The Law of Innocence Read online

  “What did they tell you?” I asked.

  “Well, they’re pretty pissed off over at the D.A.’s Office because of the way you sandbagged Berg,” Bosch said.

  “They get caught cheating and they’re pissed at us,” Jennifer said. “That’s just beautiful.”

  “What’s the upshot?” I said. “What are they going to do about it?”

  “For one, they’re going to go after special circumstances like it’s the holy grail,” Bosch said. “They want to punish you for that stunt today, put you back in jail.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Cisco said.

  “Yeah, but they can do it,” Bosch said, “if they find the evidence.”

  “There is no evidence,” Jennifer said. “Financial gain? Murder for hire? It’s ridiculous.”

  “All I’m saying is they’re looking,” Bosch said, staring at me as though the others at the table didn’t count. “And you have to be careful with your own moves.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lorna said.

  “You raised hell about car and phone data,” Bosch said. “I assume you need it to prove you never left your house. That might just end up being evidence supporting that you paid somebody to grab Scales and bring him to you. That gets you close to murder for hire.”

  “Like I said, bullshit,” Cisco said.

  “I’m saying, this is how they’re thinking,” Bosch said. “It’s how I would think.”

  “Sam owed me money,” I said. “Never paid me the back end on the last case and we sued him. What was it, Lorna? Sixty K?”

  “Seventy-five,” Lorna said. “With interest and penalty, it’s over a hundred now. But we did it just to get a judgment and lien. We knew he’d never pay.”

  “Still, they could point to that, make it look like murder for financial gain,” I said. “If they could prove Sam had money, the lien would carry over in death.”

  “Did he?” Bosch asked. “Have money? They have a newsclip that says he ripped off ten million dollars through all his cons. Where’d it go?”

  “I remember that article,” I said. “‘The Most Hated Man in America,’ they called him. It was exaggerated and didn’t make me any friends, especially at home. But Sam was always on the con. He always had money coming in. It went somewhere.”

  “But this is crazy,” Jennifer said. “They think you would kill a former client for an unpaid bill? For seventy-five thousand dollars? A hundred thousand?”

  “No, they don’t think that,” I said. “That’s not the point. The point is, they’re pissed and if they can push this into special circumstances, my bail is pulled and I go back to Twin Towers. That’s what they want. To fuck me over. To tilt the table their way. Doesn’t matter if the added charge doesn’t hold up later in court.”

  Jennifer shook her head.

  “It still makes no sense,” she said. “I think your sources are crap.”

  She looked pointedly at Bosch. He was the new guy, the outsider, and was suspect in her eyes. I tried to push past the moment.

  “Okay, so how long do I have before they pull this shit?” I asked.

  “They have to find the money and prove you knew about it,” Bosch said. “If they get there, they’ll drop the current charges and go back to the grand jury. Then they refile with special circumstances.”

  “That will restart the speedy-trial clock and mean the money posted today for bond goes down the toilet,” Jennifer said. “You go to jail, the bond is forfeited.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Cisco said again.

  “Okay, well, we should be ready to go in to see Warfield the minute this all breaks,” I said. “Harry, you let us know what you hear when you hear it. Jennifer, we’ll need an argument. They’re subverting speedy trial, maybe vindictive prosecution, something.”

  “I’m on it,” Jennifer said. “This makes me so fucking mad.”

  “Don’t let your emotions into it,” I cautioned. “Let’s not go in mad, let’s make the judge mad. I saw some of that today when we played the tape. I know it took her back to when she was a defense attorney. If the D.A. is doing this just to fuck with me, then Warfield will see it before we say it.”

  Both Jennifer and Bosch responded with nods.

  “Fucking cowards,” Cisco said. “Afraid to go straight up with you, boss.”

  I liked that my team seemed angrier about the prosecution’s end run than I was. It would help keep them sharp in the days and weeks running up to trial.

  I returned my attention to Bosch. I realized more than the others what an incredibly good break it was to have him in our court. I had taken his side the year before and now he was taking mine. But the moral support paled in comparison with what he brought as an investigator.

  “Harry, did you ever work with Drucker and Lopes?” I asked.

  Kent Drucker and Rafael Lopes were the LAPD leads on the case. They worked out of the elite Robbery-Homicide Division, where Bosch had worked until the end of his LAPD career.

  “Never directly on a case,” Bosch said. “They were in the squad but there wasn’t a lot of crossover on things. They were good detectives, though. You don’t get to RHD if you’re not. The question becomes, What do you do when you get there?—rest on your laurels or keep chopping wood? The fact that they were assigned this case answers that one.”

  I nodded. Bosch looked hesitant. I wondered whether he had heard more, something he didn’t realize was valuable or was holding back until he could fill it out.

  “What?” I asked. “You have something else?”

  “Sort of,” he said.

  “Might as well get it out so we can discuss it,” I said.

  “Well, one of my last cases at RHD, I had an investigation where there was a financial fraud involved,” Bosch said. “A guy was embezzling funds, got found out, killed the guy who found out to shut him up. Pretty clean but we couldn’t find the money. His lifestyle showed nothing. He wasn’t spending it, he was hiding it, so we hired a financial forensics analyst to follow the money. Help us find it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Did it work?”

