The Reversal Page 8
Bosch nodded. Somebody in the line behind him tapped the horn--Bosch assumed it was a man hurrying to make drop-off and then get to work. He waved his thanks to Sue and pulled out.
Maggie McFierce had called Bosch the night before and told him that there was nothing out of Burbank, so they were taking a direct flight out of LAX. That meant it would be a brutal drive in morning traffic. Bosch lived on a hillside right above the Hollywood Freeway but it was the one freeway that wouldn't help him get to the airport. Instead, he took Highland down into Hollywood and then cut over to La Cienega. It bottlenecked through the oil fields near Baldwin Hills and he lost his cushion of time. He took La Tijera from there and when he got to the airport he was forced to park in one of the expensive garages close in because he didn't have time to ride a shuttle bus in from an economy lot.
After filling out the Law Enforcement Officer forms at the counter and being walked through security by a TSA agent, he finally got to the gate while the plane was in the final stages of loading its passengers. He looked for McPherson but didn't see her and assumed she was already on the plane.
He boarded and went through the required meet-and-greet, stepping into the cockpit, showing his badge and shaking the hands of the flight crew. He then made his way toward the back of the plane. He and McPherson had exit-row seats across the aisle from each other. She was already in place, a tall Starbucks cup in hand. She had obviously arrived early for the flight.
"Thought you weren't going to make it," she said.
"It was close. How'd you get here so early? You have a daughter just like me."
"I dropped her with Mickey last night."
Bosch nodded.
"Exit row, nice. Who's your travel agent?"
"We've got a good one. That's why I wanted to handle it. We'll send LAPD the bill for you."
"Yeah, good luck with that."
Bosch had put his bag in an overhead compartment so he would have room to extend his legs. After he sat down and buckled in, he saw that McPherson had shoved two thick files into the seat pocket in front of her. He had nothing out to prep with. His files were in his bag but he didn't feel like getting them out. He pulled his notebook out of his back pocket and was about to lean across the aisle to ask McPherson a question when a flight attendant came down the aisle and stooped down to whisper to him.
"You're the detective, right?"
"Uh, yes. Is there a--"
Before he could finish the Dirty Harry line, the flight attendant informed him that they were upgrading him to an unclaimed seat in the first-class section.
"Oh, that's nice of you and the captain, but I don't think I can do that."
"There's no charge. It's--"
"No, it's not that. See, I'm with this lady here and she's my boss and I--I mean we--need to talk and go over our investigation. She's a prosecutor, actually."
The attendant took a moment to track his explanation and then nodded and said she'd go back to the front of the plane and inform the powers that be.
"And I thought chivalry was dead," McPherson said. "You gave up a first-class seat to sit with me."
"Actually, I should've told her to give it to you. That would have been real chivalry."
"Uh-oh, here she comes back."
Bosch looked up the aisle. The same smiling attendant was headed back to them.
"We're moving some people around and we have room for you both. Come on up."
They got up and headed forward, Bosch grabbing his bag out of the overhead and following McPherson. She looked back at him, smiled and said, "My tarnished knight."
"Right," Bosch said.
The seats were side by side in the first row. McPherson took the window. Soon after they were resituated, the plane took off for its three-hour flight to Seattle.
"So," McPherson said, "Mickey told me our daughter has never met your daughter."
Bosch nodded.
"Yeah, I guess we need to change that."
"Definitely. I hear they're the same age and you guys compared photos and they even look alike."
"Well, her mother sort of looked like you. Same coloring."
And fire, Bosch thought. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. He showed her a photo of Maddie.
"That's remarkable," McPherson said. "They could be sisters."
Bosch looked at his daughter's photo as he spoke.
"It's just been a tough year for her. She lost her mother and moved across an ocean. Left all her friends behind. I've been kind of letting her move at her own pace."
"All the more reason she should know her family here."
Bosch just nodded. In the past year he had fended off numerous calls from his half brother seeking to get their daughters together. He wasn't sure if his hesitation was about the potential relationship between the two cousins or the two half brothers.
Sensing that angle of conversation was at an end, McPherson unfolded her table and pulled out her files. Bosch turned his phone off and put it away.
"So we're going to work?" he asked.
"A little. I want to be prepared."
"How much do you want to tell her up front? I was thinking we just talk about the ID. Confirm it and see if she's willing to testify again."
"And not bring up the DNA?"
"Right. That could turn a yes into a no."
"But shouldn't she know everything she's going to be getting into?"
"Eventually, yes. It's been a long time. I did the trace. She hit some hard times and rough spots but it looks like she might've come out okay. I guess we'll see when we get up there."
"Let's play it by ear, then. I think if it feels right, we need to tell her everything."
"You make the call."
"The one thing that's good is that she'll only have to do it once. We don't have to go through a preliminary hearing or a grand jury. Jessup was held over for trial in 'eighty-six and that is not what the supreme court reversed. So we just go directly to trial. We'll need her one time and that will be it."
"That's good. And you'll be handling her."
