The Reversal

“Did you get divorced?” McPherson asked.

“No… I never really cared. Then when I got straight I just didn’t want to go back there. It was one of those things you block out. Like it didn’t happen.”

McPherson looked at Bosch.

“It might not have been a legal marriage,” he said. “There’s nothing in the county records.”

“Doesn’t matter if it was a legal marriage or not,” she said. “He is obviously a volunteer witness, so he can testify against her. What matters is what his testimony is going to be. What’s he going to say, Sarah?”

Sarah slowly shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what did you tell him about your sister and your stepfather?”

“I don’t know. Those years… I can hardly remember anything from back then.”

There was a silence and then McPherson asked Sarah to look at the rest of the names on the list. She did and shook her head.

“I don’t know who some of these people are. Some people in the life, I just knew them by street names.”

“But Edward Roman you know?”

“Yes. We were together.”

“How long?”

Gleason shook her head in embarrassment.

“Not long. Inside rehab we thought we were made for each other. Once we were out, it didn’t work. It lasted maybe three months. I got arrested again and when I got out of jail, he was gone.”

“Is it possible that it wasn’t a legitimate marriage?”

Gleason thought for a moment and halfheartedly shrugged.

“Anything is possible, I guess.”

“Okay, Sarah, I’m going to step out with Detective Bosch again for a few minutes. I want you to think about Edward Roman. Anything you can remember will be helpful. I’ll be right back.”

McPherson took the witness list from her and handed it back to Bosch. They left the room but just took a few paces down the hallway before stopping and talking in whispers.

“I guess you’d better find him,” she said.

“It won’t matter,” Bosch said. “If he’s Royce’s star witness he won’t talk to me.”

“Then find out everything you can about him. So when the time comes we can destroy him.”

“Got it.”

Bosch turned and headed down the hall toward the elevators. McPherson called after him. He stopped and looked back.

“Did you mean it?” McPherson asked.

“Mean what?”

“What you said down in the lobby. What you asked. You think twenty-four years ago she made it all up?”

Bosch looked at her for a long moment, then shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what about the hair in the truck? Doesn’t that tie her story in?”

Bosch held a hand up empty.

“It’s circumstantial. And I wasn’t there when they found it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means sometimes things happen when the victim is a child. And that I wasn’t there when they found it.”

“Boy, maybe you should be working for the defense.”

Bosch dropped his hand to his side.

“I’m sure they’ve thought of all of this already.”

He turned back toward the elevators and headed down the hallway.

Twenty-nine

Tuesday, April 6, 9:00 A.M.

Sometimes the wheels of justice roll smoothly. The second day of trial started exactly as scheduled. The full jury was in the box, the judge was on the bench and Jason Jessup and his attorney were seated at the defense table. I stood and called my first witness of what I hoped would be a productive day for the prosecution. Harry Bosch even had Izzy Gordon in the courtroom ready to go. By five minutes after the hour, she was sworn in and seated. She was a small woman with black-framed glasses that magnified her eyes. My records said she was fifty years old but she looked older.

“Ms. Gordon, can you tell the jury what you do for a living?”

“Yes. I am a forensic technician and crime scene supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department. I have been so employed in the forensics unit since nineteen eighty-six.”

“Were you so employed on February sixteenth of that year?”

“Yes, I was. It was my first day of work.”

“And what was your assignment on that day?”

“My job was to learn. I was assigned to a crime scene supervisor and I was to get on-the-job training.”

Izzy Gordon was a major find for the prosecution. Two technicians and a supervisor had worked the three separate crime scenes relating to the Melissa Landy case-the home on Windsor, the trash bin behind the El Rey and the tow truck driven by Jessup. Gordon had been assigned to be at the supervisor’s side and therefore had been in attendance at all three crime scenes. The supervisor was long since dead and the other techs were retired and unable to offer testimony about all three locations. Finding Gordon allowed me to streamline the introduction of crime scene evidence.

“Who was that supervisor?”

“That was Art Donovan.”

“And you got a call out with him that day?”

“Yes, we did. An abduction that turned into a homicide. We ended up going from scene to scene to scene that day. Three related locations.”

“Okay, let’s take those scenes one at a time.”