The Reversal

One

Tuesday, February 9, 1:43 P.M .

The last time I’d eaten at the Water Grill I sat across the table from a client who had coldly and calculatedly murdered his wife and her lover, shooting both of them in the face. He had engaged my services to not only defend him at trial but fully exonerate him and restore his good name in the public eye. This time I was sitting with someone with whom I needed to be even more careful. I was dining with Gabriel Williams, the district attorney of Los Angeles County.

It was a crisp afternoon in midwinter. I sat with Williams and his trusted chief of staff-read political advisor-Joe Ridell. The meal had been set for 1:30 P.M., when most courthouse lawyers would be safely back in the CCB, and the DA would not be advertising his dalliance with a member of the dark side. Meaning me, Mickey Haller, defender of the damned.

The Water Grill was a nice place for a downtown lunch. Good food and atmosphere, good separation between tables for private conversation, and a wine list hard to top in all of downtown. It was the kind of place where you kept your suit jacket on and the waiter put a black napkin across your lap so you needn’t be bothered with doing it yourself. The prosecution team ordered martinis at the county taxpayers’ expense and I stuck with the free water the restaurant was pouring. It took Williams two gulps of gin and one olive before he got to the reason we were hiding in plain sight.

“Mickey, I have a proposition for you.”

I nodded. Ridell had already said as much when he had called that morning to set up the lunch. I had agreed to the meet and then had gone to work on the phone myself, trying to gather any inside information I could on what the proposition would be. Not even my first ex-wife, who worked in the district attorney’s employ, knew what was up.

“I’m all ears,” I said. “It’s not every day that the DA himself wants to give you a proposition. I know it can’t be in regard to any of my clients-they wouldn’t merit much attention from the guy at the top. And at the moment I’m only carrying a few cases anyway. Times are slow.”

“Well, you’re right,” Williams said. “This is not about any of your clients. I have a case I would like you to take on.”

I nodded again. I understood now. They all hate the defense attorney until they need the defense attorney. I didn’t know if Williams had any children but he would have known through due diligence that I didn’t do juvy work. So I was guessing it had to be his wife. Probably a shoplifting grab or a DUI he was trying to keep under wraps.

“Who got popped?” I asked.

Williams looked at Ridell and they shared a smile.

“No, nothing like that,” Williams said. “My proposition is this. I would like to hire you, Mickey. I want you to come work at the DA’s office.”

Of all the ideas that had been rattling around in my head since I had taken Ridell’s call, being hired as a prosecutor wasn’t one of them. I’d been a card-carrying member of the criminal defense bar for more than twenty years. During that time I’d grown a suspicion and distrust of prosecutors and police that might not have equaled that of the gangbangers down in Nickerson Gardens but was at least at a level that would seem to exclude me from ever joining their ranks. Plain and simple, they wouldn’t want me and I wouldn’t want them. Except for that ex-wife I mentioned and a half brother who was an LAPD detective, I wouldn’t turn my back on any of them. Especially Williams. He was a politician first and a prosecutor second. That made him even more dangerous. Though briefly a prosecutor early in his legal career, he spent two decades as a civil rights attorney before running for the DA post as an outsider and riding into office on a tide of anti-police and -prosecutor sentiment. I was employing full caution at the fancy lunch from the moment the napkin went across my lap.

“Work for you?” I asked. “Doing what exactly?”

“As a special prosecutor. A onetime deal. I want you to handle the Jason Jessup case.”

I looked at him for a long moment. First I thought I would laugh out loud. This was some sort of cleverly orchestrated joke. But then I understood that couldn’t be the case. They don’t take you out to the Water Grill just to make a joke.

“You want me to prosecute Jessup? From what I hear there’s nothing to prosecute. That case is a duck without wings. The only thing left to do is shoot it and eat it.”

Williams shook his head in a manner that seemed intended to convince himself of something, not me.

“Next Tuesday is the anniversary of the murder,” he said. “I’m going to announce that we intend to retry Jessup. And I would like you standing next to me at the press conference.”

I leaned back in my seat and looked at them. I’ve spent a good part of my adult life looking across courtrooms and trying to read juries, judges, witnesses and prosecutors. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it. But at that table I couldn’t read Williams or his sidekick sitting three feet away from me.

Jason Jessup was a convicted child killer who had spent nearly twenty-four years in prison until a month earlier, when the California Supreme Court reversed his conviction and sent the case back to Los Angeles County for either retrial or a dismissal of the charges. The reversal came after a two-decade-long legal battle staged primarily from Jessup’s cell and with his own pen. Authoring appeals, motions, complaints and whatever legal challenges he could research, the self-styled lawyer made no headway with state and federal courts but did finally win the attention of an organization of lawyers known as the Genetic Justice Project. They took over his cause and his case and eventually won an order for genetic testing of semen found on the dress of the child Jessup had been convicted of strangling.

Jessup had been convicted before DNA analysis was used in criminal trials. The analysis performed these many years later determined that the semen found on the dress had not come from Jessup but from another unknown individual. Though the courts had repeatedly upheld Jessup’s conviction, this new information tipped the scales in Jessup’s favor. The state’s supreme court cited the DNA findings and other inconsistencies in the evidence and trial record and reversed the case.

This was pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the Jessup case, and it was largely information gathered from newspaper stories and courthouse scuttlebutt. While I had not read the court’s complete order, I had read parts of it in the Los Angeles Times and knew it was a blistering decision that echoed many of Jessup’s long-held claims of innocence as well as police and prosecutorial misconduct in the case. As a defense attorney, I can’t say I wasn’t pleased to see the DA’s office raked over the media coals with the ruling. Call it underdog schadenfreude. It didn’t really matter that it wasn’t my case or that the current regime in the DA’s office had nothing to do with the case back in 1986, there are so few victories from the defense side of the bar that there is always a sense of communal joy in the success of others and the defeat of the establishment.

The supreme court’s ruling was announced the week before, starting a sixty-day clock during which the DA would have to retry or discharge Jessup. It seemed that not a day had gone by since the ruling that Jessup was not in the news. He gave multiple interviews by phone and in person at San Quentin, proclaiming his innocence and potshotting the police and prosecutors who put him there. In his plight, he had garnered the support of several Hollywood celebrities and professional athletes and had already launched a civil claim against both the city and county, seeking millions of dollars in damages for the many long years during which he was falsely incarcerated. In this day of nonstop media cycles, he had a never-ending forum and was using it to elevate himself to folk hero status. When he finally walked out of prison, he, too, would be a celebrity.

Knowing as little as I did about the case in the details, I was of the impression that he was an innocent man who had been subjected to a quarter century of torture and that he deserved whatever he could get for it. I did, however, know enough about the case to understand that with the DNA evidence cutting Jessup’s way, the case was a loser and the idea of retrying Jessup seemed to be an exercise in political masochism unlikely to come from the brain trust of Williams and Ridell.

Unless…

“What do you know that I don’t know?” I asked. “And that the Los Angeles Times doesn’t know.”

Williams smiled smugly and leaned forward across the table to deliver his answer.

“All Jessup established with the help of the GJP is that his DNA was not on the victim’s dress,” he said. “As the petitioner, it was not up to him to establish who it did come from.”

“So you ran it through the data banks.”

Williams nodded.

“We did. And we got a hit.”

He offered nothing else.

“Well, who was it?”

“I’m not going to reveal that to you unless you come aboard on the case. Otherwise, I need to keep it confidential. But I will say that I believe our findings lead to a trial tactic that could neutralize the DNA question, leaving the rest of the case-and the evidence-pretty much intact. DNA was not needed to convict him the first time. We won’t need it now. As in nineteen eighty-six, we believe Jessup is guilty of this crime and I would be delinquent in my duties if I did not attempt to prosecute him, no matter the chances of conviction, the potential political fallout and the public perception of the case.”

Spoken as if he were looking at the cameras and not at me.

“Then why don’t you prosecute him?” I asked. “Why come to me? You have three hundred able lawyers working for you. I can think of one you’ve got stuck up in the Van Nuys office who would take this case in a heartbeat. Why come to me?”

“Because this prosecution can’t come from within the DA’s office. I am sure you have read or heard the allegations. There’s a taint on this case and it doesn’t matter that there isn’t one goddamn lawyer working for me who was around back then. I still need to bring in an outsider, an independent to take it to court. Somebody-”

“That’s what the attorney general’s office is for,” I said. “You need an independent counsel, you go to him.”

Now I was just poking him in the eye and everybody at the table knew it. There was no way Gabriel Williams was going to ask the state AG to come in on the case. That would cross the razor-wire line of politics. The AG post was an elected office in California and was seen by every political pundit in town as Williams’s next stop on his way to the governor’s mansion or some other lofty political plateau. The last thing Williams would be willing to do was hand a potential political rival a case that could be used against him, no matter how old it was. In politics, in the courtroom, in life, you don’t give your opponent the club with which he can turn around and clobber you.

“We’re not going to the AG with this one,” Williams said in a matter-of-fact manner. “That’s why I want you, Mickey. You’re a well-known and respected criminal defense attorney. I think the public will trust you to be independent in this matter and will therefore trust and accept the conviction you’ll win in this case.”

While I was staring at Williams a waiter came to the table to take our order. Without ever breaking eye contact with me, Williams told him to go away.

“I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to this,” I said. “Who’s Jessup’s defense attorney? I would find it difficult to go up against a colleague I know well.”

“Right now all he’s got is the GJP lawyer and his civil litigator. He hasn’t hired defense counsel because quite frankly he’s expecting us to drop this whole thing.”

I nodded, another hurdle cleared for the moment.

“But he’s got a surprise coming,” Williams said. “We’re going to bring him down here and retry him. He did it, Mickey, and that’s all you really need to know. There’s a little girl who’s still dead, and that’s all any prosecutor needs to know. Take the case. Do something for your community and for yourself. Who knows, you might even like it and want to stay on. If so, we’ll definitely entertain the possibility.”

I dropped my eyes to the linen tablecloth and thought about his last words. For a moment, I involuntarily conjured the image of my daughter sitting in a courtroom and watching me stand for the People instead of the accused. Williams kept talking, unaware that I had already come to a decision.

“Obviously, I can’t pay you your rate, but if you take this on, I don’t think you’ll be doing it for the money anyway. I can give you an office and a secretary. And I can give you whatever science and forensics you need. The very best of every-”

“I don’t want an office in the DA’s office. I would need to be independent of that. I have to be completely autonomous. No more lunches. We make the announcement and then you leave me alone. I decide how to proceed with the case.”

“Fine. Use your own office, just as long as you don’t store evidence there. And, of course, you make your own decisions.”

“And if I do this, I pick second chair and my own investigator out of the LAPD. People I can trust.”

“In or outside my office for your second?”

“I would need someone inside.”

“Then I assume we’re talking about your ex-wife.”

“That’s right-if she’ll take it. And if somehow we get a conviction out of this thing, you pull her out of Van Nuys and put her downtown in Major Crimes, where she belongs.”

“That’s easier said than-”

“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

Williams glanced at Ridell and I saw the supposed sidekick give an almost imperceptible nod of approval.

“All right,” Williams said, turning back to me. “Then I guess I’ll take it. You win and she’s in. We have a deal.”

He reached his hand across the table and I shook it. He smiled but I didn’t.

“Mickey Haller for the People,” he said. “Has a nice ring to it.”

For the People. It should have made me feel good. It should have made me feel like I was part of something that was noble and right. But all I had was the bad feeling that I had crossed some sort of line within myself.

“Wonderful,” I said.

Two

Friday, February 12, 10:00 A.M .

Harry Bosch stepped up to the front counter of the District Attorney’s Office on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building. He gave his name and said he had a ten A.M. appointment with District Attorney Gabriel Williams.

“Actually, your meeting is in conference room A,” said the receptionist after checking a computer screen in front of her. “You go through the door, turn right and go to the end of the hall. Right again and CONFERENCE ROOM A is on the left. It’s marked on the door. They’re expecting you.”

The door in the paneled-wood wall behind her buzzed free and Bosch went through, wondering about the fact that they were waiting for him. Since he had received the summons from the DA’s secretary the afternoon before, Bosch had been unable to determine what it was about. Secrecy was expected from the DA’s Office but usually some information trickled out. He hadn’t even known he would be meeting with more than one person until now.

Following the prescribed trail, Bosch came to the door marked CONFERENCE ROOM A, knocked once and heard a female voice say, “Come in.”

He entered and saw a woman seated by herself at an eight-chaired table, a spread of documents, files, photos and a laptop computer in front of her. She looked vaguely familiar but he could not place her. She was attractive with dark, curling hair framing her face. She had sharp eyes that followed him as he entered, and a pleasant, almost curious smile. Like she knew something he didn’t. She wore the standard female prosecutor’s power suit in navy blue. Harry might not have been able to place her but he assumed she was a DDA.

“Detective Bosch?”

“That’s me.”

“Come in, have a seat.”

Bosch pulled out a chair and sat across from her. On the table he saw a crime scene photograph of a child’s body in an open Dumpster. It was a girl and she was wearing a blue dress with long sleeves. Her feet were bare and she was lying on a pile of construction debris and other trash. The white edges of the photo were yellowed. It was an old print.

The woman moved a file over the picture and then offered her hand across the table.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” she said. “My name is Maggie McPherson.”

Bosch recognized the name but he couldn’t remember from where or what case.

“I’m a deputy district attorney,” she continued, “and I’m going to be second chair on the Jason Jessup prosecution. First chair-”

“Jason Jessup?” Bosch asked. “You’re going to take it to trial?”

“Yes, we are. We’ll be announcing it next week and I need to ask you to keep it confidential until then. I am sorry that our first chair is late coming to our meet-”

The door opened and Bosch turned. Mickey Haller stepped into the room. Bosch did a double take. Not because he didn’t recognize Haller. They were half brothers and he easily knew him on sight. But seeing Haller in the DA’s office was one of those images that didn’t quite make sense. Haller was a criminal defense attorney. He fit in at the DA’s office about as well as a cat did at the dog pound.

“I know,” Haller said. “You’re thinking, What in the hell is this?”

Smiling, Haller moved to McPherson’s side of the table and started pulling out a chair. Then Bosch remembered how he knew McPherson’s name.

“You two…,” Bosch said. “You were married, right?”

“That’s right,” Haller said. “Eight wonderful years.”

“And what, she’s prosecuting Jessup and you’re defending him? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

Haller’s smile became a broad grin.

“It would only be a conflict if we were opposing each other, Harry. But we’re not. We’re prosecuting him. Together. I’m first chair. Maggie’s second. And we want you to be our investigator.”

Bosch was completely confused.

“Wait a minute. You’re not a prosecutor. This doesn’t-”

“I’m an appointed independent prosecutor, Harry. It’s all legit. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t. We’re going after Jessup and we want you to help us.”

Bosch pulled out a chair and slowly sat down.

“From what I heard, this case is beyond help. Unless you’re telling me Jessup rigged the DNA test.”

“No, we’re not telling you that,” McPherson said. “We did our own testing and matching. His results were correct. It wasn’t his DNA on the victim’s dress.”

“But that doesn’t mean we’ve lost the case,” Haller quickly added.

Bosch looked from McPherson to Haller and then back again. He was clearly missing something.

“Then whose DNA was it?” he asked.

McPherson glanced sideways at Haller before answering.

“Her stepfather’s,” she said. “He’s dead now but we believe there is an explanation for why his semen was found on his stepdaughter’s dress.”

Haller leaned urgently across the table.

“An explanation that still leaves room to reconvict Jessup of the girl’s murder.”

Bosch thought for a moment and the image of his own daughter flashed in his mind. He knew there were certain kinds of evil in the world that had to be contained, no matter the hardship. A child killer was at the top of that list.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m in.”

Three

Tuesday, February 16, 1:00 P.M .

The DA’s Office had a press conference room that had not been updated since the days they’d used it to hold briefings on the Charles Manson case. Its faded wood-paneled walls and drooping flags in the corner had been the backdrop of a thousand press briefings and they gave all proceedings there a threadbare appearance that belied the true power and might of the office. The state prosecutor was never the underdog in any undertaking, yet it appeared that the office did not have the money for even a fresh coat of paint.

The setting, however, served the announcement on the Jessup decision well. For possibly the first time in these hallowed halls of justice, the prosecution would indeed be the underdog. The decision to retry Jason Jessup was fraught with peril and the realistic likelihood of failure. As I stood at the front of the room next to Gabriel Williams and before a phalanx of video cameras, bright lights and reporters, it finally dawned on me what a terrible mistake I had made. My decision to take on the case in hopes of currying favor with my daughter, ex-wife and myself was going to be met with disastrous consequences. I was going to go down in flames.

It was a rare moment to witness firsthand. The media had gathered to report the end of the story. The DA’s Office would assuredly announce that Jason Jessup would not be subjected to a retrial. The DA might not offer an apology but would at the very least say the evidence was not there. That there was no case against this man who had been incarcerated for so long. The case would be closed and in the eyes of the law as well as the public Jessup would finally be a free and innocent man.

The media is rarely fooled in complete numbers and usually doesn’t react well when it happens. But there was no doubt that Williams had punked them all. We had moved stealthily in the last week, putting together the team and reviewing the evidence that was still available. Not a word had leaked, which must’ve been a first in the halls of the CCB. While I could see the first inkling of suspicion creasing the brows of the reporters who recognized me as we entered, it was Williams who delivered the knockout punch when he wasted no time in stepping before a lectern festooned with microphones and digital recorders.

“On a Sunday morning twenty-four years ago today, twelve-year-old Melissa Landy was taken from her yard in Hancock Park and brutally murdered. An investigation quickly led to a suspect named Jason Jessup. He was arrested, convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison without parole. That conviction was reversed two weeks ago by the state supreme court and remanded to my office. I am here to announce that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office will retry Jason Jessup in the death of Melissa Landy. The charges of abduction and murder stand. This office intends once again to prosecute Mr. Jessup to the fullest extent of the law.”

