The Brass Verdict

story.
    “You know what I was thinking?” Lorna said.
    “What?”
    “That Jerry had the file with him – in his briefcase – when he left Monday night.”
    “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.
    I looked over and saw Cisco mopping up the steak juice and hot sauce on his plate with a piece of toast. He was good to go.
    “What do you have going today, Cisco?”
    “I’m working on Rilz and his side of the equation.”
    “How’s that going?”
    “I think there’ll be a couple things you can use. You want to hear about it?”
    “Not yet. I’ll ask when I need it.”
    I didn’t want to be given any information about Rilz that I might have to turn over to the prosecution in discovery. At the moment, the less I knew, the better. Cisco understood this and nodded.
    “I also have the Bruce Carlin debriefing this afternoon,” Cisco added.
    “He wants two hundred an hour,” Lorna said. “Highway robbery, if you ask me.”
    I waved off her protest.
    “Just pay it. It’s a onetime expense and he probably has information we can use, and that might save Cisco some time.”
    “Don’t worry, we’re paying him. I’m just not happy about it. He’s gouging us because he knows he can.”
    “Technically, he’s gouging Elliot and I don’t think he’s going to care.”
    I turned back to my investigator.
    “You have anything new on the Vincent case?”
    Cisco updated me with what he had. It consisted mostly of forensic details, suggesting that the source he had inside the investigation came from that side of the equation. He said Vincent had been shot twice, both times in the area of the left temple. The spread on the entry wounds was less than an inch, and powder burns on the skin and hair indicated the weapon was nine to twelve inches away when fired. Cisco said this indicated that the killer had fired two quick shots and was fairly skilled. It was unlikely that an amateur would fire twice quickly and be