Two Kinds of Truth Page 12

  “Place still looks the same,” Edgar said.

  “You mean the house or the canyon?” Bosch asked.

  “I guess both.”

  “Cheers.”

  Bosch handed him both glasses so he could crack the seal on the bottle and pour.

  “Wait a minute,” Edgar said when he saw the label. “Are you kidding me?”

  “About what?” Bosch asked.

  “Harry, do you know what that stuff is?”

  “This?”

  Now Bosch looked at the label. Edgar turned and dumped the ice over the railing. He then held the empty glasses out to Bosch.

  “You don’t put ice in Pappy Van Winkle.”

  “You don’t?”

  “That’d be like putting ketchup on a hot dog.”

  Bosch shook his head. He didn’t get the comparison Edgar was making.

  “People put ketchup on hot dogs all the time,” he said.

  Edgar held out the glasses, and Bosch started pouring.

  “Easy now,” Edgar said. “Where’d you get this?”

  “It was a gift from somebody I did some work for,” Bosch said.

  “He must be doing pretty good. You look this stuff up on eBay and you’ll wish you never cracked the seal. You coulda bought your daughter a car.”

  “It’s a she. The one I did the work for.”

  Bosch looked at the label on the bottle again. He held the opening to his nose and picked up a deep, smoky tang.

  “A car, huh?” he said.

  “Well, at least a down payment,” Edgar said.

  “I almost regifted this and gave it to the chief up at San Fernando. I guess it would’ve made his Christmas.”

  “More like his whole year.”

  Bosch put the bottle down on the two-by-four railing cap, and Edgar immediately panicked. He grabbed the bottle before an earthquake or a Santa Ana wind could send it down into the dark arroyo below. He put it safely down on a table next to the lounge chair.

  He came back and they leaned side by side on the rail and sipped and looked into the pass. At the bottom, the 101 freeway was still a ribbon of white light coming up through Hollywood and one of red light going south.

  Bosch waited for Edgar to get down to the reason for his visit but nothing came. His old partner seemed content to sip rare bourbon and view the lights.

  “So what made you drive up here tonight?” Bosch finally asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Edgar said. “Something about seeing you today. Seeing that you’re still in the game made me think. I hate my job, Harry. We never get anything done. Sometimes I think the state wants to protect bad doctors, not get rid of them.”

  “Well, you’re still pulling down a paycheck. I’m not—unless you count the hundo they give me a month for equipment costs.”

  Edgar laughed.

  “That much, huh? You’re rolling in the green.”

  He held out his glass, and Bosch clicked his off of it.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Making bank.”

  “How about fucking Hollywood?” Edgar said. “Don’t even have a homicide table anymore.”

  “Yeah. Things change.”

  “Things change.”

  They clicked glasses again and sipped for a few quiet moments before Edgar finally got down to what he had come up the hill to say.

  “So Charlie Hovan called me up today, wanted to know all about you.”

  “What did you say?”

  Edgar turned and looked directly at Bosch. It was so dark on the deck that Bosch could only see a glint of reflection in his eyes.

  “I said you were good people. I said trust you and treat you right.”

  “I appreciate that, J. Edgar.”

  “Harry, whatever this is, I want in. I’ve been sitting on the sidelines too long, watching this shit go down. I’m asking you to include me.”

  Bosch took a draw of smoky bourbon before responding.

  “We could use all the help we can get. Today I thought you just wanted to get us out of the office.”

  “Yeah, because you were a reminder of what I should be fucking doing.”

  Bosch nodded. When he and Edgar were partners in Hollywood twenty-five years before, he had never had the sense that Edgar was all in. But he knew the need for redemption comes in all kinds of ways at all kinds of times.

  “You know where San Fernando even is?” Bosch asked.

  “Sure,” Edgar said. “Went up to the courthouse in San Fernando a few times on cases.”

  “Well, if you want in, be at San Fernando PD at eight tomorrow. We’ve got a strategy meeting. We’re going to take down a capper and start fishing. We’ll probably bring Dr. Herrera in at some point too. We could probably use your help with that.”

  “Do you have to clear it first?”

  “I think the chief will take all the help he can get on this. I’ll talk to him.”

  “I’ll be there, Harry.”

  He took down the last of his bourbon in one gulp, savored it, and then swallowed. He put the empty glass on the railing and pointed at the glass as he backed away.

  “Smooth. Thanks for that, Harry.”

  “Want another hit?”

  “Would love it, but early start tomorrow. I should go home.”

  “You got somebody there waiting, Jerry?”

  “Matter of fact, I do. I got remarried when I was working in Vegas. Nice girl.”

  “I got married in Vegas once.”

  It was the first time Bosch had thought about Eleanor Wish in a long time. Edgar gave him a sad smile.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  He clapped Bosch on the upper arm and headed back into the house and toward the front door. Bosch remained on the deck, sipping his expensive bourbon and thinking about the past. He heard Edgar’s car start up and pull away into the night.

