us the truth, then we can talk about getting you home to Moms.
WINSLOW: I didn’t do this shit. I never met that bitch.
GRADY: Then how did your fingerprints get all over that car, and how come you know how she was strangled?
WINSLOW: I don’t know. That can’t be true about my prints. You fuckers lying to me.
WALKER: Yeah, you think we’re lying because you wiped that car down real good, didn’t you? But you forgot something, Alonzo. You forgot the rearview mirror! Remember how you turned it to make sure nobody was following you? Yeah, that was it. That was the mistake that’s going to put you in a cell the rest of your life unless you own up to things and be a man and tell us what happened.
GRADY: Hey, we can understand. Pretty white girl like that. Maybe she mouthed off to you or maybe she wanted to trade, a little poon for a spoon. We know how it works. But something happened and she got killed. If you can tell us, then we can work with you, maybe even get you home to Moms.
WINSLOW: Nah, man, you got it all wrong.
WALKER: Alonzo, I’m tired of all your bullshit. I want to get home myself. We’ve been going at this for too long trying to help you out. I want to get home to my dinner. So you either come clean right now, son, or you’re going into a cell. I’ll call your moms and tell her you ain’t never coming back.
WINSLOW: Why you want to do this to me? I’m nobody, man. Why you setting me up for this shit?
GRADY: You set yourself up, kid, when you strangled the girl.
WINSLOW: I didn’t!
WALKER: Whatever. You can tell that to your moms through the glass when she comes visit you. Stand up. You’re going to a cell and I’m going home.
GRADY: He said, Stand up!
WINSLOW: Okay, okay. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what I know and then you let me go.
GRADY: You tell us what really happened.
WALKER: And then we talk about it. You got ten seconds and then this is over.
WINSLOW: Okay, okay, this is the shit. I was walking Fuckface and I saw her car over by the towers and when I look inside I saw the keys and I saw her purse just sitting there.
WALKER: Wait a minute. Who’s Fuckface?
WINSLOW: My dog.
WALKER: You have a dog? What kind of dog?
WINSLOW: Yeah, for like protection. She a pit.
WALKER: Is that a short-hair dog?
WINSLOW: Yeah, she short.
WALKER: I mean her fur. It’s not long hair.
WINSLOW: No, she short-hair, yeah.
WALKER: Okay, where was the girl?
WINSLOW: Nowhere, man. Like I told you, I never saw her—when she was alive, I mean.
WALKER: Uh-huh, so this is just a boy and his dog story, huh? Then what?
WINSLOW: So then I jump in the ride and take off.
WALKER: With the dog?
WINSLOW: Yeah, with my dog.
WALKER: Where did you go?
WINSLOW: Just for a ride, man. Get some fuckin’ air.
WALKER: All right, that’s it. I’m tired of your bullshit. This time we go. Winslow: Wait, wait. I took it over by the Dumpsters, okay? Back in Rodia. I wanted to see what I got in the car, okay? So I pull in and I check out her purse and it’s got like two hundred fifty dollars and I check the glove box and everything and then I popped the trunk, and there she was. Plain as motherfuckin’ day and already dead, man. She was naked but I didn’t touch her. And that’s the shit. Grady: So you are now telling us and you want us to believe that you stole the car and it already had the dead girl in the trunk. Winslow: That’s right, man. You ain’t pinning nothing else on me. When I saw her in there, that was fucked up. I closed that lid faster than you can say motherfucker. I drove that car outta there and I was thinking I’d just put it back where I found it, but then I knew it would bring all kinda pressure down on my boys, so I drove it on up to the beach. I figure she a white girl, I put her in the white ’hood. So that’s what I did and that’s all I did.
WALKER: When did you wipe the car down?
WINSLOW: Right there, man. Like you said, I missed the mirror. Fuck it.
WALKER: Who helped you dump the car?
WINSLOW: Nobody helped me. I was on my own.
WALKER: Who wiped the car down?
WINSLOW: Me.
WALKER: Where and when?
WINSLOW: At the parking lot, when I got up there.
GRADY: How’d you get back to the ’hood?
