“At his house? That just doesn’t sound familiar. You know, it’s not sounding familiar. Not at all.”

“So, it’s not sounding familiar because you don’t remember?”

“You know what? I have to say I don’t remember because I don’t remember. It doesn’t sound familiar.”

“Would you not remember something like that in your life?”

“Well, I would think, but—”

“I mean the drama involved in, you know, the other-woman type of thing?”

“Did you ever fight with her?” Stearns asked.

“Have we ever fought?”

“Yeah. Did you ever duke it out with her?”

“No! I don’t think so.”

“You would remember that, right?” said Stearns. “That would be pretty—”

“Yeah, I would think so. Like I said, honestly, it just doesn’t sound familiar. I mean, what are they saying? So I fought with her, so . . . I must have killed her? I mean, come on.”

Here she had conceded the possibility that she had fought with Sherri Rasmussen. She had begun by pretending that she could not even remember the woman’s name. But she clung to the claim that it was all too distant to recall. “That just sounds crazy to me,” she said.

“O.K., well, this case, you know, this occurred in ’86, right?” said Jaramillo. “The detectives processed the scene, things of that nature. They did fingerprints and all that stuff. You know, the standard things. You’ve been doing this longer than I have.”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve got 26 years on, going on 26.”

“But, you know, they processed everything. They did the best they could at that time, and they looked at a lot of people and different things in this case.”

Lazarus caught his drift.

“If you guys are claiming that I’m a suspect, then I’ve got a problem with that, O.K.?” she said, her tone changing sharply. She was finished with the collegiality. “So, if you’re doing this as an interrogation and you’re saying, Hey, I’m a suspect, now I’ve got a problem. You know? Now you’re accusing me of this? Is that what you’re saying?”

“We’re trying to figure out what happened, Stephanie,” said Stearns.

“Well, you know, I’m just saying. Do I need to get a lawyer? Are you accusing me of this?”

“You don’t have to. You’re here of your own free will.”

“I know, but I mean—”

“You’re not under arrest. You can walk out,” said Jaramillo.

“You can leave whenever you’d like,” said Stearns.

She did not leave.

“Now, what we’d like to do is . . . If we asked you for a DNA swab, would you be willing to give us one?,” Jaramillo asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Because now I’m thinking I’m probably going to need to talk to a lawyer.” Lazarus grew indignant. “I know how this stuff works—don’t get me wrong. You’re right. I have been doing this a long time. I wish I had been recording this because now it sounds like all these people saying I was fighting with her. Now you sound like you are trying to, you know . . . I’ve been doing this a long time, O.K., and now it all sounds like you’re trying to pin something on me. I got that sense.”

“You know it as well as we do. Our job is to identify and eliminate suspects.”

“I just can’t even believe it,” she said eventually, muttering to herself, and then looking back up at Jaramillo. “I mean, I’m shocked. I’m really shocked that someone would be saying that I did this. We had a fight so I went and killed her? I mean, come on.”

She stood up abruptly, thanked the detectives for giving her “the courtesy” of discussing the matter with her, and walked out of the interview room, apparently believing that she really was free to go. She got as far as the hallway, where she was formally arrested and handcuffed.

She kept repeating, “This is crazy. This is absolutely insane.”

Jaramillo read her the Miranda rights.

XII.

In March 2012, Stephanie Lazarus was convicted of the murder of Sherri Rasmussen. She was sentenced to 27 years. The Rasmussens have sued both Lazarus personally and the L.A.P.D. A preliminary ruling that the department is immune to lawsuits of this type is on appeal. According to Detective Stearns, a re-investigation by the department did not find evidence of an internal cover-up. The missing evidence from the case file means that a piece of the mystery remains unsolved.

FROM THE ARCHIVE