Who Named the Knife Read online

  “When you heard the shots, what did you see him do?”

  “Like he was hit, like he turned and fell. He fell down where he was going to walk. He fell down, he fell down there.”

  “What did Maryann do after she fired the gun?”

  “She just stood there. It was not what she did, it was what I did. I reached over and opened the door and told her, Get in the car. Yelled at her. Got nervous, real scared. She did it. She sat in the car. I told her, What the fuck did you do that for, you know, why? The answer was strange.”

  Jan Futa did not ask William what the answer was. She did not ask him why it was strange. She asked, “What did you do?”

  “Turned the lights off and on trying to start the car. I forgot how to start the car. My mind was blown, it was unreal. Finally got the car started and headed in the wrong direction, not the way I wanted to go.”

  “And what was Maryann doing?”

  “Looking at the bullets, throwing them out the window.”

  “Can you describe how Maryann appeared to you at that time?”

  “Like I do this every day, real calm. Like: You’re the macho man, what’s happening with you, you know, wow. Like I misled her, like I wasn’t the person she thought I was, trying to make me feel bad.”

  After the wrong direction and panic, Maryann and William switched places so that she could drive. This happened, William said, at Sandy Beach, where he wanted to throw the gun out but she wouldn’t let him. Instead he took it back to the apartment and decided to hide it. “I made up my mind to leave. I was scared, I was scared.” He was trying to go to the laundry room to use the phone, “But she wanted to get down.”

  “She wanted to what?”

  “She wanted to get down. Go to bed. I told her, I made a statement to her, What? She goes, I was blown, you know, I was freaked out.” Then he added, shaking his head, “I couldn’t believe it,” and looked over at us.

  William said he went down to the laundry room to use the phone and hide the gun. “I was calling the airlines to leave, finding out information when the flights leave. But I didn’t get the right information so I just stayed there and walked around. I was trying to think, trying to get a grip on my thoughts, what to do, you know. And why, I wanted whys answered. I wanted a lot of things answered. And I couldn’t answer them, only Maryann could. So I was, you know, trying to get back to reality. You know. I’m sorry I had to rob. I got back on the phone. And she tapped me on the shoulder. She says, You’re leaving.… She said things like, Don’t abandon me.”

  Listening to William, I thought of the terror I felt when Philip left. It was summer. My father had died in June and now it was July. I had a two-year-old and a four-year-old and no real qualifications for earning a living. It was a terrible time. I was mad with shock and jealousy. I was heart-broken, half-sick and crazy. I was twenty-eight years old and for the very first time I was in charge of my life.

  “It was just unreal. And it was just real bad.” Listening to William now.

  “And then what happened?”

  “So she realized I was just freaked out. And I loved Maryann at that time, I really did. So I made arrangements.”

  That morning, the same morning of Larry Hasker’s death, they left Hawaii and flew to Los Angeles. William told about not sitting together on the plane, about what names they had used, and how she had brought the gun when he told her not to bring it, how she had packed it in a red plastic container, how he had tried to get away from her, going to a motel and checking in while she waited for the luggage. Later, though, she knocked on his door. She was holding the gun. He said by then he was really afraid. He said, “I’m going. That gun is all you.” He said, “I hid that gun a lot from her that night.”

  “So from there you and Maryann were together still? Where did you go?”

  “Up north.”

  We heard a long sigh, as if the defence attorney had already exhausted himself. Then Stephen Hioki stood up slowly, as if gathering his strength. When he said he wanted to make an objection with regard to the next area of questioning, I remembered the words I had heard on the stone lanai. She’s in prison on the mainland for the same thing. Was that the area of questioning Futa was about to raise?