He paused to add appropriate gravity to the announcement.

“As you know, the supreme court found that irregularities occurred during the first prosecution-which, of course, occurred more than two decades before the current administration. To avoid political conflicts and any future appearance of impropriety on the part of this office, I have appointed an independent special prosecutor to handle the case. Many of you know of the man standing here to my right. Michael Haller has been a defense counselor of some note in Los Angeles for two decades. He is a fair-minded and respected member of the bar. He has accepted the appointment and has assumed responsibility for the case as of today. It has been the policy of this department not to try cases in the media. However, Mr. Haller and I are willing to answer a few questions as long as they don’t tread on the specifics and evidence of the case.”

There was a booming chorus of voices calling questions out at us. Williams raised his hands for calm in the room.

“One at a time, people. Let’s start with you.”

He pointed to a woman sitting in the first row. I could not remember her name but I knew she worked for the Times. Williams knew his priorities.

“Kate Salters from the Times,” she said helpfully. “Can you tell us how you came to the decision to prosecute Jason Jessup again after DNA evidence cleared him of the crime?”

Before coming into the room, Williams had told me that he would handle the announcement and all questions unless specifically addressed to me. He made it clear that this was going to be his show. But I decided to make it clear from the outset that it was going to be my case.

“I’ll answer that,” I said as I leaned toward the lectern and the microphones. “The DNA test conducted by the Genetic Justice Project only concluded that the bodily fluid found on the victim’s clothing did not come from Jason Jessup. It did not clear him of involvement in the crime. There is a difference. The DNA test only provides additional information for a jury to consider.”

I straightened back up and caught Williams giving me a don’t-fuck-with-me stare.

“Whose DNA was it?” someone called out.

Williams quickly leaned forward to answer.

“We’re not answering questions about evidence at this time.”

“Mickey, why are you taking the case?”

The question came from the back of the room, from behind the lights, and I could not see the owner of the voice. I moved back to the microphones, angling my body so Williams had to step back.

“Good question,” I said. “It’s certainly unusual for me to be on the other side of the aisle, so to speak. But I think this is the case to cross over for. I’m an officer of the court and a proud member of the California bar. We take an oath to seek justice and fairness while upholding the Constitution and laws of this nation and state. One of the duties of a lawyer is to take a just cause without personal consideration to himself. This is such a cause. Someone has to speak for Melissa Landy. I have reviewed the evidence in this case and I think I’m on the right side of this one. The measure is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. I think that such proof exists here.”

Williams moved in and put a hand on my arm to gently move me off the microphone stand.

“We do not want to go any further than that in regard to the evidence,” he said quickly.

“Jessup’s already spent twenty-four years in prison,” Salters said. “Anything less than a conviction for first-degree murder and he will probably walk on time served. Mr. Williams, is it really worth the expense and effort of retrying this man?”

Before she was finished asking the question, I knew she and Williams had a deal working. She lobbed softballs and he hit them out of the park, looking good and righteous on the eleven o’clock news and in the morning paper. Her end of the deal would come with inside scoops on the evidence and trial strategy. I decided in that moment that it was my case, my trial, my deal.

“None of that matters,” I said loudly from my position to the side.

All eyes turned to me. Even Williams turned.

“Can you talk into the microphones, Mickey?”

It was the same voice from behind the line of lights. He knew to call me Mickey. I once again moved to the microphones, boxing Williams out like a power forward going for the rebound.

“The murder of a child is a crime that must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, no matter what the possibilities or risks are. There is no guarantee of victory here. But that was not part of the decision. The measure is reasonable doubt and I believe we surpass that. We believe that the totality of evidence shows that this man committed this horrible crime and it doesn’t matter how much time has gone by or how long he has been incarcerated. He must be prosecuted.

“I have a daughter only a little older than Melissa was… You know, people forget that in the original trial, the state sought the death penalty but the jury recommended against it and the judge imposed a life sentence. That was then and this is now. We will once again be seeking the death penalty on this case.”

Williams put his hand on my shoulder and pulled me away from the microphones.

“Uh, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” he said quickly. “My office has not yet made a determination in regard to whether we will be seeking the death penalty. That will come at a later time. But Mr. Haller makes a very valid and sad point. There can be no worse crime in our society than the murder of a child. We must do all that is within our power and our reach to seek justice for Melissa Landy. Thank you for being here today.”

“Wait a minute,” called a reporter from one of the middle seats. “What about Jessup? When will he be brought here for trial?”

Williams put his hands on both sides of the lectern in a casual move designed to keep me from the microphones.

“Earlier this morning Mr. Jessup was taken into custody by the Los Angeles police and is being transported from San Quentin. He will be booked into the downtown jail and the case will proceed. His conviction was reversed but the charges against him remain in place. We have nothing further at this time.”

Williams stepped back and signaled me toward the door. He waited until I started moving and was clear of the microphones. He then followed, coming up behind me and whispering into my ear as we went through the door.

“You do that again and I’ll fire you on the spot.”

I turned to look back at him while I walked.

“Do what? Answer one of your setup questions?”

We moved into the hallway. Ridell was waiting there with the office’s media spokesman, a guy named Fernandez. But Williams turned me down the hall away from them. He was still whispering when he spoke.

“You went off the script. Do it again and we’re done.”

I stopped and turned and Williams almost walked into me.

“Look, I’m not your puppet,” I said. “I’m an independent contractor, remember? You treat me otherwise and you’re going to be holding this hot potato without an oven mitt.”

Williams just glared at me. I obviously wasn’t getting through.

“And what was this shit about the death penalty?” he asked. “We haven’t even gotten there and you didn’t have the go-ahead to say it.”

He was bigger than me, taller. He had used his body to crowd my space and back me up against the wall.

“It will get back to Jessup and keep him thinking,” I said. “And if we’re lucky, he comes in for a deal and this whole thing goes away, including the civil action. It’ll save you all that money. That’s really what this is about, right? The money. We get a conviction and he’s got no civil case. You and the city save a few million bucks.”

“That’s got nothing to do with this. This is about justice and you still should have told me what you were doing. You don’t sandbag your own boss.”

The physical intimidation got old real fast. I put my palm on his chest and backed him off me.

“Yeah, well, you’re not my boss. I don’t have a boss.”

“Is that right? Like I said, I could fire your ass right here right now.”

I pointed down the hall to the door to the press conference room.

“Yeah, that’ll look good. Firing the independent prosecutor you just hired. Didn’t Nixon do that during the Watergate mess? Worked real well for him. Why don’t we go back in and tell them? I’m sure there are still a few cameras in there.”

Williams hesitated, realizing his predicament. I had backed him against the wall without even moving. He would look like a complete and unelectable fool if he fired me, and he knew it. He leaned in closer and his whisper dropped lower as he used the oldest threat in the mano a mano handbook. I was ready for it.

“Do not fuck with me, Haller.”

“Then don’t fuck with my case. This isn’t a campaign stop and it’s not about money. This is murder, boss. You want me to get a conviction, then get out of my way.”

I threw him the bone of calling him boss. Williams pressed his mouth into a tight line and stared at me for a long moment.

“Just so we understand each other,” he finally said.

I nodded.

“Yeah, I think we do.”

“Before you talk to the media about this case, you get it approved by my office first. Understand?”

“Got it.”

He turned and headed down the hall. His entourage followed. I remained in the hallway and watched them go. The truth was, there was nothing in the law that I objected to more than the death penalty. It was not that I had ever had a client executed or even tried such a case. It was simply a belief in the idea that an enlightened society did not kill its own.

But somehow that didn’t stop me from using the threat of the death penalty as an edge in the case. As I stood there alone in the hallway, I thought that maybe that made me a better prosecutor than I had imagined I could be.

Four

Tuesday, February 16, 2:43 P.M .

It usually was the best moment of a case. The drive downtown with a suspect handcuffed in the backseat. There was nothing better. Sure there was the eventual payoff of a conviction down the line. Being in the courtroom when the verdict is read-watching the reality shock and then deaden the eyes of the convicted. But the drive in was always better, more immediate and personal. It was always the moment Bosch savored. The chase was over and the case was about to morph from the relentless momentum of the investigation to the measured pace of the prosecution.

But this time was different. It had been a long two days and Bosch wasn’t savoring anything. He and his partner, David Chu, had driven up to Corta Madera the day before, checking into a motel off the 101 and spending the night. In the morning they drove over to San Quentin, presented a court order that transferred custody of Jason Jessup to them, and then collected their prisoner for the drive back to Los Angeles. Seven hours each way with a partner who talked too much. Seven hours on the return with a suspect who didn’t talk enough.

They were now at the top of the San Fernando Valley and an hour from the City Jail in downtown L.A. Bosch’s back hurt from so many hours behind the wheel. His right calf muscle ached from applying pressure to the gas pedal. The city car did not have cruise control.

Chu had offered to drive but Bosch had said no. Chu religiously stuck to the speed limit, even on the freeway. Bosch would take the backache over an extra hour on the freeway and the anxiety it would create.

All of this aside, he drove in uneasy silence, brooding about a case that seemed to be proceeding backwards. He had been on it for only a few days, hadn’t had the opportunity to even become acquainted with all the facts, and here he was with the suspect hooked up and in the backseat. To Bosch it felt like the arrest was coming first and the investigation wouldn’t really start until after Jessup was booked.

He checked his watch and knew the scheduled press conference must be over by now. The plan was for him to meet with Haller and McPherson at four to continue kicking around the case. But by the time Jessup was booked he would be late. He also needed to go by LAPD archives to pick up two boxes that were waiting for him.

“Harry, what’s wrong?”

Bosch glanced at Chu.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

He wasn’t going to talk in front of the suspect. Besides, he and Chu had been partnered for less than a year. It was a little soon for Chu to be making reads off of Bosch’s demeanor. Harry didn’t want him to know that he had accurately deduced that he was uncomfortable.

Jessup spoke from the backseat, his first words since asking for a bathroom break outside of Stockton.

“What’s wrong is that he doesn’t have a case. What’s wrong is that he knows this whole thing is bullshit and he doesn’t want to be part of it.”

Bosch checked Jessup in the rearview mirror. He was slightly hunched forward because his hands were cuffed and locked to a chain that went to a set of shackles around his ankles. His head was shaved, a routine prison practice among men hoping to intimidate others. Bosch guessed that with Jessup it had probably worked.

“I thought you didn’t want to talk, Jessup. You invoked.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’ll just shut the fuck up and wait for my lawyer.”

“He’s in San Francisco, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“He’s calling somebody. The GJP’s got people all over the country. We were ready for this.”

“Really? You were ready? You mean you packed your cell up because you thought you were being transferred? Or was it because you thought you were going home?”

Jessup didn’t have an answer for that one.

Bosch merged onto the 101, which would take them through the Cahuenga Pass and into Hollywood before they reached downtown.

“How’d you get hooked up with the Genetic Justice Project, Jessup?” he asked, trying once again to get something going. “You go to them or they come to you?”

“Website, man. I sent in my appeal and they saw the bullshit going on in my case. They took it over and here I am. You people are totally fucked if you think you’re going to win this. I was railroaded by you motherfuckers once before. Ain’t gonna happen again. In two months, this’ll all be over. I’ve been in twenty-four years. What’s two more months? Just makes my book rights more valuable. I guess I should be thanking you and the district attorney for that.”

Bosch glanced at the mirror again. Normally, he would love a talkative suspect. Most times they talked themselves right into prison. But Jessup was too smart and too cagey. He chose his words carefully, stayed away from talking about the crime itself, and wouldn’t be making a mistake that Bosch could use.

In the mirror now, Bosch could see Jessup staring out the window. No telling what he was thinking about. His eyes looked dead. Bosch could see the top of a prison ink tattoo on his neck, just breaking the collar line. It looked like part of a word but he couldn’t tell for sure.

“Welcome to L.A., Jessup,” Chu said without turning around. “Guess it’s been a while, huh?”

“Fuck you, you chink motherfucker,” Jessup retorted. “This’ll all be over soon and then I’ll be out and on the beach. I’m going to get a longboard and ride some tasty waves.”

“Don’t count on it, killer,” Chu said. “You’re going down. We got you by the balls.”

Bosch knew Chu was trying to provoke a response, a slip of the tongue. But he was coming off as an amateur and Jessup was too wise for him.

Harry grew tired of the back-and-forth, even after six hours of almost complete silence. He turned on the car’s radio and caught the tail end of a report on the DA’s press conference. He turned it up so Jessup would hear, and Chu would keep quiet.

“Williams and Haller refused to comment on the evidence but indicated they were not as impressed with the DNA analysis as the state’s supreme court was. Haller acknowledged that the DNA found on the victim’s dress did not come from Jessup. But he said the findings did not clear him of involvement in the crime. Haller is a well-known defense attorney and will be prosecuting a murder case for the first time. It did not sound this morning as though he has any hesitation. ‘We will once again be seeking the death penalty on this case.’ ”

Bosch flicked the volume down and checked the mirror. Jessup was still looking out the window.

“How about that, Jessup? He’s going for the Jesus juice.”

Jessup responded tiredly.

“Asshole’s posturing. Besides, they don’t execute anybody in this state anymore. You know what death row means? It means you get a cell all to yourself and you control what’s on the TV. It means better access to phone, food and visitors. Fuck it, I hope he does go for it, man. But it won’t matter. This is bullshit. This whole thing is bullshit. It’s all about the money.”

The last line floated out there for a long moment before Bosch finally bit.

“What money?”

“My money. You watch, man, they’ll come at me with a deal. My lawyer told me. They’ll want me to take a deal and plead to time served so they don’t have to pay me the money. That’s all this fucking is and you two are just the deliverymen. Fuckin’ FedEx.”

Bosch was silent. He wondered if it could be true. Jessup was suing the city and county for millions. Could it be that the retrial was simply a political move designed to save money? Both government entities were self-insured. Juries loved hitting faceless corporations and bureaucracies with obscenely large judgments. A jury believing prosecutors and police had corruptly imprisoned an innocent man for twenty-four years would be beyond generous. A hit from an eight-figure judgment could be devastating to both city and county coffers, even if they were splitting the bill.

But if they jammed Jessup and maneuvered him into a deal in which he acknowledged guilt to gain his freedom, then the lawsuit would go away. So would all the book and movie money he was counting on.

“Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?” Jessup said.

Bosch checked the mirror and realized that now Jessup was studying him. He turned his eyes back to the road. He felt his phone vibrate and pulled it out of his jacket.

“You want me to take it, Harry?” Chu asked.

A reminder that it was illegal to talk on a phone while driving an automobile. Bosch ignored him and took the call. It was Lieutenant Gandle.

“Harry, you close?”

“Getting off the one-oh-one.”

“Good. I just wanted to give you a heads-up. They’re lining up at intake. Comb your hair.”

“Got it, but maybe I’ll give my partner the airtime.”

Bosch glanced over at Chu but didn’t explain.

“Either way,” Gandle said. “What’s next?”

“He invoked so we just book him. Then I have to go back to the war room and meet with the prosecutors. I’ve got questions.”

“Harry, do they have this guy or not?”

Bosch checked Jessup in the mirror. He was back to looking out the window.

“I don’t know, Lieutenant. When I know, you’ll know.”

A few minutes later they pulled into the rear lot of the jail. There were several television cameras and their operators lined up on a ramp leading to the intake door. Chu sat up straight.

“Perp walk, Harry.”

“Yeah. You take him in.”

“Let’s both do it.”

“Nah, I’ll hang back.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Just don’t forget my cuffs.”

“Okay, Harry.”

The lot was clogged with media vans with their transmitters cranked to full height. But they had left the space in front of the ramp open. Bosch pulled in and parked.

“Okay, you ready back there, Jessup?” Chu asked. “Time to sell tickets.”

Jessup didn’t respond. Chu opened the door and got out, then opened the rear door for Jessup.

Bosch watched the ensuing spectacle from the confines of the car.

Five

Tuesday, February 16, 4:14 P.M .

One of the very best things about having previously been married to Maggie McPherson was that I never had to face her in court. The marital split created a conflict of interest that saved me professional defeat and humiliation at her hands on more than one occasion. She was truly the best prosecutor I’d ever seen step into the well and they didn’t call her Maggie McFierce for no reason.

Now, for the first time, we would be on the same team in court, sitting side by side at the same table. But what had seemed like such a good idea-not to mention such a positive potential payoff for Maggie-was already manifesting itself as something jagged and rusty. Maggie was having issues with being second chair. And for good reason. She was a professional prosecutor. From drug dealers and petty thieves to rapists and murderers, she had put dozens of criminals behind bars. I had appeared in dozens of trials myself but never as a prosecutor. Maggie would have to play backup to a novice and that realization wasn’t sitting well with her.

We sat in conference room A with the case files spread out before us on the big table. Though Williams had said I could run the case from my own independent office, the truth was, that wasn’t practical at the moment. I didn’t have an office outside my home. I primarily used the backseat of my Lincoln Town Car as my office and that wouldn’t do for The People versus Jason Jessup. I had my case manager setting up a temporary office in downtown but we were at least a few days away from that. So temporarily there we sat, eyes down and tensions up.

“Maggie,” I said, “when it comes to prosecuting bad guys, I will readily admit that I couldn’t carry your lunch. But the thing is, when it comes to politics and prosecuting bad guys, the powers that be have put me in the first chair. That’s the way it is and we can either accept it or not. I took this job and asked for you. If you don’t think we-”

“I just don’t like the idea of carrying your briefcase through this whole thing,” Maggie said.

