The Law of Innocence

by Michael Connelly

  “That’s wrong, Your Honor,” I said.

  Warfield swung her eyes back to me and squinted them down to slots.

  “What are you saying, Mr. Haller?” she asked.

  “I’m saying we were running a test,” I said. “Ms. Aronson recorded the call and that recording is available to the court right now.”

  The air momentarily went out of the room while Berg recalculated.

  “Your Honor, I am going to object to any playing of a tape,” she said. “There is no way to validate its legitimacy.”

  “I disagree, Judge,” I said. “The tape begins with the jail system’s collect call announcement, and more importantly, you will hear the exact words and story Ms. Berg just revealed to the court. Now, if I were to make a phony tape, how would I know exactly what she was going to say in court?”

  Warfield registered that for a few moments before responding.

  “Let’s hear the tape,” she said.

  “Your Honor,” Berg said, panic creeping into her voice, “the People ob—”

  “Objection overruled,” Warfield said. “I said, let’s hear the tape.”

  Jennifer came forward with her cell phone, placed it on the lectern, and bent the stem microphone down to it before pushing the play button on the recording app.

  Without my instruction Jennifer had been smart enough to record the call from the start, including the electronic voice saying she was receiving a collect call from the L.A. County jail. After the call was over, she had also added her own tag, announcing that the call had been a test to see if L.A. County authorities were violating my privilege rights.

  The call was convincing. I wanted to see Berg’s reaction but could not pull my eyes away from the judge. Her face seemed to grow darker as she heard the parts of the conversation that Berg had said came from an informant.

  When the tape ended with Jennifer’s tag, I asked the judge if she wished to hear it again. She said no, then took a moment to compose herself and her verbal response. As a former defense attorney, she had probably always had reason to be suspicious about the monitoring of calls from jailed clients to their lawyers.

  “May I address the court?” Berg said. “I did not listen to that call. What I represented to the court earlier was the truth as it was told to me. The sheriff’s jail intelligence unit provided a report that gave me the information and said it came from an informant. I did not knowingly lie to or mislead the court.”

  “Whether or not I believe you doesn’t matter,” Warfield said. “A serious intrusion upon the rights of this defendant has occurred, and there are consequences for that. There will be an investigation, and the truth will come out. In the meantime, I’m ready to rule on the defense motion on bail. Any other argument, Ms. Berg?”

  “No, Your Honor,” Berg said.

  “I didn’t think so,” the judge said.

  “May I be heard, Your Honor?” I asked.

  “There is no need, Mr. Haller. No need.”

  12

  A small group of friends, colleagues, and loved ones were there to greet me when I stepped through the inmate release door at Twin Towers. They erupted in cheers and applause as I came through. The media was there too, and they filmed me as I went down the line, hugging and hand shaking. It was embarrassing but felt good at the same time. I was breathing free air again and wanted to revel in it. One of my Lincolns was there at the curb, ready to go—obviously not the one Sam Scales had been murdered in.

  Harry Bosch and Andre La Cosse were last in the well-wishers line. I thanked them both for being willing to stand up for me and put up their money as well.

  “We got off cheap,” Bosch said.

  “You played that perfectly in court,” La Cosse added. “As usual.”

  “Well,” I said. “Twenty-five K apiece is still a lot of money in my book, and I will pay you guys back sooner than you think.”

  Both men had generously agreed to put up as much as $200,000 each to pay for a 10 percent bond. But Judge Warfield was so enraged by the obvious eavesdropping on my jail calls that she dropped bail from $5 million to $500,000 as punishment for the wrongdoing. Unfortunately, she also ordered me to wear an ankle monitor, but this did not dampen the news that my two sponsors only had to put up a fraction of what they had offered.

  It was a good day all around. I was free.

  I took Andre aside for a private moment.

  “Andre, you didn’t need to do this, man,” I said. “I mean, Harry’s my brother. There’s blood there, but you’re a client, and I hate like hell taking any of the money you earned with your own blood.”

  “Yes, I did,” he said. “I had to do it. I wanted to do it.”

  I nodded my thanks again and shook his hand. As I did so, Fernando Valenzuela walked up. He had missed the cheering section.

  “So, don’t burn me on this, Haller,” he said.

  “Val, my man,” I said.

  We bumped fists.

  “When I first heard that shit in court about Mexico, I thought, What the fuck?” Valenzuela said. “But then, man, you had it wired. Good show.”

  “Ain’t no show, Val,” I said. “I had to get out.”

  “And now you are. I’ll be monitoring you.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Valenzuela moved off and the others crowded around me again. I looked for Maggie but didn’t see her. Lorna asked what I wanted to do.

  “Meet with the team? Be by yourself? What?” she asked.

  “You know what I want?” I said. “I want to get in that Lincoln, open all the windows, and just drive out to the beach.”

  “Can I go?” Hayley asked.

  “Me too?” Kendall added.

  “Of course,” I said. “Who’s got the keys?”

  Lorna put the keys into my hand. Then she handed me a phone.

