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“ ‘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.

“Look at this,” Cisco said.

He held up a thin study manual for the California commercial driver’s license exam.

“It’s got stuff underlined in it,” Cisco said. “Like he was really studying it.”

“And I found an owner’s manual for a Mack tanker truck,” I said.

“I’ll say it again—maybe he was going straight. Being a trucker or something.”

“No way. For Sam, working a square job was worse than prison. He was working a long con. He could never go straight.”

“Then, what was it?”

“I don’t know but we’re getting close. This is why they stole the wallet.”

“Why?”

“The wallet had his current alias. That would have led here and then to BioGreen. They didn’t want us getting there.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“We don’t know yet. Maybe Opparizio. Maybe the FBI. They’re set up on Opparizio and that place and didn’t want the investigation compromised by a murder investigation linked to BioGreen. As soon as the LAPD ran Sam’s prints that night, the bureau probably got an alert. They assess the situation and go grab the wallet before anybody looks at it. They come here, search the place, remove any connection. Sam is never linked to the Walter Lennon alias and the investigation never gets to BioGreen.”

“So you’re saying they just stood by while you got tagged with the murder and were going to let you go down for it?”

“I don’t know. It had to have been a plan hatched without a lot of down-the-road thinking. Maybe they were just buying time to wrap things up on BioGreen. Then I blew up the schedule when I refused to waive a speedy trial. Instead of a trial in July or even later, it’s February, and they didn’t see that coming.”

“Maybe. A lot of maybes.”

“It’s all speculation right now. But I think we’re—”

Bosch entered the garage then and I stopped.

“Anything upstairs?” I asked.

“Clean,” he said. “I found a false-floor storage space in the bedroom closet, but it wasn’t hidden well and was empty. Whoever searched the place before would have found it.”

“How big?” I asked. “Could a laptop fit?”

“Yeah, it could fit,” Bosch said.

“That’s what’s missing here,” I said. “Sam used the Internet for his scams. I can’t see him without a computer. Plus there’s a phone bill in here for a full-service package including home Wi-Fi. Why get Wi-Fi if you don’t have a computer?”

“So, we’re missing a computer, a phone, and a wallet,” Cisco said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“What’s in the boxes?” Bosch asked.

“Not much,” I said. “A pair of boots with grease in the treads. We’re almost finished.”

I went back to the last box and saw that the bottom was lined with various documents and paperwork—things that were probably stuffed into a kitchen drawer. There was an instruction manual for the coffee maker, a set of step-by-step directions for putting together an Ikea table, and several opened letters from Neiderland. That Scales had kept them reinforced in me the idea that they’d had a romantic relationship.

There was also a trifold and stapled printout of a story from the

New York Times. The headline read “Bleeding the Beast.”

The story had a Salt Lake City dateline. I started reading and by the time I finished I knew that the story changed everything. And I knew that the printout was something I would need to turn over in discovery to the prosecution—if I took it from the garage.

I refolded the printout and dropped it back into the box. I picked up the Mack truck owner’s manual and dropped it in as well. I then closed it up and stacked two other boxes on top of it.

I pulled my phone and texted Bishop, telling him to come pick me up.

“Okay, we’re out of here,” I said.

“Wait,” Cisco said. “You don’t want to take any of this stuff?”

“We take it, we have to share it,” I said.

“Discovery,” Cisco said.

“Let them discover it on their own,” I said. “They’re not doing me any favors, I won’t do any for them. Let’s go. I have court.”

I checked Bosch as we walked out to see if he showed any signs of discomfort with my decision to leave everything behind. I didn’t see a thing.

Bishop was pulling up out front as we emerged. I handed Cisco the key to the apartment.

“You mind taking the key back to the old lady?” I asked. “And get her name and contact info. To put on the witness list.”

“You got it,” Cisco said.

“Tell her we found nothing of value to the estate in the boxes. She can donate them or get rid of them any way she wishes. As soon as she wants to.”