“You won’t be. Look, press conferences and outward appearances are one thing, but I fully assume that we’ll be working as a tag team. You’ll be conducting just as much of the investigation as I will be, probably more. The trial should be no different. We’ll come up with a strategy and choreograph it together. But you have to give me a little credit. I know my way around a courtroom. I’ll just be sitting at the other table this time.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mickey. On the defense side you have a responsibility to one person. Your client. When you are a prosecutor, you represent the people and that is a lot more responsibility. That’s why they call it the burden of proof.”

“Whatever. If you’re saying I shouldn’t be doing this, then I’m not the guy you should be complaining to. Go down the hall and talk to your boss. But if he kicks me off the case, you get kicked as well, and then you go back to Van Nuys for the rest of your career. Is that what you want?”

She didn’t answer and that was an answer in itself.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s just try to get through this without pulling each other’s hair out, okay? Remember, I’m not here to count convictions and advance my career. For me, it’s one and done. So we both want the same thing. Yes, you will have to help me. But you will also be helping-”

My phone started vibrating. I had left it out on the table. I didn’t recognize the number on the screen but took the call, just to get away from the conversation with Maggie.

“Haller.”

“Hey, Mick, how’d I do?”

“Who is this?”

“Sticks.”

Sticks was a freelance videographer who fed footage to the local news channels and sometimes even the bigs. I had known him so long I didn’t even remember his real name.

“How’d you do at what, Sticks? I’m busy here.”

“At the press conference. I set you up, man.”

I realized that it had been Sticks behind the lights, throwing the questions to me.

“Oh, yeah, yeah, you did good. Thanks for that.”

“Now you’re going to take care of me on the case, right? Give me the heads-up if there’s something for me, right? Something exclusive.”

“Yeah, no need to worry, Sticks. I got you covered. But I gotta go.”

I ended the call and put the phone back on the table. Maggie was typing something into her laptop. It looked like the momentary discontent had passed and I was hesitant to touch it again.

“That was a guy who works for the news stations. He might be useful to us at some point.”

“We don’t want to do anything underhanded. The prosecution is held to a much higher standard of ethics than the defense.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t win.

“That’s bullshit and I am not talking about doing anything un-”

The door opened and Harry Bosch stepped in, pushing the door with his back because he was carrying two large boxes in his hands.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

He put the boxes down on the table. I could tell the larger one was a carton from evidence archives. I guessed that the smaller one contained the police file on the original investigation.

“It took them three days to find the murder box. It was on the ’eighty-five aisle instead of ’eighty-six.”

He looked at me and then at Maggie and then back at me.

“So what’d I miss? War break out in the war room?”

“We were talking about prosecutorial tactics and it turns out we have opposing views.”

“Imagine that.”

He took the chair at the end of the table. I could tell he was going to have more to say. He lifted the top off the murder box and pulled out three accordion files and put them on the table. He then moved the box to the floor.

“You know, Mick, while we’re airing out our differences… I think before you pulled me into this little soap opera, you should’ve told me a few things up front.”

“Like what, Harry?”

“Like that this whole goddamn thing is about money and not murder.”

“What are you talking about? What money?”

Bosch just stared at me without responding.

“You’re talking about Jessup’s lawsuit?” I asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “I had an interesting discussion with Jessup today on the drive down. Got me thinking and it crossed my mind that if we jam this guy into a deal, the lawsuit against the city and county goes away because a guy who admits to murder isn’t going to be able to sue and claim he was railroaded. So I guess what I want to know is what we’re really doing here. Are we trying to put a murder suspect on trial or are we just trying to save the city and county a few million bucks?”

I noticed Maggie’s posture straighten as she considered the same thing.

“You gotta be kidding me,” she said. “If that-”

“Hold on, hold on,” I interjected. “Let’s be cool about this. I don’t think that’s the case here, okay? It’s not that I haven’t thought about it but Williams didn’t say one word about going for a dispo on this case. He told me to take it to trial. In fact, he assumes it will go to trial for the same reason you just mentioned. Jessup will never take a dispo for time served or anything else because there is no pot of gold in that. No book, no movie, no payout from the city. If he wants the money, he’s got to go to trial and win.”

Maggie nodded slowly as if weighing a valid supposition. Bosch didn’t seem appeased at all.

“But how would you know what Williams is up to?” he asked. “You’re an outsider. They could’ve brought you in, wound you up and pointed you in the right direction and then sat back to watch you go.”

“He’s right,” Maggie added. “Jessup doesn’t even have a defense attorney. As soon as he does he’ll start talking deal.”

I raised my hands in a calming gesture.

“Look, at the press conference today. I threw out that we were going for the death penalty. I just did that to see how Williams would react. He didn’t expect it and afterward he pressed me in the hallway. He told me that it wasn’t a decision I got to make. I told him it was just strategy, that I wanted Jessup to start thinking about a deal. And it gave Williams pause. He didn’t see it. If he was thinking of a deal just to blow up the civil action, I would have been able to read it. I’m good at reading people.”

I could tell I still hadn’t quite won Bosch over.

“Remember last year, with the two men from Hong Kong who wanted your ass on the next plane to China? I read them right and I played them right.”

In his eyes I saw Bosch relent. That China story was a reminder that he owed me one and I was collecting.

“Okay,” he said. “So what do we do?”

“We assume Jessup’s going to go to trial. As soon as he lawyers up, we’ll know for sure. But we start preparing for it now, because if I was going to represent him, I would refuse to waive speedy trial. I would try to jam the prosecution on time to prepare and make the people put up or shut up.”

I checked the date on my watch.

“If I’m right, that gives us forty-eight days till trial. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then.”

We looked at one another and sat in silence for a few moments before I threw the lead to Maggie.

“Maggie has spent the better part of the last week with the prosecution file on this. Harry, I know what you just brought in will have a lot of overlap. But why don’t we start here by having Mags go through the case as presented at trial in ’eighty-six? I think that will give us a good starting point of looking at what we need to do this time out.”

Bosch nodded his approval and I signaled for Maggie to begin. She pulled her laptop over in front of her.

“Okay, a couple of basics first. Because it was a death penalty case, jury selection was the longest part of the trial. Almost three weeks. The trial itself lasted seven days and then there were three days of deliberation on the initial verdicts, then the death penalty phase went another two weeks. But seven days of testimony and arguments-that to me is fast for a capital murder case. It was pretty cut-and-dried. And the defense… well, there wasn’t much of a defense.”

She looked at me as if I were responsible for the poor defense of the accused, even though I hadn’t even gotten out of law school by ’eighty-six.

“Who was his lawyer?” I asked.

“Charles Barnard,” she said. “I checked with the California bar. He won’t be handling the retrial. He’s listed as deceased as of ’ninety-four. The prosecutor, Gary Lintz, is also long gone.”

“Don’t remember either of them. Who was the judge?”

“Walter Sackville. He’s long retired but I do remember him. He was tough.”

“I had a few cases with him,” Bosch added. “He wouldn’t take any shit from either side.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Okay, so the prosecution’s story was this. The Landy family-that was our victim, Melissa, who was twelve, her thirteen-year-old sister, Sarah, mother, Regina, and stepfather, Kensington-lived on Windsor Boulevard in Hancock Park. The home was about a block north of Wilshire and in the vicinity of the Trinity United Church of God, which on Sundays back then drew about six thousand people to its two morning services. People parked their cars all over Hancock Park to go to the church. That is, until the residents there got tired of their neighborhood being overrun every Sunday with traffic and parking issues and went to City Hall about it. They got the neighborhood turned into a residential parking zone during weekend hours. You had to have a sticker to park on the streets, including Windsor. This opened the door to city-contracted tow truck operators patrolling the neighborhood like sharks on Sunday morning. Any cars without the proper resident sticker on the windshield were fair game. They got towed. Which finally brings us to Jason Jessup, our suspect.”

“He drove a tow truck,” I said.

“Exactly. He was a driver for a city contractor named Aardvark Towing. Cute name, got them to the front of the listings in the phone book back when people still used phone books.”

I glanced at Bosch and could tell by his reaction that he was somebody who still used the phone book instead of the Internet. Maggie didn’t notice and continued.

“On the morning in question Jessup was working the Hancock Park patrol. At the Landy house, the family happened to be putting a pool in the backyard. Kensington Landy was a musician who scored films and was doing quite well at the time. So they were putting in a pool and there was a large open hole and giant piles of dirt in the backyard. The parents didn’t want the girls playing back there. Thought it was dangerous, plus on this morning the girls were in their church dresses. The house has a large front yard. The stepfather told the girls to play outside for a few minutes before the family was planning to go off to church themselves. The older one, Sarah, was told to watch over Melissa.”

“Did they go to Trinity United?” I asked.

“No, they went to Sacred Heart in Beverly Hills. Anyway, the kids were only out there about fifteen minutes. Mother was still upstairs getting ready and the stepfather, who was also supposed to be keeping an eye on the girls, was watching television inside. An overnight sports report on ESPN or whatever they had back then. He forgot about the girls.”

Bosch shook his head, and I knew exactly how he felt. It was not in judgment of the father but in understanding of how it could have happened and in the dread of any parent who knows how a small mistake could be so costly.

“At some point, he heard screaming,” Maggie continued. “He ran out the front door and found the older girl, Sarah, in the yard. She was screaming that a man took Melissa. The stepfather ran up the street looking for her but there was no sign. Like that, she was gone.”

My ex-wife stopped there for a moment to compose herself. Everyone in the room had a young daughter and could understand the shearing of life that happened at that moment for every person in the Landy family.

“Police were called and the response was quick,” she continued. “This was Hancock Park, after all. The first bulletins were out in a matter of minutes. Detectives were dispatched right away.”

“So this whole thing went down in broad daylight?” Bosch asked.

Maggie nodded.

“It happened about ten-forty. The Landys were going to an eleven o’clock service.”

“And nobody else saw this?”

“You gotta remember, this was Hancock Park. A lot of tall hedges, a lot of walls, a lot of privacy. People there are good at keeping the world out. Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything until Sarah started screaming, and by then it was too late.”

“Was there a wall or a hedge at the Landy house?”

“Six-foot hedges down the north and south property lines but not on the street side. It was theorized at the time that Jessup drove by in his tow truck and saw the girl alone in the yard. Then he acted impulsively.”

We sat in silence for a few moments as we thought about the wrenching serendipity of fate. A tow truck goes by a house. The driver sees a girl, alone and vulnerable. All in a moment he figures he can grab her and get away with it.

“So,” Bosch finally said, “how did they get him?”

“The responding detectives were on the scene in less than an hour. The lead was named Doral Kloster and his partner was Chad Steiner. I checked. Steiner is dead and Kloster is retired and has late-stage Alzheimer’s. He’s no use to us now.”

“Damn,” Bosch said.

“Anyway, they got there quickly and moved quickly. They interviewed Sarah and she described the abductor as being dressed like a garbage man. Further questioning revealed this to mean that he was wearing dirty coveralls like the city garbage crews used. She said she heard the garbage truck in the street but couldn’t see it through a bush where she had hidden from her sister during a game of hide-and-seek. Problem is that it was a Sunday. There was no garbage pickup on Sundays. But the stepfather hears this and puts it together, mentions the tow trucks that run up and down the street on Sunday mornings. That becomes their best lead. The detectives get the list of city contractors and they start visiting tow yards.

“There were three contractors who worked the Wilshire corridor. One of them is Aardvark, where they go and are told they have three trucks working in the field. The drivers are called in and Jessup is one of them. The other two guys are named Derek Wilbern and William Clinton-really. They’re separated and questioned but nothing comes up suspicious. They run ’em through the box and Jessup and Clinton are clean but Wilbern has an arrest but no conviction on an attempted rape two years before. That would be good enough to get him a ride downtown for a lineup, but the girl is still missing and there’s no time for formalities, no time to put together a lineup.”

“They probably took him back to the house,” Bosch said. “They had no choice. They had to keep things moving.”

“That’s right. But Kloster knew he was on thin ice. He might get the girl to ID Wilbern but then he’d lose it in court for being unduly suggestive-you know, ‘Is this the guy?’ So he did the next best thing he could. He took all three drivers in their overalls back to the Landy house. Each was a white man in his twenties. They all wore the company overalls. Kloster broke procedure for the sake of speed, hoping to have a chance to find the girl alive. Sarah Landy’s bedroom was on the second floor in the front of the house. Kloster takes the girl up to her room and has her look out the window to the street. Through the venetian blinds. He radios his partner, who has the three guys get out of two patrol cars and stand in the street. But Sarah doesn’t ID Wilbern. She points to Jessup and says that’s the guy.”

Maggie looked through the documents in front of her and checked an investigative chronology before continuing.

“The ID is made at one o’clock. That is really quick work. The girl’s only been gone a little over two hours. They start sweating Jessup but he doesn’t give up a thing. Denies it all. They are working on him and getting nowhere when the call comes in. A girl’s body has been found in a Dumpster behind the El Rey Theatre on Wilshire. That was about ten blocks from Windsor and the Landy house. Cause of death would later be determined to be manual strangulation. She was not raped and there was no semen in the mouth or throat.”

Maggie stopped her summary there. She looked at Bosch and then me and solemnly nodded, giving the dead her moment.

Six

Tuesday, February 16, 4:48 P.M .

Bosch liked watching her and listening to the way she talked. He could tell the case was already under her skin. Maggie McFierce. Of course that was what they called her. More important, it was what she thought about herself. He had been on the case with her for less than a week but he understood this within the first hour of meeting her. She knew the secret. That it wasn’t about code and procedure. It wasn’t about jurisprudence and strategy. It was about taking that dark thing that you knew was out there in the world and bringing it inside. Making it yours. Forging it over an internal fire into something sharp and strong that you could hold in your hands and fight back with.

Relentlessly.

“Jessup asked for a lawyer and gave no further statement,” McPherson said, continuing her summary. “The case was initially built around the older sister’s identification and evidence found in Jessup’s tow truck. Three strands of the victim’s hair found in the seat crack. It was probably where he strangled her.”

“There was nothing on the girl?” Bosch asked. “Nothing from Jessup or the truck?”

“Nothing usable in court. The DNA was found on her dress while it was being examined two days later. It was actually the older girl’s dress. The younger girl borrowed it that day. One small deposit of semen was found on the front hem. It was typed but of course there was no DNA in criminal prosecutions back then. A blood type was determined and it was A-positive, the second-most popular type among humans, accounting for thirty-four percent of the population. Jessup matched but all it did was include him in the suspect pool. The prosecutor decided not to introduce it at trial because it would’ve just given the defense the ability to point out to the jury that the donor pool was more than a million men in Los Angeles County alone.”

Bosch saw her throw another look at her ex-husband. As if he were responsible for the courtroom obfuscations of all defense attorneys everywhere. Harry was starting to get an idea about why their marriage didn’t work out.

“It’s amazing how far we’ve come,” Haller said. “Now they make and break cases on the DNA alone.”

“Moving on,” McPherson said. “The prosecution had the hair evidence and the eyewitness. It also had opportunity-Jessup knew the neighborhood and was working there the morning of the murder. As far as motivation went, their backgrounding of Jessup produced a history of physical abuse by his father and psychopathic behavior. A lot of this came out on the record during the death penalty phase, too. But-and I will say this before you jump on it, Haller-no criminal convictions.”

“And you said no sexual assault?” Bosch asked.

“No evidence of penetration or sexual assault. But this was no doubt a sexually motivated crime. The semen aside, it was a classic control crime. The perpetrator seizing momentary control in a world where he felt he controlled very little. He acted impulsively. At the time, the semen found on her dress was a piece of the same puzzle. It was theorized that he killed the girl and then masturbated, cleaning up after himself but leaving one small deposit of semen on the dress by mistake. The stain had the appearance of a transfer deposit. It wasn’t a drop. It was a smear.”

“The hit we just got on the DNA helps explain that,” Haller said.

“Possibly,” McPherson responded. “But let’s discuss new evidence later. Right now, I’m talking about what they had and what they knew in nineteen eighty-six.”

“Fine. Go on.”

“That’s it on the evidence but not on the prosecution’s case. Two months before trial they get a call from the guy who’s in the cell next to Jessup at County. He-”

“Jailhouse snitches,” Haller said, interrupting. “Never met one who told the truth, never met a prosecutor who didn’t use them anyway.”

“Can I continue?” McPherson asked indignantly.

“Please do,” Haller responded.

“Felix Turner, a repeat drug offender who was in and out of County so often that they made him a jail orderly because he knew the day-to-day operations as well as the deputies. He delivered meals to inmates in high-power lockdown. He tells investigators that Jessup provided him with details that only the killer would know. He was interviewed and he did indeed have details of the crime that were not made public. Like that the victim’s shoes were removed, that she was not sexually assaulted, that he had wiped himself off on her dress.”

“And so they believed him and made him the star witness,” Haller said.

“They believed him and put him on the stand at trial. Not as a star witness. But his testimony was significant. Nevertheless, four years later, the Times comes out with a front-page exposé on Felix ‘The Burner’ Turner, professional jailhouse snitch who had testified for the prosecution in sixteen different cases over a seven-year period, garnering significant reductions in charges and jail time, and other perks like private cells, good jobs and large quantities of cigarettes.”

Bosch remembered the scandal. It rocked the DA’s office in the early nineties and resulted in changes in the use of jailhouse informants as trial witnesses. It was one of many black eyes local law enforcement suffered in the decade.

“Turner was discredited in the newspaper investigation. It said he used a private investigator on the outside to gather information on crimes and then to feed it to him. As you may remember, it changed how we used information that comes to us through the jails.”

“Not enough,” Haller said. “It didn’t end the entire use of jailhouse snitches and it should have.”

“Can we just focus on our case here?” McPherson said, obviously tired of Haller’s posturing.

“Sure,” Haller said. “Let’s focus.”

