Resurrection Walk

“And an innocent woman has been sitting in a cell for five years. Great story. Our tax dollars at work. But you need to give me something, MacIsaac, or this is all going to come out. With or without you on the stand, I’ll get it out there. I’ve already started. And if I get the judge to compel your testimony and it blows your cover, I don’t really care. Lucinda Sanz is not going back to that cell. You understand that?”

“I understand. And I have something for you. That’s why I’m here. I want to trade. Sanz told me things in that meeting. The clique was just a ground team. They were working for something bigger.”

“Who?”

“More like what. But we go inside to talk about it.”

“What is the obsession with going inside my house?”

“We’re exposed out here.”

I knew not to trust this man inside or outside my house. But I had to know what he knew.

I realized that my left hand was still balled into a fist, with the teeth of my house key protruding between my fingers. I released my grip and the key fell into my palm.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go in.

Part Nine True Believer

38

Bosch was worried. The rehearsal the day before had gone well. Posing as assistant attorney general Hayden Morris, Mickey Haller had cross-examined him intensely, hitting him most harshly on his lack of experience in using cellular data in homicide investigations. Bosch had held up well, by his own and Haller’s estimation, and he’d thought he was ready for whatever Morris threw at him on Monday morning. But now, sitting on the witness stand and waiting for the judge to convene court, Bosch was worried because Morris was not alone at the AG’s table. Next to him was a woman Bosch recognized as a former county prosecutor. She was good and tough and had been known in those days as Maggie McFierce. She was also Mickey Haller’s ex-wife and the mother of his only child.

Maggie McPherson had taken a leave of absence from the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office to aid her ex-husband when he was wrongly accused of murder. Haller was eventually cleared, and McPherson had gone back to Ventura, where she was in charge of the Major Crimes Unit at the DA’s office. But that intel was obviously old, as it was now clear to Bosch that she worked for the AG. She was huddled with Morris at the opposing counsel’s table in a whispered conversation. On the table in front of her was the thick stack of printouts of cell-tower data Haller had turned over in discovery. Morris had pulled in a ringer. Bosch knew that McPherson would handle his cross-examination.

Bosch looked over at the petitioner’s table to see if Haller was exhibiting any concern or giving any indication of how he was going to play this. But Haller was preoccupied with the arrival of Lucinda Sanz from the courtroom holding cell. When she was finally seated and shackled to the table ring by the marshals, Haller looked around the courtroom. He noticed the journalist he had told Bosch about, gave her a nod, and continued his scan. Bosch caught his eye. Haller made a hand gesture — a flat palm down — that told Bosch to stay calm.

Bosch assumed that Haller was as surprised about Maggie McPherson’s appearance as he was, but the Lincoln Lawyer looked cool, calm, and collected. Bosch took his cue from that.

Testifying in criminal cases was nothing new to Bosch. He had been in the witness box hundreds of times. When he had thought about it over the weekend, he realized that the first time he’d been called to testify was in a drug case in 1973. He had been in patrol then, a P-1 stripe on the sleeve of his uniform. He had found an ounce of marijuana during the pat-down of a man loitering near Dorsey High School. All these years later, Bosch clearly remembered the suspect he had arrested. His legal name was Junior Teodoro. He was twenty years old and a dropout from Dorsey. The alert had gone out in that morning’s roll call about a dealer setting up near the school. Bosch and his partner at the time had spotted Teodoro, did a stop-and-hop so fast he couldn’t run away, and caught him with the goods during the pat-down.