The Reversal

“There’s no charge. It’s-”

“No, it’s not that. See, I’m with this lady here and she’s my boss and I-I mean we-need to talk and go over our investigation. She’s a prosecutor, actually.”

The attendant took a moment to track his explanation and then nodded and said she’d go back to the front of the plane and inform the powers that be.

“And I thought chivalry was dead,” McPherson said. “You gave up a first-class seat to sit with me.”

“Actually, I should’ve told her to give it to you. That would have been real chivalry.”

“Uh-oh, here she comes back.”

Bosch looked up the aisle. The same smiling attendant was headed back to them.

“We’re moving some people around and we have room for you both. Come on up.”

They got up and headed forward, Bosch grabbing his bag out of the overhead and following McPherson. She looked back at him, smiled and said, “My tarnished knight.”

“Right,” Bosch said.

The seats were side by side in the first row. McPherson took the window. Soon after they were resituated, the plane took off for its three-hour flight to Seattle.

“So,” McPherson said, “Mickey told me our daughter has never met your daughter.”

Bosch nodded.

“Yeah, I guess we need to change that.”

“Definitely. I hear they’re the same age and you guys compared photos and they even look alike.”

“Well, her mother sort of looked like you. Same coloring.”

And fire, Bosch thought. He pulled out his phone and turned it on. He showed her a photo of Maddie.

“That’s remarkable,” McPherson said. “They could be sisters.”

Bosch looked at his daughter’s photo as he spoke.

“It’s just been a tough year for her. She lost her mother and moved across an ocean. Left all her friends behind. I’ve been kind of letting her move at her own pace.”

“All the more reason she should know her family here.”

Bosch just nodded. In the past year he had fended off numerous calls from his half brother seeking to get their daughters together. He wasn’t sure if his hesitation was about the potential relationship between the two cousins or the two half brothers.

Sensing that angle of conversation was at an end, McPherson unfolded her table and pulled out her files. Bosch turned his phone off and put it away.

“So we’re going to work?” he asked.

“A little. I want to be prepared.”

“How much do you want to tell her up front? I was thinking we just talk about the ID. Confirm it and see if she’s willing to testify again.”

“And not bring up the DNA?”

“Right. That could turn a yes into a no.”

“But shouldn’t she know everything she’s going to be getting into?”

“Eventually, yes. It’s been a long time. I did the trace. She hit some hard times and rough spots but it looks like she might’ve come out okay. I guess we’ll see when we get up there.”

“Let’s play it by ear, then. I think if it feels right, we need to tell her everything.”

“You make the call.”

“The one thing that’s good is that she’ll only have to do it once. We don’t have to go through a preliminary hearing or a grand jury. Jessup was held over for trial in ’eighty-six and that is not what the supreme court reversed. So we just go directly to trial. We’ll need her one time and that will be it.”

“That’s good. And you’ll be handling her.”

“Yes.”

Bosch nodded. The assumption was that she was a better prosecutor than Haller. After all, it was Haller’s first case. Harry was happy to hear she would be handling the most important witness at trial.

“What about me? Which one of you will take me?”

“I don’t think that’s been decided. Mickey anticipates that Jessup will actually testify. I know he’s waiting for that. But we haven’t talked about who will take you. My guess is that you’ll be doing a lot of read-backs to the jury of sworn testimony from the first trial.”

She closed the file and it looked like that was it for work.

They spent the rest of the flight small-talking about their daughters and looking through the magazines in their seat pockets. The plane landed early at SeaTac and they picked up a rental car and started north. Bosch did the driving. The car came equipped with a GPS system but the DA travel assistant had also provided McPherson with a full package of directions to Port Townsend. They drove up to Seattle and then took a ferry across Puget Sound. They left the car and went up for coffee on the concessions deck, finding an open table next to a set of windows. Bosch was staring out the window when McPherson surprised him with an observation.

“You’re not happy, are you, Harry?”

Bosch looked at her and shrugged.

“It’s a weird case. Twenty-four years old and we start with the bad guy already in prison and we take him out. It doesn’t make me unhappy, it’s just kind of strange, you know?”

She had a half smile on her face.

“I wasn’t talking about the case. I was talking about you. You’re not a happy man.”

Bosch looked down at the coffee he held on the table with two hands. Not because of the ferry’s movement, but because he was cold and the coffee was warming him inside and out.

“Oh,” he said.