Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

“That’s him,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We won’t take long.”

“Just bring the key back,” she said.

We started with the apartment, which was a small one-bedroom flat over the garage. The place had been cleaned and prepped for a new renter. We weren’t expecting to find anything in plain sight — especially since the landlord’s description indicated that it had already been searched. But Sam Scales was a lifelong con artist who might have reason to hide things in his home that a quick search might miss. The lead on this went to Bosch, who’d had many years of experience searching the homes of criminals.

Bosch had brought a little tool bag with him. His first stop was the kitchen, where he was methodical about checking the underside of drawers, unscrewing and checking behind the kickboards beneath the cabinets, opening the insulation spaces in the refrigerator and freezer doors, and examining the light and fan assembly over the stove. When I realized how long his full search might take, I decided to change things up. I left Bosch in the apartment while Cisco and I went down to the garage. I had to make sure I got to the courthouse in time.

There were two stacks of four cardboard boxes in the middle of the third bay — between the tread marks presumably left by renters’ cars over time. The boxes were sealed and each was marked with the name Lennon and the date 12/19. Cisco started with one stack and I started with the other.

My first box contained clothes. There was a car in the second bay of the garage. I laid the clothes out on its hood and then went through each item, checking pockets, before returning it to the box.

The second box contained shoes, socks, underwear, and nothing else. I checked the shoes inside and out and found a set of lace-up work boots with oily debris stuck in the treads. It reminded me of the oily substance found under Sam Scales’s fingernails.

I put the shoes aside and checked on Cisco. He was also dealing with clothes from his first two boxes.

My third box contained personal items, including toiletries, a plug-in alarm clock, and several books. I fanned the pages of each but found nothing hidden among them. They were all novels except for one book, which was a 2015 owner’s manual for a Mack Pinnacle tanker truck. I knew this fit in with BioGreen but wasn’t sure how. I set the manual aside on the hood of the car in the second bay.

My fourth box contained more of the same. More books and personal items, such as a drip coffee maker and several coffee mugs that were wrapped in old newspaper. A layer of unopened mail was at the bottom of the box, probably put there to further cushion the fragile glass coffeepot and mugs.

The mail was mostly junk with the exception of an AT&T phone bill and an unopened letter from Austin Neiderland with the return address Nevada’s High Desert State Prison. I put the prison letter unopened back into the box. It was apparent from my interview with Neiderland that he didn’t know what scam Sam Scales was into. I didn’t think the letter would be of much use. Instead, I ripped open the phone bill to see if it included a list of numbers called, but it was a reminder notice that the prior bill was unpaid. There was a list of services Sam Scales was receiving but no list of calls.

Cisco was running one box behind me as he fanned the pages of books from his third box. I moved over and opened his last one. It contained three unopened boxes of Honeycomb cereal and a fourth box of Rice Krispies.

“Sam liked his cereal, I guess.”

I shook and examined each box to see if it was factory-sealed or Sam-sealed to hide something inside. I decided they were just boxes of cereal and moved on. Below the cereal were some bags of ground coffee and other unopened items from kitchen cabinets.

“Look at this,” Cisco said.

He held up a thin study manual for the California commercial driver’s license exam.

“It’s got stuff underlined in it,” Cisco said. “Like he was really studying it.”

“And I found an owner’s manual for a Mack tanker truck,” I said.

“I’ll say it again — maybe he was going straight. Being a trucker or something.”

“No way. For Sam, working a square job was worse than prison. He was working a long con. He could never go straight.”

“Then, what was it?”

“I don’t know but we’re getting close. This is why they stole the wallet.”

“Why?”

“The wallet had his current alias. That would have led here and then to BioGreen. They didn’t want us getting there.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“We don’t know yet. Maybe Opparizio. Maybe the FBI. They’re set up on Opparizio and that place and didn’t want the investigation compromised by a murder investigation linked to BioGreen. As soon as the LAPD ran Sam’s prints that night, the bureau probably got an alert. They assess the situation and go grab the wallet before anybody looks at it. They come here, search the place, remove any connection. Sam is never linked to the Walter Lennon alias and the investigation never gets to BioGreen.”

“So you’re saying they just stood by while you got tagged with the murder and were going to let you go down for it?”

“I don’t know. It had to have been a plan hatched without a lot of down-the-road thinking. Maybe they were just buying time to wrap things up on BioGreen. Then I blew up the schedule when I refused to waive a speedy trial. Instead of a trial in July or even later, it’s February, and they didn’t see that coming.”

“Maybe. A lot of maybes.”

“It’s all speculation right now. But I think we’re—”

Bosch entered the garage then and I stopped.

“Anything upstairs?” I asked.

“Clean,” he said. “I found a false-floor storage space in the bedroom closet, but it wasn’t hidden well and was empty. Whoever searched the place before would have found it.”

“How big?” I asked. “Could a laptop fit?”

“Yeah, it could fit,” Bosch said.

“That’s what’s missing here,” I said. “Sam used the Internet for his scams. I can’t see him without a computer. Plus there’s a phone bill in here for a full-service package including home Wi-Fi. Why get Wi-Fi if you don’t have a computer?”

“So, we’re missing a computer, a phone, and a wallet,” Cisco said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“What’s in the boxes?” Bosch asked.

“Not much,” I said. “A pair of boots with grease in the treads. We’re almost finished.”

I went back to the last box and saw that the bottom was lined with various documents and paperwork — things that were probably stuffed into a kitchen drawer. There was an instruction manual for the coffee maker, a set of step-by-step directions for putting together an Ikea table, and several opened letters from Neiderland. That Scales had kept them reinforced in me the idea that they’d had a romantic relationship.

There was also a trifold and stapled printout of a story from the

New York Times. The headline read “Bleeding the Beast.”

The story had a Salt Lake City dateline. I started reading and by the time I finished I knew that the story changed everything. And I knew that the printout was something I would need to turn over in discovery to the prosecution — if I took it from the garage.

I refolded the printout and dropped it back into the box. I picked up the Mack truck owner’s manual and dropped it in as well. I then closed it up and stacked two other boxes on top of it.

I pulled my phone and texted Bishop, telling him to come pick me up.

“Okay, we’re out of here,” I said.

“Wait,” Cisco said. “You don’t want to take any of this stuff?”

“We take it, we have to share it,” I said.