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The meeting ended with a lot of excitement. But for me the adrenaline ebbed quickly. While the investigators got the thrill of working in the field, I focused through the weekend on what many lawyers abhor: reviewing the case files. The paper trail of a case is a living thing that grows and changes. Documents and evidence reviewed at one point could look different or take on new significance when reviewed through the prism of time.

It was important to know the case inside and out, but I could only accomplish that through repeated reviews of the case files. It had now been more than two months since my arrest and the files had thickened by the week with the dissemination of discovery material. I had read and reviewed it all as it came in but it was also important to take it all in as a whole.

By Sunday morning I had filled several pages of a legal pad with notes, lists, and questions. One page was a list of what was missing from the case. At the top was Sam Scales’s wallet. It was not on the property report that described the clothing found on the body and the contents of its pockets.

No wallet. It was assumed that the killer—meaning me—had taken and disposed of it. This missing wallet was important to me because in the variety of scams for which I had defended Sam, he had never used his real name. It was the con man’s way. Each con required a new personality so that he could avoid being traced after the victims woke up to the fact that they had been had. To this end, I knew that Sam was gifted at reinventing himself. I only represented him the times he got caught. It was unknown how many cons he had pulled off without detection.

The missing wallet in this case was important because after a month of diligent work, Cisco Wojciechowski had come up empty in his efforts to background Scales. It was a black hole. We had found no digital record of his whereabouts in the two previous years. The wallet would help if it contained the identification of his current persona. It also would help connect him to BioGreen. If he was working there or involved in some kind of scheme with Opparizio, his current identity would be key to tracing it.

It was only when I reviewed the case file for a third time on Sunday evening that I noticed a discrepancy that appeared to flip the case over and give me one more grievance to take to Judge Warfield.

After strategizing next moves, I called Jennifer Aronson and spoiled her dinner plans. I told her to draw up an emergency motion to compel discovery from the prosecution. I told her that the request should clearly state that the prosecution had been withholding vital evidence from the defense since the start of the case and that the evidence in question was the victim’s wallet and its contents.

It was a provocative move and my guess was that Dana Berg would object to the accusation, and an evidentiary hearing would be quickly scheduled before Warfield. That was exactly what I wanted—a hearing presumed to be about a discovery dispute that would be about something else entirely.

I told Jennifer I wanted the request filed as soon as court opened in the morning and then I disconnected and let her go to work. I had not asked if the assignment intruded on her plans for the evening. I was only interested in protecting my own. Kendall had not gotten to the Musso & Frank Grill since her return from Hawaii. It had been her favorite restaurant and a place where we had shared many a martini and dinner in our first go-round. I was off martinis and all other alcohol now, but I had made a deal with her. Musso & Frank’s on Sunday night in exchange for allowing me to hole up in my home office and work through the weekend. That work had paid off big-time and now I was looking forward to the night out as much as Kendall was. I passed the case baton to Jennifer and told her I would meet her at the Nickel Diner in the morning after she filed. I asked her to tell the whole defense team to come for breakfast so we could update one another on the prior seventy-two hours.

Despite having to witness many martinis being prepared, served, and consumed, I found dinner at Musso’s a welcome distraction from thoughts on the case, if only for a few hours, and it pulled Kendall and me back toward the relationship we had shared for seven years before her departure for Hawaii. What drew me closest to her was her assumption that there would be no interruption in our relationship going forward. The idea that I could be found guilty of murder a month from now and be locked away in prison for the rest of my life had never entered her thinking or her discussion of our renewed life together. It was naive, yes, but also endearing. It made me not want to disappoint her, even as I understood that disappointing her would be the least of my problems if I didn’t win the case.

“You know,” I said, “being innocent is no guarantee of a not-guilty verdict. Anything can happen in trial.”

“You always say that,” she said. “But I know you’re going to win.”

“But before we make any great plans, let’s get the verdict, okay?”

“It doesn’t hurt to plan. As soon as this is over, I want to go somewhere and lie on a beach and forget all about this.”

