Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

“What are you talking about?”

“He was going to throw me off the deck.”

“Please, you’re exaggerating. He was over the top, I’ll give you that, but you were pushing our buttons, Haller. And he wasn’t threatening to push you over. That’s totally insane.”

I didn’t respond, so she kept going.

“Besides, it would be your word against two agents’. Do the math on that.”

“Is that why you guys always travel in pairs?”

She didn’t respond. I pressed on.

“Look, Agent Ruth, for some reason I like you. It’s not been my experience with feds, but like I said, you pulled him off me. So I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to stop you from filing a false report on that incident when I make the complaint. It’ll probably save your job and then maybe you’ll do right by me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about now. This is—”

“Do you have a private email address? Give it to me and I’ll send you something tonight. You’ll know what I’m talking about then. I have a camera on the balcony, Agent Ruth. I caught the whole thing. It would be the word of two agents against a video. You would lose.”

There was a long silence and I looked out the window. I saw we were going by the new billion-dollar football stadium. Then I heard Ruth recite an email address. I snapped on the overhead light and wrote it down on a legal pad.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll send you the video as soon as I get home and get steady Wi-Fi. Probably be an hour. Hopefully I hear something back from you and this whole thing can be avoided — for you and your partner.”

She disconnected without a further word. I put the burner into my jacket pocket and snapped off the overhead light.

“That video must be pretty good, huh?” Bishop asked from the front seat.

I stared at him in the darkness, his face catching a dim glow from the dashboard lights. I once again wondered about Cisco having cleared him as a possible spy for the prosecution. Either way, he didn’t need to know my business.

“Nah,” I said. “I was just bluffing.”

Thursday, January 16

The next morning came quickly, thanks to a 7 a.m. hammering on the front door. Kendall jumped out of bed first and then I sat up so fast I thought I felt a muscle in my lower back twinge.

“What is it?” she cried.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Just get dressed.”

I pulled on the pants I had discarded on the floor the night before and grabbed a fresh shirt out of the closet. I buttoned it as I walked barefoot down the hall, the dread growing with each step that I might be going back to Twin Towers. Only the cops pounded on your door this early.

I opened the door, and sure enough, there was Drucker and another detective I didn’t recognize. Behind them stood two uniformed officers. Drucker was holding up a document I did recognize, a search warrant.

“Hello, sir, we have a warrant to search these premises,” Drucker said. “May we come in?”

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” I said.

I took the warrant, which was several pages stapled together. I knew to skip through all the preamble and the probable-cause statement to get to the meat of what they were looking for.

“You want billing records,” I said. “I don’t have any of that here. My office manager has all of the current stuff, and the rest is in storage.”

“My partner is serving a warrant at Ms. Taylor’s residence,” Drucker said. “And we have a third for your storage unit. I was hoping you would cooperate and meet us there to facilitate that search after this.”

I stepped back from the doorway and held my arm out, signaling them to enter. I noticed Kendall in the door to the hallway leading to the back. She was holding up my phone.

“It’s Lorna,” she said.

“Tell her I know she’s getting searched,” I said. “I’ll call her back in five.”

I turned to the four law officers now standing in my living room.

“I have a home office in the back,” I said. “I assume you’ll want to start there. But like I said, I don’t keep billing records here. Lorna handles all of that.”

Drucker was not put off.

“If you could show us the way,” he said. “We’ll try to make this as painless as possible.”

They followed me down the hall. I saw that Kendall had retreated to our bedroom and closed the door. As we went by, I knocked on the door to get her attention.

“Kendall, I need to stay with these guys,” I said. “Will you bring me some socks and my shoes?”

I then moved to the last door in the hallway, which led to a bedroom I’d converted into an office. There was a desk covered in paperwork and files.

“These are case files that contain privileged information you are not entitled to look at,” I said.

I reached down and started opening drawers in the desk so they would see they were mostly empty.

“Knock yourself out but, as you can see, no billing records,” I said. “You’re wasting your time and mine.”

I moved back around from behind the desk so there was room for the searchers. There was a couch in the office, where I slept on occasion. I sat down as Kendall entered with a fresh pair of socks and my black lace-up Ferro Aldo boots. She also handed me my cell phone.

“You people are unbelievable,” Kendall said. “Why don’t you just leave him alone?”

“It’s okay, Kendall,” I said. “They’re wrong, but they’re just doing their job. The sooner we let them get to it, the sooner they’re out of here.”

Kendall left the room in a huff. I called Lorna back.

“Mickey, they’re searching my records,” she said upon answering.

“I know,” I said. “They can look at the billing. Just make sure they’re not looking at privileged material.”

“I’m not letting them near that. But you know, all the stuff with Sam Scales is not here.”

“Detective Drucker is here. I told him that but they’re going to do what they want to do.”

Lorna lowered her voice to a whisper for her next question.

“What does this mean, Mickey? What are they looking for?”

I hadn’t really had time to think about those questions. I told Lorna I would call her back and disconnected. I then sat on the couch, unmoving, as I watched Drucker and the unnamed detective going through the drawers of my desk. The uniformed officers were milling about in the hallway. They were there to enforce the search if there was pushback. But since I was cooperating, they had nothing to do but stand with their hands on their equipment belts.

I knew that Death Row Dana was shoring up her case. I guessed that this search was about accounts receivable and motive. They were looking for documentation that Sam Scales had stiffed me. They wanted my own records to prove it, and that told me that the murder-for-financial-gain charge was still in play.

A few minutes later Drucker closed all the drawers in the desk and looked at me.

“Let’s check the garage,” he said.

“There’s nothing in the garage,” I said. “The California bar frowns on client records being stored in unsecured locations. You want to just skip all of this and go to my warehouse. I know what you’re looking for, and if I have it, it’s there.”

“Where’s your warehouse?”

“Over the hill. Studio City.”

“Let’s check the garage and then go.”

“Whatever.”

It was too early for Bishop to be around. After the garage was cleared — my first time being in there since the murder — I drove the Lincoln, and as I made my way north through Laurel Canyon, I thought about how many times I had chided clients for being cooperative with the people working to take away their freedom. Do you think by being nice and helping them out you’ll convince them you didn’t do it? Not a chance. These people want to take everything away from you: your family, your home, your freedom. Do not cooperate with them!