The Reversal Read online

  "Very well."

  Firestone still seemed put out and annoyed. The assembly line had thrown a gear. He had a docket that had probably started with more than seventy-five names on it and a desire to get through them in time to get home for dinner before eight. Royce was going to slow things down immeasurably with his request for a full debate on whether Jessup should be allowed his release while awaiting trial. But Firestone, like Royce, was about to get the surprise of the day. If he didn't make it home in time for dinner, it wouldn't be because of me.

  Royce asked the judge for an OR, meaning Jessup would have to put up no money as bail and simply be released on his own recognizance. This was just his opener. He fully expected there to be a financial figure attached to Jessup's freedom, if he was successful at all. Murder suspects didn't get OR'ed. In the rare instance when bail was granted in a murder case, it usually came with a steep price tag. Whether Jessup could raise the money through his supporters or from the book and movie deals he was supposedly negotiating was not germane to the discussion.

  Royce closed his request by arguing that Jessup should not be considered a flight risk for the very same reason I had outlined to Maggie. He had no interest in running. His only interest was in fighting to clear his name after twenty-four years of wrongful imprisonment.

  "Mr. Jessup has no other purpose at this time than to stay put and prove once and for all that he is innocent and that he has paid a nightmarish price for the mistakes and misconduct of this District Attorney's Office."

  The whole time Royce spoke I watched Jessup in the glass cage. He knew the cameras were on him and he maintained a pose of rightful indignation. Despite his efforts, he could not disguise the anger and hate in his eyes. Twenty-four years in prison had made that permanent.

  Firestone finished writing a note and then asked for my response. I stood and waited until the judge looked up at me.

  "Go ahead, Mr. Haller," he prompted.

  "Judge, providing that Mr. Jessup can show documentation of residence, the state does not oppose bail at this time."

  Firestone stared at me for a long moment as he computed that my response was diametrically opposite to what he thought it would be. The hushed sounds of the courtroom seemed to get even lower as the impact of my response was understood by every lawyer in the room.

  "Did I get that right, Mr. Haller?" Firestone said. "You are not objecting to an OR release in a murder case?"

  "That is correct, Your Honor. We are fully expecting Mr. Jessup to show for trial. There's no money in it for him if he doesn't."

  "Your Honor!" Royce cried. "I object to Mr. Haller infecting the record with such prejudicial pap directed solely at the media in attendance. My client has no other purpose at this point than--"

  "I understand, Mr. Royce," Firestone interjected. "But I think you did a fair amount of playing to the cameras yourself. Let's just leave it at that. Without objection from the prosecution, I am releasing Mr. Jessup on his own recognizance once he provides the clerk with documentation of residence. Mr. Jessup is not to leave Los Angeles County without permission of the court to which his case is assigned."

  Firestone then referred the case to the clerk of the court's office for reassignment to another department for trial. We were now finally out of Judge Firestone's orbit. He could restart the assembly line and get home for dinner. I picked up the files Maggie had left behind and left the table. Royce was back at the seat at the railing, dumping files into a leather briefcase. His young associate was helping him.

  "How did it feel, Mick?" he asked me.

  "What, being a prosecutor?"

  "Yes, crossing the aisle."

  "Not too much different, to tell you the truth. It was all procedure today."

  "You will be raked over the coals for letting my client walk out of here."

  "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. Just make sure he stays clean, Clive. If he doesn't, then my ass really will be thrown on the fire. And so will his."

  "No problem there. We'll take care of him. He's the least of your worries, you know."

  "How's that, Clive?"

  "You don't have much in the way of evidence, can't find your main witness, and the DNA is a case killer. You're captain of the Titanic, Mickey, and Gabriel Williams put you there. Makes me wonder what he's got on you."

  Out of all that he said, I only wondered about one thing. How did he know about the missing witness? I, of course, didn't ask him or respond to his jab about what the DA might have on me. I played it like all the overconfident prosecutors I had ever gone up against.

  "Tell your client to enjoy himself while he's out there, Clive. Because as soon as the verdict comes in, he's going back inside."

  Royce smiled as he snapped his case closed. He changed the subject.

  "When can we talk about discovery?"

  "We can talk about it whenever you like. I'll start putting a file together in the morning."

  "Good. Let's talk soon, Mick, yes?"

  "Like I said, anytime, Clive."

  He headed over to the court deputy's desk, most likely to see about his client's release. I pushed through the gate and connected with Lorna and we left the courtroom together. Waiting for me outside was a small gathering of reporters and cameras. The reporters shouted questions about my not objecting to bail and I told them no comment and walked on by. They waited in place for Royce to come out next.

  "I don't know, Mickey," Lorna confided. "How do you think the DA is going to respond to the no bail?"

  Just as she asked it my phone started beeping in my pocket. I realized I had forgotten to turn it off in the courtroom. That was an error that could have proven costly, depending on Firestone's view of electronic interruptions while court was in session.

  Looking at the screen, I said to Lorna, "I don't know but I think I'm about to find out."

