He looked to the rear of the courtroom and saw people still bunched at the door and moving out. His daughter was last in line and looking back at him. She gave him a nod of confidence and he returned it. After she moved through the doorway, he returned his attention to Borders. He made a low whistle sound and it caught Borders’s ear. The man in orange turned and looked directly at Bosch.
Bosch winked.
Borders looked away. Haller stepped over and blocked Bosch’s view of him.
“Don’t worry about him,” he said. “Stay focused on what’s important.”
He took the empty seat next to Bosch and leaned in to him to whisper.
“I’m going to try to get you on the record,” he said. “No proffer from me. You. So, remember, be forthright, act outraged.”
“I told you, not a problem,” Bosch said.
Haller turned to check the back of the room.
“Did you talk to Spencer or Daly before they left?”
“No. Is Daly the lawyer?”
“Yeah, Dan Daly. He’s usually a federal court guy. Must be slumming today. Or he previously knew Spencer. I’ll put Cisco on it.”
Haller took out his phone and started typing a text to his investigator, who had been among those invited by the judge to leave the courtroom. Bosch stood up so he’d have an angle on the screen. Haller was telling Cisco to see if Daly would reveal what Spencer was willing to testify to. He told Cisco to text him back. Just as he sent the message off, Houghton called the courtroom back to order.
“Okay, we’re going to be on the record here, but this is a case management conference of the related parties present. Not part of the official hearing record. What is said here is not to go outside the courtroom. Mr. Haller, why don’t you walk us through what you plan to do with your witnesses and documents if your motion is granted. And let’s be brief.”
Haller stood up and went to the lectern, placing a legal pad down. Bosch could see that the top page was covered in notes, several of which were circled with arrows pointing to other circles. It was a schematic of the frame against Bosch. Beneath the pad he had a file containing the documents he would put before the judge.
“Thank you for this opportunity, Your Honor,” he began. “You won’t regret it. Because Mr. Cronyn and Mr. Kennedy are correct, there has been a miscarriage of justice here. Just not the one most people think has occurred.”
“Your Honor?” Kennedy said, holding his hands palms out and up in a what-is-going-on? gesture.
“Mr. Haller,” Houghton said. “If I may draw your eyes to the jury box to your left, you will see it is empty. I said be brief. I didn’t say make a statement to a nonexistent jury.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Haller said. “Thank you. Moving on, then. The District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit took on this case and in a forensic review of the evidence found DNA on the clothing of Danielle Skyler that did not come from her convicted killer, Preston Borders. Instead, it came from a now-deceased serial rapist named Lucas John Olmer.”
“Mr. Haller,” Houghton interrupted again. “You are reciting the known facts of the matter before the Court. I granted you entrance to the case as an intervenor. An intervention requires something new, a change in direction. Do you have that or not?”
“I do,” Haller said.
“Then get to it. Don’t tell the Court what it already knows.”
“What I have that’s new is this: Detective Bosch can show through documentation and sworn testimony that Lucas John Olmer’s DNA was planted in the evidence box in LAPD property control as part of an elaborate scheme to set Preston Borders free and realize millions of dollars in damages from a false conviction.”
Houghton held a hand out to stay Kennedy from an obvious objection.
“A scheme by whom, Mr. Haller?” Houghton asked. “Are you saying that Preston Borders on death row at San Quentin orchestrated this?”
“No, Your Honor,” Haller said. “I’m saying Preston Borders bought into it because he had no other shot left at freedom. But the scheme was orchestrated right here in Los Angeles by the law firm of Cronyn and Cronyn.”
Immediately Lance Cronyn was on his feet.
“I strenuously object to this charade!” he said. “Mr. Haller is besmirching my good reputation with this insidious accusation, when it is his client who—”
“Noted, Mr. Cronyn,” Houghton said, cutting off Cronyn in mid-paroxysm. “But let me remind you that we are in closed session here and nothing offered by counsel will reach the ears of the public.”
But then the judge turned his attention to Haller.
“You are making a very strong allegation, Mr. Haller,” he said. “You need to put up or shut up.”
“I’ll be putting up,” Haller said. “Right now.”
Haller briefly outlined the essential contradiction of the case as Bosch had expressed to Soto in the hallway. If the DNA found in evidence was legit, then the sea horse found during the search of Preston Borders’s apartment was not. It was an either/or proposition.
“Our position is that the sea-horse pendant was and always has been the true evidence of the case,” Haller said. “It is the DNA from Lucas John Olmer that was planted. And before outlining how that occurred, I would ask the Court to indulge me and allow my client to speak to this matter of planting evidence. He has spent more than forty years in law enforcement and it is his good name and reputation that are at stake here.”
Both Kennedy and Cronyn stood and objected to Bosch’s being allowed to enter testimony without cross-examination. Houghton quickly made a decision.
“We are not going to go down that road in this conference,” he said. “If we get back in open court and on the record, the Court will entertain that. I will say this, however. Detective Bosch has appeared in this courtroom many times over the years while I’ve had the honor to serve on the bench, and his integrity has never been called into question until now.”
Bosch nodded his thanks for the slim measure of support from the judge.
“Proceed, Mr. Haller,” Houghton said.
“Moving on, then,” Haller said as he opened the file he had on the lectern. “It is known to the Court and all parties here that Mr. Cronyn represented Lucas John Olmer in the case that resulted in his imprisonment until the time of his death sixteen months ago. Key evidence in that case was DNA evidence connecting Olmer to a series of sexual assaults for which he was charged. I submit to the Court now a copy of a court order taken from the record of that case requiring prosecutors to split DNA evidence with the defense for private testing.”
Kennedy stood to object.
“Your Honor, if counsel is trying to insinuate that Olmer’s DNA was handed to Cronyn so that he could secrete some of it for himself to use years later in a scheme to free a man from death row, then that is ridiculously offensive. As Mr. Haller certainly knows, Mr. Cronyn would not have come near that material. Chain-of-evidence protocol would require a secure lab-to-lab transfer. Mr. Haller is blowing smoke and wasting the Court’s time.”
Haller shook his head and smiled before defending himself.
“Blowing smoke, Your Honor? We will see who is blowing smoke. I am not suggesting that there was anything untoward in the lab-to-lab transfer before Olmer’s trial. But at trial the DNA was not ultimately challenged, as the defense chose to claim that the sex acts were consensual. The DNA matching was even stipulated to by the defense. The evidentiary record, however, is not complete post trial. According to Mr. Kennedy’s vaunted protocol, all genetic materials not used in the private lab’s analysis were to be returned after trial to the custody of the LAPD lab. There is no record of any material being returned. It’s missing, Your Honor, and was last in the hands of a lab working for Mr. Cronyn.”