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“If the Sheriff’s Department knows, they’re not sharing it with me. I have Cisco looking into it and a call in to Harry Bosch.”

“I don’t want to pull Cisco off trial prep. That could be the whole motive behind it.”

“No, because he tried to kill you and probably thought he did. You don’t kill a guy to distract his investigators. I filed a motion with Warfield today asking her to issue an order reinstituting bail or ordering the sheriff to transport you by car to and from court. No more buses. Too dangerous.”

“That’s good thinking.”

“I hope to get a hearing on it this afternoon. We’ll see.”

“Is there like a hand mirror around here or something?”

“Why?”

“I want to see myself.”

“Mickey, I don’t think you—”

“It’s all right. I just want to take a quick look and I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t see a mirror, but hold on, I have something.”

I heard her unzip her purse and then she put a small square object in my hand. A mirror from a makeup case. I held it up to my face and managed to get a glimpse. I looked like a boxer on the morning after a fight—and a losing bout at that. My eyes were swollen and the rash of exploded blood vessels extended from the corners of my eyes and across both cheeks.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Yeah, not a good look,” Jennifer said. “I still think you should let the doctor test you.”

“I’m going to be fine.”

“Mickey, there could be something and you should know.”

“But then the prosecution could know and they’ll use it to ask for a delay.”

There was a brief silence as Jennifer considered that and realized I was right.

“Okay, I’m getting tired,” I said. “Send in the investigator, let’s see what he says.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes. And don’t pull Cisco off trial prep. When you hear from Bosch, put him on Mason Maddox. I want to know everything. There’s got to be a link somewhere.”

“A link to what, Mickey?”

“A link to the case. Or the sheriff’s wiretap investigation. Something. We have to look at everybody. The sheriffs, Opparizio, the FBI, everybody.”

“Okay, I’ll tell the guys.”

“You think I’m paranoid, don’t you?”

“I just think it’s kind of far-fetched.”

I nodded. Maybe it was.

“Did they let you bring your phone in here?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay, take a picture of me. You might want to show it to the judge when you make your argument for protection.”

“Good idea.”

I heard her getting her phone out of her purse.

“I’m sure Berg will object to it,” she said. “But worth a try.”

“If the judge knows there’s a photo, she’ll want to see it,” I said. “Human curiosity.”

I heard her snap the shot.

“Okay, Mickey,” she said. “Rest up.”

“That’s the plan,” I said.

I heard her step toward the door.

“Jennifer?” I said.

I heard her steps come back to the bed.

“Yes, I’m here,” Jennifer said.

“Look, I can’t really see yet, but I can hear,” I said.

“Okay.”

“And I hear doubt in your voice.”

“No, you’re wrong.”

“Look, it’s a natural thing. To question things. I think you—”

“It’s not that, Mickey.”

“Then, what is it?”

“Okay, look, it’s my father. He’s gotten sick. I’m worried about him.”

“Is he in the hospital? What’s wrong?”

“That’s the thing. We’re not getting straight answers. He’s in a care home up in Seattle and my sister and I are not getting answers.”

“Is your sister there?”

“Yes, she thinks I should go up. If I want to see him before … you know.”

“Then, she’s right, you need to go.”

“But we have the case—the trial. The motions hearing is next week and now this attack.”

I knew that losing her could be devastating to the case, but there was no choice.

“Look,” I said, “you gotta go. You can take your laptop and there’s a lot you can do from up there when you’re not with your father. You can write motions, Cisco can get them to the court clerk.”

“It’s not the same,” she said.

“I know it’s not but it’s what we can do. You need to go.”

“I feel like I’m leaving you all alone.”

“I’ll figure something out. Go up there, see him, and, who knows, maybe he’ll start feeling better and you get back down for trial.”

She didn’t respond at first. I had said my piece and was already thinking of alternative ways to go.

“I’m going to think about it tonight,” Jennifer finally said. “I’ll let you know tomorrow, okay?”

