The Law of Innocence

by Michael Connelly

  That was it for the list. For now. But I didn’t want to go back to the module. Too much noise, too many distractions. I liked the quiet of the library and decided that while I had a pen in hand, I might as well sketch out the brief on the motion to examine the cell phone and car. I wanted to hit Judge Warfield with it at Thursday’s hearing so we could move expeditiously. If I outlined it for Jennifer now, she could easily have it ready to submit.

  But just as I began, the deputy assigned to the library got a call on his radio and told me I had a visitor. This was a bit of a surprise because I could be visited only by people I had put on the visitation list I filled out at booking. The list was short and primarily contained the names of the people on my defense team. I was already scheduled to have a team meeting in the afternoon.

  I guessed the visitor would be Lorna Taylor. Though she managed my practice, she was neither a lawyer nor a licensed investigator, and that precluded her from being able to join the afternoon sessions with Jennifer and Cisco. But when I was escorted into the visitor booth and looked through the glass, I was pleasantly surprised to see the woman whose name I had written last on my list as a long-shot hope.

  Kendall Roberts was on the other side of the glass. I had not seen her in more than a year. Not since she had told me she was leaving me.

  I slid onto the stool in front of the glass and picked up the phone out of its cradle. She picked up the phone on the other side.

  “Kendall,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well,” she said, “I heard about you getting arrested and I had to come. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s all bullshit and I’ll beat this in court.”

  “I believe you.”

  When she had left me, she had also left the city.

  “Uh, when did you get here?” I asked. “Into town, I mean.”

  “Last night. Late.”

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I’m at a hotel. By the airport.”

  “Well, how long are you staying?”

  “I don’t know. I have no plans. When is the trial?”

  “Not for, like, two months. But we’re in court this Thursday.”

  “Maybe I’ll come by.”

  She said it as if I had invited her to a happy hour or a party. I didn’t care. She looked beautiful. I didn’t think she had cut her hair since I had last seen her. It now framed her face as it fell to her shoulders. The dimples in her cheeks when she smiled were there like always. I felt my chest constrict. I had been with my two ex-wives for a total of seven years. I had spent almost as much time with Kendall. And it was good for every one of those years until we started drifting apart and she said she wanted to leave L.A.

  I couldn’t leave my daughter or my practice. I offered to make more time for travel but I wasn’t going to leave. So, in the end, it was Kendall who left. She packed everything she owned one day while I was in trial and left me a note. I had put Cisco on it just so I had the comfort of knowing where she was and that she was all right—or so I told myself. He tracked her to Hawaii but I left it at that. Never flew across the ocean to find her and beg her to return. I simply waited and hoped.

  “Where did you come in from?” I asked.

  “Honolulu,” she said. “I’ve been living in Hawaii.”

  “Did you open a studio?”

  “No, but I teach classes. It’s better for me not to be the owner. I just teach now. I get by.”

  She’d had a yoga studio on Ventura Boulevard for several years but sold it when she started getting restless.

  “How long are you here?”

  “I told you. I don’t know yet.”

  “Well, if you want, you can stay at the house. I obviously won’t be using it and you could water the plants—some of which I think are actually yours.”

  “Uh, maybe. We’ll see.”

  “The extra key is still under the cactus on the front deck.”

  “Thanks. Why are you here, Mickey? Don’t you have bail or…?”

  “Right now they have me on five-million bail, which means I could get out with a ten percent bond. But you don’t get that money back at the end, innocent or guilty, and that would be about everything I’ve got, including the equity in my house. I can’t see giving all of that away for a couple months of freedom. I’ve got them on a speedy trial clock and I’m going to win this thing and get out without having to pay a bail bondsman a dime.”

  She nodded.

  “Good,” she said. “I believe you.”

  The interviews were fifteen minutes only and then the phones would get cut off. I knew we were almost out of time. But seeing her made me think of all that was at stake.

  “It is really nice of you to come see me,” I said. “I’m sorry the visits are so short and you came so far.”

  “You put me on your visitors list,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when they asked me and then they found my name. That was nice.”

  “I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d come if you heard about it. I didn’t know if it would make news in Hawaii but it was big news here.”

  “You knew I was in Hawaii?”

  Ugh. I had slipped up.

  “Uh, sort of,” I said. “When you left like you did, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, you know? I had Cisco check things out and he told me you flew to Hawaii. I didn’t know where or anything like that, or if it was permanent. Just that you had gone.”

  I watched her think through my answer.

  “Okay,” she said, accepting it.

  “How is it there?” I asked, trying to move past my gaffe. “You like it?”

  “It’s been okay. Isolating. I’m thinking of coming back.”

  “Well, I don’t know what I can do from here, but if there’s anything you need, let me know.”

  “Okay, thanks. I guess I should be going. They said I only get fifteen minutes.”

  “Yeah, but they just shut down the phones when your time is up. You think you’ll come back to visit? I’m here every day if I’m not in court.”

