No Matter How Loud I Shout (43 page)

It is the worst night of violence the city of Inglewood has ever seen. Even in a region long jaded by daily carnage, these killings top the LA nightly news on at least a couple of stations, though only in a way reminiscent of a Guinness Book entry—so many killed, so many wounded, a new record for the city. The true horror of it is not conveyed in the brief television and newsprint accounts—the fact that children are killing children, violently, inhumanly, forcing one another to duck bullets, spraying whole crowds in order to take out a single intended victim, transforming urban American teenagers into the psychological equivalents of war orphans. Still, there is immense pressure to do something, anything. The chief of police announces publicly that Inglewood's 112,000 citizens should stay indoors after sundown until an arrest is made. It is an unprecedented declaration of unofficial martial law, which puts the detectives on the case on an untenable time clock. Their city is being held hostage—an arrest must be made. Fast.

And so, five days after the murders—and against the recommendation of a dubious Peggy Beckstrand, already struggling to convict Inglewood's other notorious murderer, Ronald Duncan—the detectives arrest a wild-haired kid named Hugh. One of the kids on the street corner has tentatively ID'd him as the shooter, and a jubilant chief of police pronounces the case solved. For the first time in recent memory, TV cameras appear in Inglewood Juvenile Court to record the great moment of Hugh's arraignment (which they miss because, as so often happens here, the bus fails to bring the boy from Juvenile Hall). Even so, the impression is left that it will be only a matter of time before the other three killers are caught. Rest easy, Inglewood.

There's only one problem: Hugh, the kid Peggy Beckstrand has been asked to help lock away for the rest of his life, just might be innocent.

T
HE
Thurgood Marshall Branch of Juvenile Court is as ordered and calm as a swap meet today as Peggy Beckstrand makes her way across the street to resume the Baskin Robbins murder trial. She has just returned from a sleepless weekend of worry—over the rocky case and her decision to give immunity to an accomplice, along with all the other distractions and duties of a job she no longer loves or wants.

Lugging a heavy wad of files, she has to wade past a throng of black-clad gang members sitting on the steps outside the courthouse, hooting and mugging for a group of reporters and news crews milling about the unfamiliar terrain of juvenile justice, awaiting the arraignment of Hugh, the boy accused of Inglewood's worst-ever murder spree. She silently gives thanks that they are not here for her Ronald Duncan trial, though she knows there is somewhere among them one persistent reporter from a small local paper who is assembling a story on the Thirty-one Flavors case. After talking at length with Ronald's lawyer, this reporter seems convinced Peggy is letting an adult killer, Jason, go free in order to pursue young Ronald in Juvenile Court, and that favoritism among the brethren of law enforcement may lay behind her decision to grant immunity to the godson of a policeman.

Inside, the building is jammed with anxious parents and milling children, a routine mob, no more and no less angry and furtive than usual. A blue-suited security guard keeps walking the crowded hallways and issuing futile commands for everyone to stay in the building's lone waiting room, which cannot possibly accommodate the hordes on hand today. Everything is running late: the buses from the hall are late, which means court starts late, which means the lawyers, who need to interview their clients before court begins, are running late.

Peggy pushes her way through the smeary glass door on the west end of the building and down the first-floor hallway, as packed and loud as an airport terminal at Christmas. Halfway to the sanctuary of the courtroom, a defense attorney approaches her to discuss two separate murder cases she wants dropped—one young gangster charged with a drive-by murder, the other, a former foster kid who may or may not have participated in a fatal assault. From a prosecutor's point of view, both cases stink, not because the kids necessarily deserve breaks, but because the evidence is iffy and
the defense lawyer is one of Inglewood's best—two more balls for Peggy to juggle in the midst of her trial. “Let's talk later,” the DA says, pushing on through the clogged hallway.

Sharon Stegall rushes by next, announcing over her shoulder, “You've got to do something about that sorry excuse for a prosecutor. . . . He's messing with my cases.” Then she is gone, swallowed by the crowd before Peggy can reply. She knows the dismissal problem has been getting worse in here and that she needs to make a change, but she has no time—yet another ball to keep in the air. One too many. It is this wearing pull in every direction that grinds down the best-intentioned professionals of Juvenile Court, leaving them in constant danger of being swept away by an undertow of major crises and petty details. Peggy has finally settled on the most common solution to this dismal reality: She has put in for a transfer. Ronald Duncan, for better or worse, will be among her final legacies to Juvenile Court, and all her bottled anger and frustration at the system is finding its expression in this trial, making her seem far more brittle and exposed in the courtroom than people here are used to seeing.

Peggy finally makes it to Judge Scarlett's court, letting her back rest against the wooden doors that ease closed behind her, muffling the roar in the hallway. She stares vaguely at the crime scene photos on their poster board display, left over from last week's proceedings and still leaning facedown against one wall of the courtroom, those terrible pictures of Chuck and Ada, their heads exploded by shotgun blasts, their receipts from a day of selling ice cream pillaged from their car. She had kept the posters handy to use in her closing arguments, another day or two to go. But first she has to get past today, something she has been dreading: Today she has to put Jason Gueringer on the stand, her new star witness, tainted by past lies, new admissions, and an airtight grant of immunity—the cop's godson who is going to get away with murder.

Over the weekend, Jason admitted to Peggy that his original claims of being an unwitting driver for Ronald were all lies. He had helped plan the robbery from the start and had been a willing getaway driver. But he insisted he had no idea Ronald was going to kill anyone—on that point, he swore he had always told the truth. Still, his objections to murder didn't stop him from accepting three hundred dollars from Ronald for his trouble that night—at the time, he explained, he was trying to live on his own and was broke.

