Resurrection Walk

31

Haller was buoyant as he and Arslanian climbed into the Navigator by the Spring Street exit from the federal courthouse.

“Harry, you should have seen it,” he said. “Shami nailed it. The judge couldn’t take her eyes off the screen the whole damn time.”

Bosch didn’t like hearing such talk. He knew anything could happen in a courtroom and didn’t want Haller to jinx what sounded like a good morning for the team.

“Where are we going?” Bosch asked.

“Someplace good,” Haller said. “We earned it. This woman is a giant slayer.”

“I’m not sure,” Arslanian said, “that we should celebrate until the judge rules on the petition.”

“I agree, but I think she’s going to walk,” Haller said. “You nailed it, and after lunch, Harry will deliver the knockout punch.”

“Don’t forget, Morris still gets to take his shot at me,” Arslanian said.

“There’s no way,” Haller said. “He just asked for the lunch break because he knows he’s fucked. And it’s only gonna get worse for him when Harry gets up on the stand with the cell data.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Bosch said.

“Oh, come on,” Haller said. “Grumpy old Harry. Let’s go over to Water Grill. We’ll get some good food for lunch and hold off on the celebration till this thing is over.”

“I’ll take you over there,” Bosch said. “But I’m going to wait in the car. I need to go over everything again before I testify. Maybe you should think about going through it with me, get our ducks in a row.”

“I’m not worried about it,” Haller said. “Your testimony will be the frosting on the cake that Shami baked for us. I’m telling you, Harry, she clearly demonstrated that Lucinda could not have fired those shots.”

“You give me too much credit,” Arslanian said. “And you still have to finish presenting your case. You need to be ready for anything. You told me that a long time ago.”

A few minutes later Bosch dropped them off in front of the restaurant on Grand Avenue. He then drove down the block until he found a parking space and pulled in. He reached back to the floor behind his seat and grabbed the file containing the printouts from AT&T that Haller would offer as exhibits to the court.

He started reviewing the printouts and checking the numbers against the map he’d unfolded on the passenger seat. He was rehearsing because he was nervous. He had taken new digital technology and reduced it to a distinctly analog presentation. He hoped it would be defining evidence in the case for Lucinda Sanz’s innocence.

32

Bosch sat in the last row of the gallery, waiting to see whether Hayden Morris was going to cross-examine Shami Arslanian or if it would be his turn on the witness stand. When the assistant AG called Arslanian back, no one seemed to notice that Bosch was in the courtroom, so he stayed put. Haller had been so enamored with Arslanian’s direct examination that Bosch wanted to see how well she did under cross. As it turned out, he witnessed the case for Lucinda Sanz’s innocence begin to crumble like a sandcastle.

And it took Morris no more than five minutes to do it.

It began when Morris asked Arslanian to put her re-creation program’s table of contents back up on the big screen. She quickly complied with a few taps on her keyboard.

“Now, I want to draw your attention to the bottom right corner of the screen,” Morris said. “That’s a copyright protection notice, correct?”

“Yes,” she said. “Technically, it’s been applied for, but we are confident we will get it.”

“Project AImy is the name of the re-creation software?”

“Yes.”

“Am I saying that right? Like the woman’s name Amy?”

“Yes.”

“So that is A, capital I, not A, lowercase l?”

“Correct.”

“Why is it spelled that way?”

“The program is built on a machine-learning platform I developed with my partner Professor Edward Taaffe at MIT.”

“By machine learning, you mean artificial intelligence, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. No further questions.”

Coelho excused Arslanian. Bosch looked at Haller and saw the lawyer drop his head. Something was going wrong. Before Arslanian was even through the gate to the gallery, Morris addressed the judge.

“Your Honor,” he said, “the State moves to have the testimony and presentation of the witness struck from the record under Federal Rules of Evidence section seven-oh-two C.”

Haller stood up to be heard. Arslanian quickly slipped into the bench where most of the members of the media were sitting.

