Resurrection Walk

That drew another long silence. I drained my glass and looked for the waitress.

“Another round?” I asked.

“I’m good,” Bosch said.

“Another beer,” Cisco said.

“I’m good,” Arslanian said.

There was no waitress in sight. I stood up with my glass and grabbed Cisco’s empty. I turned to go to the bar.

“I wish we had those GSR pads,” Arslanian said.

I turned back around.

“Wouldn’t matter,” I said. “These people weren’t stupid. They would have replaced the pads they used on Lucinda with pads loaded with GSR.”

“I know that,” Arslanian said. “And I know the evidence was destroyed after the case was adjudicated. But I’m not talking about testing them for GSR. If those pads were wiped over Lucinda’s hands, they would have picked up skin cells along with any GSR. Most people, including defense lawyers, weren’t really thinking about touch DNA back then. But testing is so sophisticated now that we’d be able to prove whether those pads were actually used on her.”

I almost dropped the two glasses from my hands. I quickly put them back down on the table.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You may have just—”

I stopped speaking. My mind was racing through the documents I had seen from the original case against Lucinda.

“What?” Arslanian prompted.

“The DA’s file from the original prosecution,” I said. “We got a copy in discovery. There was an evidence transfer order in there. Frank Silver was going through the usual moves. He asked for an evidence split so he could have a private lab test the GSR. There were two pads and the judge had one of them transferred to Silver’s lab. But then he pleaded Lucinda out and it didn’t matter.”

“You’re saying that the pad might still be at the lab?” Cisco asked.

“Stranger things have happened,” I said. “The file’s in the back of the Lincoln.”

“Be back in five minutes,” Bosch said.

He got up and headed toward the elevator. I looked at Cisco.

“Cisco, give me your phone,” I said. “Silver probably won’t take a call from mine.”

Cisco pulled out his phone, punched in the passcode, and handed it over. I took out my wallet and dug through it until I found the business card I had taken months ago from the slot next to Silver’s office door. I had kept it in case I needed to reach him.

I called the cell number listed and Silver answered cheerfully.

“Frank Silver, how can I help you?”

“Don’t hang up.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Haller. I need your help.”

“You need my help? Bullshit. You need my help hanging a five-oh-four around my neck. Have a nice night.”

“Silver, don’t hang up. I mean it, I need your help. And you know I never filed the five-oh-four. It was a prop.”

There was a beat of silence.

“This better not be a trick,” Silver finally said.

“It’s not,” I said. “I need you to think back to when you were working the case. You got an evidence split order so you could have a private lab test one of the GSR pads supposedly taken from Lucinda. You remember?”

“If it’s in the file, then I did it.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I’ve had a few cases since then, believe it or not. I can’t remember every detail about every case.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. Neither can I. But do you know what lab you used and whether you or the court ever got the evidence back after testing? I don’t remember seeing any lab report in the file.”

Again there was silence and it was almost as if I could hear Silver’s mind grinding on how to play this.

“You want the name of my lab,” he said.

“Come on, Silver, don’t blow your chance at this,” I said. “Does the lab still have the GSR evidence?”

“As a matter of fact, I think it does. But they won’t give it to anybody but me.”

“That’s fine. We need to confirm it still exists. If it does, then you might come out the hero in all of this.”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

“That—”

He disconnected. I gave the phone back to Cisco.

“What lab did he use?” Arslanian asked.

“He’s being coy,” I said. “Won’t give that up or pull the evidence — if it still exists — unless he’s sure he gets to be the hero.”

“Guy’s a loser,” Cisco said.

“Yeah,” I said. “But we need to play along or we may not get our evidence.”

Bosch returned with the file from the Lincoln. I quickly brought him up to date.

“So we wait until tomorrow?” he asked.

“Let’s see what’s in the file first,” I said.

I opened the file and flipped through the early motions of the case until I found Silver’s request for an independent analysis of evidence. The request was approved with an order from superior court judge Adam Castle to transfer one of the collected GSR pads to an independent lab called Applied Forensics in Van Nuys.

“We might have just gotten lucky,” I said. “One of the GSR pads was transferred to Applied Forensics. Silver got a court order for the transfer, so it’s likely that Applied Forensics would not have been allowed to destroy or transfer the evidence without a court order. And if such an order existed, it would be in this file. It means the evidence should still be there, even after five years.”

“Then how do we get it?” Cisco asked.