“Not a problem. Which suit?”
“I think the Hugo Boss. The gray with the light pinstripes. A light blue oxford, and just pick any tie. You know where the key is, right?”
“Same place?”
“Same place.”
My next words were spoken in a low whisper so Gian and Nate could not overhear.
“Lorna, listen, don’t hurry. Don’t get here with the suit until at least twelve thirty. Harry and Shami need the time.”
“Got it.”
I raised my voice to its normal pitch and said, “Okay, I’ll probably be back in holding, so just bring it to the courtroom marshal. His name is Nate.”
“Got it. I’m leaving now to go to your place.”
“Thanks.”
I disconnected and got up. I presented myself to Marshal Nate and said I’d like to wait in holding so I could visit with my client and then change when my fresh suit arrived.
I realized as I was taken back into holding that I had not eaten anything and should have asked Lorna to bring me a PowerBar. The emptiness in my stomach was accentuated by the anxiety I was feeling about what was happening at Applied Forensics. I knew I was taking my last shot with the gambit I had played over the last two days. It was going to be do-or-die time very soon.
45
The hearing on the habeas motion did not get back under way until almost two o’clock, thanks to Lorna’s delay in bringing my suit. The judge wasn’t too happy about the late start but I was pleased because I now had everything I needed to face Stephanie Sanger one more time on the witness stand. Bosch and Arslanian had come through. Arslanian was outside in the hallway and ready to testify, and Bosch sat in the first row of the gallery next to the Channel 5 courtroom sketch artist.
After Judge Coelho convened court and told me to proceed, I recalled Sergeant Stephanie Sanger to the witness stand. The judge reminded her that she was still under oath.
“Good to see you again, Sergeant Sanger,” I began. “I want to start today by asking you about some testimony and evidence that came in last week. Specifically, the cell phone data that was examined by my investigator.”
“Is there a question in there?” Sanger asked.
“Not yet, Sergeant Sanger. But let’s start with this one. On the day Deputy Roberto Sanz was murdered on the front lawn of his ex-wife’s house, were you following him?”
Sanger stared at me with her dagger eyes before answering.
“Yes, I was,” she said.
I nodded and jotted a note down on my legal pad. No matter what Maggie McFierce had done to Bosch’s credibility on the stand, the data contained irrefutable facts, and Sanger was in no position to deny them. But I still was surprised by her straightforward answer to my first question. It knocked me off my game because I was expecting to have to ask several questions before I finally got her to admit that she had followed Roberto Sanz. My legal pad was covered with follow-up questions that I no longer needed. It made me jump to an improvised set of questions I should never have asked.
“You admit that you were following Roberto Sanz on the day of his death?”
“Yes, I just did.”
“Why were you following him?”
“Because he asked me to.”
There it was. With one ill-advised and improvised question, we were off in uncharted territory, and I had no doubt that what would come out would be a concocted story that explained the incontrovertible cell data. I knew that if I didn’t bring it out and attempt to control it, Hayden Morris would do that on his re-cross. I had to handle this right now and then get back to my intended path.
“Why did Roberto Sanz ask you to follow him?” I asked.
“Because he was meeting with an FBI agent and he was worried that he was being set up,” Sanger said. “He wanted me to watch in case something went wrong and he needed me to come to the rescue.”
Sanger and the AG were doing exactly what I had been doing throughout the hearing: taking the negatives and owning them. If it looks bad that you were following the murder victim, then say the murder victim asked you to — there was nobody alive to refute it.
“He would need you to rescue him from an FBI agent?” I asked.
“Not necessarily in that moment,” Sanger said. “More like later, if someone had to vouch for his story that he had met with the FBI and turned down whatever it was the Bureau wanted.”
“He never told you what the Bureau wanted?”
“He never got the chance.”
“Then how do you know he used the meeting to turn down the FBI?”
“He told me ahead of time that that’s what he planned to do.”
It was a story that didn’t make a lot of sense on close inspection. But I knew if I waded into the bog any further, there might be all manner of hidden traps below the murk for me to stumble into. I had already done enough damage by giving Sanger the chance to explain the cell data. I improvised as best I could in the moment.
“And you never filed a report on this or told the investigators of Sanz’s murder about it?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t,” Sanger said.
“Sanz gets murdered after a clandestine meeting with an FBI agent and you didn’t think the homicide investigators would want to know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“And why is that?”
“I thought it would taint Robbie Sanz’s reputation. He was dead, his ex-wife had killed him, and I didn’t think it had to be brought up.”
Once again I had opened an exit for her. I had to find my way out of this bog.
“All right, let’s move on, Sergeant Sanger,” I said. “Please describe for the court the protocol you followed when you conducted the gunshot-residue test on Lucinda Sanz on the night of her ex-husband’s murder.”
“It’s pretty simple, really,” she said. “The stubs come in a package of two and—”
“Let me interrupt you there. Can you explain what you mean by ‘stubs’?”
“They are round foam disks with a carbon adhesive that picks up the gunshot residue when wiped over a person’s hands and arms.”
“So you opened a package containing two stubs when you tested Lucinda Sanz?”
“Correct.”
“Did you wear gloves when you did this?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why is that, Sergeant Sanger?”
“So I would not possibly contaminate the stubs. I carry and handle a weapon, so my hands could have GSR on them. It is standard protocol in the department and all other agencies to wear gloves while conducting a GSR test on a suspect.”
“You are saying that at the time, Lucinda Sanz was already a suspect?”
“No, I was talking about general protocol. In the case you are specifically referring to, Ms. Sanz was not considered a suspect at that time. We viewed her as a witness, primarily, until we gathered all the facts.”
“Why were you so quick to test her for GSR if she was just a witness?”
“Because, first of all, gunshot residue sheds from the skin. It is best to take a GSR test within two hours of a gun incident. After four hours it is useless because of shedding. And second, we didn’t know what we had out there, so we wanted to cover all the bases. I conducted the test and it turned out later to be positive. I think I already testified to all of this.”
“That’s okay, Sergeant Sanger. We want to make sure we get it right. How did you find out that the test was positive?”
“The lead investigator called me to tell me and to thank me for running the test so early. It was a very solid positive response for GSR, he said.”
I asked the judge to strike the second half of Sanger’s answer as nonresponsive to my question, but Coelho overruled me and told me to move on.