Cisco looked at me and nodded. He understood what I meant. Get rid of the property before the police or prosecution finally find this place.

“I’ll deliver the message,” he said.

Things had changed rapidly since the first hearing on Sam Scales’s missing wallet. My outrage over the missing evidence and its impact on my case was now tempered by my team’s findings of the last forty-eight hours. I believed I had learned the key secret of the wallet—the alias Sam was using in the last year of his life. And now I didn’t want to share that secret with the prosecution until I had to. I certainly didn’t want it to be pursued by a court order or continue to be an issue. This led me to approach the hearing in Judge Warfield’s courtroom cautiously and with a plan to score points—especially in front of the reporters who would be there—but to let sleeping dogs lie.

Judge Warfield was again a solid ten minutes late coming to the bench for the afternoon session. This gave me time to update Jennifer on the morning’s activities. I told her about the Times story from Salt Lake City and the need to keep the knowledge it gave us under wraps. I cautioned her against printing out the story if she looked it up in the newspaper’s archives.

“If it’s on paper, it goes into discovery,” I said. “So, no paper.”

“Got it,” Jennifer said.

“Also, there was a man in the story, a witness named Art Schultz. He was retired from the EPA. We need to find him and bring him in as a witness. He’ll be key.”

“But what happens when we put him on the witness list? The prosecution will be all over it and they’ll figure out where we’re going with this.”

Each side’s witness list was included in discovery, and the court required an abbreviated summary of what every witness would testify to. Writing these so that they were accurate on face at the same time that they carried no hint of strategy or significance of the full testimony was an art form.

“There’s a way around it,” I said. “To camouflage it. Make contact with Schultz and get his CV. He was with the EPA, so he probably has a biology degree or something like that. Put him on the list and say he’ll testify in regard to the material found under the victim’s fingernails. He’ll be our grease expert and will probably fly well below the prosecution’s radar. But once we get him on the stand, we’ll use him to connect what’s under the nails to what’s going on at BioGreen.”

“Risky, but okay,” Jennifer said. “I’ll work on it after the hearing.”

The judge stepped out from the door to her chambers and took the bench. She first apologized for being late, explaining that a monthly judges’ luncheon had run long. She then got down to business.

“This is a continuation of a motion to compel discovery by the defense, and I believe, Ms. Berg, that I instructed you to investigate the matter of a missing wallet and to report back to the court. What have you found?”

Berg stepped over to the lectern to address the court. She looked pained as she adjusted the level of the microphone.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. “Simply stated, the wallet remains missing. Over the past two days, Detective Drucker has conducted an investigation and is here to testify if necessary. But the wallet was not found. The People concede that the video evidence presented by the defense Monday is conclusive in that regard—there does appear to have been a wallet in the victim’s back pocket at the time the body was discovered in the trunk of the defendant’s car. But it was not among the personal property that was later turned over to the LAPD at the coroner’s office.”

“Have you determined when it was taken or by whom?” Warfield pressed.

“No, Your Honor,” Berg said. “The procedure is that the body would have been transported to the coroner’s office, where it would have been placed in the prep room. That’s where clothing and property is removed and the bodies are prepared for autopsy, while the property is sealed and held for the police. In this case specifically, the body was discovered in the evening and therefore not delivered to the prep room until approximately two a.m. This means that autopsy prep would not have occurred until the morning.”

“So, the body would have just been sitting there unattended?” the judge asked.

“Not exactly,” Berg said. “It would have been moved to a large refrigerated crypt that is part of the coroner’s office.”

“So, it was in with other bodies.”

“Yes, Judge.”

“Not isolated.”

“Not beyond being in a crypt where authorized access is required.”

“Did Detective Drucker check to see if there are any surveillance cameras in the area?”

“He did and there are no cameras.”

“So we have no way of knowing who may have gained access to this crypt and taken the wallet.”

“That is correct at this time.”

“At this time? Do you think that is going to change?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“What is it that the People suggest I do about this, Ms. Berg?”

