Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

“And you ended up with a guilty conscience. That’s why you slipped the Ventura arrest report under my door.”

“I’m not saying I did that.”

“You don’t have to. But thank you.”

Ruth opened her door.

“So, what happens tomorrow?” I asked.

She looked back at me.

“I have no idea,” she said. “It’s out of my hands, that’s for sure.” She exited and closed the door, then walked off to the rear and I didn’t bother to turn to watch her go. Pressley quickly got in behind the wheel. He backed out of the work bay and headed out of the yard the way we had come in.

“Sorry, Pressley,” I said. “I panicked before and read you wrong.”

“Not the first time that’s been done,” he said.

“You an agent or just working with them?”

“Think I’d tell you?”

“Probably not.”

“So, if anything comes up at the Towers about us being late, I’m going to say I pulled over because you were getting sick.”

I nodded.

“I’ll back that up,” I said.

“They won’t even ask you,” he said.

We were back on Vignes Street. Through the windshield I could see Twin Towers up ahead.

Thursday, February 27

In the morning they woke me early and put me in the escort cruiser before eight o’clock. No one at the jail told me why.

“Pressley, you know why I’m going over so early?” I asked. “Court won’t even be open for an hour.”

“Not a clue,” Pressley said. “They just told me to get you there.”

“Any fallout from the little detour home last night?”

“What detour?”

I nodded and looked out the window. I hoped that whatever this was, Maggie McPherson had been alerted.

When we got to the courthouse, I was passed off to a runner who took me into the lockdown elevator and used a key to operate it. That was when I began to fill in the blanks. I was usually taken to the ninth floor, where Judge Warfield’s courtroom was located. The runner turned the key next to the button for the eighteenth floor. Every trial lawyer in the city knew that the main District Attorney’s Office was located on the eighteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building.

Off the elevator I was ushered into a locked interview room that I assumed was used to interview criminal suspects when they agreed to cooperate. It was not a good practice to let agreements like that sit. People change their minds — both criminal suspects and lawyers. If somebody facing a tough charge or a tough sentence makes the quiet offer in court to provide substantial assistance to authorities, you don’t set up an appointment for the next day. You take them upstairs and extract whatever information there is to extract. And it happened in the room that I was now sitting in.

Handcuffed to a waist chain and still in my blues, I sat in the room alone for fifteen minutes before I started staring up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling and yelling that I wanted to see my lawyer.

This drew no response for another five minutes and then the door opened and the runner was there. He escorted me down a hall and through a door. I entered what looked like a boardroom — most likely where policy was set and prosecutors and supervisors discussed big cases. Ten tall-back chairs stood around a large oval table, and most of them were occupied. I was led to an open seat next to Maggie McPherson. I either recognized most of the people gathered around the table or could guess who they were. On one side sat Dana Berg, along with her bow-tied second, as well as John “Big John” Kelly, the District Attorney, and Matthew Scallan, who I knew to be Berg’s boss and head of the Major Crimes Unit. In that capacity he had also formerly been Maggie’s boss until they moved her to the Environmental Protection Unit.

Lined up across the table from the state prosecutors were the feds. I saw Agent Ruth and her partner, Rick Aiello, along with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, Wilson Corbett, and another man whom I did not recognize but assumed was a midlevel prosecutor most likely overseeing the BioGreen investigation.

“Mr. Haller, welcome,” Kelly said. “How are you today?”

I looked at Maggie before answering and she gave a slight shake of her head. It was enough for me to understand that she did not know what this was about either.

“I just spent another night in your wonderful accommodations at Twin Towers,” I said. “How do you think I feel, Big John?”

Kelly nodded like he knew that would be my response.

“Well, we think we have some good news for you, then,” Kelly said. “If we can come to an agreement on some things here, we’re going to drop the case against you. You could sleep in your own bed tonight. How would that be?”

I took a scan of the faces in the room, beginning with Maggie’s. She looked surprised. Dana Berg looked mortified, and Rick Aiello looked the way he did the last time I had seen him on my front porch: angry.

“Dismissed?” I asked. “A jury has been sworn in. Jeopardy has attached.”

Kelly nodded.

“Correct,” he said. “You cannot be retried under the double jeopardy clause. No do-overs. It’s done. Over.”

“And what are the things we would have to come to an agreement on?” I asked.

“I’ll let Mr. Corbett take that one,” Kelly said.

I knew little about Corbett other than that he’d had no experience as a prosecutor before being appointed U.S. Attorney by the current president.

“We have a situation,” he said. “We have an ongoing investigation that reaches far deeper than you know. It doesn’t end with Louis Opparizio. But to expose even a small part of it in a court case would imperil the larger case. We need you to agree to be silent until the larger case is completed and adjudicated.”

“And when will that be?” Maggie asked.

“We don’t know,” Corbett said. “It is ongoing. That is all I can tell you.”

“So, how would this work?” I asked. “Charges are just dropped without explanation?”

Kelly took back the floor. I was staring at Dana Berg as he spoke. “We would move to dismiss the charges as contrary to the public interest,” he said. “We will state that the District Attorney’s Office has come into information and evidence that casts grave doubt on the validity and justice of our case. What that information and evidence is will remain confidential as part of an ongoing investigation.”

“That’s it?” I said. “That’s all you say? What about her? What does Dana say? She’s been calling me a murderer for four months.”

“We want to draw as little attention to this as possible,” Kelly said. “We can’t grandstand this and still protect the federal investigation.”

Berg was staring down at the table in front of her. I could tell she was not down with this plan. She was a true believer in her case until the end.

“So, that’s the deal?” I said. “Charges dropped but I can never say why, and you people never say you were wrong?”

No one responded.

“You think you’re making an accommodation,” I said. “You think this is a deal where you let a murderer walk for the greater good.”

“We’re not passing judgment,” Kelly said. “We know you have information that could be detrimental to the greater good should it come out.”

I pointed to Dana Berg.

“She is,” I said. “She passed judgment when she put me in jail. She thinks I killed Sam Scales. You all do.”

“You don’t know what I think, Haller,” Berg said.

“I pass,” I said.

“What?” Kelly said.

Maggie put her hand on my arm to try to stop me.

“I said, I pass,” I responded. “Take me down to court. I’ll take my chances with the jury. I get a not-guilty from them, and I’m clean and clear. And I can tell the whole world how I was set up right under the FBI’s nose and then railroaded by the D.A.’s Office. I like that deal better.”