“Who?” Silver asked.
Through a few phone calls Bosch had been able to learn MacIsaac’s full name and posting in the Bureau’s L.A. field office. That part of the document was fact and I was hopeful it would draw a response from Silver.
“FBI Special Agent Tom MacIsaac,” I said. “He’s the guy the U.S. attorney won’t allow me to talk to or subpoena. Did he ever show up around here to talk to you?”
“No, I never heard of him till now. What’s his—”
“He had a lengthy meeting with Roberto Sanz on the day he was killed. If you were any kind of an attorney, you would have found that out and not talked your client into a plea deal.”
Silver shook his head.
“Look, man, I keep telling you, I was threatened,” he said. “I had no choice.”
“So you turned around and gave your client no choice,” I said. “You talked her into the plea. You talked her into prison.”
“You weren’t there, man. You have no idea what kind of pressure was on me and what evidence they had on her. She was going down either way.”
“Sure, Frank. Whatever lets you sleep at night.”
I had an almost overwhelming desire to get away from Frank Silver and his office, which stank of failure and pork fried rice. But I stayed to hear him finish his confession.
“All right,” I said. “Go back to Angel Acosta and tell me everything you know. I need every detail you can remember. You do that and this motion never gets filed.”
I pointed to the prop doc on his desk.
“How do I know you won’t fuck me over in the end?” Silver asked.
“Well, buddy boy,” I said, “I guess you don’t.”
19
The Lincoln was at the curb, Bosch behind the wheel, when I came out. I had completely broken the habit of jumping in the back and I got in the front seat without a second thought.
“Did it work?” Bosch asked.
“Yes and no,” I said. “He pretty much confirmed what we had already put together. But he said he didn’t know anything about MacIsaac or the FBI.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I do. For now.”
“Well, what did he know?”
“He said that on both the Acosta and Sanz cases he was threatened by deputies. First he had to get Acosta to take a deal, then later the same thing all over again with Lucinda. He didn’t have names. It was all on his phone. One call from a male, the second from a female. Each time, he was told that the DA would come across with an offer and his client had to take it or there would be consequences. For him.”
“Just that? Anonymous phone calls?”
“Each time the caller had inside information. Knew details about the shoot-out with Sanz. He believed the threat.”
“One caller male, the other female. Lucinda says it was a woman who did the GSR.”
“What I was thinking. For now we call her Lady X. But we need to identify everybody who was in Sanz’s unit at the time, especially any women. Between you and Cisco, run them down, full bios, and we’ll start building a witness list.”
“Got it. Where to now?”
“Hall of Justice. Time to rattle a cage over there.”
Bosch checked the mirrors and then pulled the Lincoln away from the curb on Ord Street.
“Whose cage?” Bosch asked.
“The deputy DA who handled both the Acosta and Sanz cases is Andrea Fontaine. Back then she was assigned to the Antelope Valley courthouse. Now she’s downtown in Major Crimes. I was thinking we’d pay her a visit and see what she has to say about those cases and the deals she made on them. Looks to me like she might’ve made a deal for herself.”
“You’re talking major conspiracy here. The sheriff’s department and the DA’s office.”
“Hey, man, conspiracy theories are a defense lawyer’s bread and butter.”
“Great. What about the truth?”
“You don’t find that too often in the courtrooms I’ve been in.”
Bosch had no comeback for that. It took us five minutes to get to the Hall of Justice and another ten to find a parking spot. Before we got out, Bosch finally spoke.
“What you said about building a witness list. What do you expect to get from Sanz’s teammates?”
“I expect them to get on the stand and lie their asses off about this. They do and we take out the biggest piece of evidence against Lucinda.”
“The GSR.”
“Now you’re thinking like a defense attorney.”
“Never.”
“Look, do you believe that Lucinda killed her ex and is where she should be right now?”
Bosch thought a moment before answering.
“Come on,” I said. “You’re not under oath.”
“I don’t think she did it,” he finally said.
“Well, neither do I. So what we gotta do is knock down the evidence against her like dominoes. And if we can’t do that, then we have to own it and explain it. They come up with photos of her shooting at targets, then we own it and say yes, that’s her, but she was doing that because she couldn’t shoot for shit and certainly not well enough to put two bullets in her ex-husband’s back less than six inches apart. Like that. You get it?”
“I get it.”
“Good. Now, let’s go see what this prosecutor has to say.”
“You’re going to ask about this? The GSR?”
“Yeah, without giving anything away.”
Bosch nodded and we opened our doors and got out.
The Hall of Justice was across from the Criminal Courts Building. It had at one time housed the sheriff’s department, and its top three floors were the county jail. But then the sheriff’s department moved most of its operations out to the STARS Center in Whittier and a county jail was built. The building was repurposed and the jail floors were turned into offices for prosecutors who worked cases in the courtrooms across the street.
Andrea Fontaine was not welcoming of our unscheduled visit. She met us in a waiting area after being notified by the receptionist of our request for an audience. We introduced ourselves and she walked us back to her office, explaining that she had only a few minutes before she needed to leave for a hearing in a courtroom across the street.
“That’s okay,” I said. “We only need a few minutes.”
She led us into an office that was smaller than Frank Silver’s and clearly had once been a celclass="underline" three walls of concrete block and a fourth behind her desk that was a latticework of iron bars and glass with no opening bigger than six inches square.
The office was neat and not as cramped as Silver’s. There was room for two chairs in front of her desk and we all sat down.
“I don’t think we have a case together, do we?” Fontaine asked.
“Uh, not yet,” I said.
“That sounds mysterious. What’s this about?”
“Two cases you handled during your Antelope Valley days.”
“I was moved down here four years ago. Which cases?”
“Angel Acosta and Lucinda Sanz. I’m sure they’re on your greatest-hits list.”
Fontaine tried to keep a poker face but I could see the flare of fear enter her eyes.
“I remember Sanz, of course,” she said. “She killed a deputy I actually knew. It’s rare you get a case where you know the victim. And Acosta... help me with that one. It rings a bell but I can’t place it.”
“The ambush at the Flip’s burger stand the year before Sanz was killed,” I said. “The shoot-out?”
“Oh, yes, of course. Thank you. Why are you asking about those cases? They were both closed with dispositions. Guilty people pleading guilty.”
“Well, we’re not so sure about that. The guilty part.”
“On which one?”
“Lucinda Sanz.”
“You’re going to challenge that conviction? She got a great deal. You want to risk getting a redo? If we go to trial she could end up with a life sentence. With what she’s got now, she’ll be out in, what, four or five more years? Maybe even sooner.”