Resurrection Walk

14

Bosch could feel the isotope moving in him, coursing coldly through his veins, over the shoulder and across his chest like a broken-dam flood. He tried to concentrate on the open file in front of him. Edward Coldwell, fifty-seven, convicted of killing a business partner four years before, fresh out of appeals and asking the Lincoln Lawyer to work a miracle in his name.

Bosch was only halfway through the file he’d put together with case documents from the court archives. Coldwell had gone to trial and the jury had believed the evidence against him over his denials. Now it was up to Bosch to determine if the case was worthy of the Lincoln Lawyer’s time and efforts.

Bosch had decided to do the deep dive into Coldwell’s case solely on the basis of the letter the convicted murderer had sent to Haller. The majority of requests for Haller’s legal expertise came with repeated claims of innocence and allegations of prosecutorial abuse and evidence missed or improperly dismissed. Coldwell’s letter had its fair share of that but it also contained what seemed to be a sincere plea to reveal the real killer and stop him from killing someone else. Bosch had not seen that in the other requests he’d reviewed and it struck a chord. In his forty-plus-year career of working murder cases, he had been motivated in part by the same sentiment — that if he could catch the killer, he would save another victim and another family from destruction down the line.

The case had been handled by the Los Angeles Police Department. The lead detective had been a solid investigator named Gusto Garcia, whom Bosch knew and respected. He was one of the old bulls in the Homicide Special Unit who had been there before Bosch joined the unit and was still there when he left. When Bosch saw Garcia’s name on the author line of the first case summary, he almost stopped his review there. He didn’t think Garcia would have blown the case — that is, sent an innocent man to prison for a murder he didn’t commit. But the file was all he had brought with him to read and he probably had a half hour or more before he’d be released by the research team.

So he kept reading. Garcia had kept a neat and lengthy chronological record of the investigation and that made it an enjoyable read for someone of Bosch’s experience. But page after page, he saw nothing amiss. No lead unfollowed, no step not taken, no interview skipped. In Coldwell’s initial letter to Mickey Haller, he’d claimed he’d been set up to take the fall for the murder of Spiro Apodaca, the man whose Silver Lake restaurant Coldwell had invested in. According to the reports and evidence Bosch had already gotten through, the two had a falling-out over what Apodaca had done with that investment and it had led to murder. Coldwell had been convicted largely on the strength of testimony from the hit man he had allegedly contracted to kill Apodaca. The killer for hire, John Mullin, had been identified and arrested thanks to Garcia’s good work and he’d elected to make a deal with prosecutors to testify against the man who’d hired him for the hit in exchange for leniency on his sentence.

As far as Bosch could see, the only possible way that Coldwell could be innocent was if Mullin had lied about who hired him to kill Apodaca. The file Bosch had had copied in the archives contained a transcript of Mullin’s trial testimony. Bosch had yet to do an exhaustive look but he’d skimmed it and seen that Mullin was battered during questioning by Coldwell’s defense attorney but did not change his story: Coldwell had reached out to him through an intermediary and hired him to kill Apodaca for $25,000 in cash up front and an equal amount upon completion of the job. In testimony, Mullin said Coldwell stiffed him on the second payment, which explained his readiness to testify against him.

Bosch was engrossed in a lengthy entry in the chrono about Garcia and his partner running down how Coldwell accumulated the cash he’d allegedly paid to Mullin. It involved cashing checks and making ATM withdrawals in small amounts over several weeks until it finally added up to $25,000. The amounts were listed in a column in the chrono entry. Bosch was going over the math, so he didn’t look up when the door to his room was opened. He assumed it was the NMT coming to check his IV bag.

“Hi, Dad.”

Bosch looked up and saw his daughter. She was in tight-fitting workout clothes and Nikes.

“Mads, how’d you get in here?” he said. “I don’t think it’s safe.”

“They told me it was fine,” Maddie said. “Said I could just walk back.”

“You sure? The NMT said that?”

“The nurse up front. What is an NMT?”

“Nuclear medicine technician. She’s the one who sticks the needle in, hangs the bag, starts the process. But I think she wears a lead vest when she comes in here,” Bosch said.

“Probably because she’s exposed all the time,” Maddie said. “Or she wants to have babies.”

“She’s at least sixty years old.”

“Oh. Well, I’m not going to stay that long. I just wanted to come at least one time to see what they’re doing to you. And to drive you home.”

“I can take an Uber. That’s what I usually do. I still don’t think you should be in here. And we shouldn’t share a car. You might want to have babies someday.”

“Dad, let me do this, okay?”

“Okay, okay. Thank you for coming. We’ll ask the doctor if it’s all right.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

She pointed to the IV bag.

“So that’s the stuff,” she said. “What exactly is in it?”

“That’s just saline,” Bosch said. “It goes from there to the radio-active isotope, which then goes into me. Supposedly they put enough in to kill the cancer but not enough to kill the patient — me. That’s the trick.”

Maddie seemed hesitant in her response, but then she blurted out the key question.

“Do they know if it’s working?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Bosch said. “This is my last dose and then in a couple months they’ll run some tests and see what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry, Dad, to make you go through this. I know you didn’t... really want to.”

“No, it was my call. And look, if I can stick around a little longer, I get to watch you become the cop you will be, and I may even get some good work done too.”

