Resurrection Walk

21

Bosch was lying chest down, his left cheek on the dry scrub grass that had sprouted in the yard after the torrential rains of last winter. It was now October and the grass had dried to a yellow-brown over the summer months. Each blade was crisp and felt like a knife’s edge against his skin. He heard the woman’s voice from behind him.

“Okay, both hands at your sides, palms up,” she said. “There was no effort to break his fall. He was essentially dead before he hit the ground.”

Bosch adjusted his hands accordingly.

“Like that?” he asked.

“Uh, move your right about four inches farther out from your body,” she said. “No, left. Sorry, I meant your left hand four inches farther out.”

Bosch adjusted.

“Perfect,” she said.

She was Shami Arslanian, a forensics expert Mickey Haller had brought out from New York. The hearing on the Lucinda Sanz habeas petition was a week away and Arslanian had come out to prep for her presentation and testimony. Bosch had brought her to the scene of the crime, the front lawn where Roberto Sanz had been fatally shot twice in the back. She had determined that Bosch was within an inch of Sanz’s height and twenty pounds of his weight, so Bosch would be Sanz’s stand-in — actually, his lie-in. She set up a camera with a laser focus on a tripod.

“Okay,” she said. “Almost done.”

“No worries,” Bosch said. “Just glad we aren’t doing this in the summer.”

His breath kicked up a puff of desert dust.

“Okay, got it,” she said. “We’re good.”

Bosch rolled to his side and started to get up.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Actually, stay like that, on your knees,” she said. “Let me capture that while we’re here. Just turn to your left about forty-five degrees.”

Moving on his knees, Bosch turned. Arslanian tweaked his position slightly and then told him to drop his hands limply to his sides. He did so and she told him to hold still.

“Okay,” she said. “Do you need help getting all the way up?”

“No, I’m good,” he said.

He got to one knee and pushed himself up. He started brushing the dust and loose scrub grass off his clothes. He was wearing jeans and a patterned shirt with the tails out.

“Sorry about your clothes,” Arslanian said.

“Don’t be,” Bosch said. “Part of the job. I had a feeling I would get dirty out here.”

“But I’m sure your job description doesn’t include playing dead.”

“You’d be surprised. Driver, investigator, subpoena service. I’ve worked for Haller for nine months or so and there’s always a new job within the job, you know?”

“I do. This is my third case with him. I never know what to expect when he calls me.”

Bosch walked over to where she was taking the camera and laser mount off the tripod. She, too, was wearing blue jeans and a work shirt, which had several pens in a breast pocket. She was short and compact, her body shape largely hidden beneath the baggy shirt she wore untucked. And she was newly blond, which Bosch had learned when he picked her up at the airport the day before. Initially he’d looked around baggage claim for a woman whom Haller had described as a redhead.

“So, with all of this, you’re going to make a re-creation of the shooting?” he asked.

“Exactly,” Arslanian said. “We’ll be able to show the murder as close to the way it happened as possible.”

“Amazing.”

“It’s a program that I was involved in developing. It can be tweaked according to height, distance, all physical parameters. What I call the forensic physics of a case.”

Bosch wasn’t sure what all of that meant, though he did know artificial intelligence was a controversial subject, depending on the application. It reminded him of when people first started talking about DNA in law enforcement. It took a while for the technology to be accepted, but now it was considered, wrongly or rightly, to be the easy solve for violent crimes.

“I like what I do,” Arslanian said. “It’s fun to figure out exactly how something happened and why.”

“I get that,” Bosch said.

“How long were you a cop?”

“About forty years.”

“Wow. And military before that? Do you know what the high-ready gun stance is?”

“Sure.”

“That’s what we’re going to show. When Lucinda was married to Roberto, he taught her to shoot. He took her to the range and there are photos of her in high-ready stance. That’s what I’ll base this on.”

“Okay.”

Bosch had seen the photos in the discovery material Haller got after filing the habeas petition, and he knew that at first glance they weren’t helpful to the case for Lucinda Sanz’s innocence. He wasn’t sure how Arslanian’s re-creation would work, but he knew that Haller had full trust in her. And he remembered Haller talking about taking adverse evidence and finding ways to own it, make it work for you rather than against you. The photos of Lucinda at the range had seemed damning. But maybe now, not so much.

“I’m going out to Chino tomorrow to show Lucinda some photos,” Bosch said. “Do you need me to ask her anything?”

“I don’t think so,” Arslanian said. “I think we’re covered. And I’ve got what I need here. We can head back to the city and I’ll get to work on it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Bosch said. “I’m just going to tell the owners we’re done.”

