Bad Intent

by Wendy Hornsby

  ” ‘Detectives observed the victim, supine, face downward, on the floor of the men’s restroom with his head wedged between the toilet bowl and the wash basin and his feet extending out the open doorway.’ “

  I held up the hand-drawn diagram of the scene showing the orientation of the body, and then several black and white photographs of the blood-spattered room and the dark river that poured out from under the victim. According to the diagram, the room was three feet by four feet, barely wide enough to open the door without banging into the wash basin. To myself, I read through the description again before I turned to Guido.

  ” ‘He was shot from the front and he fell forward.’ “

  “There wasn’t room to fall any way but forward.”

  “Right,” I said. “The shooter had to be straddling the toilet or else he was wedged into the corner between the toilet and the wash basin.”

  “Your point?”

  “Wyatt Johnson would have literally fallen into the shooter’s arms. Look at all the blood in these pictures. In the interviews with the girls, they never said anything about seeing blood on Charles Conklin.”

  Guido gave the pictures a closer look. “It was dark. The lights were sodium vapor and fluorescent. Both of them distort color, make red look black or brown. If the shooter wore something dark or some kind of print, I can see blood getting past notice. Unless it was shiny.”

  “There are bloody footprints and handprints everywhere,” I said, pointing them out in the pictures. “A lot of people passed through that small space—James Shabazz, police, paramedics, the same assortment we saw dancing in attendance on Hanna the other night.”

  “Dancing’s a good description. Looks like Arthur Murray charts on the floor.”

  “I wonder what they did with the prints,” I said.

  “That is not allowed!” The rebuke came from a tall, dark imperious man wearing a starched white lab coat. The pocket badge labeled him as Dr. V. K. Sadgopal and he stood at the end of the bed glaring at me and Guido snuggled together over the report.

  Guido tightened his hold on me. “If you don’t like it, then expel me from this place.”

  Dr. Sadgopal slapped his clipboard down on the end of the bed and reached for the privacy curtain. “If your vital signs are normal, Mr. Patrini, you may leave.” To me he said, “Excuse us.”

  I got off the bed and went over to a chair in the corner. Very pointedly, the doctor pulled the curtain around Guido’s bed, excluding me, but also giving me a private corner of my own.

  I slouched down into the plastic-upholstered chair, crossed my legs, and searched through the report until I found the original witness statements. The interviews were handwritten by the detectives on a printed form: name, residence, phone, business, physical description, where, when, and by whom interviewed, and signed at the end of the account by the witnesses.

  I started with Hanna Rhodes. She had told the first detectives who questioned her, “I was at the filling station with my friend, LaShonda. I heard someone let off five or six. I saw the man run out of the toilet. I don’t know who he was. Tell him I said I never saw him before.”

  LaShonda said more or less the same. When she was asked why she ran all the way to James Shabazz’s house instead of calling the police, she said, “I don’t know. I was scared.”

  Tucked among the interviews I found the chronological record, the log of every action taken during the investigation. There were fifteen or so handwritten pages of telephone calls, follow-up interviews, leads, trips to canvass and recanvass the crime-scene neighborhood, autopsy findings, the booking of physical evidence. The record was meticulous, showed consistent effort, but for an entire year there was no result, no suspect identified.

  The first entry for November 1980, 0830 hours, was, “Case assigned to Dets. Flint and Kelsey,” written in Mike’s neat, all-caps hand.

  From the log, I knew everything Mike and Jerry did on that first day. Fifteen minutes after they were assigned to the case, they were at the crime scene, canvassing. The rest of the day they re-interviewed all of the witnesses on record they could find, and listed new contacts derived from those conversations. Every day for a week, they talked to the same people.

  I went back to the stack of interviews, leafed through them until I found what the witnesses had told Mike. Every day for a week, everyone involved said just about the same thing: everyone heard the shots, no one recognized the gunman.

