San Quentin State Prison sat on the choicest piece of real estate in the world that ever held a prison, unless there was one on the French Riviera. Even then, it would have been a toss-up. The prison was on twenty-two acres of land on the shoreline of North Bay. The inmates would have had a hell of a view if not for the high walls, razor wire, and sniper towers.
Randall Eddington was no longer the doughy kid in his grandparents’ photo album. The dough had turned to iron, and the intelligent eyes of a nerdy kid, still framed by black horn-rimmed glasses, had hollowed out into the thousand-yard stare of a grown man doing life. But prison would change anybody. Even a murderer.
I sat down opposite Randall, safe on the other side of the glass, but still locked behind prison walls. I’d walk out a free man. Whether I’d try to help Randall do the same depended upon the thirty minutes we’d spend together.
I picked up the handset to the phone that connected us through the glass. “Hello, Randall.”
“Mr. Cahill.” He held the phone to his mouth and looked me straight in the eyes. The thousand-yard stare slowly dissolved.
“You know why I’m here?”
“I know Mr. Buckley and my grandparents hired you to help with the effort to get me a new trial.” He held my stare. “But I think you’re here to find out whether or not I killed my family.”
“Did you?”
“No.” Direct. No challenge or fake outrage. He kept the eye contact, didn’t blink.
“Why do you think you’re here?”
“Because I let my lawyer convince me not to testify, and Detective West planted the sock with the blood on it in my car.”
Randall didn’t look, sound, or act like a criminal. He sat upright in his chair instead of the nonchalant slump and spread-legged posture of a thug. His words clear and grammatical instead of slangy and laced with F-bombs. His eyes direct without the malice or challenge of a streetwise punk. It could have been residue from his wealthy upbringing. It could have been a con to look good for the PI who might help set him free. Or, it could have been who he was.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t testify when the prosecution had such a strong case. The blood on the sock with your DNA and the projector breaking at the movie did you in.” I leaned back in my chair. “I can’t get past that.”
“I wouldn’t either if I was on the outside looking in.” He shook his head and then zeroed his eyes back on mine. “Did you see photos of the inside of my car at the crime scene?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ve been a neat freak my whole life. Ask anyone who knows me. My car was immaculate. If I’d killed my family and dropped a bloody sock in my car, I’d have seen it and disposed of it.”
“It was under the seat.”
“Was there anything else under there?”
“I don’t know.”
“There wasn’t. No trash, ever, in my car. Nothing, ever, under a seat. I was neurotic about cleanliness. I still am. Even here.”
“I was a cop, Randall. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that a detective is going to risk jail time to frame an innocent man.”
“They didn’t think I was innocent. They were convinced I was guilty right away, but knew they didn’t have evidence to prove it.” The first emotion he’d shown rolled through his voice. A plea. “Why did Detective West listen to my interview at the police station and then go back to the house and be the one who searched my car and find the evidence?” He air-quoted the word “evidence.” “She was the detective who first managed the crime scene until she turned it over to Detective Moretti. She had access to the bathroom hamper where I always put my dirty clothes and she had access to the crime scene.”
“She would have had to get the sock from the hamper and plant blood on it even before you arrived on the scene, meaning she pegged you for the murderer before anyone even collected evidence.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me.” This time he didn’t hold my stare. His eyes fell, but it didn’t read as deception. It read despair and resignation. “I don’t know when she did it or why she did it or if she did it alone. All I know is the sock was planted.”
“Okay.” I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the wooden shelf below the glass, two feet from Randall’s face. “What about the blown alibi at the movie theater? The jury didn’t buy your lawyer’s story in closing arguments that you fell asleep in the movie and slept through the broken projector interruption. Especially after you had just bought a Coke and popcorn from the snack bar.”
“That’s not what happened.” Randall wouldn’t raise his eyes to meet mine. “My lawyer convinced me not to testify after I told him what really happened.”