Bosch walked up the stoop to the front door and knocked. A woman quickly answered, and Bosch got the idea that she had been watching them through a window.

“Mrs. Perez, we’re all done here,” Bosch said. “Thanks for letting us use the front yard.”

“Is okay,” Perez said. “Uh, you said you work for the lawyer?”

“Yes, we both do.”

“Do you think the woman is innocent?”

“I do. But we have to prove it.”

“Okay, I see.”

“Do you know her?”

“Oh, no, I don’t. I just... I just wondered what would happen.”

“Okay.”

Bosch waited to see if she would say more, but she didn’t.

“Well, thank you,” he said.

He went down the two steps and joined Arslanian in the yard. She had collapsed her tripod and was stowing it in a carrying bag.

“When she bought the house, did she know what happened here?” she asked.

“She’s just renting,” Bosch said. “Her landlord didn’t tell her.”

“Was she freaked out when you told her?”

“Not so much. It’s L.A., you know. There’s probably a history of violence wherever you go.”

“That’s sad.”

“That’s L.A.”

22

On the drive back from the desert, Arslanian didn’t have to be told to sit up front. She took the seat next to Bosch but focused her attention on her notes and a laptop she opened once they were on the smooth surface of the Antelope Valley Freeway. She spoke without taking her eyes off the screen or interrupting the input of data into her computer program.

“Funny that they call it the Antelope Valley,” she said.

“Why is that?” Bosch asked.

“I did my research on the plane. There haven’t been any antelope here in over a century. The species was hunted out by the Indigenous people before it was ever called the Antelope Valley.”

“Didn’t know that.”

“I was thinking I might see antelope roaming free. But then I looked it up.”

Bosch nodded and tried to draw her attention away from the computer screen.

“Do you see that?” he said. “The rock outcropping.”

Arslanian looked up at the jagged formation they were passing to the north of the freeway.

“Wow, beautiful,” she said. “And immense!”

“Vasquez Rocks,” Bosch said. “They call it that because about a hundred and fifty years ago a bandido named Tiburcio Vasquez hid out in there, and the sheriff’s posse never found him.”

Arslanian studied the formation for a long moment before responding.

“Not many places are named after bad guys,” she said.

“How about Trump Tower?” Bosch responded.

“Self-named. And I guess it depends on who you talk to about that.”

“I guess so.”

She lapsed into silence and Bosch wondered if he had offended her. He had just been trying for some kind of reaction. He was intrigued by her and the way she did her work and looked at things. He wanted to know her better but knew her time in L.A. would be short. After the hearing she would return to New York.

When, after a few minutes, they had connected to the Golden State Freeway, she spoke again.

“Mickey told me you two are brothers.”

“Half brothers, actually.”

“Ah. Which was the common parent?”

“Father.”

“But you two didn’t know about each other until you were grown up?”

“Yeah. Our father was a lawyer like Mickey. Mickey’s mother was his wife. My mother was a client.”

“I think I see why you were kept apart. Was it consensual — your mother and father?”

It was a surprising question. Bosch didn’t answer at first because he realized he had never asked himself that. It was now too late to ever know for sure.

“I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it,” Arslanian said. “Sometimes I’m too blunt with people I feel comfortable with.”

“No, it’s not that,” Bosch said. “I just never thought about it that way before. I assumed it was consensual. Started as a business arrangement — payment for services rendered. My mother was gone by the time I figured out who he was. And I met him only once, and very briefly at that. He was dying at the time, and soon afterward he was gone too.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing really to be sorry about. I didn’t know the guy.”

“I mean sorry you had to grow up... like that.”

Bosch just nodded. She moved on.

“So, how’d you and Mickey meet? One of those DNA services?”

“No, it was a case. We met on a case and sort of figured it out.”

“Harry, can I ask you something? Something personal?”

“Seems like all you ask are personal questions.”

“True. I guess that’s just me.”

“So, go ahead. Ask away.”

“Are you ill?”

The question caught Bosch off guard. His vanity had led him to believe she was going to ask whether he was married. It took a few moments for him to form a response.

“Mickey told you that?”

“Uh, no. I just could tell. Your aura. It feels weakened, you could say.”

“My aura... well, I was sick but I’m getting better.”

“Sick how?”

“Cancer. But like I said, it’s under control.”

“No, you said you were getting better. That could mean something different from ‘under control.’ I assume you are under care. What kind of cancer is it — or was it?”

“It’s called CML for short.”

