The Gods of Guilt

29

The prosecution took eight days to present its case against Andre La Cosse, strategically finishing on a Friday so the jurors would have the whole weekend to consider its case in full before hearing a single word from the defense. Bill Forsythe, the deputy D.A., had been workmanlike in his presentation. Nothing fancy, nothing over the top. He methodically built his case around the videotaped interview of the defendant and attempted to solidly wed it to the physical evidence from the crime scene. On the tape La Cosse said he grabbed Gloria Dayton by the throat during their argument. Forsythe coupled this with testimony from the medical examiner, who said that the hyoid bone in the victim’s neck had been fractured. This coupling was the center of the case, and all other aspects, testimony, and evidence emanated from it like the concentric circles of waves from a stone thrown into a lake.

Yes, Judge Leggoe had allowed the admittance of the damning video, dismissing my motion to suppress the day before the start of jury selection with the single comment that the defense had failed to show that the police had used coercive tactics or had operated in bad faith in any way during the interview. The ruling was not unexpected and I immediately chose to see the silver lining in it; I now believed I had the first solid grounds for appeal should the verdict ultimately go against my client.

Through the video Forsythe gave the jury motive and opportunity, using the defendant’s own words to establish them. In my many trials over nearly twenty-five years as a practicing attorney I had found nothing more difficult than undoing the damage inflicted upon defendants by their own words. So was the case here. Jurors always want to hear from the defendants, whether in direct testimony, videotape, or audiotape. It is in the instinctual interpretation of voice and personality that we form our judgments of others. Nothing beats that. Not fingerprints, not DNA, not the pointed finger of an eyewitness.

Forsythe threw only one curve ball at me, but it was a good one. His final witness was another escort for whom La Cosse had formerly provided digital services and management. The prosecutor claimed that he had come forward only the day before after learning of the trial for the first time while reading the newspaper. I argued against his being allowed to testify, accusing the state of sandbagging, but to no avail. Leggoe said testimony of prior bad acts of a similar nature was admissible and allowed Forsythe to put him on the stand.

Brian “Brandi” Goodrich was a small man no more than five three. He wore tight stonewashed jeans and a lavender polo shirt on the witness stand. He testified that he was a transvestite who worked as an escort managed by Andre La Cosse. He testified that Andre had once choked him into unconsciousness when he thought Goodrich was withholding money from him. When Goodrich came to, he was handcuffed to a floor-to-ceiling pole in his living room and he watched helplessly while La Cosse ransacked his home looking for the missing cash. Brandi brought all the usual histrionics to the stand with him — he tearfully recounted that he had feared for his life and felt lucky he hadn’t been killed.

At the defense table, I leaned to Andre and smiled and shook my head as though this witness was just a nuisance and not worth taking seriously. But what I whispered to him wasn’t so light-hearted.

“I need to know right now, did this happen? And don’t hang me out there with a lie, Andre.”

He hesitated, then leaned in close to whisper back.

“He’s exaggerating. I handcuffed him first to this stripper pole he had in the living room so I could search the place. I didn’t choke him out. I grabbed him by the neck one time so he would look at me and answer my questions. He was never unconscious and it didn’t even leave a mark. He went to work that night.”

“He didn’t quit or go with someone else?”

“He didn’t quit for six months. Not until he found a sugar daddy.”

I leaned back away from Andre and waited for Forsythe to finish his direct. When it was my turn, I countered initially with a few questions I hoped would remind the jurors that Brandi was a prostitute and that he had never made any report of this near-death experience to the police.

“Which hospital did you go to to have your neck treated?” I asked.

“I didn’t go to the hospital,” he answered.

“I see. So the hyoid bone in your neck was not crushed as it was with the victim of this case?”

“I don’t know about the specific injuries in this case.”

“Of course not. But you say you were choked into unconsciousness by the defendant and you never went to the police or to seek medical attention.”

“I was just happy to be alive.”

“And to work, too, correct?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“You went to work as an escort the same night after this supposed life-and-death struggle took place, didn’t you?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“If I produced Mr. La Cosse’s business records regarding his bookings for you as a prostitute, would that help you remember?”

“If I worked that night, it was only because he made me and threatened me if I didn’t.”

“Okay, let’s go back to the alleged incident. Did the defendant use one hand or two?”

“Both hands.”

“You’re a grown man, did you defend yourself?”

“I tried, but he’s a lot bigger than me.”

“You said you then woke up handcuffed to a pole. Where were you when he allegedly choked you into unconsciousness?”

“He grabbed me from behind as soon as I let him in the apartment.”

“So he choked you from behind then?”

“Yes, sort of.”

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’? Did he choke you or not?”

“He put his arm around my neck from behind and tightened it and I tried to fight because I thought he was going to kill me. But I blacked out.”

“So why did you just testify that he used two hands to choke you?”

“Well, ’cause he did. Hands and arms.”

I let that hang out there for a few moments for the jury to consider. I thought I had successfully dented Goodrich’s credibility in a few places. I decided I should get out while I was ahead and took one last shot in the dark. It was a calculated risk, but I operate under the belief that voluntary witnesses usually want something in return. In this case, Goodrich obviously wanted revenge, but I had a hunch there was something more.

“Mr. Goodrich, are you currently facing any criminal charges, misdemeanor or felony? Anything at all?”

Goodrich’s eyes flicked toward the prosecution table for a split second.

“In Los Angeles County? No.”

“In any county anywhere, Mr. Goodrich.”

Goodrich reluctantly revealed that he had a solicitation case pending in Orange County but denied he was testifying in exchange for help with that.

“No further questions,” I said, my voice dripping with disdain.

Forsythe tried to clean things up on redirect, hammering home that he had made no overture or promise to do anything to help Goodrich in Orange County.

Goodrich was allowed to step down after that. I felt I had gotten a few good swings in, but still, the damage was done. Through the witness the prosecution had added a history of similar actions to the solid pillars of motive and opportunity already established. Forsythe’s case was complete then and he rested it at four p.m. Friday, guaranteeing me a weekend of fitful sleep and panicked preparation.

Now it was Monday and it would soon be my turn in front of the jury. My task would be clear. To undo what Forsythe had done. To change the minds of the twelve jurors. In past trials my goal had been to change just one mind. In most cases, hanging a jury is as good as a not-guilty verdict. The DA often chooses not to retry and to soften its stance on a disposition. The case is a sick dog and it needs to be put down as quickly and as smoothly as possible. In the defense trenches that is a victory. But not this time. Not with Andre La Cosse. I was convinced that my client was many things but not a killer. I felt certain that he was innocent of the charges, and so I needed all twelve of the gods of guilt to smile upon me on the day of the verdict.

I sat at the defense table, waiting for the deputies to bring La Cosse in from lockup. Those of us in the courtroom had already been alerted that the bus carrying him from Men’s Central was delayed in traffic. Once the defendant arrived the judge would come out from chambers and the defense’s case would begin.

I passed the time by studying a page of notes I had jotted down for my opening statement. I had reserved the opener at the start of the trial, exercising my option to address the jury before the presentation of the defense. This is often a risky move because it means the jurors may go several days before hearing any sort of counterargument to the prosecution’s theory of the case and presentation of evidence.

Forsythe gave his opening statement to the jury twelve days earlier. So much time had passed, it would seem that the state’s side was deeply and unalterably entrenched in the minds of the twelve. But I also felt that the jurors had to be dying to finally hear something from the defense, to hear the response to Forsythe, the video, and the scientific and physical evidence. They would start to get all of that today.

At last, at nine forty, La Cosse was brought through the lockup door and into the courtroom. I turned and watched as the deputies led him to the defense table, removed the hip shackles, and sat him down next to me. He was wearing the second suit I had bought for him. I wanted him to have a different look than he’d had last week as we started the defense. Both suits had come off the rack in a two-for-one deal at Men’s Wearhouse. Lorna chose them after we’d checked out La Cosse’s own clothing and found nothing that presented the conservative, business-like appearance I wanted him to have in court. But the new suits did little to disguise his ongoing physical decline. He looked like someone suffering in the latter stages of terminal cancer. His weight loss had gone unchecked during his six-plus months of incarceration. He was gaunt, had developed rashes on his arms and neck in reaction to the industrial detergent used in the jail laundry, and his posture at the defense table made him look like an old man. I constantly had to tell him to sit up straight because the jury was watching.

“Andre, you doing okay?” I asked as soon as he was seated.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “The weekends in there are long.”

“I know. They still giving you medicine for your stomach?”

“They give it and I drink it, but I don’t know if it’s doing anything. I still feel like I’m on fire inside.”

“Well, hopefully you won’t be in there too much longer and we’ll get you into a first-rate hospital as soon as you get out.”

La Cosse nodded in a way that indicated he couldn’t quite believe he would ever leave the shackles and the jail behind. Long-term incarceration does that to an individual — eats away at hope. Even in an innocent man.

“How are you doing, Mickey?” he asked. “How is your arm?”

Despite his own circumstances, Andre never failed to inquire about me. In many ways I was still recovering from the crash of the Lincoln. Earl had died and I was battered and broken — but mostly on the inside.

Physically, I’d suffered a concussion and needed surgery to reset my nose. It took twenty-nine stitches to close various lacerations and twice-a-week physical therapy sessions since then to help restore full motion to my left arm where ligaments were torn in the elbow.

To put it bluntly, I got off easy. People might even say I walked away. But the physical injuries didn’t even approach the intensity of the internal damage that still lingered. I grieved every day for Earl Briggs, and the sorrow was only equaled by the burden of guilt I carried with it. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t recheck the moves and decisions I’d made in April. Most damning was the decision to keep the tracker on my car and to taunt those monitoring my movements by boldly driving to Victorville to see Hector Moya. The consequences of that decision would be with me forever, the image of a smiling Earl Briggs attached to them in my mind’s eye.

By the time the wreckage of the Lincoln was examined, the GPS tracker was gone, but it had been there the afternoon before when Cisco had checked out the car. There is no doubt in my mind that I was followed to Victorville. And there is no doubt in my mind about who made the decision to send the Lincoln into the guardrail, if not did the deed himself. I had only one true purpose with this trial. That was to free Andre La Cosse and clear his name. But I considered destroying James Marco in the process to be an integral part of the trial strategy.

When I looked back on what happened up on the 15 Freeway, only one thing came out of it that could even remotely be considered good. A rescue helicopter transported both me and Earl to Desert Valley Hospital back in Victorville. Earl was dead on arrival and I was admitted to the ER. When I came out of surgery, my daughter was there at my bedside, holding my hand. It went a long way toward healing things inside me.

The trial was pushed back almost a month while I recovered, and that cost had been borne most heavily by Andre. Another month of incarceration, another month of withering hope. He never once complained about it. He only wanted me to get better.

“I’m good,” I said to him now. “Thank you for asking. I can’t wait to get started because now it’s finally your turn, Andre. Today we start telling a different story.”

“Good.”

He said it without much conviction.

“You just gotta concentrate on one thing for me, Andre.”

“Yeah, I know, I know. Don’t look guilty.”

“You got it.”

I gave him a playful punch on the shoulder with my good arm. It had been the mantra I had given him from day one. Don’t look guilty. A man who looks guilty is found guilty. In Andre’s case it was easier said than done. He looked destroyed, and that wasn’t too far off from looking guilty.

Of course, I knew something about looking guilty and feeling guilty. But like Andre, I was trying to play my part. I hadn’t had a drink since the night before jury selection began. Not even on the weekends. I was sharp and I was ready. For Andre, today was the first day of the rest of his life. Mine, too.

“I just wish David was here,” Andre said in a whisper so low I almost didn’t hear him.

Reflexively prompted by what he’d said, I turned slightly and my eyes swept across the rear of the courtroom. As had been the case since the start of the trial, the gallery was almost empty. There was an accused serial killer on trial in Department 111 and that was drawing most of the media. The La Cosse case had gotten scant attention in the news, and the cynic in me decided this was because the victim here had been a prostitute.

But I did have a cheering section. Kendall Roberts and Lorna Taylor sat in the first row directly behind the defense table. Lorna had been making periodic visits throughout the trial. This was Kendall’s first day watching. Wary of coming to the courthouse and possibly seeing someone from her past, she had stayed away until I had pointedly asked her to come for at least my opening statement. We had grown close since April and I wanted her there for the emotional support.

And in the back row were two men who had been in attendance every day since the start of jury selection. I did not know their names but I knew who they were. They wore expensive suits but looked out of place in them. They were muscular and had deeply tanned skin from lives seemingly spent outdoors and not in courtrooms. They had the same build as Hector Arrande Moya, with wide, sharp shoulders, and I had come to think of them simply as Moya’s Men. They were part of the contingent of protectors Moya had dispatched to watch over me after the car crash in the mountains. I had turned down his offer of protection that day in the visiting room. It was too late for Earl Briggs now, but I didn’t turn down the offer a second time.

But that was it. No one else was watching the trial. La Cosse’s life partner, David, was missing from the benches. He had split, having staged a full withdrawal of La Cosse’s remaining gold and leaving town on the eve of the trial. More than anything else, that loss contributed to Andre’s demeanor and downward spiral.

In a way, I understood it. Having Kendall in the courtroom was a special thing for me. I felt supported and less alone. Like I had a partner in the fight. But my daughter had so far not set foot in the courtroom and that hurt. The hospital room reunion had only gone so far in rekindling the relationship. And school was no longer an excuse, as it had let out for the year halfway through the prosecution’s case. I think my reflexive act to check the gallery was actually one more hopeful search for her.

“You can’t worry about that now,” I whispered to Andre — and myself. “You have to look strong. Be strong.”

Andre nodded and tried to smile.

When David had taken the gold and run, La Cosse wasn’t the only one he had left high and dry. By then I had already taken receipt of a second bar of gold as continuing payment. A third bar was due at the start of trial, but the gold was gone by then. So a case that I had earlier viewed as a potential financial bonanza had turned pro bono as the trial began. Team Haller was no longer getting paid.

At exactly ten o’clock the judge emerged from chambers and took the bench. As was her custom, Judge Leggoe eyed Forsythe and me and asked if there was any business to consider before she brought in the jury. This time there was. I stood, holding a set of documents, and said I had an amended witness list for the court to consider and approve. She waved me up to the bench and I handed her a copy of the new list and then dropped another one off with Forsythe on my way back. I was barely seated again when Forsythe stood to object.

“Your Honor, Counsel is engaged in an age-old practice of deception by trying to hide his real witnesses in a sea of names. His pretrial list was enormous and now he’s added what I estimate to be twenty to twenty-five more names and it is evident most of these will not be actually called.”

He gestured with the pages behind him to where Lee Lankford sat in a row of chairs against the rail.

“I see he has my own DA investigator on here now,” Forsythe continued. “And let’s see, he’s got not one but now two federal prisoners on here. He’s got one… two… three prison guards. He’s got what looks like every resident in the victim’s building—”

He abruptly cut off the litany and dropped the pages on his table as though depositing them in the trash.

“The people object, Your Honor. It would be impossible to respond beyond that without being allowed the time to look at these names and determine their relationship, if there is any at all, to the case.”

Forsythe’s objection wasn’t a surprise. We had counted on it in the defense plan and strategy we had dubbed “Marco Polo” at the top of the whiteboard Lorna had gotten installed on the brick wall of the boardroom back at the loft. The witness list was the opening move in that gambit, and so far Forsythe was playing his part, though he had not yet — at least vocally — paid attention to the one name on the list that was most important. The name we called our depth charge, sitting there beneath the surface and waiting to be detonated by the first false move by the prosecution.

I stood to respond to the objection, taking another quick glance behind me as I rose. Still no daughter but a small smile from Kendall. As my eyes swept forward they caught and locked for a moment on Lankford. He looked at me with an expression that was sixty percent What the fuck is this? and forty percent the usual Fuck you. That sixty percent was what I was hoping for.

“Your Honor,” I said, looking finally at the judge. “It seems obvious from his objection that Mr. Forsythe already does in fact have knowledge of who these people are and how they would relate to the case. Nevertheless, the defense is happy to allow him time to review the new names and respond. There is no need to interrupt the trial, however. I am planning to regale the jury with my long-delayed opening statement and then begin with witnesses who were on the original witness list and already approved by the court.”

Leggoe seemed pleased to have been handed an easy solution.

“Very well,” she said. “We will take this up first thing tomorrow morning. Mr. Forsythe, you have until then to study the list and have your response ready.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

Leggoe called for the jury. I stayed standing and read over my notes while the jurors were seated and the judge explained that I had reserved my opening statement at the start of the trial and would deliver it now. She reminded them that the words I would speak were not to be construed as evidence and then turned the floor over to me. I stepped away from the defense table, leaving my notes behind. I never used notes when I was directly addressing a jury. I maintained maximum eye contact the whole time.

The judge had earlier ruled that during openers each attorney would be allowed to stand in the space directly in front of the jury box. This is known by lawyers as the well of the courtroom but to me it has always been the proving ground. I don’t mean proving in a legal way. I am talking about proving yourself to the jury, showing them who you are and what you stand for. You have to first gain their respect if you want any hope of proving your case to them. You have to be fervent and unapologetic about standing for the accused.

The first juror I locked eyes with was number four. She was Mallory Gladwell, age twenty-eight, and a script reader for a movie studio. Her job was to analyze scripts submitted to the studio for purchase and development. As soon as she was seated and questioned during voir dire, I knew I wanted her on the jury. I wanted her analytical skills when it came to storytelling and logic. I wanted the jury to ultimately choose my story over Forsythe’s, and my gut feeling was that Mallory Gladwell could be the one who led them there.

Throughout Forsythe’s presentation of the state’s case I kept my eyes on Mallory. It was true that I watched all of the jurors, trying to read faces and pick up tells and cues as to what testimony or evidence had the strongest impact on them, what they were skeptical about, what got them angry and so on. But I had Mallory down as the alpha. My guess was that her skills at breaking down a story would lead her to be a voice, if not the voice, during deliberations. She could be my Pied Piper, and therefore she was the one I made the first eye contact with and she would be the last. I wanted her invested in the defense’s case.

The fact that she returned the eye contact and did not look away was a strong signal to me that my instincts were on target.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I began. “I don’t think any introduction is needed here. We are well into this trial and I am pretty sure we know who everybody is. So I am going to be pretty brief here because I just want to get to the case. To the truth about what happened to Gloria Dayton.”

As I spoke, I unconsciously moved two steps forward, spread my hands, and put them down on the front rail of the jury box. I leaned forward, trying to make the communication between one man and twelve strangers as intimate as a one-on-one with a priest or a rabbi. I wanted each one of them to think I was talking only to them.

“You know, lawyers have all sorts of nicknames for things, including juries. We call you people the ‘gods of guilt.’ Not in any sort of disrespect for religion or faith. But because that’s what you are. Gods of guilt. You sit here and you decide who is guilty and who is not. Who goes free and who does not. It is a lofty and yet weighty burden. To make such a difficult decision you must have all the facts. You must have the whole and true story. You must have the proper interpretation of the story.”

I glanced again directly at Mallory Gladwell. I lifted my hands off the rail and moved back into the well so I could cover the entire twelve and the two alternates in a tight back and forth sweep. As I spoke I casually moved to my right so that most of the jurors were looking at me on their left.

“I ask that over the next few days or week you pay close attention to the defense’s case. You’ve heard only one side of the story so far — the prosecution’s side. But now you are going to hear and see another side. You are going to see that there are two victims in this case. Gloria Dayton, of course, is a victim. But so, too, is Andre La Cosse. Like Gloria he was manipulated and used. She was murdered and Andre has been set up to take the fall for it.

“Realistically, my job here is to sow the seeds of doubt in your mind. If you have reasonable doubt when it comes to Andre’s guilt or innocence, then it is your job to find the defendant not guilty. But over the next few days I will go beyond that, and you will come with me. You will come to know that Andre is completely innocent. And you will come to know who really committed this terrible crime.”

I paused here but kept my eyes moving across the faces of the jurors. I had them. I could tell.

“Now, before closing, let me just address something that I’m sure has bothered you throughout the presentation of the prosecution’s case. That is Mr. La Cosse’s means of making a living. To tell you the truth, it bothers me, too. Essentially, he’s a digital pimp. And, like many of you, I am a parent, and it disturbs me to think about someone profiting from the sexual exploitation of young women and men. But the verdict you will deliver in this case is not to be influenced by what Andre La Cosse does for a living. You cannot judge him guilty of murder simply because of what he is. I ask you to think of the victim in this case, Gloria Dayton, and ask yourself, did she deserve to be murdered because she was a prostitute? The answer of course is no, and so, too, is the answer to the question should Andre La Cosse be convicted of murder simply because he is a pimp?”

I paused, put my hands in my pocket, and looked down at the floor. It was time for the big finish. When I looked up, my eyes came directly to Mallory’s.

“In closing, I make you a promise that you can hold me to. If I do not make good on what I say here, then go ahead and find my client guilty. It’s a gamble I am willing to take, and that Andre is willing to take, because we know where the truth is. We have the righteousness of the innocent.”

I paused again, hoping Forsythe would throw out an objection. I wanted the jury to see him challenging me, trying to stop me from speaking the truth. But the prosecutor wasn’t off the first bus from law school. He knew what he was doing and he held back, not giving me what I wanted.

I moved on.

“The defense will put forth evidence and testimony that proves Mr. La Cosse is nothing more than a patsy. An innocent patsy in the worst kind of scheme. A scheme in which those we trust the most have conspired to frame an innocent man. This is a story about how a conspiracy to protect a hidden truth ultimately led to murder and cover-up. It is my hope”—I turned and used a hand gesture to indicate Andre La Cosse—“as it is Mr. La Cosse’s hope, that you will find the truth with us and return the appropriate verdict of not guilty. Thank you very much.”

I returned to my seat and immediately checked my notes to see if I had forgotten anything.

It looked like I had hit all the highlights, and that pleased me. Andre leaned over and whispered his thanks. I told him he hadn’t seen anything yet.

“I think we will now take the morning break,” the judge said. “When we come back in fifteen minutes we will begin the defense’s presentation.”

I stood as the jury got up, and watched them move single file through the door to the assembly room. I watched Mallory Gladwell move with her head down. Then, at the last moment, just as she was about to slip through the doorway and out of sight, she turned to look back into the courtroom. Her eyes landed on mine and held for the split second before she was gone.

As soon as the judge adjourned, I headed out to the courthouse hallway to check the status of my first witness.

30

The real reason I had fled the courtroom the moment the judge adjourned and the jury left was to get to the restroom. I had been up since four, thinking about the trial and readying myself for my opener. I had kept the fire stoked with copious amounts of coffee and now it was time to purge.

I saw Cisco sitting on a bench in the hallway next to Fernando Valenzuela.

“How we doing?” I asked as I walked by.

“We’re great,” Cisco replied.

“Yeah, sure,” Valenzuela said.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

A few minutes later relief was flooding through me as I stood at the urinal. I even had my eyes closed as I replayed some of the opening statement in my mind. I didn’t hear the restroom door open and didn’t realize someone had come up behind me. Just as I was zipping up, I was pushed face-first into the tiled wall over the urinal. My arms were pinned and I couldn’t move.

“Where’s your cartel protection now?”

I recognized the voice as well as the breath of coffee and cigarettes.

“Lankford, get the fuck off me.”

“You want to fuck with me, Haller? You want to do the dance?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if you ruin this suit, I’m going to see the judge about it. My investigator’s sitting out there. He saw you come in.”

He yanked me off the wall and twirled me into the swinging door on a toilet stall. I recovered quickly and looked down at my suit to check for damage and buckle my belt. I did it nonchalantly like I wasn’t concerned in the least about Lankford’s menacing me.

“Go back to court, Lankford.”

“Why am I on the list? Why do you want me on the stand?”

I walked over to the row of sinks and calmly washed my hands.

“Why do you think?” I asked.

“That day in the office,” he said. “You said you saw me wearing a hat. Why the fuck would you say that?”

I looked up from my hands to the mirror and looked at him.

“I mentioned a hat?”

I reached over and pulled down a handful of paper towels to dry my hands.

“Yeah, you mentioned a hat. Why?”

I threw the wet towels in the trash can, turned, and then hesitated as though I was recalling something from the distant past. Then I looked at him and shook my head as though confused.

“I don’t know about the hat. But I know if you touch me again like that, you’re going to have more trouble than you can handle.”

I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, leaving Lankford behind. I could barely contain a smile as I approached Cisco, who was still on the bench with Valenzuela. The first rule of Marco Polo was to keep them guessing. Lankford would soon have more than his hat to worry about.

