Back Brass Verdict Save as PDF
Chapters (64)
  1. PART ONE
  2. One
  3. Two
  4. Three
  5. PART TWO
  6. Four
  7. Five
  8. Six
  9. Seven
  10. Eight
  11. Nine
  12. Ten
  13. Eleven
  14. Twelve
  15. Thirteen
  16. Fourteen
  17. Fifteen
  18. Sixteen
  19. Seventeen
  20. Eighteen
  21. Nineteen
  22. Twenty
  23. Twenty-one
  24. Twenty-two
  25. Twenty-three
  26. Twenty-four
  27. Twenty-five
  28. Twenty-six
  29. Twenty-seven
  30. Twenty-eight
  31. Twenty-nine
  32. Thirty
  33. Thirty-one
  34. Thirty-two
  35. Thirty-three
  36. PART THREE
  37. Thirty-four
  38. Thirty-five
  39. PART FOUR
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Thirty-eight
  43. Thirty-nine
  44. Forty
  45. Forty-one
  46. Forty-two
  47. Forty-three
  48. Forty-four
  49. Forty-five
  50. Forty-six
  51. PART FIVE
  52. Forty-seven
  53. Forty-eight
  54. Forty-nine
  55. Fifty
  56. Fifty-one
  57. Fifty-two
  58. Fifty-three
  59. PART SIX
  60. Fifty-four
  61. Fifty-five
  62. Acknowledgments
  63. About the Author
  64. ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

“And it got taken, along with his laptop and cell phone, by the killer.”

She nodded and I nodded back.

It made sense. He was spending the evening preparing for the week and he had a hearing Thursday on Wyms. Maybe he had run out of gas and thrown the file in his briefcase to look at later. Or maybe he kept the file with him because it was important in a way I couldn’t see yet. Maybe the killer wanted the Wyms file and not the laptop or the cell phone.

“Who’s the prosecutor on the case?”

“Joanne Giorgetti, and I’m way ahead of you. I called her yesterday and explained our situation and asked if she wouldn’t mind copying the discovery again for us. She said no problem. You can pick it up after your eleven with Judge Stanton and then have a couple hours to familiarize yourself with it before the hearing at two.”

Joanne Giorgetti was a top-flight prosecutor who worked in the crimes-against-law-officers section of the DA’s Office. She was also a longtime friend of my ex-wife’s and was my daughter’s basketball coach in the YMCA league. She had always been cordial and collegial with me, even after Maggie and I split up. It didn’t surprise me that she would run off a copy of the discovery materials for me.

“You think of everything, Lorna,” I said. “Why don’t you just take over Vincent’s practice and run with it? You don’t need me.”

She smiled at the compliment and I saw her eyes flick in the direction of Cisco. The read I got was that she wanted him to realize her value to the law firm of Michael Haller and Associates.

“I like working in the background,” she said. “I’ll leave center stage for you.”

Our plates were served and I spread a liberal dose of Tabasco sauce on both my steak and the eggs. Sometimes hot sauce was the only way I knew I was still alive.

I was finally able to hear what Cisco had come up with on the Vincent investigation but he dug into his meal and I knew better than to try to keep him from his food. I decided to wait and asked Lorna how things were working out with Wren Williams. She answered in a low voice, as if Wren were sitting nearby in the restaurant and listening.

“She’s not a lot of help, Mickey. She seems to have no idea of how the office worked or where Jerry put things. She’d be lucky to remember where she parked her car this morning. If you ask me, she was working there for some other reason.”

I could have told her the reason — as it had been told to me by Bosch — but decided to keep it to myself. I didn’t want to distract Lorna with gossip.