Майкл Коннелли - Law of Innocence

Part of vetting Sam Scales’s life was to also vet him in death. We had gotten the autopsy report in the very first but thin wave of discovery from the prosecution. It confirmed the obvious, that Scales had died of multiple gunshot wounds. But we had received only the initial autopsy report put together after the examination of the body. It did not include a toxicology report. That usually took two to four weeks to complete following the autopsy. That meant the toxicology results should be in by now and the fact that they had not been included in the latest batch of discovery was suspicious to me. The prosecution might be hiding something and I needed to find out what it was. I also wanted to know what level of mental function Sam Scales was at when he was put into the trunk of my car, presumably alive, and shot.

This could be handled two ways. Jennifer could simply file a motion seeking the report as part of discovery, or Cisco could go down to the coroner’s office and try to cadge a copy of it on his own. It was, after all, a public record.

On my to-do list, I assigned the job to Cisco for the simple reason that if he got a copy of the tox report, there was a good chance the prosecution would not be aware that we got it. This was the better strategy. Don’t let the prosecution know what you have and where you are going with it—unless it is required.

That was it for the list. For now. But I didn’t want to go back to the module. Too much noise, too many distractions. I liked the quiet of the library and decided that while I had a pen in hand, I might as well sketch out the brief on the motion to examine the cell phone and car. I wanted to hit Judge Warfield with it at Thursday’s hearing so we could move expeditiously. If I outlined it for Jennifer now, she could easily have it ready to submit.

But just as I began, the deputy assigned to the library got a call on his radio and told me I had a visitor. This was a bit of a surprise because I could be visited only by people I had put on the visitation list I filled out at booking. The list was short and primarily contained the names of the people on my defense team. I was already scheduled to have a team meeting in the afternoon.

I guessed the visitor would be Lorna Taylor. Though she managed my practice, she was neither a lawyer nor a licensed investigator, and that precluded her from being able to join the afternoon sessions with Jennifer and Cisco. But when I was escorted into the visitor booth and looked through the glass, I was pleasantly surprised to see the woman whose name I had written last on my list as a long-shot hope.

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.