“Everything okay?” Cisco asked.

“Lankford try to grab your dick in there?” Valenzuela added.

“Yeah, something like that,” I said. “Let’s go in.”

I opened the door to the courtroom and held it for them. As they passed by me, I checked the hallway for Lankford and didn’t see him. But I did see my half brother walking down the hall, a thick blue binder under his arm.

“Harry.”

He turned without breaking stride and saw me. He smiled when he recognized me and stopped.

“Mick, how are you, man? How’s the arm?”

“It’s good. You in a trial?”

“Yeah, in one eleven.”

“Hey, that’s the one stealing all the media from my trial.”

I said it mock protest and smiled.

“It’s a cold case from ’ninety-four. A guy named Patrick Sewell — one sick puppy. They brought him down from San Quentin where he was already doing life for another murder. They’re going for the death penalty this time.”

I nodded but couldn’t bring myself to say good luck. He was, after all, working for the other side.

“So anything new on your driver?” he asked. “They hook anybody up yet?”

I looked at him for a moment, wondering if he might have heard something about the investigation on the law enforcement circuit.

“Not yet,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” he said.

I nodded in agreement.

“Well, I gotta get back in. Good to see you, Harry.”

“You, too. We should try to get the girls together again.”

“Sure.”

We had daughters the same age. But his apparently still talked to him on a regular basis. After all, he put bad people in jail. I got them out.

I entered the court, privately chiding myself for the negative thoughts. I tried to remember Legal Siegel’s admonishment to let the guilt go so I could be at my best in defending La Cosse.

After the jury was reseated I called the first witness for the defense. Valenzuela walked to the witness stand, bouncing his palm along the top of the front rail of the jury box as he went. He acted as though testifying at a murder trial was as routine as buying smokes at the 7-Eleven.

He took the oath and spelled his name for the clerk. I took it from there, asking him first to tell the jury what he did for a living.

“Well,” he responded. “You might say I’m a man of many talents. I’m the oil that keeps the justice system moving smoothly.”

I almost corrected him by suggesting that he actually meant he was the grease that kept the system moving, but I held back. He was my witness, after all. Instead, I asked him to be more specific about his work.

“For one thing, I’m a state-licensed bail bondsman,” he said. “I also got my PI license and I use that for process. And if you go down to the second-floor coffee shop in this building, then I’m the leaseholder on that. I’m with my brother on that deal. So—”

“Let’s go back for a moment,” I interrupted. “What is a PI license?”

“Private investigator. You gotta have a state license if you want to do that kind of work.”

“Okay, and what do you mean when you say you use your license ‘for process’?”

“Uh, process. You know, process serving. Like when people get sued and stuff and the lawyer has to put out a subpoena if he wants to call somebody to come in to give a statement or a deposition or come to a trial so they can testify. Like what I’m doing right now.”

“So you deliver the subpoena to the witness?”

“Yes, like that. That’s what I do.”

For all his years spent being the oil in the machine, it was pretty clear that Valenzuela did not have much experience testifying. His answers were choppy and incomplete. Whereas I thought he would be one of the easier witnesses to question, I found myself having to work extra hard with him to get a complete answer to the jury. It was not the perfect way to start the defense case, but I pressed on, annoyed more with myself than with him for not conducting a practice run-through beforehand.

“Okay, now did your work as a process server bring you in contact with the victim in this case, Gloria Dayton?”

Valenzuela frowned. What I believed was a straightforward question had thrown him for a loop.

“Well… it did, but at the time I didn’t know it. What I mean is, her name wasn’t Gloria Dayton at the one and only time I came in contact with her, you see.”

“You mean she was using a different name?”

“Yes, she was. The name that was on the subpoena I delivered to her was Giselle Dallinger. That’s who I served paper on.”

“Okay, and when was that?”

“That was on Monday, November fifth at six oh six in the evening at the lobby entrance of the apartment building on Franklin, where she lived.”

“You seem pretty precise about the time and place you did this. How can you be so sure?”

“Because I document every service in case somebody doesn’t show up for court or for a depo. Then I will be able to tell the lawyer or the judge that, see, sure enough, the person was served and should’ve been there. I show them the record and I show them the picture which has the date and time stamp on it.”

“You take a photo?”

“Yep, That’s my policy.”

“So you took a photograph of Giselle Dallinger after you served her with a subpoena last November fifth?”

“That’s right.”

I then produced an eight-by-ten copy of the date- and time-stamped photo that Valenzuela had taken of Giselle née Gloria and asked the judge to accept it as the first defense exhibit. Forsythe objected to the inclusion of the photo and was willing to stipulate that Valenzuela had served a subpoena on Gloria Dayton. But I fought for the photo because I wanted the jurors to see it. The judge sided with me and I handed the photo to juror number one so it could be examined and then passed from juror to juror.

More than anything else, this was what I wanted to accomplish with Valenzuela on the stand. The image was key because it did more than bring validity to Valenzuela’s story. It also captured a look of fear in Gloria’s eyes that had to be seen and not testified to. The photo was taken at precisely the moment she looked up from having read the subpoena. She had seen the name Moya in the styling of the case—Hector Arrande Moya vs Arthur Rollins, warden, FCI Victorville—and in that instant she had been struck with fear. I wanted the jury to see that look and to surmise that it was fear without me or a witness having to tell them.

“Mr. Valenzuela, who were you delivering that subpoena for?” I asked.

“I was working for an attorney named Sylvester Fulgoni Jr.,” he responded.

I half expected Valenzuela to add to his answer the improvisation about Fulgoni being the attorney who put the F-U in litigation, but luckily he spared the jury that. Maybe he was finally getting the hang of being a witness.

“And what was the case the subpoena was attached to?”

“It was called Moya versus Rollins. A convicted drug dealer named Hector Moya was trying to—”

Forsythe objected and asked to approach the judge’s bench. He obviously didn’t want the jury hearing any part of what Valenzuela wanted to say. The judge waved us up and turned on the noise-canceling fan.

“Judge, where is this going?” Forsythe asked. “With his very first witness Mr. Haller is trying to hijack this murder case and take us into another, completely unrelated litigation. I’ve held back on my objections, but now… we have to stop this.”

I noted his use of we, as though he and the judge shared the responsibility of keeping me in check.

“Your Honor,” I said, “Mr. Forsythe wants to stop this because he knows exactly where I am going with it — and it’s a place that he knows is going to derail his whole case. The case Gloria Dayton was served on is exceedingly germane to this case and this trial, and the entire defense theory is built on it. I am asking you to let me proceed and soon enough you will understand why the state wants to block this.”

“‘Exceedingly,’ Mr. Haller?”

“Yes, Your Honor, exceedingly.”

She gave it a moment’s thought and then nodded.

“Overruled. You may proceed, Mr. Haller, but get there soon.”

We returned to our positions and I asked Valenzuela the question again.

“Like I said, Moya versus Rollins. Rollins is the warden of the prison in Victorville where Hector Moya’s been for, like, seven or eight years. He’s trying to get out on account that the DEA set him up by planting a—”

Forsythe objected again, which seemed to annoy the judge. He asked for a sidebar once more but the judge said no. He had to state his objection in open court.

“As far as I know, Judge, the witness is not an attorney, but he is giving a legal interpretation of a habeas case and about to offer as fact the allegations that are merely contained in a lawsuit. We all know that anybody can say anything in a lawsuit. Just because it is said doesn’t—”

“Okay, Mr. Forsythe,” the judge said. “I think you’ve made your objection clear to the jury.”

Now I wished he had gotten the sidebar. Forsythe had expertly used the objection to undercut Valenzuela’s testimony before he had even given it. He reminded the jury in real time that Moya vs. Rollins was just a lawsuit that contained allegations, not proven facts.

“I’m going to overrule the objection and let the witness finish his answer,” Leggoe said.

In a slightly deflated tone I told Valenzuela to give his answer again and he summarized the main charge of Moya’s habeas petition — that the gun that ended up putting him away for life had been planted by the DEA.

“Thank you,” I said when the answer was finally out and in the record. “What did you do after you served Giselle Dallinger with that subpoena?”

Valenzuela looked confused by the question.

“I, uh… I guess I told Mr. Fulgoni that it was done,” he said.

“Okay, and did you ever see Ms. Dallinger again?” I asked.

“No, not at all. That was it.”

“When did you next hear about Ms. Dallinger after November fifth?”

“It would’ve been about a week later, when I heard that she’d gotten murdered.”

“How did you hear that?”

“Mr. Fulgoni told me.”

“And did you learn anything else about her death?”

“Well, yeah, I read the paper and I saw that a guy had been arrested.”

“You’re talking about Andre La Cosse being arrested for her murder?”

“Yeah, it had it in the paper.”

“And how did you react to that news when you read it?”

“Well, it was like I was relieved, because it meant that we didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.”

“What do you—”

Forsythe objected again, citing relevance. I argued that Valenzuela’s reaction to news of the murder and arrest were relevant because the defense’s case was based on the fact that the subpoena that was served on Gloria Dayton was what motivated her murder. Leggoe allowed me to proceed subject to her determining relevancy after the witness’s testimony was completed. This was a win with an asterisk for me. Even if the judge later struck Valenzuela’s answers from the trial record, she wouldn’t be able to strike them from the memories of the twelve jurors.

“Go ahead, Mr. Valenzuela,” I said. “Tell the jury why you were relieved when you heard that Mr. La Cosse had been arrested in the murder.”

“Well, because it meant it had nothing to do with this other thing. You know, the Moya case.”

“Well, why would you have been worried about that in the first place?”

“Because Hector Moya is a cartel guy, and I thought, you know, that—”

“I think I’m going to stop the witness there,” Leggoe said. “Now we are getting into an area beyond the witness’s expertise and knowledge. Ask a different question, Mr. Haller.”

But I had no more questions. For all his unpolished delivery, Valenzuela had been an A-plus witness, and I felt good about how we had come out of the gate. I turned the floor over to Forsythe for cross-examination but he was wise enough to pass. There wasn’t much he could get out of questioning Valenzuela without one of them repeating things that supported the defense theory.

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

The judge excused Valenzuela and he made his way out of the courtroom. Leggoe told me to call my next witness.

“Your Honor,” I said. “This might be a good time to break for lunch.”

“Really, Mr. Haller,” Leggoe said. “Why is that? The clock says it is twenty minutes to twelve.”

“Uh, Judge, my next witness is not here yet, and if I could have the lunch hour, I am sure I can have him here to start the afternoon session.”

“Very well. The jury is excused until one o’clock.”

I moved back toward the defense table while the jury filed out of the courtroom. Forsythe gave me a look and shook his head as I moved by him.

“You don’t know what you just did, do you?” he whispered.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

He didn’t answer and I kept moving. At the defense table I started gathering my legal pads and documents together. I knew better than to leave anything on the table during court breaks. The moment the door closed on the last juror, the judge’s voice boomed through the courtroom.

“Mr. Haller.”

I looked up.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Mr. Haller, how would you like to join your client for lunch in lockup?”

I smiled, still not aware of any trespass that I had committed.

“Well, I wouldn’t mind the company, but cheese sandwiches aren’t on my list of culinary favorites, Your—”

“Then let me put you on notice, Mr. Haller. You never suggest a lunch break or any break in front of my jury, do you understand that?”

“I do now, Judge.”

“This is my courtroom, Mr. Haller, not yours. And I decide when we break for lunch and when we don’t.”

“Yes, Your Honor. I apologize and it won’t happen again.”

“If it does, there will be consequences.”

The judge then left the bench in a huff, her black robes flowing behind her. I gathered myself and looked over at Forsythe, who had a sneaky smile on his face. He’d obviously worked in Leggoe’s courtroom before and knew her personal rules of decorum. Big deal, I thought. At least she waited until the jury was gone before she brought out the hammer.

When I got out of the courtroom and into the hallway, I found Cisco pacing near the elevators. He was holding his cell phone to his ear but not talking.

“Where the fuck is Fulgoni?” I demanded.

“I don’t know,” Cisco said. “He said he’d be here. I’m on hold with his office.”

“He’s got one hour. He’d better be here.”

31

Kendall had left before the lunch break to head up to the Valley and her shift at Flex. Lorna and I walked down Spring and then over to Main to a place called Pete’s Café. Along the way I occasionally looked back over my shoulder to make sure we had security with us. Moya’s men were always there.

We’d chosen Pete’s because it was good and fast and it served an excellent BLT, which for some reason I was craving. The only issue I ever had with eating at Pete’s was that it was always full of cops, and this time was no different. Just a couple blocks from the Police Administration Building, the restaurant was a favorite with command staff suits and detectives from the elite Robbery-Homicide Division squads. I exchanged awkward nods and stares with a few guys I recognized from prior trials and cases. We got a table that was cut off from the view of most of the restaurant by a wide support column, and that was fine with me. I was beginning to feel like I had wandered into an enemy encampment when all I wanted was a BLT on whole wheat toast.

Lorna was smart enough to ask me if I wanted her to be quiet while I thought about the case and the day’s after-lunch session. But I told her there was no sense in my strategizing a plan for the afternoon until I knew whether Sly Jr. was going to be in court as he was supposed to be. So after ordering we spent the time studying my calendar and looking for billable hours. The firm was running out of money. Before it was known that there would be no more gold bars coming from Andre La Cosse, I had spent liberally on P&I — trial preparation and investigation. More was going out than was coming in, and that was a problem.

This was one reason that Jennifer Aronson was not in court this morning. I could not afford to take her off the work for the few other paying clients we had. She spent the morning at a bankruptcy hearing regarding the owner-landlord of the loft we used for our team meetings.

At least the credit card I used to pay for lunch went through. I could only imagine the humiliation that would have come from my card being confiscated and cut in half in front of an audience of cops.

The good news was then doubled when I got a text from Cisco on our way back to the courthouse.

He’s here. Good to go.

I shared the news with Lorna that Fulgoni was in the courthouse and was then able to relax the rest of the way back. That is, until Lorna brought up the thing we had steadfastly avoided bringing up for nearly two months.

“Mickey, do you want me to start looking around for a driver?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now. Besides, I don’t have a car. What do I want a driver for? Are you saying you no longer want to drive me?”

She had been picking me up each morning and taking me to court. Usually it was Cisco who drove me home, so he could check the house to make sure it was clear.

“No, it’s not that,” Lorna said. “I don’t mind driving you at all. But how long are you going to wait before you try to get back to normal?”

The trial had been a good salve on the internal wounds left by the crash. The attention it required kept my mind from wandering back to that day we had gone up into the Mojave.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Besides, we can’t afford normal. There’s no money for a driver and there’s no money for a car until I get the check from the insurance company.”

The insurance check was held up by the investigation. The California Highway Patrol had classified the crash as a homicide caused by the intentional hit-and-run by the tow truck. The truck was found a day after the accident, parked in a field in Hesperia and burned to a charred hulk. It had been stolen from a tow lot the morning of the crash. The CHP investigators, as far as I knew, had no line on who had been driving the truck when it had rammed into my Lincoln.

As Sylvester Fulgoni Jr. made the long walk from the rear entrance all the way to the witness stand at the front, he swiveled his head back and forth as if seeing the inside of a real courtroom for the first time. When he got to the stand, he started to sit down and the judge had to stop him so he could remain standing while taking the oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

After the preliminary questions that established who Fulgoni was and what he did, I zeroed in on Hector Moya’s habeas case, asking Fulgoni to go through the steps that led him to subpoena Gloria Dayton to appear for a deposition.

“Well, it started when Mr. Moya told me that the gun that was found by police in his hotel room was not his and that it had been planted,” Fulgoni answered. “Through our investigation we concluded that there was a strong possibility that the gun was already hidden in the room when the police arrived to make the arrest.”

“And what did that tell you?”

“Well, that if the gun was planted as Mr. Moya insisted, then it was planted by somebody who had been in that room before the police arrived.”

“Where did that lead you?”

“We looked at who had been in that room during the four days Mr. Moya was staying there before the bust. And through a process of elimination we narrowed our focus to two women who had been to the room multiple times in those days. They were prostitutes and they used the names Glory Days and Trina Trixxx — that’s spelled with three x’s. Trina Trixxx was easy to find because she was still working under that name in Los Angeles and had a website and all of that. I contacted her and arranged to meet her.”

Fulgoni stopped there, waiting for further direction. I had told him when we discussed his testimony not to take big bites out of the story, to keep his answers short. I also told him not to volunteer anything about paying Trina Trixxx for her cooperation. I didn’t want to drop that piece of information into Bill Forsythe’s lap.

“Will you tell the jury what happened at that meeting?” I asked.

Fulgoni nodded eagerly.

“Well, first she revealed that her real name is Trina Rafferty. She also acknowledged knowing Mr. Moya and being in his room back at that time. She denied ever planting a gun in the room but admitted that her friend Glory Days had told her she did.”

I did my best to feign confusion, raising one hand in an I-don’t-get-it gesture.

“But why would she plant the gun?”

This set off an objection from Bill Forsythe and a five-minute exchange of arguments at sidebar. Eventually I was allowed to proceed with my question. This is one of the few places in a criminal trial where the defense has an advantage. Everything about a trial is stacked against the defense, but the one thing no judge wants is a reversal on appeal due to judge’s error. So the wide majority of jurists, and this included Judge Nancy Leggoe, bend over backwards to allow the defense to proceed as it wishes as long as it stays close to the lines of evidentiary procedure and decorum. Leggoe knew that every time she sustained an objection from Forsythe, she risked being second-guessed and reversed by a higher court. By contrast, rejection of prosecutorial objections rarely carried the same risk. In practice this meant that giving the defense wide latitude in mounting its case was the safest judicial route to take.

Once I was back at the lectern, I again asked Fulgoni why Glory Days would plant a gun in Hector Moya’s hotel room.

“Trina Rafferty told me that both she and Glory Days were working for the DEA and they wanted to put Moya away for—”

Forsythe practically became airborne when he jumped up to object.

“Your Honor! Where is the foundation for that? The state strenuously objects to the witness and defense counsel using this trial to wander aimlessly through this valley of innuendo.”

The judge was swift in her response.

“I think Mr. Forsythe is correct this time. Mr. Haller, lay the foundation or move on to another topic with the witness.”

So much for the defense advantage. I took a few seconds to pull back and retool the examination. I then led Fulgoni through a series of questions that established the parameters of Moya’s arrest and conviction, paying careful attention to the federal code that allowed prosecutors to enhance the charges and seek a life sentence because he was found in possession of a firearm and two ounces of cocaine — a quantity deemed by federal code to be more than for personal use.

It took me nearly a half hour but eventually I got back to the question of why Glory Days — who we had now established was Gloria Dayton — would plant a gun in Moya’s room. Forsythe objected again, saying the groundwork I had just covered was insufficient, but finally the judge agreed with me and overruled the objection.

“We believed, based on facts brought forward in our investigation, that Gloria Dayton was a DEA informant and that she planted the gun in Mr. Moya’s room on the orders of her DEA handler.”

There. It was on the record. The cornerstone of the defense. I glanced over at Forsythe. He was writing furiously, even angrily, on a legal pad and not looking up. He probably didn’t even want to see how the jury was reacting to this.

“And who was her DEA handler?” I asked.

“An agent named James Marco,” Fulgoni replied.

I looked down and acted like I was checking notes on my own legal pad for a few moments so the jurors could let that name — James Marco — sink in deep.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted. “Ask your next question.”

I looked at Fulgoni and thought about which way to go, now that I had Marco’s name before the jury.

“Mr. Haller!” the judge prompted again.

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said quickly. “Mr. Fulgoni, where did you get the name James Marco as Gloria Dayton’s supposed DEA handler?”

“From Trina Rafferty. She said that both she and Gloria worked for Marco as snitches.”

“Did Trina Rafferty say whether Marco asked her to plant the gun in Mr. Moya’s hotel room?”

Before Fulgoni could answer, Forsythe objected angrily, calling the whole line of questioning hearsay. The judge sustained it without allowing argument from me. I asked for a sidebar, and the judge reluctantly signaled us up to the bench. I got right into it.

“Your Honor, the defense finds itself between a rock and a hard place. The court has sustained the objection against hearsay testimony from the witness. That leaves me no alternative but to at least try to get the testimony directly from Agent Marco. As you know, Marco was on the original witness list submitted nearly four weeks ago to the court. However, we have been unable to make service of a subpoena to Agent Marco or the DEA in general.”

Leggoe shrugged.

“And what is the remedy you want from the court? To allow hearsay evidence? That’s not going to happen, Mr. Haller.”

I started nodding before she was finished.

“I know that, Judge. But I was thinking that a direct order to appear from you and carrying the blessing of the prosecution could go a long way toward getting Agent Marco into this courtroom.”

Leggoe looked at Forsythe and raised her eyebrows. The ball was now Forsythe’s.

“Your Honor, I am happy to give my blessing,” he said. “Whether it works or not, all Agent Marco will do is show up and deny these outlandish accusations. It will be a highly decorated agent’s word against the word of a whore and I’ll—”

“Mr. Forsythe!” the judge broke in, her voice well above a whisper. “You will show a little more decorum and respect in my courtroom.”

“I apologize, Your Honor,” Forsythe said quickly. “Prostitute. What I meant to say is that this will come down to the agent’s word against the prostitute’s, and the state has no worries when it comes to that.”

Prosecutorial arrogance is a deadly sin when it comes to a criminal court trial. It was the first time I had really seen it in Forsythe and I knew that he might end up eating those words before the case was over.

“Very well, let’s proceed,” the judge said, “I will adjourn for the day fifteen minutes early so that we can fashion the order to appear.”

We returned to our positions and I looked at Fulgoni, waiting for me on the witness stand. He had so far come off as cool, calm, and collected. I was about to change that and take him in a direction we had not discussed or rehearsed in the days building up to the trial.

“Mr. Fulgoni,” I began, “how much of this gun-planting theory did Gloria Dayton confirm for you?”

“None,” Fulgoni said. “I subpoenaed her for a deposition but she was murdered before I ever spoke to her.”

I nodded and looked down at my notes.

“And how long have you been practicing law?”

The abrupt change in direction surprised young Sly.

“Uh, two and a half years next month.”

“And have you been involved in a trial before?”

“You mean in court?”

I almost laughed out loud. If Fulgoni had not been my own witness, I would have destroyed him with that answer. As it was, I needed to damn near leave him for dead before I was finished with my direct.

“Yes, in court,” I said drily.

“None so far. But I know lawyers who say the object is to stay out of the courtroom and to take care of business before it comes to that.”

“Viewing it from where I stand now, that’s not bad advice, Mr. Fulgoni. Can you tell the jury how you, just two years out of law school and never in a courtroom before, landed Hector Moya as a client?”

Fulgoni nodded.

“He was a referral.”

“From whom?”

“My father, actually.”

“And how did that come about?”

Fulgoni gave me a look that I interpreted as a warning that I was crossing into a territory that he had deemed off-limits when we had last discussed his testimony. I gave him a look back that said too fucking bad. I have you under oath. I own you.

I had to prompt him to answer.

“Please tell the jury how your father came to refer Mr. Moya to you.”

“Uh, well, my father is incarcerated in the same federal prison where Hector is. They know each other, and my father referred him to me.”

“Okay, so you took on the case two years out of law school and filed the habeas petition, hoping to have Mr. Moya’s life sentence vacated, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Because the firearm that got him that life sentence was planted.”

“Yes.”

“And you believed it was planted by Gloria Dayton, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Based on what Trina Rafferty told you.”

“Correct.”

“And before filing this habeas petition, did you study the transcript from Mr. Moya’s trial in 2006?”

“Most of it, yes.”

“Did you read the transcript of the sentencing hearing when the judge sent him to life in prison?”

“I did, yes.”

I asked the judge to allow me to approach the witness with a document I entered as the second defense exhibit, the transcript of Hector Moya’s sentencing on November 4, 2006.

The judge approved and I came forward to hand the document to Fulgoni. It was already folded back to a page with highlighted material I wanted him to read to the jury.

“What is that you have there, Mr. Fulgoni?”

“It’s the transcript from the sentencing hearing in federal court. It’s the judge’s comments.”

“Is that what you read when you were preparing to file the habeas on Mr. Moya’s behalf?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. What is the judge’s name?”

“The Honorable Lisa Bass.”

“Can you please read to the jury the quotes from Judge Bass that I have highlighted on the page?”

Fulgoni leaned forward and began reading.

