The Brass Verdict

Walking in a Dead Man’s Shoes

Attorney Takes Over for Murdered Colleague First Case; The Trial of the Decade

BY JACK McEVOY, Times Staff Writer

It wasn’t the 31 cases dropped in his lap that were the difficulty. It was the big one with the big client and highest stakes attached to it. Defense Attorney Michael Haller stepped into the shoes of the murdered Jerry Vincent two weeks ago and now finds himself at the center of this year’s so-called Trial of the Decade.

Today testimony is scheduled to begin in the trial of Walter Elliot, the 54-year-old chairman of Archway Studios, charged with murdering his wife and her alleged lover six months ago in Malibu. Haller stepped into the case after Vincent, 45, was found shot to death in his car in downtown Los Angeles.

Vincent had made legal provisions that allowed Haller to step into his practice in the event of his death. Haller, who had been at the end of a year-long sabbatical from practicing law, went to sleep one night with zero cases and woke up the next day with 31 new clients to handle.

“I was excited about coming back to work but I wasn’t expecting anything like this,” said Haller, the 42-year-old son of the late Michael Haller Sr., one of Los Angeles’s storied defense attorneys in the 50’s and 60’s. “Jerry Vincent was a friend and colleague and, of course, I would gladly go back to having no cases if he could be alive today.”

The investigation of Vincent’s murder is ongoing. There have been no arrests, and detectives say there are no suspects. He was shot twice in the head while sitting in his car in the garage next to the building where he kept his office, in the 200 block of Broadway.

Following Vincent’s death, the fallen attorney’s entire law practice was turned over to Haller. His job was to cooperate with investigators within the bounds of attorney-client protections, inventory the cases and make contact with all active clients. There was an immediate surprise. One of Vincent’s clients was due in court the day after the murder.

“My staff and I were just beginning to put all the cases together when we saw that Jerry – and now, of course, I – had a sentencing with a client,” Haller said. “I had to drop all of that, race over to the Criminal Courts Building, and be there for the client.”

That was one down and 30 other active cases to go. Every client on that list had to be quickly contacted, informed of Vincent’s death, and given the option of hiring a new lawyer or continuing with Haller handling the case.

A handful of clients decided to seek other representation but the vast majority of cases remain with Haller. By far the biggest of these is the “Murder in Malibu” case. It has drawn wide public attention. Portions of the trial are scheduled to be broadcast live nationally on Court TV. Dominick Dunne, the premier chronicler of courts and crime for Vanity Fair, is among members of the media who have requested seats in the courtroom.

The case came to Haller with one big condition. Elliot would agree to keep Haller as his attorney only if Haller agreed not to delay the trial.

“Walter is innocent and has insisted on his innocence since day one,” Haller told the Times in his first interview since taking on the case. “There were early delays in the case and he has waited six months for his day in court and the opportunity to clear his name. He wasn’t interested in another delay in justice and I agreed with him. If you’re innocent, why wait? We’ve been working almost around the clock to be ready and I think we are.”

It wasn’t easy to be ready. Whoever killed Vincent also stole his briefcase from his car. It contained Vincent’s laptop computer and his calendar.

“It was not too difficult to rebuild the calendar but the laptop was a big loss,” Haller said. “It was really the central storage point for case information and strategy. The hard files we found in the office were incomplete. We needed the laptop and at first I thought we were dead in the water.”

But then Haller found something the killer had not taken. Vincent backed his computer up on a digital flash drive attached to his key chain. Wading through the megabytes of data, Haller began to find bits and pieces of strategy for the Elliot trial. Jury selection took place last week and when the testimony begins today, he said he will be fully prepared.

“I don’t think Mr. Elliot is going to have any drop-off in his defense whatsoever,” Haller said. “We’re locked and loaded and ready to go.”

Elliot did not return calls for comment for this story and has avoided speaking to the media, except for one press conference after his arrest, in which he vehemently denied involvement in the murders and mourned the loss of his wife.

Prosecutors and investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said Elliot killed his wife, Mitzi, 39, and Johan Rilz, 35, in a fit of rage after finding them together at a weekend home owned by the Elliots on the beach in Malibu. Elliot called deputies to the scene and was arrested following the crime scene investigation. Though the murder weapon has never been found, forensic tests determined that Elliot had recently fired a weapon. Investigators said he also gave inconsistent statements while initially interviewed at the crime scene and afterwards. Other evidence against the movie mogul is expected to be revealed at trial.

Elliot remains free on $20 million bail, the highest amount ever ordered for a suspect in a crime in Los Angeles County history.

Legal experts and courthouse observers say it is expected that the defense will attack the handling of evidence in the investigation and the testing procedures that determined that Elliot had fired a gun.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey Golantz, who is prosecuting the case, declined comment for this story. Golantz has never lost a case as a prosecutor and this will be his eleventh murder case.

Thirty-six

The jury came out in a single-file line like the Lakers taking the basketball court. They weren’t all wearing the same uniform but the same feeling of anticipation was in the air. The game was about to begin. They split into two lines and moved down the two rows of the jury box. They carried steno pads and pens. They took the same seats they were in on Friday when the jury was completed and sworn in.

It was almost ten a.m. Monday and a later-than-expected start. But earlier, Judge Stanton had had the lawyers and the defendant back in chambers for almost forty minutes while he went over last-minute ground rules and took the time to give me the squint and express his displeasure over the story published on the front page of the morning’s Los Angeles Times. His chief concern was that the story was weighted heavily on the defense side and cast me as a sympathetic underdog. Though on Friday afternoon he had admonished the new jury not to read or watch any news reports on the case or trial, the judge was concerned that the story might have slipped through.

In my own defense, I told the judge that I had given the interview ten days earlier for a story I had been told would run at least a week before the trial started. Golantz smirked and said my explanation suggested I was trying to affect jury selection by giving the interview earlier but was now tainting the trial instead. I countered by pointing out that the story clearly stated that the prosecution had been contacted but refused to comment. If the story was one-sided, that was why.

Stanton grumpily seemed to accept my story but cautioned us about talking to the media. I knew then that I had to cancel my agreement to give commentary to Court TV at the end of each day’s trial session. The publicity would’ve been nice but I didn’t want to be on the wrong side of the judge.

We moved on to other things. Stanton was very interested in budgeting time for the trial. Like any judge, he had to keep things moving. He had a backlog of cases, and a long trial only backed things up further. He wanted to know how much time each side expected to take putting forth his case. Golantz said he would take a minimum of a week and I said I needed the same, though realistically I knew I would probably take much less time. Most of the defense case would be made, or at least set up, during the prosecution phase.

Stanton frowned at the time estimates and suggested that both the prosecution and defense think hard about streamlining. He said he wanted to get the case to the jury while their attention was still high.

I studied the jurors as they took their seats and looked for indications of biases or anything else. I was still happy with the jury, especially with juror three, the lawyer. A few others were questionable but I had decided over the weekend that I would make my case to the lawyer and hope that he would pull and push the others along with him when he voted for acquittal.

The jurors all kept their eyes to themselves or looked up at the judge, the alpha dog of the courtroom. As far as I could tell, no juror even glanced at the prosecution or defense table.

I turned and looked back at the gallery. The courtroom once again was packed with members of the media and the public, as well as those with a blood link to the case.

Directly behind the prosecution’s table sat Mitzi Elliot’s mother, who had flown in from New York. Next to her sat Johan Rilz’s father and two brothers, who had traveled all the way from Berlin. I noticed that Golantz had positioned the grieving mother on the end of the aisle, where she and her constant flow of tears would be fully visible to the jury.

The defense had five seats on reserve in the first row behind me. Sitting there were Lorna, Cisco, Patrick and Julie Favreau – the last on hand because I had hired her to ride through the trial and observe the jury for me. I couldn’t watch the jurors at all times, and sometimes they revealed themselves when they thought none of the lawyers were watching.

The empty fifth seat had been reserved for my daughter. My hope had been that over the weekend I would convince my ex-wife to allow me to take Hayley out of school for the day so she could go with me to court. She had never seen me at work before and I thought opening statements would be the perfect time. I felt very confident in my case. I felt bulletproof and I wanted my daughter to see her father this way. The plan was for her to sit with Lorna, whom she knew and liked, and watch me operate in front of the jury. In my argument I had even employed the Margaret Mead line about taking her out of school so that she could get an education. But it was a case I ultimately couldn’t win. My ex-wife refused to allow it. My daughter went to school and the reserved seat went unused.

Walter Elliot had no one in the gallery. He had no children and no relatives he was close to. Nina Albrecht had asked me if she would be allowed to sit in the gallery to show her support, but because she was listed on both the prosecution and defense witness lists, she was excluded from watching the trial until her testimony was completed. Otherwise, my client had no one. And this was by design. He had plenty of associates, well-wishers and hangers-on who wanted to be there for him. He even had A-list movie actors willing to sit behind him and show their support. But I told him that if he had a Hollywood entourage or his corporate lawyers in the seats behind him, he would be broadcasting the wrong message and image to the jury. It is all about the jury, I told him. Every move that is made – from the choice of tie you wear to the witnesses you put on the stand – is made in deference to the jury. Our anonymous jury.

After the jurors were seated and comfortable, Judge Stanton went on the record and began the proceedings by asking if any jurors had seen the story in the morning’s Times. None raised their hands and Stanton responded with another reminder about not reading or watching reports on the trial in the media.

He then told jurors that the trial would begin with opening statements from the opposing attorneys.

“Ladies and gentlemen, remember,” he said, “these are statements. They are not evidence. It’s up to each side to present the evidence that backs the statements up. And you will be the ones at the end of the trial who decide if they have done that.”

With that, he gestured to Golantz and said the prosecution would go first. As outlined in a pretrial conference, each side would have an hour for its opening statement. I didn’t know about Golantz but I wouldn’t take close to that.

Handsome and impressive-looking in a black suit, white shirt and maroon tie, Golantz stood up and addressed the jury from the prosecution table. For the trial he had a second chair, an attractive young lawyer named Denise Dabney. She sat next to him and kept her eyes on the jury the whole time he spoke. It was a way of double-teaming, two pairs of eyes constantly sweeping across the faces of the jurors, doubly conveying the seriousness and gravity of the task at hand.

After introducing himself and his second, Golantz got down to it.

“Ladies and gentleman of the jury, we are here today because of unchecked greed and anger. Plain and simple. The defendant, Walter Elliot, is a man of great power, money and standing in our community. But that was not enough for him. He did not want to divide his money and power. He did not want to turn the cheek on betrayal. Instead, he lashed out in the most extreme way possible. He took not just one life, but two. In a moment of high anger and humiliation, he raised a gun and killed both his wife, Mitzi Elliot, and Johan Rilz. He believed his money and power would place him above the law and save him from punishment for these heinous crimes. But that will not be the case. The state will prove to you beyond any reasonable doubt that Walter Elliot pulled the trigger and is responsible for the deaths of two innocent human beings.”

I was turned in my seat, half to obscure the jury’s view of my client and half to keep a view of Golantz and the gallery rows behind him. Before his first paragraph was completed, the tears were flowing from Mitzi Elliot’s mother, and that was something I would need to bring up with the judge out of earshot of the jury. The theatrics were prejudicial and I would ask the judge to move the victim’s mother to a seat that was less of a focal point for the jury.

I looked past the crying woman and saw hard grimaces on the faces of the men from Germany. I was very interested in them and how they would appear to the jury. I wanted to see how they handled emotion and the surroundings of an American courtroom. I wanted to see how threatening they could be made to look. The grimmer and more menacing they looked, the better the defense strategy would work when I focused on Johan Rilz. Looking at them now, I knew I was off to a good start. They looked angry and mean.

Golantz laid his case out to the jurors, telling them what he would be presenting in testimony and evidence and what he believed it meant. There were no surprises. At one point I got a one-line text from Favreau, which I read below the table.

Favreau: They are eating this up. You better be good.

Right, I thought. Tell me something I don’t know.

There was an unfair advantage to the prosecution built into every trial. The state has the power and the might on its side. It comes with an assumption of honesty and integrity and fairness. An assumption in every juror’s and onlooker’s mind that we wouldn’t be here if smoke didn’t lead to a fire.

It is that assumption that every defense has to overcome. The person on trial is supposed to be presumed innocent. But anybody who has ever stepped foot into a courtroom as a lawyer or defendant knows that presumed innocence is just one of the idealistic notions they teach in law school. There was no doubt in my mind or anybody else’s that I started this trial with a defendant who was presumed guilty. I had to find a way to either prove him innocent or prove the state guilty of malfeasance, ineptitude or corruption in its preparation of the case.

Golantz lasted his entire allotted hour, seemingly leaving no secrets about his case hidden. He showed typical prosecutorial arrogance; put it all out there and dare the defense to try to contradict it. The prosecution was always the six-hundred-pound gorilla, so big and strong it didn’t have to worry about finesse. When it painted its picture, it used a six-inch brush and hung it on the wall with a sledgehammer and spike.

The judge had told us in the pretrial session that we would be required to remain at our tables or to use the lectern placed between them while addressing witnesses during testimony. But opening statements and closing arguments were an exception to this rule. During these bookend moments of the trial, we would be free to use the space in front of the jury box – a spot the veterans of the defense bar called the “proving grounds” because it was the only time during a trial when the lawyers spoke directly to the jury and either made their case or didn’t.

Golantz finally moved from the prosecution table to the proving grounds when it was time for his big finish. He stood directly in front of the midpoint of the box and held his hands wide, like a preacher in front of his flock.

