The Lincoln Lawyer Collection

by Connelly, Michael

  “Sarah, prior to your sister borrowing your dress on the morning she was abducted, when was the last time you wore it?”

  Royce stood and objected again.

  “Same objection. We’re speculating about events twenty-four years old and when this witness was only thirteen years old.”

  “Your Honor,” McPherson rejoined, “Mr. Royce was fine with this so-called speculation when it fit with the defense’s scheme of things. But now he objects as we get to the heart of the matter. This is not speculation. Ms. Gleason is testifying truthfully about the darkest, saddest days of her life and I don’t think—”

  “Objection overruled,” Breitman said. “The witness may answer.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  As McPherson repeated the question Bosch studied the jury. He wanted to see if they saw what he saw—a defense attorney attempting to stop the forward progression of truth. Bosch had found Sarah Gleason’s testimony to be fully convincing up to this point. He wanted to hear what she had to say and his hope was that the jury was in the same boat and would look unkindly upon defense efforts to stop her.

  “I wore it two nights before,” Gleason said.

  “That would have been Friday night, the fourteenth. Valentine’s Day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you wear the dress?”

  “My mother was making a nice dinner for Valentine’s Day and my stepfather said we should get dressed up for it.”

  Gleason was looking down again, losing all eye contact with the jurors.

  “Did your stepfather engage in a sexual act with you on that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you wearing the dress at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sarah, do you know if your father ejac—”

  “He wasn’t my father!”

  She yelled it and her voice echoed in the courtroom, reverberating around a hundred people who now knew her darkest secret. Bosch looked at McPherson and saw her checking out the jury’s reaction. It was then Bosch knew that the mistake had been intentional.

  “I am sorry, Sarah. I meant your stepfather. Do you know, did he ejaculate in the course of this moment with you?”

  “Yes, and some of it got on my dress.”

  McPherson studied her notes, flipping over several pages of her yellow pad. She wanted that last answer to hang out there as long as possible.

  “Sarah, who did the laundry at your house?”

  “A lady came. Her name was Abby.”

  “After that Valentine’s Day, did you put your dress in the laundry?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was afraid Abby would find it and know what happened. I thought she might tell my mother or call the police.”

  “Why would that have been a bad thing, Sarah?”

  “I… my mother was happy and I didn’t want to ruin things for her.”

  “So what did you do with the dress that night?”

  “I cleaned off the spot and hung it in my closet. I didn’t know my sister was going to wear it.”

  “So two days later when she wanted to put it on, what did you say?”

  “She already had it on when I saw her. I told her that I wanted to wear it but she said it was too late because it wasn’t on my list of clothes I didn’t share with her.”

  “Could you see the stain on the dress?”

  “No, I looked and because it was down at the hem I didn’t see any stain.”

  McPherson paused again. Bosch knew from the prep work that she had covered all the points she wanted to in this line of questioning. She had sufficiently explained the DNA that was the cause of everyone’s being here. She now had to take Gleason further down the road of her dark journey. Because if she didn’t, Royce certainly would.

  “Sarah, did your relationship with your stepfather change after your sister’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “How so?”

  “He never touched me again.”

  “Do you know why? Did you talk to him about it?”

  “I don’t know why. I never talked to him about it. It just never happened again and he tried to act like it had never happened in the first place.”

  “But for you, all of this—your stepfather, your sister’s death—it took a toll, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In what way, Sarah?”

  “Uh, well, I started getting into drugs and I ran away again. I ran away a lot, actually. I didn’t care about sex. It was something I used to get what I needed.”

  “And were you ever arrested?”

  “Yes, a bunch of times.”

  “For what?”

  “Drugs mostly. I got arrested once for soliciting an undercover, too. And for stealing.”

  “You were arrested six times as a juvenile and five more times as an adult, is that correct?”

  “I didn’t keep count.”

  “What drugs were you taking?”

  “Crystal meth mostly. But if there was something else available, I would probably take it. That was the way I was.”

  “Did you ever receive counseling and rehabilitation?”

  “A lot of times. It didn’t work at first and then it did. I got clean.”

  “When was that?”

  “About seven years ago. When I was thirty.”

  “You’ve been clean for seven years?”

  “Yes, totally. My life is different now.”

  “I want to show you People’s exhibit thirteen, which is an intake and evaluation form from a private rehab center in Los Angeles called the Pines. Do you remember going there?”

  “Yes, my mother sent me there when I was sixteen.”

  “Was that when you first started getting into trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  McPherson distributed copies of the evaluation form to the judge, clerk and defense table.

  “Okay, Sarah, I want to draw your attention to the paragraph I have outlined in yellow in the evaluation section of the intake form. Can you please read it out loud to the jury?”

  “Candidate reports PTSD in regard to the murder of her younger sister three years ago. Suffers unresolved guilt associated with murder and also evinces behavior typical of sexual abuse. Full psych and physical evaluation is recommended.”

