Inmate Polete was very upset. Stoner did not ask the obvious questions:
How do you recall your actions on a given night twenty-four years and eleven months ago? What made that night so auspicious or so horrible or so traumatic that you will remember every detail for the rest of your life?
Inmate Polete walked out of the room. The interview was terminated at 1:00 P.M.
6
Bill said it hit him hard. It hit Gary Walker simultaneously.
The church and Crawford’s Market. Polete’s market-snatch MO. Subsequent assaults at the Food King and Lucky Market. The alibi that played like an admission.
Bill said it hit him hard. He told me a story to dramatize the impact.
He worked a case years back. A body dump in Torrance. A white male victim.
They ID’d him. His roommate was a carpet layer.
They took him to lunch. The man was not a suspect.
They took him to his apartment. They wanted to talk some more. They needed his take on the victim.
They walked in the door. Bill saw a brand-new carpet on the living-room floor.
And:
He knew that the man killed the victim right there. He knew that he’d find washed-out blood spots under the carpeting.
He found them. He confronted the man. The man confessed.
That was a fresh case. This was an old case. Instinctive knowledge never equals provability. Circumstantial confirmation buttresses instinctive knowledge and increases its evidentiary value.
12/15/97:
Bill Stoner calls the church pastor’s daughter. She says she never dated Robby Polete. She never saw him with other girls. She saw him at school. She saw him at church youth groups.
12/16/97:
Bill Stoner calls the former youth-group leader. She does not recall Robby Polete. Youth-group meetings were held at the church on Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays. They ran from 7:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M.
1/29/73 was a Monday. Betty Jean Scales was last seen at 8:30 P.M.
Bill checked out C&R Printing. The 1973 owner still owned the shop.
He remembered Robby Polete. Polete’s dad owned a shop in Baldwin Park. Robby worked at C&R sporadically. He did his dad’s loan-out jobs.
Bill went through old work sheets and time cards. He had to see if Robby worked on 1/29/73.
The work sheets and time cards only went back to 1979. The man tossed his older records to save shelf space.
The dead-end metaphysic.
Bill found Lori Polete. He interviewed her. He interviewed Robby’s mother and brother.
The brother didn’t have much to say. He and Robby ran with different crowds. The mother said Robby couldn’t have killed BettyJean. She said she had ESP. She would have known if Robby killed some woman. She almost killed herself a long time ago. She saw a preacher on a TV show. He convinced her not to do it.
Lori started out as Robby’s pen pal. She thought Robby would be paroled soon. She wised up after a while. She figured out that Robby never wised up to himself. He never took responsibility for his own actions. He couldn’t survive out of prison.
The dead-end metaphysic has an evidentiary upside. Complex procedures take time. Positive results can strike out of nowhere.
The sheriff’s crime lab found a stain on Betty Jean’s Levi’s. The technician said it might be a semen stain. The identification procedure is still in progress.
The dead-end metaphysic has a psychic upside.
Frightened people lose their fear over time. Guilty people divulge information injudiciously. Compliant people wise up to the people who exploit them. Tired people fold and betray their secrets.
People relinquish. Intransigent detectives wait and stay poised to listen. They hover. They eavesdrop. They prowl moral fault lines. They assume their victims’ and their killers’ perspectives and live their lives to stalk revelation.
In the matter of BettyJean Scales, white female, DOD 1/29/73:
Bill Stoner will continue. Sheriff’s Homicide and the El Monte PD will extend their investigation. Stoner will remain fixed on Robert Leroy Polete. He will not succumb to bias. He will retain an objective eye for leads that might subvert his opinion that Polete killed Betty Jean Scales. He stands by ready to address the California State Parole Board in the fall of ’98.