“I’m out of time here, folks,” he said. “So in closing, I urge you to take great care as you listen to the evidence and the testimony. Common sense will lead you. I urge you not to get confused or sidetracked by the roadblocks to justice the defense will put before you. Keep your eyes on the prize. Remember, two people had their lives stolen from them. Their future was ripped away. That is why we are here today. For them. Thank you very much.”

The old keep-your-eyes-on-the-prize opener. That one had been kicking around the courthouse since I was a public defender. Nevertheless, it was a solid beginning from Golantz. He wouldn’t win any orator-of-the-year trophies but he had made his points. He’d also addressed the jurors as “folks” at least four times by my count, and that was a word I would never use with a jury.

Favreau had texted me twice more during the last half hour of his delivery with reports of declining jury interest. They might have been eating it up at the start but now they were apparently full. Sometimes you can go on too long. Golantz had trudged through a full fifteen rounds like a heavyweight boxer. I was going to be a welterweight. I was interested in quick jabs. I was going to get in and get out, make a few points, plant a few seeds and raise a few questions. I was going to make them like me. That was the main thing. If they liked me, they would like my case.

Once the judge gave me the nod, I stood up and immediately moved into the proving grounds. I wanted nothing between me and the jury. I was also aware that this put me right in front and in focus of the Court TV camera mounted on the wall above the jury box.

I faced the jury without physical gesture except for a slight nod of my head.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know the judge already introduced me but I would like to introduce myself and my client. I am Michael Haller, the attorney representing Walter Elliot, whom you see here sitting at the table by himself.”

I pointed to Elliot and by prior design he nodded somberly, not offering any form of a smile that would appear as falsely ingratiating as calling the jurors folks.

“Now, I am not going to take a lot of time here, because I want to get to the testimony and the evidence – what little there is of it – and get this show on the road. Enough talk. It’s time to put up or shut up. Mr. Golantz wove a big and complicated picture for you. It took him a whole hour just to get it out. But I am here to tell you that this case is not that complicated. What the prosecution’s case amounts to is a labyrinth of smoke and mirrors. And when we blow away the smoke and get through the labyrinth, you will understand that. You will find that there is no fire, that there is no case against Walter Elliot. That there is more than reasonable doubt here, that there is outrage that this case was ever brought against Walter Elliot in the first place.”

Again I turned and pointed to my client. He sat with his eyes cast downward on the pad of paper he was now writing notes on – again, by prior design, depicting my client as busy, actively involved in his own defense, chin up and not worried about the terrible things the prosecutor had just said about him. He had right on his side, and right was might.

I turned back to the jury and continued.

“I counted six times that Mr. Golantz mentioned the word ‘gun’ in his speech. Six times he said Walter took a gun and blew away the woman he loved and a second, innocent bystander. Six times. But what he didn’t tell you six times is that there is no gun. He has no gun. The Sheriff’s Department has no gun. They have no gun and have no link between Walter and a gun because he has never owned or had such a weapon.

“Mr. Golantz told you that he will introduce indisputable evidence that Walter fired a gun, but let me tell you to hold on to your hats. Keep that promise in your back pocket and let’s see at the end of this trial whether that so-called evidence is indisputable. Let’s just see if it is even left standing.”

As I spoke, my eyes washed back and forth across the jurors like the spotlights sweeping the sky over Hollywood at night. I remained in constant but calm motion. I felt a certain rhythm in my thoughts and cadence, and I instinctively knew I was holding the jury. Each one of them was riding with me.

“I know that in our society we want our law enforcement officers to be professional and thorough and the best they can possibly be. We see crime on the news and in the streets and we know that these men and women are the thin line between order and disorder. I mean, I want that as much as you do. I’ve been the victim of a violent crime myself. I know what that is like. And we want our cops to step in and save the day. After all, that’s what they are there for.”

I stopped and swept the whole jury box, holding every set of eyes for a brief moment before continuing.

“But that’s not what happened here. The evidence – and I’m talking about the state’s own evidence and testimony – will show that from the start the investigators focused on one suspect, Walter Elliot. The evidence will show that once Walter became that focus, then all other bets were off. All other avenues of investigation were halted or never even pursued. They had a suspect and what they believed was a motive, and they never looked back. They never looked anywhere else either.”

For the first time I moved from my position. I stepped forward to the railing in front of juror number one. I slowly walked along the front of the box, hand sliding along the railing.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this case is about tunnel vision. The focus on one suspect and the complete lack of focus on anything else. And I will promise you that when you come out of the prosecution’s tunnel, you’re going to be looking at one another and squinting your eyes against the bright light. And you’re going to be wondering where the hell their case is. Thank you very much.”

My hand trailed off the railing and I headed back to my seat. Before I sat down, the judge recessed court for lunch.

Thirty-seven

Once more my client eschewed lunch with me so he could get back to the studio and make his business-as-usual appearance in the executive offices. I was beginning to think he viewed the trial as an annoying inconvenience in his schedule. He was either more confident than I was in the defense’s case, or the trial simply wasn’t a priority.

Whatever the reason, that left me with my entourage from the first row. We went over to Traxx in Union Station because I felt it was far enough away from the courthouse to avoid our ending up in the same place as one of the jurors. Patrick drove and I had him valet the Lincoln and join us so that he would feel like part of the team.

They gave us a table in a quiet enclosure next to a window that looked out on the train station’s huge and wonderful waiting room. Lorna had made the seating arrangements and I ended up next to Julie Favreau. Ever since Lorna had hooked up with Cisco, she had decided that I needed to be with someone and had endeavored to be something of a matchmaker. This effort coming from an ex-wife – an ex-wife I still cared for on many levels – was decidedly uncomfortable and it felt clumsy when Lorna overtly pointed me to the chair next to my jury consultant. I was in the middle of day one of a trial and the possibility of romance was the last thing I was thinking about. Besides that, I was incapable of a relationship. My addiction had left me with an emotional distance from people and things that I was only now beginning to close. As such, I had made it my priority to reconnect with my daughter. After that, I would worry about finding a woman to spend time with.

Romance aside, Julie Favreau was wonderful to work with. She was an attractive, diminutive woman with delicate facial features and raven hair that fell around her face in curls. A spray of youthful freckles across her nose made her look younger than she was. I knew she was thirty-three years old. She had once told me her story. She’d come to Los Angeles by way of London to act in film and had studied with a teacher who believed that internal thoughts of character could be shown externally through facial tells, tics and body movements. It was her job as an actor to bring these giveaways to the surface without making them obvious. Her student exercises became observation, identification and interpretation of these tells in others. Her assignments took her anywhere from the poker rooms in the south county, where she learned to read the faces of people trying not to give anything away, to the courtrooms of the CCB, where there were always lots of faces and giveaways to read.

After seeing her in the gallery for three days straight of a trial in which I was defending an accused serial rapist, I approached her and asked who she was. Expecting to find out she was a previously unknown victim of the man at the defense table, I was surprised to hear her story and to learn she was simply there to practice reading faces. I took her to lunch, got her number and the next time I picked a jury, I hired her to help me. She had been dead-on in her observations and I had used her several times since.

“So,” I said as I spread a black napkin on my lap. “How is my jury doing?”

I thought it was obvious that the question was directed at Julie but Patrick spoke up first.

“I think they want to throw the book at your guy,” he said. “I think they think he’s a stuck-up rich guy who thinks he can get away with murder.”

I nodded. His take probably wasn’t too far off.

“Well, thanks for the encouraging word,” I said. “I’ll make sure I tell Walter to not be so stuck-up and rich from now on.”

Patrick looked down at the table and seemed embarrassed.

“I was just saying, is all.”

“No, Patrick, I appreciate it. Any and all opinions are welcome and they all matter. But some things you can’t change. My client is rich beyond anything any of us can imagine and that gives him a certain style and image. An off-putting countenance that I’m not sure I can do anything about. Julie, what do you think of the jury so far?”

Before she could answer, the waiter came and took our drink orders. I stuck with water and lime, while the others ordered iced tea and Lorna asked for a glass of Mad Housewife Chardonnay. I gave her a look and she immediately protested.

“What? I’m not working. I’m just watching. Plus, I’m celebrating. You’re in trial again and we’re back in business.”

I grudgingly nodded.

“Speaking of which, I need you to go to the bank.”

I pulled an envelope out of my jacket pocket and handed it across the table to her. She smiled because she knew what was in it: a check from Elliot for $150,000, the remainder of the agreed-upon fee for my services.

Lorna put the envelope away and I turned my attention back to Julie.

“So what are you seeing?”

“I think it’s a good jury,” she said. “Overall, I see a lot of open faces. They are willing to listen to your case. At least right now. We all know they are predisposed to believe the prosecution, but they haven’t shut the door on anything.”

“You see any change from what we talked about Friday? I still present to number three?”

“Who is number three?” Lorna asked before Julie could answer.

“Golantz’s slip-up. Three’s a lawyer, and the prosecution should’ve never left him in the box.”

“I still think he’s a good one to present to,” Julie said. “But there are others. I like eleven and twelve, too. Both retirees and sitting right next to each other. I have a feeling that they’re going to bond and almost work as a team when it gets to deliberations. You win one over and you win them both.”

I loved her English accent. It wasn’t upper-crust at all. It had a street-smarts tone to it that gave what she said validity. She had not been very successful as an actress so far, and she had once told me that she got a lot of audition calls for period pieces requiring a dainty English accent that she hadn’t quite mastered. Her income was primarily earned in the poker rooms, where she now played for keeps, and from jury reading for me and the small group of lawyers I had introduced her to.

“What about juror seven?” I asked. “During selection he was all eyes. Now he won’t look at me.”

Julie nodded.

“You noticed that. Eye contact has completely dropped off the chart. Like something changed between Friday and today. I would have to say at this point that that’s a sign he’s in the prosecution’s camp. While you’re presenting to number three, you can bet Mr. Undefeated’s going to number seven.”

“So much for listening to my client,” I said under my breath.

We ordered lunch and told the waiter to hurry the order because we needed to get back to court. While we waited I checked with Cisco on our witnesses and he said we were good to go in that department. I then asked him to hang around after court and see if he could follow the Germans out of the courthouse and stay with them until they reached their hotel. I wanted to know where they were staying. It was just a precaution. Before the trial was over, they were not going to be very happy with me. It was good strategy to know where your enemies were.

I was halfway through my grilled-chicken salad when I glanced through the window into the waiting room. It was a grand mixture of architectural designs but primarily it had an art deco vibe to it. There were rows and rows of big leather chairs for travelers to wait in and huge chandeliers hanging above. I saw people sleeping in chairs and others sitting with their suitcases and belongings gathered close around them.

And then I saw Bosch. He was sitting alone in the third row from my window. He had his earbuds in. Our eyes held for a moment and then he looked away. I put my fork down and reached into my pocket for my cash. I had no idea how much Mad Housewife cost per glass but Lorna was into her second round. I put five twenties down on the table and told the others to finish eating while I stepped out to make a phone call.

I left the restaurant and called Bosch’s cell. He pulled his plugs and answered it as I was approaching the third row of seats.

“What?” he said by way of a greeting.

“Frank Morgan again?”

“Actually, Ron Carter. Why are you calling me?”

“What did you think of the story?”

I sat in the open seat across from him, gave him a glance but acted like I was talking to someone far away from me.

“This is kind of stupid,” Bosch said.

“Well, I didn’t know whether you wanted to stay undercover or-”

“Just hang up.”

We closed our phones and looked at each other.

“Well?” I asked. “Are we in play?”

“We won’t know until we know.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The story is out there. I think it did what we wanted it to do. Now we wait and see. If something happens, then, yes, we’re in play. We won’t know we’re in play until we’re in play.”

I nodded, even though what he had said made no sense to me.

“Who’s the woman in black?” he asked. “You didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend. We should probably put coverage on her, too.”

“She’s my jury reader, that’s all.”

“Oh, she helps you pick out the cop haters and antiestablishment types?”

“Something like that. Is it just you here? Are you watching me by yourself?”

“You know, I had a girlfriend once. She always asked questions in bunches. Never one at a time.”

“Did you ever answer any of her questions? Or did you just cleverly deflect them like you are doing now?”

“I’m not alone, Counselor. Don’t worry. You have people around you that you’ll never see. I’ve got people on your office whether you are there or not.”

And cameras. They had been installed ten days earlier, when we had thought that the Times story was imminent.

“Yeah, good, but we won’t be there for long.”

“I noticed. Where are you moving to?”

“Nowhere. I work out of my car.”

“Sounds like fun.”

I studied him a moment. He had been sarcastic in his tone as usual. He was an annoying guy but somehow he had gotten me to entrust my safety to him.

“Well, I’ve got to get to court. Is there something I should be doing? Any particular way you want me to act or place you want me to go?”

“Just do what you always do. But there is one thing. Keeping an eye on you in motion takes a lot of people. So, at the end of the day, when you are home for the night, call me and tell me so I can release some people.”

“Okay. But you’ll still have somebody watching, right?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll be covered twenty-four-seven. Oh, and one other thing.”

“What?”

“Don’t ever approach me again like this.”

I nodded. I was being dismissed.

“Got it.”

I stood up and looked toward the restaurant. I could see Lorna counting the twenties I had left and putting them down on the check. It looked like she was using them all. Patrick had left the table and gone to get the car from the valet.

“See ya, Detective,” I said without looking at him.

He didn’t respond. I walked away and caught up with my party as they were coming out of the restaurant.

“Was that Detective Bosch you were with?” Lorna asked.

“Yeah, I saw him out there.”

“What was he doing?”

“He said he likes to come over here for lunch, sit in those big, comfortable chairs and just think.”