  I held up the phone so she could see that the caller ID said LADA.

  "You take it. I'm going to run. Be careful, Mickey."

  She kissed me on the cheek and headed off to the elevator alcove. I connected to the call. I had guessed right. It was Gabriel Williams.

  "Haller, what the hell are you doing?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "One of my people said you allowed Jessup to walk on an OR."

  "That's right."

  "Then I'll ask again, What the hell are you doing?"

  "Look, I--"

  "No, you look. I don't know if you were just giving one of your buddies in the defense bar what he wanted or you are just stupid, but you never let a murderer walk. You understand me? Now, I want you to go back in there and ask for a new hearing on bail."

  "No, I'm not going to do that."

  There was a hard silence for at least ten seconds before Williams came back.

  "Did I just hear you right, Haller?"

  "I don't know what you heard, Williams, but I'm not going back for a rehearing. You have to understand something. You gave me a bag of shit for a case and I have to do the best I can with it. What evidence we do have is twenty-four years old. We have a big hole blown in the side of the case with the DNA and we have an eyewitness we can't find. So that tells me I have to do whatever I can do to make this case."

  "And what's that got to do with letting this man out of jail?"

  "Don't you see, man? Jessup has been in prison for twenty-four years. It was no finishing school. Whatever he was when he went in? He's worse now. If he's on the outside, he'll fuck up. And if he fucks up, that only helps us."

  "So in other words, you are putting the general public at risk while this guy is out there."

  "No, because you are going to talk to the LAPD and get them to watch this guy. So nobody gets hurt and they are able to step in and grab him the minute he acts out."

  Another silence followed but this time I could hear muffled voices and I figured that Williams was talking it over with his advisor, Joe Ridell. When his voice came back to me, it was stern but had lost the tone of outrage.


  "Okay, this is what I want you to do. When you want to make a move like this, you come to me first. You understand?"

  "That's not going to happen. You wanted an independent prosecutor. That's what you've got. Take it or leave it."

  There was a pause and then he hung up without further word. I closed my phone and watched for a few moments as Clive Royce exited the courtroom and waded into the crowd of reporters and cameras. Like a seasoned expert, he waited a moment for everyone to get their positions set and their lenses focused. He then proceeded with the first of what would be many impromptu but carefully scripted press briefings.

  "I think the District Attorney's Office is running scared," he began.

  It was what I knew he would say. I didn't need to listen to the rest. I walked away.

  Eight

  Wednesday, February 17, 9:48 A.M.

  Some people don't want to be found. They take measures. They drag the branch behind them to confuse the trail. Some people are just running and they don't care what they leave in their wake. What's important is that the past is behind them and that they keep moving away from it.

  Once he back-checked the DA investigator's work, it took Bosch only two hours to find a current name and address for their missing witness, Melissa Landy's older sister, Sarah. She hadn't dragged a branch. She had used the things that were close and just kept moving. The DA's investigator who lost the trail in San Francisco had not looked backwards for clues. That was his mistake. He had looked forward and he'd found an empty trail.

  Bosch had started as his predecessor had, typing the name Sarah Landy and birth date April 14, 1972, into the computer. The department's various search engines provided myriad points of impact with law enforcement and society.

  First there were arrests on drug charges in 1989 and 1990--handled discreetly and sympathetically by the Division of Children's Services. But she was beyond the reach and understanding of DYS for similar charges in late 1991 and two more times in 1992. There was probation and a period of rehabilitation and this was followed by a few years during which she left no digital fingerprints at all. Another search site provided Bosch with a series of addresses for her in Los Angeles in the early nineties. Harry recognized these as marginal neighborhoods where rents were probably low and drugs close by and easy to acquire. Sarah's illegal substance of choice was crystal meth, a drug that burned away brain cells by the billions.

  The trail on Sarah Landy, the girl who had hidden behind the bushes and watched her younger sister get taken by a killer, ended there.

  Bosch opened the first file he had retrieved from the murder box and looked at the witness information sheet for Sarah. He found her Social Security number and fed that along with the DOB into the search engine. This gave him two new names: Sarah Edwards, beginning in 1991, and Sarah Witten in 1997. With women changes of last names only were usually an indicator of marriage, and the DA's investigator had reported finding records of two marriages.

  Under the name Sarah Edwards, the arrests continued, including two pops for property crimes and a tag for soliciting for prostitution. But the arrests were spread far enough apart and perhaps her story was sad enough that once again she never saw any jail time.

  Bosch clicked through the mug shots for these arrests. They showed a young woman with changing hairstyles and colors but the unwavering look of hurt and defiance in her eyes. One mug shot showed a deep purple bruise under her left eye and open sores along her jawline. The photos seemed to tell the story best. A downward spiral of drugs and crime. An internal wound that never healed, a guilt never assuaged.