“That will be nice.”

And I left it at that.

Monday, January 13

At breakfast the next morning Jennifer was the last to arrive. By then we had been around the table with team members reporting on their efforts since the last meeting. There had been little advancement, largely because of the weekend. Cisco said that he had had a surveillance team on Jeannie Ferrigno since Friday evening but there had been no sign of Louis Opparizio having contact with her. Meanwhile, Bosch told us that he was working his law enforcement contacts to try to determine why BioGreen was on the FBI’s radar.

Jennifer had not heard the updates and asked a few questions to catch up.

“Is there any confirmation beyond his dirty fingernails that Sam Scales was somehow involved with BioGreen?” she asked.

“Well, not under that name,” Bosch said. “I dummied in a call to check on employment for a car loan and they said they had no record of a Sam Scales working there now or ever.”

“What about the FBI?” Jennifer asked. “Do we know what they’re up to?”

“Not yet,” Bosch said. “I didn’t think we wanted to take a head-on approach to that question, so I’m sort of sniffing around the edges while trying to get a line on Scales.”

“I followed a tanker truck out of there Friday afternoon,” Cisco added. “For the hell of it. Just wanted to see where it went. But he went through a security gate at the port and I had to hold back. About a half hour later, he comes driving out and goes back to the refinery. I think he either picked up or dropped off a load.”

“Are we thinking Sam Scales was driving a truck?” Jennifer said. “What’s the scam in that?”

“Maybe he went straight,” Cisco said.

“No,” I said. “I knew Sam. He was never going to go straight. He was up to something and we still need to find it.”

There was silence for a few moments while I thought about what Bosch had said. I had spent the entirety of my career laboring in state courts and had few interactions with FBI agents or the federal government. Though Bosch had once been married to an FBI agent, I knew he had a history of antagonism when it came to his federal counterparts. The rest of my team were also outsiders when it came to the feds.

“We’ve got trial in a month,” I said. “What do you think about switching to a head-on approach to the bureau instead of sniffing around the edges?”

“We can do that,” Bosch said. “But you have to remember, the feds only respond to threat. Threat of exposure. Whatever they’ve got going down there, they want to keep it quiet and they’ll only take you seriously if they see you as endangering their secrecy or their investigation. That’s what a head-on approach is. You make yourself a threat. That’s how we always did it at the LAPD.”

I nodded and thought about that. Monica, one of the owners of the Nickel, brought over a variety plate of doughnuts to go with the pancakes and eggs we had already eaten. Jennifer, the only one who hadn’t had breakfast yet, reached for the chocolate-frosted entry.

“Anyone want to share this?” she asked.

There were no takers. Jennifer continued.

“I was going to say we should file a Freedom of Information Act request,” she said. “But those take forever. They probably wouldn’t even acknowledge receipt until after your trial.”

I nodded in agreement and then changed my mind.

“We could do that but then back it up with a subpoena requesting files on Scales,” I said.

“The FBI can ignore a subpoena,” Jennifer countered. “They don’t have to answer questions about federal investigations in state court.”

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just delivering the subpoena would be the threat Harry’s talking about. They would be on notice that this is coming up at my trial. It might bring them out of the shadows. Then we see what we can get.”

I looked at Bosch for confirmation. He nodded.

“It could work,” he said.

“Let’s do it,” Jennifer said.

“Jennifer, I know I’m putting everything on your plate,” I said. “But can you add the subpoena and FOIA request?”

“No problem,” she said. “The FOIA’s probably an online request. It’ll be done by the end of the day. I’ll work on the subpoena first. What are the parameters?”

“Sam Scales and any and all aliases,” I said. “Then include Louis Opparizio and BioGreen Industries. Anything else?”

Jennifer received a call on her cell and got up from the table to take it outside. The rest of us continued to talk through the subpoena idea.

“Even if it does bring them out, I’m not sure what you’ll get,” Bosch said. “You know what they say: the FBI doesn’t share. It eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse.”