“Your Honor, the People make no excuse for the loss of this property. However, it is a loss that impacts both sides equally. Neither the People nor the defense has the opportunity to access the wallet and whatever case information, if any, it contained. Therefore, it is the People’s position that while we accept responsibility for the loss, the damage—if any—is equal.”

Warfield digested that for a few moments before responding.

“Something tells me that Mr. Haller is not going to agree with that assessment,” she said. “Would the defense like to respond?”

I was up quickly and to the lectern almost before Berg had time to step away.

“Yes, Your Honor is exactly right,” I said. “The damage to the defense and prosecution can in no way be considered equal. The state sits fat and happy with the case just as it is, Your Honor. They have a body in the trunk of a car and they’ve charged the driver. No need to dig deeper than that. Case closed. They didn’t even raise a question about the missing wallet until the defense did. They clearly weren’t interested, because the wallet and what ID the victim was using could lead to what Sam Scales was up to on the last days of his life, and that might not fit with the neat package they have put together on me. It is clear, Judge, that the damage here is to the defense, not the prosecution.”

“Say I agree with you, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “What is the remedy the defense seeks?”

“There is no remedy. The defense wants the wallet. That’s the remedy.”

“Then, what is the penalty? There appears to be no evidence of sinister behavior by those involved in the investigation. The wallet appears to have been stolen by someone who had access to the body while it was in the custody of the coroner’s office. The matter will certainly be referred for internal investigation by the coroner, but the court does not feel inclined to punish the prosecution for this unfortunate set of circumstances.”

I shook my head in frustration even though I knew this was heading toward the outcome I had expected and, based on the morning’s discoveries, wanted.

“Your Honor,” I said. “For the record, then, I want it noted that the investigation of the missing evidence carried out by the prosecution was conducted by the same detective who was in charge of protecting the crime scene and the evidence in this case.”

“So noted, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “Any other matters before we adjourn?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Berg said.

I relinquished the lectern to her and headed back to my seat, shaking my head as if frustrated by the judge’s ruling.

“Excuse me, Ms. Berg,” Warfield said. “Mr. Haller, I noted your demonstration. Are you upset with the court’s decision?”

I stopped in my tracks.

“Your Honor, I’m just frustrated,” I said. “I am trying to put together a defense and it seems that at every turn, I am thwarted. The People lost the wallet—by negligence or malfeasance doesn’t really matter—and I will pay for it. That’s all.”

“I advise counsel on both sides to keep their emotions and demonstrations in check,” Warfield said. “Particularly when we go to trial. The court will have no patience for such outbursts then, not in front of a jury.”

“Judge, I would not call it an outburst. I was just—”

“Are you going to argue with the court now as well, Mr. Haller?”

“No, Your Honor.”

I continued to my seat and Warfield tracked me with her eyes in case I so much as frowned. Finally, she broke away and looked at the prosecutor.

“Ms. Berg, continue,” she said.

“Judge, yesterday we received the first witness list from the defendant,” Berg said. “It had only two names on it—the defendant himself and his investigator. This from a defendant who has twice come before this court to complain about discovery issues, and he has the audacity to put just two names down on his witness list.”

Warfield looked like she was either weary of the constant cross fire between the prosecution and defense or was being hit with fatigue from the two martinis she’d probably had at the judges’ lunch. I was sure the alcohol was what had inspired her to snap at me. Before I could object to Berg’s complaint, Warfield held her hand up to me, indicating that she was not interested in my response.

“It’s early, Ms. Berg,” Warfield said. “We are still almost thirty days out, and there will be an update on the lists from both parties next week and every week after. Let’s wait a bit before we panic about whom he plans to call. Anything of a more serious nature?”

“No, Your Honor,” Berg said.

“No, Your Honor,” I said.

“Very well,” Warfield said. “Then we are adjourned.”