  I smiled like I was some sort of comedian hawking his stand-up act. Before she could answer, there was a loud electronic buzz on the phone and the line went dead. I saw her speak but didn’t hear it. She looked at the phone and then at me and slowly put it back in its cradle. The visit was over.

  I nodded at her and smiled awkwardly. She made a slight wave and then got up from her stool. I did the same and started walking down the line of visitor booths, all of them open behind the prisoner’s stool. I looked through every window as I passed and caught a few glimpses of her moving parallel to me on the other side.

  Then she was gone.

  The hack asked me whether I was going back to the law library and I told him I wanted to go back to the module.

  While I was being led back, I worked over my final view of Kendall on the phone. I had watched her lips as she spoke into the dead phone. I came to realize that she had said, “I don’t know.”

  8

  Thursday, December 5

  Officer Roy Milton was in uniform and sitting in the first row of the gallery behind the prosecution table when I was led into the courtroom. I recognized him easily from the night of my arrest. Following Sheriff’s Department protocol I was manacled by a waist chain, with my hands cuffed at my sides. I was led to the defense table, where the escort deputy unchained me, and Jennifer, who was standing and waiting, helped me put on my suit jacket. Lorna had somehow gotten two-day tailoring done and the suit fit me perfectly. I turned toward the gallery as I shot the cuffs and addressed Milton.

  “Officer Milton, how are you today?” I asked.

  “Don’t answer that,” Dana Berg said from the prosecution table.

  I looked at her and she stared right back at me.

  “Mind your own business, Haller,” she said.

  I spread my hands in a gesture of surprise.

  “Just being cordial,” I said.

  “Be cordial with someone
on your side,” Berg said.

  “All right,” I said. “Whatever.”

  I did a 180 sweep of the gallery and saw my daughter in her usual spot. I smiled and nodded and she gave both back to me. I didn’t see Kendall Roberts anywhere but I wasn’t expecting to. I had come to view her visit the other day as her fulfilling some sort of duty to me. But that was all there would be.

  I finally pulled out my chair at the defense table and sat down next to Jennifer.

  “You look good,” she said. “Lorna did a good job with that suit.”

  We had spoken earlier in the holding cell along with Cisco. But Cisco was gone now, with a full plate of investigative tasks to carry out.

  I heard whispers directly behind me and turned to see that two of the reporters who had been covering the case from the beginning were now in their usual spots. Both were women, one from the Los Angeles Times, the other from the Daily News, competitors who liked to sit together and chat while waiting for court to start. I had known Audrey Finnel from the Times for years, as she had covered a few of my cases. Addie Gamble was new on the criminal courts beat for the News and I knew her by her byline only.

  Soon Judge Warfield appeared in the doorway behind the clerk’s corral and court was called to order. Before getting to the motion to suppress, I told the judge that I had a new motion to file with the court on an emergency basis because the prosecution was still not playing fair when it came to the rules of discovery.

  “What is it this time, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

  Her voice took on a tone of exasperation, which I found disconcerting, since the hearing had just started. As I walked to the lectern, Jennifer carried copies of the new motion to the prosecution table and the court clerk, who then handed the documents to the judge.

  “Your Honor, the defense just wants what it is entitled to,” I said. “You have a discovery motion in front of you for data from my own car and cell phone, which the prosecution has not provided because it knows it is exculpatory and will show that I was in my house and that my car was in my garage when I supposedly went out and abducted Mr. Scales and then took him back to my house to murder him.”

  Dana Berg immediately stood up and objected. She didn’t even have to state her grounds for the objection. The judge was on it right away.

  “Mr. Haller,” she boomed. “Making your case to the media instead of the court is unacceptable and…dangerous. Do you understand me?”

  “I do, Judge, and I apologize,” I said. “Defending myself has taken me to some emotional depths I don’t usually deal with.”

  “That is no excuse. Consider that your one and only warning.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  But as I spoke my apology, I couldn’t help wondering what the judge would do to me with a contempt citation. Put me in jail? I was already there. Fine me? Good luck collecting with me earning zero income while I fought a murder rap.

  “Continue,” the judge instructed. “Carefully.”

  “Judge, the motion is clear,” I said. “The state obviously has this information and we have not received it. It appears that it is the practice of the District Attorney’s Office to hold discovery and not share it unless it is specifically asked for by the defense, and that is not the way it works. This is vital information about my own property that I need in order to defend myself, and I need it right now, Your Honor. Not when the prosecution feels like it.”

  The judge looked at Berg for a response and the prosecutor took the lectern, lowering the stem microphone to her level.

  “Your Honor, Mr. Haller’s assumptions are completely wrong,” she said. “The information he seeks was acquired by the LAPD following the issuance of a search warrant, which took time to write and execute. The material that came from that search warrant was received by my office just yesterday and has not yet been reviewed by me or anyone on my team. I believe the rules of discovery allow me to at least review evidence before passing it to the defense.”

  “When will the defense have this material?” Warfield asked.

  “I would think by the end of the day tomorrow,” Berg said.

  “Your Honor?” I said.