He gestured to the side table and the file he had been reading.

“Is that one of the innocence-project cases?” she asked.

“Yes,” Bosch said. “But you can’t call it that or the real Innocence Project may take offense.”

“Got it. So what do you call it, then?”

“Good question. I don’t know if Mickey has a name for it yet.”

“What’s the case you have there?”

“Guy convicted of hiring a hit man to take out his business partner. Only he says he didn’t hire him. Somebody else did. Problem is, the hit man testified against him at trial.”

“So why are you looking at it?”

“I don’t know, really. Something about his letter to Mickey struck me as worth a look. But maybe I was fooled. I got the whole file out of court archives and I’ll read it through and then decide if it’s worth pursuing further. I mean, what else am I going to do sitting here? Play video games on my phone?”

“That’ll be the day. What about the other case? The one with the woman in...”

“Chino? Mickey’s going to file for a habeas hearing and we’re getting our ducks in a row for that. There are still a lot of holes to fill. Mickey’s investigator Cisco just located a key witness I’ll need to go talk to.”

Maddie pointed to the IV bag again.

“But this will knock you down for a few days, won’t it?”

“Maybe a day. I’m not sure. They’ve been increasing the dose each time, so, yeah, it’ll put me on my back for a bit. At least the rest of the day.”

“You have to quit working for Mickey and concentrate on your health. Be all in on this.”

“Look, I’ll be fine in—”

“I’m serious, Dad. Your health has to come first.”

“But I think doing this work and being engaged is part of the whole picture, you know? I feel good when I’m doing this stuff. Otherwise I feel useless and I get depressed.”

“I’m just saying you need to take it easy. If this treatment works, then you can go back to these cases. I mean, these people aren’t going any—”

She cut herself off when the door opened and a man wearing a light blue lab coat entered. He had a trim build, eyeglasses, and thinning hair, but he looked to be no older than thirty. He didn’t appear to be wearing a lead vest under his lab coat.

“Oh, didn’t know you had a visitor, Harry,” he said.

“My daughter, Maddie,” Bosch said. “She’s going to drive me home if you say she’s safe doing that.”

The man held his hand out to Maddie.

“Austin Ferras,” he said. “Your dad’s doctor.”

“Oh,” Maddie said.

“Is something wrong?” Ferras said. “I can come back.”

“No, nothing’s wrong,” Maddie said. “I just... well, I guess I was expecting someone a bit older.”

“I get that all the time,” Ferras said. “But don’t worry, your dad is in good hands. He’s got me and a lot of people watching over him. And you’re safe to drive him. Harry may be ornery but he’s not particularly radioactive.”

Ferras turned to Bosch.

“How do you feel today, Harry?”

“Bored,” Bosch said.

Ferras stepped over to the IV pole and inspected the bag. He reached up and flicked it with a finger.

“Just about done here,” he said. “I’ll get Gloria in to disconnect and then you’ll be on your way in a bit.”

There was a clipboard in a pocket attached to the pole. Ferras pulled it out and checked the notations made by the NMT. He spoke while reading.

“So, side effects?” he asked.

“Uh, the usual,” Bosch said. “Mild nausea. Feels like I’m going to throw up but I never do. Haven’t tried to stand since I got here, but I’m sure that will be an adventure.”

“Vertigo — yes, a fairly common side effect. It shouldn’t last long but we’ll want you to stay until we’re sure you’re okay to go. How’s the tinnitus?”

“Still there when I think about it or when it gets mentioned.”

“Sorry, Harry, but I have to ask.”

“If it’s all right with you, I want to go as soon as I get detached. I’m not driving, and Maddie will get me home.”

Ferras looked to Maddie for confirmation.

“I’ll get him home,” she said.

“All right, then,” Ferras said.

Ferras wrote something on the clipboard and returned it to its pocket. He turned to go.

“Nice to meet you, Maddie,” he said. “Take care of him.”

“I will,” Maddie said. “But before you go... I’m sure you have learned over the past weeks that my dad is not A-plus on communication skills. Can you tell me in layman’s terms what you’re doing to him and what this clinical trial is all about? He hasn’t really told me anything—”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Bosch interjected.

“Happy to,” Ferras said. “As you probably know, your father’s cancer is in his bone marrow. What we’re doing here in the trial is taking a medium that has proved to be beneficial in the treatment of other cancers and trying it on his specific cancer.”

“Medium?” Maddie asked. “What does that mean?”

“It’s the isotope,” Ferras said. “Technically, it’s called lutetium one-seventy-seven. It’s been used successfully in recent years to treat prostate and other cancers. So our study and clinical trial seeks to determine if Lu one-seventy-seven therapy can achieve the same positive results with Harry’s cancer. We’ll know the results soon.”

“And how do you measure results?” Maddie asked.

“Well, in four to six weeks, we’ll bring Harry back to do a biopsy,” Ferras said. “He will definitely need a ride home from that, and the results will tell us where we stand.”

“What kind of biopsy?” Maddie asked.

“We’ll go into the bone and draw marrow to get the truest measure,” Ferras said. “But it’s invasive, and I have to say there will be discomfort. We need to go into one of the bigger bones for this, so we’ll go into the hip.”

“Can we stop talking about this?” Bosch said. “It’s not what I want to think about right now.”