Having not had time to eat before the hearing, I went to the Little Jewel for a shrimp po’boy sandwich directly after court. I was joined by everyone on the defense team except Bosch. He was apparently off doing his own thing again and was incommunicado. I told the team that the defense had turned a corner with the case knowledge gathered in the last forty-eight hours and that it was time to start thinking in terms of presenting the case to a jury. We could clearly anticipate what the prosecution presentation would be, because it had not really changed since the start of the case. We could prepare for that but what was more important was preparing to tell our story.

A trial often comes down to who is a better storyteller, the prosecution or the defense. There is evidence, of course, but physical evidence is at first interpreted for the jury by the storyteller.

Story A: A man kills an enemy, puts the body in the trunk, and plans to bury it late at night, when there will be no one around to see.

Story B: A man is set up for the murder of a former client and unwittingly drives around with the body in the trunk until he is pulled over by police.

The physical evidence fits both stories. One might be more believable than the other when writ small. But a skilled storyteller can even the scales of justice or maybe even tip them the other way with a different interpretation of the evidence. This was where we were now and I was starting to get the visions I got before all trials. Visions of witnesses on the stand, visions of me telling my story to a jury.

“We are clearly going for third-party culpability,” I said. “And the guy we point the finger at is going to be Louis Opparizio. I doubt he pulled the trigger but he gave the order. So he is our fall guy and our number one witness. We need to find him. We need to paper him. We need to make sure he shows up for court.”

Jennifer Aronson shook her hands palms out like she was warding off a swarm of bees.

“Can we just back up?” she asked. “Walk me through this like I’m a juror. What are we saying happened? I mean, I get it. Opparizio killed Scales or had Scales killed and then tried to frame you for it. But can we say yet exactly how this went down?”

“Nothing is exact at this point,” I said. “And we have a lot of holes to fill—that’s why we’re meeting right now. But I can tell you what I think went down and what the evidence—once we have it all—is going to prove.”

“Yes, please,” Lorna said. “I’m with Jen. I’m having a hard time seeing this.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “Let’s go through it slowly. A couple things to start with first. Number one is Louis Opparizio’s enmity for me. Nine years ago I sandbagged him in court, revealing his mob connections and shady dealings in the foreclosure world. In that case, he was a straw man. He was the shiny bait I put out in front of the jury and they went for it. Though he was not the killer I portrayed him as in court, he was involved in some shady shit, the government took notice, and he and his mob backers ended up forfeiting major millions when the Federal Trade Commission reversed a hundred-million-dollar merger he had just completed. I think all of that explains why he would hold a grudge against me. Not only did I expose him in public but I cost him and his mob backers a ton of money.”

“No doubt,” Cisco said. “I’m surprised he waited until now to make a move against you. Nine years is a long time.”

“Well, maybe he was waiting until he had the perfect frame,” I said. “Because I’m in a tight box.”

“That’s for sure,” Lorna said.

“Okay, so the second building block of the case is the victim,” I said. “Sam Scales, con man extraordinaire. Our story is that these two—Opparizio and Scales—intersected at BioGreen. They were bleeding the beast, operating the long con, when something went wrong. Opparizio had to take out Scales but also had to make sure the investigation came nowhere near BioGreen. So I became his fall guy. He somehow knew of my history with Scales and that it ended badly. He sticks Sam’s body in my trunk and I go down for it while BioGreen stays clean and supposedly keeps pumping out that recycled fuel the government loves so much.”

I looked at the three faces around the table.

“Questions?” I asked.

“I have a couple,” Lorna said. “First, what was the con they were pulling?”

“It’s called bleeding the beast,” I said. “Scamming the government—the beast, that is—out of federal subsidies for producing green gold: recycled oil.”

“Whoa,” Lorna said. “Sounds like Sam really came up in the world. That’s a long way from the Internet scams he was known for.”

“Good point,” I said. “That is something that doesn’t fit with what I know about him, but I’m just telling you my theory so far. He had green gold under his fingernails. One thing we do need to find out is whether Sam went to Opparizio with the scam idea, or was Sam simply recruited into the ongoing operation?”