  “The police still have yours,” she said. “But we think we have all your contacts and email on this.”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  Then I leaned down and whispered to her.

  “Let’s get the team together later,” I said. “Call Christian at Dan Tana’s and see if we can get in. I’ve been eating baloney for six weeks. Tonight I want steak.”

  “You got it,” Lorna said.

  “And ask Harry to come,” I added. “Maybe he’s had a chance to look at the discovery file and will have something to say.”

  “Will do.”

  “One other thing: Did you talk to Maggie in court? She kind of disappeared, and I’m wondering if she’s pissed off at us for bringing her there as a character witness.”

  “No, she’s not mad. Once the judge said she didn’t need any testimonials, she told me she had to get back to work. But she was there for you.”

  I nodded. It was good to know.

  I unlocked the Lincoln with the remote and walked around to the driver’s side.

  “Fall in, ladies,” I said.

  Kendall gave up the front seat to Hayley and took the back. That was nice of her and I smiled at her in the rearview.

  “Eyes on the road, Dad,” Hayley said.

  “Right,” I said.

  We pulled away from the curb. I worked my way down to the 10 freeway and headed west. At that point it was time to put up the windows so we could hear one another talk.

  “How do you feel?” Kendall asked.

  “Pretty good for a guy still charged with murder,” I said.

  “But you’re going to win, right, Dad?” Hayley asked urgently.

  “Don’t worry, Hay, I’m going to win,” I said. “And that’s when I’ll go from feeling pretty good to feeling pretty great. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  We rode in silence for a few moments.

  “Can I ask a dumb question?” Kendall said.

  “There are no dumb questions when it comes to the law,” I said. “Only dumb answers.”

  “What happens next?” she said. “Now that you’re out on bail, will the trial get delayed?”
<
br />   “I won’t let them delay it,” I said. “I have them on speedy trial.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Kendall asked.

  I looked over at my daughter.

  “You’re One-L,” I said. “Why don’t you answer that?”

  “I only know the answer because of you, not law school,” Hayley said.

  She turned to look back over the seat at Kendall.

  “If you’re accused of a crime, you’re entitled to a speedy trial,” she said. “In California that means they have ten court days from your arrest to hold a preliminary hearing or seek an indictment from a grand jury. Either way, you then get formally arraigned on the charges and the state must take you to trial within sixty calendar days or drop the charges and dismiss the case.”

  I nodded. She had it right.

  “What are calendar days?” Kendall asked.

  “That just means workdays,” Hayley said. “It’s sixty days excluding weekends and holidays. My father was indicted and arraigned right before Thanksgiving—November twelfth, to be exact—and the sixty days push us into February. They count two days at Thanksgiving and a whole week from Christmas to New Year’s as holidays. Then you add in Martin Luther King Day and Presidents’ Day, when the courts are closed. It all adds up to February eighteenth.”

  “D-Day,” I said.

  I reached over and squeezed Hayley’s knee like the proud father I was.

  The traffic was flowing and I took the freeway all the way to the curving tunnel that dumped out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. I pulled into a lot that served one of the beach clubs down there and got out. An attendant came walking toward us. I reached into my pocket but realized all the belongings from my pockets the night I was arrested were in an envelope I had handed off to Lorna so I could shake hands and hug people.

  “I don’t have any money,” I said. “Either of you have a five we can give this guy for ten minutes on the beach?”

  “I got it,” Kendall said.

  She paid the man and we all walked across the pedestrian and bike paths and across the sand toward the water. Kendall took off her heels and carried them in one hand. There was something very sexy about her doing that.

  “Dad, you’re not going to jump in, right?” Hayley asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “I just want to hear the waves. Everything sounds like echoes and iron where I’ve been. I need to wash it out of my ears with something good.”

  We stopped on a berm that was just above the wet sand where the surf washed in. The sun was slinking down toward the blue-black water. I held both my companions’ hands and said nothing. I breathed deeply and thought about where I had been. I resolved at that moment that I had to win the case because there was no way I was going to go back into lockup. I would take all extreme alternatives to that.

  I let go of Hayley’s hand and then pulled her close.

  “All this about me,” I said. “How are you doing, Hay?”

  “I’m good,” she said. “What you told me about first year being a bitch is true.”

  “Yeah, but you’re smarter than I ever was. You’ll do fine.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “How’s your mom? I saw her in court, and Jennifer said she was going to vouch for me if needed.”

  “She’s good. And, yeah, she was ready to speak up for you.”

  “I’ll call her and thank her.”

  “That would be nice.”

  I turned and looked at Kendall. It almost felt like she had never left me for Hawaii.

  “And you?” I said. “You doing all right?”

  “I am now,” she said. “I didn’t like seeing you in the courtroom.”

  I nodded. I got that. I looked out at the ocean. The pounding of the waves seemed to echo in my chest. The colors were vibrant, not the gray of my last six weeks. It was beautiful and I didn’t want to leave.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “Time’s up. Back to work.”