“Okay, well, by the time the Times came out with all of this, Jessup had long been convicted and was sitting in San Quentin. He of course launched an appeal citing police and prosecutorial misconduct. It went nowhere fast, with every appellate panel agreeing that while the use of Turner as a witness was egregious, his impact on the jury was not enough to have changed the verdict. The rest of the evidence was more than enough to convict.”

“And that was that,” Haller said. “They rubber-stamped it.”

“An interesting note is that Felix Turner was found murdered in West Hollywood a year after the Times exposé,” McPherson said. “The case was never solved.”

“Had it coming as far as I’m concerned,” Haller added.

That brought a pause to the discussion. Bosch used it to steer the meeting back to the evidence and to step in with some questions he had been considering.

“Is the hair evidence still available?”

It took McPherson a moment to drop Felix Turner and go back to the evidence.

“Yes, we still have it,” she said. “This case is twenty-four years old but it was always under challenge. That’s where Jessup and his jailhouse lawyering actually helped us. He was constantly filing writs and appeals. So the trial evidence was never destroyed. Of course, that eventually allowed him to get the DNA analysis off the swatch cut from the dress, but we still have all trial evidence and will be able to use it. He has claimed since day one that the hair in the truck was planted by the police.”

“I don’t think his defense at retrial will be much different from what was presented at his first trial and in his appeals,” Haller said. “The girl made the wrong ID in a prejudicial setting, and from then on it was a rush to judgment. Facing a monumental lack of physical evidence, the police planted hair from the victim in his tow truck. It didn’t play so well before a jury in ’eighty-six, but that was before Rodney King and the riots in ’ninety-two, the O.J. Simpson case, the Rampart scandal and all the other controversies that have engulfed the police department since. It’s probably going to play really well now.”

“So then, what are our chances?” Bosch asked.

Haller looked across the table at McPherson before answering.

“Based on what we know so far,” he said, “I think I’d have a better chance if I were on the other side of the aisle on this one.”

Bosch saw McPherson’s eyes grow dark.

“Well then, maybe you should cross back over.”

Haller shook his head.

“No, I made a deal. It may have been a bad deal but I’m sticking to it. Besides, it’s not often I get to be on the side of might and right. I could get used to that-even in a losing cause.”

He smiled at his ex-wife but she didn’t return the sentiment.

“What about the sister?” Bosch asked.

McPherson swung her gaze toward him.

“The witness? That’s our second problem. If she’s alive, then she’s thirty-seven now. Finding her is the problem. No help from the parents. Her real father died when she was seven. Her mother committed suicide on her sister’s grave three years after the murder. And the stepfather drank himself into liver failure and died while waiting for a transplant six years ago. I had one of the investigators here do a quick rundown on her on the computer and Sarah Landy’s trail drops off in San Francisco about the same time her stepfather died. That same year she also cleared a probation tail for a controlled substance conviction. Records show she’s been married and divorced twice, arrested multiple times for drugs and petty crimes. And then, like I said, she dropped off the grid. She either died or cleaned up her act. Even if she changed names, her prints would have left a trail if she’d been popped again in the past six years. But there’s nothing.”

“I don’t think we have much of a case if we don’t have her,” Haller said. “We’re going to need a real live person to point the finger across twenty-four years and say he did it.”

“I agree,” McPherson said. “She’s key. The jury will need to hear the woman tell them that as a girl she did not make a mistake. That she was sure then and she is sure now. If we can’t find her and get her to do that, then we have the victim’s hair to go with and that’s about it. They’ll have the DNA and that will trump everything.”

“And we will go down in flames,” Haller said.

McPherson didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to.

“Don’t worry,” Bosch said. “I’ll find her.”

The two lawyers looked at him. It wasn’t a time for empty rah-rah speeches. He meant it.

“If she’s alive,” he said, “I’ll find her.”

“Good,” Haller said. “That’ll be your first priority.”

Bosch took out his key chain and opened the small penknife attached to it. He used it to cut the red seal on the evidence box. He had no idea what would be in the box. The evidence that had been introduced at trial twenty-four years earlier was still in the possession of the DA’s Office. This box would contain other evidence that was gathered but not presented at trial.

Bosch put on a set of latex gloves from his pocket and then opened the box. On top was a paper bag that contained the victim’s dress. It was a surprise. He had assumed that the dress had been introduced at trial, if only for the sympathetic response it would get from the jurors.

Opening the bag brought a musty smell to the room. He lifted the dress out, holding it up by the shoulders. All three of them were silent. Bosch was holding up a dress that a little girl had been wearing when she was murdered. It was blue with a darker blue bow in the front. A six-inch square had been cut out of the front hem, the location of the semen stain.

“Why is this here?” Bosch asked. “Wouldn’t they have presented this at trial?”

Haller said nothing. McPherson leaned forward and looked closely at the dress as she considered a response.

“I think… they didn’t show it because of the cutout. Showing the dress would let the defense ask about the cutout. That would lead to the blood-typing. The prosecution chose not to get into it during the presentation of the evidence. They probably relied on crime scene photos that showed the girl in the dress. They left it to the defense to introduce it and they never did.”

Bosch folded the dress and put it down on the table. Also in the box was a pair of black patent leather shoes. They seemed very small and sad to him. There was a second paper bag, which contained the victim’s underwear and socks. An accompanying lab report stated that the items had been checked for bodily fluids as well as hair and fiber evidence but no such evidence had been found.

At the bottom of the box was a plastic bag containing a silver necklace with a charm on it. He looked at it through the plastic and identified the figure on the charm as Winnie the Pooh. There was also a bag containing a bracelet of aqua-blue beads on an elastic string.

“That’s it,” he said.

“We should have forensics take a fresh look at it all,” McPherson said. “You never know. Technology has advanced quite a bit in twenty-four years.”

“I’ll get it done,” Bosch said.

“By the way,” McPherson asked, “where were the shoes found? They’re not on the victim’s feet in the crime scene photos.”

Bosch looked at the property report that was taped to the inside of the box’s top.

“According to this they were found underneath the body. They must’ve come off in the truck, maybe when she was strangled. The killer threw them into the Dumpster first, then dropped in her body.”

The images conjured by the items in the box had brought a decidedly somber mood to the prosecution team. Bosch started to carefully return everything to the box. He put the envelope containing the necklace in last.

“How old was your daughter when she left Winnie the Pooh behind?” he asked.

Haller and McPherson looked at each other. Haller deferred.

“Five or six,” McPherson said. “Why?”

“Mine, too, I think. But this twelve-year-old had it on her necklace. I wonder why.”

“Maybe because of where it came from,” Haller said. “Hayley-our daughter-still wears a bracelet I got for her about five years ago.”

McPherson looked at him as if challenging the assertion.

“Not all the time,” Haller said quickly. “But on occasion. Sometimes when I pick her up. Maybe the necklace came from her real father before he died.”

A low chime came from McPherson’s computer and she checked her e-mail. She studied the screen for a few moments before speaking.

“This is from John Rivas, who handles afternoon arraignments in Department one hundred. Jessup’s now got a criminal defense attorney and John’s working on getting Jessup on the docket for a bail hearing. He’s coming over on the last bus from City Jail.”

“Who’s the lawyer?” Haller asked.

“You’ll love this. Clever Clive Royce is taking the case pro bono. It’s a referral from the GJP.”

Bosch knew the name. Royce was a high-profile guy who was a media darling who never missed a chance to stand in front of a camera and say all the things he wasn’t allowed to say in court.

“Of course he’s taking it pro bono,” Haller said. “He’ll make it up on the back end. Sound bites and headlines, that’s all Clive cares about.”

“I’ve never gone up against him,” McPherson said. “I can’t wait.”

“Is Jessup actually on the docket?”

“Not yet. But Royce is talking to the clerk. Rivas wants to know if we want him to handle it. He’ll oppose bail.”

“No, we’ll take it,” Haller said. “Let’s go.”

McPherson closed her computer at the same time Bosch put the top back on the evidence box.

“You want to come?” Haller asked him. “Get a look at the enemy?”

“I just spent seven hours with him, remember?”

“I don’t think he was talking about Jessup,” McPherson said.

Bosch nodded.

“No, I’ll pass,” he said. “I’m going to take this stuff over to SID and get to work on tracking down our witness. I’ll let you know when I find her.”

Seven

Tuesday, February 16, 5:30 P.M .

Department 100 was the largest courtroom in the CCB and reserved for morning and evening arraignment court, the twin intake points of the local justice system. All those charged with crimes had to be brought before a judge within twenty-four hours, and in the CCB this required a large courtroom with a large gallery section where the families and friends of the accused could sit. The courtroom was used for first appearances after arrest, when the loved ones were still naive about the lengthy, devastating and difficult journey the defendant was embarking upon. At arraignment, it was not unusual to have mom, dad, wife, sister-in-law, aunt, uncle and even a neighbor or two in the courtroom in a show of support for the defendant and outrage at his arrest. In another eighteen months, when the case would grind to a finale at sentencing, the defendant would be lucky to have even dear old mom still in attendance.

The other side of the gate was usually just as crowded, with lawyers of all stripes. Grizzled veterans, bored public defenders, slick cartel reps, wary prosecutors and media hounds all mingled in the well or stood against the glass partition surrounding the prisoner pen and whispered to their clients.

Presiding over this anthill was Judge Malcolm Firestone, who sat with his head down and his sharp shoulders jutting up and closer to his ears with each passing year. His black robe gave them the appearance of folded wings and the overall image was one of Firestone as a vulture waiting impatiently to dine on the bloody detritus of the justice system.

Firestone handled the evening arraignment docket, which started at three P.M. and went as far into the night as the list of detainees required. Consequently, he was a jurist who liked to keep things moving. You had to act fast in one hundred or risk being run over and left behind. In here, justice was an assembly line with a conveyor belt that never stopped turning. Firestone wanted to get home. The lawyers wanted to get home. Everybody wanted to get home.

I entered the courtroom with Maggie and immediately saw the cameras being set up in a six-foot corral to the left side, across the courtroom from the glass pen that housed defendants brought in six at a time. Without the glare of spotlights this time, I saw my friend Sticks setting the legs of the tool that provided his nickname, his tripod. He saw me and gave me a nod and I returned it.

Maggie tapped me on the arm and pointed toward a man seated at the prosecution table with three other lawyers.

“That’s Rivas on the end.”

“Okay. You go talk to him while I check in with the clerk.”

“You don’t have to check in, Haller. You’re a prosecutor, remember?”

“Oh, cool. I forgot.”

We headed over to the prosecution table and Maggie introduced me to Rivas. The prosecutor was a baby lawyer, probably no more than a few years out of a top-ranked law school. My guess was that he was biding his time, playing office politics and waiting to make a move up the ladder and out of the hellhole of arraignment court. It didn’t help that I had come from across the aisle to grab the golden ring of the office’s current caseload. By his body language I registered his wariness. I was at the wrong table. I was the fox in the henhouse. And I knew that before the hearing was over, I was going to confirm his suspicions.

After the perfunctory handshake, I looked around for Clive Royce and found him seated against the railing, conferring with a young woman who was probably his associate. They were leaning toward each other, looking into an open folder with a thick sheaf of documents in it. I approached with my hand out.

“Clive ‘The Barrister’ Royce, how’s it hanging, old chap?”

He looked up and a smile immediately creased his well-tanned face. Like a perfect gentleman, he stood up before accepting my hand.

“Mickey, how are you? I’m sorry it looks like we’re going to be opposing counsel on this one.”

I knew he was sorry but not too sorry. Royce had built his career on picking winners. He would not risk going pro bono and stepping into a heavy media case if he didn’t think it would amount to free advertising and another victory. He was in it to win it and behind the smile was a set of sharp teeth.

“Me, too. And I am sure you will make me regret the day I crossed the aisle.”

“Well, I guess we’re both fulfilling our public duty, yes? You helping out the district attorney and me taking on Jessup on the cuff.”

Royce still carried an English accent even though he had lived more than half his fifty years in the United States. It gave him an aura of culture and distinction that belied his practice of defending people accused of heinous crimes. He wore a three-piece suit with a barely discernible chalk line in the gabardine. His bald pate was well tanned and smooth, his beard dyed black and groomed to the very last hair.

“That’s one way of looking at it,” I said.

“Oh, where are my manners? Mickey, this is my associate Denise Graydon. She’ll be assisting me in the defense of Mr. Jessup.”

Graydon stood up and shook my hand firmly.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

I looked around to see if Maggie was standing nearby and could be introduced but she was huddled with Rivas at the prosecution table.

“Well,” I said to Royce. “Did you get your client on the docket?”

“I did indeed. He’ll be first in the group after this one. I’ve already gone back and visited and we’ll be ready to make a motion for bail. I was wondering, though, since we have a few minutes, could we step out into the corridor for a word?”

“Sure, Clive. Let’s do it now.”

Royce told his associate to wait in the courtroom and retrieve us when the next group of defendants was brought into the glass cage. I followed Royce through the gate and down the aisle between the crowded rows of the gallery. We went through the mantrap and into the hallway.

“You want to get a cup of tea?” Royce asked.

“I don’t think there’s time. What’s up, Clive?”

Royce folded his arms and got serious.

“I must tell you, Mick, that I am not out to embarrass you. You are a friend and colleague in the defense bar. But you have gotten yourself into a no-win situation here, yes? What are we going to do about it?”

I smiled and glanced up and down the crowded hallway. Nobody was paying attention to us.

“Are you saying that your client wants to plead this out?”

“On the contrary. There will be no plea negotiation on this matter. The district attorney has made the wrong choice and it’s very clear what maneuver he is undertaking here and how he is using you as a pawn in the process. I must put you on notice that if you insist on taking Jason Jessup to trial, then you are going to embarrass yourself. As a professional courtesy, I just thought I needed to tell you this.”

Before I could answer, Graydon came out of the courtroom and headed quickly toward us.

“Somebody in the first group is not ready, so Jessup’s been moved up and was just brought out.”

“We’ll be in straightaway,” Royce said.

She hesitated and then realized her boss wanted her to go back into the courtroom. She went back through the doors and Royce turned his attention back to me. I spoke before he could.

“I appreciate your courtesy and concern, Clive. But if your client wants a trial, he’ll get a trial. We’ll be ready and we’ll see who gets embarrassed and who goes back to prison.”

“Brilliant, then. I look forward to the contest.”

I followed him back inside. Court was in session and on my way down the aisle I saw Lorna Taylor, my office manager and second ex-wife, sitting at the end of one of the crowded rows. I leaned over to whisper.

“Hey, what are you doing here?”

“I had to come see the big moment.”

“How did you even know? I just found out fifteen minutes ago.”

“I guess so did KNX. I was already down here to look at office space and heard it on the radio that Jessup was going to appear in court. So I came.”

“Well, thanks for being here, Lorna. How is the search going? I really need to get out of this building. Soon.”

“I have three more showings after this. That’ll be enough. I’ll let you know my final choices tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s-”

I heard Jessup’s name called by the clerk.

“Look, I gotta get in there. We’ll talk later.”

“Go get ’em, Mickey!”

I found an empty seat waiting for me next to Maggie at the prosecution table. Rivas had moved to the row of seats against the gate. Royce had moved to the glass cage, where he was whispering to his client. Jessup was wearing an orange jumpsuit-the jail uniform-and looked calm and subdued. He was nodding to everything Royce whispered in his ear. He somehow seemed younger than I had thought he would. I guess I expected all of those years in prison to have taken their toll. I knew he was forty-eight but he looked no older than forty. He didn’t even have a jailhouse pallor. His skin was pale but it looked healthy, especially next to the overtanned Royce.

“Where did you go?” Maggie whispered to me. “I thought I was going to have to handle this myself.”

“I was just outside conferring with defense counsel. Do you have the charges handy? In case I have to read them into the record.”

“You won’t have to enter the charges. All you have to do is stand up and say that you believe Jessup is a flight risk and a danger to the community. He-”

“But I don’t believe he’s a flight risk. His lawyer just told me they’re ready to go and that they’re not interested in a disposition. He wants the money and the only way he’ll get it is to stick around and go to trial-and win.”

“So?”

She seemed astonished and looked down at the files stacked in front of her.

“Mags, your philosophy is to argue everything and give no quarter. I don’t think that’s going to work here. I have a strategy and-”

She turned and leaned in closer to me.

“Then I’ll just leave you and your strategy and your bald buddy from the defense bar to it.”

She pushed back her chair and got up, grabbing her briefcase from the floor.

“Maggie…”

She charged through the gate and headed toward the rear door of the courtroom. I watched her go, knowing that while I didn’t like the result, I had needed to set the lines of our prosecutorial relationship.

Jessup’s name was called and Royce identified himself for the record. I then stood and said the words I never expected I would say.

“Michael Haller for the People.”

Even Judge Firestone looked up from his perch, peering at me over a pair of reading glasses. Probably for the first time in weeks something out of the ordinary had occurred in his courtroom. A dyed-in-the-wool defense attorney had stood for the People.

“Well, gentlemen, this is an arraignment court and I have a note here saying you want to talk about bail.”

Jessup was charged twenty-four years ago with murder and abduction. When the supreme court reversed his conviction it did not throw out the charges. That had been left to the DA’s Office. So he still stood accused of the crimes and his not-guilty plea of twenty-four years ago remained in place. The case now had to be assigned to a courtroom and a judge for trial. A motion to discuss bail would usually be delayed until that point, except that Jessup, through Royce, was pushing the issue forward by coming to Firestone.

“Your Honor,” Royce said, “my client was already arraigned twenty-four years ago. What we would like to do today is discuss a motion for bail and to move this case along to trial. Mr. Jessup has waited a long time for his freedom and for justice. He has no intention of waiving his right to a speedy trial.”