  “Thank you, Sarah. Do you know what PTSD means?”

  “Posttraumatic stress disorder.”

  “Did you undergo these recommended evaluations at the Pines?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did discussion of your stepfather’s sexual abuse come up?”

  “No, because I lied.”

  “How so?”

  “By then I’d had sex with other men, so I never mentioned my stepfather.”

  “Before revealing what you have today in court, did you ever talk about your stepfather and his having sex with you with anyone?”

  “Just you and Detective Bosch. Nobody else.”

  “Have you been married?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t even tell your husbands about this?”

  “No. It’s not the kind of thing you want to tell anybody. You keep it to yourself.”

  “Thank you, Sarah. I have no further questions.”

  McPherson took her pad and returned to her seat, where she was greeted with a squeeze on the arm by Haller. It was a gesture designed for the jury to see but by then all eyes were on Royce. It was his turn and Bosch’s measure of the room was that Sarah Gleason had everybody riding with her. Any effort by Royce to destroy her ran the strong risk of backfiring against his client.

  Royce did the smart thing. He decided to let emotions cool for a night. He stood and told the judge that he reserved the right to recall Gleason as a witness during the defense phase of the trial. In effect he put off her cross-examination. He then retook his seat.

  Bosch checked his watch. It
was four-fifteen. The judge told Haller to call his next witness but Bosch knew there were no more witnesses. Haller looked at McPherson and in unison they nodded. Haller then stood up.

  “Your Honor,” he said. “The People rest.”

  Thirty-five

  Wednesday, April 7, 7:20 P.M.

  The prosecution team convened for dinner at Casa Haller. I made a thick Bolognese using a store-bought sauce for a base and boiled a box of bow tie pasta. Maggie chipped in with her own recipe for Caesar salad that I had always loved when we were married but hadn’t had in years. Bosch and his daughter were the last to arrive, as Harry first took Sarah Ann Gleason back to her hotel room following court and made sure she was secure for the night.

  Our daughters were shy upon meeting and embarrassed by how obvious their parents were about watching the long-awaited moment. They instinctively knew to move away from us and convened in the back office, ostensibly to do their homework. Pretty soon after, we started to hear laughter from down the hall.

  I put the pasta and sauce into a big bowl and mixed it all together. I then called the girls out first to serve themselves and take their dishes back to the office.

  “How’s it going back there, anyway?” I asked them while they were making their plates. “Any homework getting done?”

  “Dad,” Hayley said dismissively, as if my question were a great invasion of privacy.

  So I tried the cousin.

  “Maddie?”

  “Um, I’m almost finished with mine.”

  Both girls looked at each other and laughed, as if either the question or its answer were cause for great glee. They scurried out of the kitchen then and back to the office.

  I put everything out on the table, where the adults were sitting. The last thing I did was make sure the door to the office was closed so the girls would not hear our conversation and we would not hear theirs.

  “Well,” I said as I passed the pasta to Bosch. “We’re finished with our part. Now comes the hard part.”

  “The defense,” Maggie said. “What do we think they have in store for Sarah?”

  I thought for a moment before answering and tried my first bow tie. It was good. I was proud of my dish.

  “We know they’ll throw everything they can at her,” I finally said. “She’s the case.”

  Bosch reached inside his jacket and brought out a folded piece of paper. He opened it on the table. I could see that it was the defense’s witness list.

  “At the end of court today Royce told the judge he would complete the defense’s case in one day,” he said. “He said he’s calling only four witnesses but he’s got twenty-three listed on here.”

  “Well, we knew all along that most of that list was subterfuge,” Maggie said. “He was hiding his case.”

  “Okay, so we have Sarah coming back,” I said, holding up one finger. “Then we have Jessup himself. My guess is that Royce knows he has to put him on. That’s two. Who else?”

  Maggie waited until she finished a mouthful of food before speaking.

  “Hey, this is good, Haller. When did you learn to make this?”

  “It’s a little thing I like to call Newman’s Own.”

  “No, you added to it. You made it better. How come you never cooked like this when we were married?”

  “I guess it came out of necessity. Being a single father. What about you, Harry? What do you cook?”

  Bosch looked at us both like we were crazy.

  “I can fry an egg,” he said. “That’s about it.”

  “Let’s get back to the trial,” Maggie said. “I think Royce has got Jessup and Sarah. Then I think he’s got the secret witness we haven’t found. The guy from the last rehab center.”

  “Edward Roman,” Bosch said.

  “Right. Roman. That makes three and the fourth one could be his investigator or maybe his meth expert but is probably just bullshit. There is no fourth. So much of what Royce does is misdirection. He doesn’t want anybody’s eyes on the prize. Wants them looking anywhere but right at the truth.”

  “What about Roman?” I said. “We haven’t found him, but have we figured out his testimony?”