“Your Honor?” he said.

“Not yet, Mr. Haller,” the judge said. “You’ll get your turn.

Mr. Morris, do you wish to elaborate?”

“Thank you, Judge,” Morris said. “In regard to expert testimony, section seven-oh-two C states that the testimony and presentation of an expert witness must be the product of reliable principles and methods. The use of artificial intelligence has not been approved in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Therefore, the witness’s presentation as well as any testimony derived from her presentation must be rejected.”

The judge was silent for a long moment and then turned her attention to Haller.

“Mr. Haller, I’m afraid he’s right,” she said. “This district is looking for a test case for the use of artificial intelligence... but it has not yet come to pass.”

“May I be heard?” Haller said.

“You may,” Coelho said.

“This is flat-out wrong,” Haller said, pointing at the screen. “That program proves that Lucinda Sanz did not shoot her ex-husband and now you’re going to take it away from her on a technicality? She has been incarcer—”

“It’s not a technicality,” Morris said. “It’s the law.”

“Mr. Morris, do not interrupt,” the judge said. “Continue,

Mr. Haller.”

“She’s been in prison for five years for something she didn’t do,” Haller said. “That program proves her innocence and everybody in this courtroom knows it. If it’s not approved, then make this the test case. Your Honor, overrule the objection and we move forward and the AG can appeal.”

“Or I could sustain the objection and you could file the appeal,” Coelho said. “Different means to the same end. A higher court would decide this and you would have your test case.”

“And how long is that going to take?” Haller said. “Another three years in prison for my client while we wait to be heard on the matter? The court is behind the times, Judge. AI is here — it’s used in surgery, it’s driving cars, it’s buying stocks, it’s choosing the music we listen to. Your Honor, the applications are endless. Don’t send this woman back to prison because the courts are archaic and lagging behind the technology of the day.”

“Mr. Haller, I understand your concern,” Coelho said. “I truly do. But I am sworn to uphold the laws we currently have and I cannot anticipate the laws of the future.”

“Judge, this hearing is supposed to be about finding the truth,” Haller said. “What does it say about us if we know the truth and throw it away?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Haller, it doesn’t work that way,” Coelho said. “It pains me, but the objection is sustained. The witness’s presentation and testimony is stricken and will have no bearing on the court’s eventual ruling on this matter.”

“Shame on us,” Haller said. “That we can’t bring ourselves to do the right thing when it’s there in front of us.”

“Mr. Haller, you are now on thin ice with this court,” Coelho said.

Haller put his hands down on the table and bowed his head. Bosch felt a deep hollow open up in his chest. Haller turned and looked at Morris, who was staring straight ahead.

“And you, Morris,” Haller said. “How do you sleep at night? You’re supposed to be a guardian, you’re supposed to look for the truth, but you hide behind—”

“Mr. Haller!” the judge barked. “You are out of order. Sit down. Now!”

Haller threw up his hands in a gesture of giving up and sat down. He turned to Lucinda and whispered to her. Bosch could not remember ever seeing an attorney seem so upset by a judge’s ruling. He wondered how much was performance and how much was true anger.

Coelho poured water from a pitcher into a glass. She took her time with it, perhaps believing that moving slowly would restore calm to the courtroom.

“Now,” she finally said, “would you like to call another witness, Mr. Haller?”

Haller did not acknowledge the question. He kept whispering to Lucinda, apparently trying to explain what had just happened to her hopes of freedom.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted. “Do you have another witness?”

Haller broke away from the huddle with Lucinda and stood up. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangled.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “The petitioner calls Harry Bosch.”

With the tension in the room still as thick as the marine layer on the Santa Monica bight, Bosch got up and moved forward through the gate. He was sworn in by the clerk and took the seat on the witness stand. He watched Haller move slowly to the lectern, still reeling from the loss of Arslanian’s testimony. He started with basic questions about Bosch’s pedigree.