Lorna laughed. It made me realize that Cisco had been silent through the whole discussion.

“Cisco, what do you think?” I asked.

“I think another way to get information about that place is for me to go down there and ask if they’re hiring,” Cisco said. “Maybe I get inside there and see what’s going on—even if they don’t hire me.”

“Put a hard hat on, and you look the part,” I said with a smile. “But no. If they’re running a con, they’d do a deep dive checking you out, and your name would connect to mine. I think I’d rather have you working with the Indians on Opparizio.”

Cisco called the men on his surveillance team the Indians. Political correctness aside, he likened them to the Indians in the old westerns who watched the wagon trains from the cliffs without the settlers having any clue.

“Well, ready to go if you need it,” Cisco said. “Surveillance gets a bit boring, you know?”

“Then I’ll tell you what,” I said. “If you are okay leaving your team on Opparizio and Ferrigno, why don’t you spend a couple days on Milton, the cop who pulled me over.”

Cisco nodded.

“I could do that,” he said.

“I still don’t buy his story,” I said. “If he was doing somebody’s bidding, I want to know whose and why.”

“On it,” Cisco said.

“What about me, Mickey?” Lorna said. “What do you need from me?”

I had to think fast about that. Lorna wouldn’t want to be left out of the case.

“Uh, go back into our files on Trammel,” I said. “Pull out anything that has to do with our background work on Opparizio. I don’t remember everything, and I have to be ready to go at him again—if we ever find him.”

Jennifer came back to the table from her call but didn’t sit down. She looked at me and held up her phone.

“We’re on,” she said. “Warfield set a hearing on the motion to compel for one o’clock today. She told Berg to bring her lead investigator too.”

I was surprised.

“That was quick,” I said. “We must’ve struck a nerve.”

“That was Andrew, Warfield’s clerk,” Jennifer said. “We definitely struck a nerve with the prosecution. He said Death Row Dana got mad as hell when he called her.”

“Good,” I said. “That’ll make it interesting. We’re going to put her lead detective on the stand before she does.”

I checked my watch and then looked at Lorna.

“Lorna, how long would it take to get a couple blowups off crime scene photos?” I asked.

“Give them to me now and I’ll put a rush on them,” she said. “You want them mounted on a hard back?”

“If we can,” I said. “More important just to have them for the hearing.”

I pushed my empty plate back and opened my laptop on the table. I pulled up the two crime scene photos I planned to display at the afternoon’s hearing: two different shots of Sam Scales in the trunk of my Lincoln. I sent them to Lorna and warned her that they were graphic. It wasn’t her delicate sensibilities I was trying to protect. It was the photo technician at the FedEx store that I wanted her to warn.

It felt good to enter Judge Warfield’s courtroom through the public entrance rather than the steel door from the holding cell. But at the same time, the “free man’s” entrance put me in a heavy confluence of post-lunch returnees to the courthouse, including Dana Berg, who mad-dogged me on the elevator like an OG from lockdown. I ignored it and saved my own enmity for court. I held the door for her but she declined to say thanks.

The media twins were already in their usual spots when we entered.

“I see you alerted the press,” Berg said.

“Not me,” I said. “Maybe they’re just vigilant. Isn’t that what we want in a free society? A vigilant press?”

“Well, you’re barking up the wrong tree this time. They’re going to see you get your ass handed to you by the judge.”

“For the record, Dana, I don’t blame you. I actually like you, because you’re fierce and focused. I wish all our government people were. But you have people working for you who are not doing you any favors.”

We split as we went through the railing. She went left to the prosecution table, while I went right to the defense table. Jennifer was already seated there.

“Anything from Lorna?” I asked.

“She just parked and is on her way,” she said.

“Hope so.”

I opened my briefcase and pulled out a legal pad I had worked on while doing final prep in the first-floor cafeteria. Jennifer leaned over to look at my scribbling.

“You ready?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said.

I turned in my seat and checked the gallery. I had sent a text about the hearing to my daughter, but it was last minute and I was unsure of her Monday-afternoon class schedule. I had not heard back from her and she was not in the courtroom.

