Майкл Коннелли - Law of Innocence

“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.”

“Damn.”

“I know, but it was a long shot.”

The good feelings that we had started the meeting with were dissipating.

“Okay, where are we on the suspects list?” I asked.

“Lorna is still working on it,” Jennifer said. “You’ve had a ton of cases in the past ten years. There’s still a lot to go through. I told her I’d work with her this weekend, and with any luck you’ll be out of this place and able to be there too.”

I nodded.

“Speaking of which, you should probably go if you’re going to file something today,” I said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jennifer said. “Anything else?”

I leaned across the table to talk in a low voice to Jennifer—in case the overhead camera had grown ears.

“I’m going to call you when I can get to a phone in the module,” I said. “I want to talk about Baja and I want you to record it. Can you do that?”

“Not a problem. I’ve got an app.”

“Good. Then we’ll talk later.”

10

It was almost an hour before they moved me back to the module. I found Bishop at one of the tables playing Mexican dominoes with a custody named Filbin. He gave me his customary greeting.

“Counselor,” he said.

“Bishop, I thought you had court today,” I said.

“Thought I did too until my lawyer put it over. Motherfucker mus’ think I’m stayin’ at the Ritz over here.”

I sat down, put my documents on the table, and looked around. A lot of guys were out of their cells and moving around the dayroom. The module had two phones mounted on the wall below the mirrored windows of the hack tower. You could either make a collect call on them or use a phone card purchased from the jail canteen. At the moment, both phones were being used and each one had a line of three men waiting. The calls cut off after fifteen minutes. That meant if I got in line now I would get a phone in roughly an hour.

I didn’t see Quesada on my survey of the dayroom. Then I saw that the door to his cell was closed. Every man in the module was on keep-away status, but being locked up in a cell in a keep-away module was reserved for those inmates who were either in imminent danger or highly valuable to a prosecution.

“Quesada’s on lockdown?” I said.

“Happened this morning,” Bishop said.

“Snitch,” Filbin said.

I almost smiled. Calling someone in the keep-away module a snitch was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. The most common reason for segregating people in the module in the first place was that they were informants. For all I knew, Filbin was one. I didn’t make it a practice of asking fellow inmates what they were being held for or why they were on keep-away status. I had no idea why Bishop was in the module and would never ask him. Sticking your nose in other people’s business could have consequences in a place like Twin Towers.

I watched them play until Bishop won the game and Filbin got up and walked off toward the stairs leading to the second tier of cells.

“You want to play, Counselor?” Bishop asked. “A dime a point?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t gamble.”

“Now, that’s some bullshit right there. You gambling with your own life right now bein’ in here with us criminals.”

“Speaking of that, I might be getting out soon.”

“Yeah? You sure you want to leave this wonderful place?”

“I need to. Gotta prep my case, and in here it’s not going to happen. Anyway, I’m only telling you because I want you to know that I’ll make good on our deal. I’ll pay till the end of my trial.”

“That’s mighty white of you.”

“I mean it. You’ve made me feel safe, Bishop, and I appreciate it. When you get out, you should look me up. I might have something for you. Something legitimate.”

“Like what?”

“Like driving. You have a driver’s license?”

“I could get one.”

“A real one?”

“As real as they get, Counselor. Driving what? Who?”

“Me. I work out of my car and I need a driver. It’s a Lincoln.”

My previous driver had been working off her son’s debt for my representation and was a week away from completing that when I was arrested. If I got out, I would need a new driver, and I wasn’t blind to what Bishop could bring in terms of intimidation and security in addition to the driving chores.

I checked the phone bank again. The line was down to two each. I knew I should get over there before it built up to three again. I leaned in close to Bishop and violated my own rule about getting into other people’s business.

“Bishop, say you were going to break into a garage at somebody’s house. How would you do it?”

“Whose house?”

“It’s a hypothetical. Any house. How would you do it?”

“What makes you think I would break into a house?”

“I don’t think that. It’s a hypothetical and I’m picking your brain. And it’s breaking into a garage, not the house.” “Any windows or a side door?”