Neither the prosecution nor the defense used any of the unaired tape in court. Several of its principals were in fact called to testify, but their voices got lost in the squall. By the time you came to trial, the tales people told had, through repetition, assumed shape. Confusion gave way to conjecture; friends would ask one another how something like this could have happened, and would keep right on asking until they came up with an explanation that could be passed along. The cautionary tale that came to stand in for the facts of the case belonged to the familiar type of legend in which the greatest possible menace to a community lies just beneath the skin, its portents only readable, in retrospect, by those lucky enough to have survived its eruption.
* * *
GARY LOGAN （NEIGHBOR）： Well, I didn’t really know her much. At all, really, I guess. I live downstairs. She’s a lot younger than me. Most of the people here are younger than me but I like it. I’m retired, always wanted to live by the water. No old folks’ home for me! Anyway, we just said hello sometimes. One time she helped me with the groceries because she saw I had three bags. There was nothing really different about her as far as I could tell. She seemed nice.
MARY ZAVALA （NEIGHBOR）： I don’t know her! But she was at the beach earlier, I saw her out there. I went out for a swim. What? No, over at the pool. Nobody ever swims out in the bay almost, you know? It’s too cold! But I have trouble sleeping and we have a pool key so I went for a swim and then I thought I’d just kind of, you know, you’re up late, just look at the sky a little while before trying to go back to bed. And I saw her out there! She had a wheelbarrow and she was standing in the water. I didn’t know who it was. I still don’t know. I live in the other building, right over there, it’s all the same apartments but there’s three buildings. Do you know what they say she did? I don’t really know anything but they sent all those police cars, you saw ’em. She doesn’t live in my building, I don’t think. I know pretty much everybody who lives in mine. But I knew something was wrong! Like I told you I have trouble sleeping and I’m awake a lot, there’s never anybody else awake but there she was. I wanted to go ask her: Is everything OK? But you never know with people. And then I seen her throwing things in the ocean and I said, Oh, I don’t want to know, you know? I went back inside, it’s not my business.
DANIEL REED （PARAMEDIC）： We got the call about—was it two hours ago, Vince? Two hours ago. Hour and a half. Severe bodily injury was all we heard but when we got here they told us just to sit tight. I can sit tight here as easy as I can anyplace else, they can get us on the radio if they need us, so I sit tight. When they brought her out, from what I could see, a lot of blood, she looks hurt, possibly in shock. I wanted to put a blanket over her but I didn’t want to get in the way and she was in handcuffs. To me she looked like one of those crazy—what were they—
VINCENT ROSSETTI （PARAMEDIC）： Manson girls!
REED: The Manson girls! You seen them? All whacked-out on something, all dressed up like—
ROSSETTI: Halloween, man.
REED: Halloween, you know? Anyway all I know, the two injury victims, the two—
ROSSETTI: The two alleged victims.
REED: Right, the two alleged victims, thank you, we were supposed to take them to the hospital, but they didn’t end up going to the hospital, because—
ROSSETTI: We can’t do anything for them, is what he’s saying.
REED: We can’t do anything for ’em. You know what I mean? I don’t mean to sound hard-hearted, but you see a lot of stuff on this job.
* * *
EITHER THE CHYRON OPERATOR DIDN’T GET AROUND TO inserting the names of the three people whose conversation makes up the last frenzied minute-plus on the tape—three people talking to the camera all at once, finishing one another’s thoughts, framing questions for themselves in order to make sense of the scene before them—or somebody forgot to pass their names along to him. They stand in an undecorated frame; they could be anyone. They are a nameless chorus whose song the censor didn’t see fit to pass along to the public. It took me two days to locate the spot in the parking lot where they’d been standing; everything’s different now, so I had to go by shadows and light at the exact right time of the early morning according to the paramedics’ log. It seemed like a pointless effort in the end. The turnover inside the complex was total by the time I got there. Their brief testimonies stand apart from the case as it went forward. There is no way to compare their reporting to the matters in question, save asking you. It was too late for that by the time I got here.