“Sorry, Harry,” Ferras said again.

“One last question,” Maddie said. “After you do the biopsy, how long until you know the result?”

“Uh, not too long,” Ferras said. “Depending on what we see, we might do a second biopsy three months later.”

Maddie turned and looked pointedly at Bosch.

“You need to include me,” she said. “I want to know.”

Bosch held up his hands in surrender.

“I promise,” he said.

“I’ve heard that before,” she said.

On the ride home Bosch’s daughter again pressed the point about communications.

“Dad, really, you have to let me know what you know,” she said. “You’re not in this alone. I don’t want you to feel that you are.”

“I get it, I get it,” Bosch said. “I’ll—”

He felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw it was a call from Jennifer Aronson. He guessed it was going to be another plea for his involvement in her nephew’s case. He didn’t want to take the call but knew that he should. He also knew he had just stopped talking to his daughter in the middle of a sentence.

“When I know something, you’ll know something,” he said. “Do you mind if I take this call? It’ll be quick.”

“Might as well,” Maddie said. “You clearly don’t want to talk about your health with me.”

Rather than argue, Bosch put his finger on the phone screen and accepted the call.

“Jennifer,” he said. “I’m kind of in the middle of something, can I—”

“That’s all right,” she cut in. “I just wanted to say a big thank-you. The DA nol-prossed Anthony’s case. I’m waiting for him now at Sylmar.”

It meant the district attorney’s office had declined to prosecute the case.

“Wow, that’s good,” Bosch said.

“And all because of you, Harry,” Aronson said. “I brought up the whole scenario that you spun — and don’t worry, I never used your name. I asked if the officer was checked for gunshot residue and they understood how I was going to play it if it went to trial, especially if they bumped Anthony to adult status and the case was in open court. They folded like a paper napkin, Harry, and Anthony has you to thank.”

“Uh, well, I’m glad it worked out. But he should thank you. You made his case to the prosecutor.”

“Following your interpretation of the evidence.”

“Well...”

Bosch didn’t know what to say and wasn’t sure he wanted his daughter the cop overhearing this discussion.

“I know you’re busy,” Aronson said. “I’ll let you go. I just wanted you to know what had happened and to say thanks from both Anthony and me.”

“Okay, well, glad it worked out,” Bosch said.

“See you soon, Harry.”

“Yes.”

He clicked off and put the phone back in his pocket.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Who was that?” Maddie said. “Sounded like a woman.”

“Mickey’s associate Jennifer. It was about one of her cases.”

“Sounded like it was one of your cases.”

“I looked at a couple reports. No big deal.”

Bosch was worried that Maddie would keep asking questions about the case and eventually realize he had worked on the defense of someone accused of shooting an LAPD officer. But luckily, Maddie changed the subject.

“Do you know why Mickey isn’t bringing Hayley into the firm once she passes the bar?” she asked, referring to her cousin, Haller’s daughter.

“Supposedly she doesn’t want to do criminal work,” Bosch said. “I think he said she wants to specialize in environmental law. You’re closer to her than me. Did you two talk about it?”

“We haven’t talked in a while. I always thought that with me following in your footsteps, she might end up following in his.”

Bosch thought for a moment before responding. Maddie turned off Cahuenga onto Woodrow Wilson and started the steep ascent to his house.

“You’re not following in my footsteps, Mads. You’ll be your own cop. You’ll make your own path.”

“I know that, but it’s about the badge. We both put on the badge, you know. I’m proud of that, Dad.”

“I’m glad. Me too. And by the way, Mickey saw the picture I have of you with the shiner. He had my phone and pulled it up by mistake. Thought you should know in case you hear from him about it.”

“Well, I hope you told him he should have seen the other guy.”

“I should have. Probably one of his clients.”

They both laughed but his sarcasm about Haller was apparently not lost on Maddie.

“Dad, I know Mickey got you into the program at UCLA, but it doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life working cases for him.”

“I know. I won’t. But there’s something...”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But like this case we’re looking at... if this woman has spent five years in prison for something she didn’t do, then getting her out... it’s like that saying about it being better for a hundred guilty people to go free than for one innocent person to suffer in prison. I guess I’m saying that this could make it all worth it.”

“If she’s innocent.”

“Yeah, the big if.”

Maddie pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Bosch’s house.

“You want to come in?” Bosch asked. “I got a Miles Davis triple album from the Third Man Vault. Live at the Fillmore East in 1970. The late great Wayne Shorter’s on the sax. I’m going to give it a listen.”

At Christmas, she had gifted Bosch with a subscription to the distributor of rare vinyl out of Nashville.

“No, but thanks,” Maddie said. “I think I’m going over to the reservoir for a run. Will you be okay?”

“Of course. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride and for being there today. It means a lot.”

“Anytime, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Bosch got out and decided to enter his house through the carport. As he unlocked the side door to the kitchen, he thought about how empty his life would feel without the connection to his daughter. It was more than the shared experience of police work. It was sacred. She was his legacy. He knew that she was what made everything he did seem worth it.