“Mr. Bosch, how are you currently employed?” he asked.

“I work part-time as an investigator for you,” Bosch said.

“And what is your experience in investigating criminal matters?”

“I was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department for forty years, most of them working homicides. After I retired, I worked for a few years as a volunteer cold-case investigator with the town of San Fernando and later back with the LAPD.”

“You know your way around a murder, I guess you could say.”

“You could say that, yes. I’ve worked on more than three hundred homicides as either lead or backup investigator.”

“Is it safe to say you have put a lot of bad people — killers — in prison?”

“Yes.”

“Yet here you are, working to free a person who the State says is a killer. Why is that?”

This was the only question Haller and Bosch had rehearsed. After this, they would be winging it.

“Because I don’t think she did it,” Bosch said. “In reviewing the case, I found inconsistencies in the investigation, contradictions. That’s why I brought it to you.”

“I remember that,” Haller said. “Now, as part of your investigation, did there come a time when you served a subpoena on a company called AT and T?”

“Yes, I did that last week.”

“And what—”

Before Haller could get the question out, Morris interrupted with an objection.

“Your Honor,” he said. “If Mr. Haller is going to ask about cellular data collection, then, again, we are going to have a discovery issue.”

“How so, Mr. Morris?” the judge asked. “I seem to recall this was reported on the most recent discovery inventory Mr. Haller filed with the court.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Morris said. “He turned over a printout of more than nineteen hundred pages of data from six different cell towers, and now, just four days later, he plans to introduce his specific findings in court.”

“Are you asking for a continuance of the hearing so you have additional time to study the material?” Coelho asked.

“No, Your Honor,” Morris said. “The State asks that the petitioner be disqualified from using this material because of bad faith in meeting even basic discovery standards.”

“Well, that is certainly an extreme remedy,” Coelho said. “I am sure the petitioner has something to say about that. Mr. Haller?”

“Your Honor, there is no bad faith here,” Haller said. “And I’m tired of having to defend myself in regard to these matters that Morris brings up like a broken record. The rules of discovery are clear. I was under no obligation to turn this material over to him and his team until I decided that I intended to use it in court. I made that decision when briefed Friday morning by my investigator Mr. Bosch after he reviewed the materials. Please keep in mind, Judge, that I am a solo practitioner with one associate attorney and one full-time and one part-time investigator. Mr. Bosch received the data from AT and T last Tuesday afternoon and reported his findings to me on Friday morning. He is just one man. Morris, on the other hand, has the power and might as well as the personnel of the entire attorney general’s office at his disposal. He is also representing the L.A. County DA’s office in this matter, and last I checked, there are eight hundred prosecutors and two hundred investigators across the street in that office. And he couldn’t get someone to help him look through this material over the weekend?

“Your Honor, that’s where the bad faith is. What happened was that Morris guessed that I was dumping this material on him because it was worthless and he’d be spinning his wheels reviewing it. So he ignored it all weekend and now he finds out that maybe it is not so worthless, that there is actually exculpatory material here, and he wants to cry foul. I’ll say it again, Judge: This is supposed to be a search for truth, but Mr. Morris is not interested in that. He’s only interested in putting up roadblocks to the truth, and that to me is bad faith in its ugliest form.”

Morris spread his arms like they were wings.

“Your Honor, really?” he said. “Mr. Haller, up there on his high horse, is conveniently forgetting the facts. The court approved the subpoena for records from AT and T more than three weeks ago. He waited until the eve of trial to execute it and gather the data. That was a planned delay, Judge, and he isn’t fooling me or you. The People stand by the complaint and the suggested remedy.”

“Your Honor, may I respond?” Haller said.

“No, I don’t think I need you to, Mr. Haller,” Coelho said. “I have a good idea of what you would say. I am not going to disqualify this material from introduction in the hearing. We are going to proceed with Mr. Bosch’s testimony. And when direct examination is completed, I will give Mr. Morris time to prepare his cross if time is indeed needed. Now, let’s take a ten-minute break, go back to our corners, and cool off, and then we will continue the hearing.”