Judge Warfield was ten minutes late starting the afternoon session and that gave Lorna enough time to get to the courtroom with the photo exhibits. We were locked and loaded when Deputy Chan called the room to order and Warfield took the bench.

I held my pad in hand and was ready to be called to the lectern—it was my motion, my prerogative to go first. But Berg stood and addressed the court.

“Your Honor, before Mr. Haller is allowed to stand up here and feed his completely unfounded claims to the media that he has invited to the hearing, the state would request that the hearing be moved in camera so as not to taint the jury pool that the defense is trying to reach with these wild and wholly unsubstantiated accusations.”

I was standing before she was finished and the judge cued me.

“Mr. Haller?”

“Thank you, Judge. The defense objects to the motion to move this hearing to chambers. Just because Ms. Berg doesn’t like what she will hear is no reason to cover up what is said and presented. It’s true that these are serious allegations but sunlight is the best disinfectant, Your Honor, and this hearing should remain open to all. Additionally, and for the record, I did not alert the media to this emergency hearing. I don’t know who did. But it never occurred to me, as it apparently has to Ms. Berg, that a vigilant media would be a bad thing.”

I turned and gestured toward the two reporters as I finished. I saw then that Kent Drucker, the lead investigator on the case, had arrived and was sitting in the gallery row behind the prosecution table.

“Are you finished, Mr. Haller?” Warfield asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Submitted.”

“The request for a closed hearing is denied,” Warfield said. “Mr. Haller, do you have any witnesses?”

I paused. In a perfect world a lawyer never asks a question he doesn’t know the answer to. That means a good lawyer never puts a witness on the stand whom he or she cannot control or draw the needed answers from. I knew all of that but still made the call to go against the received wisdom.

“Your Honor, I see Detective Drucker in the courtroom. Let’s start with him as the first witness.”

Drucker went through the gate to the witness stand and was sworn in. He was a seasoned investigator with more than twenty years on the job, half of it working homicides. He wore a nice suit and carried his copy of the murder book with him. If he was surprised I had called on him, he didn’t show it. Since we were not in front of a jury, I skipped the soft introductory questions and got right to the heart of the matter.

“Detective, I see you brought your murder book with you.”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“Would you mind going to the property report that was filed in regard to the belongings of the victim in this case, Sam Scales.”

Drucker opened the thick binder on the flat surface at the front of the witness box, leafed through it, and quickly found the report. I asked him to read it to the judge and he quickly ticked off items of clothing and shoes, as well as the contents of Scales’s pockets, which amounted to some loose change, a set of keys, a comb, and a money clip containing $180 in twenties.

“Anything else in his pockets?” I asked.

“No, sir,” Drucker responded.

“Cell phone?”

“No, sir.”

“No wallet?”

“No wallet.”

“Was that notable to you?”

“Yes.”

I waited for more and got nothing. Drucker was one of those witnesses who would not give an inch more than what was required.

“Can you tell us why?” I said, not hiding my exasperation.

“It raised a question,” Drucker said. “Missing wallet—could this have been a robbery?”

“But there was a money clip in his pocket, wasn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t that undercut the robbery theory and raise the possibility that the wallet was taken for another reason?”

“It could have, yes.”

“It ‘could have’? I’m asking if it did.”

“Everything was a question. The man was obviously murdered. There were a lot of possibilities as to motive.”

“Without a wallet and ID, how did you identify the victim as Sam Scales?”

“Fingerprints. There was a patrol sergeant on hand with a mobile reader. We got the ID pretty fast and it was more reliable than checking a wallet. People carry fake IDs.”

He had just unknowingly made a point that I intended to make.

“After you identified the victim as Sam Scales, did you do a criminal background check on him?”

“My partner did.”

“What did he find?”

“A long list of frauds, cons, and other crimes that I am sure you are familiar with.”

I ignored the barb and pressed on.

“Isn’t it a fact that in each of those frauds, cons, and other crimes, Sam Scales used a different alias?”

