The Run of His Life: The People v. O. J. Simpson by Jeffrey Toobin

time was this again that you parked the Bronco?”
    “Eight-something, maybe. He hadn’t done a Jacuzzi, we had … went and got a burger, and I’d come home and kind of leisurely got ready to go. I mean, we’d done a few things.”
    Neither detective asked anything about this trip for a burger. Where exactly did they go? What time did they go? Who saw them? Did he use the cellular phone again that night?
    Instead the detectives pursued a new subject: “How did you get the injury on your hand?”
    “I don’t know,” Simpson replied. “The first time, when I was in Chicago and all, but at the house I was just running around.”
    “How did you do it in Chicago?” Vannatter asked.
    “I broke a glass. One of you guys had just called me, and I was in the bathroom, and I just kind of went bonkers for a little bit.”
    “Is that how you cut it?”
    “Mmm, it was cut before, but I think I just opened it again. I’m not sure.”
    Lange asked, “Do you recall bleeding at all in your truck, in the Bronco?”
    “I recall bleeding at my house, and then I went to the Bronco. The last thing I did before I left, when I was rushing, was went andgot my phone out of the Bronco.” Lange asked where the phone was now. Simpson told him, but there is no evidence that the detectives ever examined it.
    “So do you recall bleeding at all?”
    “Yeah, I mean, I knew I was bleeding, but it was no big deal. I bleed all the time. I play golf and stuff, so there’s always something, nicks and stuff here and there.” Lange asked where Simpson had gotten the Band-Aid he was wearing on his left middle finger. “Actually, I asked the girl this morning for it.”
    “And she got it?”
    “Yeah,” Simpson continued. “ ’Cause last night with Kato, when I was leaving, he was saying something to me, and I was rushing to get my phone, and I put a little thing on it, and it stopped.”
    The detectives never returned to the subject of the cut on his left hand, even though Simpson had not answered the most basic question about it: How had he first injured his hand? Again, the detectives changed the topic. They established that O.J.’s maid, Gigi, had access to the Bronco; that he had not argued with Nicole at the recital; and that he had worn black pants and Reebok tennis shoes the previous night. (Simpson said he left these clothes back at the house; the detectives did not even ask where, precisely—in the laundry? on a coat hanger?—Simpson had put them. They were never found, and Simpson’s lawyers never produced them, either.)
    Finally, Vannatter said, “O.J., we’ve got sort of a problem.”
    “Mmm-hmm.”
    “We’ve got some blood on and in your car, we’ve got some blood at your house, and sort of a problem.”
    “Well, take my blood test,” Simpson volunteered.
    “Well, we’d like to do that,” Lange responded. “We’ve got, of course, the cut on your finger that you aren’t real clear on. Do you recall having that cut on your finger the last time you were at Nicole’s house?”
    No, Simpson said. “It was last night.… Somewhere when I was rushing to get out of my house.”
    Vannatter, in effect, just threw up his hands and asked, “What do you think happened? Do you have any idea?”
    “I have no idea, man. You guys haven’t told me anything. I have no idea. When you said to my daughter, who said something to metoday, that somebody else might have been involved, I have absolutely no idea what happened. I don’t know how, why, or what. But you guys haven’t told me anything. Every time I ask you guys, you say you’re going to tell me in a bit.”
    “Understand,” Lange said a few moments later, “the reason we’re talking to you is because you’re the ex-husband.…”
    “I know I’m the number one target, and now you tell me I’ve got blood all over the place.”
    “Well,” Lange said, “there’s blood at your house in the driveway, and we’ve got a search warrant, and we’re going to go