  “Not by a long shot,” Maggie said. “I’ve gone over and over this with Sarah and she has no idea what he’s going to say. She couldn’t remember ever talking about her sister with him.”

  “The summary Royce provided in discovery says he will testify about Sarah’s ‘revelations’ about her childhood,” Bosch said. “Nothing more specific than that and, of course, Royce claims he didn’t take any notes during the interview.”

  “Look,” I said, “we have his record and we know exactly what kind of guy we’re dealing with here. He’s going to say whatever Royce wants him to say. It’s that simple. Whatever works for the defense. So we should be less concerned by what he says—because we know it will be lies—and more concerned with knocking him out of the box. What do we have that can help us there?”

  Maggie and I both looked at Bosch and he was ready for us.

  “I think I might have something. I’m going to go see somebody tonight. If it pans out we’ll have it in the morning. I’ll tell you then.”

  My frustrations with Bosch’s methods of investigation and communication boiled over at that point.

  “Harry, come on. We’re part of a team here. This secret agent stuff doesn’t really work when we’re in that courtroom every day with our asses on the line.”

  Bosch looked down at his plate and I saw the slow burn. His face grew as dark as the sauce.

  “Your asses on the line?” he said. “I didn’t see anywhere in the surveillance reports that Jessup was hanging around outside your house, Haller, so don’t tell me about your ass being on the line. Your job is in that courtroom. It’s nice and safe and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. But no matter what happens, you’re back in court the next day. You want your ass on the line, try working out there.”

  He pointed out the window toward the view of the city.

  “Hey, guys, let’s just calm down here,” Maggie said quickly. “Harry, what’s the matter? Has Jessup gone back to Woodrow Wilson? Maybe we should just revoke this guy and put him back in lockup.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “Not to my street. He hasn’t been back there since that first night and he hasn’t been up to Mulholland in more than a week.”

  “Then what is it?”

  Bosch put his fork down and pushed his plate back.

  “We already know there’s a good chance that Jessup has a gun from that meeting the SIS saw him have with a convicted gun dealer. They didn’t see what he got from the guy, but since it came wrapped in a towel, it doesn’t take a lot to figure it out. And then, you want to know what happened last night? Some bright guy on the surveillance decides to leave his post to use the john without telling anybody and Jessup walked right out of the net.”

  “They lost him?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah, until I found him right before he found me, which might not have turned out so well. And you know what he’s up to? He’s building a dungeon for somebody and for all I know—”

  He leaned forward over the table and finished in an urgent whisper.

  “—might be for my kid!”

  “Whoa, wait, Harry,” Maggie said. “Back up. He’s building a dungeon? Where?”

  “Under the pier. There’s like a storage room. He put a lock on the door and dropped canned food off there last night. Like he’s getting it ready for somebody.”

  “Okay, that’s scary,” Maggie said. “But your daughter? We don’t know that. You said he went by your place only the one time. What makes you think—?”

  “Because I can’t afford not to think it. You understand?”

  She nodded.

  “Yes, I do. Then I come back to what I just said. We violate him for associating with a known criminal—the gun dealer—and pull his OR release. There’s only a few days left in the trial and he obviously didn’t act out or make t
he mistake we thought he would. Let’s be safe and put him back inside until this is over.”

  “And what if we don’t get the conviction?” Bosch said. “What happens then? This guy walks and that’ll also be the end of the surveillance. He’ll be out there without any eyes on him.”

  That brought a silence to the table. I stared at Bosch and understood the pressure he was under. The case, the threat to his daughter, and no wife or ex-wife to help him out at home.

  Bosch finally broke the uneasy silence.

  “Maggie, are you taking Hayley home with you tonight?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Yes, when we’re finished here.”

  “Can Maddie stay with you two tonight? She brought a change of clothes in her backpack. I’d come by in the morning in time to take her to school.”

  The request seemed to take Maggie by surprise, especially since the girls had just met. Bosch pressed her.

  “I need to meet somebody tonight and I don’t know where it will take me,” Bosch said. “It might even lead to Roman. I need to be able to move without worrying about Maddie.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, that’s fine. It sounds like they’re becoming fast friends. I just hope they don’t stay up all night.”

  “Thank you, Maggie.”

  About thirty seconds of silence went by before I spoke.

  “Tell us about this dungeon, Harry.”

  “I was standing in it last night.”

  “Why the Santa Monica pier?”

  “My guess is that it’s because of the proximity to what’s on top of the pier.”

  “Prey.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “But what about noise? You’re saying this place is directly below the pier?”

  “There are ways of controlling human sound. And last night the sound of waves crashing against the pilings under there was so loud you could’ve screamed all night and nobody would’ve heard you. You probably wouldn’t even hear a gunshot from down there.”

  Bosch spoke with a certain authority of the dark places of the world and the evil they held. I lost my appetite then and pushed my plate away. I felt dread come inside me.