“I won’t tell them dick.”
I nodded. That was what I wanted.
“Okay, then,” I said. “I’m going to head back.”
“What about your trial?” Neiderland asked. “Do you want me to testify?”
I wasn’t sure how I could use him in my defense, or whether I could get the judge to approve it. Teleconferencing from prison to courtroom would probably put the jury to sleep. There was also the question of conflict of interest. Neiderland was now technically my client — at least on paper at the prison.
“I’ll let you know,” I said.
I stood up again, ready to bang on the door.
“Are you really going to find out who killed him?” Neiderland asked. “Or are you just worried about proving you didn’t?”
“The only way to prove I didn’t do it is to prove who did,” I said. “That’s the law of innocence.”
Part Three
Echoes and Iron
24
Wednesday, January 15
We got down to San Pedro by 9:30 the next morning. We drove separately. I was driven by Bishop because I needed to get to downtown before 1 p.m. for the hearing on the missing wallet. Bosch came in his old Cherokee and Cisco on his Harley. We convened at the house on Cabrillo that Austin Neiderland had put me onto. There was an apartment for rent sign on the front lawn. Bishop had been cleared by Cisco but you can never be 100 percent sure about anything. I didn’t want him sitting in the Lincoln in front of the house. I told him to go get coffee nearby and wait for me to summon him when I was ready to go to court. I then approached the house with my investigators and knocked on the door. A woman in a bathrobe answered. I held up a business card and went with a script I had written in my head based on what I knew from Neiderland.
“Hello, ma’am, I’m Michael Haller, an attorney involved in the situation regarding the estate of Walter Lennon, and we are here to ascertain and review any property he left behind.”
“ ‘Estate’? Does that mean he’s dead?”
“Yes, ma’am, Mr. Lennon passed in late October.”
“Well, no one told us. We just thought he took off. He was paid up through November but then December went by and no sign of him and no rent check.”
“I see the sign out front. You are rerenting the apartment?”
“Of course. He was gone and he didn’t pay.”
“Are his belongings still in there?”
“No, we cleared him out. His stuff is in the garage. We wanted to dump it, but the law, you know. We have to wait sixty days.”
“Well, thank you for adhering to the law. Do you mind if we look at the property in the garage?”
She didn’t answer. She closed the door about halfway so she could reach something behind it. She then came up with a remote control and reached out the door to click it.
“Third bay,” she said. “It’s open now. The boxes are marked with his name and stacked between the tread marks.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Do you mind if we also look around the apartment? Just a quick check.”
She reached behind the door again and then handed me a key.
“Stairs are on the side of the garage,” she said. “Bring it back when you’re finished.”
“Of course,” I said.
“And don’t mess it up. It’s all clean. Mr. Lennon left it a mess.”
“How so? What kind of mess?”
“Like a tornado had hit the place. Broken furniture, his stuff thrown all over the floors. So don’t be asking about his deposit. It barely covered what we had to do in there.”
“Understood. Do you mind one more thing? We’d like you to look at a photo to confirm that the Walter Lennon we are talking about is the Walter Lennon you are talking about.”
“I guess so.”
Cisco had pulled a photo of Sam Scales up on his phone. It was a DMV photo that had been released to the media after my arrest. He held it up to the woman at the door and she nodded after getting a look at it.
“That’s him,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “We won’t take long.”
“Just bring the key back,” she said.
We started with the apartment, which was a small one-bedroom flat over the garage. The place had been cleaned and prepped for a new renter. We weren’t expecting to find anything in plain sight — especially since the landlord’s description indicated that it had already been searched. But Sam Scales was a lifelong con artist who might have reason to hide things in his home that a quick search might miss. The lead on this went to Bosch, who’d had many years of experience searching the homes of criminals.
Bosch had brought a little tool bag with him. His first stop was the kitchen, where he was methodical about checking the underside of drawers, unscrewing and checking behind the kickboards beneath the cabinets, opening the insulation spaces in the refrigerator and freezer doors, and examining the light and fan assembly over the stove. When I realized how long his full search might take, I decided to change things up. I left Bosch in the apartment while Cisco and I went down to the garage. I had to make sure I got to the courthouse in time.
There were two stacks of four cardboard boxes in the middle of the third bay — between the tread marks presumably left by renters’ cars over time. The boxes were sealed and each was marked with the name Lennon and the date 12/19. Cisco started with one stack and I started with the other.
My first box contained clothes. There was a car in the second bay of the garage. I laid the clothes out on its hood and then went through each item, checking pockets, before returning it to the box.
The second box contained shoes, socks, underwear, and nothing else. I checked the shoes inside and out and found a set of lace-up work boots with oily debris stuck in the treads. It reminded me of the oily substance found under Sam Scales’s fingernails.
I put the shoes aside and checked on Cisco. He was also dealing with clothes from his first two boxes.
My third box contained personal items, including toiletries, a plug-in alarm clock, and several books. I fanned the pages of each but found nothing hidden among them. They were all novels except for one book, which was a 2015 owner’s manual for a Mack Pinnacle tanker truck. I knew this fit in with BioGreen but wasn’t sure how. I set the manual aside on the hood of the car in the second bay.
My fourth box contained more of the same. More books and personal items, such as a drip coffee maker and several coffee mugs that were wrapped in old newspaper. A layer of unopened mail was at the bottom of the box, probably put there to further cushion the fragile glass coffeepot and mugs.
The mail was mostly junk with the exception of an AT&T phone bill and an unopened letter from Austin Neiderland with the return address Nevada’s High Desert State Prison. I put the prison letter unopened back into the box. It was apparent from my interview with Neiderland that he didn’t know what scam Sam Scales was into. I didn’t think the letter would be of much use. Instead, I ripped open the phone bill to see if it included a list of numbers called, but it was a reminder notice that the prior bill was unpaid. There was a list of services Sam Scales was receiving but no list of calls.
Cisco was running one box behind me as he fanned the pages of books from his third box. I moved over and opened his last one. It contained three unopened boxes of Honeycomb cereal and a fourth box of Rice Krispies.
“Sam liked his cereal, I guess.”
I shook and examined each box to see if it was factory-sealed or Sam-sealed to hide something inside. I decided they were just boxes of cereal and moved on. Below the cereal were some bags of ground coffee and other unopened items from kitchen cabinets.