“Busywork? Some of those guys threatened him when they were being led off to prison. Maybe some of them are out. Maybe one just got out and made good on the threat. Maybe they contracted it out from prison. There are a lot of possibilities and they shouldn’t be dismissed as just busywork. I don’t understand your attitude on this.”

Bosch smiled and shook his head. I remembered my father doing the same thing when he was about to tell me as a five-year-old that I had misunderstood something.

“I don’t really care what you think about my attitude,” he said. “We’ll check your leads out. But I’m looking for something a little more current. Something from Vincent’s open cases.”

“Well, I can’t help you there.”

“Sure you can. You have all the cases now. I assume you are reviewing them and meeting all your new clients. You’re going to come across something or see something or hear something that doesn’t fit, that doesn’t seem right, that maybe scares you a little bit. That’s when you call me.”

I stared at him without answering.

“You never know,” he said. “It might save you from…”

He shrugged and didn’t finish, but the message was clear. He was trying to scare me into cooperating far more than Judge Holder was allowing, or than I felt comfortable with.

“It’s one thing sharing threat information from closed cases,” I said. “It’s another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed.”

Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.

“What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren’t telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?”

“I can’t talk to you about an active investigation.”

“You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI.”

He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.

“I didn’t ask you about the FBI.”

“Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I’m guessing it was the FBI.”

Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.

“This time you go first,” I prompted.

He nodded.

“Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent’s cell phone – either off his body or it was in his briefcase.”

“Okay.”

“I got the call records yesterday right before I saw you. On the day he was killed he got three calls from the bureau. Four days before that, there were two. He was talking to somebody over there. Or they were talking to him.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell. All outgoing calls from over there register on the main number. All I know is he got calls from the bureau, no names.”

“How long were the calls?”

Bosch hesitated, unsure what to divulge. He looked down at the tablet in his hand and I saw him grudgingly decide to share more. He was going to get angry when I had nothing to share back.

“They were all short calls.”

“How short?”

“None of them over a minute.”

“Then, maybe they were just wrong numbers.”

He shook his head.

“That’s too many wrong numbers. They wanted something from him.”

“Anybody from there check in on the homicide investigation?”

“Not yet.”

I thought about this and shrugged.

“Well, maybe they will and then you’ll know.”

“Yeah, and maybe they won’t. It’s not their style, if you know what I mean. Now your turn. What do you have that’s federal?”

“Nothing. I confirmed that Vincent had no federal cases.”

I watched Bosch do a slow burn as he realized I had played him.

“You’re telling me you have found no federal connections? Not even a bureau business card in that office?”

“That’s right. Nothing.”

“There’s been a rumor going around about a federal grand jury looking into corruption in the state courts. You know anything about that?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve been on the shelf for a year.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“Look, Detective, I don’t get this. Why can’t you just call over there and ask who was calling your victim? Isn’t that how an investigation should proceed?”

Bosch smiled like he was dealing with a child.

“If they want me to know something, they’ll come to me. If I call them, they’lI just shine me on. If this was part of a corruption probe or they’ve got something else going, the chances of them talking to a local cop are between slim and none. If they’re the ones who got him killed, then make it none.”

“How would they get him killed?”

“I told you, they kept calling. They wanted something. They were pressuring him. Maybe someone else knew about it and thought he was a risk.”

“That’s a lot of conjecture about five calls that don’t even add up to five minutes.”

Bosch held up the yellow pad.

“No more conjecture than this list.”

“What about the laptop?”

“What about it?”

“Is that what this is all about, something in his computer?”

“You tell me.”

“How can I tell you when I have no idea what was in it?”

Bosch nodded the point and stood up.

“Have a good day, Counselor.”

He walked out, carrying the legal pad at his side. I was left wondering whether he had been warning me or playing me the whole time he had been in the room.

Sixteen

Lorna and Cisco arrived together fifteen minutes after Bosch’s departure and we convened in Vincent’s office. I took a seat behind the dead lawyer’s desk and they sat side by side in front of it. It was another score-keeping session in which we went over cases, what had been accomplished the previous night and what still needed to be done.

With Cisco driving, I had visited eleven of Vincent’s clients the night before, signing up eight of them and giving back files to the remaining three. These were the priority cases, potential clients I hoped to keep because they could pay or their cases had garnered some form of merit in my review. They were cases I could win or be challenged by.

So it had not been a bad night. I had even convinced the woman charged with indecent exposure to keep me on as her attorney. And of course, bagging Walter Elliot was the icing on the cake. Lorna reported that she had faxed him a representation contract and it had already been signed and returned. We were in good shape there. I could start chipping away at the hundred thousand in the trust account.

We next set the plan for the day. I told Lorna that I wanted her and Wren – if she showed up – to run down the remaining clients, apprise them of Jerry Vincent’s demise and set up appointments for me to discuss the options of legal representation. I also wanted Lorna to continue building the calendar and familiarizing herself with Vincent’s files and financial records.

I told Cisco I wanted him to focus his attention on the Elliot case, with particular emphasis on witness maintenance. This meant that he had to take the preliminary defense witness list, which had already been compiled by Jerry Vincent, and prepare subpoenas for the law enforcement officers and other witnesses who might be considered hostile to the defense’s cause. For the paid expert witness and others who were willingly going to testify at trial for the defense, he had to make contact and assure them that the trial was moving forward as scheduled, with me replacing Vincent at the helm.

“Got it,” Cisco said. “What about the Vincent investigation? You still want me monitoring?”

“Yes, keep tabs on that and let me know what you find out.”

“I found out that they spent last night sweating somebody but kicked him loose this morning.”