The Reversal

A long silence opened up between them. He wasn’t sure what he should reveal to this woman. He had known her for only a week and she was making observations about him.

“I don’t really have time to be happy right now,” he finally said.

“Mickey told me what he felt he could about Hong Kong and what happened with your daughter.”

Bosch nodded. But he knew Maggie didn’t know the whole story. Nobody did except for Madeline and him.

“Yeah,” he said. “She caught some bad breaks there. That’s the thing, I guess. I think if I can make my daughter happy, then I’ll be happy. But I am not sure when that will be.”

He brought his eyes up to hers and saw only sympathy. He smiled.

“Yeah, we should get the two cousins together,” he said, moving on.

“Absolutely,” she said.

Eleven

Thursday, February 18, 1:30 P.M.

The Los Angeles Times carried a lengthy story on Jason Jessup’s first day of freedom in twenty-four years. The reporter and photographer met him at dawn on Venice Beach, where the forty-eight-year-old tried his hand at his boyhood pastime of surfing. On the first few sets, he was shaky on a borrowed longboard but soon he was up and riding the break. A photo of Jessup standing upright on the board and riding a curl with his arms outstretched, his face turned up to the sky, was the centerpiece photo on the newspaper’s front page. The photo showed off what two decades of lifting prison iron will do. Jessup’s body was roped with muscle. He looked lean and mean.

From the beach the next stop was an In-N-Out franchise in Westwood for hamburgers and French fries with all the catsup he wanted. After lunch Jessup went to Clive Royce’s storefront office in downtown, where he attended a two-hour meeting with the battery of attorneys representing him in both criminal and civil matters. This meeting was not open to the Times.

Jessup rounded out the afternoon by watching a movie called Shutter Island at the Chinese theater in Hollywood. He bought a tub of buttered popcorn large enough to feed a family of four and ate every puffed kernel. He then returned to Venice, where he had a room in an apartment near the beach courtesy of a high-school surfing buddy. The day ended at a beach barbecue with a handful of supporters who had never wavered in their belief in his innocence.

I sat at my desk studying the color photos of Jessup that graced two inside pages of the A section. The paper was going all-out on the story, as it had all along, surely smelling the journalistic honors to be gathered at the end of Jessup’s journey to complete freedom. Springing an innocent man from prison was the ultimate newspaper story and the Times was desperately trying to take credit for Jessup’s release.

The largest photo showed Jessup’s unabashed delight at the red plastic tray sitting in front of him at a table at In-N-Out. The tray contained a fully loaded double-double with fries smothered in catsup and melted cheese. The caption said

Why Is This Man Smiling? 12:05-Jessup eats his first Double-Double in 24 years. “I’ve been thinking about this forever!”

The other photos carried similarly lighthearted captions below shots of Jessup at the movies with his bucket of popcorn, hoisting a beer at the barbecue and hugging his high-school pal, walking through a glass door that said ROYCE AND ASSOCIATES, ATTORNEYS-AT-LAW. There was no indication in the tone of the article or photos that Jason Jessup was a man who happened to still be accused of murdering a twelve-year-old girl.

The story was about Jessup relishing his freedom while being unable to plan his future until his “legal issues” were resolved. It was a nice turn of phrase, I thought, calling abduction and murder charges and a pending trial merely legal issues.

I had the paper spread wide on the desk Lorna had rented for me in my new office on Broadway. We were on the second floor of the Bradbury Building and only three blocks from the CCB.

“I think you need to put something up on the walls.”

I looked up. It was Clive Royce. He had walked through the reception room unannounced because I had sent Lorna over to Philippe’s to get us lunch. Royce gestured to the empty walls of the temporary office. I flipped the newspaper closed and held up the front page.

“I just ordered a twenty-by-twenty shot of Jesus on the surfboard here. I’m going to hang him on the wall.”

Royce stepped up to the desk and took the paper, studying the photo on the front as if for the first time, which we both knew was not the case. Royce had been deeply involved in the generation of the story, the payoff being the photo of the office door with his firm’s name on the glass.

“Yes, they did a good job with it, didn’t they?”

He handed it back.

“I guess so, if you like your killers happy-go-lucky.”

Royce didn’t respond, so I continued.

“I know what you’re doing, Clive, because I would do it, too. But as soon as we get a judge, I’m going to ask him to stop you. I’m not going to let you taint the jury pool.”