Michael Connelly - The Reversal

“We don’t want to do anything underhanded. The prosecution is held to a much higher standard of ethics than the defense.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t win.

“That’s bullshit and I am not talking about doing anything un-”

The door opened and Harry Bosch stepped in, pushing the door with his back because he was carrying two large boxes in his hands.

“Sorry, I’m late,” he said.

He put the boxes down on the table. I could tell the larger one was a carton from evidence archives. I guessed that the smaller one contained the police file on the original investigation.

“It took them three days to find the murder box. It was on the ’eighty-five aisle instead of ’eighty-six.”

He looked at me and then at Maggie and then back at me.

“So what’d I miss? War break out in the war room?”

“We were talking about prosecutorial tactics and it turns out we have opposing views.”

“Imagine that.”

He took the chair at the end of the table. I could tell he was going to have more to say. He lifted the top off the murder box and pulled out three accordion files and put them on the table. He then moved the box to the floor.

“You know, Mick, while we’re airing out our differences… I think before you pulled me into this little soap opera, you should’ve told me a few things up front.”

“Like what, Harry?”

“Like that this whole goddamn thing is about money and not murder.”

“What are you talking about? What money?”

Bosch just stared at me without responding.

“You’re talking about Jessup’s lawsuit?” I asked.

“That’s right,” he said. “I had an interesting discussion with Jessup today on the drive down. Got me thinking and it crossed my mind that if we jam this guy into a deal, the lawsuit against the city and county goes away because a guy who admits to murder isn’t going to be able to sue and claim he was railroaded. So I guess what I want to know is what we’re really doing here. Are we trying to put a murder suspect on trial or are we just trying to save the city and county a few million bucks?”

I noticed Maggie’s posture straighten as she considered the same thing.

“You gotta be kidding me,” she said. “If that-”

“Hold on, hold on,” I interjected. “Let’s be cool about this. I don’t think that’s the case here, okay? It’s not that I haven’t thought about it but Williams didn’t say one word about going for a dispo on this case. He told me to take it to trial. In fact, he assumes it will go to trial for the same reason you just mentioned. Jessup will never take a dispo for time served or anything else because there is no pot of gold in that. No book, no movie, no payout from the city. If he wants the money, he’s got to go to trial and win.”

Maggie nodded slowly as if weighing a valid supposition. Bosch didn’t seem appeased at all.

“But how would you know what Williams is up to?” he asked. “You’re an outsider. They could’ve brought you in, wound you up and pointed you in the right direction and then sat back to watch you go.”

“He’s right,” Maggie added. “Jessup doesn’t even have a defense attorney. As soon as he does he’ll start talking deal.”

I raised my hands in a calming gesture.

“Look, at the press conference today. I threw out that we were going for the death penalty. I just did that to see how Williams would react. He didn’t expect it and afterward he pressed me in the hallway. He told me that it wasn’t a decision I got to make. I told him it was just strategy, that I wanted Jessup to start thinking about a deal. And it gave Williams pause. He didn’t see it. If he was thinking of a deal just to blow up the civil action, I would have been able to read it. I’m good at reading people.”

I could tell I still hadn’t quite won Bosch over.

“Remember last year, with the two men from Hong Kong who wanted your ass on the next plane to China? I read them right and I played them right.”

In his eyes I saw Bosch relent. That China story was a reminder that he owed me one and I was collecting.

“Okay,” he said. “So what do we do?”

“We assume Jessup’s going to go to trial. As soon as he lawyers up, we’ll know for sure. But we start preparing for it now, because if I was going to represent him, I would refuse to waive speedy trial. I would try to jam the prosecution on time to prepare and make the people put up or shut up.”

I checked the date on my watch.

“If I’m right, that gives us forty-eight days till trial. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then.”

We looked at one another and sat in silence for a few moments before I threw the lead to Maggie.

“Maggie has spent the better part of the last week with the prosecution file on this. Harry, I know what you just brought in will have a lot of overlap. But why don’t we start here by having Mags go through the case as presented at trial in ’eighty-six? I think that will give us a good starting point of looking at what we need to do this time out.”

Bosch nodded his approval and I signaled for Maggie to begin. She pulled her laptop over in front of her.

“Okay, a couple of basics first. Because it was a death penalty case, jury selection was the longest part of the trial. Almost three weeks. The trial itself lasted seven days and then there were three days of deliberation on the initial verdicts, then the death penalty phase went another two weeks. But seven days of testimony and arguments-that to me is fast for a capital murder case. It was pretty cut-and-dried. And the defense… well, there wasn’t much of a defense.”

She looked at me as if I were responsible for the poor defense of the accused, even though I hadn’t even gotten out of law school by ’eighty-six.

“Who was his lawyer?” I asked.

“Charles Barnard,” she said. “I checked with the California bar. He won’t be handling the retrial. He’s listed as deceased as of ’ninety-four. The prosecutor, Gary Lintz, is also long gone.”

“Don’t remember either of them. Who was the judge?”

“Walter Sackville. He’s long retired but I do remember him. He was tough.”

“I had a few cases with him,” Bosch added. “He wouldn’t take any shit from either side.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Okay, so the prosecution’s story was this. The Landy family-that was our victim, Melissa, who was twelve, her thirteen-year-old sister, Sarah, mother, Regina, and stepfather, Kensington-lived on Windsor Boulevard in Hancock Park. The home was about a block north of Wilshire and in the vicinity of the Trinity United Church of God, which on Sundays back then drew about six thousand people to its two morning services. People parked their cars all over Hancock Park to go to the church. That is, until the residents there got tired of their neighborhood being overrun every Sunday with traffic and parking issues and went to City Hall about it. They got the neighborhood turned into a residential parking zone during weekend hours. You had to have a sticker to park on the streets, including Windsor. This opened the door to city-contracted tow truck operators patrolling the neighborhood like sharks on Sunday morning. Any cars without the proper resident sticker on the windshield were fair game. They got towed. Which finally brings us to Jason Jessup, our suspect.”

“He drove a tow truck,” I said.

“Exactly. He was a driver for a city contractor named Aardvark Towing. Cute name, got them to the front of the listings in the phone book back when people still used phone books.”

I glanced at Bosch and could tell by his reaction that he was somebody who still used the phone book instead of the Internet. Maggie didn’t notice and continued.