  Judge Au called both lawyers to the bench, where we couldn’t hear what they were saying. Hioki kept gesturing, flailing his arms and hands. Judge Au was shaking his head and Futa was standing on her tiptoes, peering over the bench as if she needed to make herself seen. I thought about Larry Hasker, whose death seemed to be more important than his life. I thought of him standing on the rough hillside, the moon high above him, washing everything in its unhealthy light. Below, the ocean pulling out and out. Nearby, Leach’s torn shirt, grey with a black design. He would fall very close to it. He would swallow the water and moon and the promises of these strangers. Swallow everything, his entire life.

  10

  When I was still a child and my father was still teaching at the local law school, there was a mock trial for the students and my father asked me to play the role of a witness. I was twelve or thirteen and I was going to prove myself. I was given a piece of paper with the details of a car accident: something about a goat. Now I started thinking about the goat and that long-ago mock trial while I was sitting in the Honolulu jury box, waiting for the judge and the lawyers to finish their bench conference. First I was thinking about Larry and his death. Then I thought of William and how hard it must be to remember pertinent facts. Then I remembered the goat. It seemed to me that I was the driver, that I was the one who had killed the goat, although I was, of course, too young to drive. There were other witnesses. Not false witnesses but fake witnesses. Mock witnesses. They came out of imaginary houses along the imaginary road and described the imaginary scene they had not witnessed. They did not even imagine they had witnessed it, but the students were told to imagine not only that they had done so but that the goat had really existed and that the farmer who had owned the goat and even perhaps loved the goat was suing the driver of the car for damages.

  This was my chance to get it right. I dressed the way my father told me to dress and worked hard to remember the condition of the road and whether the headlights were working, although it was hard because I have an active imagination and sometimes I add on to things. I said the goat was white and that one of his horns was gone and even as I sat there in front of those Kansas students, I couldn’t remember whether I’d read that in the notes or whether I’d seen it in my mind while I was reading. Now, thinking back, I was not absolutely sure I’d run over the goat. What I did remember was that every one of the witnesses told a different story.

  I held on to that thought when Jan Futa resumed her questioning and William said he had wanted Maryann to go home. “She kept making me feel that nothing I do was right.” I held on to that thought when he described how they hitchhiked north, then how they suddenly changed direction, getting a ride from a young man whose name was spelled out for the court. C-e-s-a-r-i-o A-r-a-u-z-a. He was driving a Chevrolet Blazer with a stick shift, which William said he did not know how to drive. He said Maryann took the wheel so Arauza could have a nap.

  “Mr. Acker, can you describe Cesario Arauza?”

  “Yeah, he’s bigger. A lot bigger. Mexican American.”

  “Now, did anything happen on the way down south?”

  “With Cesario? Yeah, he was murdered.”

  Somewhere close to L.A., near a cloverleaf, they stopped at a restaurant and gas station and William went in to order some takeout food. He was hungry, and Arauza had given him money so that he could eat. Ten dollars, he thought it was. While William waited for the food, Maryann said she wanted to take Arauza’s car. “She said he was making a pass at her. Let’s take this creep’s car and leave him here.” William said he argued against it, but finally he took her to the public restroom and gave her the unloaded gun. She spent a few minutes alone in there, he said, and then got back in the car and drove off with Arauza, who looked back at William th
rough the rear window as if he couldn’t believe his luck. William forgot about the food and walked to the highway, planning to hitchhike alone, but twenty minutes later Maryann picked him up. “Twenty minutes. Or it might have been longer. It felt longer to me.” He checked the gun and saw that it was loaded. Smelled it. “I didn’t think it had been fired at that point.” Maryann said she had left Arauza at an on-ramp, that taking the car had been easy.

  They used Arauza’s car in three more robberies. For a night or two they slept in it. Then, in Long Beach, they rented a room in a motel and Maryann wanted to “flame” the car. William said she went out to the parking lot and he waited for her, but she didn’t come back. He said, “So I got up on the roof and I saw some squad cars. More than one. And I felt that she got arrested. I went back to the room to look for the gun. I panicked. I packed everything up in a flight bag, but I couldn’t find the gun. I threw all her shit on the floor, out of her purse, looking for it. And I went upstairs by the phone. And the cops came. A lot of cop cars drove up and I saw Maryann in one of them.” William stayed hidden and watched as the room was searched. When everyone had gone, he left on foot, taking a Greyhound bus to Yuma, where he called Bert Bray, Maryann’s father, from the bus station. “He told me that, ‘Man, you got my daughter in trouble. She’s in jail.’ ”

  Charged with murder.