“‘Mr. Moya, the presentencing report on you is abysmal. You have conducted a life full of crime, attaining a high rank in the murderous Sinaloa Cartel. You are a cold and violent man and you have lost all aspects of humanity. You sell death. You are death. And it is my good fortune to be able to sentence you to life in prison today. I wish I could do more. To be honest, I wish you were eligible for the death penalty because I would have used it.’”

He stopped there. The judge’s comments continued but I figured that the jury had a good enough taste of them.

“Okay, so you read that sentencing transcript sometime last year as you prepared the habeas petition on Mr. Moya’s behalf, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Therefore, you knew when you prepared the subpoena for Gloria Dayton what kind of history Mr. Moya had, correct?”

“Yes.”

“So then, Mr. Fulgoni, did it ever cross your mind as a young, inexperienced attorney that it might be dangerous to subpoena Gloria Dayton to a deposition in which you would undoubtedly ask her about planting the gun in Hector Moya’s hotel room?”

“Danger from whom?”

“Let me ask the questions, Mr. Fulgoni. That’s how it works in a real trial.”

There was a slight murmur of laughter from the direction of the jury but I acted as though I hadn’t heard it.

“Didn’t you, Mr. Fulgoni, understand that, by issuing a subpoena and naming Gloria Dayton as the person who planted a gun in Hector Moya’s hotel room, you were placing her in great danger?”

“That’s why I did it under seal. It was not public information. Nobody knew.”

“What about your client? Didn’t he know?”

“I didn’t tell him.”

“Did you tell your father, who lived in the same prison with Moya?”

“But it doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t have killed her.”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“Hector Moya.”

“Mr. Fulgoni, you need to answer the questions I ask you. That way we don’t have confusion. Did you or did you not tell your father that you had identified as Gloria Dayton the woman who you believed planted the gun in Mr. Moya’s room?”

“Yes, I told my father.”

“And did you ever ask him if he had told Mr. Moya before Gloria Dayton’s death?”

“I did, yeah, but it didn’t matter. She was Moya’s ticket out. He would not have killed her.”

I nodded and looked down at my notes for a moment before continuing.

“Then why did you ask your father if he had given her name to Mr. Moya?”

“Because I didn’t understand at first. I thought maybe it was possible that he had acted out of vengeance or something like that.”

“Do you think that now?”

“No, because I understand. He needed her alive in order to win the habeas. We needed her.”

I hoped the alternative to the scenario I had just explored was obvious to the jurors. At the moment, I was being subtle about it. I wanted them to come to the understanding on their own, and then I would reinforce it with further testimony. When people think they have discovered or earned a certain knowledge on their own, they are more apt to hold on to it.

I glanced at Mallory Gladwell in the jury box and saw her writing in one of the notebooks each juror is given. It looked to me like my alpha juror had gotten the subtlety.

I looked back at Fulgoni. It would have been the perfect moment to finish, but I had Fulgoni on the stand and under oath. I decided not to miss any chance of hammering home the basic theory of the defense.

“Mr. Fulgoni, I am trying to get a fix on the timing of your habeas petition involving Hector Moya. You filed the case and subpoenaed Gloria Dayton in early November, correct?”

“Yes.”

“She was then murdered on the night of November eleventh going into the twelfth, right?”

“I don’t know the exact dates.”

“It’s okay, I do. By the morning of November twelfth Gloria was dead, and yet it was another five months before anything happened on the habeas, correct?”

“Like I said, I don’t know the dates. I think that is right.”

“Why did you wait until April of this year to get things going on the case and to subpoena DEA Agent James Marco among others? What caused the delay until then, Mr. Fulgoni?”

Fulgoni shook his head like he didn’t know the answer.

“I was just… strategizing the case. Sometimes the law moves slowly, you know?”

“Was it because you realized that if Hector Moya actually needed Gloria Dayton alive, there might be someone else out there who needed her dead?”

“No, I don’t think that’s—”

“Were you afraid, Mr. Fulgoni, that you had opened a can of worms with your habeas petition and that you yourself might be in danger?”

“No, I was never afraid.”

“Were you ever threatened by someone in law enforcement to stall or shut the Moya case down?”

“No, never.”

“How did Agent Marco react to being subpoenaed in April?”

“I don’t actually know. I wasn’t there.”

“Has he ever fulfilled the subpoena and sat for a deposition with you?”

“Uh, no, not yet.”

“Has he personally threatened you if you continue the habeas case?”

“No, he has not.”

I stared at Fulgoni for a long moment. He now looked like a scared little boy who would lie his way out of anything if he could.

Now was the time. I looked up at the judge and said I had no further questions.

32

Forsythe kept Fulgoni on the stand for a full ninety minutes of hardball cross-examination. If I had made the young lawyer look foolish at times, then the prosecutor made him look downright incompetent. Forsythe clearly had a mission to accomplish with his cross and that was the total destruction of Fulgoni’s credibility. I had used young Sly to get several salient points on the record. Forsythe’s only hope of undermining those points with the jury was to undermine their source. He had to leave it so the jurors would dismiss Fulgoni’s testimony in its entirety.

He came close to mission accomplished by the end of the ninety minutes. Fulgoni looked wrung out. His clothes seemed somehow wilted, his posture was slumped, and he was answering questions monosyllabically, agreeing to almost anything the prosecutor suggested in the form of a question. It was the Stockholm syndrome — he was trying to please his captor.

I tried to intervene and help where I could with objections. But Forsythe deftly kept his questioning inside the lines, and one after the other the objections went down overruled.

Finally, at four fifteen, it was over. Fulgoni was excused and he left the witness stand like a man who never wanted to set foot in a courtroom again, despite being a lawyer. I stepped back to the rail and whispered to Cisco in the first row, telling him to make sure young Sly didn’t leave. I still needed to talk to him.

The judge sent the jury home and adjourned court for the day. She invited Forsythe and me back to her chambers to work on the order to appear that would hopefully bring James Marco to court. I told Lorna that drawing up the order would not take too long and she should go down and get her car out of the underground parking garage where she left it every morning.

I caught up to Forsythe in the hallway behind the courtroom that led to the judge’s chambers.

“Nice job on Fulgoni,” I said. “At least now he has some courtroom experience.”

Forsythe turned and waited for me.

“Me? You were the one who started it — and he was your witness.”

“A sacrifice to the gods. It had to be done.”

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of this Moya angle but it’s not going to fly, Mick.”

“We’ll see.”

“And what’s with all the names on the new list? I’ve got kids I’d like to spend time with tonight.”

“Give it to Lankford. He has the time. I think he ate his kids.”

Forsythe was laughing as we entered the chambers. The judge was already at her desk, turned to the computer terminal on the side.

“Gentlemen, let’s get this done so we can beat some traffic.”

Fifteen minutes later I left through the courtroom. The judge had issued the order to appear. The sheriff’s department would be charged with delivering it to the DEA’s office the next morning. It ordered the DEA to show cause as to why Agent James Marco should not appear in court by ten a.m. Wednesday. That meant either Marco or a lawyer for the DEA would need to show up. If that didn’t work, then Judge Leggoe would issue a bench warrant for Marco’s arrest and things would really get interesting.

I found Cisco and young Sly sharing a bench in the hallway. One of Moya’s men was on his own bench across the hall. The other had trailed Lorna as she went down to get the car.

I walked over to Cisco and Fulgoni and told young Sly that I knew it had been a rough day but that I greatly appreciated the help he had given my client’s case. I told him I was still looking forward to working with him on the habeas case in federal court.

“I was right about you, Haller,” he said.

“Yeah, when was that?” I asked.

“When I said you were an asshole.”

He stood up to leave.

“I nailed it.”

Cisco and I watched him stride to the elevator bank. The good thing about working late into the day in the courthouse was that the elevator crowds thinned out and the wait wasn’t so bad. Fulgoni caught a ride quickly and was gone.

“Nice guy,” Cisco said.

“You should meet his father,” I said. “Even nicer.”

“I shouldn’t speak ill, though. A guy like that, I’ll probably end up working for him someday,” Cisco said.

“You’re probably right.”

I handed him my copy of the judge’s order. Cisco unfolded the document and looked it over.

“Somebody up there at Roybal will probably use this to wipe his ass with.”

“Probably, but it’s all part of the game. Just in case, we need to be ready for Marco on Wednesday.”

“Right.”

We stood up and started heading toward the elevators. Moya’s man followed.

“You going to the loft?” I asked Cisco.

Team Haller had been meeting regularly at the loft after court each afternoon. We recounted the occurrences of the day as well as talked and brainstormed about the next one. It was a way of sharing successes and failures. Today I thought we had been more successful than not. It would be a good meeting.

“I’ll be there,” Cisco said. “I just have one stop to make first.”

“Okay, then.”

Outside the courthouse, I walked over to Spring Street and saw Lorna’s Lexus parked at the curb in front of two Lincoln Town Cars that were also waiting for lawyers from the courthouse. I walked down the sidewalk and past the Lincolns and almost opened the back door of Lorna’s car but decided not to embarrass her. I got in the front.

“I guess this makes me the Lexus Lawyer now,” I said. “Maybe the movie guys will make a sequel.”

She didn’t smile.

“Are we going to the loft?” she asked.

“If you don’t mind. I want to make sure we’re all set for tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

She abruptly pulled away from the curb without checking the traffic lane and got blasted by a motorist she’d cut off. I waited a few moments, deciding whether I should wade in. I had been married to her once briefly. I knew her moods and that the quiet, clipped dialogue version could boil over if left simmering on the stove too long.

“So what’s up? You’re upset.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. Tell me.”

“Why did you make Sylvester Jr. wait for you after court today?”

I squinted, trying to see the connection between making Junior wait and her being upset.

“I don’t know, I guess because I wanted to thank him for testifying. It was a rough day for him.”

“And whose fault was that?”

Now I realized why she was flatlining me. She felt sorry for young Sly.

“Look, Lorna, that kid is a complete incompetent. I had to expose that because if I didn’t, I was going to look just as incompetent when Forsythe mopped the floor with him. Besides, someday he’s going to thank me for that. It’s better he get his shit together now than somewhere down the line.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, whatever. You know something, Earl never gave me any shit about how I run my cases.”

“And look what happened to him.”

That hit me like an arrow in the back.

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Lorna, don’t lay that shit on me. Don’t you think I already carry enough guilt about it?”

I was actually surprised it had taken her two months to get to this.

“You knew you were being followed. They put a tracker on the car.”

“Yeah, a tracker. So they would know where I was going. Not so they could kill us. That was never on our radar. They put a tracker on the car, not an IED, for chrissake.”

“You should’ve known when you went up to see Moya they would know you figured everything out and were a danger.”

“That’s crazy, Lorna. Because I didn’t figure everything out. Not then and not now. I’m still flying by the seat of my pants on this case. Besides that, the day before, Cisco said they weren’t seeing anything, and I’d made an executive decision to pull the Indians back because they were costing us a lot and you were on my back all the time about the money.”

“So you’re blaming me?”

“No, I’m not blaming you. I’m not blaming anybody, but obviously somebody missed something because we were not in the clear.”

“And Earl got killed.”

“Yeah, Earl got killed and so far they’ve gotten away with it. And I have to live with making the call to pull back on the surveillance, not that it would have changed anything.”

I raised my hands in an I-give-up gesture.

“Look, I don’t know why this all comes to the surface right now, but can we stop talking about it? I’m in the middle of a trial and I’m juggling chain saws. All of this doesn’t really help. I see Earl’s face every night when I try to go to sleep. If it helps you to know he haunts me, well, he does.”

We rode in silence for the next twenty-five minutes until finally we pulled into the parking lot behind the loft on Santa Monica. I could tell by the number of cars in the lot, including three beat-up panel vans, that our staff meeting would have musical accompaniment. Under the house rules, bands were allowed to practice in their lofts after four p.m.

Lorna and I said nothing as we rode the freight elevator up. Our shoes made angry sounds on the wood floor. They echoed across the empty loft as we headed to the boardroom.

Only Jennifer Aronson was already there. I remembered that Cisco had said that he had something to do first.

“So how did it go?” Aronson asked.

I nodded as I pulled out a seat and sat down.

“Pretty good. Things are in play. I was even able to suggest to Forsythe that he let Lankford vet the new witness list.”

“I meant the trial. How was Fulgoni?”

I glanced at Lorna, aware of her sympathies for Sly Jr.

“He served his purpose.”

“Is he off yet?”

“Yeah, we’re finished with him for now.”

“And so you gave the new list, and what happened?”

Jennifer had prepared the new witness list, making sure that every new name had some connection to the case so that we could argue its place on it. That is, every name but one.

“Forsythe objected all over the place and the judge gave him till tomorrow morning to respond. So I want you there, since you know the names better than me. Are you clear in the morning?”

Jennifer nodded.

“Yes. Will I be making the response or just whispering to you?”

“You respond.”

She brightened at the thought of going up against Forsythe in court.

“What about if he brings up Stratton Sterghos?”

I thought for a moment before responding. I heard someone riffing on an electric guitar somewhere in the building.

“First of all, there is no if about that. Sterghos is going to come up. When he does, you start to answer and then you sort of look at me as if to ask if you’re saying too much. I’ll step in then and take it from there.”

The new witness list I had submitted was a carefully constructed part of our defense strategy. Every person we had added had at least a tangential connection to the Gloria Dayton case. We could easily argue for his or her inclusion and testimony. However, the truth was, we would actually call few of them to testify. Most of them had been added to the list in an effort to cloak a single name: Stratton Sterghos.

Sterghos was the depth charge. He was not directly or indirectly connected to Dayton. He did, however, live for the past twenty years across the street from a house in Glendale where two drug dealers were assassinated in 2003. It was in the investigation of those murders that I believed an unholy alliance was somehow struck between then — Detective Lee Lankford and DEA agent James Marco. I needed to root that alliance out and find a way to tie it in with Gloria. It was called relevance. I had to make the Glendale case relevant to the Dayton case or I would never get it to the jury.

“So you’re hoping Lankford does the vetting and comes up with Stratton Sterghos’s connection,” Jennifer said.

I nodded.

“If we get lucky.”

“And then he makes a mistake.”

I nodded again.

“If we get luckier.”

As if on cue, Cisco entered the boardroom. I realized that the big man hadn’t made a sound as he had crossed the loft. He went to the coffeepot and started pouring a cup.

“Cisco, that’s old,” Lorna warned. “From this morning. It’s not even hot.”

“It will have to do,” Cisco said.

He put the glass pot down on the cold burner and swallowed a gulp from the cup. We all made faces. He smiled.

“What?” he said. “I need the caffeine. We’re setting up on the house and I could be up all night.”

“So everything is set?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I just checked it out. We’re ready.”

“Then let’s hope Lankford does his job.”

“And then some.”

He started pouring more of the dead coffee into his cup.

“Let me just make a fresh pot,” Lorna said.

She got up and came around the table to her husband.

“No, it’s fine,” Cisco said. “I can’t stay long anyway. Have to get up there with the crew.”

Lorna stopped. There was a pained expression on her face.

“What?” Cisco asked.

“What is this you’re doing?” she asked. “How dangerous?”

Cisco shrugged and looked at me.

“We’ve taken precautions,” I said. “But… they are men with guns.”

“We’re always careful,” Cisco added.

I now realized where the heated discussion between Lorna and me in the car had come from. She was worried about her husband, worried that the fate that had befallen Earl Briggs would come to her house next.

33

Cisco called me at midnight. I was in bed with Kendall, having snuck out my back door and once again taken a cab over the hill to meet her. The protection of Moya’s men was twenty-four/seven, but I left them behind whenever I met Kendall because she objected to them and didn’t want them near her. As had become our routine during the trial, we’d eaten a late dinner at the sushi bar after she closed her studio and then returned to her place. I was deeply asleep and dreaming of car crashes when Cisco called. It took me a moment to adjust to where I was and what the call meant.

“We’ve got them on tape,” Cisco said.

“Who exactly?”

“Both of them. Lankford and Marco.”

“Together, same frame?”

“Same frame.”

“Good. Did they do anything?”

“Oh, yeah. They went inside.”

“You mean they broke in?”

“Yep.”

“Holy shit. And you’ve got it?”

“We’ve got it all and then some. Marco planted drugs in the house. Heroin.”

I was almost speechless. This couldn’t be any better.

“And you got that on tape, too?”

“Got it. We got it all. Do you want us to break it all down now? Pull out the cameras?”

I thought for a moment before answering.

“No,” I finally said. “I want it to stay. We paid Sterghos for two weeks. Let’s keep it all there. You never know.”

“You sure? Do we have the money for that?”

“Yes, I’m sure. No, we don’t have the money.”

“Well, you don’t want to stiff these guys.”

I almost made a joke about how we had been stiffing the Indians since Columbus got here, but decided it was not the time for an attempt at humor.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you in the morning. Will there be something I can see?”

“Yeah, I’ll download it all to Lorna’s iPad. You can watch on your way in.”

“Okay, good.”

After we disconnected, I checked my text file to see if I’d gotten anything from my daughter. I had been sending trial updates each night, telling her how things were going and the major highlight of each day. They had mostly been negative reports until the defense phase began. Now the highlights would be my highlights. The dispatch I had sent her while riding over the hill in the taxi had been about the points I’d scored with Valenzuela and Fulgoni on the stand.

But as usual there was no return text or acknowledgment of any kind from her. I put the phone down on the bedside table and laid my head back down on the pillow. Kendall’s arm came around my chest from behind.

“Who was that?”

“Cisco. He got some good stuff tonight.”

“Good for him.”

“No, good for me.”

She squeezed me and I felt how strong she was after many years of yoga.

“Go to sleep now,” she said.

“I don’t think I can,” I said.

But I tried. I closed my eyes and tried to avoid returning to the dream I’d just come out of. I didn’t want that. I tried to think about my daughter riding a black horse with a lightning bolt running down its nose. In the vision she wore no helmet and her hair was flowing behind her as the horse she rode galloped across an unfenced field of tall grass. I realized just before drifting off that the girl in the vision was my daughter of a year earlier, at a time when we still spoke regularly and saw each other on weekends. My last thought before succumbing to exhaustion and sleep was to wonder if she would always be frozen at that age in my dreams. Or if I would get experiences with her upon which I could build new dreams.

Two hours later the phone buzzed again. Kendall groaned as I quickly grabbed it off the bedside table and answered without looking at the screen.

“What now?”

“What now? What the hell you think you’re doing treating my son like that in open court?”

It wasn’t Cisco. It was Sly Fulgoni Sr.

“Sly? Look, hold on.”

I got up and walked out of the room. I didn’t want to disturb Kendall any further than I already had. I sat at the counter in the kitchen and spoke in a low voice into the phone.

“Sly, I did what I had to do for my client, and now’s not the time to talk about it. Fact is, he got what was coming to him, and it’s too late and I’m too tired to talk about it.”

There was silence for a long moment.

“Did you put me on the list?” he finally asked.

That was what he was really calling about. Himself. Sly needed a vacation from federal prison, so he demanded that his name be put on the amended witness list. He had decided that he wanted to take the bus ride down from Victorville and spend a day or two in L.A. County Jail just for the change of pace and scenery. It didn’t matter that there was no need for testimony from him in the La Cosse trial. He wanted me to manufacture an argument for his inclusion on the list and transfer down. If I succeeded, I could then always tell the judge I changed my mind and strategy and no longer needed him. He’d be sent back to Victorville after his little vacation.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re on the list. But it has not been accepted yet. It comes up first thing today, and it doesn’t help you waking me up like this. I need my sleep, Sly, so I can be sharp and win the argument.”

“Okay, I got it. You get your beauty sleep, Haller. I’ll wait to hear from you and you better not fuck me over on this. My son doesn’t know any better. He got a good lesson today. Me, I don’t need any lessons. You get me down there.”

“I’ll do my best. Good night.”

I disconnected before he could respond and went back into the bedroom. I was going to apologize to Kendall for the second intrusion but she had already fallen back asleep.

I wished I could so easily do the same. But the second call irreparably broke the sleep cycle and I moved restlessly in the bed for most of the remainder of the night, only nodding off an hour before I was supposed to awaken for the day.

That morning I called a taxi so Kendall could sleep in. Luckily, I had started leaving clothes at her house and I dressed in a suit that wasn’t that fresh but at least was different from the one I’d worn the day before. I then snuck out of the house without waking her. Lorna was already waiting for me in the Lexus when the taxi pulled up to my house shortly after eight. Moya’s men were there, too, in their car, waiting to escort us downtown. I took two minutes to go up to the house to get my briefcase and then came back down and jumped into the car.

“Let’s go.”

Lorna abruptly pulled away from the curb. I could tell she had not yet given up her anger with me.

“Hey, I’m not the one who showed up ten minutes late,” she said. “I was the one who was on time and had to sit and wait — not to mention waiting with the two cartel goons that give everybody the creeps.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s just drop it, all right? I had a rough night.”

“Aren’t you lucky.”

“I don’t mean it that way. I had Cisco waking me up and then Sly Sr. called to chew me out and I ended up with, like, three hours total. Did Cisco put the video on your iPad for me to look at?”

“Yes, it’s in the bag in the back.”

I reached between the seats to the backseat, where her purse was on the floor. It was the size of a grocery bag and it weighed a ton.

“What the hell do you have in this thing?”

“Everything.”

I didn’t ask for further explanation. I managed to pull the bag up to the front seat, open it, and find her iPad. I put the bag on the floor between my feet, lest I pull a muscle leveraging it into the back again.

“It should be right on the screen and ready to go,” Lorna said. “Just hit the play button.”

I opened her iPad case, lit the screen, and saw the frozen image of the front door of a house I knew to be the home of Stratton Sterghos. The camera angle was from below and the quality was not great, as the only illumination came from a porch light next to the door. I assumed Cisco’s people had used a pinhole camera hidden in a potted plant or some other porch ornament. The view was from a side angle so that if anyone approached and knocked on the door the camera would capture their profile.

I hit the play button and watched for a few seconds as nothing moved or happened on the screen. Then a man stepped onto the porch, hesitated, and glanced behind him. It was Lankford. He then turned back and knocked on the door. He waited for the door to be answered. I waited, too.

Nothing happened. I knew no one would answer the door but it was a tense moment just the same.

“Which way do you want me to go today?” Lorna asked.

“Just hold on a minute,” I said. “Let me watch.”

The video was without sound. Lankford knocked again with more force. He then looked back off camera and shook his head. Seemingly at the direction of someone offscreen, he turned and knocked again, even harder.

No one answered. A second man stepped up on the porch and moved to Lankford’s right side so he could look in through the window next to the door. He cupped his eyes as he leaned against the glass. His face was hidden until he leaned back, turned to Lankford, and said something. It was James Marco.

I froze the screen so I could just look at them. It was an image I knew would cause a sea change in the case. It was perfectly reasonable and acceptable that Lankford would show up at the front door of a man listed as a defense witness on a case he was assigned to for the District Attorney’s Office. But the confluence of Lankford and DEA agent James Marco on that front porch changed things exponentially. I was looking at digital evidence that tied Marco to Lankford and the events surrounding the murder of Gloria Dayton. At minimum, I felt I was looking at reasonable doubt.

I spoke to Lorna without taking my eyes off the screen.

“Where’s Cisco now?”

“He came home, gave me that, and went to sleep. He said he’d be in court by ten.”

I nodded. He deserved the the chance to sleep late.

“Well, he did good.”

“Did you watch the whole thing? He said watch it to the end.”

I pushed the play button. Lankford and Marco grew tired of waiting for the door to be answered and walked off the porch. I waited. Nothing happened. No action on the porch.

“What am I looking—”

Then I saw it. It was barely a shadow on the other side of the porch, but I saw it. One or both of the men walked down the side of the house.

The video then jumped to another view — this one from a camera in the backyard pointed toward the rear of the house. I noticed that the time count jumped backwards ten seconds. I watched and waited and then I saw two figures emerge from both side yards of the house and meet at the rear door. Under the light over the door I could make out their faces. Again it was Lankford and Marco. Lankford knocked on the door but Marco didn’t wait for an answer. He squatted down and went to work on the doorknob, obviously attempting to pick the lock.

“This is amazing,” I said. “I can’t believe we got it.”

“What exactly is it?” Lorna asked. “Cisco wouldn’t tell me. He said it was top secret but a game changer.”

“It is — a game changer, I mean. I’ll tell you in a minute. It’s not top secret.”

I silently watched the rest of the video. Marco got the door open and looked back at Lankford and nodded. He then disappeared inside while Lankford waited outside, his back to the door, and kept watch.