  Mike was persistent with LaShonda DeBevis and Hanna Rhodes. Every day he contacted them, visited them at school, saw them at home. By the end of that week, I thought, to those kids Mike would either be like a member of the family or a nightmare that wouldn’t go away. Whichever way it fell, there was no change in their story.

  There was progress, though. By the second day, Mike and Jerry were responding to telephone tips that came into the station. Someone remembered seeing a green Bonneville with gray primer paint on the right front door in the area on the night of the murder. Mike requested that patrol officers stop any cars of that description and identify the driver.

  On Monday of the second week, Mike returned a call placed from the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center. I recognized the caller’s name—the jail-house snitch in the case. The next entry was the first appearance of Charles Conklin’s name. Mike ordered a computer run on Conklin’s records with the city, the county sheriff, and with Compton police. He also ordered booking photographs from the sheriff and from Compton. That afternoon, Mike and Jerry visited Conklin at his parents’ home.

  All that week, twice a day, and sometimes three times, Mike interviewed Conklin or went by his house looking for him. He interviewed Conklin’s family, his employer and former employer, his neighbors, girlfriends and home boys, his parole officer, the clerk at his corner liquor store, and the snitch. Every day, the very last thing Mike did was make contact with Conklin.

  I had no idea what Jerry was doing during all of this. There was a blank on the interview form to list all persons present. Mike’s name was on every interview sheet after he was assigned the case, Jerry’s on very few. So, I thought, maybe Jerry’s skill was in an area outside the interview room. Or, maybe he was out serving subpoenas—cop-speak for hitting the bars during the day.

  On Friday morning of the second week, Mike picked up the booking photographs of Conklin he had ordered. He made a “photo display card” with six different men’s faces, and recorded that Conklin’s face was in position number five on the card. The rest of the day, Mike and Jerry made the rounds of their witnesses, showing every one of them the display card. Several recognized Charles “Pinkie” Conklin as a man who lived in the neighborhood and was “one badass dude,” by consensus. But no one, not LaShonda DeBevis nor Hanna Rhodes, connected him to the murder scene.

  Mike went to Conklin’s house first thing Monday morning. The house was vacant and the landlord, who lived next door, had no idea where the Conklin family had gone. No phone, no forwarding, with two weeks paid-up rent. Just gone.

  At 0830 hours, eleven-year-old LaShonda DeBevis told Mike that picture number five was “Pinkie,” the man she saw running from the restroom immediately after she heard shots fired. She gave a new interview: “I was afraid he would kill me or do me like I hear he did some girls I know. He is nasty. I saw that man lying in the toilet and I saw all his blood just pouring out and I saw Pinkie run by me with a real mean look on his face. I didn’t want to make Pinkie mad at me so he’d do me like that with his gun. That’s why I didn’t tell the police nothing. If he ever comes back, I hope he don’t kill me.”

  Hanna Rhodes spilled it at noon: “Me and LaShonda was back there and we heard the gun, like I say before. We go start to run over where her mama work because we was scared. But we run smack into Pinkie. He was running out of that toilet where he shot the man. Me and LaShonda look at that dead man and we start screaming and then she run right off. I didn’t know what to do next. I think Pinkie has another gun and he shoot me, too. But he go get in
that old green car of his and he drive off. I go jump into this old Cadillac is parked there and I climb down in the back and cover up in some old rags and things and I stay there until LaShonda and James call my name and say, ‘Get over here.’ “

  Mike and Jerry had a meeting with the district attorney late that afternoon. The district attorney issued a 187 warrant for Conklin’s arrest. At that point Conklin was officially a wanted suspect, and all shift rotations at the Southeast Division were looking for him. Three days later, around dinnertime, he was pulled over on a routine traffic stop—driving erratically in a green Bonneville with gray primer paint on the right front door. He was arrested by the patrol officers when they ran his name through the computer.

