Michael Connelly - The Crossing

Mendenhall next made a call to her boss, Ellington, and informed him in more detail of what had just occurred. When she was finished with that call she came inside the house to where Bosch was sitting on the couch in the living room.

“You turned off the music,” she said.

“Yeah, I thought I should,” he said.

“What was that?”

“Wynton Marsalis. ‘The Majesty of the Blues.’”

“It covered me, you know. Ellis didn’t hear me come up on him.”

“If I ever meet Wynton, I’ll thank him. That’s twice now, you know.”

“What’s twice?”

“That you’ve saved my life.”

She shrugged.

“To protect and serve — you know the deal.”

“It’s more than that. What made you come back?”

“Your tip about the burnt-orange Camaro. There’s one parked around the bend. I go by it on my way down the hill and think, That’s him, he’s waiting for Bosch . So I came back.”

“And the door? I’m pretty sure I locked it.”

“Internal Affairs one-oh-one. I’ve planted a lot of bugs in my time. I know my way around a lock with a pick.”

“Impressive, Mendenhall. But you know you’ll probably pay for this — in the department. Doesn’t matter that he was bent. You killed a cop.”

“I had no choice,” she said. “It was a good shooting and I’m not worried.”

“It was right as rain but there still will be blowback.”

Bosch knew that department policy held that deadly force was justified if it was used to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to an officer or a citizen. Mendenhall was not required to identify herself or give Ellis the opportunity to drop his weapon. Her coming up behind him and putting a round into his brain was within policy. She would be quickly cleared by the internal-shooting review board and then the District Attorney’s Office. It would be in the opinion of her peers and the innuendo and gossip that would follow her in the department that she might not fare so well.

Mendenhall looked out the open door at the body and Bosch saw her trying to control a momentary tremor within her own body. It was a response that often came after a shooting.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’m good,” she said. “Just sort of... I just killed a man, you know?”

Bosch nodded.

“And you saved one,” he said. “Remember that.”

“I will,” she said. “What was he saying? At the end. I couldn’t hear anything when I was coming up behind him. The music covered that, too.”

Bosch paused before answering. He realized he had an opportunity here. Mendenhall had heard nothing. There was no witness to what Ellis said to him on the deck. What Bosch said now would be considered contemporaneous recall by the courts and given the weight of truth when repeated from the witness stand. He knew that he could guarantee Da’Quan Foster’s freedom by saying that Ellis had gloated that he and Long had murdered Alexandra Parks, that he had admitted everything.

Bosch thought about all the invisible lines he had crossed in the week he had worked the case. An image came to mind; a man with an umbrella struggling for balance on a tightrope. That man was Bosch.

He decided this was one line he couldn’t cross.

“He didn’t say much other than that he was going to Belize,” he said. “He just wanted to make sure I was dead before he split.”

Mendenhall nodded.

“Big mistake,” she said.

Bosch was soon haunted by his decision not to lie and say Ellis had admitted he and Long killed Alexandra Parks. In the days following the vice cop’s death, the charges in the Parks murder remained lodged against Da’Quan Foster as the Sheriff’s Department dragged its feet on the investigation. Long was charged with a variety of crimes, including the murder of Dr. George Schubert under the felony-murder law that held him responsible for his co-conspirator’s actions. But the official stand on the Parks case remained unchanged. The Sheriff’s Department refused to acknowledge that the murder charge against Foster was the result of a complex frame-up orchestrated by Ellis and Long.

Bureaucracy, politics, and the inability of public institutions to humbly acknowledge mistakes were all to blame. The two law enforcement agencies were biding their time, refusing comment on what they termed an ongoing joint investigation into the relationship between the murders of Alexandra Parks, James Allen, Peter and Paul Nguyen, and George Schubert. The slayings of Deborah Stovall and Josette Leroux, professionally known on the porno circuit as Ashley Juggs and Annie Minx, were also folded in as part of the joint investigation. All the while, Foster remained in the L.A. County Jail on a no-bail hold.

The law enforcement agencies might have been engulfed by inertia, but Foster’s attorney was a blur of forward motion. When charges against his client were not immediately dropped in the aftermath of Ellis’s death and the charging of Long with murder, Mickey Haller filed an emergency 995 motion to overturn the findings of the preliminary hearing based on new evidence — a lot of new evidence. A week later, on a Thursday morning when the temperature in downtown had already ticked past 80 degrees by the 8 a.m. call to order, Mickey Haller stood before Judge Joseph Sackville in Department 114 of the Criminal Courts Building.

One thing that was different from the last time Bosch had seen Haller perform in court was that Bosch was now a participant rather than an observer. Haller would call Bosch as his only witness and use him to introduce the recording taken during the interview and then shoot-out in Schubert’s office. He would also ask him to detail the steps of his investigation of the Parks murder and its connection to the murder of James Allen.

Foster would not be called to the witness stand. It was too risky a move. Any misstep in his testimony could be used against him later at trial should Haller be unsuccessful in his bid to overturn the judge’s ruling at the preliminary hearing. The details of his alibi could be covered in Bosch’s summary of his investigation. Bosch’s experience testifying in trials for more than three decades made him the easy choice over Foster.

Bosch’s testimony had been carefully choreographed by Haller in a two-day run-up to the hearing. Haller made sure Bosch’s testimony thoroughly covered the defense theory that Foster was framed with his own DNA, obtained by Ellis and Long through James Allen. Ellis and Allen were dead and Long was not cooperating. The burden was all on Bosch.

A large audience filled the courtroom. The case had grown to involve seven murders plus the justifiable killing of LAPD Officer Don Ellis. Eight deaths in all made it the biggest thing going in the courthouse or anywhere else in the city, and it was drawing maximum exposure in the media. Local, national, and international reporters crowded the benches in the courtroom gallery. They were supplemented by lawyers and investigators with tangential parts of the case, and various other casual observers. Bosch’s daughter was in the front row behind the defense table, having taken off one of her last remaining days of high school to attend. She was sitting next to Mendenhall, who also had a vested interest in the outcome of the hearing. Noticeably absent from the courtroom was Foster’s own family. He had told Haller not to invite or tell his wife about the hearing for fear she would hear testimony about her husband’s lifestyle choices that would jeopardize their marriage. It would probably be impossible to keep it from her but at least she wouldn’t be on display in a crowded courtroom when the details were aired.

In the row behind the prosecution table sat the widower, Sheriff’s Deputy Vincent Harrick, in full uniform. He sat between two other uniformed deputies, there to show support for their colleague and to triple down on the message to the judge that Harrick stood solidly behind the Sheriff’s Department investigation, which still pointed the finger at Da’Quan Foster.