15

It was Monday before Bosch felt steady enough on his feet and mentally focused enough to return to the Lucinda Sanz case. Early on he had put together a lengthy to-do list but there had been no bigger priority than finding and interviewing the victim’s girlfriend, Matilda “Matty” Landas. Bosch had exhausted all the means of locating her that were available to a man without a badge and the access that came with it. Having learned his lesson in asking Renée Ballard to do something that could get her disciplined or even fired, he refrained from calling on her or his daughter for help. When he reported his failure, Haller said he would put his other investigator on the quest for Matilda.

And Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski came through, locating the woman who had previously been known as Matilda Landas in less than a day. He didn’t pay off a cop to make a computer run and he didn’t have to use his size and muscles to intimidate anyone. Because she had not been found through voter registration, property records, or utility records, Cisco had a hunch that she had changed her name, possibly through marriage but also possibly out of fear resulting from the Sanz case. When he found no records substantiating this in Los Angeles County, he hopped on his Harley and headed to San Bernardino County, where public birth records showed that Landas had been born in the town of Hesperia. Legally changing a name in California required petitioning a court and publishing the petition in a local newspaper. If Landas was operating out of fear, it was unlikely that she would advertise her plan to change her identity in the L.A. area. Cisco thought she would go to her hometown, where she might even know a lawyer who could help with her legal task. The Hesperian was a weekly newspaper that didn’t offer access to online archives. So he went to the Hesperian offices, and after less than an hour combing through hard copies of old editions, he found the public notice of Matilda Landas’s intent to change her legal name to Madison Landon. He then went to the courthouse in Victorville and confirmed that a court order had been issued three weeks later. It appeared that Matty had become Maddy.

The name change had been made seven months after Roberto Sanz was murdered.

Once Cisco had the name Madison Landon, he returned to L.A. and ran it through the usual means of tracing an individual. He was able to learn that Landon was a Democrat, had a mortgage on a home in South Pasadena, and had a matching address on her driver’s license.

Cisco passed this information to Bosch and now it was time to talk to her. He called Cisco, who’d kept a loose surveillance on Landon while Bosch was on the mend.

“I’m heading out,” he said. “Where is she?”

“She’s in a bookstore,” Cisco said. “Vroman’s. You know it?”

“Yes, on Colorado Boulevard.”

“She’s parked in the back lot. She’s only been in there a few minutes.”

“I’m probably a half hour out. Call me back if she leaves.”

“Will do. But I’m happy to take the interview if you’re not feeling up to it.”

“I’m fine. Mickey wants me to do it. In case I have to testify at the hearing.”

“Got it. Well, I’m here.”

“On the bike?”

“No, I don’t do surveillance on the bike. Too conspicuous. I’m in Lorna’s Tesla.”

“Where do I meet you?”

“You’re in that old Cherokee, right?”

“Yeah, old, but new to me.”

“Just pull in and park at Vroman’s. I’ll see you.”

“On my way.”

A half hour later Bosch was in the bookstore’s back lot. He parked, and by the time he killed the engine and got out, Cisco was waiting for him behind the Cherokee.

“You know what she looks like?” Cisco asked.

“Just from the driver’s license you came up with,” Bosch said.

“She looks different now. Dyed her hair, wears glasses.”

“Huh.”

Cisco held up his phone and showed Bosch a photo of a woman with blond hair and black-framed glasses walking across the parking lot they were standing in. He had obviously gotten the shot earlier.

“That’s her?” Bosch asked.

“No, I just took this for laughs,” Cisco said.

“Right, sorry. Look, if you want to come in with me, we can do this together. I know Mickey said he—”

“No, you do it. I might scare her off.”

Bosch nodded. It was a reasonable concern. He knew that Haller used Cisco when he wanted an element of intimidation or needed protection himself. Finessing a reluctant witness into talking, one who might have gone so far as to change her name and looks as a protective measure, was not in his wheelhouse.

“Okay, then,” Bosch said. “Here goes. Text me that photo, would you?”

“Will do,” Cisco said. “Good luck.”

Bosch headed to the bookstore, going down a set of steps to a sidewalk where the handprints of various authors had been immortalized in concrete. He entered and nodded to a woman at the checkout counter to his left. The place was huge and on two levels. It also had an exit on the Colorado Boulevard side of the building. Bosch quickly realized he might have an issue finding Landon. It was possible that she was not even in the store and had simply used its parking lot, passed through like a customer, and gone on to any of the nearby shops and restaurants that lined Colorado. It had been almost an hour since Cisco watched her enter. That seemed to Bosch like a long time to spend browsing in a bookstore.

He decided to start on the second floor and quickly search the store before raising an alarm with Cisco. He went up a wide set of stairs in the center and realized that he would not be able to scan the second level from one position. The bookshelves were too high. He moved along the main aisle, looking right and left down each row of shelving. It took him five minutes to cover the entire second level and another five to do the search again. There was no sign of Madison Landon.

He went down the steps to search the first level but spotted the woman from Cisco’s photograph in line at the register, holding a stack of books. Bosch indiscriminately grabbed a book off a bestsellers’ table and got into the checkout line behind Madison Landon.

When he got there, he read the spines of the books she was holding in both hands. They were all books about raising a child. Landon did not appear to be pregnant but judging from the titles, it looked like she was getting ready for motherhood. One of the books was Raising Your Child Alone.

“I raised a child alone,” Bosch said.

Landon turned to look at him. She smiled but not in a way that invited further comment on her reading choices.