“That’s okay, but I don’t think there is much to think about. It’s family. Your father. You have to go.”

“Thanks, Mickey.”

I nodded.

I heard her steps again as she headed to the door. I tried to relax my throat and ease the pain. Talking felt like swallowing glass.

Then I heard Jennifer tell the investigator waiting outside the room that he could go in.

PART FOUR

BLEEDING THE BEAST

Wednesday, February 19

The world seemed to be on the edge of chaos. More than a thousand people were dead from a mystery virus in China. Almost a billion people were on lockdown there and American citizens had been evacuated. There were cruise ships out on the Pacific that were floating incubators of the virus, and no vaccine was on the horizon. The president was saying the crisis would pass, while his own virus expert was saying brace for a pandemic. Closer to home, Jennifer Aronson’s father had just died in Seattle of an undiagnosed illness, and she was not getting any answers.

In L.A., it was the second day of jury selection in the trial of my life.

We had been proceeding at a rapid pace. The four days scheduled for voir dire had been cut in half by a judge who also felt that there was a coming wave. She wanted this trial over with before the wave hit, and while I wasn’t comfortable hurrying to pick a jury, I was right there with the judge. I wanted this over. Some of the deputies at Twin Towers had started wearing masks and I took that as a sign. I didn’t want to be in lockup when that wave the judge was worried about came in.

Still, picking the twelve strangers who would deliberate the case involved the most important decisions of the trial. Those twelve would hold my life in their hands, and the time allotted to choosing them had been chopped in half. This had caused me to take extraordinary measures to quickly try to find out who these people were.

Jury selection was an art form. It involved research, knowledge of social and cultural data, and, finally, gut instinct. What you want in the end is a panel of attentive people who are there for the truth. What you look for and hope to root out are those who view the truth through the prism of bias—racial, political, cultural, and so forth. And those with ulterior motives for serving.

The process begins with the judge weeding out jurors who have conflicts of schedule, can’t sit in judgment of others, or can’t grasp the meaning of legal tenets like reasonable doubt. It then moves to the lawyers, who may question jurors further to determine if they should be dismissed for cause—reasons of bias or background. The prosecution and defense are also given an equal number of peremptory challenges allowing them to dismiss jurors for unstated reasons. And that is where gut instinct most often comes into play.

All of this must be synthesized into decisions about whom to keep in and whom to kick out. That is the art—to finally arrive at a panel of twelve people you believe will be open to your cause. I fully admit that there is an advantage to the defense in that it has to win the belief of only one juror to be successful—one doubter of the state’s case. One holdout for the defense can hang a jury and force the state to start over, or even reconsider whether to go forward with a second trial at all. The state must win all twelve hearts and minds to get a conviction. Still, the state’s advantages beyond this one are so enormous as to make the defense’s jury advantage negligible. But you take what you are given, and therefore jury selection has always been sacred to me, made all the more so this time because I was the defendant.

It was 2 p.m. and the judge was expecting—no, demanding—that a jury be empaneled by the close of court in three hours. I could push it into the next day, because the judge ultimately wouldn’t want to enforce a demand that was potentially reversible on appeal. But if I did force the issue, there would be consequences down the line in terms of rulings from the bench.

Besides that, I was down to my last peremptory challenge and I knew there was no way I would be able to milk it for three more hours. We would fill the box before the courtroom went dark and the prosecution in the murder of Sam Scales would begin in the morning.

The good news was that the panel was largely set with jurors who I believed ranged on the defense meter from yellow—the middle ground—to deep green for pro-defense. Because of long-embedded and rightful distrust of police in minority communities, Black and brown jurors were always prized by the defense because they tended to view the testimony of police officers with suspicion. I had managed to keep four African Americans and two Latinas on the panel, fending off Dana Berg’s efforts to jettison the Blacks in particular. When one Black panelist revealed under questioning that she had once made a donation to the local Black Lives Matter organization, Berg first asked for the woman to be dismissed for cause. Making the request to an African-American judge took a certain level of courage, but it also underlined Berg’s singular purpose in convicting me. When the judge denied the motion, the prosecutor then attempted to use a peremptory challenge. That was when I swung in with an objection that the move was based on race, a clear exception to the rules of peremptory challenges. The judge agreed and the juror was seated. The ruling put Berg on notice in regard to future efforts to sculpt the jury along racial lines but then allowed me to do just that.