“Chronic myeloid leukemia. That’s not a hereditary cancer. It comes from chromosomal changes. Any idea how — I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be asking you this.”

The freeway traffic became clogged and slowed down as they dropped back into Los Angeles at the top of the Valley.

“It’s okay,” Bosch said. “I worked a case where I got exposed to radioactive material. I didn’t know it until it was too late. Anyway, it could have been that, but it could have been a lot of things. I used to smoke. Diagnosing origin is not an exact science. I’m sure as a person of science, you know that.”

Arslanian nodded.

“You said both that the cancer is under control and that you’re getting better,” she said. “Which is it?”

“You’d have to ask my doctor,” Bosch said. “Mickey got me into a clinical trial. That’s why I’ve been working for him — health insurance and the access he has to the upper levels of medical care. Anyway, the doctor in charge of the trial said the treatment they’d tested on me worked. To an extent. It was not full remission but close. They want to do it again and hopefully knock the rest of it out.”

“I hope so too. Where did you go for this trial?”

“UCLA Med.”

Arslanian nodded her approval.

“That’s a good facility,” she said. “Would you allow me to take a DNA sample from you?”

“Why?” Bosch asked.

“It could give us further insight into what’s going on with you biologically. Did they run genetic tests on you at UCLA?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t ask them about everything they’re doing. It’s kind of above my pay grade. But they sure took a lot of blood.”

“Of course. But you might ask them. It could be part of the clinical trial. If not, I’d like to do it.”

“Why? Is this something Mickey wants from me?”

“You are such a detective, Harry Bosch. No, Mickey knows nothing about this. But I would also go to him for a DNA sample. Since you’re half brothers, you have very similar genomes. A comparison might be beneficial to you both. Have you heard of precision medicine?”

“Uh... no, not really.”

“It’s got a lot to do with genetic makeup and targeting care and treatment. Do you have children?”

“A daughter.”

“Same as Mickey. This could be beneficial to them as well.”

Bosch had always been suspicious of science and technology. Not that he didn’t believe that the advances made were good for the world, but he had a detective’s suspicion about early adopters and didn’t buy into the cult-like belief that all scientific discoveries were beneficial. He knew this put him on the outside looking in, an analog man in a digital world, but his instincts had always served him well. For every great technological advancement, there were always people out there looking to misuse it.

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Thanks for the offer.”

“Anytime,” Arslanian said.

They rode in silence most of the way downtown. It became awkward and Bosch tried to come up with something to say.

“So,” he finally managed. “What have you been doing with the computer there?”

“Just plugging the data into the re-creation program,” Arslanian said. “It will do the work and then in court it will be my job to show and tell. Like it is for you, this is new stuff for juries.”

“We’ll just have a judge making the call on a habeas. No jury.”

“Same thing. Judges need to be schooled too.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a good teacher.”

“Thanks. I’m in the process of patenting the program.”

“I’m sure prosecutors and defense attorneys all over the country will be jumping on this.”

“That’s why I need to protect it. Not to keep them from using it but to protect the investment of time, money, and research my partner at MIT and I put into it.”

Bosch pulled into the entrance tunnel of the Conrad hotel and lowered his window to tell the valet who rushed up that he was just dropping off his passenger.

“Thank you, Harry,” Arslanian said. “I enjoyed our conversation and I hope you think about precision medicine.”

Her door was opened by the helpful valet and she got out.

“I guess I’ll see you in court,” Bosch said.

“I’ll be there,” Arslanian said.

The valet unloaded Arslanian’s equipment from the back seat and Bosch pulled out into traffic. He wished he had said more to her, maybe asked if she wanted to get dinner. He felt embarrassed. As old as he was, he still hesitated to pull the trigger on matters of the heart.

23

The shift boss at the prison denied Bosch’s request for an attorney-client meeting room because Bosch was not an attorney. He had to make a regular visitation request and then wait two hours before he heard his name called over a loudspeaker. He was ushered to a stool in front of a thick plexiglass window in a long line of stools and visitation booths very similar to the setup at Corcoran. The wait for Lucinda Sanz wasn’t long after that. They both took their phones off the hooks and spoke.

“Hello, Mr. Bosch.”

“Hello, Cindi. Call me Harry.”

“Okay, Harry. Is it over?”

“Is what over?”

“Did the judge turn Mr. Haller down?”

“Oh. No, nothing’s over. The hearing is happening. It’s this coming Monday. They’ll be transporting you to the city for it.”

Bosch saw a little bit of life return to her eyes. She had been prepared for the worst.