  After the arrest, the log continues for several pages as Mike and Jerry helped the district attorney put together an evidence package for Conklin’s arraignment. They ordered Wyatt’s autopsy photos and reports, asked for an aerial photo of the crime scene to be made, searched through DMV files for any records on the green Bonneville. They stayed in contact with their witnesses and tried to milk more from them, tried to find others who might suddenly remember something that happened that night.

  Mike logged in receipt of a lie detector test administered to the snitch in an unrelated case. I found the photocopy of the test report. The results were inconclusive. In the opinion of the examiner, the snitch did not register appropriate physiological responses, suggesting he was an accomplished liar.

  One year and two months after the murder, Charles Conklin was held to answer the charges at a preliminary hearing. A trial date was set. During the three-week interim, Mike and Jerry served subpoenas and held their evidence and witness package together. During the trial, they chauffeured witnesses, ran errands for the D.A., and testified.

  The trial lasted five days. The jury convicted Charles Pinkerton Conklin to life in prison for the murder of Officer Wyatt Johnson. End of file.

  As I read the detective reports and the witness interviews, my mind’s eye saw it all as if it were on a big, color screen. While I was trying to figure an angle that would let me use the file without getting Hector into trouble, I was vaguely aware of a lot of movement on the other side of the curtain. I never heard Dr. Sadgopal leave.

  When the curtain was drawn open again, Guido was alone, dressed in the same soiled shirt and jeans he had been wearing when I brought him in the day before. He bowed to me and said, “Ta da.”

  “You’re a mess,” I said. “Stay put for twenty minutes. I’ll go find you a clean shirt. Maybe the gift shop has something.”

  “Don’t bother. Get me out of here.”

  The heat, the bright noon sun, drug residue all conspired against Guido. He had been enervated when I told him about the office break-in. He smelled quick money from tabloid TV and talked about expanding my tape to fit their format. The money interested me, but not as much as reaching a big audience did. We were going to spend the afternoon working on something. But by the time I turned up his street, he was worn out, ready for a nap.

  I went inside with Guido on the pretext of needing to use the bathroom. I wanted to make sure that no one had been there tampering with his tapes or equipment.

  My techno friend, Guido, living alone in the woods without close neighbors, had installed a very sophisticated video-based security system. None of the cameras had been tripped or tampered with. I know, because I checked every one of them. Feeling something of an alarmist, a relieved alarmist, I double-checked that everything was reset before I left him.

  I was at the studio during the editorial meeting, but I was upstairs, holed up again with a couple of production staffers, making some changes in the tape.

  Chapter 20

  Network facilities are notorious for leaks, so I prefer working either on the street, or in private. But without Guido, and without time, I had to accept the network’s largesse.

  On that day, the big studio name worked for me. Beth Johnson, Wyatt’s widow, overcame her reluctance to talk to me when I threw in an offer of coffee in the network commissary. She left work and came right over.

  Beth rode up to the sound stage in an elevator with her favorite talk-show host. I’m not sure whether he was her favorite when he stepped into the elevator or acquired the status during the ride. He certainly had her all atwitter by the time she stepped out on the fifth floor.

  Beth’s robust happiness surprised me. I don’t know what I had been expecting, a grieving young widow I suppose, because all that I knew of her came from a single newspaper story about her husband’s funeral. An old newspaper story, I had to remind myself. To me, the shooting of Wyatt Johnson was new information, part of a situation that was still developing.

  Beth Johnson was no longer the sylphlike woman in black in the news photo. She was now plump, still very pretty, a feminine woman dressed in a flattering bright pink and turquoise silk suit. Her hair and makeup were perfect. I was flattered she had taken some extra effort on my behalf. From what I knew of her, I calculated her age to be around thirty-seven, though she looked much younger. Her skin was beautiful and unlined.

  “My name isn’t Johnson anymore,” she said when I introduced myself. She tried to seem blase, but she glowed with excitement. She spoke with a pleasant southern drawl. “I got married again a couple years after Wyatt died. I’d just as soon you don’t use my husband’s name. You can still call me Johnson.”