It was a big win for the defense but the last round of challenges had left three new faces in the box and I had just one peremptory. All three were white—two women and one man. And this was where my extraordinary juror profiling came into play. Early the morning before, Cisco had posted himself in the First Street garage, where jurors were directed to park. At that point, a few hundred potential jurors had been summoned for jury duty. Cisco had no way of knowing who would end up on my panel but he took note of character-defining aspects of the people arriving: things like make and model of cars, registrations, bumper stickers, interior contents, and so on. A person driving a Mercedes SL is going to have a different worldview from someone driving a Toyota Prius.

Sometimes you want the Mercedes on the jury. Sometimes you want the Prius.

After the first morning session with the hundred people called for the panel in my case, Cisco went back to the garage at lunchtime and then again at the end of the day. By his fourth time in the garage on Wednesday morning, he was recognizing people assigned to my case and building intel on many of them.

When court was back in session, he returned from the garage, sat in the gallery, and communicated what he knew about each potential juror to my co-counsel. I wasn’t alone at the table but I wasn’t with Jennifer Aronson either. My new co-counsel was Maggie McPherson. She had taken a leave of absence from the District Attorney’s Office and answered my distress call. I could think of no one better to be sitting next to as I faced the most difficult challenge of my life.

You never want to use your last peremptory, because you never know who will take the seat of the potential juror you just dismissed. You could clear the way for a new face that is a prosecutor’s dream, and you are left with nothing with which to stop it. So you always hold back the last peremptory for emergency circumstances only. I learned this the hard way as a baby lawyer when I was defending a man accused of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. I felt sure that the assault charge was bogus, an add-on by the arresting officer because of personal animosity. The officer was white and my client Black. During jury selection I gambled with my last peremptory to kick out a potential juror who was yellow on my meter. There were still several African Americans in the courtroom pool waiting to be randomly called to the box. I figured my chances were almost fifty-fifty that one of them would get the call to take the open seat for questioning. The move paid off. A Black woman was called, but under questioning she revealed that she was the daughter of a retired law enforcement officer who had served in the Sheriff’s Department for thirty-two years. I questioned her at length, trying to elicit an answer that would get her bumped for cause, but she maintained her stance that she could view the case impartially. The judge denied my request to dismiss her, so there I was, with a cop’s daughter on my assault-on-a-police-officer jury and no peremptory to change it. My client went down on all charges and spent a year in a county detention center for a crime I believed he had not committed.

I followed my usual routine for charting and tracking jurors through the selection process. A plain manila file folder was open flat on the defense table. I had drawn what I called the ice-cube tray across both flaps: a long rectangle divided into fourteen squares for the jury of twelve and two alternates. Each cube was two inches square—the size of a small Post-it Note. I wrote the salient thoughts and details about each prospective juror in the cube numbered for the jury box seat the candidate occupied. As jurors were dismissed and new people took the seats, I used Post-its to cover the no-longer-needed details and start again. Charting everything on the file folder allowed me to flip it closed if inquiring eyes wandered over from the prosecution table.

The prosecution got to question the new additions to the panel first. And while Berg went through her routine questions, Maggie and I checked the texts coming to her laptop from Cisco, who had to disguise what he was doing because no one but the attorneys on the case was allowed to use electronic devices in the courtroom. Cisco hid his phone from the courtroom deputies by keeping it down on the bench next to one of his massive thighs.

