Michael Connelly - The Wrong Side of Goodbye

“You usually do two — just in case,” he said. “Do you mind?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

Bosch repeated the process. It seemed so intrusive to him, his hand so close to her mouth. But Vibiana seemed unfazed by it. He put the second swab back in its tube and sealed it.

“I took a swab from your mother on Monday,” he said. “It will be part of the analysis. They will want to identify her chromosomes and separate them from your father’s and grandfather’s.”

“You went down to San Diego?” she asked.

“Yes. I went by Chicano Park and then over to her apartment. Is that where you grew up?”

“Yes. She’s still in the same place.”

“I showed her a photo. It was of you on that day you met your father. He’s not in it because he was the one who took it.”

“I’d like to see that.”

“I don’t have it with me but I’ll get it to you.”

“So she knows about this. The inheritance. What did she say?”

“She doesn’t know the details. But she told me where to find you and said it was your choice.”

Vibiana didn’t respond. She seemed to be thinking about her mother.

“I’m going to go now,” Bosch said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something.”

He handed her one of the cheap business cards he’d had printed with his name and number, then turned toward the door.

Bosch made his way back to his car, which he had left parked in a lot near the courthouse before his appointment at the D.A.’s Office. As he walked he repeatedly checked his perimeter for surveillance. He saw nothing and soon he was back to the rented Cherokee. He opened the rear hatch of the SUV and flipped up the rug liner in the back. He lifted the lid of the spare tire and tools compartment and removed the padded envelope he had put there that morning.

Closing up the back, he got in behind the wheel and opened the padded envelope. It contained the swab tube provided by Whitney Vance and marked W-V . It also contained two tubes collected from Gabriela Lida marked G-L . With a Sharpie marker he wrote V–V on the side of the two tubes containing the swabs he had just collected from Vibiana.

He put the extra tubes from Vibiana and her mother into his coat pocket and repackaged the envelope so it contained one swab from each of the principals. He put the envelope down on the seat next to him and called Mickey Haller.

“I have the granddaughter’s sample,” he said. “Where are you?”

“In the car,” Haller said. “The Starbucks in Chinatown, parked under the dragons.”

“I’ll be there in five. I have hers, her mother’s, and Vance’s with me. You can take the package to the lab.”

“Perfect. They opened probate today in Pasadena. So I want to get this going. Need confirmation before we make a move.”

“On my way.”

The Starbucks was at Broadway and Cesar Chavez. It took Bosch less than five minutes to shoot over and then spot the Lincoln at a red curb under the twin-dragon gateway to Chinatown. Bosch parked behind Haller’s car, put on the flashers, and got out. He walked up and got in through the door behind the driver. Haller was in the opposite seat with his laptop computer open on a fold-down desk. Bosch knew he was stealing Wi-Fi from the Starbucks.

“There he is,” the lawyer said. “Boyd, why don’t you go in and get us a couple lattes. You want anything, Harry?”

“I’m good,” Bosch said.

Haller handed a twenty-dollar bill over the seat and the driver got out of the car without a word and closed the door. Bosch and Haller were alone now. Bosch handed the package across the seat to him.

“Guard it with your life,” Bosch said.

“Oh, I will,” Haller said. “I’m going to take it in straight from here. Going with CellRight if that’s okay with you. They are close, reliable, and AABB accredited.”

“If you’re okay with them, I’m okay with them. How will this work now?”

“I get this in today, and we will probably hear yea or nay by Friday. Comparing grandparent to grandchild, we’re talking about a twenty-five percent passage of chromosomes. That’s a lot for them to work with.”

“What about the stuff from Dominick?”

“We wait on that. Let’s see what the swabs get us first.”

“Okay. And have you looked at the probate filing yet?”

“Not yet, but I’ll get it by the end of the day. I did hear that they’re saying the decedent had no blood heirs.”

“So what do we do?”

“Well, we wait for confirmation from CellRight, and if we get that, then we put our package together and seek an injunction.”

“Which does what?”

“We ask the court to stop the distribution of the estate. We say, ‘Hold on a minute, we have a valid heir and a holographic will and the means of proving authenticity.’ Then we brace ourselves for the onslaught.”

Bosch nodded.

“They’ll come after us,” Haller said. “You, me, the heir, everybody. Make no mistake, we’re all fair game. They’ll try to make us out as charlatans. You can count on that.”

“I warned Vibiana,” Bosch said. “But I don’t think she understood how relentless they might be.”

“Let’s see how the DNA comes back. If it’s what we think and she’s the heir, then we’ll circle the wagons and get her ready. We’ll probably have to move her and hide her.”

“She’s got a kid.”

“The kid too, then.”

“She needs a big space for her work.”

“Her work might need to be put on hold.”

“Okay.”

Bosch didn’t think that would go over well.

“I told her what you said about it being change-the-world money,” he said. “I think that’s what pulled her in.”

“Does every time.”

Haller bent down to look through the windows and see if his driver was waiting to get back behind the wheel. There was no sign of him.

“I heard in the CCB that you filed on the dungeon master,” Haller said.

“Don’t call him that,” Bosch said. “Makes it sound like a joke, and I know the woman he had down there in that place. She’s going to be dealing with the aftermath for a long time.”

“Sorry, I’m just a callous defense attorney. Did he lawyer up yet?”

“I don’t know. But I told you, you don’t want that case. Guy’s a soulless psychopath. You don’t want to get near that.”

“True.”

“This guy, he should get the death penalty, you ask me. But he didn’t kill anyone — that we know about yet.”

Out his window Bosch saw the driver standing in front of the coffee shop. He was holding two coffee cups and waiting to be called back to the Lincoln. He appeared to Bosch to be looking across the street at something. He then made a slight nod.

“Did he just...”

Bosch turned and peered out the back window of the Lincoln to try to see what the driver was looking at.

“What?” Haller said.

“Your driver,” Bosch said. “How long have you had him?”

“Who, Boyd? About two months now.”

“He one of your reformation projects?”

Bosch now leaned forward to look past Haller and out his window. Haller had a history of taking on his clients as drivers in order to help them pay off their legal fees — to him.

“I’ve helped him through a couple of scrapes,” Haller said. “What’s going on?”

“Did you mention CellRight in his presence?” Bosch asked in response. “Does he know where you’re taking the samples?”

Bosch had put two and two together. He had forgotten that morning to check his house and the street out front for cameras, but he remembered Creighton mentioning Haller during the confrontation in the lobby of the police station. If they knew about Haller, then they might also have him under surveillance. There could be a plan to intercept the DNA samples either before they reached CellRight or once they had been turned in.