“That is correct.”

Berg sensed that a kill shot might be coming and stood up and objected.

“Your Honor, this is a motion to compel discovery, and counsel is leisurely walking the witness through the entire investigation of the case. Is there a purpose here?”

It wasn’t much of an objection but it did serve to knock me out of my rhythm. The judge admonished me to get to the point of my questioning or move on.

“Detective Drucker, knowing that the victim of this murder used different aliases, wouldn’t it have been important to the investigation to recover his wallet to see what alias he was using at the time of his death?”

Drucker digested the question for a long moment before responding.

“Hard to say,” he said.

I knew with that answer that I would never get what I wanted from Drucker. He was too wary of me to ever break free of the short answers that imparted very little information of value.

“Okay, let’s move on,” I said. “Detective, could you turn to the crime scene photos in your murder book and look at photographs thirty-seven and thirty-nine.”

While Drucker found the relevant pages in the murder book, I quickly set up two portable easels in front of the empty jury box and on them placed the 24 x 18 blowup shots Lorna had gotten made that morning. Each was a photograph of Sam Scales lying on his side in the trunk of my Lincoln. The second shot was a little tighter than the first.

“Did you find the photos, Detective Drucker?”

“Yes, I have them here.”

“Do your photos thirty-seven and thirty-nine correspond with the blowups I have put up for the court to see?”

“Do they correspond? I’m not—”

“Do they match, Detective? Are they identical?”

Drucker made a display of looking down at his photos and then at the two shots I had put up on the easels.

“They appear to be the same,” he finally said.

“Perfect,” I said. “Can you tell us for the record what the two photos depict?”

“They’re both shots of the victim in this case in the trunk of your car. One of the photos is zoomed closer in than the other.”

“Thank you, Detective. The victim is lying on his right side, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“Okay, and can I now draw your attention to the victim’s left hip, which is up toward the camera. Do you see the left rear pocket of the victim’s pants?”

“I see it.”

“Do you see the rectangular-shaped distension of the pocket?”

Drucker hesitated as he realized where this was going.

“Do you see it, Detective Drucker?”

“I see some sort of pattern there. I don’t know what it is.”

“You don’t think that is indicative of a wallet in that back pocket, Detective?”

“I couldn’t know for sure without looking in that pocket. All I do know is that there was no wallet turned in to me by forensics or the Medical Examiner’s Office.”

Berg stood and objected to the line of questioning.

“Your Honor, counsel is trying to create suspicion about the investigation of this case based on a pattern he sees in the victim’s clothing. There is no wallet in that pocket because no wallet was recovered from the victim or the crime scene. The defense is using this issue, this ghost wallet, to distract the court and feed the media a conspiracy theory he hopes will get out to the jury pool. Once again the People object, first of all, to the hearing itself, and, second, to this being discussed in open court.”

She sat down angrily and the judge turned her eyes to me.

“Your Honor, that was a nice speech, but the fact remains that anybody with two eyes can see that the victim had a wallet in his back pocket. Now that wallet is gone and not only does it cast doubt on the investigation of this murder, but it puts the defense at a steep disadvantage because it is prohibited from examining the evidence that was in the wallet. Having said all of that, if the court will indulge me for five more minutes with this witness, I believe it will become abundantly clear that something was terribly wrong with this investigation.”

Warfield took her time before responding and this told me she was riding with me on this, not with the prosecution.

“You may continue with the witness, Mr. Haller.”

“Thank you, Judge. My colleague Ms. Aronson is now going to put the body-cam video for Officer Milton on the big screen. What we will show is the early moments of the tape, when Officer Milton uses the remote car key to pop the trunk.”

The video started to play on the flat-screen on the wall opposite the jury box. The angle was from the side of the rear end of the Lincoln. Milton’s hand came up into the screen as he used his thumb to pop the trunk. The lid came up, revealing the body of Sam Scales. The camera started moving as Milton reacted.

“Okay, stop it right there,” I said. “Can you back it up to the point where the trunk just comes open?”