33

Bosch spent most of the ten-minute break keeping Haller separated from Morris in the hall outside the courtroom. Haller was no doubt crestfallen by the Arslanian setback, as was Arslanian. She’d been scheduled to fly out on a red-eye that night but she insisted on delaying her return home so she could watch Bosch’s testimony and be part of a brainstorming session afterward.

No name-calling or physical scuffles broke out in the hallway and soon Bosch was back on the stand awaiting the arrival of the judge and the prisoner. Lucinda came first, and after she was placed next to Haller, he immediately leaned toward her and started whispering. Bosch could tell by his gestures that he was trying to console her and tell her that losing Arslanian’s testimony and presentation did not constitute the end of the world. The trouble was, Bosch wasn’t sure Haller believed that himself.

The judge came through the door, took her position at the bench, and went back on the record, telling Haller to proceed. Haller took his legal pad to the lectern.

“When we were interrupted,” he said to Bosch, “you were about to tell us about a collection of cell-tower data obtained with a subpoena. Why don’t you walk us through the steps you took in getting that data.”

“Well, we were interested in knowing Roberto Sanz’s movements on the day he was murdered,” Bosch said. “We knew he carried a cell phone and we got the number from Lucinda Sanz’s phone records. She had called him several times on the evening he was killed. So from there, I went to a website where you plug in a cell number and it tells you which company is the carrier.”

“For the record, what website was that?” Haller asked.

“It’s called FreeCarrierLookup-dot-com. I put in Roberto’s number and it determined that his carrier was AT and T. From there you prepared a subpoena for all data on all of AT and T’s cell towers in the Antelope Valley for the day of the murder.”

Haller whistled.

“That must have been a lot of data,” he said.

“It was,” Bosch said. “The printout was almost two thousand pages, single-spaced.”

“In layman’s terms, can you tell us what kind of data it was?”

“Well, every company has its own cell towers. Some geographic areas have more than others and that’s why you see in the TV ads for these companies how they talk about the best coverage and so forth. If you have a cell phone, it is constantly in contact with all the towers in your area, and as you move, the connections move.”

“Sort of like Tarzan swinging on vines from tree to tree, your connection moves from tower to tower?”

“Uh, I never thought about it that way, but yes, I guess it’s like that.”

“So you were able to find Roberto Sanz’s number in these two thousand pages.”

“I was. And I got a map of AT and T’s cell-tower locations throughout the AV and—”

“‘AV’?”

“Sorry, Antelope Valley.”

“And how did that help you?”

“Like I said, a cell phone is connected to many of its carrier’s towers at once, but the connection is strongest to the tower nearest the phone. And the data transmitted from the phone to the tower includes decibel strength based on proximity and GPS coordinates. That’s why when you use a mapping app like Waze or Google Maps, you see your exact location on the screen.”

“Are you saying that this data you collected with the subpoena showed exactly where Roberto Sanz was located throughout the day of his death?”

“Correct. And I was able to chart it on a map.”

“Do you have that map with you?”

“Yes.”

Haller turned his attention to the judge and asked if Bosch could step off the witness stand and display the map on a courtroom easel so that he could better explain his findings. With no objection from Morris, Coelho allowed it and the court clerk retrieved the easel from an equipment closet. Five minutes later, Bosch’s unfolded map was clipped to the easel. There were three lines — red, blue, and green — charted on the map. Bosch had carefully drawn the lines with the map spread across his dining room table. He hoped his conclusions would be clear and understandable to the judge.

“Okay, so what do we have here, Detective Bosch?” Haller asked.

Before Bosch could answer, Morris objected.

“He is no longer a police officer or a detective,” he said. “He should not be referred to as ‘Detective.’”

“Sustained,” Coelho said.