“When she was a teenager,” Bosch said. “It’s a tough job.”

She looked at him again.

“And how did she turn out?” she asked.

“Pretty great,” Bosch said. “She went into law enforcement.”

“Then you must worry about her.”

“All the time.”

Landon’s eyes dropped to the book Bosch was holding.

“I loved that book,” she said.

Bosch looked down to see what he had grabbed. It was Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. He had never heard of it. He had not been in a bookstore since before the pandemic.

“I heard it was good,” he said. “I’ll give it a try and then give it to my daughter.”

“She’ll like it,” Landon said. “I’m not so sure about you.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s about three people but it’s also about developing video games and the creativity it involves.”

“Hmm. Well, sounds like something at least Maddie will like.”

He noticed that Landon smiled at the mention of the name but did not reveal that it was also her own name.

“Why don’t you go ahead of me,” she said. “I have a lot here and you just have the one.”

“You sure?” Bosch said. “I don’t mind—”

“No, go ahead, because I’m also going to ask them to order a book for me.”

“Thank you. That’s very nice of you.”

She stepped back and he moved up in the queue just as the customer ahead finished her purchase and left. Bosch put the book down on the counter, and the cashier scanned it. He paid with cash. He turned back to Landon, held up the book, and said, “Thanks.”

“I hope she likes it,” Landon said.

Bosch exited and then took a position leaning against a wall by the stairs up to the parking lot. He opened the book he had just bought and started reading. A few minutes later, Landon came out of the store with a bag containing all her purchases. Bosch looked up from his book and Landon quickly turned away, probably thinking he was going to make an awkward attempt at some sort of pickup.

“You’re Maddy, right?” he said.

Landon stopped in her tracks at the foot of the stairs.

“What?” she said.

“Or is it Madison?” Bosch asked.

He pushed off the wall and closed the book.

“Who are you?” Landon said. “What do you want?”

“I’m a guy trying to get an innocent woman out of prison,” Bosch said. “So she can raise her child.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please leave me alone.” She turned back to the stairway.

“You know what and who I’m talking about,” Bosch said. “And why I can’t leave you alone.”

She stopped. Bosch watched her eyes dart around, looking for an escape route.

“Roberto Sanz,” he said. “You changed your name, moved away. I want to know why.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Landon said coldly.

“I understand that. But if you don’t talk to me, there will be a subpoena, and a judge will make you talk to me. Then it could go public. If you talk to me now, I can try to keep you out of it down the line. Your name, where you live — none of it should have to come out.”

She brought her free hand up and held it across her eyes.

“You’re putting me in danger,” she said. “Don’t you see that?”

“Danger from who?” Bosch asked.

“Them.”

Bosch was flying in the dark without instrumentation. He was simply following his instincts in what he had said so far. But Landon’s reactions here told him that he was clearly on the right path.

“The Cucos?” he asked. “Is that who you mean? We can protect you from them.”

The mere mention of the sheriff’s clique seemed to send a shudder through her body.

Bosch had been careful to keep his distance. But now he casually stepped closer.

“I can see to it that you have no part in what’s about to go down,” he said. “No one will ever know your new name or where you are. But you have to help me.”

“You found me,” Landon said. “They can find me.”

“They, whoever they are, won’t even know. This is just you and me. But you need to talk to me about the day Roberto got shot — what was going on, what he was into.”

“Have you talked to Agent MacIsaac?”

“Not yet. But I will. When I know more from you.”

Bosch didn’t recognize the name but he didn’t want to let Landon know that. It might undercut her confidence in the promise he had just made. But her calling MacIsaac an agent raised an immediate flag. It indicated that MacIsaac was a fed, which meant that any number of agencies in the federal sandbox could have been involved with Roberto Sanz. Even if Landon refused to cooperate, he now had a new lead to pursue.

“I have to think about this,” Landon said.

“Why?” Bosch said. “For how long?”

“Just give me today,” she said. “Give me a number and I’ll call you in the morning.”

Bosch knew better than to let a potential witness go off to think about things. Fears could multiply, legal advisers could be pulled into the decision. You never let a fish off the hook.

“Can we just talk now, off the record?” Bosch said. “I won’t record it. I won’t even take notes. I need to know about that day. A woman who may be innocent — a mother — is in prison. For her, every single day, every hour, is a nightmare. You knew Eric, her son. She needs to be with him to raise him right.”

“But I followed the case and she pleaded guilty,” Landon said. “Now she says she’s innocent?”

“She pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of manslaughter. Because she had to risk life imprisonment in a trial.”

Landon nodded as though she understood Lucinda Sanz’s plight.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get this over with. Where?”

“We can sit in my car,” Bosch said. “Or yours. Or find a coffee shop to sit in.”

“My car. I don’t want to do this in public.”

“Then your car it is.”

16

Haller didn’t return the call until Bosch was driving up Woodrow Wilson to his house, where he planned to rest. The flow of adrenaline that had kicked in once Madison Landon started talking about the day Roberto Sanz was murdered had tapered off and left him exhausted. Before leaving the parking lot at Vroman’s, he had texted Cisco to thank him once again for finding Landon and then he’d put in the call to Haller. Forty minutes later, Bosch was almost home and ready to go horizontal for an hour or so, when Haller called back.