  15

  In the morning Bosch ate breakfast at the counter at the Horseless Carriage, a diner located in the center of the vast Ford dealership in Van Nuys. It would only be a few miles from there to San Fernando and he had grown tired of eating the free breakfast burritos dropped off in the war room each morning. The Horseless had a fifties feel to it and was a lasting reminder of the population and expansion boom that swept the Valley after World War II. The car became king and Van Nuys was an auto-buying mecca, with dealerships lined up side by side and offering coffee shops and restaurants as draws to their customers.

  Bosch ordered the French toast and watched the video he had been texted the night before on the burner phone he had bought to communicate with Lucia Soto. The video had come from a strange number, which he assumed belonged to a burner Soto was now using herself.

  The video was Tapscott’s recording of the opening of the evidence box in the Danielle Skyler case. Bosch had watched it repeatedly the night before until he was too tired to keep his eyes open, but no matter how many times he viewed it, he could not figure out how the evidence box had been tampered with. The old and yellowed evidence labels were clearly intact as the box was presented to the camera and then cut open by Soto.

  This continually agitated Bosch, because he knew there was a kink in the line somewhere between property control and the lab table where Lucas John Olmer’s DNA was found on Skyler’s clothing. If he started with the bedrock knowledge that Olmer’s DNA had been planted, then he had to figure out two things. One was how DNA from a man who died two years earlier had been procured in the first place, and the other was how it had been planted on the clothing contained in a sealed evidence box.

  The first question had been answered—to Bosch’s satisfaction, at least—the night before, after Edgar left and he finally got the chance to review the Borders investigative file for a second time. This time, he paid careful attention to the file within the file—the records from Olmer’s prosecution and conviction on multiple rape charges in 1998. In his first swing through the records Bosch had paid closer attention to the investigative side of the case, exhibiting a detective’s bias
that a case was put together during the investigation and that the prosecution was only the strategic revelation of the accumulated facts and evidence to the jury. Therefore, he believed, anything in the prosecution files would already have been covered in the investigative files.

  Bosch learned how wrong he had been about this mind-set when he read through a sheaf of motions and countermotions filed by both the prosecution and defense. Most were boilerplate legal arguments: motions to suppress evidence or testimony made by the prosecution or defense. Then Bosch came across a defense motion stating that it was Olmer’s intention at trial to challenge the DNA evidence in the case. The motion asked the judge to order the state to provide the defense with a portion of the genetic evidence collected during the investigation so that independent analysis could take place. The motion was not challenged by the state, and Judge Richard Pittman ordered the District Attorney’s Office to split the genetic material with the defense.

  The defense motion had been written by Olmer’s attorney, Lance Cronyn. It was a routine pretrial move, but what drew Bosch’s attention was the witness list submitted by the defense at the start of the trial. There were only five witnesses on the list and after each name, there was a summary of who the person was and what they would testify to. None of the five were chemists or forensic specialists. This told Bosch that during the trial, Cronyn did not put forth alternate DNA findings, as the motion filed earlier had suggested. He had gone in another direction, which could have been anything from claiming the sex was consensual to hammering at the state’s own DNA collection protocol and analysis. Whatever it was, it didn’t work. Olmer went down on all charges and was shipped off to prison. And there was no record in the file of what happened to the genetic material signed over to his lawyer by the judge.

  Bosch knew that the DA’s Office should have requested the return of the material after the trial, but there was nothing in the records to indicate this had been done. Olmer was convicted and sent away on a sentence he couldn’t possibly outlive. The reality, Bosch knew, was that institutional entropy probably took over. Prosecutors and investigators moved on to other cases and trials. The missing DNA was unaccounted for, and therefore it could have been the source of the genetic material found on Danielle Skyler’s pajamas. Proving it, though, was another matter, especially when Bosch could not figure out how that microdot of DNA got there.

  Still, for the moment, he had what was certainly a crack in the facade of a seemingly solid case for wrongful conviction. There was DNA unaccounted for and the defense lawyer who moved between the two cases in question may have had access to it.

  He pushed his plate away and checked his watch. It was seven forty and time to get to the war room. He stood up, left a twenty on the counter, and headed out to his car. He stayed on surface streets, taking Roscoe over to Laurel Canyon and then heading up. Along the way he took a call from Mickey Haller.

  “Funny, I was going to call you,” Bosch said.

  “Oh, yeah?” Haller said. “About what?”

  “I’ve decided I definitely want to engage your services. I want to come in as a third party at the hearing next week and oppose the release of Preston Borders. Whatever that takes in legal terms.”

  “All right. We can do that. You want any media on it? This is going to be an unusual hearing with a retired detective going up against the D.A. It’s a good story.”

  “Not yet. It’s going to get ugly when it comes up that Borders claims I planted evidence and the D.A. apparently agrees.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been through the whole file. Borders claims that I planted the key evidence—the sea-horse pendant—in his apartment. Accusing me is the only way to sell this.”

  “Did he offer any proof of this?”

  “No, but he doesn’t have to. If the DNA points to a convicted rapist, then the only plausible evidence for Borders being in possession of the pendant is that it was planted.”

  “Okay, understood. You’re right, this is going to get down and dirty, and I see why you want to keep the media out of it if possible. But now the big question: Whaddaya got that knocks down this house of cards?”