“I’m here because I want to show you some photos,” he said. “Remember you told us that it was a female deputy who wiped your hands and arms for gunshot residue?”

“Yes, a woman,” Lucinda said.

“I have some photos. I want to see if you recognize any of them as the woman who swabbed you.”

“Okay.”

“They wouldn’t let us meet in an attorney room with a table where I could spread them out like a lineup, so I’m going to hold up the photos one at a time. I want you to study all of them before you respond. Even if you’re sure about a photo, wait till I show you all six. Take your time. And then if you recognize one, you tell me by number one through six. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“All right, here goes.”

Bosch hung up the phone to make sure he would not hear Lucinda if she blurted out a number or other exclamation before he had shown her all the photos. He opened a manila file on the shelf in front of the window. The six photos were facedown in a stack. Each had a number written on the back. He held them up to the glass one at a time, did a silent five-second count, then lowered the photo and went on to the next. Lucinda leaned toward the glass to look closely at them. Bosch watched her eyes and saw recognition when he held up the fourth photo. It was immediate and clear. But Lucinda, who had let her phone hang loose on its cord, did not make any exclamation.

The photos were not face shots. They were surveillance shots taken surreptitiously with a long-lens camera handled by Cisco Wojciechowski. It had taken him nearly a week outside the Antelope Valley sheriff’s station with the camera and a radio scanner to identify and photograph the members of the anti-gang task force that at one time included Roberto Sanz. There were only two women currently on the team and only one of them had been in the unit when Roberto Sanz was assigned to it. Her photo was among the six Bosch was now showing Lucinda. The other women in the photos were of similar age and shown in similar candid situations but none of them were sheriff’s deputies. None were in uniform.

When he was finished showing them, he put the photos back in the file and closed it. He picked up the phone.

“Do you want me to show them again?” he asked.

“Number four,” Lucinda said. “That’s her. Four.”

“Are you sure?” Bosch said. “Do you want to look again?”

He kept his voice as deadpan as possible.

“No, it’s her,” Lucinda said. “She’s the one. I remember.”

“She’s the deputy who wiped your hands and your clothes with the GSR pads?” Bosch asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure?”

“Yes. Four.”

“Percentage-wise, how sure are you?”

“One hundred percent. It’s her. Who is she?”

Bosch leaned toward the glass to take in as much of Lucinda’s side of the booth as possible. He looked past her shoulder and up. He saw the camera mounted on the upper wall that ran behind the booths where the convicts talked to their visitors. Lucinda’s identification of Stephanie Sanger would be on video, if needed.

Lucinda turned around, following Bosch’s sightline to the camera. She looked back at him.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, really,” Bosch said. “Just wanted to see if there was a camera.”

“Why?”

“In case the identification you’ve made is challenged in court.”

“You mean like if I’m not there? Do you think I’m in danger because I identified her?”

Lucinda suddenly looked scared.

“No, I don’t think that,” he said quickly to reassure her. “I’m just covering all the bases. Normally these are done in a room without glass between us and you sign your name to the photo you pick. We can’t do that here. That’s all. Nothing’s going to happen to you, Cindi.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I’m sure. I just want everything to be bulletproof for when we get to court.”

“Okay, I trust you and Mr. Haller.”

“Thank you.”

“The one I picked, who is she?”

“Her name is Stephanie Sanger. She worked with your ex-husband.”

“Yes, she told me that.”

“Do you remember what else she said?”

“She just said they had to do the test so they could rule me out.”

“That was a trick to get you to do it.”

Bosch picked up the file containing the photos and held it up.

“When we go to court next week, you may be asked about this, okay?”

“Why?”

“What I mean is you may have to make the identification again. By photo or if she’s there.”

“She’ll be there?”

“She may be, yes. We’re going to subpoena her as a witness. But I don’t know for sure whether she’ll be in court if you testify.”

“When will they move me to L.A.?”

“I’m not sure about that either. I’ll get Mr. Haller to check on it.”

“I don’t want to be held in the county jail. The sheriffs run that.”

“You won’t be. It’s a federal case. You’ll be transferred from here to federal custody — the U.S. Marshals Service — so they can bring you to court on Monday.”

“You’re sure?”

A loud buzz sounded in the phone’s earpiece, followed by an electronic voice stating that the interview had one minute left.

“I’m sure, Cindi,” Bosch said. “Don’t worry about that.”

A look of desperation came over her face as she realized the final seconds of the interview were ticking away.

“Mr. Bosch, are we going to win?” she said.

