The Reversal

exist.”
    “Sustained. Mr. Royce, a warning.”
    “Yes, Your Honor. The defense has no further questions for this prosecution witness.”

Twenty-eight
    Monday, April 5, 4:45 P.M .
    B osch knocked on the door of room 804 and looked directly at the peephole. The door was quickly opened by McPherson, who was checking her watch as she stood back to let him enter.
    “Why aren’t you in court with Mickey?” she asked.
    Bosch entered. The room was a suite with a decent view of Grand Avenue and the back of the Biltmore. There was a couch and two chairs, one of them occupied by Sarah Ann Gleason. Bosch nodded his hello.
    “Because he doesn’t need me there. I’m needed here.”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Royce tipped his hand on the defense’s case. I need to talk to Sarah about it.”
    He started toward the couch but McPherson put her hand on his arm and stopped him.
    “Wait a minute. Before you talk to Sarah you talk to me. What’s going on?”
    Bosch nodded. She was right. He looked around but there was no place for private conversation in the suite.
    “Let’s take a walk.”
    McPherson went to the coffee table and grabbed a key card.
    “We’ll be right back, Sarah. Do you need anything?”
    “No, I’m fine. I’ll be here.”
    She held up a sketchpad. It would keep her company.
    Bosch and McPherson left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby. There was a bar crowded with pre–happy hour drinkers but they found a private spot in a sitting area by the front door.
    “Okay, how did Royce tip his hand?” McPherson asked.
    “When he was cross-examining Eisenbach, he riffed off of Mickey’s question about the killer using only his right hand to choke her.”
    “Right, while he was driving. He panicked when he heard the call on the police radio and killed her.”
    “Right, that’s the prosecution theory. Well, Royce is already setting up a defense theory. On cross he asked whether it was possible that the killer was choking her with one hand while masturbating with the other.”
    She was silent as she computed this.
    “This is the old prosecution theory,” she said. “From the first trial. That it was murder in the commission of a sex act. Mickey and I sort of figured that once Royce got all the discovery material and learned that the DNA came from the stepfather, the defense would play it this way. They’re setting up the stepfather as the straw man. They’ll say he killed her and the DNA proves it.”
    McPherson folded her arms as she worked it out further.
    “It’s good but there are two things wrong with it. Sarah and the hair evidence. So we’re missing something. Royce has got to have something or someone who discredits Sarah’s ID.”
    “That’s why I’m here. I brought Royce’s witness list. These people have been playing hide-and-seek with me and I haven’t run them all down. Sarah’s got to look at this list and tell me which one I need to focus on.”
    “How the hell will she know?”
    “She’s got to. These are her people. Boyfriends, husbands, fellow tweakers. All of them have records. They’re the people she hung out with before she got straight. Every address is a last-known and worthless. Royce has got to be hiding them.”
    McPherson nodded.
    “That’s why they call him Clever Clive. Okay, let’s talk to her. Let me try first, okay?”
    She stood up.
    “Wait a minute,” Bosch said.
    She looked at him.
    “What is it?”
    “What if the defense theory is the right one?”
    “Are you kidding me?”
    He didn’t answer and she didn’t wait long. She headed back toward the elevator. He got up and followed.
    They went back to the room. Bosch noticed that Gleason had sketched a tulip on her pad while they had been gone. He sat down on the couch across from her, and McPherson took the chair right next to her.
    “Sarah,” McPherson said. “We need to talk. We think that somebody you used to know during those lost years we were talking about is going to try to help the defense. We need to figure out who it is and what they are going to say.”
    “I don’t understand,” Sarah said. “But I was thirteen years old when this happened to us. What does it matter who my friends were after?”
    “It matters because they can testify about things you might have done. Or said.”
    “What things?”
    McPherson shook her head.
    “That’s what is so frustrating. We don’t really know. We only know that today in court the defense made it clear that they are