Michael Connelly - The Reversal

“He’s been working on this one since the start because he knows the case comes down to her. She’s our primary witness and without her none of the other evidence matters. Even the hair in the truck is circumstantial. If he takes out Sarah he takes out our case.”

“I get that. But how’s he trying to get rid of her?”

She started flipping through the pages.

“It was delivered at nine and is eighty-six pages long so I haven’t had the time to completely digest it. But it’s a two-pronged effort. He’s attacking her original identification from when she was a kid. Says the setup was prejudicial. And he-”

“That was already argued, accepted by the trial court and it held up on appeal. He’s wasting the court’s time.”

“He’s got a new angle this time. Remember, Kloster’s got Alzheimer’s and is no good as a witness. He can’t tell us about the investigation and he can’t defend himself. So this time out Royce alleges that Kloster told Sarah which man to identify. He pointed Jessup out for her.”

“And what is his backup? Supposedly only Sarah and Kloster were in the room.”

“I don’t know. There’s no backup but my guess is he’s riffing on the radio call Kloster made telling them to make Jessup take off his hat.”

“It doesn’t matter. The lineup was put together to see if Sarah could identify Derek Wilbern, the other driver. Any argument that he then told her to put the finger on Jessup is ridiculous. That ID came quite unexpectedly but naturally and convincingly. This is nothing to get worked up about. Even without Kloster we’ll tear this one up.”

I knew she was right but the first attack wasn’t really what I was most worried about.

“That’s just his opening salvo,” I said. “That’s nothing compared with part two. He also seeks to exclude her entire testimony based on unreliable memory. He’s got her whole drug history laid out in the motion, seemingly down to every chip of meth she ever smoked. He’s got arrest records, jail records, witnesses who detail her consumption of drugs, multiple-partner sex and what they term her belief in out-of-body experiences-I guess she forgot to mention that part up in Port Townsend. And to top it all off, he’s got experts on memory loss and false memory creation as a by-product of meth addiction. So in all, you know what he’s got? He’s got us fucked coming and going.”

Maggie didn’t respond as she was scanning the summary pages at the end of Royce’s motion.

“He’s got investigators here and up in San Francisco,” I added. “It’s thorough and exhaustive, Mags. And you know what? It doesn’t even look like he’s gone up to Port Townsend to interview her yet. He says he doesn’t have to because it doesn’t matter what she says now. It can’t be relied upon.”

“He’ll have his experts and we’ll have ours on rebuttal,” she said calmly. “We expected this part and I’ve already been lining ours up. At worst, we can turn this into a wash. You know that.”

“The experts are only a small part of it.”

“We’ll be fine,” she insisted. “And look at these witnesses. Her ex-husbands and boyfriends. I see Royce conveniently didn’t bother to include their own arrest records here. They’re all tweakers themselves. We’ll make them look like pimps and pedophiles with grudges against her because she left them in the dust when she got straight. She married the first one when she was eighteen and he was twenty-nine. She told us. I’d love to get him in the chair in front of the judge. I really think you are overreacting to this, Haller. We can argue this. We can make him put some of these so-called witnesses in front of the judge and we can knock every one of them out of the box. You’re right about one thing, though. This is Royce’s last best stand. It’s just not going to be good enough.”

I shook my head. She was seeing only what was on paper and what could be blocked or parried with our own swords. Not what was not written.

“Look, this is about Sarah. He knows the judge is not going to want to chop our main witness. He knows we’ll get by this. But he’s putting the judge on notice that this is what he is going to put Sarah through if she takes the stand. Her whole life, every sordid detail, every pipe and dick she ever smoked, she’s going to have to sit up there and take it. Then he’ll trot out some PhD who’ll put pictures of a melted brain on the screen and say this is what meth does. Do we want that for her? Is she strong enough to take it? Maybe we have to go to Royce, offer a deal for time served and some kind of payout from the city. Something everybody can live with.”

Maggie flopped the motion onto the desk.

“Are you kidding me? You’re running scared because of this?”

“I’m not running scared. I’m being realistic. I didn’t go up to Washington. I have no feel for this woman. I don’t know if she can stand up to this or not. Besides, we can always take a second bite of the apple with those cases Bosch has been working.”

Maggie leaned back in her chair.

“There’s no guarantee that anything will come out of those other cases. We have to put everything we have into this one, Haller. I could go back up there and hold Sarah’s hand a little bit. Tell her more about what to expect. Get her ready. She already understood it wasn’t going to be pretty.”

“To put it mildly.”

“I think she’s strong enough. I think in some weird way she might need it. You know, get it all out there, expiate her sins. It’s about redemption with her, Michael. You know about that.”

We held each other’s eyes for a long moment.

“Anyway, I think she’ll be more than strong and the jury will see it,” she said. “She’s a survivor and everybody likes a survivor.”

I nodded.

“You have a way of convincing people, Mags. It’s a gift. We both know you should be lead on this, not me.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“All right, go up there and get her prepped for this. Next week, maybe. By then we should have a witness schedule and you can tell her when we’ll be bringing her down.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Meantime, how’s your weekend looking? We have to put together an answer to this.”

I pointed at the defense motion on the desk.

“Well, Harry finally got me a ride-along with the SIS tomorrow night. He’s going, too-I think his daughter has a sleepover. Other than that, I’m around.”

“Why are you going to spend all that time watching Jessup? The police have that covered.”

“Like I said before, I want to see Jessup out there when he doesn’t think anyone is watching. I would suggest that you come, too, but you’ve got Hayley.”

“I wouldn’t waste the time. But when you see Bosch, can you give him a copy of this motion? We’re going to need him to run down some of these witnesses and statements. Not all of them were in Royce’s discovery package.”

“Yeah, he played it smart. He keeps them off his witness list until they show up here. If the judge shoots down the motion, saying Gleason’s credibility is a jury question, he’ll come back with an amended witness list, saying, okay, I need to put these people in front of the jury in regard to credibility.”

“And she’ll allow it or she’ll be contradicting her own ruling. Clever Clive. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Anyway, I’ll get a copy to Harry, but I think he’s still chasing those old cases.”

“Doesn’t matter. The trial is the priority. We need complete backgrounds on these people. You want to deal with him or do you want me to?”

In our divvying up of pretrial duties I had given Maggie the responsibility of prepping for defense witnesses. All except Jessup. If he testified, he was still mine.