The video jumped inside the house to an overhead camera in the kitchen. It was a fish-eye lens, most likely housed in a smoke detector. Marco walked beneath the camera from the back door to a hallway but then turned around and came back to the kitchen. He crossed the floor and went to the refrigerator, opened the freezer, and reached in. He started checking through the various frozen food containers until he selected a package that contained two pieces of French bread pizza. Living alone, I knew the brand and the pizza well. Marco carefully opened the box without tearing the flap. He then took out one of the plastic-wrapped pizzas and secured it under his arm while he reached into the pocket of his black-leather bomber jacket and removed something. His hand moved too fast for me to identify what he held, but whatever it was, he shoved it into the pizza box and then put the pizza back in on top of it. He returned the box to the freezer under several other packages and turned to the back door.

The video jumped outside again and I saw Marco step out of the house, lock the door, and close it. He had been inside under a minute. He nodded to Lankford and they separated, each walking down the side of the house they had come from. The video ended there.

I looked up to see where we were. Lorna was about to turn onto the 101 from Sunset. I could see down the ramp that the freeway was the usual morning parking lot. I felt the first slight tightening in my chest that always came with thoughts of being late for court.

“Why’d you go this way?”

“Because I asked you and you told me to be quiet. You try so many different ways every day, I didn’t know what you wanted.”

“Earl always took pride in beating the traffic. He always tried different ways.”

“Well, Earl isn’t here.”

“I know.”

I put it aside and tried to think about what I had just seen on the video. I wasn’t sure yet how I would use it, but I knew without a doubt it was courtroom gold. We had captured on film a rogue drug agent and his accomplice planting drugs in Stratton Sterghos’s house as some sort of scheme to eliminate or control him as a witness. This took things far beyond anything I was expecting.

I whistled low as I closed the iPad and then started putting it back into Lorna’s bag.

“Okay, now can you tell me what that is and what you’re so excited about that it has you whistling?”

I nodded.

“Okay, you saw that we amended our witness list yesterday, right?”

“Yes, and the judge wants to talk about it today.”

“Right. Well, that was part of a play.”

“You mean like one of Legal Siegel’s moves?”

“Yeah, but it’s my move. We’re calling it ‘Marco Polo.’ The amended list had lots of new names on it. You heard Forsythe complain about them.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, one of the names on the list was Stratton Sterghos. The list was designed to make it look like we were cloaking him, sort of hoping to slip him through with all the others. He was listed right in the middle of all the names of the tenants from Gloria’s building. But the play is that we wanted the prosecution team to think that we were up to something and to look for the name that we were hiding in plain sight.”

“Stratton Sterghos.”

“Right.”

“So who is Stratton Sterghos?”

“It’s not really who he is. It’s where he lives. This video is from his house in Glendale. It is directly across the street from a house where ten years ago two drug dealers were murdered.”

“And what’s that have to do with Gloria Dayton?”

“Nothing directly. But we’ve been trying to make the connection between Lankford, the DA investigator who was following Gloria before her murder, and Agent Marco with the DEA, who she snitched for. For our defense theory to work, those two have to be connected somewhere down the line. That’s what Cisco has been working on and we thought we found it in that unsolved double-murder case. The lead investigator on it was then — Glendale police detective Lee Lankford. And the two victims were connected to the Sinaloa Cartel — the same group Hector Moya is connected to. We know Marco had a hard-on for Moya back then, so it stands to reason he and his unit — the Interagency Cartel Enforcement team, ICE-T for short — were aware of and maybe even working on the two guys that got whacked in that house.”

“Okay…”

That was her way of saying she still didn’t get it.

“We thought that the double murder was the connection, but Cisco got copies of Lankford’s old investigative files on the case and nowhere in any report is Marco or ICE-T even mentioned. So we set up a play with the witness list that we thought would draw them out if there was a connection.”

I pointed down to her bag where the iPad was stashed.

“The video proves it. Lankford and Marco are connected, and I’m going to turn this trial upside down with it. It’s a game changer. I just have to decide when to change the game.”

“But what was the play? How is Sterghos connected?”

“He isn’t connected. He just lives across the street from the house where those dealers were killed. We knew we could use him to smoke out Lankford and Marco.”

“I’m sorry. Don’t get angry but I still don’t understand.”

“I’m not angry. Look, Lankford now works for the DA. He got himself assigned to the La Cosse case so he could watch over it because, remember, he was following Gloria the night she was killed. So it’s his job now to work with Forsythe and help prepare for whatever moves the defense makes. As soon as court was over yesterday, you better believe he and Forsythe sat down with that new witness list and tried to figure out what I was up to. Like, who was important and who I was really going to call.”

“And they see the name Stratton Sterghos.”

“Exactly. They see that name, and it means absolutely nothing to them. So Lankford goes to work. He’s an investigator. He has a computer and a whole array of law enforcement access and data at his fingertips. He finds out pretty quickly that Stratton Sterghos lives on Salem Street in Glendale, and that would have rung a pretty big bell for him because he worked that two-bagger on Salem ten years ago.”

“The double murder he never cleared.”

“Right. So either on his own or at Forsythe’s request, he needs to check out Mr. Sterghos and see what his connection is to the Dayton case. This is what Cisco and I thought would happen. We also thought — or more like hoped — that if that double murder was the point of connection between him and Marco, Lankford might call up his buddy the DEA agent and say, ‘I gotta check this guy out. You want to back me up in case we are going to have a problem?’”

“So you set up the cameras. I get it now. But what happened to Sterghos?”

“A week ago we knocked on his door and said we wanted to rent his house for two weeks for a film production.”

“You mean like location scouts or something?”

“Exactly.”

I smiled because the ruse we had used wasn’t actually a ruse. We had indeed produced a film. Only this film’s premiere wasn’t going to be a red-carpet affair on Hollywood Boulevard. It was going to premiere in Department 120 of the Criminal Courts Building on Temple Street downtown.

“So Sterghos took our money and then took his wife on a little vay-cay to see their daughter in Florida. We set up cameras around his house and put the name Stratton Sterghos on the witness list as a depth charge. Now we have this.”

I pointed to her bag on the floor between my feet.

“You can tell from the video that Marco was hanging back,” I continued. “Lankford went to the door by himself. If Sterghos had been home and answered, he would have started with the legit interview. You know, ‘I work for the DA, your name is on the witness list, what do you know about this,’ and so on. Marco would stay back but be ready if Lankford determined that they had a problem with Sterghos.”

“Be ready to do what?” Lorna asked.

“Whatever was necessary. Look at Gloria. Look at Earl. This guy doesn’t have boundaries. Look what we have on video. Sterghos wasn’t there, so Marco breaks in and plants drugs in the freezer. That was so they could come back and pop Sterghos if they needed to. It would keep him from testifying or ruin his credibility if he did.”

“The whole thing is incredible.”

“And it’s going to be pure gold in court. We just need to figure out when to spring it.”

I could barely contain myself while thinking about the possibilities for use of the video.

“You don’t have to turn it in to the police?” Lorna asked.

“Nope. It’s our video. I’m thinking we use it to play them off against each other, see if we can get one of them to turn against the other. The weaker one. Nothing works better with a jury than an insider spilling his guts. It’s better than video. It’s better than fucking DNA.”

“What about Sterghos? What are you going to do to protect him? You pulled him into this and he doesn’t—”

“Don’t worry about him. First of all, I’m sure Cisco took care of the drugs Marco planted. Second, we have the video. Nobody’s going to lay anything on Stratton Sterghos. He’s lying on a beach somewhere in Florida and four grand happier.”

“Four grand! Where did that come from?”

“I used my own money.”

“Mickey, you better not be tapping Hayley’s college fund. That would be all you need to have go wrong with her.”

“I’m telling you, I didn’t.”

She didn’t respond and she didn’t seem mollified, probably because she could tell I was lying. But I had more than a year before I needed that money to pay for college.

I checked my watch and then looked at the slowly moving river of steel in front of me.

“See if you can get over and get off at Alvarado,” I instructed. “We’re never going to get there at this pace.”

“Whatever.”

It was her annoyed tone again. She was still fuming about my being ten minutes late for pickup. Or maybe about where I had been that made me ten minutes late. Or maybe it was a holdover from our angry words the day before. Whichever didn’t matter. I missed Earl. He never added any tone to his commentary. He never got lost and he knew better than to sit in the middle of an unmoving freeway when I was due in court.

“What if Marco Polo hadn’t worked?” Lorna asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What if they hadn’t zeroed in on Stratton Sterghos? What would have happened then?”

I thought for a moment.

“We had other strategies,” I finally said. “And I’m not doing too bad as it is in trial. Only one day of defense and I was chipping away at the DA’s case. We’re in pretty good shape without this.”

I nudged her bag again with my foot.

“But now… everything changes.”

“Let’s hope.”

34

Somehow, I made it into Department 120 at one minute before nine. Forsythe was already at his table, with Lankford sitting dutifully behind him in his seat against the rail. At the defense table Jennifer Aronson sat alone. There had been no need for the deputies to bring La Cosse out from lockup, because the jury wasn’t coming out until after the hearing on the amended witness list.

I traded looks with Lankford before pulling out my chair and sitting down.

“I thought you weren’t going to make it,” Jennifer whispered to me in a panicked tone.

“You would have done fine. But listen, things have changed since last night. I need to handle this. I’m sorry, but there isn’t enough time to explain the change in strategy. Things have happened.”

“What things?”

Before I could answer, the court clerk noticed that all attorneys were present and told us the judge wanted to discuss the new witness list in chambers. We got up and the clerk opened the half door to her corral, which gave us access to the hallway behind the courtroom.

Judge Leggoe had been expecting two lawyers. She saw Jennifer and told me to pull a chair over from a conference table to the arrangement in front of her desk. We sat down in front of her, Jennifer between Forsythe and me. I had smoothly grabbed the chair on the right so the judge would be looking at me on her left.

“I thought it better to hold this hearing in chambers so maybe we can speak a little more freely,” Leggoe said. “Rosa, we can go on record now.”

She was talking to the court reporter who sat off the rear left corner of the judge’s desk with her steno machine in front of her. I noticed that the judge didn’t go on the record until after making her comment on her desire to keep the media away from the court business at hand.

I could have objected to the in-camera hearing but I didn’t think it would get me anything and it certainly would not score me any points with the judge. So I went along to get along, even though I felt Jennifer staring at me and waiting for me to object. As a general rule, it is better for the defendant to hold hearings in open court. It guards against public suspicions that backroom deals are being made and information is being hidden.

The judge named all those present for the record and proceeded.

“Mr. Forsythe, I assume you’ve had time to study the defense’s amended list of witnesses. Why don’t we start with your response?”

“Thank you, Judge. My investigator and I have had barely enough time to review the list of names. And, Your Honor, calling it an amended list is a misnomer. Adding thirty-three names is not amending. It is reinventing and it is unreasonable. The state can’t be expected to—”

“Your Honor,” I said. “I need to interrupt Mr. Forsythe here because I think the defense can offer a compromise that will cut through a lot of this and might even make him happy.”

From my inside coat pocket I withdrew a copy of the list I had worked on in the car that morning after Lorna had exited onto Alvarado and started making good progress toward the courthouse. We had stopped talking about the previous night’s activities in Glendale and I had gone to work on the list and what I planned to present to the judge.

“Go ahead, Mr. Haller,” the judge said. “What is your proposal?”

“I have a copy of the amended list here, and I have struck all the names I think we can compromise on.”

I handed the page to her. I did not have a duplicate to share with Forsythe. It only took the judge five seconds of study for her eyebrows to shoot up in surprise.

“Mr. Haller, you’ve scratched off all but one, two… four of the names. How could twenty-nine names that were so important to you yesterday be so easily and expeditiously dismissed?”

I nodded like I agreed with the absurdity of my actions.

“All I can say, Judge, is that in the past twenty-four hours the defense has experienced a sea change in its thinking about how best to present the defense of Mr. La Cosse.”

I looked at Jennifer. She knew about the Marco Polo play but had no idea what had happened the night before in Glendale. Still, she recognized her cue and nodded in full agreement with me.

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said. “We think that we can proceed with just the four remaining names added to our original witness list.”

The judge squinted her eyes suspiciously and handed the document across the desk to Forsythe. He scanned it quickly, obviously zeroing in on the names I wanted to keep rather than those I was willing to jettison. Soon enough he frowned and shook his head. I hadn’t expected him to just give in.

“Judge, if counsel had made this offer yesterday, I could have saved my investigator a night’s work and the taxpayers of this county the overtime cost associated with his efforts. That aside, the people appreciate that counsel is willing to cut down the number of additional witnesses. However, the people still have issue with the names that remain on the list and so I must object to the outstanding amendments.”

The judge frowned and looked at her watch. She had probably thought the issue would be settled quickly and she could get the jury back into the box before nine thirty. No such luck.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go through the names. Quickly — we’ve got a jury waiting. State your objections.”

Forsythe checked the list and chose his first battle, ticking the paper with a finger.

“Counsel has put my own investigator on his list, and the people plainly object. This is simply a ploy to get my investigator on the stand and attempt to learn the prosecution’s strategies.”

I faked a laugh and shook my head.

“Your Honor, defense stipulates that no question will be asked of Investigator Lankford that involves Mr. Forsythe’s so-called strategies. I also want to note that we have entered the defense phase of the trial and the prosecution phase has ended. Any strategy employed by the state is clearly already on record or at the very least is obvious. But I also must add that Mr. Lankford is one of the main investigators on this case and the defense is allowed to vigorously question how the state gathers and analyzes evidence and the statements of witnesses. Lankford is an important witness and there is no precedent that would preclude him from being called by the defense.”

The judge looked from me back to Forsythe.

“What’s your next objection, Mr. Forsythe?”

By not making a ruling on a witness-by-witness basis, the judge was revealing that she likely would make a ruling that took all four names into account and would have something in it for both the prosecution and defense. She would attempt to split the baby in a Solomonic approach. I had anticipated this when I had scratched names off the list earlier. Lankford was the one witness I wanted. Stratton Sterghos’s name was simply a plant on the list designed to get a reaction — which I had gotten in spades on the video. I never intended to actually call him and therefore could lose him now. The other two names were a neighbor in the building where Gloria Dayton had lived and Sly Fulgoni Sr. I could lose them all as well, though Sly Sr. would be quite upset about his vacation being cancelled.

“Thank you, Judge,” Forsythe responded. “Next the people object to the inclusion of Stratton Sterghos. Our efforts last night have turned up not a single connection between him and this case. He lives in Glendale, far from the events that comprise this case. I am told he is a retired obstetrician who appears to be on vacation at the moment and out of contact. We could not talk to him and therefore we are hampered in our understanding of what Mr. Haller is hoping to achieve by calling him as a witness.”

I jumped in before the judge even had time to turn to me and ask for a response.

“As Your Honor knows, the defense is presenting an alternate theory in the motivation behind Gloria Dayton’s murder. This has already been argued at length in regard to our inclusion of Agent James Marco, Trina Rafferty, and Hector Moya on our original witness list. Same thing here, Judge. We believe Stratton Sterghos may be able to provide testimony that links the Dayton murder to a double homicide that occurred across the street from his home ten years ago.”

“What?” Forsythe cried. “You have got to be kidding me. Your Honor, you cannot allow this wild fishing expedition to infect this trial. For lack of a legal term, this is nuts. A double murder ten years ago is somehow connected to this murder of a prostitute? Come on, Judge, let’s not turn your courtroom into a circus, and that is exactly what the court will be doing if it—”

“Your position is clear, Mr. Forsythe,” the judge said, cutting in. “Any other objections to names on the list?”

“Yes, Your Honor, I object to bringing Sylvester Fulgoni Sr. down from FCI Victorville. Anything he could contribute would surely be hearsay.”

“I have to say I agree,” Leggoe said. “Anything further, Mr. Haller?”

“I would like to turn our last response over to my colleague, Ms. Aronson.”

I nodded to her and could tell my offer had taken her by surprise. Still, I knew she could respond.

“Judge Leggoe, with all due respect to the court as well as to Mr. Forsythe, appellate courts from across this land have repeatedly held that efforts to thwart the defense from exploring all angles and footholds of alternate theories are perilous and subject to reversal. The defense in the instant case is presenting just such an alternate defense and it would be in error if the court hampered it in doing so. Submitted, Your Honor.”

Jennifer had skillfully gotten the words reversal and error into her final argument. Two words that made a judge think twice. Leggoe nodded her thanks to all three of us, then folded her hands together on the desk. If she took even a minute to consider her decisions, then it was a quick minute.

“I am going to overrule the objection to the calling of Investigator Lankford. He will testify. In regard to Stratton Sterghos, at the moment I agree with Mr. Forsythe. So he is struck. I am, however, willing to take this up again if and when the defense has built a credible path to him. The remaining two names are struck as well until such time that Mr. Haller can make a renewed argument for their inclusion.”

Outwardly, I frowned. But the ruling was perfect. Sly Fulgoni Sr. wasn’t going to get his vacation, but I got exactly what I wanted — Lankford. The fact that the judge left the door open a crack on Sterghos was a bonus. Now Forsythe and, by extension, Lankford and Marco, had to keep in mind that he was out there, waiting to possibly come into the trial and turn things upside down. If nothing else, it might serve to distract them while I worked other angles that were real and more damaging to the prosecution’s case.

“Anything else?” the Judge asked. “We have a trial to get started.”

There was nothing else. We were excused and headed back to the courtroom. On the way, Forsythe sidled up to me as I expected he would.

“I don’t know where you’re going with this, Haller, but you should know that if you drag the reputations of good people through the mud, there are going to be consequences.”

I guessed that the gloves were now off between Forsythe and me. He was no longer acting as though he was above the fray. He was down in it. It was the first time I could remember him addressing me by my last name only, a sign that we were no longer going to be collegial about things.

That was okay with me. I was used to it.

“Is that a threat?” I asked.

“No, that’s the reality of where we’re at,” he said.

“You can tell Lankford that I don’t react to threats well. He should know that from the last time we crossed paths on a case.”

“This isn’t coming from Lankford. This is coming from me.”

I glanced at him.

“Oh, then I guess I should just shut everything down, have my client plead open to the charges, and beg the court for mercy. Is that what you think? Because that’s not going to happen, Forsythe, and if you think you can scare me off, then you didn’t ask enough of your colleagues about me before we started down this path.”

Forsythe picked up speed and left me behind as we pushed through the door into the courtroom. There was nothing else to say.

I scanned the courtroom and saw Lorna sitting alone in the front row. I knew that Kendall would not be in court because of at least one of the witnesses I planned to call. It was five minutes before ten, according to the clock on the rear wall of the courtroom. I walked up to the rail to talk to Lorna.

“Have you seen Cisco yet?”

“Yes, he’s out in the hallway with the witness.”

I looked back at the judge’s bench. It was still empty and they hadn’t brought La Cosse in from the lockup. I knew that with Jennifer at the defense table, things could start without me. I looked back at Lorna.

“Will you come get me in the hall when the judge comes out?”

“Sure.”

I went through the gate and walked quickly out to the hallway. Cisco was there, sitting next to Trina Rafferty. She was dressed much more conservatively than the last time I had seen her. The hem of her dress even came down over her knees and she had taken my advice to wear a sweater to keep her warm in the courtroom because Judge Leggoe had a habit of keeping the temperature down so jurors would stay awake and alert.

Costume-wise Trina Trixxx would be no problem. But I picked up the first inkling of an issue when she pointedly didn’t look at me when I approached and spoke to her.

“Trina, thank you for being here today.”

“I said I would. I’m here.”

“Well, I am going to try to make this as easy as possible for you. I don’t know how much the prosecution will have for you, but I won’t take long myself.”

She didn’t respond or look at me. I looked at Cisco and raised my eyebrows. Problem? He shrugged like he didn’t know.

“Trina,” I said, “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to take Cisco down the hall a bit so we can talk about private matters. We won’t be long.”

Cisco walked with me over to the elevator alcove. From there we could keep Trina in sight while we talked.

“So what’s going on with her?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She seems spooked about something but she isn’t saying. I asked.”

“Great, that’s all I need. Do you know if she talked to anybody last night? Somebody from the other side?”

“If she did, she isn’t saying. She might just be nervous about coming to court.”

Over his shoulder I saw Lorna waving to me from the courtroom door. The judge was on the bench.

“Well, whatever it is, she’d better get over it quick. She’ll be on in five minutes. I gotta go.”

I started to make a move to go around him, then remembered something and stepped back.

“Great work last night.”

“Thanks. You looked at the tape, right?”

“Yeah, on the way in. How much did they plant in the pizza box?”

“About three ounces of black-tar heroin.”

I whistled the way Cisco usually whistled.

“You took it out of there, right?”

“Yep. But what do I do with it? If I give it to the Indians, they’ll sell it or use it themselves.”

“Then don’t give it to them.”

“But I don’t like having it in my possession.”

It was a dilemma but the one thing I knew for sure was that we couldn’t get rid of it. I might need it as part of my presentation of the video that went with it.

“Okay, then I’ll take it. Bring it by the house tonight and I’ll put it in the safe.”

“You sure you want that kind of risk?”

“This will all be over in a few days. I’ll risk it.”

I clapped him on the shoulder and moved off toward the courtroom door.

“Hey,” he called after me.

I turned and walked back to him.

“Did you pick up on how Lankford was acting in the video?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, like he was taking orders from Marco.”

“Exactly. Marco is the alpha.”

“Right.”

35

The defense strategy was simple: Blaze a path that would lead the jury to James Marco and the unalterable conclusion that he was a rogue drug agent who was entirely corrupt and willing to kill to avoid exposure. Trina Rafferty was one of the steps on that pathway, and I called her as my first witness Tuesday. She had been associated with Gloria Dayton and both had come under Marco’s influence and control.

No matter how conservatively she had dressed, there was something about Trina that still displayed an undeniable tawdriness. The stringy blond hair and hollow eyes, the pierced nose and bracelets tattooed around her wrists. These were all features found in many respectable women, but the combination of these and her demeanor left no doubt about who she was when she made her way to the witness stand. As she stood to be sworn in, I remembered that there was a time when Kendall, Trina, and Gloria all covered for one another on jobs because they looked so similar. Not anymore. There wasn’t even a remote resemblance between Kendall and Trina. Looking at Trina, I knew I was looking at what could have been for Kendall.

After Trina was sworn in, I didn’t delay in confirming the obvious to the jurors.

“Trina, you also have a professional name, do you not?”

“Yes.”

“Can you share it with the jury?”

“Trina Trixxx, spelled with a triple x.”

She smiled coyly.

“And what is the profession you use that name for?”

“I’m an escort.”

“You mean you have sex with people for money, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“And how long has this been your profession?”

“Going on twelve years, on and off.”

“And did you know another escort named Gloria Dayton, who used names like Glory Days and Giselle Dallinger?”

“I knew Glory Days, yes.”

“When would that have been?”

“I probably met her ten years ago. We used the same answering service.”

“And did you also have some sort of work arrangement with her?”

“We covered for each other, if that’s what you mean. There were three girls and we covered for each other. If one was busy with a client or had a full schedule and a call came in for her, then one of the other two would take it. And sometimes if a customer wanted two girls or even three girls, then we would all work together.”

I nodded and paused for a moment. That last part had not come up previously and it was distracting to me, since the third girl who had not yet been named was Kendall Roberts.

“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted. “Can we get through this?”

“Yes, Your Honor. Uh, Ms. Rafferty, did you have contacts within the law enforcement community during these times?”

Trina acted puzzled by the question.

“Well, I got busted a couple times. Three times, actually.”

“Did you ever get busted by the DEA?”

She shook her head.

“No, just LAPD and the sheriff’s.”

“Were you ever detained then by the DEA, by an agent named James Marco?”

In my peripheral vision I saw Forsythe lean forward. He always did it before objecting. But for some reason he didn’t object. I turned to look at him, still expecting the objection, and saw that Lankford had reached forward from his seat at the railing and touched Forsythe’s back. I read it as Lankford, the investigator, telling Forsythe, the prosecutor, not to object.

“I don’t think so.”

I turned back to the witness, unsure about what I just heard.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you repeat that?”

“I said no,” Trina said.

“You’re saying you don’t know a DEA agent named James Marco?”

“That’s correct. I don’t know him.”

“You’ve never even met him?”

“Not as far as I know — unless he was undercover or something and using a different name.”

I turned and glanced back at Cisco in the first row. Obviously, Marco had somehow gotten to Trina Rafferty, and in that moment I wanted to know how. But what was more pressing than the explanation was what I was going to do right now. I could turn on my own witness, but the jury might not like that.

