13 Hollywood Apes Page 28

  In the end it was Johnny Velske, of all people, who came through for Remington. Her longtime friendly opposition at the local Malibu sheriff’s department substation saw her standing forlornly alone among police and deputies in a cordoned-off area at the back of the courthouse. She wore a hopeful but technically inaccurate “LA County Sheriff” jacket. He told her to follow him and brought her into a still empty Courtroom Four.

  Velske spoke briefly to a trio of folded-armed bailiffs who waited for the crowd to descend on them. One of them indicated a metal folding chair in a side aisle at the front of the gallery.

  “Sit here, stay put, and don’t make any trouble,” Deputy Velske said to Remington.

  “Hey, Johnny,” Remington said. “Thanks.”

  “You put the work in, you deserve a ringside seat,” he tossed over his shoulder.

  Remington sat. No one bothered her. She was torn between attending the prelim and pursuing her covert Odalon investigations. The telephone number for George Wold scribbled on the back of the card Arlene Honeywell had given her proved to be disconnected. The “Chimp Wizard” URL also turned up defunct.

  Of course.

  Before she had been put on leave, Remington could have marshaled a whole army of help in tracking down George Wold. The DMV database, the state prison administration, tax records; there was even some newfangled facial-recognition software at her disposal. She put a call in to Pac Bell, anyway, to try to get more info on the disconnected phone number, but she didn’t hold out much hope.

  Remington sorted through the possibilities. The first one, the one that was most probable: she was mistaken; the burn boss she’d seen that morning near the sanctuary was not the man in punk journalist Emma Lucas’s photo. She only thought they resembled each other because she was in the grip of investigatory bias. Two, the man was indeed the fake burn-boss guy, but he was only an innocent bystander, some sort of chimp groupie, up to nothing more dastardly than going to Odalon to check up on his beloved animals.

  “Hey, Johnny,” she called out to Velske. He strolled over.

  “I have a favor to ask,” she said.

  “You want a seat right up next to the judge, so you can whisper legal advice in her ear?”

  “This guy,” she said, giving the deputy a front-and-back copy of the Chimp Wizard postcard. “I need to track him down.”

  “You’re off the case, Layla. And with good reason, I might add.” Velske was scowling.

  “Look, I know you think I’m a bullshit girl who got boosted up from patrol in some sort of affirmative-action fandango, but we’re both in this for the truth, aren’t we?”

  “See, that’s the sort of attitude that gets you into trouble. We’re in this, Deputy Detective Investigator Remington, to serve our masters.”

  As if on cue, Rick Stills entered the courtroom, trailing fellow ADA Deborah Charles and D.A. Baez’s henchman, Mark Sissoko. Deep in their extremely important high-level conversation, they didn’t immediately notice Remington.

  At the same moment, the bailiffs swung wide the public doors at the back of the gallery. Those audience members lucky enough to be at the front of the line flooded in. The atmosphere immediately rose to a higher level of wild. The crowd babbled, and the judge was not yet present to silence them.

  Remington laid her hand on Deputy Velske’s arm. “Please, Johnny—” she said.

  But he shrugged her off and turned away.

  “I’d do it for you,” she called after him. They had a complicated relationship. Velske saw himself as a protector of cop purity in the face of newcomers like Remington. But he had accepted help from her in the past. And she believed that, deep down, the veteran deputy respected her police work.

  Velske crossed the courtroom and fell into small talk with a bailiff. But he glanced Remington’s way a couple of times. Finally, he strolled back toward her.

  “I’m not saying I’m going to do anything for you,” he said. “It’d be my ass, too, if they caught me helping you.” Reluctantly, Velske took the sheet of paper with the Chimp Wizard postcard copied onto it. He turned back down the aisle and disappeared through a door at the front of the courtroom.

  The gallery filled. Filing into reserved seats behind the defendant’s table were the C-movie crew, the frail, silent-movie presence of Arlene Honeywell among them. Also seated in the same rows were what appeared to be members of Mace Arthur’s family. A mother and two sisters, both girls resembling their brother but even more good-looking than he was.