  At Bert Bray’s urging, William agreed to turn himself in. “To clear things up. Because of the bullets that were used. He said hollow points, and we didn’t have no hollow points except for five that came with the gun that we already used practising in Arizona.”

  Remember the goat, I told myself, because William couldn’t remember whether he had called Los Angeles or the Yuma police. Or maybe Maryann’s father had driven him to the police station, he wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was the bullets. Hollow points. He said they had never used them. Later he said they had hollow-point bullets in Arizona when they were practising with the gun. Remember the goat, because Leach had said William instructed Maryann about the gun, telling her how to use it.

  11

  In the spring of 1979, a few months after Cesario Arauza’s murder and a few weeks after William had been convicted, Detective Jimon You received a phone call from the Los Angeles sheriff’s office. He was told that a man in custody there had information about a murder in Hawaii. William may have been hoping that his offer of information would lighten the California sentence, which he had not yet received, but perhaps Detective You had no qualms about that. He flew to L.A. to interview William as soon as he could book a flight. “They took the victim to Hanauma Bay,” he wrote in his subsequent report, “and his wife took the victim into the bushy area. The guy then said that he heard three shots; his wife returned and he asked her if the guy was all right and she replied, ‘No, he’s dead.’ The guy also added that his wife used a .38-calibre revolver with some of the bullets being hollow points.”

  William signed a plea agreement with Charles Marsland, the DA whose son had been shot on a beach in Waimanalo, not far from Hanauma Bay. “You know,” William said, speaking of Hasker’s murder, “it went over and over and over and over and over. And it was a senseless thing.”

  In his California trial, William had acted as his own counsel. Now, when Jan Futa asked him if he had researched California law, he said, “Where murder is concerned, that’s right.”

  And why had he decided to take responsibility for the Arauza murder? Why had he pleaded nolo contendere?

  “Because in California they have what’s called felony murder rule. When there is a crime or when two people do a crime or three and as a result of that somebody’s shot and killed, stabbed and killed, hung, whatever – when they’re killed, each defendant is charged with murder and held responsible.”

  That afternoon, around three o’clock, Stephen Hioki began his cross-examination of William. Advancing and retreating between his chair and the witness stand, he seemed tense and unprepared. After noting that William was twenty-eight and Maryann eighteen when they married and that they had known each other less than two months when Larry Hasker was shot, he said, “Now, isn’t it true that prior to the marriage Maryann was a fairly close follower of the Mormon Church?”

  William said, “No, that’s not true.”

  Mormon. Everyone in the courtroom must have made something of that, one of the biggest Mormon temples in the world is on O’ahu. There might easily have been a Mormon on the jury. My own great-grandmother was a convert, although my family is still ashamed of her. Heaven. The Second Coming. Prophecies. The Mormons are zealots. But Hioki was beating a fast retreat. Did William recall speaking to a detective in L.A.? Did he recall saying that they had found Cesario Arauza’s Blazer on the side of a California highway?

  “Initially, yes.”

  “So you lied?” Hioki was clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “Definitely. I made statements, you know, there was a lot of statements made. And sometimes memory was better and sometimes it wasn’t. But going back to the initial statement,” William continued calmly, “I lied tremendously. That’s when I was going to fight the robberies and murders.” He paused. “I didn’t know about the murder. I mean, I knew, but I did not … I was positive it wasn’t ours because of the hollow points that killed him. We didn’t have any hollow-point bullets. But I was going to evade the robberies, you know. And I talked pretty good …”

  “And you were going to fight them by lying?”

