Chapters (64)
- PART ONE
- One
- Two
- Three
- PART TWO
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- PART THREE
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- PART FOUR
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- PART FIVE
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
- Forty-nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-one
- Fifty-two
- Fifty-three
- PART SIX
- Fifty-four
- Fifty-five
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY
“Look, wait till they bring him out. You’ll see, he’s a zombie. You don’t want this to go down and then have him challenge the deal because the state made him incompetent to make a decision. Let’s get his head clear, do the deal and then you can have them pump him up with whatever you want.”
She thought about it, saw the logic and finally nodded.
“But if he acts out in jail one time, I’m going to blame you and take it out on him.”
I laughed. The idea of blaming me was absurd.
“Whatever.”
I got up and started to push the chair back to the defense table. But then I turned back to the prosecutor.
“Joanne, let me ask you something else. Why did Jerry Vincent take on this case?”
She shrugged and shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, did it surprise you?”
“Sure. It was kind of strange, him showing up. I knew him from way back when, you know?”
Meaning when he was a prosecutor.
“Yeah, so what happened?”
“One day — a few months ago — I got notice of a competency motion on Wyms, and Jerry’s name was on it. I called him up and said, ‘What the hell,’ you know? ‘You don’t even call to say, I’m taking over the case?’ And he just said he wanted to get some pro bono in and asked the PD for a case. But I know Angel Romero, the PD who had the case originally. A couple months back, I ran into him on one of the floors and he asked me what was happening on Wyms. And in the course of the conversation, he told me that Jerry didn’t just come in asking for a PB referral. He went to Wyms first in Men’s Central, signed him up and then came in and told Angel to turn over the file.”
“Why do you think he took the case?”
I’ve learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.
“I don’t know. I specifically asked him that and he didn’t really answer. He changed the subject to something else and it was all kind of awkward. I remember thinking there was something else here, like maybe he had a connection to Wyms. But then when he sent him off to Camarillo, I knew he wasn’t doing the guy any favors.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, you just spent a couple hours with the case and you know how it’s going to go. This is a plea. Jail time, counseling and supervision. That’s what it was before he was sent to Camarillo. So Wyms’s time there wasn’t really necessary. Jerry just prolonged the inevitable.”