Jennifer did so and froze the image. Milton had taken a safe side angle to the car as he opened the trunk, presumably because he did not know who or what was in it. This gave a two-second side view of the body, an angle the forensic photographer had not taken. It just happened to be captured by Milton’s body cam.

“Detective Drucker,” I said. “Can I draw your attention to the victim’s rear left pocket again? Does what you see from this angle change your opinion as to whether the victim had a wallet in his pocket at the time the body was discovered?”

All eyes were on the video screen except mine. I even saw one of the journalists slide down her gallery bench to get a better angle on the screen. The camera angle on the video clearly showed the back pocket of the victim’s pants to be slightly open because of an object inside it. It was a dark object but there was a line of lighter color running lengthwise in the middle of it.

To me, it was clearly a wallet with the edge of a currency bill poking out of it. To Drucker, it was still nothing.

“No,” he testified. “I can’t tell for sure what that is.”

I had him.

“What do you mean by ‘what that is,’ Detective?”

“I mean I can’t tell. It could be anything.”

“But you are now acknowledging that there is something in his pocket, correct?”

Drucker realized he had walked into a defense trap.

“Well, I can’t say for sure,” he said. “It could just be the lining of the pocket.”

“Really?” I said, full of disbelief. “You are now saying that is the lining of the pocket?”

“I’m saying I don’t know for sure.”

“Detective, can you go back to the property report you have in the murder book, and I’ll ask my last question.”

The room waited silently until Drucker had it in front of him.

“Okay, sir,” I said. “The property report lists where each item recovered came from, correct?”

“Yes, correct.”

Drucker seemed relieved to get an easy one. But I didn’t let it last long.

“Okay, then,” I said. “What does the report say was removed from the left rear pocket of the victim’s pants?”

“Nothing,” Drucker said. “Nothing is listed.”

“No further questions,” I said.

Like a good prosecutor, Dana Berg was thinking of the trial down the road. Her cross-examination of Detective Drucker was not so much about winning the day as it was about winning the trial. She had to make sure that what went on the record today would not turn a juror against Drucker or the prosecution at trial. The smartest move she made was to ask for a ten-minute recess after I finished my direct. That gave her the space to huddle with Drucker and get a handle on what was transpiring here.

When court reconvened, Drucker had a completely different view of the photographs and video I had showed him.

I was not surprised.

“Detective Drucker, did you get a chance to review all of the crime scene photos of the victim during the break?” she asked.

“Yes, I did,” Drucker said.

“And did you draw any new conclusions about what you saw?”

“I looked at all of the photos we have of the body in the trunk and I now believe that there most likely was a wallet in the rear pocket of the pants at the time the body was in the trunk.”

I had to smile. Berg was going to make it seem as though the prosecution team had made this discovery and brought it to light.

“And yet your own property report says no wallet. How do you explain that?”

“Well, obviously, the wallet was taken at some point.”

“Taken? You mean taken and misplaced?”

“Possibly.”

“Could it have been stolen?”

“Possibly.”

“When was the clothing that was on the body searched?”

“We didn’t touch it while it was in the trunk. We waited for the coroner’s people to arrive and then the body was removed from the trunk. We grabbed his prints with the reader and then the body was wrapped in plastic. After that, it was taken to the coroner’s office for autopsy.”

“So, can you say at what point the clothing was removed and examined and the property inventoried?”

“That all falls under the coroner’s duties. The body was prepped for autopsy the following day and I got a call from an investigator over there that I could swing by and pick up the property.”

“And did you?”

“Not right away. The autopsy was scheduled for the following morning. I waited to pick up the property then.”

“It wasn’t urgent?”

“Not really. The coroner’s investigator shot me an email with the property list. I noted that there was no wallet, and the other property didn’t appear to be germane to the investigation.”

“You got that email when?”

Drucker looked up innocently at the judge.

“Can I refer to my records?” he asked.

“You may,” Warfield said.

Drucker flipped through pages in the murder book and then stopped to read.

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