I knew it was the move Royce would make, because it was the move I would have made. Every person accused of a crime is guaranteed a speedy trial. Most often trials are delayed at the defense’s request or acquiescence as both sides want time to prepare. As a pressure tactic, Royce was not going to suspend the speedy-trial statute. With a case and evidence twenty-four years old, not to mention a primary witness whose whereabouts were at the moment unknown, it was not only prudent but a no-brainer to put the prosecution on the clock. When the supreme court reversed the conviction, that clock started ticking. The People had sixty days from that point to bring Jessup to trial. Twelve of them had already gone by.

“I can move the case to the clerk for assignment,” Firestone said. “And I would prefer that the assigned judge handle the question of bail.”

Royce composed his thoughts for a moment before responding. In doing so he turned his body slightly so the cameras would have a better angle on him.

“Your Honor, my client has been falsely incarcerated for twenty-four years. And those aren’t just my words, that’s the opinion of the state supreme court. Now they have pulled him out of prison and brought him down here so he can face trial once again. This is all part of an ongoing scheme that has nothing to do with justice, and everything to do with money and politics. It’s about avoiding responsibility for corruptly taking a man’s freedom. To put this over until another hearing on another day would continue the travesty of justice that has beset Jason Jessup for more than two decades.”

“Very well.”

Firestone still seemed put out and annoyed. The assembly line had thrown a gear. He had a docket that had probably started with more than seventy-five names on it and a desire to get through them in time to get home for dinner before eight. Royce was going to slow things down immeasurably with his request for a full debate on whether Jessup should be allowed his release while awaiting trial. But Firestone, like Royce, was about to get the surprise of the day. If he didn’t make it home in time for dinner, it wouldn’t be because of me.

Royce asked the judge for an OR, meaning Jessup would have to put up no money as bail and simply be released on his own recognizance. This was just his opener. He fully expected there to be a financial figure attached to Jessup’s freedom, if he was successful at all. Murder suspects didn’t get OR’ed. In the rare instance when bail was granted in a murder case, it usually came with a steep price tag. Whether Jessup could raise the money through his supporters or from the book and movie deals he was supposedly negotiating was not germane to the discussion.

Royce closed his request by arguing that Jessup should not be considered a flight risk for the very same reason I had outlined to Maggie. He had no interest in running. His only interest was in fighting to clear his name after twenty-four years of wrongful imprisonment.

“Mr. Jessup has no other purpose at this time than to stay put and prove once and for all that he is innocent and that he has paid a nightmarish price for the mistakes and misconduct of this District Attorney’s Office.”

The whole time Royce spoke I watched Jessup in the glass cage. He knew the cameras were on him and he maintained a pose of rightful indignation. Despite his efforts, he could not disguise the anger and hate in his eyes. Twenty-four years in prison had made that permanent.

Firestone finished writing a note and then asked for my response. I stood and waited until the judge looked up at me.

“Go ahead, Mr. Haller,” he prompted.

“Judge, providing that Mr. Jessup can show documentation of residence, the state does not oppose bail at this time.”

Firestone stared at me for a long moment as he computed that my response was diametrically opposite to what he thought it would be. The hushed sounds of the courtroom seemed to get even lower as the impact of my response was understood by every lawyer in the room.

“Did I get that right, Mr. Haller?” Firestone said. “You are not objecting to an OR release in a murder case?”

“That is correct, Your Honor. We are fully expecting Mr. Jessup to show for trial. There’s no money in it for him if he doesn’t.”

“Your Honor!” Royce cried. “I object to Mr. Haller infecting the record with such prejudicial pap directed solely at the media in attendance. My client has no other purpose at this point than-”

“I understand, Mr. Royce,” Firestone interjected. “But I think you did a fair amount of playing to the cameras yourself. Let’s just leave it at that. Without objection from the prosecution, I am releasing Mr. Jessup on his own recognizance once he provides the clerk with documentation of residence. Mr. Jessup is not to leave Los Angeles County without permission of the court to which his case is assigned.”

Firestone then referred the case to the clerk of the court’s office for reassignment to another department for trial. We were now finally out of Judge Firestone’s orbit. He could restart the assembly line and get home for dinner. I picked up the files Maggie had left behind and left the table. Royce was back at the seat at the railing, dumping files into a leather briefcase. His young associate was helping him.

“How did it feel, Mick?” he asked me.

“What, being a prosecutor?”

“Yes, crossing the aisle.”

“Not too much different, to tell you the truth. It was all procedure today.”

“You will be raked over the coals for letting my client walk out of here.”

“Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke. Just make sure he stays clean, Clive. If he doesn’t, then my ass really will be thrown on the fire. And so will his.”

“No problem there. We’ll take care of him. He’s the least of your worries, you know.”

“How’s that, Clive?”

“You don’t have much in the way of evidence, can’t find your main witness, and the DNA is a case killer. You’re captain of the Titanic, Mickey, and Gabriel Williams put you there. Makes me wonder what he’s got on you.”

Out of all that he said, I only wondered about one thing. How did he know about the missing witness? I, of course, didn’t ask him or respond to his jab about what the DA might have on me. I played it like all the overconfident prosecutors I had ever gone up against.

“Tell your client to enjoy himself while he’s out there, Clive. Because as soon as the verdict comes in, he’s going back inside.”

Royce smiled as he snapped his case closed. He changed the subject.

“When can we talk about discovery?”

“We can talk about it whenever you like. I’ll start putting a file together in the morning.”

“Good. Let’s talk soon, Mick, yes?”

“Like I said, anytime, Clive.”

He headed over to the court deputy’s desk, most likely to see about his client’s release. I pushed through the gate and connected with Lorna and we left the courtroom together. Waiting for me outside was a small gathering of reporters and cameras. The reporters shouted questions about my not objecting to bail and I told them no comment and walked on by. They waited in place for Royce to come out next.

“I don’t know, Mickey,” Lorna confided. “How do you think the DA is going to respond to the no bail?”

Just as she asked it my phone started beeping in my pocket. I realized I had forgotten to turn it off in the courtroom. That was an error that could have proven costly, depending on Firestone’s view of electronic interruptions while court was in session.

Looking at the screen, I said to Lorna, “I don’t know but I think I’m about to find out.”

I held up the phone so she could see that the caller ID said LADA.

“You take it. I’m going to run. Be careful, Mickey.”

She kissed me on the cheek and headed off to the elevator alcove. I connected to the call. I had guessed right. It was Gabriel Williams.

“Haller, what the hell are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“One of my people said you allowed Jessup to walk on an OR.”

“That’s right.”

“Then I’ll ask again, What the hell are you doing?”

“Look, I-”

“No, you look. I don’t know if you were just giving one of your buddies in the defense bar what he wanted or you are just stupid, but you never let a murderer walk. You understand me? Now, I want you to go back in there and ask for a new hearing on bail.”

“No, I’m not going to do that.”

There was a hard silence for at least ten seconds before Williams came back.

“Did I just hear you right, Haller?”

“I don’t know what you heard, Williams, but I’m not going back for a rehearing. You have to understand something. You gave me a bag of shit for a case and I have to do the best I can with it. What evidence we do have is twenty-four years old. We have a big hole blown in the side of the case with the DNA and we have an eyewitness we can’t find. So that tells me I have to do whatever I can do to make this case.”

“And what’s that got to do with letting this man out of jail?”

“Don’t you see, man? Jessup has been in prison for twenty-four years. It was no finishing school. Whatever he was when he went in? He’s worse now. If he’s on the outside, he’ll fuck up. And if he fucks up, that only helps us.”

“So in other words, you are putting the general public at risk while this guy is out there.”

“No, because you are going to talk to the LAPD and get them to watch this guy. So nobody gets hurt and they are able to step in and grab him the minute he acts out.”

Another silence followed but this time I could hear muffled voices and I figured that Williams was talking it over with his advisor, Joe Ridell. When his voice came back to me, it was stern but had lost the tone of outrage.

“Okay, this is what I want you to do. When you want to make a move like this, you come to me first. You understand?”

“That’s not going to happen. You wanted an independent prosecutor. That’s what you’ve got. Take it or leave it.”

There was a pause and then he hung up without further word. I closed my phone and watched for a few moments as Clive Royce exited the courtroom and waded into the crowd of reporters and cameras. Like a seasoned expert, he waited a moment for everyone to get their positions set and their lenses focused. He then proceeded with the first of what would be many impromptu but carefully scripted press briefings.

“I think the District Attorney’s Office is running scared,” he began.

It was what I knew he would say. I didn’t need to listen to the rest. I walked away.

Eight

Wednesday, February 17, 9:48 A.M .

Some people don’t want to be found. They take measures. They drag the branch behind them to confuse the trail. Some people are just running and they don’t care what they leave in their wake. What’s important is that the past is behind them and that they keep moving away from it.

Once he back-checked the DA investigator’s work, it took Bosch only two hours to find a current name and address for their missing witness, Melissa Landy’s older sister, Sarah. She hadn’t dragged a branch. She had used the things that were close and just kept moving. The DA’s investigator who lost the trail in San Francisco had not looked backwards for clues. That was his mistake. He had looked forward and he’d found an empty trail.

Bosch had started as his predecessor had, typing the name Sarah Landy and birth date April 14, 1972, into the computer. The department’s various search engines provided myriad points of impact with law enforcement and society.

First there were arrests on drug charges in 1989 and 1990-handled discreetly and sympathetically by the Division of Children’s Services. But she was beyond the reach and understanding of DYS for similar charges in late 1991 and two more times in 1992. There was probation and a period of rehabilitation and this was followed by a few years during which she left no digital fingerprints at all. Another search site provided Bosch with a series of addresses for her in Los Angeles in the early nineties. Harry recognized these as marginal neighborhoods where rents were probably low and drugs close by and easy to acquire. Sarah’s illegal substance of choice was crystal meth, a drug that burned away brain cells by the billions.

The trail on Sarah Landy, the girl who had hidden behind the bushes and watched her younger sister get taken by a killer, ended there.

Bosch opened the first file he had retrieved from the murder box and looked at the witness information sheet for Sarah. He found her Social Security number and fed that along with the DOB into the search engine. This gave him two new names: Sarah Edwards, beginning in 1991, and Sarah Witten in 1997. With women changes of last names only were usually an indicator of marriage, and the DA’s investigator had reported finding records of two marriages.

Under the name Sarah Edwards, the arrests continued, including two pops for property crimes and a tag for soliciting for prostitution. But the arrests were spread far enough apart and perhaps her story was sad enough that once again she never saw any jail time.

Bosch clicked through the mug shots for these arrests. They showed a young woman with changing hairstyles and colors but the unwavering look of hurt and defiance in her eyes. One mug shot showed a deep purple bruise under her left eye and open sores along her jawline. The photos seemed to tell the story best. A downward spiral of drugs and crime. An internal wound that never healed, a guilt never assuaged.

Under the name Sarah Witten, the arrests didn’t change, only the location. She had probably realized she was wearing thin on the prosecutors and judges who had repeatedly given her breaks-most likely after reading the summary of her life contained in the presentencing investigations. She moved north to San Francisco and once again had frequent encounters with the law. Drugs and petty crime, charges that often go hand in hand. Bosch checked the mug shots and saw a woman who looked old beyond her years. She looked like she was forty before she was yet thirty.

In 2003 she did her first significant jail time when she was sentenced to six months in San Mateo County Jail after pleading guilty to a possession charge. The records showed that she served four months in jail followed by a lockdown rehab program. It was the last marker on the system for her. No one with any of her names or Social Security number had been arrested since or applied for a driver’s license in any of the fifty states.

Bosch tried a few other digital maneuvers he had learned while working in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where Internet tracing was raised to an art form, but could not pick up the trail. Sarah was gone.

Putting the computer aside, Bosch took up the files from the murder box. He started scanning the documents, looking for clues that might help him track her. He got more than a clue when he found a photocopy of Sarah’s birth certificate. It was then that he remembered that she had been living with her mother and stepfather at the time of her sister’s murder.

The birth name on the certificate was Sarah Ann Gleason. He entered it into the computer along with her birth date. He found no criminal history under the name but he did find a Washington State driver’s license that had been established six years earlier and renewed just two months before. He pulled up the photo and it was a match. But barely. Bosch studied it for a long time. He would have sworn that Sarah Ann Gleason was getting younger.

His guess was that she had left the hard life behind. She had found something that made her change. Maybe she had taken the cure. Maybe she had a child. But something had changed her life for the better.

Bosch next ran her name through another search engine and got utility and satellite hookups under her name. The addresses matched the one on her driver’s license. Bosch was sure he had found her. Port Townsend. He went onto Google and typed it in. Soon he was looking at a map of the Olympic Peninsula in the northwest corner of Washington. Sarah Landy had changed her name three times and had run to the farthest tip of the continental United States, but he had found her.

The phone rang as he was reaching for it. It was Lieutenant Stephen Wright, commander of the LAPD’s Special Investigation Section.

“I just wanted you to know that as of fifteen minutes ago we’re fully deployed on Jessup. The full unit’s involved and we’ll get you surveillance logs each morning. If you need anything else or want to ride along at any point, you call me.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I will.”

“Let’s hope something happens.”

“That would be nice.”

Bosch disconnected. And made the call to Maggie McPherson.

“Couple things. First, SIS is in place now on Jessup. You can let Gabriel Williams know.”

He thought he heard a small chuckle before she responded.

“Ironic, huh?”

“Yeah. Maybe they’ll end up killing Jessup and we won’t have to worry about a trial.”

The Special Investigation Section was an elite surveillance squad that had existed for more than forty years despite a kill rate higher than that of any other unit in the department, including SWAT. The SIS was used to clandestinely watch apex predators-individuals suspected in violent crimes who would not cease until caught in the act and stopped by the police. Masters of surveillance, SIS officers waited to observe suspects committing new crimes before moving in to make arrests, often with fatal consequences.

The irony McPherson mentioned was that Gabriel Williams was a civil rights attorney before running for and winning the DA’s post. He had sued the department over SIS shootings on multiple occasions, claiming that the unit’s strategies were designed to draw suspects into deadly confrontations with police. He had gone so far as to call the unit a “death squad” while announcing a lawsuit over an SIS shooting that had left four robbers dead outside a Tommy’s fast-food franchise. That same death squad was now being used in a gambit that might help win the case against Jessup and further Williams’s political rise.

“You’ll be informed of his activities?” McPherson asked.

“Every morning I’ll get the surveillance log. And they’ll call me out if anything good happens.”

“Perfect. Was there something else? I’m in a bit of a rush. I’m working on one of my preexisting cases and have a hearing about to start.”

“Yeah, I found our witness.”

“You’re brilliant! Where is she?”

“Up in Washington on the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. A place called Port Townsend. She’s using her birth name, Sarah Ann Gleason, and it appears that she’s been living clean up there for about six years.”

“That’s good for us.”

“Maybe not.”

“How so?”

“It looks to me like most of her life has been spent trying to get away from what happened that Sunday in Hancock Park. If she’s finally gotten past it and is living the clean life up there in Port Townsend, she might not be interested in picking at old scabs, if you know what I mean.”

“Not even for her sister?”

“Maybe not. We’re talking about twenty-four years ago.”

McPherson was quiet for a long moment and then finally responded.

“That’s a cynical view of the world, Harry. When are you planning on going up there?”

“As soon as I can. But I have to make arrangements for my daughter. She stayed with a friend when I went up to get Jessup at San Quentin. It didn’t turn out so good and now I have to hit the road again.”

“Sorry to hear that. I want to go up with you.”

“I think I can handle it.”

“I know you can handle it. But it might be good to have a woman and a prosecutor with you. More and more, I think she’s going to be the key to this whole thing and she’s going to be my witness. Our approach to her will be very important.”

“I’ve been approaching witnesses for about thirty years. I think I-”

“Let me have the travel office here make the arrangements. That way we can go up together. Talk out the strategy.”

Bosch paused. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to change her mind.

“Whatever you say.”

“Good. I’ll tell Mickey and contact travel. We’ll book a morning flight. I’m clear tomorrow. Is that too soon for you? I’d hate to wait on this till next week.”

“I’ll make it work.”

Bosch had had a third reason to call her but now decided to hold back. Her taking over the trip to Washington made him gun-shy about discussing his investigative moves.

They hung up and he was left drumming his fingers on the edge of his desk as he contemplated what he would say to Rachel Walling.

After a few moments he pulled out his cell phone and used it to make the call. He had Walling’s number in its memory. To his surprise, she answered right away. He had envisioned her seeing his name on the ID and letting him go to the message. They’d had a relationship that was long over but still left a trail of intense feelings.

“Hello, Harry.”

“Hello, Rachel. How are you?”

“I’m fine. And you?”

“Pretty good. I’m calling about a case.”

“Of course. Harry Bosch never goes through channels. He goes direct.”

“There are no channels for this. And you know I call you because I trust you and more than anything else respect your opinion. I go through channels and I get some profiler in Quantico who’s just a voice on the phone. And not only that, he doesn’t call me back with anything for two months. What would you do if you were me?”

“Oh… probably the same thing.”

“Besides that, I don’t want the bureau’s official involvement. I am just looking for your opinion and advice, Rachel.”

“What’s the case?”

“I think you’re going to like it. It’s a twenty-four-year-old murder of a twelve-year-old girl. A guy went down for it back then and now we have to retry him. I was thinking a profile of the crime might be helpful to the prosecutor.”

“Is this that Jessup case that’s in the news?”

“That’s right.”

He knew she would be interested. He could hear it in her voice.

“All right, well, bring by whatever you’ve got. How much time are you giving me? I’ve got my regular job, you know.”

“No hurry this time. Not like with that Echo Park thing. I’ll probably be out of town tomorrow. Maybe longer. I think you can have a few days with the file. You still in the same place above the Million Dollar Theater?”

“That’s it.”

“Okay, I’ll drop the box by.”

“I’ll be here.”