To protect the anonymity of the jury in a criminal case, the prospective jurors were referred to by numbers given to them when they checked in at the jury coordination center on the first floor. Cisco’s texts did the same.

17 parked in handicap—no tag.

That reference was to the male member of the new trio. It was an interesting piece of information but not something I would be able to go at directly without possibly giving away how I got the information. Revealing that I had an investigator scoping out potential jurors in the parking garage would not go over well with the judge or the California bar. It didn’t go over well with Maggie McFierce either. She was getting a quick education in criminal defense and didn’t always like what she was learning. But I wasn’t worried. She was now co-opted by the attorney-client relationship.

I had watched number 17 stand up in the gallery when his number was called. He had squeezed past others out of the row and then moved to the jury box for questioning without showing any obvious physical difficulty or handicap. Of course, there were other possible unseen issues that could have resulted in his receiving a handicap tag. But it bothered me. If the man was a cheat, I didn’t want him on the jury.

Cisco immediately followed his first missive with a text on one of the women.

68 should be 86ed. Trump 2020 bumper sticker.

This was good intel. Politics were a good window into a person’s soul. If 68 was a supporter of the president, it was likely she was a law-and-order hard-liner—not good for a guy accused of murder. That this person would continue to support the president after the media had documented his many, many untruths was a factor as well. It was blind loyalty to a cause, and an indicator that truthfulness was not an important part of her framework.

I agreed with Cisco. She had to go.

On the third potential juror—number 21—Cisco had limited intel.

21 drives a Prius. Extinction Rebellion sticker on rear window.

I didn’t know what an Extinction Rebellion sign was but I thought I understood the sticker’s message. Both pieces of information were almost useless. Both could be indicators of a judgmental personality, particularly when it came to the environment and crime. I drove a gas-eating Lincoln and that would certainly come out in trial. And I was charged with a very violent crime while being a person who associated professionally with others charged with violent acts.

I kept an ear on the proceedings as Berg questioned the new candidates but I also huddled with Maggie as she pulled out the questionnaires the three had filled out when reporting for jury service.

Immediately I changed my mind about 21. I liked what I read. She was thirty-six years old, unmarried, lived in Studio City, and had a job as a prep chef at one of the upscale restaurants at the Hollywood Bowl. This told me she liked music and culture and chose to work in a place that had both. She also listed reading first among her hobbies. I didn’t think anyone who was a reader could avoid coming across stories—nonfiction or fiction—that underscored the frailties of the American justice system, chief among them that the police don’t always get it right and that innocent people are sometimes accused and convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. I believed that would give 21 an open mind. She would listen closely to my case.

“I want her,” I whispered.

“Yeah, she looks good,” Maggie whispered back.

I moved on to the other two questionnaires. I saw that 68, the other female, was my age and had gotten married the same year she graduated from Pepperdine, a conservative Christian school in Malibu. Add all of that to the Trump bumper sticker, and I was convinced. She had to go.

Maggie agreed.

“You want to use the last challenge?” she asked.

“No, I’m going to question her,” I said. “Try to get her bumped for cause.”

“What about the guy? There’s nothing here.”

She was referring to 17. I scanned his questionnaire and had to agree with Maggie. Nothing on the single page drew a flag. He was forty-six years old and married, an assistant principal at a private school in Encino. I was familiar with it because Maggie and I had flirted with the idea of sending Hayley there for elementary school many years before. We took the tour and went to a parents’ presentation but ultimately got a bad vibe. Most of the students came from well-to-do families. We weren’t destitute by any means but Maggie was a civil servant and I was always chasing money cases. Some years were fat, some were thin. We thought the peer pressure on our daughter would be unhealthy. We enrolled her somewhere else.

“You remember this guy?” I asked. “He would have been there when we looked at the place.”

“I don’t recognize him,” Maggie said.

“I’ll see what I can get on Q and A. You okay with my taking all three?”

“Of course. It’s your case. I don’t want you deferring to me.”