“Any idea what the falling-out was?” Jennifer asked. “Why was Sam killed?”

“Another hole we have to fill,” I said. “And my guess is that the FBI is at the bottom of that hole.”

“They flipped him?” Cisco half asked, half suggested.

I nodded.

“I think it’s something along those lines,” I said. “Opparizio found out and Sam had to go.”

“But the smart move would have been to just make him disappear,” Cisco said. “Why put the body anyplace where it could and would be found?”

“Right,” I said. “That goes on the list of unknowns. But I think that simply disappearing Sam might have brought in more scrutiny from the feds. Doing it the way they did would help insulate BioGreen and maybe make it look like it had nothing to do with the scam down there.”

“Not to mention Opparizio knew this was a good way to get back at you, boss,” Cisco added.

“Most of this is just theory,” Jennifer said. “What’s next? How do we turn theory into a solid defense?”

“Opparizio,” I said. “We find him, serve him, and make sure the judge enforces the subpoena.”

“That only gets him to court,” Jennifer said. “Last time you wanted him to take the Fifth, but this time you have to get him to actually testify.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “If we have the goods on him, it’ll be about the questions we ask, not the answers. He can take the Fifth all he wants. The jury will hear the story in the questions.”

I turned my eyes to Cisco. “So, where is he?” I asked.

“We’ve been on the girlfriend, what, five days now?” Cisco said. “And no sign of him. We may need to shake things up. Throw a scare at her, create a need for her to see him.”

I shook my head.

“I think it’s too early for that,” I said. “We have some time. We don’t want to subpoena him till pretty late in the game. Otherwise, Iceberg will be onto us.”

“She is already,” Jennifer said. “She would have gotten copied on the FBI subpoena.”

“But my guess is she saw that as a shot in the dark,” I said. “A fishing expedition to see if the feds had anything. Even the judge thought that. Anyway, I don’t want to go for a subpoena yet. That will give the prosecution too much time to cover our ground. So we need to find him first and then watch him until it’s time.”

“That can be done,” Cisco said. “But it will cost. I didn’t realize we were talking about running this up to the trial.”

“How much?” I asked.

“We’re running four grand a day with the surveillance package we’ve got out there now,” Cisco said.

I looked at Lorna, the keeper of the practice’s bank accounts. She shook her head.

“We’re four weeks out from trial,” she said. “You’ll need a hundred thousand to keep it going, Mickey. We don’t have that.”

“Unless you go back to Andre La Cosse or Bosch,” Jennifer said. “They got off easy on your bail but had been willing to pony up six figures each.”

“No on Bosch,” I said. “I should be paying him rather than asking him for money. Lorna, see if you can set up a dinner between me and Andre. I’ll see what he’s willing to do.”

“Maybe Cisco can negotiate a discount?” Lorna said, looking across the table at her husband. “Mickey is a repeat client, after all.”

“I can try for it,” Cisco said.

I knew that he probably got a piece of any business he brought to the Indians. So Lorna’s suggestion hit him in his own wallet.

“Good,” I said.

“So, what about the FBI?” Jennifer said, changing the subject. “The FOIA and subpoena went nowhere. We could formally go to the U.S. Attorney with a Touhy letter. But we all know the feds can just sit on it, and it won’t work with our timeframe.”

“What’s a Touhy letter?” Cisco asked.

“Step one in a protocol for demanding a federal agent’s testimony,” Jennifer said. “Named after an Illinois convict whose case created it.”

“You’re right, though,” I said. “It’ll take forever. But there might be an end run with the bureau. And if we make enough waves at BioGreen or at least threaten to, they may come to the table.”

“Good luck with that,” Jennifer said.

“Yeah, luck is what we need,” I said.

And that put a solemn cap on the meeting.

Wednesdays had always been my night with my daughter but things had shifted with law school. She had a torts study group that met at seven, so I was relegated to the early-bird special. We’d meet on campus or close by for a quick and early dinner and then she would go off to the law school and the group’s meeting room.

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