  Once again the door opened to the side of the bench, the same one that Rick Stills had come through. This time Trish Sedgewick and Harry Cornell entered. The two attorneys passed directly by Remington, sitting in her folding chair at the side of the gallery.

  Sedgewick made as if to stop and talk.

  “Don’t,” Remington said.

  After a brief hesitation the attorney moved on, taking a position with Cornell as counsel for the defense. The moment drew the attention of Rick Stills, who finally became aware of Remington’s presence. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t direct her to be removed, either. Every actor likes an audience.

  “Hear ye, hear ye,” the bailiff called out. “The Superior Court of the Second District of the State of California is now in session, Judge Etha Keris presiding. All rise.”

  Keris entered through a door behind the bench and seated herself. She gazed out at the assembly like a short-statured Olympic god.

  “Docket number AA-130278-S,” announced the clerk. “The State of California versus Mace Damien Arthur. All parties with business in this court are to come forth.”

  “I am well aware of the public interest in this case,” began Keris, her voice sounding strong in the crowded space. “I welcome visitors to the gallery, but I will not tolerate any disruption to this hearing. As far as I’m concerned, you are all jumping the gun. This is a preliminary hearing only. If things go as I expect them to, you will have come down here and stood in line just to see a fifteen-minute exercise in judicial minutiae. I suppose that’s your right, and the fall fog has relented to give us a sunny day in Santa Monica, so you’re not out by too much in coming down.”

  She nodded at her clerk, who intoned, “Counsel will rise.”

  “Assistant District Attorney for Los Angeles County Rick Stills for the prosecution, Your Honor.” ADAs Charles and Sissoko introduced themselves also.

  “Harry Cornell for the defense, Your Honor, and my co-counsel Tricia Sedgewick.”

  “You are with us again, Ms. Sedgewick,” Keris said, pepper in her voice.

  “Yes, if you please, Your Honor, as counsel for the defense.”

  “I don’t know how much it does please,” the judge said.

  “Your Honor would certainly not wish to abrogate the defendant’s right to representation of his choice,” Cornell said.

  “I would only seek to abrogate hearing nonsense in my court, Mr. Cornell.”

  “We will try to accommodate you in that respect, Judge,” Cornell replied. With a sly glance at Stills, he added, “Though I can’t answer for the prosecution.”

  “Your Honor…” Stills said.

  “Settle down, counselors,” Keris scolded. She addressed the gallery. “Ladies and gentlemen, what we are going to attend to this morning are several quite routine procedures. The clerk of court will read the defendant the terms of the indictment, which reading will constitute the defendant’s formal arraignment. The prosecution will present its arguments that there is probable cause to hold the defendant over for trial. Be still your hearts and hold on to your hats—you may even get to witness a hearing for bail.”

  She turned to the head bailiff. “All right, let’s go.”

  —

  The bailiff opened a door next to the bench at the front of the courtroom. Mace Arthur entered, unshackled and wearing an extravagant dark purple suit with a pearlescent tie. Directed by the bailiff, he crossed in front of the bench to take his place between Cornell and Sedgewick.

  Re
mington hadn’t seen the rock star since her interviews with him and Cornell when he was first incarcerated. Arthur seemed none the worse for wear after almost a month in Metro. Unlike Stills, he marked Remington’s presence right away, giving her a jaunty smile and a covert wave. He stood undaunted for the reading of the indictment. The clerk of court intoned the phrases robotically, as though he were reciting from a menu.

  The state avers…on the night of…caused the death of one Ian Lawrence Terry…with malicious intent…furthermore the defendant caused…Dukundane Tamas, a foreign national…felonious assault with intent to kill one Pia Rachel Liebstein…

  When the reading of the indictment was finished, Harry Cornell remained standing after his client sat down. “May I address the court, Your Honor?”

  Keris dipped her chin at him. “I apologize for any plans that may be disrupted,” Cornell continued. “Perhaps some of us had appointments or some outdoor activity on this fine autumn day. But with the court’s forbearance I’d like to suggest that the quarter hour Your Honor estimated for the duration of this hearing might be a tad on the short side.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Cornell?”

