Resurrection Walk

Bosch quickly skimmed these before moving to the next document, which was the agreement signed by Lucinda Sanz pleading nolo contendere to a charge of voluntary manslaughter. The document, also signed by Andrea Fontaine, the deputy district attorney who had handled the case, additionally set out the term range from medium to high, with an enhancement for use of a firearm. It all added up to Sanz going before the judge and receiving a sentence that could be anywhere between seven and thirteen years. It seemed to Bosch to be a good deal for someone who had supposedly killed a law enforcement officer.

The last document was the presentencing report. Bosch fanned it open and saw that it was lengthy and at least half the pages were police and autopsy reports. This was what he had hoped for. Summaries of the investigation that would allow him to understand how the case had been worked.

The report was authored by a state probation officer named Robert Kohut. It was written in narrative form and was essentially a deep dive into Lucinda Sanz’s life with specific sections regarding her childhood, family structure, adolescent legal troubles, education, employment history, residency history, adult law enforcement interactions, and any documented psychological treatment.

Kohut’s report was largely favorable. He described Sanz as a single mother who worked sixty-hour weeks at Desert Pearl Farms in Lancaster in order to provide for herself and her young son. She had no criminal record prior to the homicide charge, though there were two incidents listed in which deputies were called to the house in Quartz Hill to quell domestic disputes. In one case, Lucinda was arrested, but the district attorney did not file a charge against her and the case was dropped. In the second incident, neither Lucinda nor her husband was arrested. Both incidents were pre-divorce and Bosch assumed that Roberto Sanz and his wife had been cut a break because he was a deputy.

The report also said there was no record of mental-health or drug issues, and Lucinda was deemed by Kohut to be a good candidate for rehabilitation and eventual probation. However, Kohut’s recommendation was to sentence Sanz on the high end of the manslaughter term range because of the circumstances of the crime. Those centered on the fact that Roberto Sanz was shot twice in the back, once when he was apparently already on the ground.

Bosch planned to request a copy of the PSR, so he moved on to the official records that had been included in the support material. This was where Bosch lived as an investigator. He had a facility for digesting reports and being able to view the case from all angles. He could see the logic jumps as well as the discrepancies and conflicts between reports. He understood that this was where he would come to a decision about Lucinda Sanz’s claim of innocence.

He first reviewed the initial crime report on the killing. The summary stated that Lucinda Sanz told responding officers that she had argued with her ex-husband because he had been two hours late returning their son home from a weekend visit, a violation of their custody agreement. The argument continued until Roberto Sanz turned and walked out of the house in an apparent effort to leave the dispute behind. Lucinda Sanz said she slammed and locked the front door after he left but then heard what sounded like gunshots from the front exterior of the house. Unsure whether her ex-husband had fired at the house, she hid with her son in the boy’s bedroom and did not reopen the door. From her son’s room she called 911 on her cell phone and reported the gunfire. Arriving officers found Roberto Sanz lying facedown in the front yard. Paramedics were called but he was declared dead at the scene.

The medical examiner’s report on the autopsy of Roberto Sanz was part of the support package. Bosch flipped to it now so he could look at the diagram of exactly where the wounds were located.

The single-page diagram contained two side-by-side generic line drawings of a male human body, front and back. There were markings, measurements, and annotations hand-printed by the deputy medical examiner who had conducted the autopsy. Bosch’s eyes were immediately drawn to the two Xs on the upper back of the rear profile. A note indicated that the distance between the wounds was 5.7 inches.

There were also notations on the diagram about the angle of entry of the wounds, and from these it was determined that the two shots had distinctly different trajectories. One shot, presumed to be the first, was from a relatively flat angle, indicating the victim was likely standing when struck by the bullet from behind. The second shot entered the body at an acute angle, indicating that the victim was already down when fired on a second time. The trajectory was upward through the body from back to front, breaking the right collarbone before lodging in the upper pectoral muscle.