The Law of Innocence

by Michael Connelly

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “Thank you. And if I could make one other quick request?”

  “Here we go,” Berg said.

  “What is it, Mr. Haller?” Warfield asked.

  “Your Honor, I have the ankle monitor and I’m sure that’s going to be a problem at the prison in Nevada,” I said.

  “No way,” Berg jumped in forcefully. “You can’t be serious. We are not going to accept him taking off the monitor. The state—”

  “I’m not asking for that,” I cut in. “I’m asking for a letter from the court that maybe Your Honor’s clerk could write up quickly and email me, explaining my standing—if it comes into question.”

  There was a pause during which the judge was most likely waiting for Berg to object. But I thought the prosecutor probably believed she had overstepped with her loud objection to removal of the monitor. She had overplayed and now was silent.

  “Very well,” Warfield said. “I will craft a note and have Andrew email it to you.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” I said.

  After the call, I contacted Bosch and told him I was coming. I told him to set up the appointment with Neiderland for 2 p.m. This would give me time to fly over and be driven up to the prison. I also told Bosch to keep an eye out.

  “I had to give Neiderland’s name to the prosecution,” I said. “I doubt they’ll be able to get anybody out there before me. But they may try to fuck with us somehow.”

  “I’ll stay right here,” Bosch said. “Look out for anything strange. Call when you’re getting close.”

  A quick shower and shave later, I was in fresh travel clothes and ready to go. I downloaded and printed the letter from Judge Warfield and put it in my briefcase.

  Kendall was awake and in the kitchen. There was a loud silence that she broke first.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “I know you need to put everything you’ve got into your defense. I was being selfish.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I countered. “I was ignoring you and that should never be. I’ll do better. I promise.”

  “The best thing you can do for me is win your case.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  We hugged it out, then I kissed her goodbye.

  Bambadjan Bishop was sitting at the bottom of the stairs when I exited my house and locked the door behind me.

  “Right on time,” I said. “I like that.”

  “Where’re we going?” he asked.

  “Burbank Airport. I’m flying to Vegas. Then you’re free until eight tonight, when I come back. I’ll need you to pick me up.”

  “Got it.”

  The JetSuite terminal was not on the commercial airfield at Burbank. It was hidden in a long line of private jet operators and hangars. The beauty of the little-known airline was that it operated like a private jet but provided commercial service. I got there fifteen minutes before my flight and it was no problem.

  The sold-out flight carried thirty passengers into the air above the San Gabriel Mountains and then out over the Mojave Desert. I finally started to relax after the rush-rush morning.

  I had a window seat and the woman next to me was wearing a surgical mask. I wondered if she was sick or trying to prevent becoming sick.

  I turned and looked down on the vast nothingness below. The brown, sun-burned desert went in all directions as far as the eye could see. It made everything seem inconsequential. Including me.

  23

  Harry Bosch was waiting for me in front of the prison’s main entrance. He met me at the door of my ride as I got out. The sun was blistering and I had forgotten to bring sunglasses. I squinted at him.

  “Can I let this guy go and you drive me back to the airport?” I asked. “Flight’s at seven.”

  “Yeah, no problem,” he said.

  I made sure I had my briefcase, then tipped the driver and sent him off.

  Bosch and I started toward the prison entrance.

  “You go through the doors and then there’s another door just for visiting attorneys. Head in through there and it should all be set. Neiderland is supposed to be in a room by two.”

  “You can go through the attorney chute with me,” I said. “You’re—”

  “No, I’m not going in with you. It’ll just be you and him—attorney-client.”

  “That’s what I’m saying, you work for me as an investigator and that puts you under the privilege umbrella.”

  “Yeah, but you’re about to go to work for him and I’m not working for that guy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I pick my cases, Mick. I don’t work for criminals—that would undo everything I ever did in my career.”

  I stopped and looked at him for a moment.

  “I guess I should take that as a compliment,” I finally said.

  “I told you at Dan Tana’s that I believe you,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  I turned and looked up at the prison.

  “Well, okay, then,” I said.

  “I’ll be out here,” Bosch said. “You get a name from him, I’ll be ready to go to work on it.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Good luck.”

  I didn’t get into a room with Neiderland until forty minutes later. The ankle monitor set off alarms with the jail staff as I had thought it might. The letter from Judge Warfield was deemed not good enough because it could have been forged. Somebody called the judge’s office to confirm that she had granted permission for me to travel to Nevada but was told the judge was currently on the bench. It wasn’t until Warfield took the midafternoon break and returned the call from chambers that I was led to the attorney-client interview room. I was running a half hour late and Neiderland looked angry when I arrived.

  He sat in a chair across a bolted-down table from another chair. His hands were cuffed and a lead chain ran from his wrists to a ring bolted to the front of his chair, which in turn was bolted to the floor. Still, he tried to stand and yanked hard against the chain as I slid into my seat.

  “Mr. Neiderland, I’m Michael Haller,” I began. “I’m sorry—”

  “I know who the fuck you are,” he said.

  “You told my—”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “I just flew here from L.A. because you told my—”

  “Don’t you fucking get it?”

