“Who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“A suspect?”

“They cut him loose, so whoever it was is cleared. For now.”

I nodded as I thought about this. No wonder Bosch looked like he had been up all night.

“What are you going to be doing today?” Lorna asked.

“My priority starting today is Elliot. There are a few things on these other cases that I’ll need to pay some attention to but for the most part I’m going to be on Elliot from here on out. We’ve got jury selection in eight days. Today I want to start at the crime scene.”

“I should go with you,” Cisco said.

“No, I just want to get a feel for the place. You can get in there with a camera and tape measure later.”

“Mick, isn’t there any way you can convince Elliot to delay?” Lorna asked. “Doesn’t he realize that you need time to study and understand the case?”

“I told him that, but he’s not interested. He made it a condition of my hire. I had to agree to go to trial next week or he’d find another lawyer who could. He says he’s innocent and doesn’t want to wait a single day longer to prove it.”

“Do you believe him?”

I shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter. He believes it. And he’s got this strange confidence in it all turning out his way – like the Monday morning box office. So I either get ready to go to trial at the end of next week or I lose the client.”

Just then the door to the office swung open and revealed Wren Williams standing tentatively in the doorway.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Hello, Wren,” I said. “Glad you’re here. Could you wait out there in reception, and Lorna will be right out to work with you?”

“No problem. You also have one of the clients waiting out here. Patrick Henson. He was already waiting when I came in.”

I looked at my watch. It was five of nine. It was a good sign in regard to Patrick Henson.

“Then, send him in.”

A young man walked in. Patrick Henson was smaller than I thought he would be, but maybe it was the low center of gravity that made him a good surfer. He had the requisite hardened tan but his hair was cropped short. No earrings, no white shell necklace or shark’s tooth. No tattoos that I could see. He wore black cargo pants and what probably passed as his best shirt. It had a collar.

“Patrick, we spoke on the phone yesterday. I’m Mickey Haller and this is my case manager, Lorna Taylor. This big guy is Cisco, my investigator.”

He stepped toward the desk and shook our hands. His grip was firm.

“I’m glad you decided to come in. Is that your fish on the wall back there?”

Without moving his feet Henson swiveled at the hips as if on a surfboard and looked at the fish hanging on the wall.

“Yeah, that’s Betty.”

“You gave a stuffed fish a name?” Lorna asked. “What, was it a pet?”

Henson smiled, more to himself than to us.

“No, I caught it a long time ago. Back in Florida. We hung it by the front door in the place I was sharing in Malibu. My roommates and me, we’d always say, ‘Hellooo, Betty’ to it when we came home. It was kind of stupid.”

He swiveled back and looked at me.

“Speaking of names, do we call you Trick?”

“Nah, that was just the name my agent came up with. I don’t have him anymore. You can just call me Patrick.”

“Okay, and you told me you had a valid driver’s license?”

“Sure do.”

He reached into a front pocket and removed a thick nylon wallet. He pulled his license out and handed it to me. I studied it for a moment and then handed it to Cisco. He studied it a little longer and then nodded, giving it his official approval.

“Okay, Patrick, I need a driver,” I said. “I provide the car and gas and insurance and you show up here every morning at nine to drive me wherever I need to go. I told you the pay schedule yesterday. You still interested?”

“I’m interested.”

“Are you a safe driver?” Lorna asked.

“I’ve never had an accident.” Patrick said.

I nodded my approval. They say an addict is best suited for spotting another addict. I was looking for signs that he was still using. Heavy eyelids, slow speech, avoidance of eye contact. But I didn’t pick up on anything.

“When can you start?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t have anything… I mean, whenever you want, I guess.”

“How about we start right now? Today will be a test-drive. We’ll see how you do and we can talk about it at the end of the day.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Okay, well, we’re going to get out of here and hit the road and I’ll explain in the car how I like things to work.”

“Cool.”

He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and awaited the next move or instruction. He looked like he was about thirty but that was because of what the sun had done to his skin. I knew from the file that he was only twenty-four and still had a lot to learn.

Today the plan was to take him back to school.

Seventeen

We took the 10 out of downtown and headed west toward Malibu. I sat in the back and opened my computer on the fold-down table. While I waited for it to boot up I told Patrick Henson how it all worked.

“Patrick, I haven’t had an office since I left the Public Defenders Office twelve years ago. My car is my office. I’ve got two other Lincolns just like this one. I keep them in rotation. Each one’s got a printer, a fax and I’ve got a wireless card in my computer. Anything I have to do in an office I can do back here while I’m on the road to the next place. There are more than forty courthouses spread across L.A. County. Being mobile is the best way to do business.”

“Cool,” Patrick said. “I wouldn’t want to be in an office either.”

“Damn right,” I said. “Too claustrophobic.”

My computer was ready. I went to the file where I kept generic forms and motions and began to customize a pretrial motion to examine evidence.

“I’m working on your case right now, Patrick.”

He looked at me in the mirror.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I reviewed your file and there’s something Mr. Vincent hadn’t done that I think we need to do that may help.”

“What’s that?”

“Get an independent appraisal of the necklace you took. They list the value as twenty-five thousand and that bumps you up to a felony theft category. But it doesn’t look like anybody ever challenged that.”

“You mean like if the diamonds are bogus there’s no felony?”

“It could work out like that. But I was thinking of something else, too.”

“What?”

I pulled his file out of my bag so I could check a name.

“Let me ask you a few questions first, Patrick,” I said. “What were you doing in that house where you took the necklace?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I was dating the old lady’s youngest daughter. I met her on the beach and was sort of teaching her to surf. We went out a few times and hung out. One time there was a birthday party at the house and I was invited and the mother was given the necklace as a gift.”

“That’s when you learned its value.”

“Yeah, the father said they were diamonds when he gave it to her. He was real proud of ’em.”

“So then, the next time you were there at the house, you stole the necklace.”

He didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t a question, Patrick. It’s a fact. I’m your lawyer now and we need to discuss the facts of the case. Just don’t ever lie to me or I won’t be your lawyer anymore.”

“Okay.”

“So the next time you were in the house, you stole the necklace.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We were there alone using the pool and I said I had to go to the can, only I really just wanted to check the medicine cabinet for pills. I was hurting. There weren’t any in the bathroom downstairs so I went upstairs and looked around. I looked in the old lady’s jewelry box and saw the necklace. I just took it.”

He shook his head and I knew why. He was thoroughly embarrassed and defeated by the actions his addiction had made him take. I had been there myself and knew that looking back from sobriety was almost as scary as looking forward.