Майкл Коннелли - Two Kinds of Truth

“Is he going to be here?” Maddie whispered.

“Who?” Bosch asked.

“Preston Borders.”

“Yes, he’ll be here.”

He pointed to the metal door behind the desk where the courtroom deputy sat.

“He’s probably in a holding cell back there now.”

Bosch realized by her first question that she might have a fascination with Borders, the unrepentant death row killer. He second-guessed his allowing his daughter to come.

Bosch looked around. While Houghton was not the original judge on the Borders case, Department 107 was the original courtroom, and it looked to Bosch like it hadn’t been updated in the intervening thirty years. It was 1960s contemporary design, like most of the courthouses in the county. Light wood paneling covered the walls, with the judge’s bench, witness stand, and clerk’s corral all part of one module of sharp lines and faux wood. The great seal of the State of California was affixed to the wall at the front of the courtroom, three feet above the judge’s head.

The courtroom was cool, but Bosch felt hot under the collar of his suit. He tried to calm himself and be ready for the hearing. The truth was, he felt powerless. His career and reputation were essentially going to be in Mickey Haller’s hands and their fate possibly determined over the next few hours. As much as he trusted his half brother, passing the responsibility to someone else left him sweating in a cold room.

The first familiar face to enter the courtroom belonged to Cisco Wojciechowski. Bosch and his daughter slid down the bench and the big man sat down. He was as dressed up as Bosch had ever seen him, in clean black jeans and matching boots, an untucked white collared shirt, and a black vest with stylized swirls of silver thread. Bosch introduced his daughter and then she went back to reading her book, a collection of essays by a writer named B. J. Novak.

“How you feeling?” Cisco asked.

“One way or another, it will all be over in a few hours,” Bosch said. “How’s Elizabeth?”

“She had a rough night, but she’s getting there. I got one of my guys watching her. Maybe if you can, you could come by and see her. Encourage her. Might help.”

“Sure. But when I was there yesterday, it looked like she wanted to use my head as a battering ram on the door.”

“You go through big changes in the first week. It will be different today. I think she’s about to crest. It’s an uphill battle and then there’s a point where you’re suddenly going down the other side of the mountain.”

Bosch nodded.

“The question is, what happens at the end of the week?” Cisco said. “Do we just cut her loose, drop her off somewhere? She needs a long-range plan or she won’t make it.”

“I’ll think of something,” Bosch said. “You just get her through the week and I’ll take it from there.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you ever find anything out about the daughter? She still doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah, I found out. Daisy. She was a runaway. Got into drugs in junior high, ran away from home. Was living on the street down in Hollywood and one night she got in the wrong car with somebody.”

“Shit.”

“She was...”

Bosch turned his body casually as if he were reaching down with his left hand to adjust the cuff of his right pant leg. His back to his daughter, he continued.

“Tortured — to put it politely — and left in a Dumpster in an alley off of Cahuenga.”

Cisco shook his head.

“I guess if anybody ever had a reason...”

“Right.”

“Did they at least catch the bastard?”

“Nope. Not yet.”

Cisco laughed without humor.

“Not yet?” he said. “Like it’s going to get solved ten years later?”

Bosch looked at him for a long moment without replying.

“You never know,” he said.

Haller entered the courtroom then, saw his investigator and client sitting together, and pointed in the direction of the hallway outside. He hadn’t noticed Maddie because the two bigger men had eclipsed her from the doorway angle. Bosch whispered to Maddie to stay where she was, and started to get up. Maddie put her hand on his arm to stop him.

“Who were you just talking about?”

“Uh, a woman from a case. She needed help and I asked Cisco to get involved.”

“What kind of help? Who’s Daisy?”

“We can talk about it later. I need to go out and talk to my — your uncle — about the hearing. Stay here and I’ll be back.”

Bosch got up and followed Cisco out. Most people in the long hallway congregated down in the middle near the snack bar, restrooms, and elevators. Team Bosch found an open bench with some privacy by the door to Department 107 and sat down, Haller in the middle.

“Okay, boys, are we ready to rock?” the lawyer said. “How are my witnesses? Where are my witnesses?”

“Locked and loaded, I think,” Cisco said.

“Tell me about Spencer,” Haller said. “You guys stayed with him, right?”

“All night,” Cisco said. “As of twenty minutes ago, he was still at his new lawyer’s office in the Bradbury.”

Bosch knew that meant Spencer was only two blocks away. Haller turned on the bench and looked at him eye to eye.

“And you, I told you to get some sleep,” he said. “But you still look like shit, and there’s dust on the shoulders of that suit, man.”

Haller reached out and roughly slapped off the dust that had settled on the suit during the two or more years it had been on a hanger in Bosch’s closet.

“I don’t have to remind you, this is probably all going to come down to you,” Haller said. “Be sharp. Be forthright. These people are fucking with everything that is important to you.”

“I know that,” Bosch said.

As if on cue, the CIU team came out of the stairwell down the hall, having taken the steps down from the D.A.’s Office. It was Kennedy, Soto, and Tapscott. They were heading to Department 107. Another woman, who was carrying a cardboard file box with two hands, followed. She was most likely Kennedy’s assistant.

Further behind them, coming from the elevator alcove at the same time, walked Cronyn and Cronyn. Lance Cronyn wore steel-rimmed glasses and had slicked-back jet-black hair that was obviously dyed. His suit was black with pinstripes and his tie a loud aqua. He looked like he went to great lengths to appear young, and the reason was right next to him, matching him stride for stride. Katherine Cronyn was at least twenty years his junior. She had flowing red hair and a voluptuous figure clad in a blue calf-length skirt and matching jacket over a chiffon blouse.

“Here they all come,” Bosch said.

Haller looked up from a yellow legal pad he was referring to and saw the opposition approaching.

“Like lambs to slaughter,” he said, his voice brimming with bravado and confidence.

Team Bosch remained seated as the others made the turn toward the courtroom door. Kennedy kept his eyes averted, as though there was no one sitting on the bench fifteen feet away. But Soto locked eyes with Bosch and peeled off from her team to approach him. She was unhesitant about speaking in front of Haller and Wojciechowski.

“Harry, why didn’t you call me back?” she asked. “I left you several messages.”

“Because there was nothing to say, Lucia,” Bosch said. “You guys believe Borders over me and there’s nothing else to say.”

“I believe the forensic evidence, Harry. It doesn’t mean I believe you planted the other evidence. The stuff in the paper didn’t come from me.”

“Then how did the evidence I found get there, Lucia? How did Dani Skyler’s pendant get into the suspect’s apartment?”

“I don’t know, but you weren’t in there alone.”