I decided that I didn’t have much of a choice.

“Trina,” I said, “didn’t you tell me previous to your testimony here today that you were a confidential informant who worked for Agent Marco and the DEA?”

“Well, I told you a lot of things because you were paying my rent. I told you whatever you wanted me to tell you.”

“No, that’s—”

I stopped myself and tried to remain composed. Not only had Marco and Lankford gotten to her, but they had turned her into a weapon of mass destruction. If I didn’t salvage this, she could blow up the entire defense.

“When was the last time you spoke with Agent Marco?”

“I don’t know him, so I didn’t speak to him.”

“You’re telling this jury that you have no idea who Agent James Marco is?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t. I needed a place to stay and some food. I might have told you things so you would give me things back.”

It had happened to me before, a witness shifting sides like this. But never so dramatically and with so much damage inflicted on my case. I glanced over at my client at the defense table. He looked bewildered. I looked past him at Jennifer and she had an expression of embarrassment on her face — embarrassment for me.

I turned and looked at the judge, who was equally perplexed. I did the only thing I could in the situation.

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

I slowly returned to the defense table, passing Forsythe on his way to the lectern to further the damage. As I moved through the narrow channel between the empty prosecution table and the chairs running along the railing I had to pass Lankford. I heard him make a low humming sound.

“Mmm mmm mmmmm.”

Only I would have heard it. I stopped, took a step back, and leaned down to him.

“What did you say?” I asked in a whisper.

“I said, keep going, Haller,” he whispered back.

Forsythe began his cross-examination by asking Trina Rafferty if the two of them had ever met. I moved to my seat and sat down. The one good thing about Forsythe jumping on his cross so fast was that it saved me for the moment from having to tell my client how badly things had just turned. The Rafferty fiasco was a one-two punch to the guts of our case. Already, without Forsythe piling on — which he was about to do — I had lost a key piece of testimony connecting Marco and Gloria Dayton. Adding insult to that injury, she was more than implying that I was suborning perjury — paying a witness with rent money to lie.

Forsythe seemed to think that by destroying me he was destroying the case. Almost all of his cross centered on Trina’s testimony that I fed her the lines she was supposed to speak in testimony in exchange for the apartment just a few blocks away behind the Police Administration Building. And in his zeal to take me down, I saw the way to possibly salvage things. If I could show her to have lied, I stood a good chance of undercutting — in the eyes of the jury, at least — the accusations she was making about me.

Forsythe finished after fifteen minutes, curtailing his cross when I started objecting to nearly every question on the basis that it had already been asked and answered. You can beat a dead horse only so many times. He finally gave up and sat down.

I slowly got up for redirect, walking to the lectern like a condemned man to the gallows.

“Ms. Rafferty, you gave the address of this apartment I am supposedly paying for. When did you move in there?”

“In December, right before Christmas.”

“And do you recall when you first met me?”

“It was after. I think March or April.”

“Then, how is it that you think I was paying for this apartment for you when I did not meet you until three to four months after you moved in?”

“Because you were meeting with the other lawyer, and he was the one who moved me in.”

“And which lawyer was that?”

“Sly. Mr. Fulgoni.”

“You mean Sylvester Fulgoni Jr.?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that Sylvester Fulgoni Jr. along with me is representing Mr. La Cosse?”

I pointed to my client as I spoke, and I asked the question with a reserved astonishment in my voice.

“Well, no,” she said.

“Then who was he representing when he supposedly moved you into this apartment?”

“Hector Moya.”

“Why did Mr. Fulgoni move you into an apartment?”

Forsythe objected, arguing that Fulgoni and the Moya case were not relevant. I, of course, took the opposite view of this in my response, citing once again the alternate defense theory I was presenting. The judge overruled and I asked the question again.

“Same thing,” Trina answered. “He wanted me to say Gloria Dayton told me that Agent Marco asked her to plant a gun in Hector’s hotel room.”

“And you’re saying that never happened, that Mr. Fulgoni made it up.”

“That’s correct.”

“Didn’t you testify a few minutes ago that you never heard of an Agent Marco, and now you say Mr. Fulgoni was feeding you testimony regarding him?”

“I didn’t say I never heard of him. I said I never met him and I never snitched for him. There’s a difference, you know.”

I nodded, properly chastised by the witness.

“Ms. Rafferty, have you received a phone call or a visit within the last twenty-four hours from a law enforcement officer?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Has anyone attempted to coerce you into testifying the way you have today?”

“No, I’m just telling the truth.”

I had gotten it out to the jury as best I could, even if it was in the form of denials. My hope was that they would instinctively know that Trina Rafferty was the liar, that she had been pressured by someone to lie. I decided it was too risky to continue and ended the questioning.

On my way back to my seat, I whispered to Lankford as I went by.

“Where’s your hat?”

I kept moving along the rail until I got to Cisco. I leaned over to whisper to him as well.

“Have you seen Whitten?”

He shook his head.

“Not yet. What do you want me to do with Trina?”

I glanced back at the front of the courtroom. Forsythe had no re-cross, so the judge was dismissing Rafferty from the witness stand. Cisco had picked her up that morning at her apartment building and taken her the three blocks to court.

“Take her back. See if she’ll say anything.”

“You want me to be nice?”

I hesitated but only for a moment. I understood the threat and pressure people like Marco and Lankford could bring to bear. If the jury picked up on that, then her flip on the stand might be more valuable than if she had testified truthfully.

“Yeah, be nice.”

Over Cisco’s shoulder I saw Detective Whitten enter the courtroom and take a seat in the back row. He was right on time.

36

As the lead investigator on the Gloria Dayton murder, Detective Mark Whitten had attended most of the trial, often sitting along the rail next to Lankford. However, I had not noticed during the course of the proceedings the two acting much like prosecution teammates. Whitten seemed to keep to himself, almost aloof when it came to Forsythe, Lankford, and everyone else associated with the trial. During trial breaks I had seen him walking by himself back to the PAB. Once I had even seen him in Pete’s eating lunch by himself.

I called Whitten as my next witness. He had already testified for a day and a half during the prosecution phase of the trial. He had primarily been used by Forsythe to introduce evidence such as the video of the La Cosse interview. In a way, he was the narrator of the prosecution’s story, and as such, his testimony had been the longest by far of any witness in the case.

At the time, I had limited my cross-examination to aspects of the video, repeating many of the questions I hit Whitten with during the unsuccessful motion-to-suppress hearing. I wanted the jury to hear him deny that La Cosse had been a suspect the moment Whitten and his partner knocked on Andre’s door. I knew no one would believe that and hoped it would plant a seed of mistrust in the official investigation that would blossom during the defense phase.

I had reserved the right to recall him as a witness, and now was that time. I didn’t need to get a lot from him, but what I was going for was vitally important. It would be the fulcrum on which the case would pivot to the defense’s side of the equation. Whitten, who was in his midforties with twenty years on the job, was an experienced witness. He had a calm demeanor and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. He was skilled at not revealing the hostility that almost all cops carry for the defense. That was reserved for times when the jury was not present.

After a few preliminary questions that would serve to remind the jury of his role in the case, I moved on to the areas I needed to explore. Defense work is about building foundations for the evidence and angles you want to introduce. That’s what I needed Whitten for now.

“Detective, when you testified last week, you spoke at length about the crime scene and what was found there, correct?”

“That’s right, I did.”

“And you had an inventory of that crime scene and what was found there, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And these were the victim’s belongings and property, right?”

“Yes.”

“Can you refer to that inventory list now?”

With the judge’s permission, Lankford brought the so-called murder book to Whitten. If he had been called by the prosecution, he would have normally taken the witness stand with the thick compendium of all investigative records tucked under his arm. Not bringing it with him to the stand when I called him was a little glimmer of that hostility he was so skilled at hiding.

Working off a copy of the list I had received in discovery, I continued.

“Okay, referring to the inventory list, I see no cell phone. Is that correct?”

“We did not recover a cell phone from the crime scene. That is correct.”

“Now, Mr. La Cosse explained to you, did he not, that he’d been on a call with the victim earlier that evening and that that conversation was the reason he went to her place in person?”

“Yes, that is what he told us.”

“But you found no phone in the apartment, right?”

“Right.”

“Did you or your partner try to find an explanation for this discrepancy?”

“We assumed that the killer took her phones as a means of hiding his trail.”

“You say ‘phones.’ There was more than one phone?”

“Yes, we determined that the victim and the defendant used a variety of throwaway phones to conduct their business. The victim also had a cell phone for private use.”

“Can you tell the jury what a throwaway phone is?”

“These are inexpensive phones that come with a limited number of minutes of call time. When you burn up the minutes, you throw the phone away or in some cases you can reload them with new minutes for a fee.”

“These were used because call records would be difficult to obtain by investigators if the phone was thrown away and you didn’t know where to start looking.”

“Exactly.”

“And this is how Mr. La Cosse and Ms. Dayton communicated in the course of their business, correct?”

“Yes.”

“But you found none of these phones in the apartment after the murder, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Now, you mentioned that the victim also had a cell phone for private use. What did you mean by that?”

“This was an iPhone that she owned and that she used for calls unrelated to her escort business.”

“And this iPhone was also missing after the murder?”

“Yes, we never found it.”

“And whoever killed her, you think he took it.”

“Yes.”

“What was the theory behind that?”

“We believed it was an indication that the killer knew her and that they might have communicated by cell phone or his name and number might be in a contact list on the phone. So the killer took all of the phones as a precaution against being tracked in that way.”

“And the phones have never been found?”

“They have not.”

“So, did this cause you to go to the phone company and order the call records from these phones?”

“We ordered records for the iPhone because we found some bills in the apartment and knew the number. As far as the throwaways went, there was no way to order records when we didn’t have the phones or the numbers. There was nowhere to start.”

I nodded like I was learning all of this for the first time and coming to a deeper understanding of the difficulties Whitten faced on the case.

“Okay, so going back to the iPhone. You ordered records and you had some records you’d found. You studied these records for clues, correct?”

“We did.”

“Did you find any calls to or from Mr. La Cosse on that iPhone?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Did you find any calls that were significant or of note in those records?”

“No, we didn’t.”

I paused there and made a face as I looked down at my notes. I wanted the jury to think I was troubled by the detective’s last answer.

“Now, these records that you ordered, they contained all incoming and outgoing calls on that phone, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Even local calls?”

“Yes, we were able to obtain local records.”

“And you studied these?”

“Yes.”

“And did you find any calls, either coming in or going out, that were significant to your investigation?”

Forsythe objected, saying I was repeating my questions. The judge told me to move along. I asked Whitten to find in the murder book the three-page printout of calls on Gloria’s iPhone.

“Are those your initials on the bottom right corner of this document’s front page?”

“Yes.”

“And you wrote the date of November twenty-sixth there, correct?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why is that?”

“That would be the date that I received the document from the phone company.”

“That would have been fourteen days after the murder. Why did it take so long?”

“I had to secure a search warrant for the records. That took some time and then it took the phone company some time to put it all together.”

“So by the time you got these records, Andre La Cosse had already been arrested and charged with the murder, correct?”

“That’s correct.”

“You believed that you had the killer in jail, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“So then, what good were these phone records?”

“The investigation always continues after an arrest. In this case, all leads were followed and we continued all valid avenues of investigation. The report on the phone records was one of them.”

“Well then, did you find any numbers on this list that were connected to Mr. La Cosse?”

“No.”

“None?”

“None.”

“Then did any of the numbers listed here — there must be about two hundred — have investigative value to you?”

“No, sir, they didn’t.”

“And, by the way, how are the numbers ordered here?”

“By frequency of calls. The numbers she called the most often are at the top and then they go down in descending frequency from there.”

I turned to the last page and told Whitten to do so as well.

“So on the last page here, these are numbers she called just once?”

“Correct.”

“For how long a period?”

“The search warrant asked for records going back six months.”

I nodded.

“Detective, let me draw your attention to the ninth number down on the third page. Can you read that out to the jury?”

I heard rustling as Forsythe decided I might be doing more than wasting the court’s time and turned the pages of his copy of the document.

“Area code two-one-three, six-two-one, sixty-seven hundred,” Whitten read.

“And when was that number dialed on Gloria Dayton’s iPhone?”

Whitten squinted as he read.

“At six forty-seven p.m. on November fifth.”

Forsythe now understood where I was going with this and stood up and objected.

“Relevancy, Your Honor,” he said with an urgent tone in his voice. “We’ve allowed defense counsel great latitude, but where does it end? He is going far off the reservation here, stringing out the details of one three-minute phone call. It has nothing to do with the case at hand or the charges against his client.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Your Honor, Mr. Forsythe knows exactly where this is headed, and he does not want the jury to go there because he knows the house of cards that is the prosecution’s case is in great peril.”

The judge made a motion with her hands, bringing her fingers together.

“Connect it, Mr. Haller. Soon.”

“Right away, Your Honor.”

I looked back at my notes, got my bearings again, and pressed on. Forsythe’s objection was nothing more than an attempt to break my rhythm. He knew it didn’t stand a chance on its merits.

“So Detective Whitten, this call went out at six forty-seven on the evening of November fifth, just seven days before Ms. Dayton’s murder, correct?”

“Yes.”

“How long did the call last?”

Whitten checked the document.

“It says two minutes, fifty-seven seconds.”

“Thank you. Did you check that number out when you got this list? Did you call it?”

“I don’t recall if I did or not.”

“Do you have a cell phone, Detective?”

“Yes, but I don’t have it on me.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled my own phone. I asked the judge to allow me to give it to Whitten.

Forsythe objected, calling what I was about to do a stunt and accusing me of grandstanding.

I argued that what Forsythe called a stunt was merely a demonstration, not unlike the demonstration a week earlier when he asked the deputy medical examiner to demonstrate on Lankford how the victim’s hyoid bone was crushed during her strangulation. I added that having the detective make the call to the number in question was the easiest and quickest way to ascertain who Gloria Dayton had called at 6:47 p.m. on November 5.

The judge allowed me to proceed. I walked up and handed my phone to Whitten after turning on its speaker. I asked him to call 213-621-6700. He did so and placed the phone down on the flat railing that ran in front of the witness stand.

The call was answered by a woman’s voice after one ring.

“DEA, Los Angeles Division, how can I help you?”

I nodded and stepped forward, picking up the phone.

“Sorry, wrong number,” I said before disconnecting.

I stepped back to the lectern, savoring the pure silence that had followed the voice of the woman who had said DEA. I stole a quick glance at Mallory Gladwell, my alpha juror, and saw an expression that soothed my soul. Her mouth was slightly opened in what I took to be an Oh My God moment.

I looked back at Whitten as I pulled a photograph I’d had ready from beneath my legal pad. I asked permission to approach the witness with the defense’s first exhibit.

The judge allowed it, and I gave Whitten the eight-by-ten shot that Fernando Valenzuela had taken of Gloria Dayton when he served her with the subpoena in the Moya case.

“Detective, you have in your hand a photo that has been marked as defense exhibit one. It is a photo of the victim in this case in the moment she was served with a subpoena in a civil matter styled as Moya versus Rollins. Can I draw your attention to the time and date stamp on the photograph, and will you read that out to the jury?”

“It says six oh-six p.m., November fifth, twenty twelve.”

“Thank you, Detective. And so, is it correct to conclude from that photo and the victim’s phone records that exactly forty-one minutes after Gloria Dayton was served with the subpoena in the Moya case, she called the DEA’s Los Angeles Division on her personal cell phone?”

Whitten hesitated as he looked for a way out of his predicament.

“It is impossible for me to know if she made the call,” he finally said. “She could have loaned her phone to someone else.”

I loved it when cops dissembled on the stand. When they tried not to give the obvious answer and made themselves look bad in the process.

“So then it would be your opinion that forty-one minutes after being served as a witness in a case involving an incarcerated drug dealer, someone other than Ms. Dayton used her phone to call the DEA?”

“No, I’m not saying that. I don’t have an opinion on it. I said that we don’t know who was in possession of her phone at that moment. Therefore, I can’t sit here and say with certainty that it was she who made the call.”

I shook my head in a feigned show of frustration. The truth was I was elated by Whitten’s response.

“Okay, Detective, then let’s move on. Did you ever investigate this call or Gloria Dayton’s connection to the DEA?”

“No, I did not.”

“Did you ever inquire as to whether she had been an informant for the DEA?”

“No, I did not.”

I could tell Whitten was about to blow his cool. He wasn’t getting any protection from Forsythe, who, without valid objection in hand, was hunkering down in his seat, waiting for the damage to end.

“Why not, Detective? Doesn’t this strike you as one of those ‘valid avenues of investigation’ you spoke of earlier?”

“First of all, I knew nothing about the subpoena at that time. And second, informants don’t call the main number of the DEA. That would be like walking through the front door with a sign on your back. I had no reason to be suspicious about one quick call to the DEA.”

“I’m confused now, Detective. So are you now saying you were aware of the call and just not suspicious of it? Or, as I think you just said a few minutes ago, you didn’t even recall checking out that number or the call. Which is it?”

“You’re twisting what I say around.”

“I don’t think so, but let me rephrase. Before testifying here today, did you or did you not know that a call from the victim’s personal cell phone had been placed to the DEA one week before her death? Yes or no, Detective?”

“No.”

“Okay. So then it is safe to say you missed it?”

“I wouldn’t say that. But you can say whatever you want.”

I turned and looked back at the clock. It was eleven forty-five. I wanted to take Whitten in another direction but I wanted to leave the jurors with Gloria’s phone call to mull over at lunch. I knew if I suggested to the judge that we take the lunch break now I would end up in lockup with my client for the next hour.

I turned back to Whitten, needing to string things out at least another fifteen minutes. I looked down at my notes.

“Mr. Haller,” the judge prompted. “Do you have any more questions for the witness?”

“Uh, yes, Your Honor. Quite a few, in fact.”

“Then I suggest you get on with them.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Uh, Detective Whitten, you just testified that you did not know that Gloria Dayton had been subpoenaed in a case involving Hector Moya. Do you recall when you found out?”

“It was earlier this year,” Whitten answered. “It came to light through the exchange of discovery materials.”

“So, in other words, you learned of the subpoena she received because the defense told you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do with the information once the defense furnished you with it?”

“I checked it out as I check out all leads that come in.”

“And what did you conclude after checking it out?”

“That it had no bearing on the case. It was coincidental.”

“Coincidental. Do you still feel that it was coincidental now that you know that Gloria Dayton’s personal cell phone was used to call the DEA in Los Angeles less than an hour after she was served with the subpoena in a case that accused her of planting a gun on a DEA target?”

Forsythe objected to the question on multiple grounds, and Leggoe had her pick. She sustained the objection and told me to rephrase the question if I wanted to get it in. I simplified and asked again.

“Detective, if you knew back then on the day of Gloria Dayton’s murder that a week earlier she had called the DEA, would you have been interested enough to find out why?”

Forsythe was on his feet again before I finished the question and jumped in right away with his objection.

“Calls for speculation,” he argued.

“Sustained,” Judge Leggoe said without giving me the opportunity to argue.

But that was okay. I no longer needed Whitten to answer. I liked how the question hung out there like a cloud over the jury box.

Sensing it was the right time to pause, the judge called for the lunch break.

I moved over to the defense table and stood next to my client as the jury filed out of the box. I felt as though I had recovered from the Trina Trixxx fiasco and was back on top. I glanced out to the gallery and saw only Moya’s men in the public seats. Cisco had apparently not come back from escorting Trina Rafferty home. And Lorna was nowhere to be seen.

No one had been watching. No one who mattered to me.

37

Jury trials always made me hungry. Something about the energy expended in constant wariness of the prosecution’s moves while worrying about my own moves steadily built a hunger in me that started soon after the judge took the bench and grew through the morning session. By the lunch break I usually wasn’t thinking about salad and soup. I usually craved a heavy meal that would carry me through the afternoon session.

I made calls, and Jennifer, Lorna, Cisco, and I agreed to meet at Traxx in Union Station so I could indulge my appetite. They made a great hamburger there. Cisco and I gorged on the basics — red meat, French fries, and ketchup — while the ladies fooled themselves into being satisfied with Niçoise salads and iced tea.

There wasn’t much talk. A little discussion about Trina Rafferty. Cisco reported only that something or someone had scared her shitless and she wasn’t talking, even off the record. But for the most part I stayed in my own world. Like a boxer in his corner between rounds, I wasn’t thinking about the earlier rounds and the punches missed. I was only thinking about answering the next bell and landing the knockout blow.

“Do they ever eat?” Jennifer said.

This question somehow bumped through my thoughts, and I looked across the table at her, wondering what I had missed and what she was talking about.

“Who?” I asked.

She nodded toward the great hall of the train station.

“Those guys.”

I turned and looked through the doorway of the restaurant and into the massive waiting area. Moya’s men were out there, sitting in the first row of stuffed-leather chairs.

“If they do, I’ve never seen it,” I said. “You want to send them a salad?”

“They don’t look like salad eaters,” Lorna said.

“Carnivores,” Cisco added.

I waved our waitress down.

“Mickey, don’t,” Jennifer said.

“Relax,” I said.

I told the waitress we were ready for the check. It was time to get back to court.

The afternoon session started on time at one o’clock. Whitten returned to the witness stand and looked a little less crisp than he had in the morning. It made me wonder if he’d braced himself for the afternoon with a martini or two for lunch. Maybe the whole aloof thing was actually about covering an alcohol habit.

The plan with Whitten now was to use him to set up my next witness. My case was a daisy chain of interlocking witnesses, where one was used to build the path to the next. It was Whitten’s turn now to pave the way for a man named Victor Hensley, who was a security supervisor at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

“Good afternoon, Detective Whitten,” I said cheerily, as if I was not the same attorney who had brutalized him in the morning’s session. “Let’s turn our attention here to the victim of this horrible crime, Gloria Dayton. Did you and your partner, as part of your investigation, trace her movements up until the time of the murder?”

Whitten made a show of adjusting the microphone to buy some time as he thought about how to answer. I was pleased to see this. It meant that he was on alert and looking for the trapdoor in the simplest of questions from me.

“Yes,” he finally said. “We composed a timeline for her. The closer it was to the time of the murder, the more details we were interested in.”

I nodded.

“Okay, so you checked out the last escort job she went out on that night?”

“Yes, we did.”

“You talked to the man who regularly drove her to her assignations, correct?”

“Yes, John Baldwin. We talked to him.”

“And her last job was at the Beverly Wilshire, correct?”

Forsythe stood up and objected, saying I was going over a timeline that had already been established by Whitten during his direct examination in the prosecution phase. The judge agreed and asked me to break new ground or to move on.

“Okay, Detective, as testified to earlier, there was a disagreement that night between the victim and the defendant, am I right?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“What would you call it, then?”

“You are talking about before he killed her?”

I looked at the judge and widened my hands in a feigned signal of astonishment.

“Your Honor…”

“Detective Whitten,” the judge said, “please curtail such prejudicial statements. It is the jury’s role to determine the guilt or innocence of the defendant.”

“I apologize, Your Honor,” Whitten said.

I asked the question again.

“Yes. They had a disagreement.”

“And this disagreement was over money, correct?”

“Yes, La Cosse wanted his share from a client and Gloria Dayton said there had been no client, that nobody was in the room he sent her to.”

I pointed at the ground as if pointing to the moment he just described.

“Did you and your partner investigate that disagreement to determine who was right and who was wrong?”

“If you mean, did we check out whether the victim was actually holding out on La Cosse, yes we looked into it. We determined that the room La Cosse sent her to was unoccupied and that the name La Cosse said he gave her belonged to the guest who was in that room previously but had already checked out. There was no one in that room when she went to the hotel. He killed her for holding out on money she didn’t have.”

I asked the judge to strike Whitten’s last sentence as unresponsive and prejudicial. She agreed and instructed the jury to disregard it, for whatever that was worth. I moved on, hitting Whitten with a new set of questions.

“Did you check to see if the Beverly Wilshire had surveillance cameras on site, Detective Whitten?”

“Yes, and they do.”

“Did you review any of video from the night in question?”

“We went to the security office at the hotel and reviewed their video feeds, yes.”

“And what did you glean from your review, Detective Whitten?”

“They don’t have video on the guest floors. But from what we did see of the lobby and elevators videos, we concluded that there was no one in the room she was sent to. She even checked at the front desk and they told her no. You can see it on the video.”

“Why didn’t the state present this video to the jury during the prosecution phase of this trial?”

