Page 84 of Resurrection Walk

Morris, who was in the act of sitting down, suddenly bolted to his feet. He spread his arms wide and displayed an exaggerated look of shock and horror on his face.

“Objection, Your Honor,” he said. “What could the plaintiff possibly want with the revelation of this law enforcement officer’s private number other than to expose it to the media and the public?”

“Can you answer that, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

“Your Honor, I am not trying to expose her private number to the public,” I said. “But she testified to having received notice of the Sanz killing on her cell phone, and the petitioner is entitled to that phone number as part of the evidence in this case. If the court would order the witness to privately disclose the number to me through Mr. Morris or the clerk of the court, that would be fine.”

“But why would he need the number other than to harass the witness with phone calls?” Morris said.

“Judge, I will never distribute or call the number,” I said. “And you can hold me in contempt if I do.”

“Then why do you need the number, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

I spread my arms in surprise in the same way Morris had just moments earlier.

“Your Honor, please,” I said. “Are you asking me to stand here and outline my case strategy for Mr. Morris?”

“Let’s just calm things down here,” the judge said.

She seemed to understand her misstep. She considered her ruling for a long moment before responding.

“Very well,” she finally said. “The court orders the witness to provide the clerk with the phone number requested, and it will be turned over to the plaintiff’s counsel.”

“Your Honor,” Morris said, “the State asks that the number be sealed.”

“Is that necessary, Mr. Morris?” Coelho asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Morris said. “To protect Deputy Sanger from harassment.”

“It’s Sergeant Sanger,” I said.

“Sergeant Sanger,” Morris corrected himself.

“Very well,” Coelho said. “There is to be no distribution or use of the number by the plaintiff. It is under court seal. To violate the seal, Mr. Haller, will be to incur the wrath of this court.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Morris said, his tone suggesting that he had just attained some sort of victory.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I echoed, because I knew that the victory was mine.

27

IT WAS LATEwhen I got the text from Bosch. I was working at the kitchen table because my home office was still a shambles. I had been writing out questions for Shami Arslanian on a legal pad when my phone buzzed with the message. It was an address in Burbank. A third-floor apartment. Bosch told me to come quickly and provided the combo for the building security gate.

I left the legal pad on the table, took the Navigator down the hill, and cut through Laurel Canyon to get to the Valley. I reached the destination near the Burbank Airport in forty minutes. The gate combo Bosch had sent worked and I was knocking on the door of apartment 317 two minutes later. Cisco answered the door and brought me in. Bosch was in the tiny apartment’s living room, sitting on a garish green couch next to a man with unkempt red hair and pale white skin. He looked to be in his late twenties, but that was just a guess because the scabs on his face disguised his true age. He was an obvious tweaker and that meant he could have been fifty or twenty. I almost turned around and walked. Tweakers were bad witnesses.

“Mick, this is Max Moder,” Cisco said. “His sister is Isabella.”

Moder pointed at me with recognition in his eyes.

“Hey, you, you’re the guy on the billboards, right?” Moder said. “I seen you up there.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” I said. “What’ve you got for me?”

Moder turned to Bosch as if to get his approval. Bosch nodded, giving him the go-ahead.

“Well, about three or four months ago my sister called me from the prison where she is,” he said. “She asked me to go to the library where they keep the old newspaper archives. She told me to try to find stories about a murder case. A sheriff’s deputy that got killed up in Quartz Hill.”

“So did you do it?” I asked.

---