Michael Connelly - The Reversal

“Did he ever act on that threat in any way?” Maggie asked.

“No,” Clinton said. “But that was the same day as the girl. So he got arrested and that was that. I can’t say I was too upset about seeing him go. Turned out Mr. Korish then laid off Derek ’cause he lied about not having a record. I was the last man standing. I worked there another four years-till I saved up the money to start my place.”

A regular American success story. I waited to see if Maggie had a follow but she didn’t. I did.

“Mr. Clinton, did you ever talk about any of this with the police or prosecutors twenty-four years ago?”

Clinton shook his head.

“Not really. I mean I spoke to the detective who was in charge back then. He asked me questions. But I wasn’t ever brought to court or anything like that.”

Because they didn’t need you back then, I thought. But I’m going to need you now.

“What makes you so sure that this threat from Jessup occurred on the day of the murder?”

“I just know it was that day. I remember that day because it’s not every day that a guy you’re working with gets arrested for murder.”

He nodded as if to underscore the point.

I looked at Bosch to see if we had missed anything. Bosch took the cue and took back the lead.

“Bill, tell them what you told me about being in the police car with Jessup. On the way to Windsor.”

Clinton nodded. He could be led easily and I took that as another good sign.

“Well, what happened was they really thought that Derek was the guy. The police did. He had a criminal record and lied about it and they found out. So that made him suspect numero uno. So they put Derek in the back of one patrol car and then me and Jason in another.”

“Did they say where they were taking you?”

“They said they had additional questions, so we thought we were going to the police station. There were two officers in the car with us and we heard them talking about all of us being in a lineup. Jason asked them about it and they said it was no big thing, they just wanted guys in overalls because they wanted to see if a witness could pick out Derek.”

Clinton stopped there and looked expectantly from Bosch to me and then to Maggie.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Well, first Jason told the two cops that they couldn’t just take us and put us in a lineup like that. They just said that they were following orders. So we go over to Windsor and pull up in front of a house. The cops got out and went and talked to the lead detective, who was standing there with some other detectives. Jason and I were watching out the windows but didn’t see any witness or anything. Then the detective in charge goes inside the house and doesn’t come back out. We don’t know what’s going on, and then Jason says to me he wants to borrow my hat.”

“Your hat?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah, my Dodgers hat. I was wearing it like I always did and Jason said he needed to borrow it because he recognizes one of the other cops that was already standing there at the house when we pulled up. He said that he got in a fight with the guy over a tow and if he sees him there’s going to be trouble. He goes on like that and says, let me have your hat.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t think it was a big deal on account of I didn’t know what I knew later, you know what I mean? So I gave him my hat and he put it on. Then when the cops came back to get us out of the car, they didn’t seem to notice that the hat was switched. They made us get out of the car and we had to go over and stand next to Derek. We were standing there and then one of the cops gets a call on the radio-I remember that-and he turns and tells Jason to take off the hat. He did and then a few minutes later they’re all of a sudden surrounding Jason and putting the cuffs on him, and it wasn’t Derek, it was him.”

I looked from Clinton to Bosch and then to Maggie. I could see in her expression that the hat story was significant.

“You know the funny thing?” Clinton asked.

“No, what?” I said.

“I never got that hat back.”

He smiled and I smiled back.

“Well, we’ll have to get you a new hat when this is all said and done. Now let me ask you the key question. What you have told us here, are you willing to testify to all of it at Jason Jessup’s trial?”

Clinton seemed to think about it for a few seconds before nodding.

“Yeah, I could do that,” he said.

I stood up and came around the desk, extending my hand.

“Then it looks like we’ve got ourselves a witness. Many thanks to you, Mr. Clinton.”

We shook hands and then I gestured to Bosch.

“Harry, I should have asked you, did we cover everything?”

Bosch stood up as well.

“I think so. For now. I’ll take Mr. Clinton back to his shop.”

“Excellent. Thank you again, Mr. Clinton.”

Clinton stood up.

“Please call me Bill.”

“We will, I promise. We’ll call you Bill and we’ll call you as a witness.”

Everybody laughed in that phony way and then Bosch shepherded Clinton out of the office. I went back to my desk and sat down.

“So tell me about the hat,” I said to Maggie.

“It’s a good connection,” she said. “When we interviewed Sarah she remembered that Kloster radioed from the bedroom down to the street and had them make Jessup take off his hat. That was when she made the ID. Harry then looked through the case file and found a property list from Jessup’s arrest. The Dodgers hat was on there. We’re still trying to track his property-hard to do after twenty-four years. But it might have gone up to San Quentin. Either way, if we don’t have the hat, we have the list.”

I nodded. This was good on a number of levels. It showed witnesses independently corroborating each other, put a crack in any sort of defense contention that memories cannot be trusted after so many years and, last but not least, showed state of mind of the defendant. Jessup knew he was somehow in danger of being identified. Someone had seen him abduct the girl.

“All right, good,” I said. “What do you think about the initial stuff, about how there was competition between them and somebody was going to get laid off? Maybe two of them.”

“Again, it’s good state-of-mind material. Jessup was under pressure and he acted out. Maybe this whole thing was about that. Maybe we should put a shrink on the witness list.”

I nodded.

“Did you tell Bosch to find and interview Clinton?”

She shook her head.

“He did it on his own. He’s good at this.”

“I know. I just wish he’d tell me a little more about what he’s up to.”

Thursday, February 25, 11 A.M .

Rachel Walling wanted to meet at an office in one of the glass towers in downtown. Bosch went to the address and took the elevator up to the thirty-fourth floor. The door to the offices of Franco, Becerra & Itzuris, attorneys-at-law, was locked and he had to knock. Rachel answered promptly and invited him into a luxurious suite of offices that was empty of lawyers, clerks and anybody else. She led him to the firm’s boardroom, where he saw the box and files he had given her the week before on a large oval table. They entered and he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over downtown.

Bosch couldn’t remember being up so high in downtown. He could see all the way to Dodger Stadium and beyond. He checked out the civic center and saw the glass-sided PAB sitting next to the Los Angeles Times building. His eyes then scanned toward Echo Park and he remembered a day there with Rachel Walling. They had been a team then, in more ways than one. But now that seemed so long ago.