Page 104 of Resurrection Walk

“You’re saying that the pad might still be at the lab?” Cisco asked.

“Stranger things have happened,” I said. “The file’s in the back of the Lincoln.”

“Be back in five minutes,” Bosch said.

He got up and headed toward the elevator. I looked at Cisco.

“Cisco, give me your phone,” I said. “Silver probably won’t take a call from mine.”

Cisco pulled out his phone, punched in the passcode, and handed it over. I took out my wallet and dug through it until I found the business card I had taken months ago from the slot next to Silver’s office door. I had kept it in case I needed to reach him.

I called the cell number listed and Silver answered cheerfully.

“Frank Silver, how can I help you?”

“Don’t hang up.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Haller. I need your help.”

“You need my help? Bullshit. You need my help hanging a five-oh-four around my neck. Have a nice night.”

“Silver, don’t hang up. I mean it, I need your help. And you know I never filed the five-oh-four. It was a prop.”

There was a beat of silence.

“This better not be a trick,” Silver finally said.

“It’s not,” I said. “I need you to think back to when you were working the case. You got an evidence split order so you could have a private lab test one of the GSR pads supposedly taken from Lucinda. You remember?”

“If it’s in the file, then I did it.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I’ve had a few cases since then, believe it or not. I can’t remember every detail about every case.”

“Okay, okay. I get it. Neither can I. But do you know what lab you used and whether you or the court ever got the evidence back after testing? I don’t remember seeing any lab report in the file.”

Again there was silence and it was almost as if I could hear Silver’s mind grinding on how to play this.

“You want the name of my lab,” he said.

“Come on, Silver, don’t blow your chance at this,” I said. “Does the lab still have the GSR evidence?”

“As a matter of fact, I think it does. But they won’t give it to anybody but me.”

“That’s fine. We need to confirm it still exists. If it does, then you might come out the hero in all of this.”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

“That —”

He disconnected. I gave the phone back to Cisco.

“What lab did he use?” Arslanian asked.

“He’s being coy,” I said. “Won’t give that up or pull the evidence — if it still exists — unless he’s sure he gets to be the hero.”

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