The question and answer had little if anything to do with the murder of a twelve-year-old girl but proved to be the pivotal point in the trial. In later interviews jurors said Kincaid’s answer was emblematic of the city’s deep racial gulf. With that one answer sympathy swayed from the Kincaid family to Harris. The prosecution was doomed.
The jury acquitted Harris in four hours. Penny then turned the case over to his colleague, Howard Elias, for civil proceedings and Harris took his place next to Rodney King in the pantheon of civil rights victims and heroes in South L.A. Most of them deserved such honored status, but some were the creations of lawyers and the media. Whichever Harris was, he was now seeking his payday – acivil rights trial in which $10 million would be just the opening bid.
Despite the verdict and all the attached rhetoric, Bosch didn’t believe Harris’s claims of innocence or police brutality. One of the detectives Harris specifically accused of brutality was Bosch’s former partner, Frankie Sheehan, and Bosch knew Sheehan to be a total professional when dealing with suspects and prisoners. So Bosch simply thought of Harris as a liar and murderer who had walked away from his crime. He would have no qualms about rousting him and taking him downtown for questioning about Howard Elias’s murder. But Bosch also knew as he stood there with Rider that if he now brought Harris in, he would run the risk of compounding the alleged wrongs already done to him – at least in the eyes of much of the public and the media. It was a political decision as much as a police decision that he had to make.
“Let me think about this for a second,” he said.
He walked off by himself through the atrium. The case was even more perilous than he had realized. Any misstep could result in disaster – to the case, to the department, to careers. He wondered if Irving had realized all of this when he had chosen Bosch’s team for the case. Perhaps, he thought, Irving’s compliments were just a front for a real motive – leaving Bosch and his team dangling in the wind. Bosch knew he was now venturing into paranoia. It was unlikely that the deputy chief could have come up with such a plan so quickly. Or that he would even care about Bosch’s team with so much else at stake.
Bosch looked up and saw the sky was much brighter now. It would be a sunny and hot day.
“Harry?”
He turned. It was Rider.
“She’s off.”
He walked back to the group and Langwiser handed him his phone.
“You’re not going to like this,” she said. “Dave Sheiman wants to bring in a special master to look at the files before you do.”
“Special master?” Dellacroce asked. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s an attorney,” Langwiser said. “An independent attorney appointed by a judge who will oversee the files. He will be hired to protect the rights of those clients while still giving you people what you need. Hopefully.”
“Shit,” Bosch said, his frustration finally getting the better of him. “Why don’t we just stop the whole thing now and drop the damn case? If the DA’s office doesn’t care about us clearing it then we won’t care either.”
“Detective Bosch, you know it’s not like that. Of course we care. We just want to be safe. The warrant you have is still good for searching the office. Sheiman said you can even go through completed case files – which I am sure you need to look at as well. But the special master will have to come in and look at all pending files first. Remember, this person is not an adversary to you. He will give you everything you are entitled to see.”
“And when will that be? Next week? Next month?”
“No. Sheiman is going to go to work on that this morning. He’ll call Judge Houghton, apprise him of the situation, and see if he has any recommendations for a special master. With any luck, the appointment will be made today and you’ll have what you need from the files this afternoon. Tomorrow, at the very latest.”
“Tomorrow at the latest is too late. We need to keep moving on this.”
“Yeah,” Chastain chimed in. “Don’t you know an investigation is like a shark? It’s got to keep – ”
“All right, Chastain,” Bosch said.
“Look,” Langwiser said. “I’ll make sure Dave understands the urgency of the situation. In the meantime you’ll just have to be patient. Now do you want to keep standing down here talking about it or do you want to go up and do what we can in the office?”
Bosch looked at her for a long moment, annoyed by her chiding tone. The moment ended when the phone in his hand rang. It was Edgar and he was whispering. Bosch held a hand over his ear so he could hear.
“I didn’t hear that. What?”
“Listen, I’m in the bedroom. There’s no phone book in the bed table. I checked both bed tables. It’s not here.”
“What?”
“The phone book, it’s not here, man.”
Bosch looked at Chastain, who was looking back at him. He turned and walked away, out of earshot of the others. Now he whispered to Edgar.
“You sure?”
“Course I’m sure. I woulda found it if it was here.”
“You were first in the bedroom?”
“Right. First one in. It’s not here.”
“You’re in the bedroom to the right when you come down the hall.”
“Yeah, Harry. I’m in the right place. It’s just not here.”
“Shit.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. Continue the search.”
Bosch flipped the phone closed and put it in his pocket. He walked back to the others. He tried to act calm, as if the call had only been a minor annoyance.
“Okay, let’s go up and do what we can up there.”
They moved to the elevator, which was an open wrought-iron cage with ornate flourishes and polished brass trim.
“Why don’t you take the ladies up first,” Bosch said to Dellacroce. “We’ll come up after. That ought to distribute the weight pretty evenly.”
He took Elias’s key ring out of his pocket and handed it to Rider.
“The office key should be on there,” he said. “And never mind about that other thing with Harris for the time being. Let’s see what we’ve got in the office first.”
“Sure, Harry.”
They got on and Dellacroce pulled the accordion gate closed. The elevator rose with a jerking motion. After it was up one floor and those on it could not see them, Bosch turned to Chastain. The anger and frustration of everything going wrong flooded him then. He dropped his briefcase and with both hands grabbed Chastain by the collar of his jacket. He roughly pushed him against the elevator cage and spoke in a low, dark voice that was full of rage.
“Goddammit, Chastain, I’m only asking this one time. Where’s the fucking phone book?”
Chastain’s face flushed crimson and his eyes grew wide in shock.
“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”
He brought his hands up to Bosch’s and tried to free himself but Bosch maintained the pressure, leaning all of his weight into the other man.
“The phone book in the apartment. I know you took it and I want it back. Right the fuck now.”
Finally, Chastain tore himself loose. His jacket and shirt and tie were wrenched askew. He stepped away from Bosch as if he was scared and adjusted himself. He then pointed a finger at him.
“Stay away from me! You’re fucking nuts! I don’t have any phone book. You had it. I saw you put it in the goddamn drawer next to the bed.”
Bosch took a step toward him.
“You took it. When I was on the bal – ”
“I said stay away! I didn’t take it. If it’s not there, then somebody came in and took it after we left.”
Bosch stopped. It was an obvious explanation but it hadn’t even entered his mind. He had automatically thought of Chastain. He looked down at the tiles, embarrassed by how he’d let an old animosity cloud his judgment. He could hear the elevator gate opening on the fifth floor. He raised his eyes, fixed Chastain with a bloodless stare and pointed at his face.