  “The defense will challenge the state’s case for probable cause, Your Honor.”

  Keris gave a visible shrug. “As is your right,” she said.

  “We will call an extensive list of witnesses who can all testify as to Mr. Arthur’s presence elsewhere at the specific times the state maintains he was out perpetrating heinous crimes. We have surveillance-video footage to place in evidence also. So we may be here for a while past our allotted quarter hour. May I?”

  Cornell waved a sheet of paper at the clerk of court, who took it from him and brought it up to Keris at the bench. “A list of our potential witnesses, Your Honor,” Cornell said.

  Glancing at the document, Keris remarked, “There are dozens of names here.”

  “To be precise, there are forty-seven, Judge. All willing to swear under oath that my client was with them at the times in question.”

  “Your Honor?” Stills said.

  “Mr. Stills?”

  “We have physical evidence placing the animal called Angle at the scene of two of the three indictable charges,” Stills said.

  Sedgewick rose immediately. “Is the individual Angle under indictment here? Because he is not so named in the charge.”

  Stills: “The state will establish that the defendant was in possession and control of said animal during the times in question, and as such constituted an instrument of danger.”

  Cornell: “The state cannot place my client at the scene, while defense can furnish ample testimony that he was not.”

  “Again, Your Honor, the animal was there,” Stills said, a shade of exasperation seeping into his voice. “The defendant was in control of the animal, therefore we have belief under the state’s evidence that there is probable cause to place Mr. Arthur at the scene. The chimpanzee Angle did not drive up to the Malibu canyons all by himself.”

  Delighted titters from the gallery. Remington heard Billy Deevers stage-whisper to Vincent Raut, “I once knew an orangutan who could drive a car.” Keris banged her gavel, and the courtroom fell silent again.

  Stills continued. “The defendant had his lawyer, Mr. Cornell here, plead for custody of the chimpanzee just days before the indictable incidents. Furthermore, we have in submission an affidavit from a law-enforcement officer, an officer of this court, that the defendant, Mace Arthur, had physical possession of the animal called Angle.”

  “Your Honor,” Cornell responded, “the law-enforcement officer to whom Mr. Stills refers, Detective Investigator Layla Remington of the county sheriff’s department, is presently on administrative leave pending a disciplinary hearing. So her affidavit might be challengeable.”

  “Judge,” Stills began, but Keris held up her hand to stop him. She had adopted a long-suffering expression during the back-and-forth between the lawyers. “Danny,” she said, casually summoning her clerk of court, “bump the calendar for the rest of the morning and, I guess, this afternoon, too.”

  Turning to the gallery, she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it looks as though we might be in for a longer haul than I expected. What’s happening now is that the defense counsel is challenging the state’s right to bring Mr. Arthur to trial. Please bear with us, and please maintain the decorum of the court.”

  So it went for the whole morning. Stills presented the fingerprint evidence placing Angle at the scene of the Ian Terry and Dukundane Tamas homicides. Cornell fought him every step of the way. Sedgewick disputed the whole fingerprinting process of nonhuman primates, questioning the credentials of the county forensics lab to be able to process and verify the evidence.

  During the three-hour break for lunch, Remington sat alone on an expanse of grass behind the courthouse, within the area cordoned off from the public. She could hear the “Chom-pan-zee” chant from in front of the courthouse rise and die.

  The sad, winsome figure of Arlene Honeywell approached her. “May I join you, Detective?”

  “Of course.”

  The woman sat beside Remington. “I don’t like courtrooms,” she said. “I don’t like them in movies, and I like them even less in real life.”

  “It’s messy, you’re right,” Remington said. “Too bad it’s the only way we have.”

  “I wanted to tell you, Detective—I wanted to confess something to you.”

  Remington wondered what in heaven’s name a woman-child like Arlene Honeywell might have to confess.