“And that was?” I had gone from a one percent chance that Randall was innocent before I arrived at the prison to close to fifty after listening to him and watching him. Now my belief bottomed out again.
“I…I used to have a thing for Kirsten Dunst.” Eyes still pinned to the floor, he ran his free hand over a tight prison buzz cut of black hair. “I was a dorky eighteen-year-old with hormones raging who’d never been with a girl.”
If Randall’s freedom hadn’t been on the line, I would have asked him to stop talking right there.
“I saw her in the movie and she kind of got my motor running.” His pale prison face glowed pink. “So I…I…went into the bathroom…”
“And jerked off.”
“Yeah.” He wouldn’t look at me.
Whether the story was true or not, I now understood why Randall’s lawyer didn’t put him on the stand. Sexual pervert. Lack of impulse control. Risky behavior. Not the qualities you wanted to showcase when the defendant was on trial for a rage murder. Still, something didn’t ring true.
“When I was eighteen and in the pole position, it didn’t take me fifteen minutes to finish the race.”
“I’m glad you can make a joke with my freedom on the line.” Randall finally looked at me and the shame turned to anger. Not homicidal anger, just everyday pissed-off anger.
“You can take offense, but you haven’t answered my question. What took so long?”
“I made a mess on my jeans right in the crotch. I washed it off and spent the next twenty or twenty-five minutes trying to dry my jeans with paper towels. I didn’t want to walk around looking like I wet my pants.”
Better a lack of bladder control than impulse control. But, taken by itself, the story sounded plausible for a hormonally out-of-control eighteen-year-old. Unusual, but not unreasonable.
“LJPD surely tested your clothes from that night for blood. Traces of semen would have shown up under an ultraviolet light. Why isn’t it in the police report?”
“They probably left it out because they didn’t find blood. The lab report is in the discovery documents. Ask Mr. Buckley.”
Even if it was, it didn’t mean the semen was from that night. And if the semen was from that night, Randall still could have murdered his family. Yet, an embarrassing story to make up. Randall could have told me he stayed up all night high on cocaine the night before and slept through the movie. At least as plausible as the semen story.
“Why did you tell the police the movie let out at 12:30 a.m., when it was really 12:45 a.m.?” I asked.
“I didn’t check my watch. I was in the bathroom during the projector breakdown and didn’t know about the delay. I just assumed the movie let out at the normal time.”
Back to fifty percent.
“Did you steal jewelry from your mother and money from your father?” One last barrier to hurdle to get Randall above fifty-fifty.
“You mean the night they were murdered?” High eyebrows.
“Anytime.”
A long silence that answered the question. I waited to hear if his words matched his silent response.
“I was a pretty horrible kid before my family died. Prison has made me a better person and I’m thankful for that. Ironic.” Sad eyes stared past me. “I stole from both of them, but never admitted it. I was supposed to go to Stanford in the fall. Dad told me he wasn’t going to pay my tuition and that I had to move out of the house by the end of summer. Told me he was going to dissolve the trust he had set up for me. Pretty simple motive for murder, huh?”
Tears pooled in his eyes.
“Did you kill them, Randall?”
“I wanted my dad dead. I fantasized about it for weeks. But I didn’t do it. I could never do that. I wish he and my mom, and Molly—” His voice cracked and tears broke loose when he mentioned his sister’s name. “I wish Molly could see the man I am now. I miss her so much.”
He set the phone down and put both hands to his face and sobbed. I let him cry. An emotion he could never show outside the visitor room. Finally, he wiped tears from his eyes and picked up the phone. “Sorry. Sometimes it sneaks up on me.”
“No need to apologize.” Randall was either San Quentin’s version of Tom Hanks or he was telling the truth. “How did your father and grandfather get along?”
He wiped his tears away with the sleeve of his blue prison shirt. “Pretty well, except the last year…that my dad was alive.”
“What happened to put them at odds?”
“I don’t know, but something changed between them. It was sad.”
I stood up. “Take care of yourself in here, Randall.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find the truth.”