“Sorry, was in court. What’s up?”

“Sanz was late bringing his son home to Lucinda because he was with the FBI.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“You there, Mick?”

“Yes, just digesting this. Who told you this, the girlfriend?”

“Yes. Off the record. She wants no part of this. She’s scared.”

“Of who?”

“The Cucos.”

“Who were the agents? Did you get any names?”

“One partial. Agent MacIsaac. It won’t be hard to get a full name and assignment. I’m going to start making calls once I get home.”

“This changes everything, you know.”

“How so?”

“MacIsaac won’t talk to you. I can pretty much guarantee that. And the feds routinely swat state court subpoenas away like Mookie Betts swats fastballs over the plate. Did the girlfriend — what’s her new name again?”

“Madison Landon.”

“Did Madison Landon know what the meeting with Agent MacIsaac was about?”

“No, she just knew it was serious. Sanz told her he was ‘jammed up’ on something — his words — and had to talk to the FBI. The only reason she knew the name MacIsaac was that she heard Sanz say it on a call when they were setting up the meeting that day.”

Haller went silent again. Bosch knew he was thinking of the possible legal scenarios this new information presented. He pulled the Cherokee into the carport of his house. He killed the engine but stayed seated, phone to his ear.

“So, what are you thinking?” he finally prompted.

“The FBI changes things,” Haller said. “I’m thinking I may need to find a way to get this into federal court without first showing our hand in state court.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Well, like I said, we’ll never get MacIsaac into superior court. But we have a good shot at getting him into federal court. The thing is, you’re supposed to exhaust all state appeals before you file in a U.S. district court. But if we go that route, they’ll see us coming a mile away. They’ll be locked and loaded, prepared for us. We don’t want MacIsaac knowing what’s coming when I say, ‘Agent MacIsaac, tell us about this conversation you had with Roberto Sanz a couple hours before his murder.’”

Now Bosch was silent as he considered the path they were on with Lucinda Sanz.

“I think we need to hold up on reaching out to MacIsaac,” Haller said.

“But we need to know why he was with Sanz the day he was killed,” Bosch countered.

“We do. But let’s circle around him a little bit and see what else we can find before we knock on the FBI’s door.”

“Not sure where else to circle.”

“That’s because you’re thinking like a cop and not a defense investigator.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that it’s a stacked deck. When you’re a cop or a prosecutor, you have the almighty power of the state behind you every step of the way. All the state’s resources and reach. On the defense side, it’s just you. It’s David and Goliath, and you’re David, baby. It’s why getting a win is so special. And so very rare.”

“I think that’s a little simplistic — especially with all the red tape and rules slanted in favor of the defendant — but I get the point. So if I’m laying low on the FBI, what do you want me doing instead?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something. Just give me a few days to figure how we deal with the feds. I need to talk to some people to see if we can make this jump to federal court.”

Still parked in the carport, Bosch stared straight ahead, thinking of possible next moves. He assumed that the FBI had something on Sanz and that was the reason for the clandestine meeting on a Sunday afternoon. Sanz was jammed up and MacIsaac was applying pressure for him to turn informant. Based on recent and very public history, the Bureau had been heavily focused at the time on corruption in the sheriff’s department, with a particular interest in the flourishing of deputy cliques there. Bosch didn’t need to talk to MacIsaac to know this.

The question was, what did the FBI have on Sanz that was more serious and actionable than him being in a clique, and had it led to his murder? Bosch knew that Haller didn’t need to have all the facts to carry out his duties. Most defense attorneys operated by the “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” creed. They needed to sow the seeds of doubt but didn’t necessarily have to believe in the doubts sown. But Bosch could not operate that way, even if he was working for a defense lawyer. He needed to get through the smoke to the fire. If there was a fire.

As his mind pushed through the smoke he came to realize what his next move would be. If he could not go directly to MacIsaac, he knew who he could take a run at.

As he pulled back his thousand-yard stare he realized he had been looking through the windshield at the door to the kitchen and hadn’t even noticed something.

It was three inches ajar.

“Are you there, Bosch?” Haller said. “Or did I lose you in the hills?”

“I’m here,” Bosch said. “But hold on a second.”

Bosch removed the key from the ignition and used it to unlock the glove compartment. He grabbed his gun and got out of the car, weapon in one hand, phone in the other. In a low voice he spoke to Haller.

“I just got home and my door’s open. Pretty sure I didn’t leave it that way.”

“Then hang up and call the cops.”

“I’m going to check it out first.”

“Harry, you’re not a cop. Let the cops check it out.”

“Just hold on.”

Bosch dropped the phone into his pocket without disconnecting. He approached the door with the gun in a two-handed grip and used the muzzle to push it all the way open. Standing still, he listened for a moment before entering but heard nothing. From his vantage point, he saw nothing amiss in the galley kitchen. He tried to recall how he had left that morning after getting the call from Cisco. He had been in a hurry, but he could conceive of no circumstance where he would have left the door open. He had lived in the house more than thirty years. Pulling the door closed until the lock clicked was automatic, pure muscle memory.

He took a step back into the carport to check whether he had missed seeing his daughter’s car parked on the street when he had pulled up to the house.