  “I’m only halfway there. I know where and how they could’ve gotten Olmer’s DNA. I just need to find out how they were then able to salt the evidence with it.”

  “Sounds like you’ve done the easy part, if you ask me.”

  “I’m working on the hard part. Is that why you called? To encourage me?”

  “No, actually I’ve got a little gift for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  Bosch was now off of Laurel Canyon and cruising up Brand Boulevard and passing the “Welcome to San Fernando” sign.

  “Well, when you first told me about this, the name Preston Borders rang a bell. I remembered it but I couldn’t place it. I was in law school at Southwestern and of course I didn’t know about you at the time. Anyway, I used to go to the Criminal Courts Building between classes and sit in courtrooms, watch defense lawyers work.”

  “Never interested in how prosecutors worked?”

  “Not really. Not with my father—our father—having been a defense attorney. The point is, I’m pretty sure I watched some of the Borders trial, and that would have put you and me in the same room without knowing each other thirty years ago. I thought that was sort of neat.”

  “Yeah, neat. That’s why you called? That’s the gift?”

  “No, the gift is this: Our father died young—in fact, I never saw him in a courtroom—but he had a young partner who carried on, and that’s the guy I used to go watch at the CCB.”

  “You’re talking about David Siegel? He was the partner?”

  “That’s right. And he defended Preston Borders in that trial in nineteen eighty-eight. I grew up calling him Uncle David. He was a great lawyer and they called him Legal Siegel around the courthouse. He’s the one who sent me to law school.”

  “What happened to his practice? Do you think there are any records still around from the trial? They might be useful.”

  “You see, that’s my gift to you, my brother. You don’t need records; you’ve got Legal Siegel.”

  “What are you talking about? He’s dead. There’s an obit in the file—I read it last night.”

  Bosch had to wait at the crossing a block from the station for a Metro train to go screaming through. Haller heard it over the phone and waited for silence before responding.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “When he retired from the practice of law, Legal Siegel did not want to be found by any of the, let’s say, unsavory clients he represented over the years, especially those who might not have been pleased with the outcome of their interaction.”

  “He didn’t want guys getting out of prison and looking him up,” Bosch said. “Geez, I wonder why.”

  “I’ve had the experience myself and it’s not pleasant. So Legal Siegel sold his practice and pulled a disappearing act. He even had one of his sons send an obituary of his own creation to the newsletter of the California bar. I remember reading it. It called him a legal genius.”

  “That’s what I read. Soto and Tapscott put it in the file because they said Siegel was dead. You’re telling me he’s still alive?”

  “He’s going on eighty-six years old and I try to visit him every few weeks or so.”

  Bosch pulled into a parking space in the SFPD’s side lot. He checked the dash clock and saw he was late. The personal cars of all the other detectives were already there.

  “I need to talk to him,” he said. “In the new files, Borders throws him under the bus. He’s not going to like that.”

  “I’m sure he won’t,” Haller said. “But that’s a good break for you. If you impugn the reputation of a lawyer, he’s allowed to fight back. I’ll set up an interview and we’ll record it. What’s your availability going to be?”

  “The sooner the better. You said he was pushing eighty-six. Is he all there?”

  “Absolutely.
Sharp as a stiletto mentally. Physically, not so much. He’s bedridden. They move him around in a wheelchair. Bring him a sandwich from Langer’s or Philippe’s and he’ll go on a nostalgic bender about old cases. That’s what I do. I love to hear him talk cases.”

  “All right, set it up and let me know.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Bosch killed the engine and opened the Jeep’s door. He quickly tried to remember if there was anything else he needed to ask Haller.

  “Oh, one other thing,” he said. “You remember at Christmas when we got those bottles of bourbon from Vibiana at the Fruit Box Foundation?”

  Vibiana Veracruz was an artist both Haller and Bosch had encountered on a private case they had worked the year before.

  “Happy Pappy, yes, I do,” Haller said.

  “I remember you offered me a hundred bucks for mine,” Bosch said. “I almost took it.”

  “Offer still stands. Unless you finished that sucker off.”

  “No, I didn’t even crack it open until last night. And that’s when I found out I could’ve gotten about twenty times what you offered.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. You’re a scoundrel, Haller. Just wanted you to know I’m onto you.”

  Bosch could hear Haller chuckling at the other end of the line.

  “Laugh it up,” Bosch said. “But I’m keeping it.”

  “Hey, there are no morals and no ethics when it comes to choice Kentucky bourbon,” Haller said. “Especially Pappy Van Winkle.”

  “I’m going to remember that.”

  “You do that. Talk to you later.”

  The call ended and Bosch went in the side door to the station. He walked through the empty detective bureau and opened the door to the war room. He was immediately hit with the fresh smell of breakfast burritos.

  It was a full house. Sitting around the table and eating were Lourdes, Sisto, Luzon, Captain Trevino, and Chief Valdez. Jerry Edgar was also in attendance with a man Bosch had never seen before. He was late thirties with dark hair and a deep tan. He wore a golf shirt with sleeves tight on his expanded biceps.