Nine

Wednesday, February 17, 3:18 P.M .

The holding cell next to Department 124 on the thirteenth floor of the CCB was empty except for my client Cassius Clay Montgomery. He sat morosely on the bench in the corner and didn’t get up when he saw me come back.

“Sorry I’m late.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t acknowledge my presence.

“Come on, Cash. It’s not like you’d be going anywhere. What’s it matter if you were waiting here or back in County?”

“They got TV in County, man,” he said, looking up at me.

“Okay, so you missed Oprah. Can you come over here so I don’t have to shout our business across the room?”

He got up and came over to the bars. I stood on the other side, beyond the red line marking the three-foot threshold.

“Doesn’t matter if you shout our business. There ain’t nobody left to hear it.”

“I told you, I’m sorry. I’ve been having a busy day.”

“Yeah, and I guess I’m just a no-count nigger when it comes to being on TV and turnin’ into the man.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I saw you on the news, dog. Now you a prosecutor? What kinda shit is that?”

I nodded. Obviously, my client was more concerned with me being a turncoat than with waiting until the last hearing of the day.

“Look, all I can tell you is that I took the job reluctantly. I am not a prosecutor. I am a defense attorney. I’m your defense attorney. But every now and then they come to you and they want something. And it’s hard to say no.”

“So what happens to me?”

“Nothing happens to you. I’m still your lawyer, Cash. And we have a big decision to make here. This hearing is going to be short and sweet. It’s to set a trial date and that’s it. But Mr. Hellman, the prosecutor, says the offer he made to you is good only until today. If we tell Judge Champagne we’re ready to go to trial today, then the deal disappears and we go to trial. Have you thought about it some more?”

Montgomery leaned his head in between two bars and didn’t speak. I realized he couldn’t pull the trigger on a decision. He was forty-seven and had already spent nine years of his life in prison. He was charged with armed robbery and assault with great bodily injury and was looking at a big fall.

According to the police, Montgomery had posed as a buyer at a drive-through drug market in the Rodia Gardens projects. But instead of paying, he pulled a gun and demanded the dealer’s drugs and money roll. The dealer went for the gun and it went off. Now the dealer, a gang member named Darnell Hicks, was in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

As is usual in the projects, no one cooperated with the investigation. Even the victim said he didn’t remember what happened, choosing in his silence to trust that his fellow Crips would handle justice in the matter. But investigators made a case anyway. Picking up my client’s car on a video camera at the entrance to the projects, they found the car and matched blood on the door to the victim.

It wasn’t a strong case but it was solid enough for us to entertain an offer from the prosecution. If Montgomery took the deal he’d be sentenced to three years in prison and would likely serve two and a half. If he gambled and took a conviction at the end of a trial, then he’d be looking at a mandatory minimum of fifteen years inside. The add-on of GBI and use of a firearm in the commission of a robbery were the killers. And I knew firsthand that Judge Judith Champagne wasn’t soft on gun crimes.

I had recommended to my client that he take the deal. It was a no-brainer to me but then I wasn’t the one who had to do the time. Montgomery couldn’t decide. It wasn’t so much about the prison time. It was the fact that the victim, Hicks, was a Crip and the street gang had a long reach into every prison in the state. Even taking the three-year sentence could be a death penalty. Montgomery wasn’t sure he would make it.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “It’s a good offer. The DA doesn’t want to go to trial on this. He doesn’t want to put a victim on the stand who doesn’t want to be there and may hurt the case more than help it. So he’s gone as low as he can go. But it’s up to you. Your decision. You’ve had a couple weeks now and this is it. We have to go out there in a couple minutes.”

Montgomery tried to shake his head but his forehead was pressed between the two bars.

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“It means shit. Can’t we win this case, man? I mean, you a prosecutor now. Can’t you get a good word in for me on this?”

“They’re two different matters, Cash. I can’t do anything like that. You got your choice. Take the three or we go to trial. And like I told you before, we can certainly do some stuff at trial. They’ve got no weapon and a victim who won’t tell the story, but they still got his blood on the door of your car and they got video of you driving it out of Rodia right after the shooting. We can try to play it the way you said it went down. Self-defense. You were there to buy a rock and he saw your roll and tried to rip you off. The jury might believe it, especially if he won’t testify. And they might believe it even if he does testify because I’ll make him take the fifth so many times they’ll think he’s Al Capone before he gets off the stand.”

“Who’s Al Capone?”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, man, who is he?”

“Never mind, Cash. What do you want to do?”

“You’re cool if we go to trial?”

“I’m cool with it. It’s just that there is that gap, you know?”

“Gap?”

“There is a wide gap between what they’re offering you right now and what you could get if we lose at trial. We’re talking about a minimum twelve-year swing, Cash. That’s a lot of time to gamble with.”

Montgomery backed away from the bars. They had left twin impressions on both sides of his forehead. He now gripped the bars in his hands.

“The thing is, three years, fifteen years, I ain’t going to make it either way. They got hit men in every prison. But in County, they got the system and ev’rybody is separated and locked up tight. I’m okay there.”

I nodded. But the problem was that any sentence over a year had to be served in a state prison. The county system was a holding system for those awaiting trial or sentenced to short terms.

“Okay, then I guess we go to trial.”

“I guess we do.”

“Sit tight. They’ll be coming back for you soon.”

I knocked quietly on the courtroom door and the deputy opened it. Court was in session and Judge Champagne was holding a status conference on another case. I saw my prosecutor sitting against the rail and went over to confer. This was the first case I’d had with Philip Hellman and I had found him to be extremely reasonable. I decided to test the limits of that reason one last time.

“So, Mickey, I hear we are now colleagues,” he said with a smile.

“Temporarily,” I said. “I don’t plan to make it a career.”

“Good, I don’t need the competition. So what are we going to do here?”

“I think we are going to put it over one more time.”

“Mickey, come on, I’ve been very generous. I can’t keep-”

“No, you’re right. You’ve been completely generous, Phil, and I appreciate that. My client appreciates that. It’s just that he can’t take a deal because anything that puts him in a state prison is a death penalty. We both know that the Crips will get him.”

“First of all, I don’t know that. And second of all, if that’s what he thinks, then maybe he shouldn’t have tried to rip off the Crips and shoot one of their guys.”

I nodded in agreement.

“That’s a good point but my client maintains it was self-defense. Your vic drew first. So I guess we go to trial and you’ve got to ask a jury for justice for a victim who doesn’t want it. Who will testify only if you force him to and will then claim he doesn’t remember shit.”

“Maybe he doesn’t. He did get shot, after all.”

“Yeah, and maybe the jury will buy that, especially when I bring out his pedigree. I’ll ask him what he does for a living for starters. According to what Cisco, my investigator, has found out, he’s been selling drugs since he was twelve years old and his mother put him on the street.”

“Mickey, we’ve already been down this road. What do you want? I’m getting ready to just say fuck it, let’s go to trial.”

“What do I want? I want to make sure you don’t fuck up the start of your brilliant career.”

“What?”

“Look, man, you are a young prosecutor. Remember what you just said about not wanting the competition? Well, another thing you don’t want is to risk putting a loss on your ledger. Not this early in the game. You just want this to go away. So here’s what I want. A year in County and restitution. You can name your price on restitution.”

“Are you kidding me?”

He said it too loud and drew a look from the judge. He then spoke very quietly.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Not really. It’s a good solution when you think about it, Phil. It works for everybody.”

“Yeah, and what’s Judge Judy going to say when I present this? The victim is in a wheelchair for life. She won’t sign off on this.”

“We ask to go back to chambers and we both sell it to her. We tell her that Montgomery wants to go to trial and claim self-defense and that the state has real reservations because of the victim’s lack of cooperation and status as a high-ranking member of a criminal organization. She was a prosecutor before she was a judge. She’ll understand this. And she’ll probably have more sympathy for Montgomery than she does for your drug-dealing victim.”

Hellman thought for a long moment. The hearing before Champagne ended and she instructed the courtroom deputy to bring Montgomery out. It was the last case of the day.

“Now or never, Phil,” I prompted.

“Okay, let’s do it,” he finally said.

Hellman stood up and moved to the prosecution table.

“Your Honor,” he intoned, “before we bring the defendant out, could counsel discuss this case in chambers?”

Champagne, a veteran judge who had seen everything at least three times, creased her brow.

“On the record, gentlemen?”

“That’s probably not necessary,” Hellman said. “We would like to discuss the terms of a disposition in the case.”

“Then by all means. Let’s go.”

The judge stepped down from the bench and headed back toward her chambers. Hellman and I started to follow. As we got to the gate next to the clerk’s pod, I leaned forward to whisper to the young prosecutor.

“Montgomery gets credit for time served, right?”

Hellman stopped in his tracks and turned back to me.

“You’ve got to be-”

“Just kidding,” I quickly said.

I held my hands up in surrender. Hellman frowned and then turned back around and headed toward the judge’s chambers. I had thought it was worth a try.

Ten

Thursday, February 18, 7:18 A.M .

It was a silent breakfast. Madeline Bosch poked at her cereal with her spoon but managed to put very little of it into her stomach. Bosch knew that his daughter wasn’t upset because he was going away for the night. And she wasn’t upset because she wasn’t going. He believed she had come to enjoy the breaks his infrequent travels gave her. The reason she was upset was the arrangements he had made for her care while he was gone. She was fourteen going on twenty-four and her first choice would have been to simply be left alone to fend for herself. Her second choice would have been to stay with her best friend up the street, and her last choice would have been to have Mrs. Bambrough from the school stay at the house with her.

Bosch knew she was perfectly capable of fending for herself but he wasn’t there yet. They had been living together for only a few months and it had been only those few months since she had lost her mother. He just wasn’t ready to turn her loose, no matter how fervently she insisted she was ready.

He finally put down his spoon and spoke.

“Look, Maddie, it’s a school night and last time when you stayed with Rory you both stayed up all night, slept through most of your classes and had your parents and all your teachers mad at both of you.”

“I told you we wouldn’t do that again.”

“I just think we need to wait on that a little bit. I’ll tell Mrs. Bambrough that it’s all right if Rory comes over, just not till midnight. You guys can do your homework together or something.”

“Like she’s really going to want to come here when I’m being watched by the assistant principal. Thanks for that, Dad.”

Bosch had to concentrate on not laughing. This issue seemed so simple compared with what she had faced in October after coming to live with him. She still had regular therapy sessions and they seemed to go a long way toward helping her cope with her mother’s death. Bosch would take a dispute over child care over those other deeper issues any day.

He checked his watch. It was time to go.

“If you’re done playing with your food you can put your bowl in the sink. We have to get going.”

“Finished, Dad. You should use the correct word.”

“Sorry about that. Are you finished playing with your cereal?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

He got up from the table and went back to his room to grab his overnight bag off the bed. He was traveling light, expecting the trip to last one night at the most. If they got lucky, they might even catch a late flight home tonight.

When he came back out, Maddie was standing by the door, her backpack over one shoulder.

“Ready?”

“No, I’m just standing here for my health.”

He walked up to her and kissed the top of her head before she could move away from him. She tried, though.

“Gotcha.”

“Daaaad!”

He locked the door behind them and put his bag in the backseat of the Mustang.

“You have your key, right?”

“Yes!”

“Just making sure.”

“Can we go? I don’t want to be late.”

They drove down the hill in silence after that. When they got to the school, he saw Sue Bambrough working the drop-off lane, getting the slow-moving kids out of the cars and into the school, keeping things moving.

“You know the routine, Mads. Call me, text me, vid me, let me know you’re doing okay.”

“I’ll get out here.”

She opened the door early, before they got to where the assistant principal was stationed. Maddie got out and then reached back in to grab her bag. Bosch waited for it, the sign that everything was really okay.

“Be safe, Dad.”

There it was.

“You, too, baby.”

She closed the door. He lowered the window and drove down to Sue Bambrough. She leaned into the open window.

“Hey, Sue. She’s a little upset but she’ll get over it by the end of the day. I told her that Aurora Smith could come by but not to make it late. Who knows, maybe they’ll do some homework.”

“She’ll be fine, Harry.”

“I left the check on the kitchen counter and there’s some cash there for anything you guys’ll need.”

“Thanks, Harry. Just let me know if you think it will be more than one night. No problem on my end.”

Bosch checked the rearview. He wanted to ask a question but didn’t want to hold people up.

“What is it, Harry?”

“Uh, to say you’re done doing something, is that wrong? You know, bad English?”

Sue tried to hide a smile.

“If she’s correcting you, that’s the natural course of things. Don’t take it personally. We drill it into them here. They go home and want to drill somebody else. It would be proper to say you finished doing something. But I know what you meant.”

Bosch nodded. Somebody in the line behind him tapped the horn-Bosch assumed it was a man hurrying to make drop-off and then get to work. He waved his thanks to Sue and pulled out.

Maggie McFierce had called Bosch the night before and told him that there was nothing out of Burbank, so they were taking a direct flight out of LAX. That meant it would be a brutal drive in morning traffic. Bosch lived on a hillside right above the Hollywood Freeway but it was the one freeway that wouldn’t help him get to the airport. Instead, he took Highland down into Hollywood and then cut over to La Cienega. It bottlenecked through the oil fields near Baldwin Hills and he lost his cushion of time. He took La Tijera from there and when he got to the airport he was forced to park in one of the expensive garages close in because he didn’t have time to ride a shuttle bus in from an economy lot.

After filling out the Law Enforcement Officer forms at the counter and being walked through security by a TSA agent, he finally got to the gate while the plane was in the final stages of loading its passengers. He looked for McPherson but didn’t see her and assumed she was already on the plane.

He boarded and went through the required meet-and-greet, stepping into the cockpit, showing his badge and shaking the hands of the flight crew. He then made his way toward the back of the plane. He and McPherson had exit-row seats across the aisle from each other. She was already in place, a tall Starbucks cup in hand. She had obviously arrived early for the flight.

“Thought you weren’t going to make it,” she said.

“It was close. How’d you get here so early? You have a daughter just like me.”

“I dropped her with Mickey last night.”

Bosch nodded.

“Exit row, nice. Who’s your travel agent?”

“We’ve got a good one. That’s why I wanted to handle it. We’ll send LAPD the bill for you.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

Bosch had put his bag in an overhead compartment so he would have room to extend his legs. After he sat down and buckled in, he saw that McPherson had shoved two thick files into the seat pocket in front of her. He had nothing out to prep with. His files were in his bag but he didn’t feel like getting them out. He pulled his notebook out of his back pocket and was about to lean across the aisle to ask McPherson a question when a flight attendant came down the aisle and stooped down to whisper to him.

“You’re the detective, right?”

“Uh, yes. Is there a-”

Before he could finish the Dirty Harry line, the flight attendant informed him that they were upgrading him to an unclaimed seat in the first-class section.

“Oh, that’s nice of you and the captain, but I don’t think I can do that.”

“There’s no charge. It’s-”

“No, it’s not that. See, I’m with this lady here and she’s my boss and I-I mean we-need to talk and go over our investigation. She’s a prosecutor, actually.”

The attendant took a moment to track his explanation and then nodded and said she’d go back to the front of the plane and inform the powers that be.

“And I thought chivalry was dead,” McPherson said. “You gave up a first-class seat to sit with me.”

“Actually, I should’ve told her to give it to you. That would have been real chivalry.”

“Uh-oh, here she comes back.”

Bosch looked up the aisle. The same smiling attendant was headed back to them.

“We’re moving some people around and we have room for you both. Come on up.”

They got up and headed forward, Bosch grabbing his bag out of the overhead and following McPherson. She looked back at him, smiled and said, “My tarnished knight.”

“Right,” Bosch said.

The seats were side by side in the first row. McPherson took the window. Soon after they were resituated, the plane took off for its three-hour flight to Seattle.

“So,” McPherson said, “Mickey told me our daughter has never met your daughter.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yeah, I guess we need to change that.”

“Definitely. I hear they’re the same age and you guys compared photos and they even look alike.”

“Well, her mother sort of looked like you. Same coloring.”

And fire, Bosch thought. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. He showed her a photo of Maddie.

“That’s remarkable,” McPherson said. “They could be sisters.”

Bosch looked at his daughter’s photo as he spoke.

“It’s just been a tough year for her. She lost her mother and moved across an ocean. Left all her friends behind. I’ve been kind of letting her move at her own pace.”

“All the more reason she should know her family here.”

Bosch just nodded. In the past year he had fended off numerous calls from his half brother seeking to get their daughters together. He wasn’t sure if his hesitation was about the potential relationship between the two cousins or the two half brothers.

Sensing that angle of conversation was at an end, McPherson unfolded her table and pulled out her files. Bosch turned his phone off and put it away.

“So we’re going to work?” he asked.

“A little. I want to be prepared.”

“How much do you want to tell her up front? I was thinking we just talk about the ID. Confirm it and see if she’s willing to testify again.”

“And not bring up the DNA?”

“Right. That could turn a yes into a no.”

“But shouldn’t she know everything she’s going to be getting into?”

“Eventually, yes. It’s been a long time. I did the trace. She hit some hard times and rough spots but it looks like she might’ve come out okay. I guess we’ll see when we get up there.”

“Let’s play it by ear, then. I think if it feels right, we need to tell her everything.”

“You make the call.”

“The one thing that’s good is that she’ll only have to do it once. We don’t have to go through a preliminary hearing or a grand jury. Jessup was held over for trial in ’eighty-six and that is not what the supreme court reversed. So we just go directly to trial. We’ll need her one time and that will be it.”

“That’s good. And you’ll be handling her.”

“Yes.”

Bosch nodded. The assumption was that she was a better prosecutor than Haller. After all, it was Haller’s first case. Harry was happy to hear she would be handling the most important witness at trial.

“What about me? Which one of you will take me?”