Forsythe objected, saying the question was argumentative and irrelevant. Judge Leggoe agreed and sustained the objection, but again the question was more important than the answer. I wanted the jurors to wish they had seen the video, whether it was germane to the murder or not.

I moved on.

“Detective, how do you account for the discrepancy between Andre La Cosse setting up the date at the Beverly Wilshire and Gloria Dayton going there and finding the room unoccupied?”

“I don’t account for it.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Sure it bothers me but not every loose end gets tied up.”

“Well, tell us, what you think happened that could explain what seems to be some kind of mix-up on Andre La Cosse’s part?”

Forsythe objected, saying the answer called for speculation. This time the judge overruled, saying she wanted to hear the detective’s answer.

“I really don’t have an answer,” Whitten said.

I checked my notes to see if I had forgotten anything and then glanced at the defense table to see if Jennifer had any reminders. It looked like I was clear. I thanked the witness and told the judge I had no further questions.

Forsythe went to the lectern to see if he could bandage the wounds I had opened in the prosecution’s case during the morning session. He would have been better off passing, because it came off — at least to me — as though he was more worried about semantics than content. He brought out that Whitten had been an undercover narcotics officer in an earlier part of his career. As such he had several confidential sources that fed him tips. None of them, he testified, contacted him through the main number of the police station. That would have been highly unusual and dangerous. They all were given private numbers with which to make contact.

That was all well and good, but it did not speak to Gloria Dayton’s circumstances and gave me an easy setup when it was my turn for redirect. I didn’t even go to the lectern with my legal pad.

“Detective Whitten, how long ago did you work as an undercover narcotics officer?”

“I did it for two years — two thousand and two thousand and one.”

“Okay, and do you still have the same cell phone number from those days?”

“No, I’m in homicide now.”

“You have a new number.”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so what if one of your informants from two thousand and one wanted to call you today because they had information you needed to have?”

“Well, I would direct this person to current narcotics investigators.”

“You’re missing the point of the question. How would that old source of yours reach out to you, since the old established method of contact is no longer in existence?”

“There are a lot of different ways.”

“Like calling the main number of the police station and asking for you?”

“I don’t see an informant who wants to stay an informant doing that.”

Whitten understood what I wanted and obstinately didn’t want to give me the point. It didn’t matter, though. I was sure the jury understood. Gloria Dayton had no way after so many years to contact Agent Marco but to call the DEA’s main number.

I gave up and sat down. Whitten was dismissed and I called my next witness, Victor Hensley.

Hensley was a Trojan horse witness. His was the sixteenth name on the original witness list that the defense turned in before the start of trial. In keeping with court protocol, each name on the witness list was followed by a brief description of who the person was and what his or her expected testimony would be. This was to help the opposing side decide how much focus and time to apply to vetting and preparing for the witness’s testimony. However, in placing Hensley’s name on the list, I didn’t want the prosecution to know my true purpose — which was to use him to enter the Beverly Wilshire’s security videos as defense exhibits. So I listed Hensley’s occupation and simply described him as a corroborating witness. My hope was that Forsythe and his investigator Lankford would view Hensley as a witness who would confirm that no one had rented the room that Gloria Dayton had gone to on the night of her death.

As it turned out, Hensley reported to Cisco during a check-in phone call that during the run-up to the trial, he’d had only one brief visit at the hotel from Lankford and had never spoken to Forsythe at all. All of this boded well for me. I realized as Hensley took the stand, carrying with him a smart-looking leather folder with his notes inside, that I stood a good chance of not only maintaining the momentum begun that morning with Whitten but increasing it.

Hensley was in his late fifties and looked like a cop. After he was sworn in, I quickly ran down his pedigree as a former detective with the Beverly Hills Police Department who retired and took the job in security at the Beverly Wilshire. I then asked him if the hotel security staff had conducted its own investigation of the part the premises had played in the hours before Gloria Dayton’s murder.

“Yes, we did,” he answered. “Once we became aware that the hotel played a tangential part in the situation, we looked into it.”

“And did you take part in that investigation yourself?”

“Yes, I did. I was in charge of it.”

I then led Hensley through a series of questions and answers that outlined how he had worked with LAPD detectives and confirmed that Gloria Dayton had entered the hotel that evening and knocked on a guest-room door. He also confirmed that the room where she had knocked was empty and that no guest was staying in it.

My Trojan horse was now inside the gate and I got down to work.

“Now, from the very start, the defendant has claimed to police that a prospective client had called from the Beverly Wilshire and said that he was in that room. Is that possible?”

“No, it’s not possible that a guest was staying in that room.”

“But could someone have gotten in that room somehow and made the call?”

“Anything’s possible. It would have to be someone who had a key.”

“Is it an electronic key?”

“Yes.”

“Did you check to see if someone stayed in that room the night before?”

“Yes, we checked, and someone did stay in that room the night before. That would have been Saturday night. We’d had a wedding reception in the hotel, and the bride and groom stayed in that suite that night.”

“When is checkout time?”

“Noon. But they asked for late checkout because they had an evening flight to Hawaii. Since they were newlyweds, we gladly accommodated them. They left at four twenty-five that afternoon, according to our records, meaning they probably left the room at four fifteen or so. We covered this in our investigation.”

“So the room was occupied until four fifteen or so and then not rebooked for Sunday night.”

“That’s correct. Because of the late checkout, it was not put on the availability list because housekeeping wouldn’t have it ready until much later.”

“And if someone somehow got access to that room — got in somehow — then he would have been able to use the phone to call out, is that right?”

“That is correct.”

“Would a call from outside the hotel be put through to that room if the caller requested it?”

“The policy at our hotel is that no call is transferred to a room without the caller asking for the guest by name. You cannot just call up and ask for room twelve-ten, for example. You have to know the name, and it has to be a registered guest. So the answer is no. The call would not have been put through.”

I nodded thoughtfully before continuing.

“What were the names of the newlyweds who had the suite the night before?”

“Daniel and…”

He opened his yellow folder and checked his notes from the investigation.

“… Laura Price. But they were checked out and on their way to Hawaii when all of these events were supposedly happening.”

“Earlier in this trial, the prosecution introduced a video of the police interrogation of the defendant, Andre La Cosse. Are you familiar with it?”

“No, I have not seen it.”

I got permission from the judge to reshow a portion of the interrogation on the overhead screen. In the segment, Andre La Cosse told Detective Whitten that he received a blocked call from someone named Daniel Price at about four-thirty the afternoon before the murder. As a security measure, he then asked for a callback number and the caller provided the phone number and a room number at the Beverly Wilshire. La Cosse said he called the hotel back, asked for Daniel Price’s room, and was put through. They made arrangements for escort service at eight p.m., with Giselle Dallinger being the provider.

I turned the video off and looked at Hensley.

“Mr. Hensley, does your hotel keep records of incoming calls to guest rooms?”

“No, only outgoing calls, because those are charged to the guest account.”

I nodded.

“How would you explain that Mr. La Cosse had the right name and room number when he called the hotel?”

Hensley shook his head.

“I can’t explain it.”

“Is it possible that because of the late checkout given the newlyweds, the name Daniel Price was still on the guest list that the hotel operator uses?”

“It’s possible. But once they checked out, the name would have been removed from the current guest list.”

“Is that a human process or a computerized process?”

“Human. The name is deleted from the current guest list at the front desk when someone checks out.”

“So if the person handling the assignment at the front desk got busy with other work or other guests, that process might have been delayed, correct?”

“It could have happened.”

“It could have happened,” I repeated. “Isn’t three o’clock check-in time at the hotel?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Is the front desk generally busy at that time?”

“It all depends on the day of the week, and Sunday check-ins are usually slow. But you’re right, it could have been busy at the desk.”

I didn’t know what any of this got me, but I felt that the jury might be getting bored. It was time to open the trapdoor in the Trojan horse’s belly. Time to come out of hiding and attack.

“Mr. Hensley, let’s move on a bit. You said in your earlier testimony that the hotel’s own investigation confirmed that the victim, Gloria Dayton, had entered the hotel on the evening of last November eleventh. How did you confirm that?”

“We looked at video from the cameras and pretty soon we found her.”

“And you were able to track her by different cameras and video as she moved through the hotel, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you bring a copy of the video from the cameras with you to court today?”

“Yes, I did.”

He pulled a disc out of one of the pockets of his leather folder and held it up for a moment.

“Did you ever give a copy of that video record to the LAPD investigators who were working on the case?”

“The detectives came by early in the investigation and reviewed our raw feeds — this was before we put together a single video that tracked the woman they were interested in through the hotel. We later put that together and made all the material available, but nobody came to pick it up until a couple months ago.”

“Was that Detective Whitten or his partner?”

“No, it was Mr. Lankford from the DA’s Office. They were prepping for the trial and he came around to collect what we had.”

I wanted to turn and look at Forsythe, to try to get a read on whether he ever saw the video — because it sure never showed up on any discovery list I had seen.

But I didn’t look at the prosecutor, because I didn’t want to give anything away. Not yet, at least.

“Do you see Mr. Lankford here in court today?” I asked Hensley.

“Yes, I do.”

I then asked the judge to tell Lankford to stand, and Hensley identified him. Lankford looked at me with eyes that were as cold and gray as a January dawn. After he was reseated, I turned to the judge and asked if the attorneys could approach. The judge waved us up and she knew exactly what I wanted to talk about.

“Don’t tell me, Mr. Haller. You didn’t get copied on the videos.”

“That’s right, Judge. The witness says the prosecution has had this material for two months and not a single frame of video was turned over in discovery to the defense. That’s a direct violation of—”

“Your Honor,” Forsythe broke in. “I have not even seen these videos myself so—”

“But your investigator took delivery of them,” the judge said in a tone of incredulity that told me she was going to come down on my side on this.

“Your Honor,” Forsythe sputtered, “I can’t explain this. If you wish to question my investigator in camera, I am sure there is an explanation. The bottom line is all parties are in agreement that the victim visited that hotel in the hours before her death. It’s not in dispute, so the trespass here is minimal. No harm, no foul, Judge. I make a motion we press on with the case.”

I shook my head wearily.

“Judge, there is no way of knowing whether there is no harm and no foul without looking at the videos.”

The judge nodded in agreement.

“How much time do you need, Mr. Haller?”

“I don’t know. There can’t be a lot of material. An hour?”

“Very well. One hour. You can use the conference room down the hall. My clerk has the key. Step back, gentlemen.”

As I walked back to the defense table, I raised my eyes to the railing and found Lankford staring back at me.

38

I borrowed Lorna’s iPad back from her after the judge broke for the hour. Since I had already studied the Beverly Wilshire videos at length, my purpose in complaining about the prosecution’s discovery violation was actually an effort to conceal my own violation in not providing the same videos to Forsythe. Either way, I didn’t need an hour to study them again. Instead, I used the time to watch the surveillance video from the Stratton Sterghos house once more and to strategize its best use in bringing down Marco and Lankford on the way to a not-guilty verdict for Andre La Cosse. The video was indeed the depth charge I had hoped for. It was waiting below the surface for the prosecution to sail over. When I detonated the charge, Forsythe’s ship would sink.

My case plan was to take things right up to the bell on Friday and rest my case just before the jury was discharged for the weekend. That would give them two full days to consider things before we moved to closing arguments. This meant I was most likely looking at Friday morning as the introduction point of the Sterghos video. I had plenty of witnesses to present between now and then.

At three twenty-five, there was a single knock on the door and Leggoe’s courtroom deputy looked in. It said HERNANDEZ on his name tag.

“You’re up,” he said.

When I got back to the defense table, the video remote and laser pointer were waiting for me at my place.

And my defendant was, too. I realized that Andre’s downward spiral could now be measured by the hours instead of days. He had actually deteriorated in the hour I had spent in the conference room and he had spent in the courthouse lockup.

I squeezed his arm. It felt as thin as a broomstick under his sleeve.

“We’re doing well, Andre. Hang in there.”

“Have you decided if I get to testify?”

This was an ongoing conversation we’d been having during the trial. He wanted to testify and tell the world he was innocent. He believed — not without some merit — that guilty men remain mute and the innocent speak out. They testify.

The problem was that, while Andre wasn’t a murderer, he was a man engaged in a criminal enterprise. Additionally, his deteriorated physical condition would likely not garner sympathy from the jury. I didn’t want him to testify and didn’t think he needed to. I had come to believe, contrary to my earlier instincts, that our best shot at a not-guilty verdict was to keep him in his seat.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m hoping that it will be so obvious that you’re innocent that it won’t matter.”

He nodded, disappointed in my answer. I realized that he had lost so much weight in the two weeks since jury selection started that I needed to think about getting him a better fitting suit. There were only four or five court days left before the jurors began deliberations, but I thought it was the right thing to do.

I wrote a note about it on my legal pad, tore the page out, and then handed it back over the rail to Lorna just as the judge came out from chambers and took the bench.

Victor Hensley was recalled to the witness stand and Judge Leggoe gave me permission to position myself in the well while I showed the composite Beverly Wilshire security video and asked Hensley questions.

I first established through Hensley the date and time of the video that we would watch and had him explain how video from several different cameras was edited together so Gloria Dayton could be tracked in her movements through the hotel. I also had Hensley explain that there were no cameras on the guest-room floors because it was a privacy issue. The hotel management apparently thought it was bad for business to film who entered what rooms and when.

I handed Hensley the laser pointer so he could keep the red dot on Gloria as she made her way and he narrated. I realized that the video gave the jurors their first glimpse of Gloria in motion. During the prosecution phase they had seen autopsy photos, mug shots, and screen shots from her Giselle Dallinger websites. But the video was Gloria as a living person, and when I glanced at the jury, I saw that they were fully engaged in watching her.

That was what I wanted, because my next set of questions to Hensley would take them in a new direction. I retrieved the remote and the laser and stood back in the well. I started playing the video trail from the beginning and then froze the image when Gloria was passing through the lobby and in front of the man in the hat.

“Now, Mr. Hensley, can you look at the screen and tell the jury if you have any members of your staff there in the lobby?”

Hensley said the man standing at the elevator alcove was part of the security staff.

“Anyone else that you can see?”

“No, I don’t believe so.”

“What about this man here?”

I put the laser dot on the man in the hat, who was sitting on the divan and looking at his phone.

“Well,” Hensley said. “We can’t see his face in this frame. If you play it until we see his face…”

I hit the play button and the video advanced. I had drawn eyes toward the man in the hat. But he never changed the position of his head and his face was not seen. The video jumped when Gloria went into the alcove and then stepped onto an elevator. There was a black screen for a few seconds and then the video showed Gloria getting back on the elevator on the eighth floor and going down to the lobby.

When the video jumped again to her exit walk through the lobby, I hit the slow button on the remote and put the laser dot on the man in the hat once again to orient the jurors. I said nothing while all eyes were on the screen. I held the red dot on the man in the hat as he got up and left behind Gloria. I then froze the image a moment before he left the screen.

“Does that man work for the hotel?” I asked.

“I could never see the face but, no, I don’t think so,” Hensley said.

“If you could not see his face, how do you know he isn’t an employee?”

“Because he would have to be a floater and we don’t have floaters.”

“Can you explain to the jury what you mean by that?”

“Our security is post-oriented. We have people at posts — like the man at the elevator alcove. We are posted and we are visible. Name tags, green blazers. We don’t have undercovers. We don’t have floaters — guys who float around and do whatever they want.”

I started to pace in front of the jury box, first walking toward the witness stand and then turning back to cross the well. With my back turned to Hensley and my eyes on Lankford sitting against the rail, I asked my next question.

“What about private security, Mr. Hensley? Could that man have been working security for someone staying in the hotel?”

“He could have. But usually private security people check in with us to let us know they’re there.”

“I see. Then, what do you think that man was doing there?”

Forsythe objected, saying I was calling for speculation from the witness.

“Your Honor,” I responded. “Mr. Hensley spent twenty years as a police officer and detective before spending the past ten in security for this hotel. He’s been in that lobby countless times and dealt with countless situations there. I think he is more than qualified to render an observation on what he sees on the video.”

“Overruled,” Leggoe said.

I nodded to Hensley to answer the question.

“I would bet that he was following her,” he said.

I paused, wanting to underline the answer with silence.

“What makes you say that, Mr. Hensley?”

“Well, it looks like he was waiting for her before she even got there. And then when she comes back down, he follows her out. You can tell when she makes the sudden turn to go to the front desk. That catches him off guard and he has to correct. Then he follows when she leaves.”

“Let’s watch it again.”

I ran the whole video again in real time, keeping the laser dot on the hat.

“What other observations do you have about the video, Mr. Hensley?” I asked afterward.

“Well, for one, he knew about our cameras,” Hensley said. “We never see his face because of the hat, and he knew just where to sit and how to wear it so he would never be seen. He’s a real mystery man.”

I tried hard not to smile. Hensley was the perfect witness, honest and obvious. But calling the man in the hat a “mystery man” was beyond my expectations. It was perfect.

“Let’s summarize, Mr. Hensley. What you’ve told us here today is that Gloria Dayton came into the hotel on the evening of November eleventh and went up to the eighth floor, where she presumably knocked on the door of a room where no one was staying. Is that correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

“And that when she went back down the elevator and left the hotel, she was followed by a ‘mystery man’ who was not an employee of the hotel. Correct?”

“Again, correct.”

“And just over two hours later she was dead.”

Forsythe weakly objected on the grounds I was asking a question that was outside the scope of Hensley’s knowledge and expertise.

Leggoe sustained the objection but it didn’t matter.

“Then I have no further questions,” I said.

Forsythe stood for his cross-examination but then surprised me.

“Your Honor, the state has no questions at this time.”

He must have decided that the best path out of the “mystery man” debacle was to pay it no mind, give it no credibility, act like it didn’t matter — and then retreat with Lankford and engineer some kind of response in rebuttal.

The problem for me was that I didn’t want to put another witness on the stand but it was only four ten and probably too soon in the judge’s estimation to end court for the day.

I walked to the railing behind the defense table and leaned over to whisper to Cisco.

“Tell me something,” I said.

“Tell you what?” he answered.

“Act like you’re telling me about our next witness and shake your head.”

“Well, yeah, I mean we don’t have another witness unless you want me to go to the hotel where we stashed Budwin Dell and bring him over.”

He shook his head, playing along perfectly, and then continued.

“But it’s four ten now and by the time I got back it would be five.”

“That’s good.”

I nodded and returned to the defense table.

“Mr. Haller, you can call your next witness,” the judge said.

“Judge… I, uh, don’t exactly have my next witness ready. I thought Mr. Forsythe would have at least a few questions for Mr. Hensley and that would take us through until four thirty or five.”

The judge frowned.

“I don’t like quitting early. I told you that at the start of the trial. I said have your witnesses ready.”

“I understand, Your Honor. I do have a witness but he is in a hotel twenty minutes away. If you want, I can have my investigator—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We wouldn’t get started until almost five. What about Mr. Lankford? He’s on your witness list.”

I turned and looked back at Lankford as if I was considering it. Then I looked back at the judge.

“I’m not prepared today for Mr. Lankford, Your Honor. Could we just break for the day now and make up the lost time by shortening our recesses over the next couple days?”

“And penalize the jury for your lack of preparedness? No, we’re not going to do that.”

“Sorry, Judge.”

“Very well, I am adjourning court for the day. We will be in recess until nine o’clock tomorrow morning. I suggest you be prepared to begin then, Mr. Haller.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

We stood as the jury filed out, and Andre needed to grab me by the arm to pull himself up.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Fine. You did good today, Mickey. Real good.”

“I hope so.”

The deputies came for him then. He would be taken back to the courtside cell, where he would change from his baggy suit into an orange jumpsuit. He would then be put on a bus and shipped back to Men’s Central. If there were any delays in the process, he would miss chow time in the jail and go to sleep hungry.

“Just a few more days, Andre.”

“I know. I’m hanging in.”

I nodded and they led him away. I watched them take him through the steel door.

“Isn’t that touching?”

I turned. It was Lankford. He had come up to the defense table. I looked over his shoulder at Forsythe. The prosecutor was standing over his table, trying to fit a thick stack of files into his thin attaché case. He was not paying attention to Lankford and me. Behind him, the courtroom had emptied. Lorna had gone down to get the car. One of Moya’s men had followed her while the other had moved out into the hallway to wait for me. Cisco and Jennifer had already left the courtroom.

“It is touching, Lankford,” I said. “You know why? Because that’s an innocent man, and you don’t see too many of those around here.”

I raised my hand in a who-am-I-kidding gesture.

“But of course you know that better than almost anybody, don’t you? I mean the part about him being innocent.”

Lankford shook his head like he didn’t get it.

“You really think you’re going to get him off with this mystery man defense?”

I smiled as I started putting my own files and notes into my briefcase.

“We’re actually calling it the ‘Cat in the Hat’ defense. And believe me, it’s a lock.”

He said nothing in response and I paused my efforts to look at him.

“One-Echo-Robert-five-six-seven-six.”

“What’s that, your mother’s phone number?”

“No, Lankford, it’s your license plate number.”

I saw a split-second change in his eyes. It was recognition or maybe fear. I kept going, improvising but following some instinctual path to an unknown destination.

“It’s a city of cameras. You should have lost the plate before you started following her. That next witness the judge wanted to hear today? He’s bringing video from outside the hotel, and he’s going to identify you as the cat in the hat.”

The look in Lankford’s eyes wasn’t fleeting anymore. It was the vicious look of a cornered animal.

“And then you’re going to have to explain to the jury why you were following Gloria Dayton before she was murdered and before you were on the case.”

Lankford suddenly moved into me, grabbing my tie to jerk me away from the table. But the tie came off in his hand and he stumbled backwards off balance.

“Hey! Is there a problem?”

Forsythe had taken notice. Lankford recovered and I looked at Forsythe.

“No, no problem.”

I calmly took my tie back from Lankford. His back was to Forsythe. He stared at me with those black-marble eyes. I started clipping my tie back on and leaned in to whisper.

“Lankford, I’m going to go out on a limb here. I don’t think you’re a killer. I’m guessing you got into something way over your head and you got pushed. Used. You found her for somebody and he did the rest. Maybe you knew what was coming, maybe not. Either way, you’re going to let an innocent man go down for it?”

“Fuck you, Haller. Your client is scum. All of them are.”

Forsythe walked up to us then.

“I’m leaving now, gentlemen. I ask again, is there a problem here? Do I have to stay here and babysit you two?”

Neither of us broke our stares to look at the prosecutor. I answered.

“We’re fine. I’m just explaining to… Investigator Lankford the reason I wear clip-ons.”

“Fascinating. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Forsythe went out through the gate and down the middle aisle of the empty courtroom. I picked up with Lankford where I had left off before the interruption.

“You’ve got less than twenty-four hours to figure out how you want to play this. Tomorrow your buddy Marco is going to go down. You can go down with him or you can get smart and get out of this in one piece. There is a way, you know.”

Lankford slowly shook his head.

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Haller. You never do. You don’t know who you’re dealing with. In fact, you don’t know shit.”

I nodded as though I felt I had been properly rebuked.

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I clapped him on the arm like I was saying good-bye to a good friend.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” he said.

39

Under directions from Lorna, Cisco brought wine and pizza from the takeout at Mozza to the loft for the postcourt staff meeting that night. She said it was warranted because for the first time in two weeks of trial and more than seven months of prep, it felt like there was something to celebrate.

It was unexpected to have a midtrial celebration, but the bigger surprise was seeing Legal Siegel in a wheelchair at the end of the table. He had a mobile air tank on the chair and was happily munching on a piece of pizza.

“Who sprung you?” I asked.

“Your girl here,” Legal said, pointing with his pizza at Jennifer. “She rescued me from those people. Just in time, too.”

He toasted me with his slice, holding it up with two bony white hands.

I nodded and looked at everyone. I guess the reluctance to celebrate anything showed on my face.

“Come on, we finally had a good day,” Lorna said, handing me a glass of red. “Revel in it.”

“I’ll revel in it when it’s over and we put the big NG on the scoreboard,” I said.

I pointed to the whiteboard, which had our defense strategy outlined on it. But I took the glass and a slice of sausage pizza, and smiled at the others as I made my way to a chair by Legal Siegel. Once everyone was seated, Lorna initiated a toast to me, and with great embarrassment I held up my glass. I then hijacked the moment and added my own toast.

“To the gods of guilt,” I said. “May they release Andre La Cosse soon.”

