“Is there any mention of it in the discovery material supplied by Tidalwaiv?”
“No, not that I can find.”
“Assholes. Hiding the ball once again. I’m going to shove it up Marcus Mason’s ass when we get to trial.”
“You’ll have to explain how you know what you know.”
“Yeah, that’s the problem. Protecting Challenger may lose us the case.”
“Is there any way to trick Mason into opening the door to Challenger and some of these other things we’re finding?”
“Easier said than done. But I’ll think on it. When was the last time you talked to her?”
“I checked in with her Saturday. You know, to thank her for the material she gave us and see if there was any change or anything I could do for her.”
“And?”
“She was still saying no on testifying.”
I nodded.
“Okay, keep at it,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” Jack said.
I pulled my phone as I left the cage through the copper curtain. I checked my contacts for a name from the past but couldn’t find it. I walked over to Lorna’s desk.
“You remember Bambadjan Bishop?” I asked. “Do we have a file on him? I need his cell number.”
Lorna opened a file search window.
“I should have it,” she said. “Why do you need his cell?”
“No reason,” I said. “I just want to check on him.”
She found the number and wrote it down on a Post-it, then handed it to me. I headed back to my office so I could avoid further questions. Bishop was a former employee and client — in that order. A few years earlier, when I spent several weeks in the L.A. County jail falsely accused of murder, I hired Bishop to protect me. He was a big man whose face and body seemed shaped by violence. After I survived incarceration, I took on his case and got him out. It was part of the deal we had made.
I closed the door to my office and sat down behind the desk. I opened a drawer and took out one of the burners I kept on hand, like the one I had given Naomi Kitchens. I booted it up and called Bishop, hoping he would take a call from an unknown number.
He did, but not until I called him three times in a row.
“Who the fuck is this?” he said.
“Bamba,” I said. “It’s your lawyer.”
“Mickey?”
“That’s right. How are you, Bamba?”
“I’m fine, man. Doin’ fine.”
“You working?”
“This and that. You know.”
“I might have something for you, if you’re interested.”
“Always interested.”
“It would be off the books. Nothing illegal but off the books.”
“Tell me all about it.”
And so I did.
19
The house was dark when I got home. Maggie had taken to staying at the office late to help keep her mind off her losses. I texted to see if she wanted me to DoorDash anything for dinner or maybe go over to Pace in the canyon for Italian. I preferred the latter but wasn’t sure what kind of mood she would be in or if she’d even be interested in eating. She was well into the five stages of grief. Lately she seemed balanced on the line between depression and acceptance. She would fixate on things she had lost: her high-school yearbooks, a tile mosaic we bought in Rome because it depicted a girl eating ice cream who looked remarkably like our daughter. I woke up in the middle of the night sometimes to find her looking at photos on her phone, some her own, taken at the house in Altadena, some from news feeds showing shots from the days of the fire. Other days she talked about the opportunity to build a home to her specifications, even though we both knew that it would be years before she would be able to walk through a new front door. I never stopped reminding her that she had a home right here with me, but this didn’t seem to lift the cloud, and that left me unsure of our future together. It was too fragile a thing to openly discuss.
I went to the back room of the house, where I had a desk. Cassie Snow and her case kept invading my thoughts, threatening my focus on the case at hand. I opened my laptop, went online, and plugged ASMR into the search engine.
It opened a whole new world to me. ASMR — autonomous sensory meridian response — was the descriptor of a physiological sensation triggered by audio, visual, or touch stimuli. It was described as a tingling sense of euphoria that runs along the scalp and down the neck and spine to the limbs. Certain voices could trigger it. Certain sounds, like the popping of static in a blanket and the strokes of a paintbrush on canvas. One article I read attributed the popularity of YouTube videos of the long-dead artist Bob Ross to the ASMR values of his voice and the sound of his brushstrokes.
Not everyone experienced ASMR, but many who did sought it out like a drug. It was said by some to be therapeutic and a cure for insomnia and panic. There were over ten million videos available online from ASMRtists like Cassandra Snow, videos of people whispering into microphones, tapping on hollow objects, tearing and creasing paper. Apparently there was an ASMR fix for just about any need. But according to the medical sites I checked, there had not been any large-scale clinical studies demonstrating ASMR’s effect on brain activity and mental health. The bottom line was that those who responded to it craved it. Those who didn’t tended to be suspicious of it.
I thought about Cassie’s voice pattern and her long and pointed fingernails. I remembered that she said she had her own channel. I jumped over to YouTube and searched for her by name but nothing came up under Cassie or Cassandra Snow. I guessed that she probably had a professional name that safeguarded her privacy. I assumed that ASMRtists might draw stalkers who wanted more than a video feed.
My research into this world I had known nothing about gave me an idea. I thought about the addictive quality of ASMR and called McEvoy. It sounded like he was in a bar. I heard multiple conversations in the background and glassware clinking.
“Where are you?”
“My local. Mistral in Sherman Oaks.”
“Alone?”
“At the moment. What’s up?”
“Remember, we’re not in the cage. In the material you’ve been looking through, have you seen anything about the voice?”
“The voice? What do you mean?”
“Clair’s voice. Wren’s voice. Where did it come from?”
“Um, I saw some reports. They tested various voices, yeah.”
“You know what ASMR is?”
“Uh, not sure.”
“It’s a positive physiological response to stimuli, including voices.”
“I don’t remember reading about anything like that in the reports. But I wasn’t looking for it specifically. There’s so much to get through. I also got sidetracked a bit with the material we got from Challenger. Is it important?”
“Maybe not. But do a deeper dive on it when you can. Let me know if anything comes up.”
“ASMR — will do.”
“Have a good night.”
I disconnected. Just the short conversation reminded me of my barstool days. I didn’t miss them.
I heard the distinctive rumble of a Harley from out on the street. When the engine cut off after a double rev, I knew that Cisco had come to visit. I walked back through the house and opened the front door before he got to it.
“I thought you were going to stop revving the engine before cutting it off,” I said. “My neighbors are going to give me holy hell for that.”
“Sorry,” Cisco said. “Force of habit. I forgot.”
“Yeah, tell it to Hank, the old guy who lives next door. You want a beer? I only have alcohol-free Guinness.”