“That’s a coincidence that we were here too.”

Julie Favreau shook her head.

“There are no coincidences,” she said.

Thirty-eight

After lunch Golantz began to present his case. He went with what I called the “square one” presentation. He started at the very beginning – the 911 call that brought the double murder to public light – and proceeded in linear fashion from there. The first witness was an emergency operator with the county’s communications center. She was used to introduce the tape recordings of Walter Elliot’s calls for help. I had sought in a pretrial motion to thwart the playing of the two tapes, arguing that printed transcripts would be clearer and more useful to the jurors but the judge had ruled in the prosecution’s favor. He ordered Golantz to provide transcripts so jurors could read along with the audio when the tapes were played in court.

I had tried to halt the playing of the tapes because I knew they were prejudicial to my client. Elliot had calmly spoken to the dispatcher in the first call, reporting that his wife and another person had been murdered. In that calm demeanor was room for an interpretation of calculated coldness that I didn’t want the jury to make. The second tape was worse from a defense standpoint. Elliot sounded annoyed and also indicated he knew and disliked the man who had been killed with his wife.

Tape 1 – 13:05 – 05/02/07

Dispatcher: Nine-one-one. Do you have an emergency?

Walter Elliot: I… well, they look dead. I don’t think anybody can help them.

Dispatcher: Excuse me, sir. Who am I talking to?

Walter Elliot: This is Walter Elliot. This is my house.

Dispatcher: Yes, sir. And you say somebody is dead?

Walter Elliot: I found my wife. She’s shot. And there’s a man here. He’s shot, too.

Dispatcher: Hold on a moment, sir. Let me type this in and get help going to you.

– break -

Dispatcher: Okay, Mr. Elliot, I have paramedics and deputies on their way.

Walter Elliot: It’s too late for them. The paramedics, I mean.

Dispatcher: I have to send them, sir. You said they are shot? Are you in danger?

Walter Elliot: I don’t know. I just got here. I didn’t do this thing. Are you recording this?

Dispatcher: Yes, sir. Everything is recorded. Are you in the house right now?

Walter Elliot: I’m in the bedroom. I didn’t do it.

Dispatcher: Is there anybody else in the house besides you and the two people who are shot?

Walter Elliot: I don’t think so.

Dispatcher: Okay, I want you to step outside so the deputies will see you when they pull up. Stand out where they can see you.

Walter Elliot: Okay, I’m going out.

– end -

The second tape involved a different dispatcher but I allowed Golantz to play it. I had lost the big argument about whether the tapes could be played at all. I saw no sense in wasting the court’s time by making the prosecutor bring in the second dispatcher to establish and introduce the second tape.

This one was made from Elliot’s cell phone. He was outside, and the slight sound of the ocean’s waves could be heard in the background.

Tape 2 – 13:24 – 05/02/07

Dispatcher: Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?

Walter Elliot: Yeah, I called before. Where is everybody?

Dispatcher: You called nine-one-one?

Walter Elliot: Yeah, my wife’s shot. So’s the German. Where is everybody?

Dispatcher: Is this the call in Malibu on Crescent Cove Road?

Walter Elliot: Yeah, that’s me. I called at least fifteen minutes ago and nobody’s here.

Dispatcher: Sir, my screen shows our alpha unit has an ETA of less than one minute. Hang up the phone and stand out front so they will see you when they arrive. Will you do that, sir?

Walter Elliot: I’m already standing out here.

Dispatcher: Then wait right there, sir.

Walter Elliot: If you say so. Good-bye.

– end -

Elliot not only sounded annoyed in the second call by the delay but said the word “German” with almost a sneer in his voice. Whether or not guilt could be extrapolated from his verbal tones didn’t matter. The tapes helped set the prosecution’s theme of Walter Elliot’s being arrogant and believing he was above the law. It was a good start for Golantz.

I passed on questioning the dispatcher because I knew there was nothing to be gained for the defense. Next up for the prosecution was sheriff’s deputy Brendan Murray, who was driving the alpha car that first responded to the 911 call. In a half hour of testimony, in minute detail Golantz led the deputy through his arrival and discovery of the bodies. He paid special attention to Murray’s recollections of Elliot’s behavior, demeanor and statements. According to Murray, the defendant showed no emotions when leading them up the stairs to the bedroom where his wife lay shot to death and naked on the bed. He calmly stepped over the legs of the dead man in the doorway and pointed to the body on the bed.

“He said, ‘That’s my wife. I’m pretty sure she’s dead,’ ” Murray testified.

According to Murray, Elliot also said at least three times that he had not killed the two people in the bedroom.

“Well, was that unusual?” Golantz asked.

“Well, we’re not trained to get involved in murder investigations,” Murray said. “We’re not supposed to. So I never asked Mr. Elliot if he did it. He just kept telling us he didn’t.”

I had no questions for Murray either. He was on my witness list and I would be able to recall him during the defense phase if I needed to. But I wanted to wait for the prosecution’s next witness, Christopher Harber, who was Murray’s partner and a rookie in the Sheriff’s Department. I thought that if either of the deputies was to make a mistake that might help the defense, it would be the rookie.

Harber’s testimony was shorter than Murray’s and he was used primarily to confirm his partner’s testimony. He heard the same things Murray heard. He saw the same things as well.

“Just a few questions, Your Honor,” I said when Stanton inquired about cross-examination.

While Golantz had been conducting his direct examination from the lectern, I remained at the defense table for the cross. This was a ploy. I wanted the jury, the witness and the prosecutor to think I was just going through the motions and asking a few questions on cross. The truth was I was about to plant what would be a key point in the defense’s case.

“Now, Deputy Harber, you are a rookie, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Have you ever testified in court before?”

“Not in a murder case.”

“Well, don’t be nervous. Despite what Mr. Golantz may have told you, I don’t bite.”

There was a polite murmur of laughter in the courtroom. Harber’s face turned a little pink. He was a big man with sandy hair cut military-short, the way they like it in the Sheriff’s Department.

“Now, when you and your partner arrived at the Elliot house, you said you saw my client standing out front in the turnaround. Is that correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Okay, what was he doing?”

“Just standing there. He had been told to wait there for us.”

“Okay, now, what did you know about the situation when the alpha car pulled in there?”

“We only knew what dispatch had told us. That a man named Walter Elliot had called from the house and said that two people were dead inside. They had been shot.”

“Had you ever had a call like that before?”

“No.”

“Were you scared, nervous, jacked-up, what?”

“I would say that the adrenaline was flowing, but we were pretty calm.”

“Did you draw your weapon when you got out of your car?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you point it at Mr. Elliot?”

“No, I carried it at my side.”

“Did your partner draw his weapon?”

“I believe so.”

“Did he point it at Mr. Elliot?”

Harber hesitated. I always liked it when witnesses for the prosecution hesitated.

“I don’t recall. I wasn’t really looking at him. I was looking at the defendant.”

I nodded like that made sense to me.

“You had to be safe, correct? You didn’t know this guy. You just knew that there supposedly were two dead people inside.”

“That’s right.”

“So it would be correct to say you approached Mr. Elliot cautiously?”

“That’s right.”

“When did you put your weapon away?”

“That was after we had searched and secured the premises.”

“You mean after you went inside and confirmed the deaths and that there was no one else inside?”

“Correct.”

“Okay, so when you were doing this, Mr. Elliot was with you the whole time?”

“Yes, we needed to keep him with us so he could show us where the bodies were.”

“Now was he under arrest?”

“No, he was not. He volunteered to show us.”

“But you handcuffed him, didn’t you?”

Harber’s second hesitation followed the question. He was in uncharted water and probably remembering the lines he’d rehearsed with Golantz or his young second chair.

“He had voluntarily agreed to be handcuffed. We explained to him that we were not arresting him but that we had a volatile situation inside the house and that it would be best for his safety and ours if we could handcuff him until we secured the premises.”

“And he agreed.”

“Yes, he agreed.”

In my peripheral vision I saw Elliot shake his head. I hoped the jury saw it too.

“Were his hands cuffed behind his back or in the front?”

“In the back, according to procedure. We are not allowed to handcuff a subject in the front.”

“A subject? What does that mean?”

“A subject can be anybody involved in an investigation.”

“Someone who is arrested?”

“Including that, yes. But Mr. Elliot was not under arrest.”

“I know you are new on the job, but how often have you handcuffed someone who was not under arrest?”

“It’s happened on occasion. But I don’t recall the number of times.”

I nodded but I hoped it was clear that I wasn’t nodding because I believed him.

“Now, your partner testified and you have testified that Mr. Elliot on three occasions told you both that he was not responsible for the killings in that house. Right?”

“Right.”

“You heard those statements?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Was that when you were outside or inside or where?”

“That was inside, when we were up in the bedroom.”

“So that means that he made these supposedly uninvited protestations of his innocence while he was handcuffed with his arms behind his back and you and your partner had your weapons drawn and ready, is that correct?”

The third hesitation.

“Yes, I believe that would be so.”

“And you are saying he was not under arrest at this time?”

“He was not under arrest.”

“Okay, so what happened after Mr. Elliot led you inside and up to the bodies and you and your partner determined that there was no one else in the house?”

“We took Mr. Elliot back outside, we sealed the house and we called detective services for a homicide call-out.”

“Was that all according to sheriff’s procedure, too?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Good. Now, Deputy Harber, did you take the handcuffs off of Mr. Elliot then, since he was not under arrest?”

“No, sir, we didn’t. We placed Mr. Elliot in the back of the car, and it is against procedure to place a subject in a sheriff’s car without handcuffs.”

“Again, there’s that word ‘subject.’ Are you sure Mr. Elliot wasn’t under arrest?”

“I am sure. We did not arrest him.”

“Okay, how long was he in the backseat of that car?”

“Approximately one half hour while we waited for the homicide team.”

“And what happened when the team arrived?”

“When the investigators arrived, they looked in the house first. Then they came out and took custody of Mr. Elliot. I mean, took him out of the car.”

There was a slip I dove into.

“He was in custody at that time?”

“No, I made a mistake there. He voluntarily agreed to wait in the car and then they arrived and took him out.”

“You are saying he voluntarily agreed to be handcuffed in the back of a patrol car?”

“Yes.”

“If he had wanted to, could he have opened the door and gotten out?”

“I don’t think so. The back doors have security locks. You can’t open them from inside.”

“But he was in there voluntarily.”

“Yes, he was.”

Even Harber didn’t look like he believed what he was saying. His face had turned a deeper shade of pink.

“Deputy Harber, when did the handcuffs finally come off of Mr. Elliot?”

“When the detectives removed him from the car, they took the cuffs off and gave them back to my partner.”

“Okay.”

I nodded like I was finished and flipped up a few pages on my pad to check for questions I missed. I kept my eyes down on the pad when I spoke.

“Oh, Deputy? One last thing. The first call to nine-one-one went out at one-oh-five according to the dispatch log. Mr. Elliot had to call again nineteen minutes later to make sure he hadn’t been forgotten about, and then you and your partner finally arrived four minutes after that. A total of twenty-three minutes to respond.”

I now looked up at Harber.

“Deputy, why did it take so long to respond to what must’ve been a priority call?”

“The Malibu district is our largest geographically. We had to come all the way over the mountain from another call.”

“Wasn’t there another patrol car that was closer and also available?”

“My partner and I were in the alpha car. It’s a rover. We handle the priority calls and we accepted this one when it came in from dispatch.”

“Okay, Deputy, I have nothing further.”

On redirect Golantz followed the misdirection I’d set up. He asked Harber several questions that revolved around whether Elliot had been under arrest or not. The prosecutor sought to diffuse this idea, as it would play into the defense’s tunnel-vision theory. That was what I wanted him to think I was doing and it had worked. Golantz spent another fifteen minutes eliciting testimony from Harber that underlined that the man he and his partner had handcuffed outside the scene of a double murder was not under arrest. It defied common sense but the prosecution was sticking with it.

When the prosecutor was finished, the judge adjourned for the afternoon break. As soon as the jury had cleared the courtroom, I heard a whispered voice call my name. I turned around and saw Lorna, who pointed her finger toward the back of the courtroom. I turned further to look back, and there were my daughter and her mother, squeezed into the back row of the gallery. My daughter surreptitiously waved to me and I smiled back.

Thirty-nine

I met them in the hallway outside the courtroom, away from the clot of reporters who surrounded the other principals of the trial as they exited. Hayley hugged me and I was overwhelmed that she had come. I saw an empty wooden bench and we sat down.

“How long were you guys in there?” I asked. “I didn’t see you.”

“Unfortunately, not that long,” Maggie said. “Her last period today was PE, so I decided to take the afternoon off, pull her out early and come on down. We saw most of your cross with the deputy.”

I looked from Maggie to our daughter, who was sitting between us. She had her mother’s looks; dark hair and eyes, skin that held a tan long into the winter.

“What did you think, Hay?”

“Um, I thought it was really interesting. You asked him a lot of questions. He looked like he was getting mad.”

“Don’t worry, he’ll get over it.”

I looked over her head and winked at my ex-wife.

“Mickey?”

I turned around and saw it was McEvoy from the Times. He had come over, his pad and pen ready.

“Not now,” I said.

“I just had a quick-”

“And I just said, not now. Leave me alone.”

McEvoy turned and walked back to one of the groups circling Golantz.

“Who was that?” Hayley asked.

“A newspaper reporter. I’ll talk to him later.”

“Mom said there was a big story about you today.”

“It wasn’t really about me. It was about the case. That’s why I was hoping you could come see some of it.”

I looked at my ex-wife again and nodded my thanks. She had put aside any anger she had toward me and placed our daughter first. No matter what else, I could always count on her for that.