  “Yeah, we found the money offshore and made the case,” Bosch said. “I bring it up now because my partner from back then is still on the job in RHD. She told me that Drucker came to her and asked for the contact info for the financial forensics guy.”

  “We should look into getting our own,” Jennifer added.

  She wrote a note down on a small pad on the table in front of her.

  “Let’s look again through our files on Sam’s past cases,” I said. “Maybe there’s something in them with info on how he moved and hid cash. Harry, anything else?”

  I looked over my shoulder for Arturo. It wasn’t that I was starving, but I couldn’t wait to have a real meal for the first time in six weeks.

  “Just on the discovery file,” Bosch said. “I’ve been through the photos and the autopsy. It was all pretty self-explanatory, no surprises. But then I saw this.”

  He was looking through his copy of the discovery and pulled out two documents and a crime scene photo. He handed them around the table and waited a moment until everyone had a look and they came back to him.

  “The autopsy report stated that the victim’s fingernails were scraped for samples of what looked like dirt or grease,” he said. “Then the lab report came in, identifying the substance as a combination of vegetable oil, chicken fat, and some sugarcane—cooking grease, according to the report.”

  “I saw that in the discovery,” I said. “Why is it significant?”

  “Well, when you look at the crime scene photos, you see that all of this guy’s fingernails were dirty with this stuff,” Bosch said.

  “I’m still not following,” I said. “If it was blood or something, I could—”

  “I looked at this guy’s rap sheet,” Bosch interjected. “He was strictly white-collar cons. Internet mostly. And now he’s got grease under his nails.”

  “So, what does it mean?” I pressed.

 
“Maybe he was working as a fucking dishwasher,” Cisco said.

  “I think it means he was into something completely new,” Bosch said. “What that means to the case, I don’t know. But I think you should request a sample of the fingernail grease for your own testing.”

  “Okay,” I said. “We can do that. Jennifer?”

  “Got it,” she said.

  She wrote it down. I was about to pass the baton to Lorna to see what she had come up with on the review of my past cases. But Arturo brought the steaks to the table at that moment and I kept my mouth closed until we were all served. I then started devouring my strip like a man who has eaten only apples and baloney sandwiches for a month and a half.

  I soon became aware that I was being watched by the others. I spoke without looking up at them.

  “What, you never seen a guy eat a steak before?” I asked.

  “Just never seen one eat it so fast,” Lorna replied.

  “Well, stand back, I might order another,” I said. “I need to get back to my fighting weight. Since you take so much time between bites, Lorna, why don’t you tell us where we stand on my enemies list.”

  Before she could answer, I glanced over at Bosch to offer an explanation.

  “Lorna has been going through the old case files and drawing up a list of enemies, people who might have wanted to do this to me,” I said. “Lorna?”

  “Well, the list so far is short,” Lorna said. “You’ve had your problem clients and there have been some threats, but very few who we think have the skills, smarts, and general wherewithal to pull together a frame like this.”

  “It’s a sophisticated frame,” Cisco added. “Your run-of-the-mill client could not do this.”

  “So, who could?” I asked. “Who’s on your list?”

  “I’ve been through everything twice and came up with only one name,” Lorna said.

  “One name?” I said. “That’s it? Who?”

  “Louis Opparizio,” she said.

  “Wait, what?” I said. “Louis Opparizio…?”

  The name rang a loud bell in my memory but I needed a moment to place it. I was sure I’d never had a client named Louis Opparizio. Then I remembered. Opparizio wasn’t a client. He was a witness. A man from a mob-connected family who straddled the line between criminal enterprise and legitimate business. I had used him. I had cornered him on the witness stand and made him look like the guilty party. It drew the jury’s attention away from my client and on to Opparizio. Compared to him, my client looked like an angel.

  I remembered an encounter I’d had with Opparizio in a courthouse restroom. I remembered the anger, the hate. He was a bull of a man, built like a fireplug, and his arms hung away from his body like he was ready to use them to tear me apart. He’d backed me into a corner and had wanted to kill me right there.

  “Who is Opparizio?” Bosch asked.

  “He’s somebody I pinned a murder on once in court,” I said.

  “He was mobbed up,” Cisco added. “From Vegas.”

  “And did he do it?” Bosch asked.

  “No, but I made it look like he did,” I said. “My client got the NG and walked.”

  “And was your client really guilty?”

  I hesitated but then answered truthfully.

  “Yes, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

  Bosch nodded and I took it as a judgment, as though I had just confirmed why people hate lawyers.

  “So,” he said then. “Would Opparizio wanting to return the favor and pin a murder on you be out of the question?”

  “No, not at all,” I said. “What happened in court back then, it caused him a lot of problems and cost him a lot of money. He was a sleeper. He was trying to move mob money into legitimate fields and I sort of blew that up when I had him on the stand.”

  Bosch thought about that for a few moments and nobody interrupted.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Let me take Opparizio. Find out what he’s up to. And Cisco, you stay with Sam Scales. Maybe we cross paths somewhere and then we know why this whole thing went down.”