“I don’t think that’s been decided. Mickey anticipates that Jessup will actually testify. I know he’s waiting for that. But we haven’t talked about who will take you. My guess is that you’ll be doing a lot of read-backs to the jury of sworn testimony from the first trial.”

She closed the file and it looked like that was it for work.

They spent the rest of the flight small-talking about their daughters and looking through the magazines in their seat pockets. The plane landed early at SeaTac and they picked up a rental car and started north. Bosch did the driving. The car came equipped with a GPS system but the DA travel assistant had also provided McPherson with a full package of directions to Port Townsend. They drove up to Seattle and then took a ferry across Puget Sound. They left the car and went up for coffee on the concessions deck, finding an open table next to a set of windows. Bosch was staring out the window when McPherson surprised him with an observation.

“You’re not happy, are you, Harry?”

Bosch looked at her and shrugged.

“It’s a weird case. Twenty-four years old and we start with the bad guy already in prison and we take him out. It doesn’t make me unhappy, it’s just kind of strange, you know?”

She had a half smile on her face.

“I wasn’t talking about the case. I was talking about you. You’re not a happy man.”

Bosch looked down at the coffee he held on the table with two hands. Not because of the ferry’s movement, but because he was cold and the coffee was warming him inside and out.

“Oh,” he said.

A long silence opened up between them. He wasn’t sure what he should reveal to this woman. He had known her for only a week and she was making observations about him.

“I don’t really have time to be happy right now,” he finally said.

“Mickey told me what he felt he could about Hong Kong and what happened with your daughter.”

Bosch nodded. But he knew Maggie didn’t know the whole story. Nobody did except for Madeline and him.

“Yeah,” he said. “She caught some bad breaks there. That’s the thing, I guess. I think if I can make my daughter happy, then I’ll be happy. But I am not sure when that will be.”

He brought his eyes up to hers and saw only sympathy. He smiled.

“Yeah, we should get the two cousins together,” he said, moving on.

“Absolutely,” she said.

Eleven

Thursday, February 18, 1:30 P.M .

The Los Angeles Times carried a lengthy story on Jason Jessup’s first day of freedom in twenty-four years. The reporter and photographer met him at dawn on Venice Beach, where the forty-eight-year-old tried his hand at his boyhood pastime of surfing. On the first few sets, he was shaky on a borrowed longboard but soon he was up and riding the break. A photo of Jessup standing upright on the board and riding a curl with his arms outstretched, his face turned up to the sky, was the centerpiece photo on the newspaper’s front page. The photo showed off what two decades of lifting prison iron will do. Jessup’s body was roped with muscle. He looked lean and mean.

From the beach the next stop was an In-N-Out franchise in Westwood for hamburgers and French fries with all the catsup he wanted. After lunch Jessup went to Clive Royce’s storefront office in downtown, where he attended a two-hour meeting with the battery of attorneys representing him in both criminal and civil matters. This meeting was not open to the Times.

Jessup rounded out the afternoon by watching a movie called Shutter Island at the Chinese theater in Hollywood. He bought a tub of buttered popcorn large enough to feed a family of four and ate every puffed kernel. He then returned to Venice, where he had a room in an apartment near the beach courtesy of a high-school surfing buddy. The day ended at a beach barbecue with a handful of supporters who had never wavered in their belief in his innocence.

I sat at my desk studying the color photos of Jessup that graced two inside pages of the A section. The paper was going all-out on the story, as it had all along, surely smelling the journalistic honors to be gathered at the end of Jessup’s journey to complete freedom. Springing an innocent man from prison was the ultimate newspaper story and the Times was desperately trying to take credit for Jessup’s release.

The largest photo showed Jessup’s unabashed delight at the red plastic tray sitting in front of him at a table at In-N-Out. The tray contained a fully loaded double-double with fries smothered in catsup and melted cheese. The caption said

Why Is This Man Smiling? 12:05-Jessup eats his first Double-Double in 24 years. “I’ve been thinking about this forever!”

The other photos carried similarly lighthearted captions below shots of Jessup at the movies with his bucket of popcorn, hoisting a beer at the barbecue and hugging his high-school pal, walking through a glass door that said ROYCE AND ASSOCIATES, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW. There was no indication in the tone of the article or photos that Jason Jessup was a man who happened to still be accused of murdering a twelve-year-old girl.

The story was about Jessup relishing his freedom while being unable to plan his future until his “legal issues” were resolved. It was a nice turn of phrase, I thought, calling abduction and murder charges and a pending trial merely legal issues.

I had the paper spread wide on the desk Lorna had rented for me in my new office on Broadway. We were on the second floor of the Bradbury Building and only three blocks from the CCB.

“I think you need to put something up on the walls.”

I looked up. It was Clive Royce. He had walked through the reception room unannounced because I had sent Lorna over to Philippe’s to get us lunch. Royce gestured to the empty walls of the temporary office. I flipped the newspaper closed and held up the front page.

“I just ordered a twenty-by-twenty shot of Jesus on the surfboard here. I’m going to hang him on the wall.”

Royce stepped up to the desk and took the paper, studying the photo on the front as if for the first time, which we both knew was not the case. Royce had been deeply involved in the generation of the story, the payoff being the photo of the office door with his firm’s name on the glass.

“Yes, they did a good job with it, didn’t they?”

He handed it back.

“I guess so, if you like your killers happy-go-lucky.”

Royce didn’t respond, so I continued.

“I know what you’re doing, Clive, because I would do it, too. But as soon as we get a judge, I’m going to ask him to stop you. I’m not going to let you taint the jury pool.”

Royce frowned as if I had suggested something completely untoward.

“It’s a free press, Mick. You can’t control the media. The man just got out of prison, and like it or not, it’s a news story.”

“Right, and you can give exclusives in exchange for display. Display that might plant a seed in a potential juror’s mind. What do you have planned for today? Jessup co-hosting the morning show on Channel Five? Or is he judging the chili cook-off at the state fair?”

“As a matter of fact, NPR wanted to hang with him today but I showed restraint. I said no. Make sure you tell the judge that as well.”

“Wow, you actually said no to NPR? Was that because most people who listen to NPR are the kind of people who can get out of jury duty, or because you got something better lined up?”

Royce frowned again, looking as though I had impaled him with an integrity spear. He looked around, grabbed the chair from Maggie’s desk and pulled it over so he could sit in front of mine. Once he was seated with his legs crossed and had arranged his suit properly he spoke.

“Now, tell me, Mick, does your boss think that housing you in a separate building is really going to make people think you are acting independently of his direction? You’re having us on, right?”

I smiled at him. His effort to get under my skin was not going to work.

“Let me state once again for the record, Clive, that I have no boss in this matter. I am working independently of Gabriel Williams.”

I gestured to the room.

“I’m here, not in the courthouse, and all decisions on this case will be made from this desk. But at the moment my decisions aren’t that important. It’s you who has the decision, Clive.”

“And what would that be? A disposition, Mick?”

“That’s right. Today’s special, good until five o’clock only. Your boy pleads guilty, I’ll come down off the death penalty and we both roll the dice with the judge on sentencing. You never know, Jessup could walk away with time served.”

Royce smiled cordially and shook his head.

“I am sure that would make the powers that be in this town happy, but I’m afraid I must disappoint you, Mick. My client remains absolutely uninterested in a plea. And that is not going to change. I was actually hoping that by now you would have seen the uselessness of going to trial and would simply drop the charges. You can’t win this thing, Mick. The state has to bend over on this one and you unfortunately are the fool who volunteered to take it in the arse.”

“Well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

“We will indeed.”

I opened the desk’s center drawer and removed a green plastic case containing a computer disc. I slid it across the desk to him.

“I wasn’t expecting you to come by for it yourself, Clive. Thought you’d send an investigator or a clerk. You gotta bunch of them working for you, don’t you? Along with that full-time publicist.”

Royce slowly collected the disc. The plastic case was marked DEFENSE DISCOVERY 1.

“Well, aren’t we snarky today? Seems that only two weeks ago you were one of us, Mick. A lowly member of the defense bar.”

I nodded my contrition. He had nailed me there.

“Sorry, Clive. Perhaps the power of the office is getting to me.”

“Apology accepted.”

“And sorry to waste your time coming over here. As I told you on the phone, that’s got everything we have up until this morning. Mostly the old files and reports. I won’t play discovery games with you, Clive. I’ve been on the wrong end of that too many times to count. So when I get it, you get it. But right now that’s all I’ve got.”

Royce tapped the disc case on the edge of the desk.

“No witness list?”

“There is but as of now it’s essentially the same list from the trial in ’eighty-six. I’ve added my investigator and subtracted a few names-the parents, other people no longer alive.”

“No doubt Felix Turner has been redacted.”

I smiled like the Cheshire cat.

“Thankfully you won’t get the chance to bring him up at trial.”

“Yes, a pity. I would have loved the opportunity to shove him up the state’s ass.”

I nodded, noting that Royce had come off the English colloquialisms and was hitting me with pure Americana now. It was a symptom of his frustration over Turner, and as a longtime counsel for the defense I certainly felt it. In the retrial, there would be no mention of any aspect of the first trial. The new jurors would have no knowledge of what had transpired before. And that meant the state’s use of the fraudulent jailhouse informant-no matter how grievous a prosecutorial sin-would not hurt the current prosecution.

I decided to move on.

“I should have another disc for you by the end of the week.”

“Yes, I can’t wait to see what you come up with.”

Sarcasm noted.

“Just remember one thing, Clive. Discovery is a two-way street. You go beyond thirty days and we’ll go see the judge.”

The rules of evidence required that each side complete its discovery exchange no later than thirty days before the start of trial. Missing this deadline could lead to sanctions and open the door to a trial delay as the judge would grant the offended party more time to prepare.

“Yes, well, as you can imagine, we weren’t expecting the turn of events that has transpired here,” Royce said. “Consequently, our defense is in its infancy. But I won’t play games with you either, Mick. A disc will be along to you in short order-provided that we have any discovery to give.”

I knew that as a practical matter the defense usually had little in the way of discovery to give unless the plan was to mount an extensive defense. But I sounded the warning because I was leery of Royce. In a case this old, he might try to dig up an alibi witness or something else out of left field. I wanted to know about it before it came up in court.

“I appreciate that,” I said.

Over his shoulder I saw Lorna enter the office. She was carrying two brown bags, one of which contained my French dip sandwich.

“Oh, I didn’t realize…”

Royce turned around in his seat.

“Ah, the lovely Lorna. How are you, my darling?”

“Hello, Clive. I see you got the disc.”

“Indeed. Thank you, Lorna.”

I had noticed that Royce’s English accent and formal parlance became more pronounced at times, especially in front of attractive women. I wondered if that was a conscious thing or not.

“I have two sandwiches here, Clive,” Lorna said. “Would you like one?”

It was the wrong time for Lorna to be magnanimous.

“I think he was just about to leave,” I said quickly.

“Yes, love, I must go. But thank you for the most gracious offer.”

“I’ll be out here if you need me, Mickey.”

Lorna went back to the reception room, closing the door behind her. Royce turned back to me and spoke in a low voice.

“You know you should never have let that one go, Mick. She was the keeper. And now, joining forces with the first Mrs. Haller to deprive an innocent man of his long-deserved freedom, there is something incestuous about the whole thing, isn’t there?”

I just looked at him for a long moment.

“Is there anything else, Clive?”

He held up the disc.

“I think this should do it for today.”

“Good. I have to get back to work.”

I walked him out through reception and closed the door after him. I turned and looked at Lorna.

“Feels weird, doesn’t it?” she said. “Being on this side of it-the prosecution side.”

“It does.”

She held up one of the sandwich bags.

“Can I ask you something?” I said. “Whose sandwich were you going to give him, yours or mine?”

She looked at me with a straight face, then a smile of guilt leaked out.

“I was being polite, okay? I thought you and I could share.”

I shook my head.

“Don’t be giving my French dip sandwich to anybody. Especially a defense lawyer.”

I snatched the bag from her hand.

“Thank you, love,” I said in my best British accent.

She laughed and I headed back into my office to eat.

Twelve

Thursday, February 18, 3:31 P.M .

After driving off the ferry at Port Townsend, Bosch and McPherson followed directions from the rental car’s GPS to the address on Sarah Ann Gleason’s driver’s license. The trail led them through the small Victorian sea village and then out into a more rural area of large and isolated properties. Gleason’s house was a small clapboard house that failed to keep the nearby town’s Victorian theme. The detective and the prosecutor stood on the porch and knocked but got no response.

“Maybe she’s at work or something,” McPherson said.

“Could be.”

“We could go back into town and get rooms, then come back after five.”

Bosch checked his watch. He realized that school was just over and Maddie was probably heading home with Sue Bambrough. He guessed that his daughter was giving the assistant principal the silent treatment.

He stepped off the porch and started walking toward the corner of the house.

“Where are you going?”

“To check the back. Hold on.”

But as soon as Bosch turned the corner he could see that a hundred yards beyond the house there was another structure. It was a windowless barn or garage. What stood out was that it had a chimney. He could see heat waves but no smoke rising from the two black pipes that extended over the roofline. There were two cars and a van parked in front of the closed garage doors.

Bosch stood there watching for so long that McPherson finally came around the corner as well.

“What’s taking-?”

Bosch held up his hand to silence her, then pointed toward the outbuilding.

“What is it?” McPherson whispered.

Before Bosch could answer, one of the garage doors slid open a few feet and a figure stepped out. It looked like a young man or a teenager. He was wearing a full-length black apron over his clothes. He took off heavy elbow-length gloves so he could light a cigarette.

“Shit,” McPherson whispered, answering her own question.

Bosch stepped back to the corner of the house to use it as a blind. He pulled McPherson with him.

“All her arrests-her drug of choice was meth,” he whispered.

“Great,” McPherson whispered back. “Our main witness is a meth cook.”

The young smoker turned when apparently called from within the barn. He threw down his cigarette, stepped on it, and went back inside. He yanked the door closed behind him but it slid to a stop six inches before closing.

“Let’s go,” Bosch said.

He started to move but McPherson put her hand on his arm.

“Wait, what are you talking about? We need to call Port Townsend police and get some backup, don’t we?”

Bosch looked at her a moment without responding.

“I saw the police station when we went through town,” McPherson said, as if to assure him that backup was waiting and willing.

“If we call for backup they’re not going to be very cooperative, since we didn’t bother to check in when we got to town in the first place,” Bosch said. “They’ll arrest her and then we have a main witness awaiting trial on drug charges. How do you think that will work with Jessup’s jury?”

She didn’t answer.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You hold back here and I’ll go check it out. Three vehicles, probably three cooks. If I can’t handle it, we call backup.”

“They’re probably armed, Harry. You-”

“They’re probably not armed. I’ll check it out and if it looks like a situation we’ll call Port Townsend.”

“I don’t like this.”

“It could work to our favor.”

“What? How?”

“Think about it. Watch for my signal. If something goes wrong, get in the car and get out of here.”

He held up the car keys and she reluctantly took them. He could tell she was thinking about what he had said. The advantage. If they caught their witness in a compromising situation, it could give them the leverage they needed to assure her cooperation and testimony.

Bosch left McPherson there and headed on foot down the crushed-shell drive to the barn. He didn’t attempt to hide in case they had a lookout. He put his hands in his pocket to try to convey he was no threat, somebody just lost and looking for directions.

The crushed shell made it impossible for him to make a completely silent approach. But as he got closer he heard loud music coming from the barn. It was rock and roll but he could not identify it. Something heavy on the guitar and with a pounding beat. It had a retro feel to it, like he had heard the song a long time ago, maybe in Vietnam.

Bosch was twenty feet from the partially opened door when it moved open another two feet and the same young man stepped out again. Seeing him closer, Bosch pegged his age at twenty-one or so. In the moment he stepped out Bosch realized he should have expected that he’d be back out to finish his interrupted smoke. Now it was too late and the smoker saw him.

But the young man didn’t hesitate or sound an alarm of any sort. He looked at Bosch curiously as he started tapping a cigarette out of a soft pack. He was sweating profusely.

“You parked up at the house?” he asked.

Bosch stopped ten feet from him and took his hands out of his pockets. He didn’t look back toward the house, choosing instead to keep his eyes on the kid.

“Uh, yes, is that a problem?” he asked.

“No, but most people just drive on down to the barn. Sarah usually tells them to.”

“Oh, I didn’t get that message. Is Sarah here?”

“Yeah, inside. Go on in.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, we’re almost done for the day.”

Bosch was getting the idea that he had walked into something that was not what he thought it was. He now glanced back and saw McPherson peering around the corner of the house. This wasn’t the best way to do this but he turned and headed toward the open door.

The heat hit him the moment he entered. The inside of the barn was like an oven and for good reason. The first thing Bosch saw was the open door of a huge furnace that was glowing orange with flames.

Standing eight feet from the heat source was another young man and an older woman. They also wore full-length aprons and heavy gloves. The man was using a pair of iron tongs to hold steady a large piece of molten glass attached to the end of an iron pipe. The woman was shaping it with a wooden block and a pair of pliers.

They were glassmakers, not drug cooks. The woman wore a welder’s mask over her face as protection. Bosch could not identify her but he was pretty sure he was looking at Sarah Ann Gleason.

Bosch stepped back through the door and signaled to McPherson. He gave the okay sign but was unsure she would be able to identify it from the distance. He waved her in.

“What’s going on, man?” the smoker asked.

“That’s Sarah Gleason in there, you said?” Bosch responded.

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“You’re going to have to wait until she’s set the piece. She can’t stop while it’s soft. We’ve been working it for almost four hours.”

“How much longer?”

“Maybe an hour. You can probably talk to her while she’s working. You want a piece made?”

“That’s okay, I think we can wait.”