“Do you go back in there?” Hayley asked.

“Yes, this is just a little break so people can get something to drink or use the bathroom. We have one more session and then we’ll go home and start it all over tomorrow.”

She nodded and looked down the hall toward the courtroom door. I followed her eyes and saw that people were starting to go back in.

“Um, Daddy? Did that man in there kill somebody?”

I looked at Maggie and she shrugged as if to say, I didn’t tell her to ask the question.

“Well, honey, we don’t know. He is accused of that, yes. And a lot of people think he did. But nothing has been proven yet and we’re going to use this trial to decide that. That’s what the trial is for. Remember how I explained that to you?”

“I remember.”

“Mick, is this your family?”

I looked over my shoulder and froze when I looked into the eyes of Walter Elliot. He was smiling warmly, expecting an introduction. Little did he know who Maggie McFierce was.

“Uh, hi, Walter. This is my daughter, Hayley, and this is her mom, Maggie McPherson.”

“Hi,” Hayley said shyly.

Maggie nodded and looked uncomfortable.

Walter made the mistake of thrusting his hand out to Maggie. If she could have acted more stiffly, I couldn’t imagine it. She shook his hand once and then quickly pulled away from his grasp. When his hand moved toward Hayley, Maggie literally jumped up, put her arms on our daughter’s shoulders and pulled her from the bench.

“Hayley, let’s go into the restroom real quick before court starts again.”

She hustled Hayley off toward the restroom. Walter watched them go and then looked at me, his hand still held out and empty. I stood up.

“Sorry, Walter, my ex-wife’s a prosecutor. She works for the DA.”

His eyebrows climbed his forehead.

“Then, I guess I understand why she’s an ex-wife.”

I nodded just to make him feel better. I told him to go on back into the courtroom and that I would be along shortly.

I walked toward the restrooms and met Maggie and Hayley as they were coming out.

“I think we’re going to head home,” Maggie said.

“Really?”

“She’s got a lot of homework and I think she’s seen enough for today.”

I could’ve argued that last point but I let it go.

“Okay,” I said. “Hayley, thanks for coming. It means a lot to me.”

“Okay.”

I bent down and kissed her on the top of her head, then pulled her in close for a hug. It was only at times like this with my daughter that the distance I had opened in my life came closed. I felt connected to something that mattered. I looked up at Maggie.

“Thanks for bringing her.”

She nodded.

“For what it’s worth, you’re doing good in there.”

“It’s worth a lot. Thank you.”

She shrugged and let a small smile slip out. And that was nice, too.

I watched them walk toward the elevator alcove, knowing they weren’t going home to my house and wondering how it was that I had messed up my life so badly.

“Hayley!” I called after them.

My daughter looked back at me.

“See you Wednesday. Pancakes!”

She was smiling as they joined the crowd waiting for an elevator. I noticed that my former wife was smiling, too. I pointed at her as I walked back toward the courtroom.

“And you can come, too.”

She nodded.

“We’ll see,” she said.

An elevator opened and they moved toward it. “We’ll see.” Those two words seemed to cover it all for me.

Forty

In any murder trial, the main witness for the prosecution is always the lead investigator. Because there are no living victims to tell the jury what happened to them, it falls upon the lead to tell the tale of the investigation as well as to speak for the dead. The lead investigator brings the hammer. He puts everything together for the jury, makes it clear and makes it sympathetic. The lead’s job is to sell the case to the jury and, like any exchange or transaction, it is often just as much about the salesman as it is about the goods being sold. The best homicide men are the best salesmen. I’ve seen men as hard as Harry Bosch on the stand shed a tear when they’ve described the last moments a murder victim spent on earth.

Golantz called the case’s lead investigator to the stand after the afternoon break. It was a stroke of genius and master planning. John Kinder would hold center stage until court was adjourned for the day, and the jurors would go home with his words to consider over dinner and then into the night. And there was nothing I could do about it but watch.

Kinder was a large, affable black man who spoke with a fatherly baritone. He wore reading glasses slipped down to the end of his nose when referring to the thick binder he’d carried with him to the stand. Between questions he would look over the rims at Golantz or the jury. His eyes seemed comfortable, kind, alert and wise. He was the one witness I didn’t have a comeback for.

With Golantz’s precise questioning and a series of blow-ups of crime scene photos – which I had been unsuccessful in keeping out on the grounds they were prejudicial – Kinder led the jury on a tour of the murder scene and what the evidence told the investigative team. It was purely clinical and methodical but it was supremely interesting. With his deep, authoritative voice, Kinder came off as something akin to a professor, teaching Homicide 101 to every person in the courtroom.

I objected here and there when I could in an effort to break the Golantz/Kinder rhythm, but there was little I could do but nut it out and wait. At one point I got a text on my phone from the gallery and it didn’t help ease my concerns.

Favreau: They love this guy! Isn’t there anything you can do?

Without turning to glance back at Favreau I simply shook my head while looking down at the phone’s screen under the defense table.

I then glanced at my client and it appeared that he was barely paying attention to Kinder’s testimony. He was writing notes on a legal pad but they weren’t about the trial or the case. I saw a lot of numbers and the heading FOREIGN DISTRIBUTION underlined on the page. I leaned over and whispered to him.

“This guy’s killing us up there,” I said. “Just in case you’re wondering.”

A humorless smile bent his lips and Elliot whispered back.

“I think we’re doing fine. You’ve had a good day.”

I shook my head and turned back to watch the testimony. I had a client who wasn’t concerned by the reality of his situation. He was well aware of my trial strategy and that I had the magic bullet in my gun. But nothing is a sure thing when you go to trial. That’s why ninety percent of all cases are settled by disposition before trial. Nobody wants to roll the dice. The stakes are too high. And a murder trial is the biggest gamble of them all.

But from day one, Walter Elliot didn’t seem to get this. He just went about the business of making movies and working out foreign distribution and seemingly believed that there was no question that he would walk at the end of the trial. I felt my case was bulletproof but not even I had that kind of confidence.

After the basics of the crime scene investigation were thoroughly covered with Kinder, Golantz moved the testimony toward Elliot and the investigator’s interaction with him.

“Now, you have testified that the defendant remained in Deputy Murray’s patrol car while you initially surveyed the crime scene and sort of got the lay of the land, correct?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“When did you first speak with Walter Elliot?”

Kinder referred to a document in the binder open on the shelf at the front of the witness stand.

“At approximately two thirty, I came out of the house after completing my initial survey of the crime scene and I asked the deputies to take Mr. Elliot out of the car.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I told one of deputies to take the handcuffs off him because I didn’t think that was necessary any longer. There were several deputies and investigators on the scene by this point and the premises were very secure.”

“Well, was Mr. Elliot under arrest at that point?”

“No, he wasn’t and I explained that to him. I told him that the guys – the deputies – had been taking every precaution until they knew what they had. Mr. Elliot said he understood this. I asked if he wanted to continue to cooperate and show the members of my team around inside and he said, yes, he would do it.”

“So you took him back inside the house?”

“Yes. We had him put on booties first so as not to contaminate anything and then we went back inside. I had Mr. Elliot retrace the exact steps he said he had taken when he came in and found the bodies.”

I made a note about the booties being a bit late, since Elliot had already shown the first deputies around inside. I’d potshot Kinder with that on cross.

“Was there anything unusual about the steps he said he had taken or anything inconsistent in what he told you?”

I objected to the question, saying that it was too vague. The judge agreed. Score one inconsequential point for the defense. Golantz simply rephrased and got more specific.

“Where did Mr. Elliot lead you in the house, Detective Kinder?”

“He walked us in and we went straight up the stairs to the bedroom. He told us this was what he had done when he entered. He said he then found the bodies and called nine-one-one from the phone next to the bed. He said the dispatcher told him to leave the house and go out front to wait and that’s what he did. I asked him specifically if he had been anywhere else in the house and he said no.”

“Did that seem unusual or inconsistent to you?”

“Well, first of all, I thought it was odd if true that he’d gone inside and directly up to the bedroom without initially looking around the first level of the house. It also didn’t jibe with what he told us when we got back outside the house. He pointed at his wife’s car, which was parked in the circle out front, and said that was how he knew she had somebody with her in the house. I asked him what he meant and he said that she parked out front so that Johan Rilz, the other victim, could use the one space available in the garage. They had stored a bunch of furniture and stuff in there and that left only one space. He said the German had hidden his Porsche in there and his wife had to park outside.”

“And what was the significance of that to you?”

“Well, to me it showed deception. He’d told us that he hadn’t been anywhere in the house but the bedroom upstairs. But it was pretty clear to me he had looked in the garage and seen the second victim’s Porsche.”

Golantz nodded emphatically from the lectern, driving home the point about Elliot being deceptive. I knew I would be able to handle this point on cross but I wouldn’t get the chance until the next day, after it had percolated in the brains of the jury for almost twenty-four hours.

“What happened after that?” Golantz asked.

“Well, there was still a lot of work to do inside the house. So I had a couple members of my team take Mr. Elliot to the Malibu substation so he could wait there and be comfortable.”

“Was he arrested at this time?”

“No, once again I explained to him that we needed to talk to him and if he was still willing to be cooperative, we were going to take him to an interview room at the station, and I said that I would get there as soon as possible. Once again he agreed.”

“Who transported him?”

“Investigators Joshua and Toles took him in their car.”

“Why didn’t they go ahead and interview him once they got to the Malibu station?”

“Because I wanted to know more about him and the crime scene before we talked to him. Sometimes you get only one chance, even with a cooperating witness.”

“You used the word ‘witness.’ Wasn’t Mr. Elliot a suspect at this time?”

It was a cat-and-mouse game with the truth. It didn’t matter how Kinder answered, everybody in the courtroom knew that they had drawn a bead on Elliot.

“Well, to some extent anybody and everybody is a suspect,” Kinder answered. “You go into a situation like that and you suspect everybody. But at that point, I didn’t know a lot about the victims, I didn’t know a lot about Mr. Elliot and I didn’t know exactly what we had. So at that time, I was viewing him more as a very important witness. He found the bodies and he knew the victims. He could help us.”

“Okay, so you stashed him at the Malibu station while you went to work at the crime scene. What were you doing?”

“My job was to oversee the documentation of the crime scene and the gathering of any evidence in that house. We were also working the phones and the computers and confirming the identities and backgrounding the parties involved.”

“What did you learn?”

“We learned that neither of the Elliots had a criminal record or had any guns legally registered to them. We learned that the other victim, Johan Rilz, was a German national and appeared to have no criminal record or own any weapons. We learned that Mr. Elliot was the head of a studio and very successful in the movie business, things like that.”

“At some point did a member of your team draw up search warrants in the case?”

“Yes, we did. Proceeding with an abundance of caution, we drew up and had a judge sign off on a series of search warrants so we had the authority to continue the investigation and take it wherever it led.”

“Is it unusual to take such steps?”

“Perhaps. The courts have granted law enforcement wide leeway in the gathering of evidence. But we determined that because of the parties involved in this case, we would go the extra mile. We went for the search warrants even though we might not need them.”

“What specifically were the search warrants for?”

“We had warrants for the Elliot house and for the three cars, Mr. Elliot’s, his wife’s and the Porsche in the garage. We also had a search warrant granting us permission to conduct tests on Mr. Elliot and his clothing to determine if he had discharged a gun in recent hours.”

The prosecutor continued to lead Kinder through the investigation up until he cleared the crime scene and interviewed Elliot at the Malibu station. This set up the introduction of a videotape of the first sit-down interview with Elliot. This was a tape I had viewed several times during preparation for trial. I knew it was unremarkable in terms of the content of what Elliot told Kinder and his partner, Roland Ericsson. What was important to the prosecution about the tape was Elliot’s demeanor. He didn’t look like somebody who had just discovered the naked body of his dead wife with a bullet hole in the center of her face and two more in her chest. He appeared as calm as a summer sunset, and that made him look like an ice-cold killer.

A video screen was set up in front of the jury box and Golantz played the tape, often stopping it to ask Kinder a question and then starting it again. The taped interview lasted ten minutes and was nonconfrontational. It was simply an exercise in which the investigators locked in Elliot’s story. There were no hard questions. Elliot was asked broadly about what he did and when. It ended with Kinder presenting a search warrant to Elliot that the investigator explained granted the Sheriff’s Department access to test his hands, arms and clothing for gunshot residue.

Elliot smiled slightly as he replied.

“Have at it, gentlemen,” he said. “Do what you have to do.”

Golantz checked the clock on the back wall of the courtroom and then used a remote to freeze the image of Elliot’s half smile on the video screen. That was the image he wanted the jurors to take with them. He wanted them to think about that catch-me-if-you-can smile as they drove home in five o’clock traffic.

“Your Honor,” he said. “I think now would be a good time to break for the day. I will be moving with Deputy Kinder in a new direction after this and maybe we should start that tomorrow morning.”

The judge agreed, adjourning court for the day after once more admonishing the jurors to avoid all media reports on the trial.

I stood at the defense table and watched the jurors file into the deliberation room. I was pretty sure that the prosecution had won the first day, but that was to be expected. We still had our shots coming. I looked over at my client.

“Walter, what do you have going tonight?” I asked.

“A small dinner party with friends. They’ve invited Dominick Dunne. Then I am going to watch the first cut of a film my studio is producing with Johnny Depp playing a detective.”

“Well, call your friends and call Johnny and cancel it all. You’re having dinner with me. We’re going to work.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve been ducking me since the trial began. That was okay because I didn’t want to know what I didn’t need to know. Now it’s different. We’re in trial, we’re past discovery, and I need to know. Everything, Walter. So, we’re going to talk tonight, or you’re going to have to hire another lawyer in the morning.”