  The traffic was not as kind heading in the opposite direction. It took almost an hour to get Hayley to her apartment in K-town after she turned down my invitation to dinner in favor of her weekly study group. This week’s subject: The Rule Against Perpetuities.

  After dropping her off, I stayed on the curb and called Lorna. She told me that dinner was set up at Dan Tana’s at 8 p.m. and that Harry Bosch would be in attendance.

  “I think he has something to discuss,” Lorna said.

  “Good,” I said. “I’ll want to hear it.”

  I disconnected and looked at Kendall.

  “So,” I said. “The dinner with my team is at eight and it sounds like they really want to work and discuss the case. I don’t think—”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I know you want to get to it. You can just drop me off.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, I took you up on your offer. I’ve been at your place. Is that okay?”

  “Of course. I forgot, but that’s great. I want to go there anyway to change. This is the suit I was arrested in. It doesn’t fit anymore and it smells like jail to me.”

  “Good, then. You’ll be taking off your clothes.”

  I looked at her and she smiled provocatively.

  “Um, I thought we were broken up,” I said.

  “We are,” she said. “That’s why this is going to be so much fun.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I pulled the Lincoln away from the curb.

  13

  Somebody once said that a person’s favorite restaurant is where they know you. That might be true. They knew me at Dan Tana’s and I knew them: Christian at the door, Arturo at the table, Mike behind the bar. But that didn’t obscure the fact that the kitschy Italian joint with checkered tablecloths served up the best New York strip in the city. I liked the place because they knew me, but I liked the steak even better.

  When I pulled up to the valet, I saw Bosch standing outside the restaurant’s front door by himself. He was at the smoking bench but I knew he didn’t smoke. After turning over the car keys, I walked over. I noticed he had an inch-thick file tucked under his arm. The discovery file, I assumed.

  “You’re the first one here?” I asked.

  “No, they’re all in there,” he said. “Table in the back corner.”

  “But you’re here waiting for me. Is this where you ask me if I did it?”

  “Give me a little more credit, Mick. If I thought you did it, I wouldn’t have put up the money.”

  I nodded.

  “And nothing in that file changed your mind?”

  “Not really. Just made me think you’ve got yourself in a pretty tight box.”

  “Tell me about it. Should we go in?”

  “Sure, but one thing before we’re with the others. Like I said, somebody really put you in a box here, and I was thinking that you may want to run this out for as long as you can. You know, drop the speedy trial thing…take your time with it.”

  “So much for the vote of confidence.”

  “It is what it is.”

  “Thanks for the advice but I’ll pass. One way or another, I want this thing done.”

  “I get it.”

  “What about you? You okay? Still taking your pills?”

  “Every day. So far, so good.”

  “I like hearing that. And Maddie? How’s she doing?”

  “She’s good. In the academy.”

  “Man, the second generation, just like the first.”

  “I thought Hayley wants to be a prosecutor.”

  “She’ll change her mind.”

  I smiled at him.

  “Let’s go in.”

  “One other thing. I just wanted to explain why I never came to see you in the jail.”

  “I don’t think you need to, Harry. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I should have visited, I know. But I didn’t want to see you in there.”

  “I know. Lorna told me. To be honest, I didn
’t even put you on my list. I didn’t want you to see me in there either.”

  He nodded and we went inside. Christian, the tuxedo-clad maître d’, greeted me warmly and had the class not to mention that I hadn’t been there in more than six weeks, even though he probably knew why. I introduced Bosch as my brother. Christian escorted us to the table where the others were waiting: Jennifer, Lorna, and Cisco. It was a table for six but with Cisco in the mix it was crowded.

  The smell of food on the tables around us was almost overpowering. I was distracted by it and found myself turning and craning my neck to see what other patrons had ordered.

  “You all right, boss?” Cisco asked.

  I turned back to him.

  “Fine, I’m fine,” I said. “But let’s order first. Where’s Arturo?”

  Lorna waved to someone behind me and soon Arturo was at our table with his order pad. It was orders of Steak Helen all around except for Jennifer, who wasn’t a red-meat eater. She went with eggplant parmigiana on Arturo’s recommendation. Lorna ordered a bottle of red wine for the drinkers, and I asked for a big bottle of sparkling water. I also told Arturo to bring bread and butter as soon as he could.

  “Okay,” I said when we were alone. “Tonight we can celebrate because I’m free and we knocked the prosecution down a notch or two in court. But that’s it. No hangovers tomorrow because we go back to work.”

  Everybody nodded except Bosch. He just stared at me from the opposite side of the table.

  “Harry, you’re dying to say something,” I said. “Probably something bad. You want to start? You have the discovery file. Did you read it?”

  “Uh, sure,” he said. “I read the discovery and I also talked to some people I know.”

  “Like who?” Jennifer asked.

  Bosch looked at her for a moment. I raised my hand a few inches off the table as a signal to her to cool it. Bosch was long retired from the LAPD but he was still tightly connected. I knew that firsthand and did not need him to name his sources.