Page 46 of Resurrection Walk

Bosch thought for a moment before responding. Maddie turned off Cahuenga onto Woodrow Wilson and started the steep ascent to his house.

“You’re not following in my footsteps, Mads. You’ll be your own cop. You’ll make your own path.”

“I know that, but it’s about the badge. We both put on the badge, you know. I’m proud of that, Dad.”

“I’m glad. Me too. And by the way, Mickey saw the picture I have of you with the shiner. He had my phone and pulled it up by mistake. Thought you should know in case you hear from him about it.”

“Well, I hope you told him he should have seen the other guy.”

“I should have. Probably one of his clients.”

They both laughed but his sarcasm about Haller was apparently not lost on Maddie.

“Dad, I know Mickey got you into the program at UCLA, but it doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life working cases for him.”

“I know. I won’t. But there’s something…”

“What?”

“I don’t know. But like this case we’re looking at… if this woman has spent five years in prison for something she didn’t do, then getting her out… it’s like that saying about it being better for a hundred guilty people to go free than for one innocent person to suffer in prison. I guess I’m saying that this could make it all worth it.”

“If she’s innocent.”

“Yeah, the big if.”

Maddie pulled to a stop at the curb in front of Bosch’s house.

“You want to come in?” Bosch asked. “I got a Miles Davis triple album from the Third Man Vault.Live at the Fillmore Eastin 1970. The late great Wayne Shorter’s on the sax. I’m going to give it a listen.”

At Christmas, she had gifted Bosch with a subscription to the distributor of rare vinyl out of Nashville.

“No, but thanks,” Maddie said. “I think I’m going over to the reservoir for a run. Will you be okay?”

“Of course. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride and for being there today. It means a lot.”

“Anytime, Dad. Love you.”

“Love you.”

Bosch got out and decided to enter his house through the carport. As he unlocked the side door to the kitchen, he thought about how empty his life would feel without the connection to his daughter. It was more than the shared experience of police work. It was sacred. She was his legacy. He knew that she was what made everything he did seem worth it.

15

IT WAS MONDAYbefore Bosch felt steady enough on his feet and mentally focused enough to return to the Lucinda Sanz case. Early on he had put together a lengthy to-do list but there had been no bigger priority than finding and interviewing the victim’s girlfriend, Matilda “Matty” Landas. Bosch had exhausted all the means of locating her that were available to a man without a badge and the access that came with it. Having learned his lesson in asking Renée Ballard to do something that could get her disciplined or even fired, he refrained from calling on her or his daughter for help. When he reported his failure, Haller said he would put his other investigator on the quest for Matilda.

And Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski came through, locating the woman who had previously been known as Matilda Landas in less than a day. He didn’t pay off a cop to make a computer run and he didn’t have to use his size and muscles to intimidate anyone. Because she had not been found through voter registration, property records, or utility records, Cisco had a hunch that she had changed her name, possibly through marriage but also possibly out of fear resulting from the Sanz case. When he found no records substantiating this in Los Angeles County, he hopped on his Harley and headed to San Bernardino County, where public birth records showed that Landas had been born in the town of Hesperia. Legally changing a name in California required petitioning a court and publishing the petition in a local newspaper. If Landas was operating out of fear, it was unlikely that she would advertise her plan to change her identity in the L.A. area. Cisco thought she would go to her hometown, where she might even know a lawyer who could help with her legal task.TheHesperianwas a weekly newspaper that didn’t offer access to online archives. So he went to theHesperianoffices, and after less than an hour combing through hard copies of old editions, he found the public notice of Matilda Landas’s intent to change her legal name to Madison Landon. He then went to the courthouse in Victorville and confirmed that a court order had been issued three weeks later. It appeared that Matty had become Maddy.

The name change had been made seven months after Roberto Sanz was murdered.

Once Cisco had the name Madison Landon, he returned to L.A. and ran it through the usual means of tracing an individual. He was able to learn that Landon was a Democrat, had a mortgage on a home in South Pasadena, and had a matching address on her driver’s license.

Cisco passed this information to Bosch and now it was time to talk to her. He called Cisco, who’d kept a loose surveillance on Landon while Bosch was on the mend.

“I’m heading out,” he said. “Where is she?”

“She’s in a bookstore,” Cisco said. “Vroman’s. You know it?”

“Yes, on Colorado Boulevard.”

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