“What about Sanger?”
“She’s last — after we have the DNA.”
“And MacIsaac?”
“No MacIsaac. I’m not going that route.”
“What? I thought this whole thing was to get the judge to—”
“All of that’s changed. We’ll never get MacIsaac on the stand, so we go without him.”
“How do you know she won’t order him to testify?”
“Because he paid me a visit last night.”
“What?”
“After dinner, when I got home, he was sitting on my porch. He’s working undercover on a national-security thing and they’re not going to let him near the courthouse.”
“Bullshit. They use that national-security crap anytime they don’t want to—”
“I believed him.”
“Why?”
“Because he gave me something. Something I can use against Sanger.”
“What?”
“I can’t say at the moment. I have to figure a few things out and then I’ll tell you.”
Bosch looked at me as though I had just said I didn’t trust him.
“Look, I’ll bring you into the loop as soon as I can. I need to get back to court now, and you need to find Second-Place Silver.”
Bosch nodded.
“Okay,” he said.
He got up and turned to the door.
“And I’m sorry, Harry,” I said. “About what Maggie pulled in there.”
“It’s not on you, Mick,” he said. “I’ll let you know when I have Silver ready to go.”
In the hall, he went one way and I went the other, toward the courtroom. Before I got there, Maggie hit me back with a text.
A lawyer once said that all was fair on the proving ground of the courtroom. Oh, yeah, I think that lawyer was you.
I decided not to respond. Instead, I called Shami Arslanian.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“We just got results,” she said. “I’m looking at them now.”
I braced myself. This was the case.
“And?” I prompted.
“There was DNA on the swab,” she said. “It’s not Lucinda’s.”
I suddenly, almost involuntarily, moved to one of the marble benches lining the hall and sat down, the phone pressed against my ear. In that moment, I felt that we would win, that Lucinda Sanz would walk free.
“Mickey, are you there?” Arslanian said.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “I’m just... this is incredible.”
“There is a complication.”
“What’s that?”
“The DNA that’s there comes from two other people. One is unknown. But we already matched the other because it belongs to a former lab tech at Applied Forensics. They always run matching to their own personnel to guard against contamination.”
“What does this mean, Shami?”
“The lab tech it matches has not worked here in four years. It means that at some point when the evidence was brought here, it got mishandled and contaminated with his DNA. Again, we’re talking about touch DNA, which at the time they didn’t have a protocol for.”
I closed my eyes.
“Jesus Christ. Every time I think we’ve grabbed the brass ring, something goes wrong and we’ve got shit.”
“I’m sorry, Mickey. But the important thing is that Lucinda’s DNA is not on the GSR pad. This proves your theory of the crime. Are you saying you won’t be able to use this in court?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I need you to get back to the courthouse as soon as you can with whatever reports you have there. Get the name of the tech from before and whatever documentation there is about the contamination. You’ll probably have to explain everything in an evidentiary hearing before the judge. I’m going to go ask for that now.”
“Okay, Mickey, I’ll grab an Uber.”
I disconnected and tried to compose myself, channeling the ghost of Legal Siegel. Breathe it in. This is your moment. This is your stage. Want it. Own it. Take it.
I got up off the bench and reentered the courtroom.
41
Over my objection, Judge Coelho held the evidentiary hearing behind closed doors. The Latin term for it was in camera, which sounded like the opposite of a private meeting. I had opposed it because if the judge ruled against the introduction of the DNA findings, I wanted the world to know it and share in my outrage. But my argument for an open hearing fell on deaf ears, and I found myself sitting next to Hayden Morris in front of Coelho and her massive desk in chambers. My client was deemed unnecessary to the hearing and was waiting in the courtside lockup for me to tell her how things shook out.
“Before we begin, we need to inform Mr. Morris of what has transpired over the past five days,” Coelho said. “Last Wednesday, Mr. Haller came to me and informed me that evidence from the earlier adjudicated case had been located. He asked for sealed orders that would allow him to pursue the testing of this evidence.”
“What was the evidence?” Morris asked. “And what tests are we talking about?”
“It gets complicated, Mr. Morris,” the judge said. “I’ll let Mr. Haller explain the details.”
She nodded to me and I took up the story.
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “During the initial prosecution of the case five years ago, defense counsel — a lawyer named Frank Silver — asked for a split of evidence so he could conduct independent testing. There were two gunshot-residue pads presumably used to swipe Lucinda Sanz’s hands, arms, and clothing. As you know, GSR was a key piece of the prosecution’s case. The court gave him one of the two pads to have independently tested for gunshot residue.”
“This was before the plea agreement?” Morris asked.
“Exactly,” I said. “The pad was transferred to Applied Forensics, an independent lab out in Van Nuys that still operates today. While that was happening, plea negotiations began, and as we all know, Lucinda Sanz took the plea deal. She went off to prison after pleading nolo, and Silver never bothered going back to Applied Forensics to retrieve the evidence. We learned of this Wednesday, checked it out, and the evidence was still in storage at the lab — largely because Silver never paid the lab’s bill.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Morris said, shaking his head. “This sounds like a setup if I’ve ever heard one. Your Honor, why are we even considering this?”
“Let Mr. Haller continue,” Coelho said.
“Think what you want,” I said. “But I came to the judge Wednesday and asked for orders to have the remaining pad tested for DNA, because if the pad was actually swiped over my client’s hands and clothes, we would find her DNA — her touch DNA — on the pad. I have a forensics expert who backs me up on this. The judge then ordered the U.S. Marshals to swab Sanz and take her DNA sample to Applied Forensics.”
“I don’t care who backs you up,” Morris said. “This is incredibly unusual and the wrong protocol. This should have been handled by either the sheriff’s lab or the state DOJ’s crime lab, not some fly-by-night lab in the Valley.”
He said it in a tone that suggested all of the San Fernando Valley was a haven for fly-by-night businesses and people.
“Mr. Haller asked me to seal the orders,” the judge said. “He wanted the evidence analyzed privately because of his concerns over obstruction from within the government agencies. I agreed. The orders were sealed until there were results. If this goes any further, you will have the opportunity to test the evidence at the lab of your choice, Mr. Morris. Now, Mr. Haller, I assume you called for this session because you have results?”