The Brass Verdict (13 page)

“It’s one thing sharing threat information from closed cases,” I said. “It’s another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed.”

Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.

“What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren’t telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?”

“I can’t talk to you about an active investigation.”

“You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI.”

He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.

“I didn’t ask you about the FBI.”

“Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I’m guessing it was the FBI.”

Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.

“This time you go first,” I prompted.

He nodded.

“Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent’s cell phone — either off his body or it was in his briefcase.”

“Okay.”

“I got the call records yesterday right before I saw you. On the day he was killed he got three calls from the bureau. Four days before that, there were two. He was talking to somebody over there. Or they were talking to him.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell. All outgoing calls from over there register on the main number. All I know is he got calls from the bureau, no names.”

“How long were the calls?”

Bosch hesitated, unsure what to divulge. He looked down at the tablet in his hand and I saw him grudgingly decide to share more. He was going to get angry when I had nothing to share back.

“They were all short calls.”

“How short?”

“None of them over a minute.”

“Then, maybe they were just wrong numbers.”

He shook his head.

“That’s too many wrong numbers. They wanted something from him.”

“Anybody from there check in on the homicide investigation?”

“Not yet.”

I thought about this and shrugged.

“Well, maybe they will and then you’ll know.”

“Yeah, and maybe they won’t. It’s not their style, if you know what I mean. Now your turn. What do you have that’s federal?”

“Nothing. I confirmed that Vincent had no federal cases.”

I watched Bosch do a slow burn as he realized I had played him.

“You’re telling me you have found no federal connections? Not even a bureau business card in that office?”

“That’s right. Nothing.”

“There’s been a rumor going around about a federal grand jury looking into corruption in the state courts. You know anything about that?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve been on the shelf for a year.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“Look, Detective, I don’t get this. Why can’t you just call over there and ask who was calling your victim? Isn’t that how an investigation should proceed?”

Bosch smiled like he was dealing with a child.

“If they want me to know something, they’ll come to me. If I call them, they’lI just shine me on. If this was part of a corruption probe or they’ve got something else going, the chances of them talking to a local cop are between slim and none. If they’re the ones who got him killed, then make it none.”

“How would they get him killed?”

“I told you, they kept calling. They wanted something. They were pressuring him. Maybe someone else knew about it and thought he was a risk.”

“That’s a lot of conjecture about five calls that don’t even add up to five minutes.”

Bosch held up the yellow pad.

“No more conjecture than this list.”

“What about the laptop?”

“What about it?”

“Is that what this is all about, something in his computer?”

“You tell me.”

“How can I tell you when I have no idea what was in it?”

Bosch nodded the point and stood up.

“Have a good day, Counselor.”

He walked out, carrying the legal pad at his side. I was left wondering whether he had been warning me or playing me the whole time he had been in the room.

Sixteen

L
orna and Cisco arrived together fifteen minutes after Bosch’s departure and we convened in Vincent’s office. I took a seat behind the dead lawyer’s desk and they sat side by side in front of it. It was another score-keeping session in which we went over cases, what had been accomplished the previous night and what still needed to be done.

With Cisco driving, I had visited eleven of Vincent’s clients the night before, signing up eight of them and giving back files to the remaining three. These were the priority cases, potential clients I hoped to keep because they could pay or their cases had garnered some form of merit in my review. They were cases I could win or be challenged by.

So it had not been a bad night. I had even convinced the woman charged with indecent exposure to keep me on as her attorney. And of course, bagging Walter Elliot was the icing on the cake. Lorna reported that she had faxed him a representation contract and it had already been signed and returned. We were in good shape there. I could start chipping away at the hundred thousand in the trust account.

We next set the plan for the day. I told Lorna that I wanted her and Wren — if she showed up — to run down the remaining clients, apprise them of Jerry Vincent’s demise and set up appointments for me to discuss the options of legal representation. I also wanted Lorna to continue building the calendar and familiarizing herself with Vincent’s files and financial records.

I told Cisco I wanted him to focus his attention on the Elliot case, with particular emphasis on witness maintenance. This meant that he had to take the preliminary defense witness list, which had already been compiled by Jerry Vincent, and prepare subpoenas for the law enforcement officers and other witnesses who might be considered hostile to the defense’s cause. For the paid expert witness and others who were willingly going to testify at trial for the defense, he had to make contact and assure them that the trial was moving forward as scheduled, with me replacing Vincent at the helm.

“Got it,” Cisco said. “What about the Vincent investigation? You still want me monitoring?”

“Yes, keep tabs on that and let me know what you find out.”

“I found out that they spent last night sweating somebody but kicked him loose this morning.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“A suspect?”

“They cut him loose, so whoever it was is cleared. For now.”

I nodded as I thought about this. No wonder Bosch looked like he had been up all night.

“What are you going to be doing today?” Lorna asked.

“My priority starting today is Elliot. There are a few things on these other cases that I’ll need to pay some attention to but for the most part I’m going to be on Elliot from here on out. We’ve got jury selection in eight days. Today I want to start at the crime scene.”

“I should go with you,” Cisco said.

“No, I just want to get a feel for the place. You can get in there with a camera and tape measure later.”

“Mick, isn’t there any way you can convince Elliot to delay?” Lorna asked. “Doesn’t he realize that you need time to study and understand the case?”