  “They said I was Norman Dorian’s mistress. I’m embarrassed to say that was true; he was such an old man. Have you ever gone with an eighty-year-old man? I couldn’t get over the shape of his skin. Or, really, it didn’t have any shape. You could pinch it and it would stay pinched.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” Remington said.

  “But I was with Norman for only a brief while,” Honeywell said. She paused for a long beat. “This is the hard part,” she whispered to herself.

  Remington didn’t press her. The two women gazed out toward the Pacific, past the tops of the well-trimmed palm trees in Santa Monica’s oceanfront park. The morning was sunny, and the sea breezes freshened the air.

  “I wasn’t with the father for long, but I was with the son longer,” Honeywell said.

  “Norman Dorian has a son?”

  Honeywell nodded. “I went with Russell Dorian for a couple years. He wasn’t as nice as his dad. Russell could be pretty nasty, in fact. And you know what? He hated, hated chimpanzees.”

  “Really?” Remington couldn’t imagine where Honeywell was going to take this.

  “With a passion,” the woman said, nodding vigorously. “I was there when it happened, you know?”

  “When what happened?”

  “On the set of that silly movie I was in, Savage Breast. Norman Dorian was the producer, and Russell had a bit role.”

  “Russell Dorian was a child actor?”

  “I don’t know if he did much besides Savage Breast, since it worked out so badly,” Honeywell said. “He’d come to the set with his dad, and we had a whole collection of animals in the movie. He used to bug them—you know, just kid stuff. Russell was, like, a teenager at the time. He’d toss rocks at the chimps, and they’d spit at him. Pretty soon it was a war. He’d always give Chow-Chow the finger the first thing when he came on set, and the chimp would give the finger back at him.”

  “This was the same Chow-Chow that got killed at Odalon?”

  “Russell always said he’d murder him. He said the most awful curses at him. Russ had to play nice in front of Norman, because Norman liked chimpanzees so much, but as soon as his old man left the set Russell would be baiting the chimps. So they tore off his finger.”

  “What?”

  Honeywell nodded, staring down at her lap. “He was giving the finger to Chow-Chow, who was flipping him off back, and Shorty—that was another chimp; he got put down afte
r this—snuck up behind Russell, grabbed his middle finger, and twisted it clean off, just like it was a little banana picked off a tree.”

  “My Lord,” Remington said. “What happened?”

  “Well, they hushed it all up. It was never reported to the police. Norman didn’t even stop the production. They put Shorty down, like I said. And this was back when surgeons were just finding out how to reattach limbs, but it didn’t matter, because after he snapped it off Shorty swallowed Russell’s finger. By the time they gassed him dead and opened up his stomach and got it out, there wasn’t any way that anyone was sticking that finger back on.”

  “Good Lord,” Remington said.

  “I’m thinking that’s why Russell had those sanctuary animals killed….”

  Remington immediately snapped to total attention. “Do you know this for a fact?” she asked.

  “Well, no.” Honeywell shook her head.

  Remington gripped the frail woman’s arm as though she could wring the truth out of her. “What are you talking about?”

  “It only makes sense,” Honeywell insisted. “He’s going to inherit the land, you know. When all the chimps were dead. Russell’s father wanted the animals to live out their natural lives there in Malibu. But Russell, he was always boasting that he wasn’t about to wait to be rich. I don’t know how much more money he could need, since he inherited a bunch from his father.”

  “You know, Arlene, I’d really like to speak with Russell Dorian,” Remington said. “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Oh, yeah. He just moved into what’s only the most famous house in L.A. right now.”

  Remington was stunned. Russell Dorian, Honeywell told her, now occupied the Hollywood Hills estate made infamous by Ro-Co-Co.

  The milling of the deputies and the court personnel indicated that the hearing was going to resume. The activities of bickering lawyers and an imperious judge in Courtroom Four suddenly didn’t appear as compelling as they once were.

  “You aren’t going back in?” Honeywell asked her.

  “I’ve got something I need to do,” Remington said. On her way out to the courthouse lot to find Gene’s F-150 pickup, her cellphone buzzed.