Without a Doubt - [44]

We were well into the criminal trial by the time we were allowed to learn that the envelope did indeed contain a stiletto. The report said that it had been discovered by Jason Simpson in the medicine cabinet of Simpson’s bathroom. Then it had been turned over by Shapiro to a special court master, who gave it to Judge Kennedy-Powell. (Shapiro was unhappy that she introduced it at the prelim-apparently he’d been hoping to blindside us with this evidence during the trial.) The knife’s discovery was supposedly made after our second search of June 28.

I never believed the medicine cabinet story. I’d been at Rockingham all through the second search, and the rooms had been taken to pieces by officers looking specifically for that knife. But the question was largely academic. The knife didn’t matter. It is too easy to boil a knife to destroy traces of blood and tissue. It is not difficult to go out and buy a duplicate. No coroner could say with certainty that it was the murder weapon. Knives, unlike guns, do not smoke: they do not leave proof-positive evidentiary calling cards. If I’d really pressed to get it into evidence, however, I’m sure that all I would have gotten was a spanking-clean knife, property of a known collector of weapons. In the end, we let the stiletto rest in its eight-by-eleven manila envelope-where, I believe, it remains today.

Eventually, I imagine, O. J. Simpson will reclaim it and auction it off on Larry King Live.

After the knife interlude, we were finally able to begin proving that there was sufficient cause to charge our defendant. We clicked through the civilian witnesses briskly. Shapiro’s cross-examination was uniformly ineffective, so there was little or no cleanup needed on redirect. Every single witness helped our presentation.

One key witness was Steven Schwab, the dog walker who had first encountered Nicole’s Akita running loose in the neighborhood. We hadn’t been able to get him up before the grand jury, but his testimony was crucial to our time line. If the murders were committed after eleven o’clock, Simpson would be home free: he couldn’t possibly have done the killing and hooked up with the limo driver in time. The problem was that the first time Schwab talked to police, he said that he believed he’d first seen the Akita around 11:15 P.M. This statement was made to the cops at about five on the morning after the murders; Schwab had been awakened from a deep sleep and was slightly confused about times. Upon more clear-minded reflection, however, he realized he’d actually seen the dog at about 10:45.

Usually a prior inconsistent statement by a witness is a credibility killer. At best, you’re left doubting the witness’s memory; at worst, his honesty. But Schwab was so sturdily forthright you just knew he’d made an honest mistake. He endeared himself to the spectators in court by recounting the process by which he had verified in his own mind the Akita encounter. He had an unvarying nightly routine, centered on old reruns. A cable network showed his favorites and he always watched the Dick Van Dyke Show, which ended at 10:30. Then he would take his dog for a half-hour walk, returning in time to catch the opening minutes of the eleven P.M. showing of Mary Tyler Moore.

Such banal details mark all of our daily lives and give our days some predictability. Schwab’s recitation drew laughter, but no one could doubt the truth of his testimony. He had seen the dog at 10:45, not 11:15. Our time line was secure.

Pablo Fenjves was my essential “dog bark” witness, the neighbor who heard the Akita’s “plaintive wail” starting at 10:15 P.M. His description of that sound lodged in the memories of reporters and public alike. Taken in tandem with Sukru Boztepe and Bettina Rasmussen’s solemn, emotional account of finding Nicole’s body, it seemed to cast an eerie spell over the gallery. We were still in that state of morbid dislocation when Judge Kennedy-Powell dismissed us for the Fourth of July weekend.

I spent very little of that weekend at home. I worked all day Saturday. And on Sunday morning I drove out to Bundy, to the little condominium on the downscale side of Sunset.

For the past few days I been increasingly anxious to scope out the condo. I had not been to Bundy since the morning after the murders, and then I’d been detained at the perimeter, like a bystander. The condo’s various appointments-the security gate, the dog leap stairway, the landing where Nicole lay, the fenced-in corner where Ron was killed-had all become part of the public’s collective consciousness. Yet to me they remained abstractions.

I met up with Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter at the rear of the condo. Bill was there, too, as were Patti Jo and several officers from Robbery/Homicide. We were all silently relieved that the media hadn’t trailed us.

We’d gathered in the lane at the rear of the condo, when Lieutenant John Rogers noticed blood-drops of blood, on the back gate. What the hell? We stopped dead in our tracks and looked at one another. Could Dennis Fung have overlooked this crucial evidence on the morning of the thirteenth? We stopped everything and called for a criminalist.