I saw his face grow tight with checked anger. In that moment, I knew he could be a killer, or at least someone who could order it done.

“You wouldn’t dare,” he said.

“Try me.”

We stared at each other for a moment and I saw something about his face relax.

“Make your calls,” I finally said. “We’ll take my car.”

Forty-one

Since I had insisted on the meeting, Elliot insisted on the place. With a thirty-second phone call he got us a private booth at the Water Grill over by the Biltmore and had a martini waiting on the table for him when we got there. As we sat down, I asked for a bottle of flat water and some sliced lemons.

I sat across from my client and watched him study the fresh fish menu. For the longest time I had wanted to be in the dark about Walter Elliot. Usually the less you know about your client, the better able you are to provide a defense. But we were past that time now.

“You called it a dinner meeting,” Elliot said without taking his eyes from the menu. “Aren’t you going to look?”

“I’m having what you’re having, Walter.”

He put the menu to the side and looked at me.

“Fillet of sole.”

“Sounds good.”

He signaled a waiter who had been standing nearby but too intimidated to approach the table. Elliot ordered for us both, adding a bottle of Chardonnay to come with the fish, and told the waiter not to forget about my flat water and lemon. He then clasped his hands on the table and looked expectantly at me.

“I could be dining with Dominick Dunne,” he said. “This better be good.”

“Walter, this is going to be good. This is going to be where you stop hiding from me. This is where you tell me the whole story. The true story. You see, if I know what you know, then I’m not going to get sandbagged by the prosecution. I am going to know what moves Golantz is going to make before he makes them.”

Elliot nodded as though he agreed it was time to deliver the goods.

“I did not kill my wife or her Nazi friend,” he said. “I have told you that from day one.”

I shook my head.

“That’s not good enough. I said I want the story. I want to know what really happened, Walter. I want to know what’s going on or I’m going to be moving on.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. No judge is going to let you walk away in the middle of a trial.”

“You want to bet your freedom on that, Walter? If I want off this case, I will find a way off it.”

He hesitated and studied me before answering.

“You should be careful what you ask for. Guilty knowledge could be a dangerous thing.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“But I’m not sure I can.”

I leaned across the table to him.

“What does that mean, Walter? What is going on? I’m your lawyer. You can tell me what you’ve done and it stays with me.”

Before he could speak, the waiter brought a bottle of European water to the table and a side plate of sliced lemons. Enough for everybody in the restaurant. Elliot waited until he had filled my glass and moved away and out of earshot before responding.

“What is going on is that you have been hired to present my defense to the jury. In my estimation you have done an excellent job so far and your preparations for the defense phase are on the highest level. All of this in two weeks. Astonishing!”

“Drop the bullshit!”

I said it too loud. Elliot looked outside the booth and stared down a woman at a nearby table who had heard the expletive.

“You’ll have to keep your voice down,” he said. “The bond of attorney-client confidentiality ends at this table.”

I looked at him. He was smiling but I also knew he was reminding me of what I had already assured him of, that what was said here stayed here. Was it a signal that he was willing to finally talk? I played the only ace I had.

“Tell me about the bribe Jerry Vincent paid,” I said.

At first I detected a momentary shock in his eyes. Then came a knowing look as the wheels turned inside and he put something together. Then I thought I saw a quick flash of regret. I wished Julie Favreau had been sitting next to me. She could have read him better than I could.

“That is a very dangerous piece of information to be in possession of,” he said. “How did you get it?”

I obviously couldn’t tell my client I got it from a police detective I was now cooperating with.

“I guess you could say it came with the case, Walter. I have all of Vincent’s records, including his financials. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he funneled a hundred thousand of your advance to an unknown party. Is the bribe what got him killed?”

Elliot raised his martini glass with two fingers clenching the delicate stem and drank what was left in it. He then nodded to someone unseen over my shoulder. He wanted another. Then he looked at me.

“I think it is safe to say a confluence of events led to Jerry Vincent’s death.”

“Walter, I’m not fucking around with you. I need to know – not only to defend you, but to protect myself.”

He put his empty glass to the side of the table and someone whisked it away within two seconds. He nodded as if in agreement with me and then he spoke.

“I think you may have found the reason for his death,” he said. “It was in the file. You even mentioned it to me.”

“I don’t understand. What did I mention?”

Elliot responded in an impatient tone.

“He planned to delay the trial. You found the motion. He was killed before he could file it.”

I tried to put it together but I didn’t have enough of the parts.

“I don’t understand, Walter. He wanted to delay the trial and that got him killed? Why?”

Elliot leaned across the table toward me. He spoke in a tone just above a whisper.

“Okay, you asked for it and I’ll tell you. But don’t blame me when you wish you didn’t know what you know. Yes, there was a bribe. He paid it and everything was fine. The trial was scheduled and all we had to do was be ready to go. We had to stay on schedule. No delays, no continuances. But then he changed his mind and wanted to delay.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I think he actually thought he could win the case without the fix.”

It appeared that Elliot didn’t know about the FBI’s phone calls and apparent interest in Vincent. If he did know, now would have been the time to mention it. The FBI’s focus on Vincent would have been as good a reason as any to delay a trial involving a bribery scheme.

“So delaying the trial got him killed?”

“That’s my guess, yes.”

“Did you kill him, Walter?”

“I don’t kill people.”

“You had him killed.”

Elliot shook his head wearily.

“I don’t have people killed either.”

A waiter moved up to the booth with a tray and a stand and we both leaned back to let him work. He deboned our fish, plated them and put them down on the table along with two small serving pitchers with beurre blanc sauce in them. He then placed Elliot’s fresh martini down along with two wineglasses. He uncorked the bottle Elliot had ordered and asked if he wanted to taste the wine yet. Elliot shook his head and told the waiter to go away.

“Okay,” I said when we were left alone. “Let’s go back to the bribe. Who was bribed?”

Elliot took down half his new martini in one gulp.

“That should be obvious when you think about it.”

“Then I’m stupid. Help me out.”

“A trial that cannot be delayed. Why?”

My eyes stayed on him but I was no longer looking at him. I went inside to work the riddle until it came to me. I ticked off the possibilities – judge, prosecutor, cops, witnesses, jury… I realized that there was only one place where a bribe and an unmovable trial intersected. There was only one aspect that would change if the trial were delayed and rescheduled. The judge, prosecutor and all the witnesses would remain the same no matter when it was scheduled. But the jury pool changes week to week.

“There’s a sleeper on the jury,” I said. “You got to somebody.”

Elliot didn’t react. He let me run with it and I did. My mind swept along the faces in the jury box. Two rows of six. I stopped on juror number seven.

“Number seven. You wanted him in the box. You knew. He’s the sleeper. Who is he?”

Elliot nodded slightly and gave me that half smile. He took his first bite of fish before answering my question as calmly as if we were talking about the Lakers’ chances at the playoffs and not the rigging of a murder trial.

“I have no idea who he is and don’t really care to know. But he’s ours. We were told that number seven would be ours. And he’s no sleeper. He’s a persuader. When it gets to deliberations, he will go in there and turn the tide for the defense. With the case Vincent built and you’re delivering, it probably won’t take more than a little push. I’m banking on us getting our verdict. But at minimum he will hold out for acquittal and we’ll have a hung jury. If that happens, we just start all over and do it again. They will never convict me, Mickey. Never.”

I pushed my plate aside. I couldn’t eat.

“Walter, no more riddles. Tell me how this went down. Tell me from the start.”

“From the start?”

“From the start.”

Elliot chuckled at the thought of it and poured himself a glass of wine without first tasting from the bottle. A waiter swooped in to take over the operation but Elliot waved him away with the bottle.

“This is a long story, Mickey. Would you like a glass of wine to go with it?”

He held the mouth of the bottle poised over my empty glass. I was tempted but I shook my head.

“No, Walter, I don’t drink.”

“I’m not sure I can trust someone who doesn’t take a drink from time to time.”

“I’m your lawyer. You can trust me.”

“I trusted the last one, too, and look what happened to him.”

“Don’t threaten me, Walter. Just tell me the story.”

He drank heavily from his wineglass and then put it down too hard on the table. He looked around to see if anyone in the restaurant had noticed and I got the sense that it was all an act. He was really checking to see if we were being watched. I scanned the angles I had without being obvious. I didn’t see Bosch or anyone else I pegged as a cop in the restaurant.

Elliot began his story.

“When you come to Hollywood, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from as long as you’ve got one thing in your pocket.”

“Money.”

“That’s right. I came here twenty-five years ago and I had money. I put it in a couple of movies first and then into a half-assed studio nobody gave two shits about. And I built that place into a contender. Another five years and it will no longer be the Big Four they talk about. It will be the Big Five. Archway will be right up there with Paramount and Warner’s and the rest.”

I wasn’t anticipating going back twenty-five years when I told him to start the story from the beginning.

“Okay, Walter, I get all of that about your success. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying it wasn’t my money. When I came here, it wasn’t my money.”

“I thought the story was that you came from a family that owned a phosphate mine or shipping operation in Florida.”

He nodded emphatically.

“All true, but it depends on your definition of family.”

It slowly came to me.

“Are you talking about the mob, Walter?”

“I am talking about an organization in Florida with a tremendous cash flow that needed legitimate businesses to move it through and legitimate front men to operate those businesses. I was an accountant. I was one of those men.”

It was easy to put together. Florida twenty-five years ago. The heyday of the uninhibited flow of cocaine and money.

“I was sent west,” Elliot said. “I had a story and I had suitcases full of money. And I loved movies. I knew how to pick ’em and put ’ em together. I took Archway and turned it into a billion-dollar enterprise. And then my wife…”

A sad look of regret crossed his face.

“What, Walter?”

He shook his head.

“On the morning after our twelfth anniversary – after the prenuptial agreement was vested – she told me she was leaving. She was going to get a divorce.”

I nodded. I understood. With the prenup vested, Mitzi Elliot would be entitled to half of Walter Elliot’s holdings in Archway Studios. Only he was just a front. His holdings actually belonged to the organization and it wasn’t the type of organization that would allow half of its investment to walk out the door in a skirt.

“I tried to change her mind,” Elliot said. “She wouldn’t listen. She was in love with that Nazi bastard and thought he could protect her.”

“The organization had her killed.”

It sounded so strange to say those words out loud. It made me look around and sweep my eyes across the restaurant.

“I wasn’t supposed to be there that day,” Elliot said. “I was told to stay away, to make sure I had a rock-solid alibi.”

“Why’d you go, then?”

His eyes held on mine before he answered.

“I still loved her in some way. Somehow I still did and I wanted her. I wanted to fight for her. I went out there to try to stop it, maybe be the hero, save the day and win her back. I don’t know. I didn’t have a plan. I just didn’t want it to happen. So I went out there… but I was too late. They were both dead when I got there. Terrible…”

Elliot was staring at the memory, perhaps the scene in the bedroom in Malibu. I dropped my eyes down to the white tablecloth in front of me. A defense attorney never expects his client to tell him the whole truth. Parts of the truth, yes. But never the cold, hard and complete truth. I had to think that there were things Elliot had left out. But what he had told me was enough for now. It was time to talk about the bribe.

“And then came Jerry Vincent,” I prompted.

His eyes came back into focus and he looked at me.

“Yes.”

“Tell me about the bribe.”

“I don’t have a lot to tell. My corporate attorney hooked me up with Jerry and he was fine. We worked out the fee arrangement and then he came to me – this was early on, at least five months ago – and he said he had been approached by someone who could salt the jury. You know, put someone on the jury who would be for us. No matter what happened he would be a holdout for acquittal but he would also work for the defense on the inside – during deliberations. He would be a talker, a skilled persuader – a con man. The catch was that once it was in play, the trial would have to stay on schedule so that this person would end up on my jury.”

“And you and Jerry took the offer.”

“We took it. This was five months ago. At the time, I didn’t have much of a defense. I didn’t kill my wife but it seemed the odds were stacked against me. We had no magic bullet… and I was scared. I was innocent but could see that I was going to be convicted. So we took the offer.”

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand up front. Like you found out, Jerry paid it through his fees. He inflated his fee and I paid him and then he paid for the juror. Then it was going to be another hundred for a hung jury and two-fifty for an acquittal. Jerry told me that these people had done it before.”

“You mean fixed a jury?”

“Yes, that’s what he said.”

I thought maybe the FBI had gotten wind of the earlier fixes and that was why they had come to Vincent.

“Were they Jerry’s trials that were fixed before?” I asked.

“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”

“Did he ever say anything about the FBI sniffing around your case?”

Elliot leaned back, as if I had just said something repulsive.

“No. Is that what’s going on?”

He looked very concerned.

“I don’t know, Walter. I’m just asking questions here. But Jerry told you he was going to delay the trial, right?”

Elliot nodded.

“Yes. That Monday. He said we didn’t need the fix. He had the magic bullet and he was going to win the trial without the sleeper on the jury.”

“And that got him killed.”

“It had to be. I don’t think these kinds of people just let you change your mind and pull out of something like this.”

“What kind of people? The organization?”

“I don’t know. Just these kinds of people. Whoever does this sort of thing.”

“Did you tell anyone that Jerry was going to delay the case?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Then, who did Jerry tell?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, who did Jerry make the deal with? Who did he bribe?”

“I don’t know that either. He wouldn’t tell me. Said it would be better if I didn’t know names. Same thing I’m telling you.”

