I is for Innocent

"I'm not sure. I'd like to look at some five-year-old news footage, if you have it."

"Something we taped?"

"That's what I'm assuming. This was the verdict on a local murder trial and I'm pretty sure you'd have covered it."

"Hang on a minute and I'll see if somebody back there can help you."

She rang through to 'somebody' in the bowels of the building, briefly describing the nature of my quest. "Leland'll be out in five minutes," she said.

I thanked her and spent the mandatory waiting period wandering from the front entrance, which looked out onto the parking lot, to the sliding glass doors on the far side of the reception area, which looked out onto a wide concrete patio furnished with molded white plastic chairs. A three-dimensional view of the city wrapped around the patio like a screen. I could imagine the station employees having lunch out in the hot sun-women with cotton skirts discreetly pulled up, men without shirts. A big dish ante

"I'm Leland. What can I do for you?"

The fellow who'd appeared through the doorway behind me was in his late twenties and had to be a hundred pounds overweight. He had a mop of curly brown hair surrounding a baby face, with wire-rimmed glasses, clear blue eyes, flushed cheeks, and no facial hair. With a name like Leland, he was doomed. He looked like the kind of kid who'd been tormented by his schoolmates since the first day of school, too bright and too big to avoid the involuntary cruelties of other middle-class children.

I introduced myself and we shook hands. I explained the situation as succinctly as possible. "What occurred to me was that with local reporters present on the day Barney was acquitted, there were probably Mini-cams rolling as he emerged from the courtroom."

"Okay," he said.

" 'Okay' wasn't really the response I was looking for, Leland. I was hoping you had a way to go back and check the old news tapes."

Leland gave me a blank look. I wish a P.I.'s job were half as easy as they make it look on television. I've never opened a dead bolt with a pass of my credit card. I can't even force mine into a doorjamb without breaking it off. And what's it supposed to do once you slide it in there? Most of the latch bolts I've seen, the slanted angle is on the inside so it's not as though you could slip a credit card along the face of it and force the latch to move back. And where the angle faces the outside, the strike plate resists the insertion of even the most flexible object. Leland seemed to be taking the same implacable position.

"What's the matter? Don't you keep that stuff?"

"It's not that. I'm sure there's a copy of the footage you're looking for. The master tapes are catalogued by subject matter and date, cross-referenced and cross-filed on three-by-five index cards."

"You don't have it on computer?"

He shook his head, with just a hint of satisfaction. "The logistics of the system don't really matter much because I can't let you see the master tape without a properly executed subpoena."

"I'm working for an attorney. I can get a subpoena. This is no big deal."

"Go ahead then. I can wait."

"Yeah, well, I can't. I need the information as soon as possible."

"In that case, you got a problem. I can't let you see the master tape unless you have a subpoena."

"But if I could get it eventually, what difference does it make? I'm entitled to the information. That's the bottom line, isn't it?"

"No tickee, no washee. That's the bottom line," he said.

I was begi

He stared at me with that blank look all petty bureaucrats assume while they calculate the probabilities of getting fired if they say yes. "Why do you want to know? I really wasn't listening before."

"This fellow claims he had a conversation with the defendant in a murder trial shortly after he was acquitted. He says the cameras were rolling as the guy left the courtroom, so if what he says is true, he ought to be clearly visible on the tape, right?"

"Yeeess," he said slowly. I could tell he thought there was some kind of trick to it.

"This isn't a violation of anybody's civil rights," I said reasonably. "Could you just look?"

He held his hand out. I gave him Curtis's mug shot. He continued to hold his hand out.

I stared for a moment. "Oh," I said. I opened my handbag and took out my wallet. I peeled off a twenty and put it in his palm. His expression didn't actually change, but I knew he was insulted. I'm sure it's the same look you'd get from a New York taxi driver if you tipped him a dime.

I peeled off another twenty. No reaction. I said, "I really hate corruption in someone so young."

"It's disgusting, isn't it?" he replied.

I added a third.

His hand closed. "Come with me."

He turned and headed back through the doorway and into a narrow corridor. I followed without a word. Offices opened up on either side of us. Occasionally, we passed other station employees wearing jeans and Reeboks, but no one was doing much. The spaces seemed cramped and irregular, with too much knotty pine veneer paneling and too many cheaply framed photographs and certificates. The whole interior of the building had been done up with the sort of do-it-yourself home improvements that later make a house impossible to sell.

At the rear, we passed into a tiny concrete cul-de-sac with a wood-and-metal stairway leading up to an attic. Just to the right was an old-fashioned wooden file cabinet, with a smaller wooden file sitting on top. He opened the drawer for the year we wanted and began to sort through the index cards, starting with the name Barney. "We won't have the actual field tapes," he remarked while he looked.

"What's a field tape?"

"That would be like the whole twenty minutes of tape the guy shot. We keep the ninety seconds to two minutes of edited footage that actually goes on the air."

"Oh. Well, even that would help."

"Unless the guy you're looking for stepped up and spoke to your suspect after the cameras finished rolling."

"True enough," I said.

"Nope. Nothing," he said. "Well, let's see here. What else could it be under?" He tried "Murder,"

"Trials," and "Courtroom Cases," but there was no reference to Isabelle Barney.

"Try 'Homicides,' " I suggested.

"Oh, good one." He shifted to the H's. There it was, with a numerical designation that apparently referred to the number of the tape on file. We went up the narrow stairs and through a door so low we were forced to duck our heads. Inside, there was a warren of tiny rooms with six-foot ceilings, lined with videocassette containers, neatly labeled and filed upright. Leland located and retrieved the cassette we were looking for and then led me downstairs again and around to the right where there were four stations set up with monitoring equipment. He flipped on the first machine and inserted the tape. The first segment appeared on the screen in front of us. He pressed Fast Forward. I watched the news for that year whiz by like the history of civilization in two minutes flat, everybody very animated and jerky. I spotted a still of Isabelle Barney. "There she is," I yelped.

Leland backed the tape up and began to run it at normal speed. An anchorperson I hadn't seen for years was suddenly doing the voice-over commentary as snippets of the case, neatly spliced together, spelled out the highlights of Isabelle's death, David Barney's arrest, and the subsequent trial. The acquittal, in condensed form, had the speedy air of instant justice, well edited, swiftly rendered, with liberty for all. David Barney emerged from the courtroom looking slightly dazed.