Maddie’s car was not there, and there were no other vehicles that drew Bosch’s suspicion. He turned back to the kitchen door and quietly entered the house again, holding the gun up at the ready. His most valuable tool now was his hearing but his left ear was afflicted with low-level tinnitus. He strained to hear any sound. He made the turn out of the kitchen and into the entry area by the front door. This gave him a view of the living room and dining area. He moved forward but noticed nothing unusual until he got into the living room and saw a record spinning on the turntable.

The tonearm was up; no music was playing. Bosch switched the player off and stared at the record until it stopped turning. It was the Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore East album he had last played days before. He knew he had left it on the platter, but he was sure he had turned off the player.

“Harry, what’s happening?”

Bosch heard Haller’s tinny voice coming from his pocket. He pulled out his phone and responded.

“So far nothing seems wrong. But somebody was here. And they wanted me to know it.”

“You sure?”

Bosch realized that someone had been smoking in the house. He hadn’t smoked in twenty years but he knew the smell that hung in the air in a closed space when someone recently had.

“I’m sure,” he said.

“Who?” Haller asked.

“I don’t know. Yet.”

“You need to call the cops. Get it on the record.”

“I’m not finished checking the house. Let me call you back.”

“Fine, but you need to call the—”

Bosch disconnected, dropped the phone in his pocket, and continued the sweep of the house. He checked the bedrooms and bathrooms but saw no further evidence of intrusion. He sat down on his bed. He thought about things and wondered again if it was possible that he had left the door open and the turntable spinning. Maybe the smell of a cigarette was a ghost memory of his own former addiction or a side effect of his medical treatment. He knew that short-term memory loss and a heightened or diminished sense of smell or taste were possible side effects of the therapy he was receiving.

Dr. Ferras had given Bosch his personal cell number, and Bosch thought about calling now. But he quickly dismissed the idea. What was Ferras going to say beyond what was already in the small print of the materials Bosch had signed? Forgetfulness was a possible side effect.

Bosch felt tired and old. And defeated. He put the gun on the side table. The pillow looked so inviting. He thought about calling his daughter to see if she had come by and left the door open. She didn’t smoke, as far as Bosch knew, but the man she was dating did. He decided he would do it later. He would also decide whether to call the police later. Right now he needed to rest.

He lay down and soon his dark thoughts about mortality slipped away and he was dreaming of himself as a younger man, moving through a tunnel with a dying flashlight.

17

It was a five-hour drive and Bosch left home in predawn darkness to get ahead of traffic and make it to the prison by 10 a.m., the start of visiting hours. He knew he was risking a ten-hour round trip and the waste of a whole day if Angel Acosta refused to see him. But he was riding on a hunch based on decades of experience in law enforcement and banking that a twenty-nine-year-old lifer would welcome any interruption or change of pace in a schedule that offered little of it for the next forty or fifty years. The trick would be getting him to open up and talk once they were face-to-face.

Along the way he burned through his whole playlist of favorite jazz recordings, from Cannonball Adderley to Joe Zawinul, finishing with Weather Report’s “Birdland,” Zawinul’s signature fusion composition, as he pulled into the visitors’ parking lot at Corcoran State Prison. The music had cleared his mind of the concerns he’d been carrying since arriving home to see his kitchen door open three days earlier. He had found himself in the strange position of hoping it had been an intruder and not the other option: the first indication of a slide into dementia. He had filed a police report but knew that it was the kind of crime that would receive little attention from the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division burglary unit. The officer who took the report was not convinced there had been a break-in, since Bosch could not say whether anything was taken. The officer did not bother to call a fingerprint technician to the house either. Bosch could not fault him for this, given his own uncertainty.

Bosch had been to the state prison at Corcoran many times as a badge-carrying detective, but this was his first time as a civilian. Finding Angel Acosta had not been as difficult as locating Madison Landon. Bosch had gone back to the digital archives of the L.A. Times and combed through all the follow-up stories on the shoot-out between Roberto Sanz and gang members at a Lancaster hamburger stand. One gangster was killed, one was wounded and arrested, and two got away. The one that was arrested was identified in subsequent stories as Angel Acosta. He had been shot once in the abdomen but recovered in the hospital ward at the county jail and a year after the shoot-out pleaded guilty to assaulting a law enforcement officer. To Bosch it looked like a sweetheart deal — three to five years for shooting at a sheriff’s deputy. On top of that Acosta wasn’t tagged with responsibility for his fellow gangbanger’s death. That was usually an add-on in gang cases when someone was killed in the commission of a crime. California prosecutors no longer followed this practice because of adverse appellate rulings, but six years ago it was still a routine enhancement slapped on the defendant. Why Acosta hadn’t faced it from his initial arrest was unclear.

The light sentence didn’t matter in the long run because Acosta was later convicted of murdering a fellow inmate. His new conviction carried a life sentence without parole. He had been moved to Corcoran, where it was likely he would be for the rest of his life.

Bosch wanted to talk to Acosta for a few reasons. He was suspicious about that first sentence and how Acosta got it. The newspaper accounts were short and didn’t mention his attorney or the prosecutor who’d handled the case. Added to this was the new information that Roberto Sanz had been talking to an Agent MacIsaac. Bosch knew that the Bureau investigation likely had to do with the wide-ranging probe of the cliques and corruption that had proliferated inside the sheriff’s department. Any focus on Sanz and his affiliation with the Cucos would have included a look at the shoot-out that had made Sanz a hero in the department. If Bosch could get Acosta talking, that was what he would ask about.

