Free Without a Doubt by Marcia Clark Page A

all relative. Compared to the act of cutting him loose in the first place, a negotiated surrender was a minor outrage. If it worked, we’d all be happy. But what if the negotiations failed? Would the police back down and delay the arrest again? Would they give Simpson a deadline? We wanted to keep our options open—and that meant proceeding full speed ahead with the grand jury.
    First order of business: reel in Kato Kaelin. O. J. Simpson was clearly Kato’s benefactor. I could just about bet that had Kato known Simpson was a suspect, he would not have spoken so freely about the thump, for instance, and risk dumping his meal ticket. On the other hand, however, I’d had a chance to study his witness statement pretty thoroughly by now. I felt he had to know a lot more about the Simpsons’ private lives than he’d told the cops.
    Early Friday morning I dispatched a couple of detectives to West L.A. to serve Kato with a subpoena. David and I were in conference with Gil when I got a call from one of the cops on the detail.
    “Kaelin’s here with us,” he said. “But he says he won’t talk unless his lawyer’s with him.”
    “Bring him in anyway,” I told him.
    This was extremely unusual. Witnesses don’t arrive in the company of lawyers unless they’re worried about being charged with a crime. From what I could see, Brian Kaelin had no criminal liability. The events he’d witnessed on the night of June 12 had clearly occurred after the murders. I was afraid that his request for an attorney meant that Simpson had gotten to him.
    The cops brought Kato into my office at a little past nine. I looked up from my paperwork and saw for the first time that wild mane of dirty-blond hair, casual hip clothes, goofy surfer-boy slouch. My first thought: Zone-out case .
    “Hey, guy,” I greeted him. Casual seemed the way to go.
    He shook my hand and fidgeted like a puppy.
    “Have a seat while I call my boss.”
    “Hi, sure, no problem.”
    He plopped down in one of the chairs across the desk from me. David said he’d be delayed a few minutes, to start without him.
    I began by asking Kato how much sleep he’d gotten that night. Did he feel prepared to go before a grand jury? He answered in half sentences, nodding a lot, managing to say very little. Great , I thought, this guy can barely handle small talk — what’s going to happen when we put him on the stand?
    I cut to the chase: “Do you remember what you were doing when you heard the thump on your wall?”
    “I think I was talking to my friend Rachel. Yeah, I was talking to Rachel.”
    Okay; that was what he had told the cops.
    “Did you tell her about what you’d heard?”
    “I really don’t… um… you know… want to say anything until my attorney gets here. I mean, you seem real nice and all, and… um… I really want to help you out. But… um… I really can’t talk about the case without him. I’m real sorry, really, Marcia. I am.”
    His words tumbled over each other as he squirmed in his seat and cast me a beseeching look.
    I wasn’t buying this act. Kato wasn’t as dumb as he appeared. He’d cut off the questioning expertly.
    “Kato, I don’t get it,” I told him. “Why do you think you need a lawyer? As far as I can tell, you have no liability whatsoever. If there’s more to it, please say so now and I won’t say another word until your lawyer arrives.”
    “No, no. It’s not that. It’s just that my lawyer told me I shouldn’t say anything unless he’s here.”
    When David finally showed up, he, too, lobbed Kato a few low and slow ones. No dice. Then, Kato’s lawyer, a young guy named William Genego, finally arrived and demanded that we stop talking to his client until he could read the witness report. David offered them his office as a conference room. It was only about 9:30; Kato didn’t need to get on the witness stand until early afternoon. But Genego said that wasn’t good enough. He’d need the whole weekend to go over the