  It sounded like a plan to me but I was going to let Cisco decide. It seemed we were all looking at him, waiting, when he nodded his approval.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

  14

  I got home late and parked on the street. I didn’t want to park in the garage and wasn’t sure I ever would again. I entered to find the house completely dark. In that moment, I thought Kendall was gone. That she had realized, now that I was out, that she didn’t want to live here with me again. But then I saw movement in the darkened hallway and she appeared. She was wearing just a robe.

  “You’re home,” she said.

  “Yeah, it went late,” I said. “A lot to discuss. You’ve been waiting in the dark?”

  “Actually, I’ve been asleep since earlier. We never turned on any lights when we got here. We just went straight to the bed.”

  I nodded that I understood. My eyes started adjusting to the shadows and the dark.

  “So you didn’t eat?” I said. “You must be hungry.”

  “No, I’m fine,” she said. “You must be tired.”

  “Sort of. Yeah.”

  “But still excited about being free?”

  “Yeah.”

  I had woken that day in a jail cell. I was now about to sleep in my own bed for the first time in six weeks. My back on a thick mattress and my head on a soft pillow. And if that wasn’t enough, my ex-girlfriend had come back and was standing in front of me with her robe open and nothing on underneath. I was still accused of murder but it was amazing how my fortunes had changed in a single day. As I stood there, I felt that nobody could ever touch me. I was golden. I was free.

  “Well,” Kendall said, smiling. “I hope not too tired.”

  “I think I can manage,” I said.

  She turned and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway leading to the bedroom.

  And I followed.

  Part Two

  Follow the Honey

  15

  Thursday, January 9

  I had no illusions about my innocence. I knew it was something only I could know for sure. And I knew that it wasn’t a perfect shield against injustice. It was no guarantee of anything. The clouds were not going to open for some sort of divine light of intervention.

  I was on my own.

  Innocence is not a legal term. No one is ever found innocent in a court of law. No one is ever exonerated by the verdict of a jury. The justice system can only deliver a verdict of guilty or not guilty. Nothing else, nothing more.

  The law of innocence is unwritten. It will not be found in a leather-bound codebook. It will never be argued in a courtroom. It cannot be written into law by the elected. It is an abstract idea and yet it closely aligns with the hard laws of nature and science. In the law of physics, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the law of innocence, for every man not guilty of a crime, there is a man out there who is. And to prove true innocence, the guilty man must be found and exposed to the world.

  That was my plan. To go further than a jury verdict. To expose the guilty and make my innocence clear. It was my only way out.

  To that end, December proceeded with preparations for trial as well as prep for the anticipated move by the prosecution to recharge me and remand me back to a solo cell at Twin Towers. As the days until Christmas counted down, my paranoia rose incrementally. I expected the cruelest of moves by Death Row Dana as payback for the humiliation I had brought her in the last hearing—a Christmas Day arrest with courts closed for the holidays and me left unable to put our ready arguments before Judge Warfield until the calendar turned to the new year.

  There was no evasive action that I could take. My current bail restriction forbade me to leave the county, and the ankle-mounted monitor broadcast my location to authorities twenty-four hours a day. If they wanted me, they could surely find me. There was no escape.

  But no one ca
me knocking. No one came looking for me.

  I spent Christmas Eve with my daughter and she went to her mother’s on Christmas Day. And I got an early dinner with her a week later before she went off with friends to celebrate the changing of the year. Kendall was with me the whole time and even told me on New Year’s Eve that she was having all her belongings shipped back from Hawaii.

  All in all, it was a great month of freedom and work in preparation for the trial that lay ahead of me. But it would have been better if I hadn’t been looking over my shoulder the whole time. I began to think that I had been played, that Harry Bosch had been fed the false narrative of my re-arrest as the real payback. Dana Berg had made sure I would not be able to rest easy in my newfound freedom, and so she had the last laugh.

  As far as the investigation into eavesdropping on privileged conversations at Twin Towers that Judge Warfield had promised, Berg escaped unscathed. The illegal activity was laid squarely at the door of the jail intelligence unit. A report that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times during the news-starved week after Christmas resulted in a New Year’s Day exclusive on the front page that concluded that deputies had been listening for years to privileged conversations, the contents of which were then used to create tip sheets from nonexistent jailhouse informants. These were then turned over to police and prosecutors. It was one more black eye for the sheriff’s jail division, which in the prior decade had been the target of multiple federal investigations. Horror stories had abounded of jail deputies staging gladiator fights, putting inmates in cells with enemies, using gang members to carry out punishment beatings and rapes of other prisoners. Indictments had come and heads had rolled. The elected sheriff at the time and his second-in-command had even gone to prison for turning a blind eye to the corruption.

  Now the eavesdropping scandal promised more scrutiny and disgrace. Most likely the feds would be back in play and the new year was sure to bring a free-for-all for defense attorneys looking to overturn convictions in cases affected by the illegal activity.

  This caused me to double down on my resolve not to be returned to Twin Towers. Every deputy in the jail would know that the latest scandal that had befallen them was caused by me. I could clearly imagine the retribution that would be awaiting me if I went back.