I reached out and gently grabbed the robe’s terry-cloth belt, which she had loosely cinched around her waist. I tugged it playfully.
“Come here. This isn’t the same thing, babe. This is me. My case. I have to put everything into it or there might not be any future for us. We’ve got a month until trial. I just need you to put up with this for a month. Okay? Can you give me that?”
I moved my hands up her arms to her shoulders and waited. She said nothing. She just looked down at the floor between us.
“You can’t give me the month?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“It’s not that,” she said. “I can give you the month. But sometimes it’s like you’re talking to me like a juror, like you’re trying to convince me you’re not guilty.”
I let go of her shoulders.
“And what, you think I am?”
“No. I’m talking about the way you talk to me.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “But if you think I’m trying to play you, then maybe you should go to bed and I should go back to work. I have to figure out how to convince a real jury I’m not a killer.”
I left her there in the hallway.
22
Tuesday, January 14
I worked late and fell asleep on the couch. I had forgotten to attach the charger to my ankle monitor and it woke me at 8:15 a.m. with a sharp intermittent beeping that told me the device’s battery would be dead in an hour. And I would be in violation of the terms of my bail.
I timed the beeps. At the moment, the alarm was on a five-second interval but I knew that would get shorter and the device would get ear-piercingly louder as the hour counted down. I couldn’t casually go into the bedroom to get the charger without the alarm waking Kendall, who liked to sleep in most mornings. But with no choice in the matter, I timed my move, went swiftly into the room, and managed to plug the charging cord into the ankle device before the next beep. It appeared that Kendall had slept through. She was on her side, turned away from me, and I could see her arm moving with each rhythmic breath of sleep. I now had an hour to pass while the device charged, but I had left my phone, laptop, and briefcase in the living room. I could unplug the charger and race with it out of the room but I felt I was pressing my luck already. And if the alarm sounded again, it would definitely wake up Kendall.
The bedroom TV remote was on the bed within reach, having been left there by Kendall the night before. I turned on the flat-screen and immediately muted the sound. I switched on the closed captions and started reading the news. The House was planning to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for what everybody in the country new was a nonstarter. But it was monopolizing the news feed. I watched and read captions for twenty minutes before another story broke in for a few seconds of airtime. It was a report on rising concerns in Asia after the mystery virus originating in Wuhan, China, was confirmed as having jumped borders to other countries.
I heard my phone ringing out in the living room. I checked my watch. It was now 8:45 and I believed the ankle monitor had sufficiently charged to the point where there would be no alarm beep if I disconnected it. I quickly yanked out the charging line and moved quickly to get the phone. I missed the call but saw it had come from Bosch. I called him right back.
“Mick, there’s an issue with the cellmate,” he said.
“You’re at the prison?” I asked.
“I’m here and I saw the guy. His name is Austin Neiderland, but he won’t talk to me. Says he’s got a name that will tell us all we need to know about what Sam Scales was into. But he wouldn’t give me the name.”
“What’s he want? He’s got to be through his appeals by now.”
“He wants you, Mick.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He said he would give only you the name. He knows about you. Scales must’ve told him that you were a good lawyer. Neiderland says he’ll give you the name if you just come up, sign in as his lawyer, and talk to him. See if there’s anything to be done on his case, I guess. He’s still got two years on his sentence. That means he still has to do eighteen months.”
“You mean today? Come there today?”
“Can you? I’ll set it up and wait here for you.”
“Harry, I can’t. I’ve got an ankle monitor and bail restrictions. I can’t leave the county.”
“Shit, I forgot.”
“What about a video connection? Can we set up something like that?”
“I checked and the prison only does it for court hearings. No teleconferencing interviews or attorney-client meetings.”
There was silence on the phone while I thought about this.
“So, what else did he say about this name?” I finally asked. “I mean, what if we jump through all these hoops and he says, yeah, it’s Louis Opparizio. Then we’re nowhere. We already have that name.”
“It’s not Opparizio,” Bosch said. “I tried that name on him and got a read. He didn’t know it.”
“Okay, so can this even be done today? I have court tomorrow. Even if I can convince the judge to let me go up there, I have to be back tonight — tomorrow morning at the latest. You think I can get in and out? It’s a prison, and they don’t like cooperating with defense lawyers.”
“Your call, Mick, but if you have to talk to the judge to get permission, maybe she can write you an order that gets you in.”
“Different states, Harry. She doesn’t have jurisdiction.”
“Well... what do you want to do?”
“Okay, hold tight. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you back as soon as I know something.”
I disconnected and thought about the best way to approach this. Then I called Lorna and asked if there was anything on my schedule.
“Your first witness list is due today,” she said. “But that’s it. And then you have the continuation of yesterday’s hearing tomorrow at one.”
“Okay, I already have a wit list ready,” I said. “I’ll send it in. I might be going to Las Vegas — if the judge lets me.”
“What’s in Vegas?”
“A prison where Sam Scales last served time. I want to talk to the guy he shared a cell with.”
“Good luck with that. Let me know.”
I next called Judge Warfield’s courtroom and got her clerk, Andrew. I said I wanted to set up a teleconference with the judge requesting that I be allowed to leave the county for the day to pursue a witness. The clerk said he would check with the judge and call me back. I reminded him that Dana Berg would need to be alerted.
While I waited, I decided to act as if I would gain the judge’s permission and I booked flights on JetSuite out of Burbank to Las Vegas. The outbound left in two hours.
Thirty minutes went by with no return call from the judge or her clerk. I called the courtroom back and pushed for an answer. Andrew said the judge was okay with a teleconference but Dana Berg had not responded to a message left for her.
“Can the judge just talk to me, then?” I asked. “This is time-sensitive. I can see this potential witness today only and need to know whether I can go. If you leave a message for Berg saying when the conference is taking place, my guess is she’ll respond and be on the call. If you just wait for her to call back, we’re going to be waiting all day.”
The clerk took what I said under advisement and said he would get back to me. Another twenty minutes went by and Andrew called, saying he was connecting me to a conference call with the judge and Deputy D.A. Dana Berg. My plane was leaving in seventy minutes.
Soon I heard the judge’s voice on the phone.
“I think we have everybody here,” she said. “Mr. Haller, you are asking for a deviation in bail restrictions?”