"Yes."
Bosch nodded. The assumption was that she was a better prosecutor than Haller. After all, it was Haller's first case. Harry was happy to hear she would be handling the most important witness at trial.
"What about me? Which one of you will take me?"
"I don't think that's been decided. Mickey anticipates that Jessup will actually testify. I know he's waiting for that. But we haven't talked about who will take you. My guess is that you'll be doing a lot of read-backs to the jury of sworn testimony from the first trial."
She closed the file and it looked like that was it for work.
They spent the rest of the flight small-talking about their daughters and looking through the magazines in their seat pockets. The plane landed early at SeaTac and they picked up a rental car and started north. Bosch did the driving. The car came equipped with a GPS system but the DA travel assistant had also provided McPherson with a full package of directions to Port Townsend. They drove up to Seattle and then took a ferry across Puget Sound. They left the car and went up for coffee on the concessions deck, finding an open table next to a set of windows. Bosch was staring out the window when McPherson surprised him with an observation.
"You're not happy, are you, Harry?"
Bosch looked at her and shrugged.
"It's a weird case. Twenty-four years old and we start with the bad guy already in prison and we take him out. It doesn't make me unhappy, it's just kind of strange, you know?"
She had a half smile on her face.
"I wasn't talking about the case. I was talking about you. You're not a happy man."
Bosch looked down at the coffee he held on the table with two hands. Not because of the ferry's movement, but because he was cold and the coffee was warming him inside and out.
"Oh," he said.
A long silence opened up between them. He wasn't sure what he should reveal to this woman. He had known her for only
a week and she was making observations about him.
"I don't really have time to be happy right now," he finally said.
"Mickey told me what he felt he could about Hong Kong and what happened with your daughter."
Bosch nodded. But he knew Maggie didn't know the whole story. Nobody did except for Madeline and him.
"Yeah," he said. "She caught some bad breaks there. That's the thing, I guess. I think if I can make my daughter happy, then I'll be happy. But I am not sure when that will be."
He brought his eyes up to hers and saw only sympathy. He smiled.
"Yeah, we should get the two cousins together," he said, moving on.
"Absolutely," she said.
Eleven
Thursday, February 18, 1:30 P.M.
The Los Angeles Times carried a lengthy story on Jason Jessup's first day of freedom in twenty-four years. The reporter and photographer met him at dawn on Venice Beach, where the forty-eight-year-old tried his hand at his boyhood pastime of surfing. On the first few sets, he was shaky on a borrowed longboard but soon he was up and riding the break. A photo of Jessup standing upright on the board and riding a curl with his arms outstretched, his face turned up to the sky, was the centerpiece photo on the newspaper's front page. The photo showed off what two decades of lifting prison iron will do. Jessup's body was roped with muscle. He looked lean and mean.
From the beach the next stop was an In-N-Out franchise in Westwood for hamburgers and French fries with all the catsup he wanted. After lunch Jessup went to Clive Royce's storefront office in downtown, where he attended a two-hour meeting with the battery of attorneys representing him in both criminal and civil matters. This meeting was not open to the Times.
Jessup rounded out the afternoon by watching a movie called Shutter Island at the Chinese theater in Hollywood. He bought a tub of buttered popcorn large enough to feed a family of four and ate every puffed kernel. He then returned to Venice, where he had a room in an apartment near the beach courtesy of a high-school surfing buddy. The day ended at a beach barbecue with a handful of supporters who had never wavered in their belief in his innocence.
I sat at my desk studying the color photos of Jessup that graced two inside pages of the A section. The paper was going all-out on the story, as it had all along, surely smelling the journalistic honors to be gathered at the end of Jessup's journey to complete freedom. Springing an innocent man from prison was the ultimate newspaper story and the Times was desperately trying to take credit for Jessup's release.
The largest photo showed Jessup's unabashed delight at the red plastic tray sitting in front of him at a table at In-N-Out. The tray contained a fully loaded double-double with fries smothered in catsup and melted cheese. The caption said
Why Is This Man Smiling? 12:05--Jessup eats his first Double-Double in 24 years. "I've been thinking about this forever!"
The other photos carried similarly lighthearted captions below shots of Jessup at the movies with his bucket of popcorn, hoisting a beer at the barbecue and hugging his high-school pal, walking through a glass door that said ROYCE AND ASSOCIATES, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW. There was no indication in the tone of the article or photos that Jason Jessup was a man who happened to still be accused of murdering a twelve-year-old girl.
The story was about Jessup relishing his freedom while being unable to plan his future until his "legal issues" were resolved. It was a nice turn of phrase, I thought, calling abduction and murder charges and a pending trial merely legal issues.
I had the paper spread wide on the desk Lorna had rented for me in my new office on Broadway. We were on the second floor of the Bradbury Building and only three blocks from the CCB.
"I think you need to put something up on the walls."
