“I don’t know yet. But I want to move you and Lily from the hotel you’re in to a new one. One of us will pick you up tomorrow morning to bring you to court.”
“This is really bad, isn’t it? For the case.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, it’s bad,” I said. “I thought we won yesterday. But today, I think they got the W. And that’s on me, Naomi. Not you. I should have known what they had, and I should’ve seen it coming.”
36
THIS TIME ITwas me in the wave’s trough when I got home. Maggie was riding high on the crest. It had been that way with her since the fires, a rhythm of quick ups and downs. So this time it was her consoling me. We’d shared takeout from Pace down in the canyon. I told her how I had miscalculated things in court and opened the door to the defense sending the jury home with testimony indicating that my key witness could not be trusted. Now we sat in our chairs in front of the picture window, backlit from the kitchen, her with a glass of sauvignon blanc and me with a full glass of guilt over letting myself be outplayed in court.
“Mickey, you could not have seen that coming,” she told me again. “Your witness deceived you. How could you be ready for that?”
“I’m supposed to be ready for anything,” I said. “Every lawyer knows that.”
“Well, you will be tomorrow. Are you going to put her back on the stand and try to rehabilitate her?”
“I think that’s going to be a game-time decision. It might just bebest to move forward rather than spend the morning doing damage control. That always looks bad to the jury.”
“Moving forward is a good idea.”
I nodded. I had not heard anything from Cisco, so I hadn’t decided how the following morning would go and wanted to change the subject.
“You sure seem chipper after last night,” I said. “What happened with theTimes?”
“Supposedly they’re holding the story,” Maggie said. “It was based on unnamed sources, and an editor over there got smart and said, get somebody on the record saying she’s incapacitated or we don’t run the story.”
“Glad they still have somebody there who’s thinking right.”
“Plus I did what you suggested and held a press conference. Just not about your client.”
“I haven’t seen any news. What was it about?”
“We filed on a cold case LAPD brought in. A serial killer who’s not dead or already incarcerated. They got him on at least four kills here in L.A., but it looks like there are others up in the Bay Area. Alameda County. And we already have a name for him: the Pizza Man. He’d follow a woman home, then come back later with a pizza and act like he was delivering it but had the wrong address. It got him through the woman’s door. The Open-Unsolved Unit got him on DNA off a pizza crust.”
“Nice. LAPD cold case comes to the rescue. Take that,L.A. Times.”
“Exactly.”
“How cold was the case?”
“It was late nineties down here. He then moved up to Oakland. They arrested him there.”
“Cool.”
“By the way, did you know Harry Bosch’s daughter is now working with the Open-Unsolved Unit? With Harry and Reneé Ballard, who runs it, as mentors, that girl is going to be a top-notch investigator, and she’s not even thirty.”
“Yeah, Harry told me that last time we talked. Was this thing her case?”
“She was part of it. They work everything as a team. She wrote some of the reports I looked at. They were well done. Made my job easy.”
“And the press conference was well attended?”
“We got them all. Five local stations, theTimes,theDaily News,andLa Opinión—one of the victims was Latina.”
“Cool. Hopefully you get all of them when you clear my guy Snow.”
“Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
