Майкл Коннелли: The Law of Innocence

Kendall Roberts was on the other side of the glass. I had not seen her in more than a year. Not since she had told me she was leaving me.

I slid onto the stool in front of the glass and picked up the phone out of its cradle. She picked up the phone on the other side.

“Kendall,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” she said, “I heard about you getting arrested and I had to come. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s all bullshit and I’ll beat this in court.”

“I believe you.”

When she had left me, she had also left the city.

“Uh, when did you get here?” I asked. “Into town, I mean.”

“Last night. Late.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m at a hotel. By the airport.”

“Well, how long are you staying?”

“I don’t know. I have no plans. When is the trial?”

“Not for, like, two months. But we’re in court this Thursday.”

“Maybe I’ll come by.”

She said it as if I had invited her to a happy hour or a party. I didn’t care. She looked beautiful. I didn’t think she had cut her hair since I had last seen her. It now framed her face as it fell to her shoulders. The dimples in her cheeks when she smiled were there like always. I felt my chest constrict. I had been with my two ex-wives for a total of seven years. I had spent almost as much time with Kendall. And it was good for every one of those years until we started drifting apart and she said she wanted to leave L.A.

I couldn’t leave my daughter or my practice. I offered to make more time for travel but I wasn’t going to leave. So, in the end, it was Kendall who left. She packed everything she owned one day while I was in trial and left me a note. I had put Cisco on it just so I had the comfort of knowing where she was and that she was all right — or so I told myself. He tracked her to Hawaii but I left it at that. Never flew across the ocean to find her and beg her to return. I simply waited and hoped.

“Where did you come in from?” I asked.

“Honolulu,” she said. “I’ve been living in Hawaii.”

“Did you open a studio?”

“No, but I teach classes. It’s better for me not to be the owner. I just teach now. I get by.”

She’d had a yoga studio on Ventura Boulevard for several years but sold it when she started getting restless.

“How long are you here?”

“I told you. I don’t know yet.”

“Well, if you want, you can stay at the house. I obviously won’t be using it and you could water the plants — some of which I think are actually yours.”

“Uh, maybe. We’ll see.”

“The extra key is still under the cactus on the front deck.”

“Thanks. Why are you here, Mickey? Don’t you have bail or...?”

“Right now they have me on five-million bail, which means I could get out with a ten percent bond. But you don’t get that money back at the end, innocent or guilty, and that would be about everything I’ve got, including the equity in my house. I can’t see giving all of that away for a couple months of freedom. I’ve got them on a speedy trial clock and I’m going to win this thing and get out without having to pay a bail bondsman a dime.”

She nodded.

“Good,” she said. “I believe you.”

The interviews were fifteen minutes only and then the phones would get cut off. I knew we were almost out of time. But seeing her made me think of all that was at stake.

“It is really nice of you to come see me,” I said. “I’m sorry the visits are so short and you came so far.”

“You put me on your visitors list,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when they asked me and then they found my name. That was nice.”

“I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d come if you heard about it. I didn’t know if it would make news in Hawaii but it was big news here.”

“You knew I was in Hawaii?”

Ugh. I had slipped up.

“Uh, sort of,” I said. “When you left like you did, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, you know? I had Cisco check things out and he told me you flew to Hawaii. I didn’t know where or anything like that, or if it was permanent. Just that you had gone.”

I watched her think through my answer.

“Okay,” she said, accepting it.

“How is it there?” I asked, trying to move past my gaffe. “You like it?”

“It’s been okay. Isolating. I’m thinking of coming back.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can do from here, but if there’s anything you need, let me know.”

“Okay, thanks. I guess I should be going. They said I only get fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, but they just shut down the phones when your time is up. You think you’ll come back to visit? I’m here every day if I’m not in court.”

I smiled like I was some sort of comedian hawking his stand-up act. Before she could answer, there was a loud electronic buzz on the phone and the line went dead. I saw her speak but didn’t hear it. She looked at the phone and then at me and slowly put it back in its cradle. The visit was over.

I nodded at her and smiled awkwardly. She made a slight wave and then got up from her stool. I did the same and started walking down the line of visitor booths, all of them open behind the prisoner’s stool. I looked through every window as I passed and caught a few glimpses of her moving parallel to me on the other side.

Then she was gone.

The hack asked me whether I was going back to the law library and I told him I wanted to go back to the module.

While I was being led back, I worked over my final view of Kendall on the phone. I had watched her lips as she spoke into the dead phone. I came to realize that she had said, “I don’t know.”

Thursday, December 5

Officer Roy Milton was in uniform and sitting in the first row of the gallery behind the prosecution table when I was led into the courtroom. I recognized him easily from the night of my arrest. Following Sheriff’s Department protocol I was manacled by a waist chain, with my hands cuffed at my sides. I was led to the defense table, where the escort deputy unchained me, and Jennifer, who was standing and waiting, helped me put on my suit jacket. Lorna had somehow gotten two-day tailoring done and the suit fit me perfectly. I turned toward the gallery as I shot the cuffs and addressed Milton.

“Officer Milton, how are you today?” I asked.

“Don’t answer that,” Dana Berg said from the prosecution table.

I looked at her and she stared right back at me.

“Mind your own business, Haller,” she said.

I spread my hands in a gesture of surprise.

“Just being cordial,” I said.

“Be cordial with someone on your side,” Berg said.

“All right,” I said. “Whatever.”

I did a 180 sweep of the gallery and saw my daughter in her usual spot. I smiled and nodded and she gave both back to me. I didn’t see Kendall Roberts anywhere but I wasn’t expecting to. I had come to view her visit the other day as her fulfilling some sort of duty to me. But that was all there would be.

I finally pulled out my chair at the defense table and sat down next to Jennifer.

“You look good,” she said. “Lorna did a good job with that suit.”

We had spoken earlier in the holding cell along with Cisco. But Cisco was gone now, with a full plate of investigative tasks to carry out.

I heard whispers directly behind me and turned to see that two of the reporters who had been covering the case from the beginning were now in their usual spots. Both were women, one from the Los Angeles Times, the other from the Daily News, competitors who liked to sit together and chat while waiting for court to start. I had known Audrey Finnel from the Times for years, as she had covered a few of my cases. Addie Gamble was new on the criminal courts beat for the News and I knew her by her byline only.