It was a little late for that. I had to end this and get away by myself to think. I glanced at my untouched plate of fish and wondered if I should take it to go for Patrick or if someone back in the kitchen would eat it.

“You know,” Elliot said, “not to put any more pressure on you, but if I get convicted, I’m dead.”

I looked at him.

“The organization?”

He nodded.

“A guy gets busted and he becomes a liability. Normally, they wipe him out before he even gets to court. They don’t take the chance that he’ll try to cut a deal. But I still have control of their money, you see. They wipe me out and they lose it all. Archway, the real estate, everything. So they’re hanging back and watching. If I get off, then we go back to normal and everything’s good. If I get convicted, I’m too much of a liability and I won’t last two nights in prison. They’ll get to me in there.”

It’s always good to know exactly what the stakes are but I probably could have gone without the reminder.

“We’re dealing with a higher authority here,” Elliot continued. “It goes way beyond things like attorney-client confidentiality. That’s small change, Mick. The things I’ve told you tonight can go no further than this table. Not into court or anywhere else. What I’ve told you here could get you killed in a heartbeat. Just like Jerry. Remember that.”

Elliot had spoken matter-of-factly and concluded the statement by calmly draining the wine from his glass. But the threat was implicit in every word he had said. I would have no trouble remembering it.

Elliot waved down a waiter and asked for the check.

Forty-two

I was thankful that my client liked his martinis before dinner and his Chardonnay with it. I wasn’t sure I would have gotten what I got from Elliot without the alcohol smoothing the way and loosening his tongue. But afterward I didn’t want him running the risk of getting pulled over on a DUI in the middle of a murder trial. I insisted that he not drive home. But Elliot insisted he wasn’t going to leave his $400,000 Maybach overnight in a downtown garage. So I had Patrick take us to the car and then I drove Elliot home while Patrick followed.

“This car cost four hundred grand?” I asked him. “I’m scared to drive it.”

“A little less, actually.”

“Yeah, well, do you have anything else to drive? When I told you not to take the limo, I didn’t expect you’d be tooling up to your murder trial in one of these. Think about the impressions you are putting out there, Walter. This doesn’t look good. Remember what you told me the first day we met? About having to win outside of the courtroom too? A car like this doesn’t help you with that.”

“My other car is a Carrera GT.”

“Great. What’s that worth?”

“More than this one.”

“Tell you what, why don’t you borrow one of my Lincolns. I even have one that has a plate that says NOT GUILTY. You can drive that.”

“That’s okay. I have access to a nice modest Mercedes. Is that all right?”

“Perfect. Walter, despite everything you told me tonight, I’m going to do my best for you. I think we have a good shot at this.”

“Then, you believe I’m innocent.”

I hesitated.

“I believe you didn’t shoot your wife and Rilz. I’m not sure that makes you innocent, but put it this way: I don’t think you’re guilty of the charges you’re facing. And that’s all I need.”

He nodded.

“Maybe that’s the best I can ask for. Thank you, Mickey.”

After that we didn’t talk much as I concentrated on not wrecking the car, which was worth more than most people’s houses.

Elliot lived in Beverly Hills in a gated estate in the flats south of Sunset. He pushed a button on the car’s ceiling that opened the steel entry gate and we slipped through, Patrick coming in right behind me in the Lincoln. We got out and I gave Elliot his keys. He asked if I wanted to come in for another drink and I reminded him that I didn’t drink. He stuck out his hand and I shook it and it felt awkward, as if we were sealing some sort of deal on what had been revealed earlier. I said good night and got into the back of my Lincoln.

The internal gears were working all the way back to my house. Patrick had been a quick study of my nuances and seemed to know that it was not the time to interrupt with small talk. He let me work.

I sat leaning against the door, my eyes gazing out the window but not seeing the neon world go by. I was thinking about Jerry Vincent and the deal he had made with a party unknown. It wasn’t hard to figure out how it was done. The question of who did it was another matter.

I knew that the jury system relied on random selection on multiple levels. This helped ensure the integrity and cross-social composition of juries. The initial pool of hundreds of citizens summoned to jury duty each week was drawn randomly from voter registrations as well as property and public utility records. Jurors culled from this larger group for the jury selection process in a specific trial were again chosen randomly – this time by a courthouse computer. The list of those prospective jurors was given to the judge presiding over the trial, and the first twelve names or code numbers on the list were called to take the seats in the box for the initial round of voir dire. Again, the order of names or numbers on the list was determined by computer-generated random selection.

Elliot told me that after a trial date had been set in his case, Jerry Vincent was approached by an unknown party and told that a sleeper could be placed on the jury. The catch was that there could be no delays. If the trial moved, the sleeper couldn’t move with it. All of this told me that this unknown party had full access to all levels of the random processes of the jury system: the initial summons to show for jury duty at a specific courthouse on a specific week; the random selection of the venire for the trial; and the random selection of the first twelve jurors to go into the box.

Once the sleeper was in the box, it was up to him to stay there. The defense would know not to oust him with a preemptory strike, and by appearing to be pro-prosecution he would avoid being challenged by the prosecution. It was simple enough, as long as the trial’s date didn’t change.

Stepping it out this way gave me a better understanding of the manipulation involved and who might have engineered it. It also gave me a better understanding of the ethical predicament I was in. Elliot had admitted several crimes to me over dinner. But I was his lawyer and these admissions would remain confidential under the bonds of the attorney-client relationship. The exception to this rule was if I were endangered by my knowledge or had knowledge of a crime that was planned but had not yet occurred. I knew that someone had been bribed by Vincent. That crime had already occurred. But the crime of jury tampering had not yet occurred. That crime wouldn’t take place until deliberations began, so I was duty-bound to report it. Elliot apparently didn’t know of this exception to the rules of client confidentiality or was convinced that the threat of my meeting the same end as Jerry Vincent would keep me in check.

I thought about all of this and realized there was one more exception to consider. I would not have to report the intended jury tampering if I were to stop the crime from happening.

I straightened up and looked around. We were on Sunset coming into West Hollywood. I looked ahead and saw a familiar sign.

“Patrick, pull over up here in front of Book Soup. I want to run in for a minute.”

Patrick pulled the Lincoln to the curb in front of the bookstore. I told him to wait in front and I jumped out. I went in the store’s front door and back into the stacks. Although I loved the store, I wasn’t there to shop. I needed to make a phone call and I didn’t want Patrick to hear it.

The mystery aisle was too crowded with customers. I went further back and found an empty alcove where big coffee-table books were stacked heavily on the shelves and tables. I pulled my phone and called my investigator.

“Cisco, it’s me. Where are you?”

“At home. What’s up?”

“Lorna there?”

“No, she went to a movie with her sister. She should be back in-”

“That’s all right. I wanted to talk to you. I want you to do something and you may not want to do it. If you don’t, I understand. Either way, I don’t want you to talk about it with anybody. Including Lorna.”

There was a hesitation before he answered.

“Who do I kill?”

We both started to laugh and it relieved some of the tension that had been building through the night.

“We can talk about that later but this might be just as dicey. I want you to shadow somebody for me and find out everything you can about him. The catch is, if you get caught, we’ll both probably get our tickets pulled.”

“Who is it?”

“Juror number seven.”

Forty-three

As soon as I got back in the Lincoln, I started to regret what I was doing. I was walking a fine gray line that could lead me into big trouble. On the one hand, it is perfectly reasonable for an attorney to investigate a report of jury misconduct and tampering. But on the other hand, that investigation could be viewed as tampering in itself. Judge Stanton had taken steps to ensure the anonymity of the jury. I had just asked my investigator to subvert that. If it blew up in our faces, Stanton would be more than upset and would do more than give me the squint. This wasn’t a Make-A-Wish infraction. Stanton would complain to the bar, the chief judge and all the way up the line to the Supreme Court if he could get them to listen. He would see to it that the Elliot trial was my last.

Patrick drove up Fareholm and pulled the car into the garage below my house. We walked out and then up the stairs to the front deck. It was almost ten o’clock and I was beat after a fourteen-hour day. But my adrenaline kicked in when I saw a man sitting in one of the deck chairs, his face in silhouette with the lights of the city behind him. I put my arm out to stop Patrick from advancing, the way a parent would stop a child from stepping blindly into the street.

“Hello, Counselor.”

Bosch. I recognized the voice and the greeting. I relaxed and let Patrick continue. We stepped up onto the porch and I unlocked the door to let Patrick go in. I then closed the door and turned to Bosch.

“Nice view,” he said. “Defending scumbags got you this place?”

I was too tired to do the dance with him.

“What are you doing here, Detective?”

“I figured you might be heading home after the bookstore,” he said. “So I just went on ahead and waited for you up here.”

“Well, I’m done for the night. You can give your team the word, if there really is a team.”

“What makes you think there’s not?”

“I don’t know. I just haven’t seen anybody. I hope you weren’t bullshitting me, Bosch. I’ve got my ass way out in the wind on this.”

“After court you had dinner with your client at Water Grill. You both had the fillet of sole and both of you raised your voices at times. Your client drank liberally, which resulted in you driving him home in his car. On your way back from there you stopped into Book Soup and made a phone call you obviously didn’t want your driver to hear.”

I was impressed.

“Okay, then, never mind that. I get it. They’re out there. What do you want, Bosch? What’s going on?”

Bosch stood up and approached me.

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said. “What was Walter Elliot so hot and bothered about tonight at dinner? And who’d you call in the back of the bookstore?”

“First of all, Elliot’s my client and I’m not telling you what we talked about. I’m not crossing that line with you. And as far as the call in the bookstore goes, I was ordering pizza because, as you and your colleagues might have noticed, I didn’t eat my dinner tonight. Stick around if you want a slice.”

Bosch looked at me with that half smile of his, the knowing look with his flat dead eyes.

“So that’s how you want to play it, Counselor?”

“For now.”

We didn’t speak for a long moment. We just sort of stood there, waiting for the next clever line. It didn’t come and I decided I really was tired and hungry.

“Good night, Detective Bosch.”

I went in and closed the door, leaving Bosch out there on the deck.

Forty-four

My turn at Detective Kinder did not come until late on Tuesday, after the prosecutor had spent several more hours drawing the details of the investigation out on direct examination. This worked in my favor. I thought the jury – and Julie Favreau confirmed this by text message – was getting bored by the minutiae of the testimony and would welcome a new line of questions.

The direct testimony primarily regarded the investigative efforts that took place after Walter Elliot’s arrest. Kinder described at length his delving into the defendant’s marriage, the discovery of a recently vested prenuptial agreement, and the efforts Elliot made in the weeks before the murders to determine how much money and control of Archway Studios he would lose in a divorce. With a time chart he was also able to establish through Elliot’s statements and documented movements that the defendant had no credible alibi for the estimated time of the murders.

Golantz also took the time to question Kinder about all the dead ends and offshoots of the investigation that proved to be ancillary. Kinder described the many unfounded leads that were called in and dutifully checked out, the investigation of Johan Rilz in an effort to determine if he had been the main target of the killer, and the comparison of the double murder to other cases that were similar and unsolved.

In all, Golantz and Kinder appeared to have done a thorough job of nailing my client to the murders in Malibu, and by midafternoon the young prosecutor was satisfied enough to say, “No more questions, Your Honor.”

It was now finally my turn and I had decided to go after Kinder in a cross-examination that would stay tightly focused on just three areas of his direct testimony, and then surprise him with an unexpected punch to the gut. I moved to the lectern to conduct the questioning.

“Detective Kinder, I know we will be hearing from the medical examiner later in the trial, but you testified that you were informed after the autopsy that the time of death of Mrs. Elliot and Mr. Rilz was estimated to be between eleven a.m. and noon on the day of the murders.”

“That is correct.”

“Was it closer to eleven or closer to noon?”

“It’s impossible to tell for sure. That is just the time frame in which it happened.”

“Okay, and once you had that frame, you then proceeded to make sure that the man you had already arrested had no alibi, correct?”

“I would not put it that way, no.”

“Then, how would you put it?”

“I would say that it was my obligation to continue to investigate the case and prepare it for trial. Part of that due diligence would be to keep an open mind to the possibility that the suspect had an alibi for the murders. In carrying out that obligation, I determined according to multiple interviews as well as records kept at the gate at Archway Studios that Mr. Elliot left the studio, driving by himself, at ten forty that morning. This gave him plenty of time to-”

“Thank you, Detective. You’ve answered the question.”

“I haven’t finished my answer.”

Golantz stood and asked the judge if the witness could finish his answer, and Stanton allowed it. Kinder continued in his Homicide 101 tone.

“As I was saying, this gave Mr. Elliot plenty of time to get to the Malibu house within the parameters of the estimated time of death.”

“Did you say plenty of time to get there?”

“Enough time.”

“Earlier you described making the drive yourself several times. When was that?”

“The first time was exactly one week after the murders. I left the gatehouse at Archway at ten forty in the morning and drove to the Malibu house. I arrived at eleven forty-two, well within the murder window.”

“How did you know that you were taking the same route that Mr. Elliot would have taken?”

“I didn’t. So I just took what I considered the most obvious and quickest route that somebody would take. Most people don’t take the long cut. They take the short cut – the shortest amount of time to their destination. From Archway I took Melrose to La Brea and then La Brea down to the ten. At that point I headed west to the Pacific Coast Highway.”

“How did you know that the traffic you encountered would be the same that Mr. Elliot encountered?”

“I didn’t.”

“Traffic in Los Angeles can be a very unpredictable thing, can it not?”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you drove the route several times?”

“One reason, yes.”

“Okay, Detective Kinder, you testified that you drove the route a total of five times and got to the Malibu house each time before your so-called murder window closed, right?”