That turned the happy moment somber, but it couldn’t be helped. Getting a not-guilty verdict was a long shot. Even when you knew in your gut that you were sitting next to an innocent man at the defense table, you also knew that the NGs came grudgingly from a system designed only to deal with the guilty. I had to satisfy myself with knowing, no matter the outcome, that I had done all I could do for Andre La Cosse.

I then cleared my throat, held up my glass, and offered another toast.

“And to Gloria Dayton and Earl Briggs. May justice be done by our work.”

The others chimed in and an impromptu moment of silence followed. It seemed that we all were reminded that the victims in this case were many.

I broke the spell by steering everyone back to the business at hand.

“Before we all get too drunk, let’s talk about tomorrow for a few minutes.”

I went down the line, pointing to each as I gave orders and asked questions.

“Lorna, I want to go in a little bit early. So pick me up at seven forty-five, okay?”

“Hey, I’ll be there if you’ll be there.”

A not-so-veiled reference to my showing up late that morning.

“Jennifer, are you with me tomorrow or do you have things on your calendar?”

“I’m there in the morning. In the afternoon I’ve got a loan-modification hearing.”

Another foreclosure case, which were still the only cases bringing in any money.

“All right. Cisco, where are we with the witnesses?”

“Well, you have Budwin stashed at Checkers. Just let me know whether to bring him to the courthouse. You got my guy from the Ferrari dealership standing by and ready to authenticate. Then you’ve got the big question. Marco. Will he show up or not?”

I nodded.

“He has till ten, so I’d better be able to put someone in the chair at nine when the judge comes out. So bring Budwin over first thing.”

“You got it.”

“When does Moya come in?”

“They won’t divulge an exact time for security reasons. But they are transporting him from Victorville tomorrow. I don’t think you can count on him in court till Thursday.”

“That’ll work.”

I nodded. Things seemed to be in place. I would have rather held back Budwin Dell, the gun dealer, until after I knew whether Marco was going to testify, but I had no choice. A trial was always a work in progress and it almost never rolled out the way you initially planned or envisioned it.

“What about going with Lankford ahead of Marco?” Jennifer asked, eyeing the witness order I had written along one side of the whiteboard. “Would that work?”

“I have to think about it,” I said. “It might.”

“There are no maybes and might-bes in trial,” Legal Siegel announced. “You gotta be sure.”

I put my arm on his shoulder and nodded my thanks for his counsel.

“He’s right. Legal’s always right.”

Everyone laughed, including Legal. The work questions finished for the moment, we went back to eating. I took a second piece of pizza and soon the wine worked its way into everybody in the room, and the banter and laughs continued. All seemed well in the Haller & Associates universe. No one seemed to notice that I was not actually drinking my wine.

Then my phone started vibrating. I pulled it from my pocket, checking the caller ID before answering because I didn’t want to intrude on the moment.

Normally, I wouldn’t take a call after hours from the jail. Most of the time it’s a collect call from somebody who got my name and number from somebody else. Nine out of ten times it’s somebody who says he has money for private counsel but ultimately proves to be lying about that and everything else. But this time I knew there was a good chance it was Andre La Cosse. He had taken to calling me from the jail after court to discuss what had happened that day and what to expect the next. I stood up and worked my way around the table so I could walk out into the loft and be able to hear the call.

“Hello?”

“I’m looking for Michael Haller.”

It wasn’t Andre and it wasn’t a collect call. I instinctively closed the door to the boardroom to further insulate myself from the noise.

“This is Haller. Who is this?”

“This is Sergeant Rowley at the Men’s Central jail. I am calling to tell you there has been an incident involving your client Andre La Cosse.”

He had pronounced “La Cosse” wrong.

“What do you mean? What incident?”

I started pacing across the empty wooden floor, putting more space between me and the boardroom.

“The inmate was assaulted early this evening in the transportation center at the Criminal Courts Building. Another inmate is being investigated.”

“Assaulted? What does that mean? How bad is it?”

“He was stabbed multiple times, sir.”

I closed my eyes.

“Is he dead? Is Andre dead?”

“No, sir, he was transported in critical condition to the jail ward at County/USC Medical Center. No other details on his condition are available at this time.”

I opened my eyes, turned, and unconsciously raised my left hand in an impotent gesture. A sharp pain shot through my elbow, reminding me of my injury, and I dropped my arm to my side.

“How could this happen? What exactly is the transportation center at CCB?”

“The TC is the staging area in the courthouse basement where custodies are loaded on buses for transport back to our different holding facilities. Your client was about to be transported back to Men’s Central when the assault took place.”

“Aren’t these people in shackles? How could—”

“Sir, the incident is under investigation and I can’t—”

“Who is the investigator? I want his number.”

“I’m not at liberty to give you that information. I am only calling as a courtesy to tell you there has been an incident and your client is at County/USC. Yours is the only name on his sheet here.”

“Is he going to make it?”

“I don’t know that information, sir.”

“You don’t know shit, do you?”

I disconnected before I heard a reply. I started walking toward the boardroom. Lorna, Cisco, and Jennifer were standing behind the glass window, watching me. They knew something was up.

“Okay,” I said after entering. “Andre got stabbed in the courthouse before they put him on the bus tonight. He’s at County/USC.”

“Oh my god!” Jennifer exclaimed.

Her hands went to her face. She had sat next to Andre through several days of the trial, often whispering in his ear explanations about what I was doing when I dealt with witnesses. I was too busy with the trial. She had become the chief handholder, and that had drawn them close.

“How?” Cisco said. “Who?”

“I don’t know. They said another inmate is under investigation. This is what I want to do. I’m going to go to County/USC and see what his status is and if I can get in to see him. Cisco, I want you on the investigation. They wouldn’t tell me the name of the suspect. I want to know who it is and what connections he could have to Marco and Lankford.”

“You think they’re behind this?” Lorna asked.

“Anything’s possible. I spoke to Lankford today after court. I tried to rattle him but he didn’t rattle. Maybe he knew what was going to come down.”

“I thought you had Moya’s people protecting him,” Jennifer said.

“In the jail module, yeah,” I said. “But it would be impossible to cover the buses and the courthouse. It’s not like I could get him a bodyguard.”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I want you to take Legal back first. Then I want you to blueprint an argument against mistrial.”

Jennifer seemed to come out of the shock of the moment and focus for the first time on what I had just said.

“You mean—”

“I was told he was in critical condition. I don’t know if that means he’s going to live or die. But either way I doubt he’s going to court in the foreseeable future. The default setting on that is to go to mistrial and start over when he’s recovered. If Leggoe doesn’t come to that on her own, then Forsythe will make the motion because he saw his case start to go sideways today. We have to stop it. We’re about to win this case. Let’s proceed with the trial.”

Jennifer pulled a pad and pen up from her bag that was on the floor.

“So we want to continue the trial with Andre in absentia? I’m not sure that will fly.”

“They proceed with cases when defendants escape during trial. Why not here? There’s got to be a precedent. If not, we need to make one.”

Jennifer shook her head.

“In those escape cases, the defendants forfeit the right to be present by their own actions in escaping. This is different.”

Not interested in the legal discussion, Cisco stepped out into the loft space so he could start working his phone.

“No, it’s different but the same,” I said. “It’s just going to come down to the judge and judicial discretion.”

“Judicial discretion is a big fucking tent,” Legal said.

I nodded and pointed at him.

“He’s right, and we have to find space in that tent.”

“Well, I would say that at the very least we are going to need a waiver from Andre,” Jennifer said. “The judge won’t even consider it if Andre hasn’t signed off, and we don’t know if he’s in a condition to sign or understand any of this.”

“Pull out your computer and let’s write up the waiver right now.”

There was a printer on the counter beneath our whiteboard. We had set things up for printing in the loft after my car was wrecked and the printer I had was destroyed.

“You’re sure he’ll be able to knowingly sign?” Jennifer asked.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You write it up, I’ll get it signed.”

I spent six hours in a family waiting room on the lockdown floor at County/USC. For the first four hours I was repeatedly told that my client was in surgery. I was then told he was in recovery but that I could not see him because he had not regained consciousness. During the whole time, I never lost my cool with anyone. I did not complain and I did not yell.

But by two o’clock in the morning I had reached the limits of my patience and started demanding to see my client at ten-minute intervals. I pulled out the full arsenal, threatening legal action, media attention, even FBI intervention. It got me nowhere.

By then I had received two updates from Cisco on his investigation of the investigation. In his first call, he confirmed much of what we had suspected; that a fellow inmate who had been in the courthouse for his own trial had attacked Andre, using a shiv fashioned from a piece of metal. Though shackled at the waist like all the men waiting in lines to load onto jail buses, the suspect dropped to the ground and managed to slip the waist chain down over his feet, freeing his movements enough to attack Andre and stab him seven times in the chest and abdomen before he was overpowered by jail deputies.

In his second call, Cisco added the name of the suspect — Patrick Sewell — and said he had found no connection so far by case or other means to either DEA agent James Marco or DA investigator Lee Lankford. The name of the assailant was familiar to me, and then I remembered that Sewell was the defendant in the death-penalty case my half brother was in trial with. I recalled that Harry had said Sewell was brought down from San Quentin, where he was already serving a life sentence. This told me Sewell was the perfect hit man. He had nothing to lose.

I told Cisco to keep working it. If he came up with even a slim connection between Sewell and Marco or Lankford, then I’d be able to create enough smoke to make Judge Leggoe think twice about calling a mistrial.

“I’m on it,” Cisco said.

I expected nothing less.

At three ten in the morning, I was finally allowed to see my client. I was escorted by a nurse and a detention deputy into the high-dependency unit of the medical wing. I had to gown up because of the risk of infection to Andre, and then I was able to enter a surgery recovery room where Andre’s frail body lay attached to a concert of machines, tubes, and hanging plastic bags.

I stood at the end of the bed and just watched as the nurse checked the machines and then lifted the blanket over him to look at the bandages that wrapped Andre’s entire torso. His upper body was propped at a low angle on the bed, and I noticed that next to his right hand was a remote for setting the bed’s incline. His left wrist was handcuffed to a thick metal eyelet attached to the bed’s side frame. Though the prisoner was barely clinging to life, no chances were being taken with the possibility of escape.

Andre’s eyes were puffy and half open, but he wasn’t seeing anything.

“So… is he going to make it?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to tell you anything,” the nurse said.

“But you could.”

“The first twenty-four hours will tell the tale.”

At least it was something.

“Thank you.”

She patted my arm and left the room, leaving the deputy standing in the doorway. I walked over to the door and started to close it.

“You can’t close that,” the deputy said.

“Sure I can. This is an attorney-client conference.”

“He’s not even conscious.”

“Right now he isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. He’s my client and we are entitled by the U.S. Constitution to private consultation. You want to stand in front of a judge tomorrow and explain why you failed to provide this man — who is now the victim of a vicious crime — his inalienable right to confer with his attorney?”

In the Sheriff’s Department, all academy graduates are transferred directly into the detention division for their first two years on the job. The deputy in front of me looked like he was twenty-four at the most and maybe even still on probation. I knew he would back down and he did.

“All right,” he said. “You have ten minutes. After that, you’re out of here. Doctor’s orders.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll be standing right out here.”

“Good. I feel safer already.”

I closed the door.

40

Judge Leggoe brought the attorneys into chambers first thing the next morning. Lankford was invited in with Forsythe so he could brief the judge on what was known in regard to the stabbing of Andre La Cosse. Lankford, of course, couched it in terms of the kind of random violence that happens often between incarcerated men.

“Most likely it will be determined to be a hate crime,” he said. “Mr. La Cosse is a homosexual. The suspect is already convicted of one murder and is on trial for another.”

The judge nodded thoughtfully. I could not counter Lankford’s insinuations because so far Cisco had not come up with any link between Patrick Sewell — La Cosse’s suspected assailant — and Marco and Lankford. My response was weak at best.

“There’s still a long way to go in the investigation,” I said. “I would not jump to any conclusions yet.”

“I’m sure they won’t,” Lankford said.

He didn’t have the judgmental smirk that was customary on his face. I read that as an early indication of something changing in Lankford. Maybe it was the weight of knowing he wasn’t in the clear. If the attack on La Cosse was, as I believed, an attempt to end the case by eliminating the defendant, then it had failed. The question now was how badly it had failed.

“Your Honor,” Forsythe said. “In light of these events and the recovery time the victim will certainly need, the state moves for a mistrial. I really don’t see any alternative. We will not be able to guarantee the integrity of the trial or the jury if the case is continued until the defendant reaches a condition in which he can come back to court—if he ever reaches that condition.”

The judge nodded and looked at me.

“Does that make sense to you, Mr. Haller?”

“No, Your Honor, not at all. But I would like my colleague Ms. Aronson to respond to Mr. Forsythe. She is better prepared than me. I spent the night at the hospital with my client.”

The judge nodded to Jennifer, and she responded with a beautiful and unrehearsed argument against mistrial. With every sentence I grew prouder of the fact that I had picked her for my team. Without a doubt she would someday leave me in the dust. But for now she was working for me and with me, and I could not have done better.

Her argument had three concise points, the first being that to declare a mistrial would be prejudicial to the defendant. She cited the cost of mounting the defense and the continuation of Andre La Cosse’s incarceration; the physical toll it would take; and the simple fact that with the prosecution team having seen most of the defense’s case, it would be allowed with a mistrial to retool and be better prepared for the next trial.

“Your Honor, that is not fair in any perception,” she said. “It is prejudicial.”

In my opinion that argument was good enough on its own to win the day. But Jennifer hammered it down with her next two points. She cited the cost to taxpayers that a new trial would certainly entail. And she concluded that the administration of justice was best served in this case by allowing the trial to continue.

These last two points were particularly genius because they hit the judge where she lived. A judgeship was an elected office, and no jurist wants to be called out by an opponent or a newspaper for wasting taxpayer dollars. And the “administration of justice” was a reference to the discretion the judge had in making this decision. Leggoe’s ultimate goal was the administration of justice in this matter and she had to consider whether cutting and running on the case allowed for it or precluded it.

“Ms. Aronson,” the judge said after Jennifer submitted, “your argument is cogent and persuasive, but your client is in a hospital bed in a critical care unit. Surely you’re not suggesting that we bring the jury to him. I think the court is faced with a dilemma here with only one solution.”

This was the only part that was rehearsed. The best way to get what we wanted was to lead the judge to it, not come out of the gate with it.

“No, Judge,” Jennifer said. “We think you should proceed with the case without the defendant present, after admonishing the jury not to consider the defendant’s absence.”

“That’s impossible,” Forsythe blurted out. “We get a conviction and it will be reversed on appeal in five minutes flat. The defendant has the right to face his accusers.”

“It won’t be reversed if the defendant has knowingly waived his right to appear,” Jennifer said.

“Yeah, that’s great,” Forsythe responded sarcastically, “but last I heard, your client is lying unconscious in a bed and we have a jury sitting out there in the box ready to go.”

I reached into my inside jacket pocket and pulled the waiver I had taken to County/USC the night before. I handed it across the desk to the judge.

“That is a signed waiver of appearance, Judge,” I said.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Forsythe said, the first notes of desperation creeping into his voice. “How can that be? The man’s in a coma. I doubt he could sign anything, let alone knowingly sign it.”

The judge handed the waiver to Forsythe. Lankford leaned over from his chair to look at the signature.

“I was at the hospital all night, Judge. He was in and out of consciousness, which is not the same as being in a coma. Mr. Forsythe is throwing around medical terms he doesn’t know the meaning of. That aside, during my client’s periods of consciousness he expressed to me the strong desire to continue the trial in his absence. He doesn’t want to wait. He doesn’t want to have to go through this again.”

Forsythe shook his head.

“Look, Judge, I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything but this is impossible. There’s just no way that this—”

“Your Honor,” I said evenly, as though it didn’t bother me that Forsythe was calling me a liar. “If it will help with your decision, I have this.”

I pulled my cell phone and opened up the photo app. I went to the camera roll and expanded the shot I had taken in my client’s hospital room. It showed Andre in his bed, propped at a forty-five-degree angle, a bed table positioned across his midsection. His right hand was on the table, holding a pen and signing the waiver. The shot was angled down from Andre’s right side. The angle and the swelling around his eyes made it impossible to tell if his eyes were open or closed.

I handed the phone to the judge.

“I had a feeling Mr. Forsythe would object, so I took this quick shot. Something I learned from my process server. There was also a deputy on the room named Evanston. If necessary, we can wake him up and bring him to court to attest to the signature.”

The judge pointedly handed the phone back to me instead of letting Forsythe look.

“The photo isn’t necessary, Mr. Haller. You’re an officer of the court and I take you at your word.”

“Your Honor?” Forsythe said.

“Yes, Mr. Forsythe?”

“I would like to request a brief delay to allow time for the state to consider and formulate a response to the defense.”

“Mr. Forsythe, this is your motion, and on top of that, you were the one just moments ago reminding the court that there was a jury waiting to proceed.”

“Then, Your Honor, the state requests that the court conduct a thorough examination of the defendant and assure that the waiver Mr. Haller purportedly has was indeed voluntarily and knowingly signed by the defendant.”

I had to head this off before one of Forsythe’s desperate attempts to stop the trial took hold.

“Your Honor, Mr. Forsythe is a desperate man. He obviously will say anything to stop this trial. You have to ask yourself why and I think the answer is that he knows he is going down. We are proving that Mr. La Cosse is innocent in there, and the jury, the gallery, everyone, knows it, including Mr. Forsythe. And so he wants to stop it. He wants a court-sanctioned do-over. Judge, are you really going to allow this? My client is an innocent man and he has been jailed and abused and deprived of everything, including possibly his very life. The administration of justice demands that this trial continue. Right now. Today.”

Forsythe was about to bark back, but the judge held up her hand to stop him. She was set to make the call but was interrupted by a buzzing from the phone on her desk.

“That’s my clerk.”

Meaning that she had to take the call. I winced. I felt that I had her and that she was about to deny the motion for mistrial.

She picked up the phone and listened to something briefly, then hung up.

“James Marco is in the courtroom with an attorney from the DEA,” she said. “He’s ready to testify.”

She let that sink in for a few moments and then continued.

“The motion for a mistrial is denied. Mr. Haller, you will call your next witness in ten minutes.”

“Your Honor, I must strenuously object to this,” Forsythe said.

“Strenuously noted,” Leggoe responded, a harshness in her voice.

“I request that these proceedings be stayed while the state takes the matter up on appeal.”

“Mr. Forsythe, you can file your notice to appeal anytime you want, but there is no stay. We’re back in session in ten minutes.”

She gave Forsythe a moment to come back at her. When he didn’t, she ended the session.

“I think we’re finished here.”

On the way back to the courtroom, the defense team kept a steady separation of fifteen feet behind the state team. I bent over to whisper to Jennifer.

“You hit it out of the park,” I said. “We’re going to win this thing.”

She smiled proudly.

“Legal helped me with the talking points when I was driving him back last night. He’s still sharp as a razor.”

“You’re telling me. He’s still better than ninety percent of the lawyers in this courthouse.”

Up ahead in the hallway I saw Lankford holding the door to the courtroom open and waiting for us after Forsythe had gone through. We held each other’s eyes as I approached, and I took the door gesture as a signal. As an invitation. I touched Jennifer on the elbow and nodded for her to go ahead into the courtroom. I stopped when I got to Lankford. He was a smart guy. He knew the effort to stop the trial and stop me had failed. I gave him an opening because I still needed one side of the conspiracy to cave. And as often as I had crossed swords with Lankford, I wanted Marco to go down even more.

“I’ve got something you should take a look at,” I said.

“Not interested,” he said. “Keep moving, asshole.”

But there was no conviction in it. It was just his starting point in a negotiation.

“I think this is something you’ll be very interested in.”

He shrugged. He needed more in order to make the decision.

“And if you’re not interested, your pal Marco will be.”

Lankford nodded.

I went through the door and entered the courtroom. I saw Forsythe at the prosecution table. He had pulled out his phone and was making a call. I assumed it was to a supervisor or to somebody in the appellate unit. I didn’t much care which.

Lankford passed me and went to his seat at the rail. I went to the defense table and picked up the iPad I had borrowed from Lorna. I engaged the screen and cued up the video from the Sterghos house, then stepped over to the railing and put the device down on the empty seat next to Lankford as I brought my right foot up to tie my shoe. I whispered without looking at Lankford.

“Watch it to the end.”

As I stood up, I scanned the crowded courtroom. Word that Department 120 was where the action was had already spread through the courthouse. In addition to Moya’s men, who were in their usual spot, there were at least six members of the media in the first two rows, a variety of suited men I identified as fellow lawyers, and the highest concentration I’d seen in a long time of professional trial watchers — the retired, unemployed, and lonely who wander courthouses every day in search of human drama, pathos, and anguish. I wasn’t sure whether the draw was Marco’s appearance or the fact that the defendant had been nearly stabbed to death the evening before in the CCB’s basement, but the message had been transmitted and the people had come.

I spotted Marco four rows back. He sat next to a man in a suit who I assumed was his lawyer. Marco hadn’t bothered to dress for the occasion. He was wearing a black golf shirt and jeans again, the shirt tucked in so the gun holstered on his right hip was fully on display. The gunslinger look.

I decided that I needed to try to do something about that.

I looked down and saw that Lankford had already viewed the silent video and returned it to the empty seat. He sat there in what appeared to be a daze, perhaps understanding that his life was unalterably going to change before the end of this day. I brought my other shoe up onto the chair to tie. I bent down again, my eyes on Marco in the gallery as I whispered to Lankford.

“I want Marco, not you.”

41

The judge took the bench as promised and briefly eyed the number of people in the gallery.

“Are we ready for the jury?” she asked.

I stood to address the court.

“Your Honor, before we call the jury, I would like to address a couple of matters that have just now come up.”

“What is it, Mr. Haller?”

She said it with exasperation clearly in her voice.

“Well, Agent Marco is here presumably to testify as a witness called by the defense. I would like to request that I be allowed to treat him as a hostile witness and I would also ask that the court direct Agent Marco to remove the firearm he is wearing openly on his belt.”

“Let’s take these one at a time, Mr. Haller. First, you have called Agent Marco as a defense witness and he has so far not answered a single question. On what basis should you be allowed to treat your own witness as a hostile witness?”

Classifying a witness as hostile would allow me more freedom in questioning Marco. I could ask leading questions needing only a yes or no response.

“Your Honor, Agent Marco has sought to avoid testifying at this trial. He has even brought his lawyer with him today. Additionally, the one and only time I have met Agent Marco, he threatened me. I think that makes him, well, hostile.”

Forsythe stood to respond, as did Marco’s attorney, but the judge waved them off.

“Your request is denied. Let’s start the testimony and see how it goes. Now, what troubles you about Agent Marco’s sidearm?”

I asked if she could direct Marco to stand in the gallery so that she could see his gun. She agreed and ordered him to stand.

“Your Honor,” I said, “I believe that his wearing his weapon in such an open way is threatening and prejudicial.”

“He is a law enforcement officer,” Leggoe said. “And that will be established, I’m assuming, when he begins his testimony.”

“Yes, Judge, but he’s going to walk by the jury on his way to the stand looking like he’s Wyatt Earp. This is a courtroom, Judge, not the Old West.”

The judge thought for a moment and then shook her head.

“I’m unconvinced, Mr. Haller. I’m denying that request as well.”

I had hoped the judge would read between the lines and understand what I was seeking. I was going to push Marco out of his comfort zone and, depending on how things went, possibly even accuse him of murder. You never know how people are going to react, even law enforcement officers. I would have been far more comfortable knowing Marco was unarmed.

“Anything else, Mr. Haller? The jury has been most patient waiting on us.”

“Yes, Judge, one more thing. This morning I will call Agent Marco, followed by Investigator Lankford. I would ask that you instruct Mr. Lankford to remain in the courtroom so that I can ensure his testimony.”

“I will do no such thing. Mr. Lankford is expected to be where he should be, but I will not restrict his movements in the meantime. Let’s bring the jury in now.”

I glanced back at Lankford after the ruling and saw his cold-eyed stare trained fully on me.

The jury was finally seated, and the judge took five minutes to explain to them that the defendant would likely not be present for the rest of the trial. She said this was due to a hospitalization that had nothing to do with the trial or the case at hand. She admonished them not to let the defendant’s absence affect their deliberations or view of the trial in any way.

I then took my place at the lectern and called James Marco to the stand. The federal agent stood in the gallery and stepped forward with an undeniable confidence and ease in his stride.

After the preliminaries that identified him as a DEA agent and member of the ICE team, I quickly got down to the script I had worked out in my head during the sleepless night before.