  “Well, a convict or a criminal doesn’t tell the police the truth.”

  Someone laughed. Someone in the courtroom.

  Had William ever bought bullets at GEMs in Honolulu?

  “Yes.”

  “Isn’t it true that you purchased these bullets for the purpose of sending a bullet a day to a neighbour in Arizona to intimidate him?”

  “That’s what I told the detective, but it’s not true.”

  “Hadn’t these people accused you of stealing their .38-calibre revolver?”

  “I heard mention of that, yeah. But the fact is Maryann stole that gun. She knew where it was.”

  Hioki introduced two letters and asked William to examine them. “Do you recognize the handwriting, Mr. Acker?” He was making himself sound forceful, as he had probably been trained to do in law school.

  “It appears to be mine unless somebody’s a real good forger.” This time everyone laughed.

  Hioki read the letters aloud. To Bert Bray, Maryann’s father, William had written: “ ‘What can I say? I got what I had coming. I tried a twisted plan concerning Hawaii, hoping they would offer Maryann deals. But instead, I will catch the Hawaii charges. In fact, I’ve already told the Attorney General I would cop to the Hawaiian affairs …’ ” Hioki asked him to explain.

  “I believe,” William said, scratching his neck, “this was when I was going to cop to everything. I might have told this to Bert Bray. But I also bullshitted Bert Bray a whole lot because he did me too.”

  The second letter was to Maryann, although William had addressed it to Free, which he said was his name for her “because of her ability to stay out of jail at that time.” He had written: “ ‘Honey, I couldn’t tell you then, nor can I fully explain now. But the two heavy things that went down were mine to take. I will explain when I can, sister of mine in the Randanian way.’ ” Hioki paused. He said, “What did you mean by that?”

  William said, “It’s a step beyond Ayn Rand. It’s taking her a step further than she goes. It’s a philosophy.”

  “Doesn’t this philosophy basically mean you look out for yourself first and foremost?”

  “No. It basically means you are yourself.”

  Hioki closed his eyes. Then he opened them and returned to the letter. But I was watching his narrow face, his chin like a spoon, his eyes humourless. He was shaking the letter as if it contained loose dirt. “You indicated that as far as you know, it was Maryann who killed Mr. Arauza, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “
Isn’t it true that the day after Mr. Arauza was killed you told a Mr. Raymond Guillen that the orange and red spot on your pants was from the blood of a man you had just killed the day before?”

  “No. That’s not true.”

  Hioki dropped the question and we were never to hear another word about the pants or the blood. When he jumped back to Phoenix and asked why William and Maryann had left – was it to evade William’s parole officer? – the question was stricken. Once, William corrected him bluntly. “No, no. Read my lips.” When Hioki mistakenly referred to William as Mr. Leach, William said flatly, “I’m not Mr. Leach.” Hioki said, “Sorry. I’m sorry.” But William was becoming belligerent. When asked about the Hasker murder, he told Hioki they’d never gone to Larry’s apartment. Then he said they went to Larry’s apartment first, after the bar, and then to their own. Then he said, “You’re not listening to me. We went to our apartment, the gun was pulled on him, then we went to his apartment because he said he had cocaine and money.”

  “Okay,” said Hioki. “Okay.”

  “You understand that?”

  “Okay.”

  “I told you. Now, listen to me real carefully, watch my mouth.”

  But Steven Hioki did not look at William; he looked down at his notes. He said, “You indicated during direct examination that you represented yourself in the California case, is that correct?”

  “Yes I did.”

  “And you researched the area of law concerning murder, is that right?”

  “And robberies.”

  “And based on your research you decided that you should plead guilty because under California law you were responsible for that particular incident, isn’t that right?”

  “Just as responsible.”

  Suddenly, Maryann’s lawyer slipped out an invisible knife. “And can you explain, Mr. Acker, why you were sentenced to life without parole?”