  Under the name Sarah Witten, the arrests didn't change, only the location. She had probably realized she was wearing thin on the prosecutors and judges who had repeatedly given her breaks--most likely after reading the summary of her life contained in the presentencing investigations. She moved north to San Francisco and once again had frequent encounters with the law. Drugs and petty crime, charges that often go hand in hand. Bosch checked the mug shots and saw a woman who looked old beyond her years. She looked like she was forty before she was yet thirty.

  In 2003 she did her first significant jail time when she was sentenced to six months in San Mateo County Jail after pleading guilty to a possession charge. The records showed that she served four months in jail followed by a lockdown rehab program. It was the last marker on the system for her. No one with any of her names or Social Security number had been arrested since or applied for a driver's license in any of the fifty states.

  Bosch tried a few other digital maneuvers he had learned while working in the Open-Unsolved Unit, where Internet tracing was raised to an art form, but could not pick up the trail. Sarah was gone.

  Putting the computer aside, Bosch took up the files from the murder box. He started scanning the documents, looking for clues that might help him track her. He got more than a clue when he found a photocopy of Sarah's birth certificate. It was then that he remembered that she had been living with her mother and stepfather at the time of her sister's murder.

  The birth name on the certificate was Sarah Ann Gleason. He entered it into the computer along with her birth date. He found no criminal history under the name but he did find a Washington State driver's license that had been established six years earlier and renewed just two months before. He pulled up the photo and it was a match. But barely. Bosch studied it for a long time. He would have sworn that Sarah Ann Gleason was getting younger.

  His guess was that she had left the hard life behind. She had found something that made her change. Maybe she had taken the cure. Maybe she had a child. But something had changed her life for the better.

  Bosch next ran her name through another search engine and got utility and satellite hookups under her name. The addresses matched the one on her driver's license. Bosch was sure he had found her. Port Townsend. He went onto Google and typed it in. Soon he was looking at a map of the Olympic Peninsula in the northwest corner of Washington. Sarah Landy had changed her name three times and had run to the farthest tip of the continental United States, but he had found her.

  The phone rang as he was reaching for it. It was Lieutenant Stephen Wright, commander of the LAPD's Special Investigation Section.

  "I just wanted you to know that as of fifteen minutes ago we're fully deployed on Jessup. The full unit's involved and we'll get you surveillance logs each morning. If you need anything else or want to ride along at any point, you call me."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant. I will."

  "Let's hope something happens."

  "That would be nice."

  Bosch disconnected. And made the call to Maggie McPherson.

  "Couple things. First, SIS is in place now on Jessup. You can let Gabriel Williams know."

  He thought he heard a small chuckle before she responded.

  "Ironic, huh?"

  "Yeah. Maybe they'll end up killing Jessup and we won't have to worry about a trial."

  The Special Investigation Section was an elite surveillance squad that had existed for more than forty years despite a kill rate higher than that of any other unit in the department, including SWAT. The SIS was used to clandestinely watch apex predators--individuals suspected in violent crimes who would not cease until caught in the act and stopped by the police. Masters of surveillance, SIS officers waited to observe suspects committing new crimes before moving in to make arrests, often with fatal consequences.

  The irony McPherson mentioned was that Gabriel Williams was a civil rights attorney before running for and winning the DA's post. He had sued the department over SIS shootings on multiple occasions, claiming that the unit's strategies were designed to draw suspects into deadly confrontations with police. He had gone so far as to call the unit a "death squad" while announcing a lawsuit over an SIS shooting that had left four robbers dead outside a Tommy's fast-food franchise. That same death squad was now being used in a gambit that might help win the case against Jessup and further Williams's political rise.

 
"You'll be informed of his activities?" McPherson asked.

  "Every morning I'll get the surveillance log. And they'll call me out if anything good happens."

  "Perfect. Was there something else? I'm in a bit of a rush. I'm working on one of my preexisting cases and have a hearing about to start."

  "Yeah, I found our witness."

  "You're brilliant! Where is she?"

  "Up in Washington on the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula. A place called Port Townsend. She's using her birth name, Sarah Ann Gleason, and it appears that she's been living clean up there for about six years."

  "That's good for us."

  "Maybe not."

  "How so?"

  "It looks to me like most of her life has been spent trying to get away from what happened that Sunday in Hancock Park. If she's finally gotten past it and is living the clean life up there in Port Townsend, she might not be interested in picking at old scabs, if you know what I mean."

  "Not even for her sister?"

  "Maybe not. We're talking about twenty-four years ago."

  McPherson was quiet for a long moment and then finally responded.

  "That's a cynical view of the world, Harry. When are you planning on going up there?"

  "As soon as I can. But I have to make arrangements for my daughter. She stayed with a friend when I went up to get Jessup at San Quentin. It didn't turn out so good and now I have to hit the road again."

  "Sorry to hear that. I want to go up with you."

  "I think I can handle it."

  "I know you can handle it. But it might be good to have a woman and a prosecutor with you. More and more, I think she's going to be the key to this whole thing and she's going to be my witness. Our approach to her will be very important."