Haller threw a look at Morris that clearly said that was a chickenshit objection, then moved back to his direct examination of Bosch.

“I see three lines on your map,” he said. “Which is Roberto Sanz?”

“This one,” Bosch said. “The green.”

“I’m sure we will get to the others soon enough, but let’s stick with the green. What did you find that was significant about Roberto Sanz’s movements in the hours before his death?”

Bosch pointed to a spot on the green track.

“This place right here in Lancaster,” he said. “The data showed that he was here for nearly two hours.”

“And what is significant about that?” Haller asked.

“Well, two things. One is that this location is a hamburger place called Flip’s and this was where Roberto Sanz had gotten into a shoot-out with four gang members the year before. The second is that it was established in the original investigation that Roberto was two hours late bringing his son home to Lucinda, and he told her he had had a work meeting. But it was determined that there had been no meeting involving his sheriff’s unit. So this is new information placing him at this business during those two hours — the place where he had been in a shoot-out the year before.”

“And now, looking at your map, I see the red line intersects Roberto Sanz’s green line at that location. Am I reading that correctly?”

“Yes. Those two phones were there almost the same amount of time. The red phone was actually there first, arriving six minutes before the green. Then they both left an hour and forty-one minutes later.”

“And what did you take from that?”

Morris objected, stating that Bosch’s answer would be speculation and not fact. The judge sustained the objection and Haller started another path toward the answer he wanted.

“How did you come up with the red line?” he asked.

“I thought that the length of time that Sanz was at Flip’s seemed excessive,” Bosch said. “It’s a fast-food place and he’s there an hour and forty-one minutes. Besides that, it was where he had gotten into a shoot-out, so why would he go there unless the location was important to what was happening that day? So I concluded that he was meeting someone there. This led me to search the data for another cell phone exhibiting the same GPS coordinates at the same time.”

Bosch looked at the judge as he answered, hoping to get a read on whether he was explaining himself clearly. The judge’s eyes were focused on the map and she gave no indication that she was confused. Bosch’s attention was drawn back to Haller with the next question.

“But couldn’t it have been a phone with a different carrier that wouldn’t show up in the data?” Haller asked.

“That was the risk,” Bosch said. “But I knew that AT and T gave discounts to military and law enforcement personnel, so I thought if he was meeting someone, there was a good chance it was a fellow LEO.”

“‘Leo’?”

“Law enforcement officer.”

“Got it. So what did you find when you searched for another phone that was at Flip’s?”

“I found the red phone and I concluded that Sanz was meeting with the holder of that phone. I assumed it was a car-to-car meeting in the parking lot.”

Morris made the same objection, calling Bosch’s conclusions speculation and not fact. Before Haller could counter, the judge overruled the objection, stating that Bosch’s decades of experience as an investigator made his assumptions more valid than blind speculation. She told Haller to continue with his examination.

“Were you able to identify the owner of the red phone?” Haller asked.

“Yes,” Bosch said.

“How?”

“I called it and a man answered with his name: MacIsaac. He basically hung up on me when I asked a question, but I already knew that name from my investigation of Roberto Sanz’s activity on the day of his death. I had learned that Sanz had a meeting with an Agent MacIsaac an hour or so before he was killed. From there it was not hard to confirm that there was an Agent Tom MacIsaac on the roster of the Los Angeles field office.”

“You’re talking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”

“Yes.”

“You said he hung up on you when you asked a question?”

“Yes. I identified myself, told him what I was doing, and asked if he’d had a meeting with Roberto Sanz on the day of Sanz’s death. At that point he ended the call. I called back but he didn’t answer. I then texted him but he didn’t respond. He still hasn’t.”

Haller looked down at his notes, letting that last answer float in the room.

“Okay,” Haller said. “Let’s talk about the blue line. Your chart shows that the holder of the blue phone was tracking along with the green phone, correct?”