McPherson drove up in the rental car and got out. Bosch opened the door for her and explained quietly that they had read wrong what they had seen. He told her the barn was a glassmaking studio. He told her how he wanted to play it until they could get Gleason into a private setting. McPherson shook her head and smiled.

“What if we had gone in there with backup?”

“I guess we would’ve broken some glass.”

“And had one pissed-off witness.”

She got out of the car and Bosch reached in for the file he had put on the dashboard. He put it inside his jacket and under his arm so he could carry it unseen.

They entered the studio and Gleason was waiting for them, with her gloves off and her mask folded up to reveal her face. She had obviously been told by the smoker that they were potential customers and Bosch initially did nothing to dissuade her of that interpretation. He didn’t want to reveal their true business until they were alone with her.

“I’m Harry and this is Maggie. Sorry to barge in like this.”

“Oh, no problem. We like it when people get a chance to see what we do. In fact, we’re right in the middle of a project right now and need to get back to it. You’re welcome to stay and watch and I can tell you a little bit about what we’re doing.”

“That would be great.”

“You just have to stay back. We’re dealing with very hot material here.”

“Not a problem.”

“Where are you from? Seattle?”

“No, actually we’re all the way up from California. We’re pretty far from home.”

If the mention of her native state caused Gleason any concern, she didn’t show it. She pulled the mask back down over a smile, put her gloves on and went back to work. Over the next forty minutes Bosch and McPherson watched Gleason and her two assistants finish the glass piece. Gleason provided a steady narration as she worked, explaining that the three members of her team had different duties. One of the young men was a blower and the other was a blocker. Gleason was the gaffer, the one in charge. The piece they were sculpting was a four-foot-long grape leaf that would be part of a larger piece commissioned to hang in the lobby of a business in Seattle called Rainier Wine.

Gleason also filled in some of her recent history. She said she started her own studio only two years ago after spending three years apprenticing with a glass artist in Seattle. It was useful information to Bosch. Both hearing her talk about herself and watching her work the soft glass. Gathering color, as she called it. Using heavy tools to manipulate something beautiful and fragile and glowing with red-hot danger all at the same time.

The heat from the furnace was stifling and both Bosch and McPherson took off their jackets. Gleason said the oven burned at 2,300 degrees and Bosch marveled at how the artists could spend so many hours working so close to the source. The glory hole, the small opening into which they repeatedly passed the sculpture to reheat and add layers, glowed like the gateway to Hell.

When the day’s work was completed and the piece was placed in the finishing kiln, Gleason asked the assistants to clean up the studio before heading home. She then invited Bosch and McPherson to wait for her in the office while she got cleaned up herself.

The office doubled as a break room. It was sparely furnished with a table and four chairs, a filing cabinet, a storage locker and a small kitchenette. There was a binder on the table containing plastic sleeves with photos of glass pieces made previously in the studio. McPherson studied these and seemed taken with several. Bosch took out the file he had been carrying inside his jacket and put it down on the table ready to go.

“It must be nice to be able to make something out of nothing,” McPherson said. “I wish I could.”

Bosch tried to think of a response but before he could come up with anything the door opened and Sarah Gleason entered. The bulky mask, apron and gloves were gone and she was smaller than Bosch had expected. She barely crested five feet and he doubted there were more than ninety pounds on her tiny frame. He knew that childhood trauma sometimes stunted growth. So it was no wonder Sarah Gleason looked like a woman in a child’s body.

Her auburn hair was down now instead of tied into a knot behind her head. It framed a weary face with dark blue eyes. She wore blue jeans, clogs and a black T-shirt that said Death Cab on it. She headed directly to the refrigerator.

“Can I get you something? Don’t have any alcohol in here but if you need something cold…”

Bosch and McPherson passed. Harry noticed she had left the door to the office open. He could hear someone sweeping in the studio. He stepped over and closed it.

Gleason turned from the refrigerator with a bottle of water. She saw Bosch closing the door and a look of apprehension immediately crossed her face. Bosch raised one hand in a calming gesture as he pulled his badge with the other.

“Ms. Gleason, everything is okay. We’re from Los Angeles and just need to speak privately with you.”

He opened his badge wallet and held it up to her.

“What is this?”

“My name is Harry Bosch and this is Maggie McPherson. She is a prosecutor with the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office.”

“Why did you lie?” she said angrily. “You said you wanted a piece made.”

“No, actually we didn’t. Your assistant, the blocker, just assumed that. We never said why we were here.”

Her guard was clearly up and Bosch thought they had blown their approach and with that the opportunity to secure her as a witness. But then Gleason stepped forward and grabbed the badge wallet out of his hand. She studied it and the facing ID card. It was an unusual move, taking the badge from him. No more than the fifth time that had ever happened to Bosch in his long career as a cop. He saw her eyes hold on the ID card and he knew she had noticed the discrepancy between what he had said his name was and what was on the ID.

“You said Harry Bosch?”

“Harry for short.”

“Hieronymus Bosch. You’re named after the artist?”

Bosch nodded.

“My mother liked the paintings.”

“Well, I like them, too. I think he knew something about inner demons. Is that why your mother liked him?”

“I think so, yeah.”

She handed the badge wallet back to him and Bosch sensed a calmness come over her. The moment of anxiety and apprehension had passed, thanks to the painter whose name Bosch carried.

“What do you want with me? I haven’t been to L.A. in more than ten years.”

Bosch noted that if she was telling the truth, then she had not returned when her stepfather was ill and dying.

“We just want to talk,” he said. “Can we sit down?”

“Talk about what?”

“Your sister.”

“My sister? I don’t-look, you need to tell me what this is-”

“You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Sit down and we’ll tell you.”

Finally, she moved to the lunch table and took a seat. She pulled a soft pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s my one remaining addiction. And you two showing up like this-I need a smoke.”

For the next ten minutes Bosch and McPherson traded off the story and walked her through the short version of Jason Jessup’s journey to freedom. Gleason showed almost no reaction to the news. No tears, no outrage. And she didn’t ask questions about the DNA test that had sprung him from prison. She only explained that she had no contact with anyone in California, owned no television and never read newspapers. She said they were distractions from work as well as from her recovery from addiction.

“We’re going to retry him, Sarah,” McPherson said. “And we’re here because we’re going to need your help.”

Bosch could see Sarah turn inward, to start to measure the impact of what they were telling her.

“It was so long ago,” she finally responded. “Can’t you just use what I said from the first trial?”

McPherson shook her head.

“We can’t, Sarah. The new jury can’t even know there was an earlier trial because that could influence how they weigh the evidence. It would prejudice them against the defendant and a guilty verdict wouldn’t stand. So in situations where witnesses from the first trial are dead or mentally incompetent, we read their earlier testimony into the trial record without telling the jury where it’s from. But where that’s not the case, like with you, we need the person to come to court and testify.”

It wasn’t clear whether Gleason had even registered McPherson’s response. She sat staring at something far away. Even as she spoke, her eyes didn’t come off their distant focus.

“I’ve spent my whole life since then trying to forget about that day. I tried different things to make me forget. I used drugs to make a big bubble with me in the middle of it. I made… Never mind, the point is, I don’t think I’m going to be much help to you.”

Before McPherson could respond, Bosch stepped in.

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s just talk here for a few minutes about what you can remember, okay? And if it’s not going to work, then it won’t work. You were a victim, Sarah, and we don’t want to victimize you all over again.”

He waited a moment for Gleason to respond but she sat mute, staring at the water bottle in front of her on the table.

“Let’s start with that day,” Bosch said. “I don’t need you at this point to go through the horrible moments of your sister’s abduction, but do you remember making the identification of Jason Jessup for the police?”

She slowly nodded.

“I remember looking through the window. Upstairs. They opened the blinds a little bit so I could look out. They weren’t supposed to be able to see me. The men. He was the one with the hat. They made him take it off and that’s when I saw it was him. I remember that.”

Bosch was encouraged by the detail of the hat. He didn’t recall seeing that in the case records or hearing it in McPherson’s summary but the fact that Gleason remembered it was a good sign.

“What kind of hat was he wearing?” he asked.

“A baseball cap,” Gleason said. “It was blue.”

“A Dodgers cap?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t think I knew back then either.”

Bosch nodded and moved in.

“Do you think if I showed you a photo lineup, you would be able to identify the man who took your sister?”

“You mean the way he looks now? I doubt it.”

“No, not now,” McPherson said. “What we would need to do in trial is confirm the identification you made back then. We would show you photos from back then.”

Gleason hesitated and then nodded.

“Sure. Through everything I’ve done to myself over the years, I’ve never been able to forget that man’s face.”

“Well, let’s see.”

While Bosch opened the file on the table, Gleason lit a new cigarette off the end of her old one.

The file contained a lineup of six black-and-white booking photos of men of the same age, build and coloring. A 1986 photo of Jessup was included in the spread. Harry knew that this was the make-or-break moment of the case.

The photos were displayed in two rows of three. Jessup’s shot was in the middle window on the bottom row. The five hole. It had always been the lucky spot for Bosch.

“Take your time,” he said.

Gleason drank some water and then put the bottle to the side. She leaned over the table, bringing her face within twelve inches of the photos. It didn’t take her long. She pointed to the photo of Jessup without hesitation.

“I wish I could forget him,” she said. “But I can’t. He’s always there in the back of my mind. In the shadows.”

“Do you have any doubt about the photo you have chosen?” Bosch asked.

Gleason leaned down and looked again, then shook her head.

“No. He was the man.”

Bosch glanced at McPherson, who made a slight nod. It was a good ID and they had handled it right. The only thing that was missing was a show of emotion on Gleason’s part. But maybe twenty-four years had drained her of everything. Harry took out a pen and handed it to Gleason.

“Would you put your initials and the date below the photo you chose, please?”

“Why?”

“It confirms your ID. It just helps make it more solid when it comes up in court.”

Bosch noted that she had not asked if she had chosen the right photo. She didn’t have to and that was a secondary confirmation of her recall. Another good sign. After she handed the pen back to Bosch he closed the file and slid it to the side. He glanced at McPherson again. Now came the hard part. By prior agreement, Maggie was going to make the call here on whether to bring up the DNA now or to wait until Gleason was more firmly onboard as a witness.

McPherson decided not to wait.

“Sarah, there is a second issue to discuss now. We told you about the DNA that allowed this man to get this new trial and what we hope is only his temporary freedom.”

“Yes.”

“We took the DNA profile and checked it against the California data bank. We got a match. The semen on the dress your sister was wearing came from your stepfather.”

Bosch watched Sarah closely. Not even a flicker of surprise showed on her face or in her eyes. This information was not news to her.

“In two thousand four the state started taking DNA swabs from all suspects in felony arrests. That same year your father was arrested for a felony hit-and-run with injuries. He ran a stop sign and hit-”

“Stepfather.”

“Excuse me?”

“You said ‘your father.’ He wasn’t my father. He was my stepfather.”

“My mistake. I’m sorry. The bottom line is Kensington Landy’s DNA was in the data bank and it’s a match with the sample from the dress. What could not be determined is how long that sample was on the dress at the time of its discovery. It could have been deposited on the dress the day of the murder or the week before or maybe even a month before.”

Sarah started flying on autopilot. She was there but not there. Her eyes were fixed on a distance that was far beyond the room they were in.

“We have a theory, Sarah. The autopsy that was conducted on your sister determined that she had not been sexually abused by her killer or anyone else prior to that day. We also know the dress she wore happened to be yours and Melissa was borrowing it that morning because she liked it.”

McPherson paused but Sarah said nothing.

“When we get to trial we’re going to have to explain the semen found on the dress. If we can’t explain it, the assumption will be that it came from the killer and that killer was your stepfather. We will lose the case and Jessup, the real killer, will walk away free. I’m sure you don’t want that, do you, Sarah? There are some people out there who think twenty-four years in prison is enough time served for the murder of a twelve-year-old girl. They don’t know why we’re doing this. But I want you to know that I don’t think that, Sarah. Not by a long shot.”

Sarah Gleason didn’t answer at first. Bosch expected tears but none came and he began to wonder if her emotions had been cauterized by the traumas and depravities of her life. Or maybe she simply had an internal toughness that her diminutive stature camouflaged. Either way, when she finally responded, it was in a flat, emotionless voice that belied the heartfelt words she spoke.

“You know what I always thought?” she said.

McPherson leaned forward.

“What, Sarah?”

“That that man killed three people that day. My sister, then my mother… and then me. None of us got away.”

There was a long moment of silence. McPherson slowly reached out and put her hand on Gleason’s arm, a gesture of comfort where no comfort could exist.

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” McPherson whispered.

“Okay,” Gleason said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

Thirteen

Thursday, February 18, 8:15 P.M .

My daughter was already missing her mother’s cooking-and she’d only been gone one day. I was dropping her half-eaten sandwich into the garbage and wondering how the hell I could’ve messed up a grilled cheese when my cell phone’s ring interrupted. It was Maggie checking in from the road.

“Tell me something good,” I said by way of greeting.

“You get to spend the evening with our beautiful daughter.”

“Yes, that’s something good. Except she doesn’t like my cooking. Now tell me something else that’s good.”

“Our primary witness is good to go. She’ll testify.”

“She made the ID?”

“She did.”

“She told you about the DNA and it fits with our theory?”

“She did and it does.”

“And she’ll come down here and testify to all of it at the trial?”

“She will.”

I felt a twelve-volt charge go through my body.

“That’s actually a lot of good things, Maggie. Is there any downside?”

“Well…”

I felt the wind go out of the sails. I was about to learn that Sarah was still a drug addict or there was some other issue that would prevent me from using her at trial.

“Well, what?”

“Well, there are going to be challenges to her testimony, of course, but she’s pretty solid. She’s a survivor and it shows. There’s really only one thing missing: emotions. She’s been through a lot in her life and she basically seems to be a bit burned out-emotionally. No tears, no laughter, just straight down the middle.”

“We can work on that. We can coach her.”

“Yeah, well, we just have to be careful with that. I am not saying she isn’t fine the way she is. I’m just saying that she’s sort of a flat line. Everything else is good. I think you’re going to like her and I think she’ll help us put Jessup back in prison.”

“That’s fantastic, Maggie. Really. And you’re still all right handling her at trial, right?”

“I’ve got her.”

“Royce will attack her on the meth-memory loss and all of that. Her lifestyle… you’ll have to be ready for anything and everything.”

“I will be. That leaves you with Bosch and Jessup. You still think he’ll testify?”

“Jessup? Yes, he’s got to. Clive knows he can’t do that to a jury, not after twenty-four years. So, yes, I’ve got him and I’ve got Bosch.”

“At least with Harry you don’t have to worry about any baggage.”

“That Clive knows about yet.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means don’t underestimate Clever Clive Royce. See, that’s what you prosecutors always do. You get overconfident and it makes you vulnerable.”

“Thank you, F. Lee Bailey. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“How was Bosch today?”

“He was Bosch. What happened on your end?”

I checked through the door of the kitchen. Hayley was sitting on the couch with her homework spread out on the coffee table.

“Well, for one thing, we’ve got a judge. Breitman, Department one-twelve.”

Maggie considered the case assignment for a moment before responding.

“I would call that a no-win for either side. She’s straight down the middle. Never a prosecutor, never a defense attorney. Just a good, solid civil trial lawyer. I think neither side gets an advantage with her.”

“Wow, a judge who’s going to be impartial and fair. Imagine that.”

She didn’t respond.

“She set the first status conference in chambers. Wednesday morning at eight before court starts. You read anything into that?”

This meant the judge wanted to meet the lawyers and discuss the case in chambers, starting things off informally and away from the lens of the media.

“I think that’s good. She’s probably going to set the rules with media and procedure. It sounds to me like she’s going to run a tight ship.”

“That was what I was thinking. You’re free Wednesday to be there?”

“I’ll have to check my calendar but I think so. I’m trying to clear everything except for this.”

“I gave Royce the first bit of discovery today. It was mostly composed of material from the first trial.”

“You know you could have held off on that until the thirty-day marker.”

“Yeah, but what’s the point?”

“The point is strategy. The earlier you give it to him, the more time he has to be ready for it. He’s trying to put the squeeze on us by not waiving speedy trial. You should put the squeeze right back on him by not showing our hand until we have to. Thirty days before trial.”

“I’ll remember that with the next round. But this was pretty basic stuff.”

“Was Sarah Gleason on the witness list?”

“Yes, but under the name Sarah Landy-as it was in ’eighty-six. And I gave the office as the address. Clive doesn’t know we found her.”

“We need to keep it that way until we have to reveal it. I don’t want her harassed or feeling threatened.”

“What did you tell her about coming down for the trial?”

“I told her she would probably be needed for two days in trial. Plus the travel.”

“And that’s not going to be a problem?”

“Well… she runs her own business and has been at it only a couple years. She has one big, ongoing project but otherwise said that things are slow. My guess is we can get her down when we need her.”

“Are you still in Port Townsend?”

“Yes, we just got finished with her about an hour ago. We grabbed dinner and checked in at a hotel. It’s been a long day.”

“And you’re coming back tomorrow?”

“We were planning on it. But our flight’s not till two. We have to take a ferry-it’s a journey just to the airport.”

“Okay, call me in the morning before you leave. Just in case I think of something involving the witness.”

“Okay.”

“Did either of you take notes?”

“No, we thought it might freeze her.”

“Did you record it?”

“No, same reason.”

“Good. I want to keep as much of this out of discovery as possible. Tell Bosch not to write anything up. We can copy Royce on the six-pack she made the ID off of, but that’s it.”

“Right. I’ll tell Harry.”

“When, tonight or tomorrow?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, never mind. Anything else?”

“Yes.”

I braced for it. My petty jealousy had slipped out for one small moment.

“I would like to say good night to my daughter now.”

“Oh,” I said, relief bursting through my body. “I’ll put her on.”

I took the phone out to Hayley.

“It’s your mother.”