Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

“No, boss,” Cisco said.

“We thought about that,” Jennifer said. “And there’s somebody else who wants to help. Another donor.”

“Who?” I said.

“Harry Bosch,” she said.

“No way,” I said. “He’s a retired cop, for god’s sake. He can’t—”

“Mickey, you got him a million-dollar settlement from the city last year and didn’t even take a cut. He wants—”

“I didn’t take a cut, because he might need that money. He’s going to max out his insurance and then he’ll need it. Besides, I set up a trust and he put it in there.”

“Look, Mickey, he can tap it or borrow against it,” Jennifer insisted. “The point is, you have to get out of here. Not only is it dangerous in this place, but you’re losing weight, you don’t look good, and your health is at risk. Remember what Legal Siegel used to say? ‘Look like a winner and you’ll become a winner’? You don’t look like a winner, Mickey. You can tailor your suits but you still look pale and sick. You need to get out of here and get yourself in shape for trial.”

“He actually said, ‘ Act like a winner and you’ll be a winner.’ ”

“Doesn’t matter. Same thing. This is your chance. These people came to us. We didn’t go to them. In fact, Andre said he came because he saw you on TV from that last hearing and it reminded him of himself when he was in here.”

I nodded. I knew she was right. But I hated taking the money, especially from Bosch, my half brother, who I knew needed it for other things.

“Not only that, but you need to get home for Christmas and see your daughter,” Jennifer said. “This no-visitation thing is hurting her as much as it must hurt you.”

She nailed me with her final argument. I missed my daughter, missed her voice.

“Okay, I hear you,” I said.

“Good,” Jennifer said.

“I think we might be able to knock the bail down to three million,” I said. “But that’s probably it.”

“We can cover three million,” Jennifer said.

“Okay, set it up,” I said. “Don’t give any hint that we can go up to three million. I want Berg to think we’re coming in hat in hand. She’ll think dropping bail a couple million will still probably keep me in stir. We ask for one million and she compromises at two or three.”

“Right,” Jennifer said.

“And one last thing,” I said. “Are you sure Harry and Andre came in voluntarily with this? It wasn’t the other way around?”

Jennifer shrugged and looked at Cisco.

“Scout’s honor, boss,” he said. “That’s straight up from Lorna.”

I looked for any sign of deception and didn’t see any. But I could tell something was bothering Jennifer.

“Jennifer, what?” I asked.

“On bail, what if the judge makes a monitor part of the deal?” she asked. “An ankle bracelet. Can you live with that?”

I thought about it for a moment. It would be the ultimate invasion, having the state monitoring my every move while I was building my defense. But I recalled what Jennifer had said about spending time with my daughter.

“Don’t offer it,” I finally said. “But if it comes up as part of the deal, I’ll accept it.”

“Good,” Jennifer said. “I’ll file the motion as soon as we get out of here. If we’re lucky, we’ll get before the judge tomorrow and you’ll be home for the weekend.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

“There’s one other thing from Harry Bosch,” Jennifer said.

“What’s that?”

“He said he also wants to help with the defense, if we want him.” This was cause for hesitation. There had always been a low-level friction between Cisco and Bosch that stemmed from their origins as investigators. Bosch was retired now, but from law enforcement. Cisco was from the defense side from the start. Bringing Bosch on could be extremely useful because of his experience and connections. It could also throw off the chemistry of my team. I didn’t have to ponder the offer long before Cisco ended my uncertainty.

“We need him,” Cisco said.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Bring him on,” he said.

I knew what he was doing. He was casting all friction or animosity aside for me. If it had been any other case, he would have said we didn’t need Bosch, and that was probably true. But with my life and freedom on the line, Cisco wanted any possible advantage we could get.

I nodded my thanks to him and looked at Jennifer.

“Get me out of here first,” I said. “Then we meet with Bosch. Make sure he gets everything from the discovery file, especially all the crime scene photos. He’s good with that stuff.”

“I’m on it,” she said. “Is he on your visitors list here?”

“No, but I can add him,” I said. “He may have already tried to see me.”

I shifted my focus back to Cisco.

“Okay, Big Man, what’ve you got?” I asked.

“I got the full autopsy from a guy at the coroner’s,” he said. “You’re going to like the tox report.”

“Tell me.”

“Sam Scales had flunitrazepam in his blood. That’s what’s on the report. You look that up on Google and you get Rohypnol.”

“The date-rape drug,” Jennifer said.

“Okay,” I said. “How much was in his blood?”

“Enough to knock him out,” Cisco said. “He wasn’t conscious when they shot him.”

I liked that Cisco had said they. It told me he was all in on the theory that I had been framed and most likely by more than one person.

“So what does this tell us in terms of when he got dosed?” I asked.

“Not sure yet,” Cisco said.

“Jennifer, we’re going to need an expert for trial,” I said. “A good one. Can you work on that?”

“On it,” she said.

I thought about things for a few moments before continuing.

“I’m not sure it really helps us,” I said. “The state’s position will be that I dosed him, then abducted him and took him to the house. We still need to get into Sam Scales and where he was and what he was doing.”

“I’m on it,” Cisco said.

“Good,” I said. “Let’s talk about the garage next. Did Lorna get Wesley out to look at it?”

Wesley Brower was the installer I’d used to replace the emergency release on my garage door. This happened seven months earlier during fire season when a rolling brownout left my house without power. I could not open the garage door and was due in court on a sentencing. I had long misplaced the key to the emergency release. I called out Brower to get the garage open and he found that the keyed handle of the release pull was seized with rust. He still managed to get the door open, and I got to court — late. The next day Brower came back and installed a new emergency release system.

If my defense was going to claim that I was framed, then it would be my job at trial to explain to the jury exactly how that frame came together. And that would start with how the true killer or killers got into my garage to put Sam Scales in the trunk of my car and then shoot him. I had told my team to have Wesley Brower check the emergency release to see if it had been recently engaged or tampered with.

Jennifer answered my question by raising a hand and wagging it side to side to say she had good and bad news.

“Lorna got Brower out to the garage and he checked the emergency release,” she said. “He determined that it had been pulled, but he can’t say when. You put the new one in back in July, so all he can say is that it has been pulled since then.”

“How does he know?” I asked.

“Whoever pulled it put it back together after they got the door open. But they didn’t do it the way he left it back in July. So he knows it was pulled — he just won’t be able to testify when. It’s a wash, Mickey.”