“Agent Marco, please tell the jury how you knew the victim in this case, Gloria Dayton.”

“I did not know her.”

“We have heard testimony here that she was your informant. Is that not true?”

“It is not true.”

“Did she call you on November sixth to inform you that she had been subpoenaed in a habeas corpus case involving Hector Arrande Moya?”

“No, she did not.”

“Are you familiar with Hector Arrande Moya?”

“Yes, I am.”

“How so?”

“He’s a drug dealer who was arrested by the LAPD about eight years ago. The case was eventually taken over by federal prosecutors and it landed in my lap. I became the case agent on it at that time. Moya was convicted of various charges in federal court and sentenced to life in prison.”

“And in the course of your work on that case, did you ever hear the name Gloria Dayton?”

“No, I did not.”

I paused for a moment and referred to my notes. So far, Marco had been nothing but cordial in his responses and seemed unconcerned by being forced to testify. His denials were what I had expected. My job was to somehow open a crack in the facade and then exploit it.

“Now, you are currently involved in a federal case involving Hector Moya, are you not?”

“I don’t know the details because the lawyers are handling it.”

“Mr. Moya is suing the federal government, alleging that you set him up in that bust eight years ago, is he not?”

“Mr. Moya is in prison and is a desperate man. You can sue anybody for anything, but the fact is, I was not there when he got busted and it wasn’t my case. It came to me afterward and that’s all I know about the whole thing.”

I nodded as though I was pleased with his answer.

“Okay, let’s move on. What about other players in this case? Do you know or have past experience with anyone?”

“Players? I am not sure who you mean?”

“For example, do you know the prosecutor, Mr. Forsythe?”

I turned and gestured toward Forsythe.

“No, I don’t know him,” Marco said.

“How about the lead investigator on the case, Detective Whitten?” I asked. “Any past association with him?”

Forsythe objected, asking where I was going with this meandering examination. I asked for the judge’s indulgence and promised to get to the point quickly. The judge let me carry on.

“No, I don’t know Detective Whitten either,” Marco answered.

“Then how about the DA’s investigator, Mr. Lankford?”

I pointed at Lankford, who was sitting face forward, staring at the back of Forsythe’s head.

“He and I go back about ten years,” Marco said. “I knew him then.”

“How so?” I asked.

“There was a case when he was with the Glendale PD, and we crossed paths.”

“What was the case?”

“There was a double murder, and the victims were drug dealers. Lankford caught the case and he consulted with me a couple, maybe three, times about it.”

“Why you?”

“DEA, I guess. The dead guys were drug dealers. There were drugs found in the house where they got killed.”

“And Detective Lankford wanted to know what? If you knew anything about the victims or who might have killed them?”

“Yes. Things like that.”

“Were you able to help?”

“Not real—”

Forsythe objected again, citing relevancy.

“We are trying a case involving a murder seven months ago,” he said. “Mr. Haller has shown no relevancy to this case ten years ago.”

“Relevancy is coming, Your Honor,” I responded. “And Mr. Forsythe knows it.”

“Soon, Mr. Haller,” the judge responded.

I nodded my thanks.

“Agent Marco, did you just say you were unable to help Detective Lankford?”

“I don’t think I was. As far as I know, they never made a case against anyone.”

“Were you familiar with the victims in that case?”

“I knew who they were. They were on our radar but they weren’t the subjects of an active investigation.”

“What about in this case, Agent Marco? The Gloria Dayton case. Has Investigator Lankford consulted you on it?”

“No, he has not.”

“Have you consulted him on it?”

“No, I have not.”

“So, no communication between you two?”

“None.”

There was the crack. I knew I was in.

“Now this double murder you spoke of from ten years ago, was that the one on Salem Street in Glendale?”

“Uh… yes, I believe so.”

“Are you familiar with the name Stratton Sterghos?”

Forsythe objected and asked for a sidebar. The judge signaled us up to the bench, and then, as expected, the prosecutor complained that I was trying an end-run move to bring Sterghos in as a witness when the judge had already struck him from the witness list.

I shook my head.

“Judge, that is not what I am trying to do now, and I will go on record right here and say I will not be calling Dr. Sterghos as a witness. He’s not even in Los Angeles. All I want to do here is establish whether the witness knew that I had put Sterghos on the witness list. He said he’s had no contact with anyone associated with this case, but I will be introducing evidence to the contrary.”

Forsythe shook his head like he was exhausted by my antics.

“There is no evidence, Judge. This is just a sideshow. He’s trying to hijack the case while he chases after rainbows.”

I smiled and shook my head. I looked back at the courtroom and happened to see Lankford walking down the center aisle to the rear door.

“Where’s your investigator going?” I asked Forsythe. “I’m going to put him on the stand in a few minutes.”

The question to Forsythe alerted the judge. She raised her head to look over us.

“Mr. Lankford,” she called.

Lankford stopped five feet from the door and looked back.

“Where are you going?” the judge asked. “You are going to be called soon as a witness.”

Lankford held his hands out like he was not sure of an answer.

“Uh, the men’s room.”

“Be back soon, please. You will be needed shortly and we have already lost enough time this morning. I want no more delays.”

Lankford nodded and continued out of the courtroom.

“Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,” the judge said.

She rolled her chair to her left and leaned over the edge of the bench to converse with her clerk. I heard her ask the clerk to tell one of the courtroom deputies to make sure Lankford came back promptly to the courtroom.

That made me feel better about things.

The judge rolled back and returned her focus to the subject of the sidebar. She warned me that her patience had grown exceedingly thin and that I needed to draw the string on the net she had allowed me to cast.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I went back to the lectern.

“Agent Marco, did anyone tell you that the name Stratton Sterghos had appeared on the defense’s amended witness list this week?”

Marco showed the first signs of discomfort, shaking his head wearily.

“No. I don’t know that name. I never heard of the man before you just brought him up.”

I nodded and made a notation on my legal pad. It read Got you, motherfucker.

“Can you tell the jury where you were on the night of November eleventh of last year?”

Forsythe stood.

“Your Honor!”

“Be seated, Mr. Forsythe.”

Marco shook his head casually.

“I can’t remember exactly what I was doing that far back.”

“It was a Sunday.”

He shrugged.

“Then I was probably watching Sunday Night Football. I don’t know for sure. Does that make me guilty of something?”

I waited, but nothing more came.

“The way it usually works is that I ask the questions,” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”

“What about two nights ago on Monday? Do you remember where you were that night?”

Marco didn’t answer for a long moment. I think he realized that he might be standing in the middle of a minefield. In the silence, I heard the rear door of the courtroom open and turned to see Lankford returning, one of the courtroom deputies behind him.

“I was on a surveillance,” Marco finally said.

I turned back to the witness stand.

“A surveillance of whom?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“That’s a case. I’m not going to talk about it in open court.”

“Was that surveillance on Salem Street in Glendale?”

Again he shook his head.

“I’m not going to talk about open investigations in court.”

I stared at him for a long time, wondering how far I should push him.

I finally decided to wait and looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, I have no further questions at this time but I request that the court hold Agent Marco as a witness so that I can recall him later today.”

The judge frowned.

“Why can’t you finish your direct now, Mr. Haller?”

“I need to take testimony from another witness this morning, and from that testimony I will draw the final questions I’ll have for Agent Marco. I appreciate the court’s ongoing indulgence of the defense’s presentation.”

Leggoe asked Forsythe if he had an issue with my plan.

“Judge, the people have grown very weary of defense counsel’s flights of fancy but once more we are willing to take the ride. I know this will be another crash-and-burn and forgive me but I just can’t look away.”

The judge asked Forsythe if he wanted the opportunity to cross-examine Marco before he stepped down. This would be in addition to the opportunity he would have after I brought the DEA agent back to the stand in the afternoon. Without much thought, he opted to wait to conduct one uninterrupted cross-examination. And as a safety measure, he reserved the right to call Marco back to the stand even if I didn’t.

The judge told Marco he could step down but ordered him to return to the court at one p.m. She then told me to call my next witness.

“The defense calls Lee Lankford.”

I turned to look at Lankford. He was slowly starting to stand.

“And, Your Honor, we’re going to need the audio-visual remote for a video demonstration.”

I made sure I requested it before Marco and his attorney got out of the courtroom. I wanted them thinking about the video I planned to play.

42

Lankford walked with a steady but slow pace to the witness stand, his eyes staring at a fixed point on the wall behind it. I watched him closely. He looked like a man who was running equations internally while running on autopilot externally. I thought this was a good sign, that he was realizing his one way out was through me. I decided I would know pretty quickly into his testimony which path he had chosen.

As the DA’s investigator assigned to the case, Lankford had been granted a standard exception that allowed him to remain in court even though he had been listed as a witness by the defense. This meant that going all the way back to jury selection he had been a familiar presence to the jurors as he sat each day against the railing behind Forsythe. But he had never been introduced before the moment I made him stand and be identified during Hensley’s testimony the day before. So I walked him through who he was and what he did, and I included his background as a former Glendale homicide detective, even though that information had been revealed earlier by Marco.

I then moved into matters intrinsic to the defense case. It seemed to me that all the tendrils of the case had led me to this one witness. It all came down to this moment.

“Okay,” I said. “Now let’s talk about this specific case. How did it work? Were you assigned to this prosecution or did you request it?”

Lankford sat with his eyes cast downward. His posture and demeanor indicated he had not heard the question. He remained motionless and said nothing for several seconds. The silence stretched to the point that I felt the judge was on the verge of prompting him when he finally spoke.

“We normally have a rotation when it comes to murder cases.”

I nodded and was formulating a follow-up when Lankford continued.

“But in this case I personally requested the assignment.”

I paused, waiting for Lankford to say more, but he was silent. Still, I interpreted his full answer as a strong indication that we had come to a tacit agreement earlier.

“Why did you request it?”

“I had been assigned previously to a murder case in which the prosecutor was Bill Forsythe and we had worked well together. At least, that was the reason I gave.”

Lankford looked directly at me when he added the last sentence. I believed there was some kind of message in it. There was almost a pleading look in his eyes.

“Are you saying you had an ulterior motive for requesting the case?”

“Yes. I did.”

I could almost feel Forsythe tightening up as he sat at the table next to the lectern.

“What was that motive?”

“I wanted to be on the case so I could monitor it from the inside.”

“Why?”

“Because I was told to.”

“You mean by a supervisor?”

“No, I don’t mean a supervisor.”

“Then by who?”

“James Marco.”

I don’t think in all the thousands of hours I have spent in courtrooms that I had ever had such a moment of clarity. But I knew the moment that Lankford said the name James Marco that my client, if he was to survive his injuries, would be set free. I looked down at the top sheet of my yellow legal pad and composed myself for a moment before continuing.

And in that moment, Forsythe rose in slow motion, as if knowing by reflex that he had to stop this but being unsure of how to do it. He asked for a sidebar and the judge told us to come forward. As we assembled in front of the judge, I actually felt sorry for Forsythe because of the predicament the prosecutor was in.

“Judge,” he said, “I would like to request a fifteen-minute recess so I can confer with my investigator.”

“That’s not going to happen, Mr. Forsythe,” Leggoe responded. “He’s a witness now. Anything else?”

“I’m being sandbagged here, Judge. This—”

“By Mr. Haller or your own investigator?”

Forsythe stood frozen.

“Go back, gentlemen. And Mr. Haller, continue with the witness.”

I went back to the lectern. Forsythe sat down and stared straight ahead, bracing for what was coming.

“You said that Agent Marco told you to monitor this case?” I asked Lankford.

“Yes,” he said.

“Why is that?”

“Because he wanted to know whatever we could find out about Gloria Dayton’s murder investigation.”

“He knew her?”

“He told me she was his informant a long time ago.”

I made a mark on my legal pad, checking off one of the points I had wanted to make through Lankford’s testimony. I glanced over at the jury box. Twelve for twelve, plus two alternates, they were riveted. And so was I. I had chosen Lankford over Marco as the weaker part of the conspiracy. He saw the Sterghos house video and, of course, knew he was the man in the hat. He knew that his only way out was to carefully attempt to pick his way through his testimony without snagging himself on perjury or self-incrimination. It was going to be hard to do.

“Let’s back up for a minute,” I said. “You’re familiar with the video taken through security cameras at the Beverly Wilshire hotel that showed Gloria Dayton on the evening she was murdered, are you not?”

Lankford closed his eyes for a long moment and then opened them.

“Yes, I am.”

“I am talking about the video first shown to the jury yesterday.”

“Yes, I know.”

“When did you first see that video?”

“About two months ago. I don’t remember the date.”

“Now yesterday during testimony, Victor Hensley, a security supervisor at the hotel, said he believed that the video showed Gloria Dayton being followed when she left the hotel. Do you have an opinion on that?”

Forsythe objected, saying the question was leading and beyond the scope of Lankford’s knowledge and expertise. The judge overruled it and I asked Lankford the question again.

“Do you think Gloria Dayton was being followed the night of her death?”

“Yes, I do,” Lankford said.

“Why is that?”

“Because I was following her.”

What followed that answer may have been the loudest silence I had ever heard in a courtroom.

“Are you saying that is you on the video — the man in the hat?”

“Yes. I’m the man in the hat.”

That got another check mark on my pad and another roaring silence. I realized that Lankford might be exorcizing his demons by confessing, but he so far had not admitted to anything that was actually a crime. He continued to give me that same pleading look. I came to believe in those moments that he and I were making an unspoken agreement. It was the video, I realized. He didn’t want it played. He wanted to tell the story as a cooperating witness, not have the Sterghos video shoved down his throat while on the stand.

I was willing to take that deal.

“Why were you following Gloria Dayton?”

“I had been asked to find her and to find out where she lived.”

“By Agent Marco?”

“Yes.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“No. Not at that time.”

“What did he tell you?”

Forsythe objected again, saying I was asking for hearsay testimony. The judge said she was going to allow it, and I thought about what Legal Siegel had said the night before about judicial discretion being a big fucking tent. No doubt I was living in the tent now.

I told Lankford to answer the question.

“He just said he needed to find her. He said she was a snitch who had left town many years ago and now she was back but he couldn’t find her, so he thought she was using a new name.”

“So he left it up to you to find her.”

“Yes.”

“When was this?”

“Last November, the week before she was murdered.”

“How did you find her?”

“Rico gave me a picture he had of her.”

“Who is Rico?”

“Rico is Marco. That was his nickname because he worked racketeering cases.”

“You’re referring to RICO as in the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act?”

“Yes.”

“What was the picture he gave you?”

“He texted it to me. He took it the night he turned her. It was old — like from eight or nine years before. He had busted her but made a deal not to book her if she snitched for him. He took her photo for his snitch file and he still had it.”

“Do you still have that photo?”

“No, I deleted it.”

“When?”

“After I heard that she was murdered.”

I gave that answer a pause for effect.

“Did you use the photo to find her for Marco?”

“Yes, I started looking at locally based websites for escorts and eventually I found her using the name Giselle. The hair was different but it was her.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Contact with escorts on this level is usually buffered. They don’t just give out their home addresses and cell numbers. On Giselle’s page, there was mention of a ‘Pretty Woman Special’ at the Beverly Wilshire. I asked Rico — Marco — to get me into a room there using one of his UC aliases.”

“By ‘UC,’ you mean undercover?”

“Yes, undercover.”

“What was the name, do you remember?”

“Ronald Weldon.”

I knew this could be checked with Hensley and hotel records if I needed to corroborate Lankford’s story later. The case had suddenly changed dimensions with Lankford’s testimony.

“Okay, what happened next?”

“Marco got the room and gave me the key. It was on the eighth floor. I went there, and when I was opening the door, one of the bellmen arrived with a cart to the room across the hall.”

“You mean it looked like the people in that room were checking out?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do next?”

“I went into my room and watched through the peephole. There was a couple in the room opposite mine. The bellman left with their luggage first and then they left. They didn’t pull the door closed all the way. So I went across and into the room.”

“What did you do in there?”

“I looked around first. And I got lucky. In the trash can, there were several envelopes, and it looked like wedding cards had come in them. They were addressed to Daniel and Linda or Mr. and Mrs. Price and things like that. I figured out that his name was Daniel Price. So I used that name and that room number to set up Giselle Dallinger to come that night.”

“Why did you go through such elaborate efforts?”

“Because first of all, I know everything can be traced. Everything. I didn’t want this coming back on me. And second, I worked vice when I was a cop. I know how prostitutes and pimps work it to avoid law enforcement. Whoever the setup person was for Giselle would call me back at the hotel. It was their way of hopefully confirming I wasn’t law enforcement. I could’ve done it from the room Marco got me, but I saw that open door and thought it would be better and completely untraceable to me. And Marco.”

With his answer Lankford walked across the line from plausible deniability to conspiracy to commit. If he had been my client, I would have stopped him by now. But I had my own client to clear. I pressed on.

“Are you saying that you knew what was going to happen to Giselle that night?”

“No, never. I was just taking precautions.”

I studied Lankford, unsure if he was elaborately covering his own culpability in a murder or actually telling the truth.

“So you set up the liaison for that night and then you waited for her in the lobby, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Using your hat as a shield against the cameras?”

“Yes.”

“And then you followed her home to Franklin Avenue.”

“I did.”

The judge interrupted at that moment and addressed the jury.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I know it seems as though we just got started but we are going to take a quick five-minute break. I want you to go to the jury room and stay close by. I want all counsel and the witness to remain in place, please.”

We stood as the jury filed out. I knew what was coming. The judge couldn’t just sit there without warning Lankford of his peril. As soon as the jury room’s door closed, she turned to my witness.

“Mr. Lankford, do you have counsel present?”

“No, I don’t,” Lankford responded calmly.

“Do you want me to pause your testimony here so you can seek the advice of counsel?”

“No, Your Honor. I want to do this. I’ve committed no crime.”

“You are sure?”

The question could be taken two ways. Was Lankford sure he didn’t want a lawyer, or was he sure he had committed no crime.

“I would like to continue to testify.”

The judge stared at Lankford for a long moment as if taking some sort of measure of him. She then turned away and signaled for the courtroom deputy to approach the bench. She whispered to the deputy and then he immediately walked to the side of the witness stand and took a position next to Lankford. He put his hand on his sidearm. It looked as if he was about to make an arrest.

“Mr. Lankford, will you please stand.”

Looking puzzled, Lankford stood. He glanced at the deputy and then at the judge.

“Are you wearing a firearm, Mr. Lankford?” Leggoe asked.

“Uh, yes, I am.”

“I want you to surrender your weapon to Deputy Hernandez. He will secure it until your testimony is completed.”

Lankford didn’t move. It became clear that Leggoe was concerned that he was armed and might attempt to harm himself or others. It was a good move.

“Mr. Lankford,” the judge said sternly. “Please hand your weapon to Deputy Hernandez.”

Hernandez responded by unsnapping his holster with one hand and keying his shoulder mike with the other. I assumed he was broadcasting an emergency code of some sort to others in courthouse security.

Lankford finally raised his hand and reached inside his sport coat. He slowly removed his gun and handed it to Deputy Hernandez.

“Thank you, Mr. Lankford,” the judge said. “You may sit down now.”

“I have a pocket knife, too,” Lankford said. “Is that a problem?”

“No, Mr. Lankford, that is not a problem. Please be seated.”

There was a collective exhale of relief in the courtroom as Lankford sat down and Hernandez took the gun to his desk to lock it in a drawer. Four deputies flooded into the courtroom through the rear door and the holding area entrance. The judge immediately told them to stand down and called for the jury to be returned to the box.

Three minutes later, things seemed to have returned to normal. The jury and witness were in place and the judge nodded at me.

“Mr. Haller, you may proceed.”

I thanked the judge and then tried to pick up at the point where I had been interrupted.

“Investigator Lankford, did you tell Agent Marco to meet you there at the Franklin address?”

“No, I called him and gave him the address. Shortly after that I left. I was done. I went home.”

“And two hours later, Gloria Dayton, the woman using the name Giselle Dallinger, was dead. Isn’t that right?”

Lankford cast his eyes down and nodded his head.

“Yes.”

I once again checked the jury and saw that nothing had changed. They were mesmerized by Lankford’s confession.

“I’ll ask you again, Investigator. Did you know she would die that night?”

“No, I did not. If I had…”

“What?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what I would have done.”

“What did you think would happen once you gave Gloria Dayton’s address to Marco?”

Forsythe objected, saying the question asked for speculation, but the judge overruled it and told Lankford he could answer. Like everyone else in the courtroom, Leggoe wanted to hear the answer.

Lankford shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Before I gave him the address that night, I asked him again what was going on. I said I didn’t want to get involved if she was going to get hurt. He insisted that he just wanted to talk to her. He admitted that he knew she was back in town because she had called him from a blocked number and told him that she’d gotten a subpoena in some civil case. And he said he needed to find her to talk to her about it.”

I underlined that answer with some silence. Essentially my case was made. But it was hard to end Lankford’s testimony.

“Why did you do this for Agent Marco?”

“Because he had a hold on me. He owned me.”

“How?”

“Ten years ago I worked that double-homicide case in Glendale. On Salem Street. I met him on that and I made a mistake…”

Lankford’s voice trembled slightly. I waited. He composed himself and continued.

“He came to me. He said there were people… people who would pay for the case to remain unsolved. You know, pay me not to solve it. The truth was, my partner and I probably weren’t going to close it. Not a shred of evidence was left in that place. It was an execution and the hitters had probably come across the border and then gone right back. So I thought, what difference would it make? I needed the money. I had gotten divorced and my wife — my ex-wife — was going to take our son away. She was going to move to Arizona and take him, and I needed money for a good lawyer who would fight it. My boy was only nine. He needed me. So I took the money. Twenty-five thousand. Marco made the deal and I got the money and after that…”

He paused there and seemed to go off on some internal flight of thought. I thought the judge might step in again here because, statute of limitations notwithstanding, Lankford had certainly now confessed to a crime. But the judge remained as still as every other person in the courtroom.

“After that, what?” I prompted.

It was a mistake. It brought Lankford back angry.

“What, you want me to draw you a picture? He had me. You understand what I’m saying? He owned me. This little hotel thing wasn’t the first time he used me or told me what to do. There were other times. A lot of other times. He treated me the way he treated his snitches.”

I nodded and looked down at my notes. I knew the case was over. I didn’t need to bring back Marco or put any of the other witnesses on. Moya, Budwin Dell — none of them were needed, none of them mattered. The case ended right here.

Lankford had his head down so no one could see his eyes.

“Investigator Lankford, did you ever ask Agent Marco what happened that night to Gloria after you gave him her address?”

Lankford nodded slowly.

“I asked him point-blank if he killed her, because I didn’t want that on my conscience. He said no. He said he went to the apartment, but when he got there she was already dead. He said he set the fire because he didn’t know if she had anything that would link him to her. But he claimed she was already dead.”

“Did you believe him?”

Lankford paused before answering.

“No,” he finally said. “I didn’t.”

I paused. I wanted to hold the moment for the rest of my life. But then finally I looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, I have no further questions.”

I passed behind Forsythe on the way to the defense table. He remained in his seat, apparently still deciding whether to mount a cross-examination or simply ask the judge to dismiss the case. I sat down next to Jennifer and she whispered urgently in my ear.

“Holy shit!”

I nodded and leaned toward her to whisper back when I heard Lankford speak from the witness stand.

“My son is older now and he’ll be okay.”

I turned back to see who he was talking to, but he was bent over in the witness stand and obscured by the wood paneling. It looked like he was reaching down to something that had fallen to the floor.

Then, as I watched, Lankford sat up straight and brought his right hand up to his neck. I saw his fingers wrapped around a small pistol — a boot gun. Without hesitation he pressed the muzzle into the soft skin under his chin and pulled the trigger.

The muffled pop from the gun brought a shriek from the jury box. Lankford’s head snapped back and then forward. His body listed slowly to the right and then dropped down behind the front panel of the witness stand out of sight.

Screams of horror and fear came from all over the courtroom, though Jennifer Aronson never made a sound. Like me, she sat there speechless, staring at what now appeared to be the empty witness stand.

The judge started shouting for the courtroom to be cleared, though even her high-pitched and panicked tenor drifted into the background for me. Soon it was as though I couldn’t hear a thing.

I looked over at the jury box and saw my alpha, Mallory Gladwell, standing with her eyes closed, hands pressed against her open mouth. Behind her and to either side of her, other jurors were reacting to the horror of what they had just witnessed. I will always remember the composition of that scene. Twelve people — the gods of guilt — trying to unsee what they all had just seen.