“I told him that, but he’s not interested. He made it a condition of my hire. I had to agree to go to trial next week or he’d find another lawyer who could. He says he’s innocent and doesn’t want to wait a single day longer to prove it.”

“Do you believe him?”

I shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter. He believes it. And he’s got this strange confidence in it all turning out his way — like the Monday morning box office. So I either get ready to go to trial at the end of next week or I lose the client.”

Just then the door to the office swung open and revealed Wren Williams standing tentatively in the doorway.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Hello, Wren,” I said. “Glad you’re here. Could you wait out there in reception, and Lorna will be right out to work with you?”

“No problem. You also have one of the clients waiting out here. Patrick Henson. He was already waiting when I came in.”

I looked at my watch. It was five of nine. It was a good sign in regard to Patrick Henson.

“Then, send him in.”

A young man walked in. Patrick Henson was smaller than I thought he would be, but maybe it was the low center of gravity that made him a good surfer. He had the requisite hardened tan but his hair was cropped short. No earrings, no white shell necklace or shark’s tooth. No tattoos that I could see. He wore black cargo pants and what probably passed as his best shirt. It had a collar.

“Patrick, we spoke on the phone yesterday. I’m Mickey Haller and this is my case manager, Lorna Taylor. This big guy is Cisco, my investigator.”

He stepped toward the desk and shook our hands. His grip was firm.

“I’m glad you decided to come in. Is that your fish on the wall back there?”

Without moving his feet Henson swiveled at the hips as if on a surfboard and looked at the fish hanging on the wall.

“Yeah, that’s Betty.”

“You gave a stuffed fish a name?” Lorna asked. “What, was it a pet?”

Henson smiled, more to himself than to us.

“No, I caught it a long time ago. Back in Florida. We hung it by the front door in the place I was sharing in Malibu. My roommates and me, we’d always say, ‘Hellooo, Betty’ to it when we came home. It was kind of stupid.”

He swiveled back and looked at me.

“Speaking of names, do we call you Trick?”

“Nah, that was just the name my agent came up with. I don’t have him anymore. You can just call me Patrick.”

“Okay, and you told me you had a valid driver’s license?”

“Sure do.”

He reached into a front pocket and removed a thick nylon wallet. He pulled his license out and handed it to me. I studied it for a moment and then handed it to Cisco. He studied it a little longer and then nodded, giving it his official approval.

“Okay, Patrick, I need a driver,” I said. “I provide the car and gas and insurance and you show up here every morning at nine to drive me wherever I need to go. I told you the pay schedule yesterday. You still interested?”

“I’m interested.”

“Are you a safe driver?” Lorna asked.

“I’ve never had an accident.” Patrick said.

I nodded my approval. They say an addict is best suited for spotting another addict. I was looking for signs that he was still using. Heavy eyelids, slow speech, avoidance of eye contact. But I didn’t pick up on anything.

“When can you start?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t have anything … I mean, whenever you want, I guess.”

“How about we start right now? Today will be a test-drive. We’ll see how you do and we can talk about it at the end of the day.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Okay, well, we’re going to get out of here and hit the road and I’ll explain in the car how I like things to work.”

“Cool.”

He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and awaited the next move or instruction. He looked like he was about thirty but that was because of what the sun had done to his skin. I knew from the file that he was only twenty-four and still had a lot to learn.

Today the plan was to take him back to school.

Seventeen

W
e took the 10 out of downtown and headed west toward Malibu. I sat in the back and opened my computer on the fold-down table. While I waited for it to boot up I told Patrick Henson how it all worked.

“Patrick, I haven’t had an office since I left the Public Defenders Office twelve years ago. My car is my office. I’ve got two other Lincolns just like this one. I keep them in rotation. Each one’s got a printer, a fax and I’ve got a wireless card in my computer. Anything I have to do in an office I can do back here while I’m on the road to the next place. There are more than forty courthouses spread across L.A. County. Being mobile is the best way to do business.”

“Cool,” Patrick said. “I wouldn’t want to be in an office either.”

“Damn right,” I said. “Too claustrophobic.”

My computer was ready. I went to the file where I kept generic forms and motions and began to customize a pretrial motion to examine evidence.

“I’m working on your case right now, Patrick.”

He looked at me in the mirror.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I reviewed your file and there’s something Mr. Vincent hadn’t done that I think we need to do that may help.”

“What’s that?”

“Get an independent appraisal of the necklace you took. They list the value as twenty-five thousand and that bumps you up to a felony theft category. But it doesn’t look like anybody ever challenged that.”

“You mean like if the diamonds are bogus there’s no felony?”

“It could work out like that. But I was thinking of something else, too.”

“What?”

I pulled his file out of my bag so I could check a name.

“Let me ask you a few questions first, Patrick,” I said. “What were you doing in that house where you took the necklace?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I was dating the old lady’s youngest daughter. I met her on the beach and was sort of teaching her to surf. We went out a few times and hung out. One time there was a birthday party at the house and I was invited and the mother was given the necklace as a gift.”

“That’s when you learned its value.”

“Yeah, the father said they were diamonds when he gave it to her. He was real proud of ’em.”

“So then, the next time you were there at the house, you stole the necklace.”

He didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t a question, Patrick. It’s a fact. I’m your lawyer now and we need to discuss the facts of the case. Just don’t ever lie to me or I won’t be your lawyer anymore.”

“Okay.”

“So the next time you were in the house, you stole the necklace.”