“We’re going to do our best,” Bosch said, immediately knowing his words were inadequate. “The truth will come out and we’re going to get you home to your son.”

“Do you promise me?”

Bosch hesitated, but before he could answer, the connection went dead. He just looked at Lucinda Sanz and nodded. He knew as he did so that it was a promise that would haunt him if things didn’t turn out the way he hoped.

He got up from the stool and gave Lucinda a half-hearted wave goodbye. She did the same and her face showed the uncertainty of what lay ahead. Promises or no promises, nothing was for sure in court.

He followed the arrows on the floor to the prison’s exit gate. He felt bad about how the interview had ended but tried to concentrate on what had been accomplished. She had identified Stephanie Sanger as the one who started the chain reaction that resulted in Lucinda Sanz being charged with her ex-husband’s murder. That was a big get and as soon as he got to the prison’s parking lot, he turned his phone back on and called Haller.

The call rang through to voice mail. Bosch guessed that Haller was in court. He started to leave a message but heard a beep and saw that Haller was calling him back. He ended the message and took the call.

“So, what’s happening in Chino?” Haller said.

“Cindi identified Sanger as the one who conducted the GSR test,” Bosch said.

Haller whistled. Bosch could hear traffic noises and guessed that he was in the Lincoln.

“This is good,” Haller said. “It’s what we thought but nice to have it on the record.”

“Sort of,” Bosch said. “They wouldn’t give me the lawyer room. I had to show her the photos through the glass. She couldn’t sign the photo, but there was a camera behind her. It’s on video if we ever need it.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“She’s nervous, especially about Sanger. Afraid.”

“Well, we’re six days out. I’d say it’s time to initiate our plan.”

“Subpoena Sanger?”

“And her pal Mitchell.”

“Yeah, they’re not going to like it.”

“That’s an understatement. I also want you to pick up the thumb drive AT and T has been holding for us.”

“Doesn’t it become discovery the minute I do?”

“Technically it’s not discoverable until I decide I’m going to present it in court. But if I wait and sandbag ’em with it the day before, they’ll scream bloody murder and get a continuance from the judge.”

“So what do we do?”

“You pick it up, download the data, then print out the entire file. Should be a couple thousand pages, I’m guessing. Then we give them the hard copy while you keep the searchable electronic file. My guess is they’ll look at that haystack and think we’re scamming them into wasting time on it. And they’ll have no valid complaint when we put it into evidence.”

“If we put it into evidence.”

“That’s a big if. We have our hunches about what you’ll find, but it’s all got to pan out or we’ve wasted our time and our client’s chance at freedom.”

“Well, I’ll get to work on the cell data as soon as I have it.”

“Let me know what you get.”

“Wait — what about the FBI?”

“I’m not going to play that card until I have to.”

Bosch wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but he knew not to ask further questions about it. Haller was trying to play hide the ball with the attorney general’s office — handing over what he had to but only when he had to and disguising his court strategy as best he could. It was a high-wire act with no net that could ultimately come down to an angry federal judge wanting to know what he knew and when he’d known it. It was the kind of defense ploy that would have made Bosch’s blood boil when he carried a badge. Now he almost admired Haller for the moves he was making. He saw the Lincoln Lawyer as a master at staying just inside the ethical boundary lines when it came to dealings with those sitting across the aisle. Haller called it dancing between the raindrops.

In the seven months they had worked the Sanz case together, Bosch had come to realize that working on the defense side made Haller the long-shot underdog. He was like a man on the beach holding a surfboard and looking up at a hundred-foot wave coming in. The power and might of the state was limitless. Haller was just one man making a stand for his client. He was willing to paddle out to that crushing wave. Bosch was beginning to see that there was something noble in that.

“You heard anything from Morris yet?” Bosch asked. “We’re still good to go Monday?”

Hayden Morris was the assistant attorney general for California who would defend the conviction of Lucinda Sanz at the federal habeas hearing. He had made little contact with Haller other than sending him a note every Monday morning demanding full discovery.

“Not a word,” Haller said. “So, as far as I’m concerned, all systems are go for Monday. Be there or be square.”

“Got it,” Bosch said. “I’ll pick up the AT and T stuff on my way in. I’ll dive in tonight and then go paper Sanger and Mitchell tomorrow.”

“If you find what we hope is in there, you call me right away. But remember, no emails, no texts.”

“Right. Nothing you’ll have to turn over to the AG.”

“There you go. You’re thinking like a defense lawyer again.”

“I hope not.”

“Embrace it. It’s the new you, Harry.”

Bosch disconnected without further comment. Or denial.