His new story, in short, made him as culpable under the law for two murders as Ronald Duncan, whether he knew they were going to die that
night or not. Yet he would suffer no consequences. Peggy felt she needed him and, despite his lies, she reluctantly continued her offer of full immunity in exchange for his testimony against Ronald. He had made his new admissions under that immunity grant—they could not be used against him. And there was no other evidence against Jason. So the offer stood.

James Cooper, Ronald's lawyer, professed to be stunned by this decision. There are people doing life in prison—or on death row—who have done less than Jason, he complained when Peggy told him of Jason's new tale. Peggy cannot argue the point, for there are too many examples to count that prove Cooper right: Elias Elizondo, for one, got fifteen to life in prison for being with a fellow gang member who committed murder. George Trevino is looking at twenty-nine years behind bars for a failed robbery in which only the adult ringleader was hurt. Geri Vance, trying to avoid a life sentence, accepted a plea bargain that will take away twelve years of his life, simply because he was an accomplice to a robber killed by his intended victim. Yet Jason walks free, no criminal record behind him, a career in the military ahead. What could Peggy say to Cooper except “I know. I know. But you've given me no choice”?

Now word has spread throughout the courthouse about this turn of events. Every public defender in the building is in the courtroom watching. Ronald's original lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Nancy Liebold, is talking to a colleague loudly. She says she is outraged that Jason is getting a walk on a potential death penalty case. She points out how the immunity smacks of favoritism toward a cop's relative, even though she knows from her work early in the case that the detectives investigating the murders wanted her and Ronald to help them nail Jason—proof that a lack of evidence, not favoritism, shaped the course of the case. Had Ronald cooperated, Jason would be on trial now.

Peggy looks pale and grim when Judge Scarlett takes the bench and resumes the trial, mistakenly announcing it as “People versus Donald Duncan” for the third time. Ronald takes his seat next to his lawyer with his customary grin, waving to his mother and father. As usual, Ronald's parents sit in separate rows, but they react in tandem when they see Jason Gueringer arrive in the courtroom from the witness room upstairs. Ronald's mother stares at him with unmistakable hatred; Ronald's father wears more of a sad expression of betrayal, as if he cannot fathom how the son of a friend and neighbor could be tearing his family apart in this way.

Jason avoids looking at them as he enters. He is exceptionally tall and thin, ducking slightly as he strides through the double doors, a nervous
blue stork in his Air Force uniform—blue tie and pale blue shirt topped by a darker blue sweater with cloth epaulets on each shoulder. He exchanges glances with Peggy, as if to say he knows he is in for an unpleasant grilling. She has already delivered a tape recording of Jason's new, revised statement to Ronald's lawyer, James Cooper, who told Peggy without hesitation, “I am licking my chops on this one.”

The prosecutor ushers her witness to the stand so he can take his oath and spell his name for the record. As he does this, the courtroom doors keep opening and closing as various people stick their heads in to see if they belong, the roar in the hallway pushing into the room each time, then fading as the doors ease shut—the courthouse Doppler effect, one attorney calls it. Jason tries to ignore this odd wax and wane, perching on the stand uneasily, towering over the microphone, scanning the crowd of unfamiliar faces in the gallery. He spots his godfather, Inglewood Police Sergeant Harold Moret, the man who made the first queasy connection between Jason, Ronald, and the blue getaway van used in the murders and smeared with the victims' blood. Moret glares back at Jason from a center-row seat. He is aghast at what Jason has done, but he is unwilling to believe completely that this young man he has known all his life could be a criminal without hearing it himself, right from Jason's own mouth.

Jason licks his dry lips and looks away, focusing on Peggy. Then, under her gentle questioning and in a surprisingly calm voice, he tells the story of the murder of Chuck and Ada Rusitanonta. Unlike the previous witnesses, this is not police theorizing on the meaning of blood drops, or eyewitnesses saying maybe or perhaps, or friends reporting what someone said and might have meant. This is the real thing: Jason delivers the detailed story only an accomplice can provide, damning and grim.

He explains that, contrary to his original statements to the police, he knew about the robbery in advance, he planned it with Ronald, and he accepted money to be the getaway driver. Having also worked at the ice-cream store in years past, he knew the owners' habits well. He knew when there would be large amounts of money for the taking, and how Chuck liked to carry it from the store in a brown attaché he treasured and called his “James Bond briefcase.” Jason even bought shotgun shells for Ronald a few days before the murders, at Ronald's request, he testifies.

He had originally told police that he was out driving that night because he had gone to his girlfriend's house. Now, though, he admits this was a lie, a cover story. In truth, Jason testifies, he drove alone in his blue van to Taco Bell for a quick dinner, wolfed down a burrito, then parked at a spot
Ronald had picked in advance. Just as the other witnesses had suggested, he parked there and waited for Ronald to come with the booty. But when he saw Ronald hop aboard in blood-soaked clothes, stripping down to his boxers and T-shirt and screaming of murder, Jason had been terrified, he tells the court. Still, he drove Ronald home and accepted a cut of the money. Later, he tried to scrub away the blood to save his own skin, only to be caught in the act by detectives, forcing him to cook up some quick lies to minimize his involvement. He had already instructed Ronald, “No matter what happens, keep my name out of it,” and Ronald had readily agreed, eager, it seemed, to be a stand-up guy for the older, wiser Jason.

“I knew he was going to rob them,” Jason swears. “I didn't know he was going to kill them.”

It is devastating testimony of Ronald's guilt—with one caveat. And on cross-examination, defense attorney Cooper takes aim at the obvious flaw in Jason's story.