While Berg finished her canvassing of the jurors, I wrote notes on all three on Post-its and attached them to the corresponding squares on my ice-cube tray chart. I wrote in green for 21 and red for 68. For 17, I wrote a yellow question mark. Then I folded the file closed.

When it was my turn to question the people who might decide my future, the judge verbally cut me off at the knees before I even got to the lectern.

“You have fifteen minutes, Mr. Haller,” she said.

“Your Honor, we technically have three open seats and then the alternates to fill,” I protested. “The prosecution just took way more than fifteen minutes to question these three.”

“No, you’re wrong. I timed it. Fourteen minutes. I’m giving you fifteen. Starting now. You can use the time to argue with me or to question the jurors.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

I went to the lectern and started with number 68.

“Juror sixty-eight, I was looking at your questionnaire and didn’t see what your husband does for a living.”

“My husband was killed in Iraq seventeen years ago.”

That brought a moment of silence—a collective holding of breath—as I retooled my approach. I could not let the jurors who were already seated see me treat the woman with anything but kid gloves.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. “And that I even brought the memory up.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “The memory never goes away.”

I nodded. Though I had stumbled into this, I had to find a way to finesse my way out.

“Uh, on the questionnaire, you didn’t check that you had been a victim of a crime. Don’t you consider the loss of your husband to be in a way a crime?”

“That was war. That was different. He gave his life for his country.”

God and country—a defense lawyer’s nightmare on a jury.

“Then he was a hero,” I offered.

“And still is,” she said.

“Right. He still is.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you been on a jury before, ma’am?”

“It was one of the questions on the form. No, I have not. And please don’t call me ma’am. Makes me feel like my mother.”

There was a slight tickle of laughter in the courtroom. I smiled and pressed on.

“I will refrain from doing that. Let me ask you a question: If a police officer testifies to one thing and then a regular citizen testifies and says the opposite, whom do you believe?”

“Well, I guess you just have to weigh what each one says and try to figure out who’s telling the truth. It could be the officer. But it might not be.”

“But do you give the police officer the benefit of the doubt?”

“Not necessarily. I would have to hear more about the officer. You know, who he is, how he comes across. Like that.”

I nodded. It was becoming clear that she was a Jury Judy—someone who wants to be on the jury and gives the right answer to every question whether or not it reflects her true sentiments. I am always suspicious of people who want to be on a jury, who want to judge others.

“Okay, and as the judge explained yesterday, you know that I am both the defendant and defense attorney in this case. If at the end of this trial you think that I probably committed the crime of murder, how do you vote in the jury room?”

“I would have to trust my instincts after weighing the evidence.”

“Which means what? How would you vote?”

“If I’m convinced beyond a reasonable doubt, I vote guilty.”

“Is thinking I probably did it convincing? Is that what you mean?”

“No, like I said, I would have to feel you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“What does reasonable doubt mean to you, ma’am?”

Before 68 could answer, the judge cut in.

“Mr. Haller, are you trying to bait the juror?” Warfield said. “She asked you not to call her that.”

“No, Judge,” I said. “I just forgot. My Southern manners. I apologize.”

“That’s all well and good, but I know you were born right here in Los Angeles, because I knew your father.”

“Just a figure of speech, Your Honor. I won’t say the offending word again.”

“Very well, continue. You’re using up all your time on this one juror. I’m not giving you an extension.”

Fifteen minutes to interview the people who might decide your fate. I thought I had my first point of appeal should the trial not go the way I wanted it to. I turned my attention back to the woman in the jury box.

“If you could, can you tell us what you believe reasonable doubt to mean?”

“Just that there’s no other possible explanation. Based on the evidence and your evaluation of it, it couldn’t have been anybody else.”

I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make any headway with her. She had her answers rehearsed. I had to wonder whether she had been following the case in the media.

“Yesterday morning the judge asked for a show of hands for anyone who had read about this case in the media. You did not raise your hand, correct?”

