and for being where they shouldn't have been. A hate crime, with all the special penalties hate crimes carry. That's what the DA tried to go with, at first. The other version was that ; decent young Latino boy had defended his aunt from a man who had raped and beaten her the week before and who he feared had come back to do it again. That's what he was doing when he took out Patrick through the window of the fast food place. Carolyn, in this scenario, was a tragic accident. That the boy's aunt had been beaten and likely raped was established—bruises, cuts, vaginal abrasions. But she didn't report it until after her son had shot Patrick. She was afraid of being deported. The public defender struggled to establish that Patrick had committed the rape, but couldn't get far—no fluids, no blood—nothing but Teresa Descanso's word and a dead accused. During the trial, in this land of orange blossoms, rolling surf and Mickey Mouse, you defined your soul by what version you believed. You wanted the shooter's blood, or you thought he was a hero. It was ugly and divisive and unnecessary. But then, a lot of life is, it seems."
"I read about it," said Menden.
Next were still shots of the funeral, several showing the demolished countenance of Puma, his hair unkempt and his eyes swollen. Valerie's face looked like that of someone who had seen something she would never be able to unsee again.
The video ended. Weinstein used the remote to hit rewind. Silence filled the little room.
Weinstein took a hearty sip of water. His big Adam's apple bobbed with the swallow. "The alleged shooter was a boy of fifteen—good student, no gang involvement—a minor Latino activist of sorts. He'd written some rather . . . what, Sharon, vehement articles?"
"Childish articles."
"No, they were better than childish, but they were naive and strident. Anyway, he'd done some articles about La Raza and Aztlan for a class at his high school. You know, the stuff about the Mexicans reclaiming California for their race. Naive stuff, like I said, but it came up in court. He admitted the shooting, on the strength of his aunt's identification of Patrick, governed by fear for her safety and life. The jury finally hung on murder two, so he went back to jail. For reasons championed by the media and press, and finally agreed to by the DA, he wasn't tried again for Patrick. He got four years for mayhem on Carolyn, walked after two, moved to Mexico, they say. A controversial decision, to say the least. Maybe it was supposed to keep the lid on the pressure cooker. Maybe it was supposed to be a concession to an emotionally charged county minority that truly believed the kid was defending his family. This was before your time at the paper. You were in Key West, fishing, I believe."
John felt, not for the first time that his skin had been peeled back by Joshua and his people, affording them a full view of everything inside.
"I read about the trial," he said. "It wasn't big in the papers back there."
"It was big here. On the heels of O.J. and Prop. 187. Goodness, what a summer that was."
Weinstein sighed deeply, removed his glasses and massaged the sides of his nose. "How'd you do down in Key West, fish-wise?"
"Does it matter?"
"It couldn't possibly matter less."
"Then get on with it."
"Yeah, that's the spirit."
The glasses back on now, Joshua contemplated John with his voracious eyes. "Cut now to Puma. You need to know something about him. He came from a wealthy family that had been in the county since the early eighteen hundreds. A very wealthy family—bought land grants on the cheap, made a go with cattle and crops, sent sons into the assembly and Congress and watched the land value go out of sight after World War II. Puma was working at the time, that dreary August when he lost his son and most of his wife. He quit his job. He sold his house in Tustin and moved onto family land—a couple of thousand acres down in the south part of the county. The land is hilly and dry,