“Correct.”

“In regard to these five driving tests, what was the earliest time you got to the house in Malibu?”

Kinder looked at his notes.

“That would have been the first time, when I got there at eleven forty-two.”

“And what was the worst time?”

“The worst?”

“What was the longest drive time you recorded during your five trips?”

Kinder checked his notes again.

“The latest I got there was eleven fifty-one.”

“Okay, so your best time was still in the last third of the window the medical examiner set for the time of these murders, and your worst time would have left Mr. Elliot less than ten minutes to sneak into his house and murder two people. Correct?”

“Yes, but it could have been done.”

“Could have? You don’t sound very confident, Detective.”

“I am very confident that the defendant had the time to commit these murders.”

“But only if the murders took place at least forty-two minutes after the killing window opened, correct?”

“If you want to look at it that way.”

“It’s not how I am looking at it, Detective. I’m working with what the medical examiner has given us. So, in summary for the jury, you are saying that Mr. Elliot left his studio at ten forty and got all the way out to Malibu, snuck into his house, surprised his wife and her lover in the upstairs bedroom and killed them both, all before that window slammed shut at noon. Do I have all of that right?”

“Essentially. Yes.”

I shook my head as if it was a lot to swallow.

“Okay, Detective, let’s move on. Please tell the jury how many times you began the driving route to Malibu but broke it off when you knew that you weren’t going to make it before that window closed at noon.”

“That never happened.”

But there had been a slight hesitation in Kinder’s response. I was sure the jury picked up on it.

“Yes or no, Detective, if I were to produce records and even video that showed you started at the Archway gate at ten forty in the morning seven times and not five, then those records would be false?”

Kinder’s eyes flicked to Golantz and then back to me.

“What you’re suggesting happened didn’t happen,” he said.

“And you’re not answering the question, Detective. Once again, yes or no: If I introduced records that showed you conducted your driving study at least seven times but have only testified to five times, would those records be false?”

“No, but I didn’t-”

“Thank you, Detective. I only asked for a yes or no response.”

Golantz stood and asked the judge to allow the witness to fully answer the question but Stanton told him he could take it up on redirect. But now I hesitated. Knowing that Golantz would go after Kinder’s explanation on redirect, I had the opportunity to get it now and possibly still control it and turn the admission to my advantage. It was a gamble because at the moment, I felt I had dinged him pretty good, and if I went with him until court adjourned for the day, then the jurors would go home with police suspicion percolating in their brains. That was never a bad thing.

I decided to risk it and try to control it.

“Detective, tell us how many of these test drives you broke off before reaching the house in Malibu.”

“There were two.”

“Which ones?”

“The second time and the last time – the seventh.”

I nodded.

“And you stopped these because you knew you would never make it to the house in Malibu within the murder window, correct?”

“No, that’s very incorrect.”

“Then, what was the reason you stopped the test drives?”

“One time, I was called back to the office to conduct an interview of somebody waiting there, and the other time, I was listening to the radio and I heard a deputy call for backup. I diverted to back him up.”

“Why didn’t you document these in your report on your driving time investigation?”

“I didn’t think they were germane, because they were incomplete tests.”

“So these incompletes were not documented anywhere in that thick file of yours?”

“No, they were not.”

“And so we have only your word about what caused you to stop them before reaching the Elliot house in Malibu, correct?”

“That would be correct.”

I nodded and decided I had flogged him enough on this front. I knew Golantz could rehabilitate Kinder on redirect, maybe even come up with documentation of the calls that pulled Kinder off the Malibu route. But I hoped that I had raised at least a question of trust in the minds of the jurors. I took my small victory and moved on.

I next hammered Kinder on the fact that there was no murder weapon recovered and that his six-month investigation of Walter Elliot had never linked him to a gun of any sort. I hit this from several angles so that Kinder had to repeatedly acknowledge that a key part of the investigation and prosecution was never located, even though if Elliot was the killer, he’d had little time to hide the weapon.

Finally, in frustration, Kinder said, “Well, it’s a big ocean out there, Mr. Haller.”

It was an opening I was waiting for.

“A big ocean, Detective? Are you suggesting that Mr. Elliot had a boat and dumped the gun out in the middle of the Pacific?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then, like what?”

“I am just saying the gun could have ended up in the water and the currents took it away before our divers got out there.”

“It could have ended up out there? You want to take Mr. Elliot’s life and livelihood away from him on a ‘could have,’ Detective Kinder?”

“No, that’s not what I am saying.”

“What you are saying is that you don’t have a gun, you can’t connect a gun to Mr. Elliot, but you have never wavered in believing he is your man, correct?”

“We had a gunshot residue examination that came back positive. In my mind that connected Mr. Elliot to a gun.”

“What gun was that?”

“We don’t have it.”

“Uh-huh, and can you sit there and say to a scientific certainty that Mr. Elliot fired a gun on the day his wife and Johan Rilz were murdered?”

“Well, not to a scientific certainty, but the test-”

“Thank you, Detective Kinder. I think that answers the question. Let’s move on.”

I flipped the page on my notepad and studied the next set of questions I had written the night before.

“Detective Kinder, in the course of your investigation, did you determine when Johan Rilz and Mitzi Elliot became acquainted?”

“I determined that she hired him for his interior decorating services in the fall of two thousand five. If she was acquainted with him before that, I do not know.”

“And when did they become lovers?”

“That was impossible for us to determine. I do know that Mr. Rilz’s appointment book showed regular appointments with Mrs. Elliot at one home or the other. The frequency increased about six months before her death.”

“Was he paid for each one of those appointments?”

“Mr. Rilz kept very incomplete books. It was hard to determine if he was paid for specific appointments. But in general, the payments to Mr. Rilz from Mrs. Elliot increased when the frequency of the appointments increased.”

I nodded like this answer fit with a larger picture I was seeing.

“Okay, and you have also testified that you learned that the murders occurred just thirty-two days after the prenuptial agreement between Walter and Mitzi Elliot vested, thereby giving Mrs. Elliot a full shot at the couple’s financial holdings in the event of a divorce.”

“That’s right.”

“And that is your motive for these killings.”

“In part, yes. I call it an aggravating factor.”

“Do you see any inconsistency in your theory of the crime, Detective Kinder?”

“No, I do not.”

“Was it not obvious to you from the financial records and the appointment frequency that there was some sort of romantic or at least a sexual relationship going on between Mr. Rilz and Mrs. Elliot?”

“I wouldn’t say it was obvious.”

“You wouldn’t?”

I said it with surprise. I had him in a little corner. If he said the affair was obvious, he would be giving me the answer he knew I wanted. If he said it was not obvious, then he came off as a fool because everyone else in the courtroom thought it was obvious.

“In retrospect it might look obvious but at the time I think it was hidden.”

“Then how did Walter Elliot find out about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t the fact that you were unable to find a murder weapon indicate that Walter Elliot planned these murders?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Then it’s easy to hide a weapon from the entire Sheriff’s Department?”

“No, but like I told you, it could have simply been thrown into the ocean off the back deck and the currents took over from there. That wouldn’t take a lot of planning.”

Kinder knew what I wanted and where I was trying to go. I couldn’t get him there so I decided to use a shove.

“Detective, didn’t it ever occur to you that if Walter Elliot knew about his wife’s affair, it would have made better sense just to divorce her before the prenuptial agreement vested?”

“There was no indication of when he learned of the affair. And your question does not take into account things like emotions and rage. It was possible that the money had nothing to do with it as a motivating factor. It could have just been betrayal and rage, pure and simple.”

I hadn’t gotten what I wanted. I was annoyed with myself and chalked it up to rust. I was prepared for the cross but it was the first time I had gone head-to-head with a seasoned and cagey witness in a year. I decided to back off here and to hit Kinder with the punch he wouldn’t see coming.

Forty-five

I asked the judge for a moment and then went to the defense table. I bent down to my client’s ear.

“Just nod like I am telling you something really important,” I whispered.

Elliot did as instructed and then I picked up a file and went back to the lectern. I opened the file and then looked at the witness stand.

“Detective Kinder, at what point in your investigation did you determine that Johan Rilz was the primary target of this double murder?”

Kinder opened his mouth to respond immediately, then closed it and sat back and thought for a moment. It was just the kind of body language I was hoping the jury would pick up on.

“At no point did I ever determine that,” Kinder finally responded.

“At no point was Johan Rilz front and center in your investigation?”

“Well, he was the victim of a homicide. That made him front and center the whole time in my book.”

Kinder seemed pretty proud of that answer but I didn’t give him much time to savor it.

“Then his being front and center explains why you went to Germany to investigate his background, correct?”

“I did not go to Germany.”

“What about France? His passport indicates he lived there before coming to the United States.”

“I didn’t go there.”

“Then, who on your team did?”

“No one. We didn’t believe it was necessary.”

“Why wasn’t it necessary?”

“We had asked Interpol for a background check on Johan Rilz and it came back clean.”

“What is Interpol?”

“It stands for International Criminal Police Organization. It’s an organization that links the police in more than a hundred countries and facilitates cross-border cooperation. It has several offices throughout Europe and enjoys total access and cooperation from its host countries.”

“That’s nice but it means you didn’t go directly to the police in Berlin, where Rilz was from?”

“No, we did not.”

“Did you directly check with police in Paris, where Rilz lived five years ago?”

“No, we relied on our Interpol contacts for background on Mr. Rilz.”

“The Interpol background pretty much was a check of a criminal arrest record, correct?”

“That was included, yes.”

“What else was included?”

“I’m not sure what else. I don’t work for Interpol.”

“If Mr. Rilz had worked for the police in Paris as a confidential informant on a drug case, would Interpol have given you this information?”

Kinder’s eyes widened for a split second before he answered. It was clear he wasn’t expecting the question, but I couldn’t get a read on whether he knew where I was heading or if it was all new to him.

“I don’t know whether they would have given us that information or not.”

“Law enforcement agencies usually don’t give out the names of their confidential informants willy-nilly, do they?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it might put the informants in danger.”

“So being an informant in a criminal case can be dangerous?”

“On occasion, yes.”

“Detective, have you ever investigated the murder of a confidential informant?”

Golantz stood up before Kinder could answer and asked the judge for a sidebar conference. The judge signaled us up. I grabbed the file off the lectern and followed Golantz up. The court reporter moved next to the bench with her steno machine. The judge rolled his chair over and we huddled.

“Mr. Golantz?” the judge prompted.

“Judge, I would like to know where this is going, because I’m feeling like I’m being sandbagged here. There has been nothing in any of the defense’s discovery that even hints at what Mr. Haller is asking the witness about.”

The judge swiveled in his chair and looked at me.

“Mr. Haller?”

“Judge, if anybody is being sandbagged, it’s my client. This was a sloppy investigation that-”

“Save it for the jury, Mr. Haller. Whaddaya got?”

I opened the file and put a computer printout down in front of the judge, which positioned it upside down to Golantz.

“What I’ve got is a story that ran in Le Parisien four and a half years ago. It names Johan Rilz as a witness for the prosecution in a major drug case. He was used by the Direction de la Police Judiciaire to make buys and get inside knowledge of the drug ring. He was a CI, Your Honor, and these guys over here never even looked at him. It was tunnel vision from the-”

“Mr. Haller, again, save your argument for the jury. This printout is in French. Do you have the translation?”

“Sorry, Your Honor.”

I took the second of three sheets out of the file and put it down on top of the first, again in the direction of the judge. Golantz was twisting his head awkwardly as he tried to read it.

“How do we know this is the same Johan Rilz?” Golantz said. “It’s a common name over there.”

“Maybe in Germany, but not in France.”

“So how do we know it’s him?” the judge asked this time. “This is a translated newspaper article. This isn’t any kind of official document.”

I pulled the last sheet from the file and put it down.

“This is a photocopy of a page from Rilz’s passport. I got it from the state’s own discovery. It shows that Rilz left France for the United States in March, two thousand three. One month after this story was published. Plus, you’ve got the age. The article has his age right and it says he was making drug buys for the cops out of his business as an interior decorator. It obviously is him, Your Honor. He betrayed a lot of people over there and put them in jail, then he comes here and starts over.”

Golantz started shaking his head in a desperate sort of way.

“It’s still no good,” he said. “This is a violation of the rules of discovery and is inadmissible. You can’t sit on this and then sucker punch the state with it.”

The judge swiveled his view to me and this time gave me the squint as well.

“Your Honor, if anybody sat on anything, it was the state. This is stuff the prosecution should’ve come up with and given to me. In fact, I think the witness did know about this and he sat on it.”

“That is a serious accusation, Mr. Haller,” the judge intoned. “Do you have evidence of that?”

“Judge, the reason I know about this at all is by accident. On Sunday I was reviewing my investigator’s prep work and noticed that he had run all the names associated with this case through the LexisNexis search engine. He had used the computer and account I inherited with Jerry Vincent’s law practice. I checked the account and noticed that the default setting was for English-language search only. Having looked at the photocopy of Rilz’s passport in the discovery file and knowing of his background in Europe, I did the search again, this time including French and German languages. I came up with this French newspaper article in about two minutes, and I find it hard to believe that I found something that easily that the entire Sheriff’s Department, the prosecution and Interpol didn’t know about. So Judge, I don’t know if that is evidence of anything but the defense is certainly feeling like the party that’s been damaged here.”

I couldn’t believe it. The judge swiveled to Golantz and gave him the squint. The first time ever. I shifted to my right so that a good part of the jury had an angle on it.

“What about that, Mr. Golantz?” the judge asked.

