Without a Doubt - [47]

The big question seemed to be whether Vannatter, Lange, Fuhrman, and Phillips had gone to Rockingham early that morning to notify Simpson-or to investigate him. Believe me, I grilled Phil with plenty of hard questions.

“Phil, man,” I said. “You’re tellin’ me straight that you didn’t think that Simpson might be a suspect when you went out there?”

Phil was unshakable. All that he would say was that Simpson was a “potential suspect,” just like everyone else who had come in contact with the victim. He was not an actual suspect, meaning they had no actual evidence linking him to the murders.

“We took Mark and Ron along so they could stay with him, get his kids out of the station, and calm him down when we went back to the crime scene,” he insisted.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But really, Phil, didn’t you consider him a suspect after Mark told you he’d been out to the place before?”

This was one aspect of the case that puzzled me. Back in the mid-eighties, when he was still a patrolman, Mark Fuhrman had been called out to 360 North Rockingham for some unspecified family-dispute call. This was a fact that he apparently had confided in his superior, Ron Phillips, on the morning of June 13. Ron, in turn, told Phil, who professed not to know quite what to make of it. Later I would receive, among documents sent over by the City Attorney’s office, the copy of a letter Fuhrman had written at that office’s request to shore up its 1989 battery case against Simpson. In the letter, Mark had mentioned how he’d come upon O. J. Simpson pacing in his driveway. Nicole sat on the hood of a Mercedes-Benz, its windshield shattered, apparently by Simpson wielding a baseball bat. When Fuhrman inquired as to what had happened, Simpson replied, “I broke the windshield… it’s mine… there’s no trouble here.” Fuhrman had asked Nicole if she’d wanted to make a report, and she’d said no.

The most curious part of the letter was its closing: “It seems odd to remember such an event, but it is not every day that you respond to a celebrity’s home for a family dispute. For this reason this incident was indelibly pressed in my memory.”

This squared perfectly with the Mark Fuhrman I had seen admiring the bronze statue of Simpson on the morning of June 13. Clearly, Fuhrman adored the Juice and was not about to arrest him if he didn’t have to. Still, didn’t the mere fact that Fuhrman knew of prior domestic violence between the Simpsons color the cops’ thinking about Simpson as a suspect on the morning they left Bundy for Rockingham?

“Frankly, all I remember was him saying he’d been there a long time ago and it may have involved domestic violence. It was a passing remark and it didn’t mean much at the time. A call from ten years ago sure didn’t add up to what we saw at Bundy.”

Do I think Phil was naive? Yes. Do I think he was lying? No. That conviction grows stronger as time wears on. What you had in this situation was four cops who, on one hand, worshiped O. J. Simpson-and on the other, were seriously shaken by the mayhem at Bundy. I believe in my heart that they were actually resisting the idea that the Juice could have caused this horror.

Everything about the situation bore out their story. They’d left Bundy without so much as a whisper to anyone to advance the investigation. They hadn’t even called the coroner. Why? They thought they’d be right back. Their actions at Rockingham were also consistent with their story. Once over the wall, they’d done nothing more than check the grounds with their flashlights, looking for other victims, until they reached Kato. When Arnelle let them into the house, they waited as she tried to locate her father. They didn’t so much as open a drawer in all that time. They didn’t venture upstairs. How did that conform with the notion that they’d come to Rockingham to grab their number-one suspect? It didn’t.

As a witness in the preliminary hearings, Mark Fuhrman was simply splendid. He remained poised and patient in the face of defense attorney Gerald Uelmen’s pedantic and long-winded cross. He sounded like a model cop.

The public has long since forgotten this fact, but the press had begun lionizing Fuhrman even before he left the courtroom. They followed him down the corridor, clamoring for sound bites. As I watched this scene unfold, I had an uneasy feeling. Now I know why. I’ve come to recognize reflexive adulation as the kiss of death.

Suddenly Mark turned and waved off the reporters. He looked my way and motioned me over. We pulled away from the crowd.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said urgently. “But this has to remain confidential. I can’t tell anyone but you.”

What, I thought, could be so damned urgent? I was hip-deep in motions and had no time for distractions.

“Can’t it wait?”

“No. I’ve got to tell you now,” he replied. He sat down on one of the benches that lined the court hallways. This forced me to stop and sit beside him. I glanced conspicuously at my watch.

“Marcia, you have to know about this because the press is going to pick it up any minute,” he continued. “A long time ago, I thought I wanted to leave the force. I was strung out over my divorce and feeling burnt out. I put in for a stress disability claim. There’s a file with some shrink’s reports in it. Mine claimed I said things that I never said. He got it all wrong. I tried to get them to take it out, but I couldn’t. When the press gets hold of it, they’ll smear me to kingdom come.”