Michael Connelly - The Reversal

“You can get your coffee later. There’s no time to drink it anyway. I wanted you to know that I had lunch with your girlfriend from the bureau.”

“What? Who?”

“Agent Walling.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. Why did she have lunch with you?”

I led him to the stairwell and we headed back upstairs as we talked.

“Well, I think she wanted to have lunch with you but you split out of here too fast so she settled for me. She wanted to give us a warning. She said she’s been watching and reading the reports on the trial and she thinks if Jessup is going to blow, it’s going to be soon. She said he reacts to pressure and he’s probably never been under more than he is right now.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about before.”

He looked around to make sure that no one was in earshot.

“The SIS says Jessup’s nighttime activities have increased since the start of the trial. He’s going out every night now.”

“Has he gone down your street?”

“No, he hasn’t been back there or to any of the other spots off Mulholland in a week. But over the last two nights he’s done things that are new.”

“Like what, Harry?”

“Like on Sunday they followed him down the beach from Venice and he went into the old storage area under the Santa Monica Pier.”

“What storage area? What’s this mean?”

“It’s an old city storage facility but it got flooded by high tides so many times it’s locked up and abandoned. Jessup dug underneath one of the old wood sidings and crawled in.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? They couldn’t go in or they would risk exposing the surveillance. But that’s not the real news. The real news is, last night he met with a couple of guys at the Townhouse in Venice and then went out to a car in one of the beach lots. One of the guys took something wrapped in a towel out of the trunk and gave it to him.”

“A gun?”

Bosch shrugged.

“Whatever it was, they never saw, but through the car’s plates they IDed one of the two guys. Marshall Daniels. He was in San Quentin in the nineties-same time as Jessup.”

I was now catching some of the tension and urgency that was coming off Bosch.

“They could’ve known each other. What was Daniels up there for?”

“Drugs and weapons.”

I checked my watch. I needed to be back in court.

“Then we have to assume Jessup has a weapon. We could violate his OR right now for associating with a convicted felon. Do they have pictures of Jessup and Daniels together?”

“They have photos but I am not sure we want to do that.”

“If he’s got a gun… Do you trust the SIS to stop him before he makes a move or does some damage?”

“I do, but it would help if we knew what the move was.”

We stepped out into the hallway and saw no sign of any jurors or anyone else from the trial. Everybody was back in court but me.

“We’ll talk about this later. I have to get back into court or the judge will jump on my ass next. I’m not like Royce. I can’t afford a contempt hearing just to make a point with the jury. Go get Atwater and bring her in.”

I hurried back to Department 112 and rudely pushed around a couple of the courthouse gadflies who were moving slowly through the door. Judge Breitman had not waited for me. I saw everyone but me in place and the jury was being seated. I moved up the aisle and through the gate and slipped into the seat next to Maggie.

“That was close,” she whispered. “I think the judge was hoping to even things up by holding you in contempt.”

“Yeah, well, she may still.”

The judge turned away from the jurors and noticed me at the prosecution table.

“Well, thank you for joining us this afternoon, Mr. Haller. Did you have a nice excursion?”

I stood.

“My apologies, Your Honor. I had a personal matter come up and it took far longer than I expected it would.”

She opened her mouth to deliver a rebuke but then paused as she realized I had thrown her words from the morning’s delay-her delay-right back at her.

“Just call your next witness, Counselor,” she said curtly.

I called Lisa Atwater to the stand and glanced to the back of the courtroom to see Bosch leading the DNA lab technician down the aisle to the gate. I checked the clock up on the rear wall. My goal was to use up the rest of the day with Atwater’s testimony, bringing her to the nuts and bolts just before we recessed for the day. That might give Royce a whole night to prepare his cross-examination, but I would happily trade that for what I would get out of the deal-every juror going home with knowledge of the unimpeachable evidence that linked Jason Jessup to the murder of Melissa Landy.

As I had asked her to, Atwater had kept her lab coat on when she walked over from the LAPD lab. The light blue jacket gave her a look of competence and professionalism that the rest of her didn’t convey. Atwater was very young-only thirty-one-and had blond hair with a pink stripe down one side, modeling her look after a supercool lab tech on one of the TV crime shows. After meeting her for the first time, I tried to get her to think about losing the pink, but she told me she wouldn’t give up her individuality. The jurors, she said, would have to accept her for who and what she was.

At least the lab coat wasn’t pink.

Atwater identified herself and was sworn in. After she took the witness seat I started asking questions about her educational pedigree and work experience. I spent at least ten more minutes on this than I normally would have, but I kept seeing that ribbon of pink hair and thought I had to do all I could to turn it into a badge of professionalism and accomplishment.

Finally, I got to the crux of her testimony. With me carefully asking the questions, she testified that she had conducted DNA typing and comparison on two completely different evidence samples from the Landy case. I went with the more problematic analysis first.

“Ms. Atwater, can you describe the first DNA assignment you received on the Landy case?”

“Yes, on February fourth I was given a swatch of fabric that had been cut from the dress that the victim had been wearing at the time of her murder.”

“Where did you receive this from?”

“It came from the LAPD’s Property Division, where it had been kept in controlled evidence storage.”

Her answers were carefully rehearsed. She could give no indication that there had been a previous trial in the case or that Jessup had been in prison for the past twenty-four years. To do so would create prejudice against Jessup and trigger a mistrial.

“Why were you sent this swatch of fabric?”

“There was a stain on the fabric that twenty-four years ago had been identified by the LAPD forensics unit as semen. My assignment was to extract DNA and identify it if possible.”

“When you examined this swatch, was there any degradation of the genetic material on it?”

“No, sir. It had been properly preserved.”

“Okay, so you got this swatch of material from Melissa Landy’s dress and you extracted DNA from it. Do I have that right so far?”

“That’s right.”

“What did you do next?”

“I turned the DNA profile into a code and entered it into the CODIS database.”

“What is CODIS?”

“It’s the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. Think of it as a national clearinghouse of DNA records. All DNA signatures gathered by law enforcement end up here and are available for comparison.”

“So you entered the DNA signature obtained from semen on the dress Melissa Landy wore on the day she was murdered, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Did you get a hit?”

“I did. The profile belonged to her stepfather, Kensington Landy.”