BECAUSE THE NIGHT

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chamber click resounded like hollow thunder, snapping the slow motion sequence, sending everything topsy-turvy and breakneck fast. Suddenly Lloyd had the shotgun reversed and was slamming the butt into Havilland’s face over and over again, until a jagged section of his cheek was sheared off and blood started to seep from his ears. Then the speed diminished into a vertiginous absence of light, and from deep nowhere a beautiful voice called out, “Walk, Richard. Walk. ”

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The legal machinery took over, and for nine straight days, temporarily suspended from duty and held incommunicado at Parker Center, Lloyd watched the state of California and the City and County of Los Angeles bury Dr. John Havilland in an avalanche of felony indictments, a barrage of due process based on his ninety-four page arresting officer’s report and Havilland’s own written and taped memoirs. The first indictment was for the murder of Martin Bergen. The Malibu District Attorney expected it to be an open and shut case, because a highly respected veteran police officer had witnessed the killing, and because the defendant appeared to have no known relatives or friends likely to press embarrassing lawsuits against either Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins or the Los Angeles Police Department for their jurisdictional foul-up on the “arrest.”

Back-up charges were quick in coming, as federal agents investigating the Howard Christie murder moved in and seized everything at Havilland’s Century City office, Beverly Hills condominium, and Malibu house. His handwritten notes alone led to three indictments for first degree murder, handwriting experts having examined verified specimens of the Doctor’s script along with his diary notations stating that he had ordered Thomas Goff to “kill the proprietor of the liquor store on Sunset and the Hollywood Freeway as proof of your desire to move beyond your beyond.” Identical match ups, three murder one indictments and an indictment for criminal conspiracy resulting.

The agents also found the deed to a storage garage in East Los Angeles, 420

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and upon checking it out discovered a yellow Toyota sedan and the decomposed body of Thomas Goff. A right index print belonging to John Havilland was found on the car’s dashboard. The District Attorney of the City of Los Angeles ordered yet another murder indictment. The federal officers could find no concrete evidence linking Havilland to the murder of Howard Christie, and gave up.

Four days into his forced sequestering, Captain Fred Gaffaney visited Lloyd at his typewriter storage room/domicile and told him that any report that he submitted explaining Martin Bergen’s presence at the Malibu house would be accepted if he agreed to edit out all mention of former officer Jacob Herzog and all mention of the stolen L.A.P.D. files and the security firms and their files. The various prosecutors thus far involved in the case had read his ninety-four page epic and considered it “overly candid” and

“potentially embarrassing to the prosecution.” Lloyd agreed. Gaffaney smiled and told him it was a wise move—he would have been summarily shitcanned from the Department had he refused. Before he left, Gaffaney added that he would be appearing before the grand jury in two days. Was there any information he had held back? Lloyd lied and said, “No.”

The worshippers of John Havilland were taken into custody, questioned and released after signing depositions elaborating their relationships with

“Doctor John.” A free-lance “deprogrammer” of religious cult captives was there to aid the district attorneys and D.A.’s investigators in their interrogations. The combined coercion worked four out of five times, resulting in detailed accounts of brainwashing, dope experimentation, and sexual debasement. Only William Nagler could not be convinced to talk. He screamed his mantra and ranted about “horror movies” and was ultimately released to the care of his parents, who admitted him to an expensive private sanitarium. The D.A.s were pleased overall with their questionings; the depositions would be juicy fodder for the grand jury, and they would spare the sad brainwashees the grief of a courtroom appearance. Lloyd was not spared that grief. He spoke for four straight hours, almost verbatim from his new arrest report, omitting all mention of Herzog, the security files and Martin Bergen’s outsized role in his investigation. He explained Bergen’s presence at the death house as a simple case of a bulldog reporter hot on a story. When Lloyd concluded his own story, he did not mention Richard Oldfield or Linda Wilhite and their presences at the house, or how he happened to be unconscious when the first wave of sheriff’s deputies arrived on the scene. When he walked back to the witness