“It’s absurd, Your Honor. We have sat on nothing, and anything that we have found has gone into the discovery file. And I would like to ask why Mr. Haller didn’t alert us to this yesterday when he just admitted that he made this discovery Sunday and the printout is dated then as well.”

I stared deadpan at Golantz when I answered.

“If I had known you were fluent in French I would have given it to you, Jeff, and maybe you could’ve helped out. But I’m not fluent and I didn’t know what it said and I had to get it translated. I was handed that translation about ten minutes before I started my cross.”

“All right,” the judge said, breaking up the stare-down. “This is still a printout of a newspaper article. What are you going to do about verifying the information it contains, Mr. Haller?”

“Well, as soon as we break, I’m going to put my investigator on it and see if we can contact somebody in the Police Judiciaire. We’re going to be doing the job the Sheriff’s Department should have done six months ago.”

“We’re obviously going to verify it as well,” Golantz added.

“Rilz’s father and two brothers are sitting in the gallery. Maybe you can start with them.”

The judge held up a hand in a calming gesture like he was a parent quelling an argument between two brothers.

“Okay,” he said. “I am going to stop this line of cross-examination. Mr. Haller, I will allow you to lay the foundation for it during the presentation of the defense. You can call the witness back then, and if you can verify the report and the identity, then I will give you wide latitude in pursuing it.”

“Your Honor, that puts the defense at a disadvantage,” I protested.

“How so?”

“Because now that the state’s been made aware of this information, it can take steps to hinder my verification of it.”

“That’s absurd,” Golantz said.

But the judge nodded.

“I understand your concern and I am putting Mr. Golantz on notice that if I find any indication of that, then I will become… shall we say, very agitated. I think we are done here, gentlemen.”

The judge rolled back into position and the lawyers returned to theirs. On my way back, I checked the clock on the back wall of the courtroom. It was ten minutes until five. I figured if I could stall for a few more minutes, the judge would recess for the day and the jurors would have the French connection to mull over for the night.

I stood at the lectern and asked the judge for a few moments. I then acted like I was studying my notepad, trying to decide if there was anything else I wanted to ask Kinder about.

“Mr. Haller, how are we doing?” the judge finally prompted.

“We’re doing fine, Judge. And I look forward to exploring Mr. Rilz’s activities in France more thoroughly during the defense phase of the trial. Until then, I have no further questions for Detective Kinder.”

I returned to the defense table and sat down. The judge then announced that court was recessed for the day.

I watched the jury file out of the courtroom and picked up no read from any of them. I then glanced behind Golantz to the gallery. All three of the Rilz men were staring at me with hardened, dead eyes.

Forty-six

Cisco called me at home at ten o’clock. He said he was nearby in Hollywood and that he could come right over. He said he already had some news about juror number seven.

After hanging up I told Patrick that I was going out on the deck to meet privately with Cisco. I put on a sweater because there was a chill in the air outside, grabbed the file I’d used in court earlier and went out to wait for my investigator.

The Sunset Strip glowed like a blast furnace fire over the shoulder of the hills. I’d bought the house in a flush year because of the deck and the view it offered of the city. It never ceased to entrance me, day or night. It never ceased to charge me and tell me the truth. That truth being that anything was possible, that anything could happen, good or bad.

“Hey, boss.”

I jumped and turned. Cisco had climbed the stairs and come up behind me without my even hearing him. He must’ve come up the hill on Fairfax and then killed the engine and freewheeled down to my house. He knew I’d be upset if his pipes woke up everybody in the neighborhood.

“Don’t scare me like that, man.”

“What are you so jumpy about?”

“I just don’t like people sneaking up on me. Sit down out here.”

I pointed him to the small table and chairs positioned under the roof’s eave and in front of the living room window. It was uncomfortable outdoor furniture I almost never used. I liked to contemplate the city from the deck and draw the charge. The only way to do that was standing.

The file I’d brought out was on the table. Cisco pulled out a chair and was about to sit down when he stopped and used a hand to sweep the smog dust and crud off the seat.

“Man, don’t you ever spray this stuff off?”

“You’re wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Cisco. Just sit down.”

He did and I did and I saw him look through the translucent window shade into the living room. The television was on and Patrick was in there watching the extreme-sports channel on cable. People were doing flips on snowmobiles.

“Is that a sport?” Cisco asked.

“To Patrick, I guess.”

“How’s it working out with him?”

“It’s working. He’s only staying a couple weeks. Tell me about number seven?”

“Down to business. Okay.”

He reached behind him and pulled a small journal out of his back pocket.

“You got any light out here?”

I got up, went to the front door and reached in to turn on the deck light. I glanced at the TV and saw the medical staff attending to a snowmobile driver who apparently had failed to complete his flip and had three hundred pounds of sled land on him.

I closed the door and sat back down across from Cisco. He was studying something in his journal.

“Okay,” he said. “Juror number seven. I haven’t had much time on this but I’ve got a few things I wanted to get right to you. His name is David McSweeney and I think almost everything he put on his J-sheet is false.”

The J-sheet was the single-page form each juror fills out as part of the voir dire process. The sheets carry the prospective juror’s name, profession and area of residence by zip code as well as a checklist of basic questions designed to help attorneys form opinions about whether they want the individual on their jury. In this case the name would’ve been excised but all the other information was on the sheet I had given Cisco to start with.

“Give me some examples.”

“Well, according to the zip on the sheet, he lives down in Palos Verdes. Not true. I followed him from the courthouse directly to an apartment off of Beverly over there behind CBS.”

Cisco pointed south in the general direction of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, where the CBS television studio was located.

“I had a friend run the plate on the pickup he drove home from court and it came back to David McSweeney on Beverly, same address I saw him go into. I then had my guy run his DL and shoot me over the photo. I looked at it on my phone and McSweeney is our guy.”

The information was intriguing but I was more concerned with how Cisco was conducting his investigation of juror number seven. We had already blown up one source on the Vincent investigation.

“Cisco, man, your prints are going to be all over this. I told you I can’t have any blowback on this.”

“Chill, man. There’s no fingerprints. My guy isn’t going to go volunteering that he did a search for me. It’s illegal for a cop to do an outside search. He’d lose his job. And if somebody comes looking, we still don’t need to worry, because he doesn’t use his terminal or user ID when he does these for me. He cadged an old lieutenant’s password. So there are no prints, okay? No trails. We’re safe on this.”

I reluctantly nodded. Cops stealing from cops. Why didn’t that surprise me?

“All right,” I said. “What else?”

“Well, for one thing, he’s got an arrest record and he checked the box on the sheet that said he’d never been popped before.”

“What was the arrest for?”

“Two arrests. ADW in ’ninety-seven and conspiracy to commit fraud in ’ninety-nine. No convictions but that is all I know for right now. When the court opens I can get more if you want.”

I wanted to know more, especially about how arrests for fraud and assault with a deadly weapon could result in no convictions, but if Cisco pulled records on the case, then he’d have to show ID and that would leave a trail.

“Not if you have to sign out the files. Let it go for now. You got anything else?”

“Yeah, I’m telling you, I think it’s all phony. On the sheet he says he’s an engineer with Lockheed. As far as I can tell, that’s not true. I called Lockheed and they don’t have a David McSweeney in the phone directory. So unless the guy’s got a job with no phone, then…”

He raised his hands palm up, as if to say there was no explanation but deception.

“I’ve only had t’night on this, but everything’s coming up phony and that probably includes the guy’s name.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we don’t officially know his name, do we? It was blacked out on the J-sheet.”

“Right.”

“So I followed juror number seven and IDed him as David McSweeney, but who’s to say that’s the same name that was blacked out on the sheet. Know what I mean?”

I thought for a moment and then nodded.

“You’re saying that McSweeney could’ve hijacked a legitimate juror’s name and maybe even his jury summons and is masquerading as that person in the courthouse.”

“Exactly. When you get a summons and show up at the juror check-in window, all they do is check your DL against the list. These are minimum-wage court clerks, Mick. It would not be difficult to get a dummy DL by one of them, and we both know how easy it is to get a dummy.”

I nodded. Most people want to get out of jury duty. This was a scheme to get into it. Civic duty taken to extreme.

Cisco said, “If you can somehow get me the name the court has for number seven, I would check it, and I’m betting I find out there is a guy at Lockheed with that name.”

I shook my head.

“There’s no way I can get it without leaving a trail.”

Cisco shrugged.

“So what’s going on with this, Mick? Don’t tell me that fucking prosecutor put a sleeper on the jury.”

I thought a moment about telling him but decided against it.

“At the moment it’s better if I don’t tell you.”

“Down periscope.”

It meant that we were taking the submarine – compartmentalizing so if one of us sprang a leak it wouldn’t sink the whole sub.

“It’s best this way. Did you see this guy with anybody? Any KAs of interest?”

“I followed him over to the Grove tonight and he met somebody for a coffee in Marmalade, one of the restaurants they’ve got over there. It was a woman. It looked like a casual thing, like they sort of ran into each other unplanned and sat down together to catch up. Other than that, I’ve got no known associates so far. I’ve really only been with the guy since five, when the judge cut the jury loose.”

I nodded. He had gotten me a lot in a short amount of time. More than I’d anticipated.

“How close did you get to him and the woman?”

“Not close. You told me to take all precautions.”

“So you can’t describe her?”

“I just said I didn’t get close, Mick. I can describe her. I even got a picture of her on my camera.”

He had to stand up to get his big hand into one of the front pockets of his jeans. He pulled out a small, black, non-attention-getting camera and sat back down. He turned it on and looked at the screen on the back. He clicked some buttons on the top and then handed it across the table to me.

“They start there and you can scroll through till you get to the woman.”

I manipulated the camera and scrolled through a series of digital photos showing juror number seven at various times during the evening. The last three shots were of him sitting with a woman in Marmalade. She had jet-black hair that hung loose and shadowed her face. The photos also weren’t very crisp because they had been taken from long distance and without a flash.

I didn’t recognize the woman. I handed the camera back to Cisco.

“Okay, Cisco, you did good. You can drop it now.”

“Just drop it?”

“Yeah, and go back to this.”

I slid the file across the table to him. He nodded and smiled slyly as he took it.

“So what did you tell the judge up there at the sidebar?”

I had forgotten he had been in the courtroom, waiting to start his tail of juror seven.

“I told him I realized that you had done the original background search on the English-language default so I redid it to include French and German. I even printed the story out again Sunday so I would have a fresh date on it.”

“Nice. But I look like a fuckup.”

“I had to come up with something. If I’d told him you came across it a week ago and I’d been sitting on it since, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d probably be in lockup for contempt. Besides, the judge thinks Golantz is the fuckup for not finding it before the defense.”

That seemed to placate Cisco. He held up the file.

“So then, what do you want me to do with it?” he asked.

“Where’s the translator you used on the printout?”

“Probably in her dorm over in Westwood. She’s an exchange student I came up with on the Net.”

“Well, call her up and pick her up because you’re going to need her tonight.”

“I have a feeling Lorna isn’t going to like this. Me and a twenty-year-old French girl.”

“Lorna doesn’t speak French, so she will understand. They’re what, nine hours ahead over there in Paris?”

“Yeah, nine or ten. I forget.”

“Okay, then I want you to get with the translator and at midnight start working the phones. Call all the gendarmes, or whatever they call themselves, who worked that drug case and get one of them on a plane over here. At least three of them are named in that article. You can start there.”

“Just like that? You think one of those guys is going to just jump on a plane for us?”

“They’ll probably be stabbing one another in the back, trying to get the ticket. Tell them we’ll fly first class and put whoever comes out in the hotel where Mickey Rourke stays.”

“Yeah, what hotel’s that?”

“I don’t know but I hear he’s big over there. They think he’s like a genius or something. Anyway, look, what I’m saying is, just tell them whatever they want to hear. Spend whatever needs to be spent. If two want to come, then bring over two and we vet them and put the best one on the stand. Just get somebody over here. It’s Los Angeles, Cisco. Every cop in the world wants to see this place and then go back home and tell everybody what and who he saw.”

“Okay, I’ll get somebody on a plane. But what if he can’t leave right away?”

“Then get him going as soon as possible and let me know. I can stretch things in court. The judge wants to hurry everything along but I can slow it down if I need to. Probably next Tuesday or Wednesday is as far as I can go. Get somebody here by then.”

“You want me to call you tonight when I have it set up?”

“No, I need my beauty rest. I’m not used to being on my toes in court all day and I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed. Just call me in the morning.”

“Okay, Mick.”

He stood up and so did I. He slapped me on the shoulder with the file and then tucked it into the waistband at the back of his jeans. He descended the steps and I walked to the edge of the deck to look down on him as he mounted his horse by the curb, dropped it into neutral and silently started to glide down Fareholm toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

I then looked up and out at the city and thought about the moves I was making, my personal situation and my professional deceit in front of the judge in court. I didn’t ponder it all too long and I didn’t feel guilty about any of it. I was defending a man I believed was innocent of the murders he was charged with but complicit in the reason they had occurred. I had a sleeper on the jury whose placement was directly related to the murder of my predecessor. And I had a detective watching over me whom I was holding back on and couldn’t be sure was considering my safety ahead of his own desire to break open the case.

I had all of that and I didn’t feel guilty or fearful about anything. I felt like a guy flipping a three-hundred-pound sled in midair. It might not be a sport but it was dangerous as hell and it did what I hadn’t been able to do in more than a year’s time. It shook off the rust and put the charge back in my blood.

It gave it a fierce momentum.

I heard the sound of the pipes on Cisco’s panhead finally fire up. He had made it all the way down to Laurel Canyon before kicking over the engine. The throttle roared deeply as he headed into the night.