Michael Connelly: The Reversal

“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.

Wednesday, February 17, 9:48A.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.