“I had an interesting call with Jen Aronson last night,” he said.
Bosch nodded. He’d thought this might come up. “She told you about wanting to do a press conference on her nephew’s case?” he asked.
“She did,” Haller said. “And she also said you want no part of it.”
“I don’t.”
“Harry, you planted the seed but want no part of the tree that grows from it.”
“I don’t know what that means. Can we talk about Lucinda Sanz? That’s what I’m working on.”
“We can, but I want to make sure you get to UCLA.”
“I’m going this afternoon.”
“Good. What’ve you got?”
It took Bosch a moment to switch tracks and get back to thinking about Lucinda Sanz. When Haller brought Bosch on to review and cull the requests that came in from the prisons, one of the rules of the road he’d set was that Bosch was not to reach out to any sender of a request without his approval. These were long shots and Haller wasn’t in the business of offering false hope to incarcerated individuals. He didn’t want Bosch making that move until he had been apprised of Bosch’s thinking and agreed on next steps.
“It’s the court file,” Bosch said. “It’s pretty thin but there’s enough there to make me want to go out to Chino and talk to Lucinda Sanz.”
“The one who killed her husband, the deputy?” Haller said.
“Her ex-husband.”
“Well, tell me what you got. But she pleaded nolo, right? That makes it a steep mountain to climb. You know what El Capitan is?”
“At Yosemite? Yeah.”
“Reversing a nolo is like climbing El Cap.”
“Yeah, but she didn’t have the Lincoln Lawyer on her side back then. She had some second-stringer works out of that lawyer commune in Chinatown.”
While still with the LAPD, Bosch had been to the office of Frank Silver, the attorney who had represented Lucinda Sanz. It was in a brick building on Ord Street that was nicknamed “the commune” because several solo-practice attorneys worked there out of cubbyhole offices in a cut-rate space that allowed them to share the overhead expenses of reception, internet, copying, coffee, and paralegal and other support services. And it was walking distance to the CCB.
“I’d rather work out of my car,” Haller said. “Who was the lawyer? Maybe I know him.”
“Frank Silver,” Bosch said. “I had a case with him once. When I was with Hollywood Homicide. He was a water-seeks-its-own-level kind of guy. Not too impressive, you ask me.”
“Silver — don’t know him. They give you the silver medal for second place. And in trial, second place is a guilty verdict.”
“Never thought of it that way.”
“At least over there they’re close to Little Jewel and Howlin’ Ray’s.”
After COVID, those were two of the best restaurants left, not only in Chinatown but in all of downtown.
“True, but I miss Chinese Friends,” Bosch said.
“It’s closed?” Haller asked. “You mean permanently?”
There was surprise and disappointment in Haller’s tone. There weren’t many quick and reliable lunch places near the CCB, especially since the pandemic.
“Last year,” Bosch said. “After fifty years.”
He realized that he had probably been going to Chinese Friends all fifty of those years. Until he went one day in August and there was a sign on the locked glass door that said ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END — like a message from a fortune cookie. He had never spoken to the man who ran the restaurant and was always posted at the cash register. Bosch had always just nodded to him when he paid, assuming there was a language barrier.
“Anyway,” Haller said. “What did you find in the basement?”
Bosch pushed himself back on track with the case.
“Okay, a few things bother me on this one,” he said, “to the point that I want to take it further. First off, Silver. I think he talked Sanz into accepting a plea. He probably knew they would get the full-court press if he took it to trial. The victim was a deputy, after all. So he pushed for a deal and then he pushed her into taking it.”
“I get that,” Haller said. “What else?”
“The PSR was in the basement file. It contained the autopsy report and some crime reports and there’s some stuff that just doesn’t add up for me.”
“Like what?”
“Well, first of all, the weapon. Never found. This was painted as a crime of passion, like an argument that went too far, but they never found the gun. And then they let her plea nolo without turning it in.”
“Maybe she didn’t have it. She got rid of it and it was destroyed or otherwise irretrievable.”
“Maybe. But I read the plea agreement everybody signed, and it was not mentioned as lost or acknowledged at all. She was not required to reveal what she’d done with it.”
“Okay, noted. What else?”
“The choreography of it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Lucinda Sanz was not the registered owner of a firearm. So the gun had to be hot. That would indicate she bought this gun illegally, and the only reason to do that was—”
“Premeditation — she got it to kill him.”
“Yeah. Like she had a plan. But the way it goes down doesn’t jibe with that. He goes storming out of the house, she grabs the gun and, in a fit of anger, shoots him when he’s outside the house and walking to his car. Right on the front lawn. Then she shoots him again when he’s down.”
Haller leaned back in his pink plastic chair and gazed at the top of City Hall.
“Vultures,” he said. “There are always vultures up there.”
Bosch looked up and could see birds flying around the top of the spire.
“How can you tell they’re vultures?” he asked. “They’re so far up.”
“Because they’re circling,” Haller said. “Vultures always circle.”
“I’ve got one more thing, if you’re interested. On the case.”
“Go ahead.”
“The autopsy. Roberto Sanz was hit twice in the back. Now look at this.”
Bosch pulled out his phone and opened the photo of the body diagram from the autopsy. He handed the phone to Haller.
“What am I looking at?” Haller said.
“That’s the diagram that shows the impacts,” Bosch said. “Two shots in the upper back, perfectly placed. Small grouping, only five point seven inches apart.”
“Okay. And?”
“And that was some good shooting. Moving target, dark out, but she hits him in the back, then when he’s down, she pops him again. Two entry wounds, less than six inches apart.”
“And she didn’t even own a gun.”
“Right, no gun.”
“Did he teach her to shoot? When they were together?”
“Yeah, the PSR says there were photos in evidence of them at a range when they were still married. The photos weren’t in the file. Silver may have them.”
Bosch could tell Haller was intrigued. He continued to stare at the image on the phone. He had his trial face on and was most likely running through what he could do in court with what Bosch was telling him.
“Kind of looks more like a hit than a crime of passion,” Haller said, mostly to himself.
“Yeah, and one last thing,” Bosch said. “When this went down, all the news stories talked about how Roberto Sanz was a hero, got the medal of valor after a gang shooting and all of that. Now slide to the next photo.”
Haller swiped his finger across the screen. Bosch leaned over and saw a photo of his daughter, Maddie, with a black eye.
“Wrong way,” Bosch said.
“What the hell is this?” Haller exclaimed.
“She’s working undercover. The other night she took down a purse snatcher on Melrose and because she’s a woman, the guy thought he could throw a punch and get away. He was wrong.”