  He yanked his cuffed hands up until the lead chain snapped taut again. His hands were gripped as if around an imaginary neck. My neck.

  “They didn’t used to do this,” he said. “Chain you down like this. Not with your lawyer. I didn’t know. I didn’t fucking know. You should be dead by now, motherfucker.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Why would I be dead?”

  “Because I would’ve broken your fucking neck.”

  He pushed his words through gritted teeth. He wasn’t a big man or heavily muscled. He had thin blond hair and a sallow complexion—no surprise considering his current address. But the look of sheer hatred on his face was downright scary. My first thought was that somehow there had been a setup and he was working for Louis Opparizio—a hit man in an elaborate scheme to take me out. But then I dismissed it. The circumstances of my visit defied such a plan. And there was clearly emotion behind the hate on Neiderland’s face.

  “You were going to kill me,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because you killed my friend,” he said, again through clenched teeth.

  “I didn’t kill Sam Scales. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find the person who did, and you just wasted a whole fucking day of my time and my investigator’s time. You may not believe me and I may even go down for it, but know this: there’s someone else out there who did it and walked away. And by not helping me, you help him.”

  I got up and turned to the steel door, raising my arm to pound on it. I was frustrated and angry and wondering whether
there would be an earlier flight back so that my entire day would not be wasted.

  “Wait a minute,” Neiderland said.

  I turned back to him.

  “Prove it,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said. “And it doesn’t help when I go off on a wild—”

  “No, I mean prove it right here.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Sit down.”

  He nodded to the empty seat. I reluctantly sat down.

  “I can’t prove it to you,” I said. “Not yet, at least.”

  “He told me you betrayed him,” Neiderland said. “Yeah, the famous Lincoln Lawyer. You went Hollywood when they made a movie about your ass and left all the people who counted on you in the gutter.”

  “That’s not what happened. I didn’t go Hollywood. Sam stopped paying me. That was one thing. But the truth is, I just couldn’t do it anymore. He was hurting a lot of people, taking their money, making them feel like fools. He got off on it, but I’d had enough. I couldn’t take another case.”

  Neiderland didn’t respond. I tried again. I wanted to win him over because I still thought he could be helpful.

  “You were really going to kill me?” I asked. “With less than two years to go in here?”

  “I don’t know,” Neiderland said. “But I was going to do something. I was mad. I still am.”

  I nodded. I could feel the temperature in the room subsiding.

  “For what it’s worth, I liked Sam,” I said. “He ripped off a lot of people, and that was hard to take, but somehow I always liked him. I just had to draw the line because what he was doing was reflecting on me in the media and at home. Added to that, he stopped paying me and that was the same as treating me like one of the fools he ripped off.”

  “He outstayed his welcome with a lot of people,” Neiderland said.

  I could see a door of communication opening.

  “But not you?” I asked.

  “No, I never abandoned him,” Neiderland said. “And he never abandoned me. We had plans for when I got out of here.”

  “What were they?”

  “Find one big score and then disappear.”

  “What was the score? Did he already find it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like he could put it in one of his letters. Everything here is monitored—visitors, phone calls, letters. You’re not even supposed to have contact with any ex-cons on the outside.”

  “So, how did you communicate?”

  Neiderland shook his head. He wasn’t going to go there.

  “Hey, I’m your lawyer,” I said. “You can tell me anything, and they can’t listen and I can’t repeat it. It’s privileged.”

  Neiderland nodded and relented.

  “He sent me letters,” he said. “Posing as my uncle.”

  I paused for a moment. I knew the next question and answer could change everything about the case. I also knew that when people make up stories, plays, and even cons, they usually salt their stories with truth. Neiderland had promised Harry Bosch a name if I came to the prison. Maybe that was the truth in his con.

  “What’s your uncle’s name?” I asked.

  “Was,” Neiderland said. “He’s dead now. His name was Walter Lennon. My mother’s brother.”

  “Did you ever send Sam letters—as your uncle?”

  “Sure. What else is there to do in here?”

  “And do you remember where you sent the letters?”

  “He had a garage apartment in San Pedro. But that was three months ago, when he was alive. They probably put his shit out on the street.”

  “Do you remember the address?”

  “Yeah, I looked at a few of his letters this morning. The return was 2720 Cabrillo. He said it was small. He was saving and we were going to get something bigger when I got out. He said we’d buy a place.”

  The vibe I was getting was that Neiderland was talking about a romantic relationship without actually saying it. I realized that I had never known Sam Scales’s sexual orientation because it didn’t play a part in his crimes or our attorney-client relationship.

  “Did he tell you how he was getting the money he was saving?”

  “He said he was working at the port.”

  “Doing what?”

  “He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”

  To Sam, working a job meant working a grift. I wrote the name and address down on my legal pad. It would be considered work product and not discoverable.

  “Anything else you think I should know?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  I thought about protecting the information I had just received—at least until we checked it out.

  “An investigator from the LAPD might come to see you,” I said. “They think I killed Sam and that’s all they’re worried about. Just remember that you don’t have to talk to them. I’m your lawyer now, you can refer them to me.”

  “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 che
ck.”

  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.