  “Johnson would be less confusing for the viewers,” I said.

  The set we were given to use belonged to a morning talk show, looked like a big farmhouse living room. The space was too big, so I had asked the crew to move a couple of high-back chairs, a lamp, some silk plants over in front of a fake window that looked out into a tempera-paint garden; an illusion a million light years away from the cement and asphalt real world outside.

  Beth seemed to enjoy the fuss with microphones and lights, held up her face for the woman who came to powder some shine off her chin. I gave myself over to the same makeup woman, let her paint over the circles under my eyes, add a little sunshine to my cheeks, mousse up my flat hair.

  When everything was set, I put my hand over Beth’s, felt the nervous tremor. I said, “Just relax and talk to me. In a few minutes you’ll forget all these people are here eavesdropping.”

  “I’m used to it,” she smiled. “I have the nosiest neighbors in the world.”

  I laughed to be polite, thought I sounded artificial. “Tell me about your life now, Mrs. Johnson. What sort of work do you do?”

  “Same as always. I work in a bank, in the loan department. I’ve been there since I married Wyatt and moved to California.”

  “You have one child from your marriage to Wyatt Johnson. Tell me about him.”

  “Wyatt Junior, he’s in college now. A good boy. We had our rough times, like everyone does bringing up kids, especially a widow woman. But he’s a good boy. A serious boy, like his daddy. A good, Christian boy.”

  “How old was he when his father died?”

  “He was a baby. Not even four years old. He never remembered his daddy at all. Sometimes when I think of all Wyatt missed out on, watching his boy come up, well, it breaks my heart all over again.”

  “Tell me about Wyatt Senior. What sort of man was he?”

  “Like I said, he was serious. He was real smart, too. Wanted to be somebody. His folks couldn’t afford to send him to college, so he went into the army for a couple of years to get his GI Bill. That’s when I married him—when he was stationed at Fort Polk in Louisiana. Soon as he got his discharge, Wyatt came home and joined the police. For a boy without an education, it was the best job he could get. Better than the post office.”

  “Did he enjoy police work?”

  She frowned. “Not very much. They were hard on black officers back then. Said a lot of racial things to him. But with what they paid, and all the benefits, he couldn’t hardly quit.”

  “He worked part-time jobs to supplement his income,” I said.

  “Y
es he did. Wyatt grew up in Willowbrook. He wanted something better for his family. So we bought a new house outside the city, out in Cerritos. Then we had the baby and I could only work part time—with the cost of baby-sitters, clothes, transportation and all, I saved money every day I stayed home when the baby was little. It was nice being at home—we had a real nice house. But that house payment…” She waved her hand as if something smelly had passed by. “It nearly killed us. Wyatt wanted to go to college, maybe go to law school at night later on. But he spent all his time working extra security jobs just to keep our heads above water.”

  I said, “At one point, the police department asked him to quit his part-time jobs. How did you manage financially?”

  “I went back to work full-time and Wyatt started working morning watch so he could be home with the baby when I was gone. I sold Avon Products on the side—you know, to the ladies at work and in my church. Still, it wasn’t enough.

  “Then Wyatt got into some business deal with some other officers—selling vitamins or something he told me. Just like me selling cosmetics from a catalog. I didn’t like his hours, but pretty soon, one way and another, money started coming in. At the time he got himself shot, we were doing okay.”

  The memory of the burden, her loss, maybe all of it together, pulled down her initial buoyance. I leaned forward to bring her eyes up again for the camera. In a soft voice, I said, “Mrs. Johnson, let’s talk about the shooting. I have seen where it occurred—one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city. Do you have any idea why your husband was there?”

  Slowly, sadly, she shook her head. “He was working morning watch, like I said, so he was used to being out all night. A lot of police are like that, out real late. Besides, it was difficult for him to go out during the day, because of the baby and all.