People making unscheduled visits had to fill out a form and then stand by in a waiting room while the inmate was asked if he would agree to the visit. There was no timetable. The corrections officer who Bosch gave the completed form to did not run back into the prison dorms with it to find Acosta. He simply put the form on top of a stack and told Bosch to make himself comfortable in the waiting room and listen for his name to be called.

Bosch waited almost two hours and then heard his name. Acosta had agreed to the visit. Bosch knew that was the easy part. The next — getting Acosta to talk to him — was the hard part.

He was led to a room where twenty stools and interview booths lined one side and a catwalk ran along the opposite one. A corrections officer walked a back-and-forth circuit watching over the booths.

Bosch was instructed to take booth seven. He sat down on a steel stool in front of a thick piece of scratched plexiglass with a telephone receiver on a side hook. He waited another ten minutes before a thin, wiry man in prison blues showed up on the other side of the glass. The man hesitated, then picked up the phone but didn’t sit down. Bosch picked up his phone. The next thirty seconds would determine if he’d wasted the day.

“You a cop?” Acosta said. “You look like a cop.”

“Used to be,” Bosch said. “Now I work for people like you.”

Acosta’s entire neck was collared in prison-ink tattoos that showed his allegiance to La Eme — the Mexican Mafia that controlled all Latino gangs in California prisons. He had one teardrop tattoo at the corner of his left eye, and his head and face were shaven. He stared at Bosch, curious about his answer. He slowly slid onto his stool.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“It was on the paper the guard showed you,” Bosch said. “My name’s Bosch. I’m a private investigator.”

“Okay, private investigator, no bullshit, what do you want?”

“I’m trying to get a woman named Lucinda Sanz out of prison. You know that name?”

“Can’t say I do and I don’t care.”

“She was married to the deputy who shot you six years ago. You remember now?”

“I remember she did a righteous thing, that lady, putting his ass in the ground. I heard about that. But what’s it got to do with me? I got a perfect alibi. When that shit went down, I was already in prison, thanks to him and his lying ass.”

“He was lying? Then how come you pled?”

“Let’s just say I had no choice, cabrón. I got nothing else to say.”

He took the phone away from his ear and reached out to hang it up. Bosch held up a finger as if to say One last question. Acosta brought the phone back to his ear.

“I don’t talk to cops or ex-cops, pendejo,” he said.

“That’s not what I heard,” Bosch said.

“Yeah, what did you hear?”

“That you talked to the FBI.”

Acosta’s eyes widened slightly for a moment.

“That’s bullshit,” he said. “I didn’t tell them shit.”

Acosta’s answer confirmed that the Bureau had come to him whether he had talked or not. Bosch’s hunch was looking good.

“Agent MacIsaac’s report says different,” he said. “It says you told him what really went down at Flip’s hamburger stand that day.”

Bosch was still working without a net. But he was staying with his hunch that the shoot-out at Flip’s had not happened the way the sheriff’s department publicly reported it. Based on what he knew so far about Roberto Sanz, he doubted there’d been any heroes that day at Flip’s.

“It was no ambush, was it?” he said.

Acosta shook his head. “I don’t talk to cops, I don’t talk to FBI, I don’t talk to pendejo private eyes.”

“You talked to MacIsaac and told him that the ambush wasn’t an ambush. It was really a meeting with a corrupt cop that went sideways. That’s how you got your sweetheart deal.”

Acosta took the phone away from his ear again, hesitated, and brought it back.

“‘Sweetheart deal’?” he said. “I’m in here for the rest of my fucking life.”

“But it wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Bosch said. “You were supposed to go away for a little while and get out after cooperating with the Bureau. But then Sanz got killed and that was the end of that. And then, of course, you did a prison hit for La Eme and that got you a teardrop and life without parole.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Maybe I don’t have the whole picture yet, but I will. I know you talked to MacIsaac and I know you got a deal from the feds.”

“You’re wrong. My lawyer got me that deal. Silver said I didn’t have to cooperate, and I didn’t. I just had to keep my mouth shut like I’m doing right fucking now.”

Bosch stared at Acosta for a long moment before responding. His hunch was paying off but not in any way he had expected.

“Your lawyer was Frank Silver?” he finally asked.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Acosta said. “So go talk to him and you’ll find out I’m no fucking snitch. I didn’t talk to MacIsaac or any of them.”

“But you talked to Silver, right? Your attorney. Everything you told him was confidential. You told him about Flip’s? That’s how he got the deal.”

“This is over, man. I didn’t talk to any of them and I’m not talking to you.”

Acosta abruptly hung up the phone, slamming it down on its hook so hard that the report in Bosch’s ear sounded like a gunshot. Acosta backed off his stool and was gone.

Bosch held steady for a long moment, reviewing in his mind what he had just heard. Attorney Frank Silver had represented Angel Acosta the same year he’d represented Lucinda Sanz. He tried to remember what Lucinda had said about how Silver had come to represent her. He had pushed his way onto the case, volunteering to take it off the public defender’s hands.

Bosch put the phone back on the hook and got up off the stool. He knew there were real coincidences on cases. He didn’t believe this was one of them.