I looked up. It was Clive Royce. He had walked through the reception room unannounced because I had sent Lorna over to Philippe's to get us lunch. Royce gestured to the empty walls of the temporary office. I flipped the newspaper closed and held up the front page.
"I just ordered a twenty-by-twenty shot of Jesus on the surfboard here. I'm going to hang him on the wall."
Royce stepped up to the desk and took the paper, studying the photo on the front as if for the first time, which we both knew was not the case. Royce had been deeply involved in the generation of the story, the payoff being the photo of the office door with his firm's name on the glass.
"Yes, they did a good job with it, didn't they?"
He handed it back.
"I guess so, if you like your killers happy-go-lucky."
Royce didn't respond, so I continued.
"I know what you're doing, Clive, because I would do it, too. But as soon as we get a judge, I'm going to ask him to stop you. I'm not going to let you taint the jury pool."
Royce frowned as if I had suggested something completely untoward.
"It's a free press, Mick. You can't control the media. The man just got out of prison, and like it or not, it's a news story."
"Right, and you can give exclusives in exchange for display. Display that might plant a seed in a potential juror's mind. What do you have planned for today? Jessup co-hosting the morning show on Channel Five? Or is he judging the chili cook-off at the state fair?"
"As a matter of fact, NPR wanted to hang with him today but I showed restraint. I said no. Make sure you tell the judge that as well."
"Wow, you actually said no to NPR? Was that because most people who listen to NPR are the kind of people who can get out of jury duty, or because you got something better lined up?"
Royce frowned again, looking as though I had impaled him with an integrity spear. He looked around, grabbed the chair from Maggie's desk and pulled it over so he could sit in front of mine. Once he was seated with his legs crossed and had arranged his suit properly he spoke.
"Now, tell me, Mick, does your boss think that housing you in a separate building is really going to make people think you are acting independently of his direction? You're having us on, right?"
I smiled at him. His effort to get under my skin was not going to work.
"Let me state once again for the record, Clive, that I have no boss in this matter. I am working independently of Gabriel Williams."
I gestured to the room.
"I'm here, not in the courthouse, and all decisions on this case will be made from this desk. But at the moment my decisions aren't that important. It's you who has the decision, Clive."
"And what would that be? A disposition, Mick?"
"That's right. Today's special, good until five o'clock only. Your boy pleads guilty, I'll come down off the death penalty and we both roll the dice with the judge on sentencing. You never know, Jessup could walk away with time served."
Royce smiled cordially and shook his head.
"I am sure that would make the powers that be in this town happy, but I'm afraid I must disappoint you, Mick. My client remains absolutely uninterested in a plea. And that is not going to change. I was actually hoping that by now you would have seen the uselessness of going to trial and would simply drop the charges. You can't win this thing, Mick. The state has to bend over on this one and you unfortunately are the fool who volunteered to take it in the arse."
"Well, I guess we'll see, won't we?"
"We will indeed."
I opened the desk's center drawer and removed a green plastic case containing a computer disc. I slid it across the desk to him.
"I wasn't expecting you to come by for it yourself, Clive. Thought you'd send an investigator or a clerk. You gotta bunch of them working for you, don't you? Along with that full-time publicist."
Royce slowly collected the disc. The plastic case was marked DEFENSE DISCOVERY 1.
"Well, aren't we snarky today? Seems that only two weeks ago you were one of us, Mick. A lowly member of the defense bar."
I nodded my contrition. He had nailed me there.
"Sorry, Clive. Perhaps the power of the office is getting to me."
"Apology accepted."
Royce tapped the disc case on the edge of the desk.
"No witness list?"
"There is but as of now it's essentially the same list from the trial in 'eighty-six. I've added my investigator and subtracted a few names--the parents, other people no longer alive."
"No doubt Felix Turner has been redacted."
I smiled like the Cheshire cat.
"Thankfully you won't get the chance to bring him up at trial."
"Yes, a pity. I would have loved the opportunity to shove him up the state's ass."
I nodded, noting that Royce had come off the English colloquialisms and was hitting me with pure Americana now. It was a symptom of his frustration over Turner, and as a longtime counsel for the defense I certainly felt it. In the retrial, there would be no mention of any aspect of the first trial. The new jurors would have no knowledge of what had transpired before. And that meant the state's use of the fraudulent jailhouse informant--no matter how grievous a prosecutorial sin--would not hurt the current prosecution.
I decided to move on.
"I should have another disc for you by the end of the week."
"Yes, I can't wait to see what you come up with."
Sarcasm noted.
"Just remember one thing, Clive. Discovery is a two-way street. You go beyond thirty days and we'll go see the judge."
The rules of evidence required that each side complete its discovery exchange no later than thirty days before the start of trial. Missing this deadline could lead to sanctions and open the door to a trial delay as the judge would grant the offended party more time to prepare.
"Yes, well, as you can imagine, we weren't expecting the turn of events that has transpired here," Royce said. "Consequently, our defense is in its infancy. But I won't play games with you either, Mick. A disc will be along to you in short order--provided that we have any discovery to give."