  “Hold your horses, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “Ms. Berg, if you don’t have time to review the material, then get someone else to review it or turn it over blind. I want you to give it to the defense by the end of the day. That’s today I’m talking about. And that’s the workday. Not midnight.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” a chastened Berg said.

  “Your Honor, I would still like to be heard,” I said.

  “Mr. Haller, I just got you what you asked for,” Warfield said impatiently. “What else is there to say?”

  I went to the lectern as Berg stepped away. I glanced back into the gallery and saw Kendall sitting next to my daughter. That gave me confidence. I raised the microphone stem back up.

  “Judge,” I began, “the defense is troubled by this absurd idea that discovery does not need to be completed until a review of the discoverable evidence occurs. Review is an amorphous word, Your Honor. What is a review? How long is a review? Two days? Two weeks? Two months? I would ask the court to set out clear guidelines about this. As the court knows, I have not and will not waive my right to a speedy trial, and therefore any delay in the transfer of discovery puts the defense on an unfair footing.”

  “Your Honor?” Berg said. “May I be heard?”

  “No, Ms. Berg, there is no need for you to be heard,” Warfield said. “Let me make clear the rules of discovery in this courtroom. Discovery is a two-way street. What comes in must go out. Forthwith. No delay, no undue review. What the state gets, the defense gets. Conversely, what the defense gets, the state gets. Without delay. The penalty for violation is the disallowance of the material at the source of the complaint. Remember that. Now, can we take up the cause that this hearing was scheduled for? The motion in limine filed by Mr. Haller to essentially disallow the body in this case. Ms. Berg, you bear the burden of justifying a warrantless search and seizure. Do you have a witness to call in this matter?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Berg said. “The People call Officer Roy Milton.”

  Milton stood in the gallery and walked through the gate and to the witness stand. He raised his hand and was sworn in. After he was seated and the preliminaries of identity were completed, Berg elicited Milton’s version of my arrest.

  “You are assigned to Metro Division, correct, Officer Milton?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is Metro’s jurisdiction?”

  “Well, we have the whole city, I guess you could say.”

  “But on the night in question, you were working downtown on Second Street, weren’t you?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “What was your assignment that night, Officer Milton?”

  “I was on an SPU assignment and was posted near—”

  “Let me stop you right there. What is SPU?”

  “Special Problems Unit.”

  “And what was the special problem that you were addressing that night?”

  “We were encountering spikes in crimes in the civic center. Vandalism mostly. We had spotters in the center and I was in a support car posted just outside the zone. I was at Second and Broadway, with eyelines down both streets.”

  “Eyelines for what, Officer Milton?”

  “Everything, anything. I saw the defendant pull out of the parking lot on Broadway.”

  “You did, didn’t you? Let’s talk about that. You were stationary, correct?”

  “Yes, I was parked at the curb at the southeast corner on Second. I had a view up to the tunnel in front of me and down Broadway to my left. That was where I saw the vehicle leaving the pay lot.”

  “Were you assigned that position, or did you choose it?”

  “I was assigned that general location—the top corner of the box we were putting over the civic center.”

  “But didn’t your position put you in a blind? The L.A. Tim
es Building would block any view of the civic center, would it not?”

  “Like I said, we had spotters inside—observers on the ground in the civic center. I was containment. I was placed in a position where I could react to anyone leaving the civic center on Broadway. Or I could come into the box if needed.”

  Step-by-step she walked him through the pull-over and the discussion with me at the rear of my car. He described my reticence to open the trunk to see if the license plate was there, then his spotting the substance dripping from the car.

  “I thought it was blood,” Milton said. “At that point I believed there were exigent circumstances and that I needed to open the trunk to see if someone was hurt inside.”

  “Thank you, Officer Milton,” Berg said. “I have nothing further.”

  The witness was turned over to me. My goal was to build a record I hoped would be useful at trial. Berg had not bothered to show any video during her questioning, because all she needed to do was establish exigent circumstances.

  But we had received the extended versions of both his body-cam and the car-cam video from the prosecution the day before and had studied them during our three o’clock at Twin Towers. Jennifer had the body-cam tape cued up on her laptop and ready to go now if needed.

  As I walked to the lectern, I took the rubber band off a rolled printout of an aerial shot of the downtown civic center. I asked permission of the judge to approach the witness, then unrolled the photo in front of him.

  “Officer Milton, I see you have a pen in your pocket,” I said. “Would you mark this photograph with the position you had taken on the night in question?”

  Milton did as I requested, and I asked him to add his initials. I then took the photo back, rolled and banded it, and asked the judge to enter it as defense exhibit A. Milton, Berg, and the judge all looked a bit bewildered by what I had just done, but that was okay. I wanted Berg to be puzzled about what the defense was up to.

  I returned to the lectern and asked the court’s permission to play both videos turned over to me in discovery. The judge gave her approval and I used Milton to authenticate and introduce the videos. I played them back-to-back without stopping to ask any questions. When they were finished, I asked only two.