“That’s correct. I had never heard of it before.”

I didn’t believe her. She knew about the case and for some reason wanted to be on the jury. I checked my watch and moved on to Mr. 17. I had no choice.

“Sir, you are an assistant principal at a private elementary school, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I see on the questionnaire that you have a master’s degree in education and are working on a doctorate.”

“Yes, part-time on the doctorate.”

“Is there a reason why you haven’t chosen to teach at the university level?”

“Not really. I like working with younger kids. That’s where I get my fulfillment.”

I nodded.

“It says you also coach the boys’ basketball team at the school. Does that require a lot of physical activity on your part?”

“Well, I think the boys should see their coach as someone who can keep up with them. Someone in shape.”

“You do strength-training exercises with them?”

“Uh, sometimes.”

“You run with them?”

“I do laps in the gym with them.”

“What is your philosophy on sport? Winning is everything?”

“Well, I’m competitive, yes, but I don’t think winning is everything.”

“What do you think, then?”

“I think winning is better than losing.”

That drew some polite laughter. And I changed the direction of my questions.

“Your wife. According to the info sheet, she is a teacher as well?”

“Yes, same school. We met there.”

“So I assume you carpool to school together?”

“No, I have the coaching after school, and she has a part-time job at a crafts store. So different schedules, different cars.”

“Do you think that there are serious crimes and not serious crimes?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you think that there are some crimes that shouldn’t be considered crimes?”

“I don’t really understand.”

“I guess I’m talking about the highs and lows. Murder—that’s a crime, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And those who murder should pay for their crimes. You agree?”

“Of course.”

“What about smaller crimes? Crimes where there are no victims—should we bother with those?”

“A crime is a crime.”

The judge intervened again.

“Mr. Haller, do you intend to question juror twenty-one with the time you have left?” she asked.

I was annoyed at the interruption. I was building toward a decision with 17 and she shouldn’t have interrupted.

“As soon as I’m finished here, Your Honor,” I said, my frustration clear in my voice. “Can I proceed?”

“Go ahead,” Warfield said.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Haller.”

I turned back to 17 and attempted to gather my splintered momentum.

“Sir, is a crime a crime, no matter how big or small?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“What about jaywalking? It’s against the law but do you think it’s a crime?”

“Well, if that’s what the law is, then, yes, I guess it’s a crime. A minor crime.”

“What about parking in a handicapped zone when you have no handicap?”

It was a gamble. All I knew about 17 was what I had read on the questionnaire and what I learned in the text from Cisco about his parking in a handicapped spot. I had to make a call on him but could only dance around the essential question: Was he a cheater?

We stared at each other in silent communication before 17 finally spoke.

“There might be a reasonable explanation for someone doing that,” he said.

There it was. He didn’t believe he needed to play by the rules. He was a cheater and he had to go.

“So what you’re saying is that—”

Warfield interrupted again.

“Your time is up, Mr. Haller,” she said. “Counsel, approach.”

I cursed under my breath and turned away from 17.

We had been handling challenges at the bench so the objections to jurors—possibly embarrassing to them—were not made in open court. But when I got to the bench, I was too hot to worry about keeping my voice down.

“Your Honor, I need time to question the last juror,” I said. “You can’t arbitrarily set my time based on what time the state needed. That is patently unfair to the defense.”

Maggie had joined the conference at the bench. She now lightly touched my arm as the judge responded. It was a warning to tread carefully.

“Mr. Haller, your time management is not my problem,” Warfield said. “I made it abundantly clear from the start of day yesterday, start of day today, and at the start of your most recent questioning of potential jurors: we are going to finish jury selection today and opening statements are tomorrow. We are now approaching three o’clock and we still have alternates to seat and I imagine at least one or two jurors. Your time was up. Now, does either of you have a challenge?”

Before Berg could say a word, I spoke.

“I would like to confer with counsel first,” I said. “Could we take the afternoon break and then consider challenges?”

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