Resurrection Walk

“It’s the best I could come up with on the spot. But it’s not just about that. You testified thoroughly and professionally last week. You were in complete command of the cell-tower data and the judge saw and heard that. She won’t make any decision based on what just happened. I think we’re fine. What I need now is for you to go find Frank Silver and bring him in. We’re going to need him to testify if and when we get the results from Shami.”

“What about Sanger?”

“She’s last — after we have the DNA.”

“And MacIsaac?”

“No MacIsaac. I’m not going that route.”

“What? I thought this whole thing was to get the judge to—”

“All of that’s changed. We’ll never get MacIsaac on the stand, so we go without him.”

“How do you know she won’t order him to testify?”

“Because he paid me a visit last night.”

“What?”

“After dinner, when I got home, he was sitting on my porch. He’s working undercover on a national-security thing and they’re not going to let him near the courthouse.”

“Bullshit. They use that national-security crap anytime they don’t want to—”

“I believed him.”

“Why?”

“Because he gave me something. Something I can use against Sanger.”

“What?”

“I can’t say at the moment. I have to figure a few things out and then I’ll tell you.”

Bosch looked at me as though I had just said I didn’t trust him.

“Look, I’ll bring you into the loop as soon as I can. I need to get back to court now, and you need to find Second-Place Silver.”

Bosch nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

He got up and turned to the door.

“And I’m sorry, Harry,” I said. “About what Maggie pulled in there.”

“It’s not on you, Mick,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I have Silver ready to go.”

In the hall, he went one way and I went the other, toward the courtroom. Before I got there, Maggie hit me back with a text.

A lawyer once said that all was fair on the proving ground of the courtroom. Oh, yeah, I think that lawyer was you.

I decided not to respond. Instead, I called Shami Arslanian.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We just got results,” she said. “I’m looking at them now.”

I braced myself. This was the case.

“And?” I prompted.

“There was DNA on the swab,” she said. “It’s not Lucinda’s.”

I suddenly, almost involuntarily, moved to one of the marble benches lining the hall and sat down, the phone pressed against my ear. In that moment, I felt that we would win, that Lucinda Sanz would walk free.

“Mickey, are you there?” Arslanian said.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m just... this is incredible.”

“There is a complication.”

“What’s that?”

“The DNA that’s there comes from two other people. One is unknown. But we already matched the other because it belongs to a former lab tech at Applied Forensics. They always run matching to their own personnel to guard against contamination.”

“What does this mean, Shami?”

“The lab tech it matches has not worked here in four years. It means that at some point when the evidence was brought here, it got mishandled and contaminated with his DNA. Again, we’re talking about touch DNA, which at the time they didn’t have a protocol for.”

I closed my eyes.

“Jesus Christ. Every time I think we’ve grabbed the brass ring, something goes wrong and we’ve got shit.”

“I’m sorry, Mickey. But the important thing is that Lucinda’s DNA is not on the GSR pad. This proves your theory of the crime. Are you saying you won’t be able to use this in court?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I need you to get back to the courthouse as soon as you can with whatever reports you have there. Get the name of the tech from before and whatever documentation there is about the contamination. You’ll probably have to explain everything in an evidentiary hearing before the judge. I’m going to go ask for that now.”

“Okay, Mickey, I’ll grab an Uber.”

I disconnected and tried to compose myself, channeling the ghost of Legal Siegel. Breathe it in. This is your moment. This is your stage. Want it. Own it. Take it.

I got up off the bench and reentered the courtroom.

41

Over my objection, Judge Coelho held the evidentiary hearing behind closed doors. The Latin term for it was in camera, which sounded like the opposite of a private meeting. I had opposed it because if the judge ruled against the introduction of the DNA findings, I wanted the world to know it and share in my outrage. But my argument for an open hearing fell on deaf ears, and I found myself sitting next to Hayden Morris in front of Coelho and her massive desk in chambers. My client was deemed unnecessary to the hearing and was waiting in the courtside lockup for me to tell her how things shook out.