“Yes and no,” Bosch said. “The data includes time stamps. It shows that while the blue phone followed the same path as the green phone, it lagged behind each geographic marker by twenty to forty seconds until the green phone stopped at Flip’s.”

“Does that indicate that the blue phone was following the green phone?”

“It does.”

Bosch got the answer out as Morris was standing to make the same objection, that it was speculation. But once more the judge overruled the objection, saying that Bosch’s conclusion was acceptable based on his experience and his expertise with the tower data.

“What happened when Roberto Sanz — the green phone — pulled into Flip’s to meet with Agent MacIsaac?” Haller asked.

This time Morris was quick with the objection.

“Assumes facts not in evidence,” Morris claimed.

“Again, I am allowing the answer,” the judge said. “Mr. Morris, I think you know where this is headed and I find your constant interruption of the flow of testimony to be disruptive to the court’s understanding of the case. Wait until you have a real objection, please. Objection overruled. Continue, Mr. Haller.”

Haller waited for Bosch to answer. But he didn’t.

“Do you need me to ask the question again?” Haller asked.

“If you don’t mind,” Bosch said.

“Not a problem. According to the data and your charting, what were the movements of the blue phone when Roberto Sanz pulled into Flip’s to meet with Agent MacIsaac?”

Bosch used his finger to trace the blue phone’s path as he answered.

“The blue phone drove by and stopped at the next corner at the ARCO gas station. It remained there for at least an hour.”

“What do you mean by ‘at least an hour’? Isn’t the data complete?”

“It is. But the blue phone stopped transmitting GPS coordinates to the cell tower at that point.”

“Just disappeared?”

“Correct.”

“Does that mean the phone was turned off?”

“Yes, or put on airplane mode so it no longer sent signals to the towers in the area.”

“Okay, let’s go back. How did you come upon this blue phone?”

“Yesterday at the end of the court session, the clerk gave you the cell phone number of Sergeant Sanger, which you asked for when she was testifying. I took that number and looked for it in the tower data received from AT and T. I found it and tracked it.”

Haller pointed to the map on the easel and spoke with exaggerated astonishment.

“That was Sanger’s phone?” he said. “She was following Sanz?”

“It appears so,” Bosch said.

“But at the ARCO, the phone suddenly went dark.”

“Correct.”

“And when did it come back online, according to the data?”

“That number, which is carried by AT and T, does not come up on any cell tower in the Antelope Valley from that point at the ARCO station until twenty-two minutes after Lucinda Sanz’s 911 call reporting gunshots. That indicates that during that time, the phone was either turned off, on airplane mode, or out of reach of the area’s towers.”

“And where is the phone located when it does come back up after the shooting?”

“It reappears in Palmdale at a restaurant called Brandy’s Café.”

“Did you track it from there?”

Bosch pointed again at the map.

“Yes, the second blue line on the map. It goes from the café to the scene of the shooting at Lucinda Sanz’s house.”

“All told, how many minutes was the blue phone offline?”

“Eighty-four minutes.”

“And Roberto Sanz was shot during those eighty-four minutes, correct?”

Morris leaped to his feet, shouting, “Objection! Your Honor, this is fantasy. I beg the court to stop this sheer speculation and innuendo when there is not an ounce of evidence that supports any conclusion other than Lucinda Sanz being the shooter of her ex-husband.”

“Your Honor,” Haller said, “the witness has worked three hundred murder cases. He knows what he is doing and knows what he’s saying. Mr. Morris, with his barrage of objections, is just trying to—”

“Enough!” Coelho cried. “The objection is overruled for reasons previously stated. Continue, Mr. Haller.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Haller said. “Mr. Bosch, other than Sergeant Sanger turning off her phone, putting it on airplane mode, or being out of reach of the towers, is there any other explanation as to why her phone dropped its connection to the cell towers in the Antelope Valley?”

“No, nothing that I can think of.”

Haller looked up at the judge from the lectern.

“Your Honor,” he said, “I have no further questions.”