WINSLOW: I walked mostly. Walked all fucking night down to Oak-wood and then I got a bus.
WALKER: You still had your dog with you?
WINSLOW: No, man, I dropped her with my girlfriend. That’s where she stay ’cause my moms don’t want no dog in the house on account of all the people’s laundry and shit.
WALKER: So who killed the girl?
WINSLOW: How would I know? She dead when I found her.
WALKER: You just stole her car and robbed her money.
WINSLOW: That’s it, man. That’s all you got me on. I give you that. Walker: Well, Alonzo, that doesn’t add up to the evidence we’ve got. We got your DNA on her.
WINSLOW: No, you don’t. That a lie!
WALKER: Yes, we do. You killed her, kid, and you’re going down for it.
WINSLOW: No! I didn’t kill nobody!
And so it went for another hundred pages. The cops threw lies and accusations at Winslow and he denied them. But as I read those last pages, I quickly came to realize something that stood out like a 72-point headline. Alonzo Winslow never said he did it. He never said he strangled Denise Babbit. If anything, he denied it dozens of times. The only confession in his so-called confession was his acknowledgment that he had taken her money and then dumped the car with her body inside it. But that was a long way from him taking credit for her murder.
I got up and quickly walked back over to my pod and dug through the stack of papers in my outbox, looking for the press release distributed by the SMPD after Winslow was arrested for the murder. I finally found it and sat down to reread its four paragraphs. Knowing what I knew now from the transcript, I realized how the police had manipulated the media into reporting something that was not, indeed, true.
The Santa Monica Police announced today that a 16-year-old gang member from South Los Angeles has been taken into custody in the death of Denise Babbit. The youth, whose name will not be released because of his age, was being held by juvenile authorities at a detention center in Sylmar.
Police spokesmen said identification of fingerprints collected from the victim’s car after her body was found in the trunk Saturday morning led detectives to the suspect. He was taken in for questioning Sunday from the Rodia Gardens housing project in Watts, where it was believed the abduction and murder took place.
The suspect faces charges of murder, abduction, rape and robbery. During a confession to investigators, the suspect said he moved the car with the body in the trunk to a beach parking lot in Santa Monica so as to throw off suspicions that Babbit had been killed in Watts.
The SMPD wishes to acknowledge the help of the Los Angeles Police Department in bringing the suspect into custody.
The press release was not inaccurate. But I no
w viewed it very cynically and thought it had been carefully crafted to convey something that was not accurate, that there had been a full confession to the murder when there had not been anything close to that. Winslow’s lawyer was right. The confession would not hold up, and there was a solid chance that his client was innocent.
In the field of investigative journalism, the Holy Grail might be the taking down of a president, but when it came to the lowly crime beat, proving a guilty man innocent was as good as it gets. It didn’t matter how Sonny Lester had tried to play it down the day we went to Rodia Gardens. Springing an innocent kid trumped all. Alonzo Winslow may not have been judged guilty of anything yet, but in the media he had been condemned.
I had been part of that lynching and I now saw that I might have a shot at changing all of that and doing the right thing. I might be able to rescue him.
I thought of something and looked around on my desk for the printouts Angela had produced from her research on trunk murders. I then remembered I had thrown them out. I got up and quickly left the newsroom, going down the stairs to the cafeteria. I went directly to the trash receptacle I had used after looking over the printouts Angela had pushed across the table to me as a peace offering. I had scanned and dismissed them, thinking at the time that there was no way stories about other trunk murders could have any bearing on a story about the collision between a sixteen-year-old admitted killer and his victim.
Now I wasn’t so sure. I remembered things about the stories from Las Vegas that no longer seemed distant in light of my conclusions from Alonzo’s so-called confession.
It was a large commercial trash can. I took the top off it and found that I was in luck. The printouts were on top of the day’s detritus and were no worse for wear.
It dawned on me that I could have simply gone on Google and conducted the same search as Angela instead of rooting through a trash can, but I was elbows deep now and this would be quicker. I took the printouts over to a table to reread them.
“Hey!”
I turned and saw a double-wide woman with her hair in a net staring at me with her fists balled tightly on her ample hips.