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“I guess some people call it that.”
“Did you ever use this court-sanctioned trickery when you were a police detective, Mr. Bosch?”
“I did on occasion, yes.”
“What about in this case?”
Bosch knew that Garland had the transcripts of all the recorded interviews conducted with Talbot. Bosch had reviewed them himself over the weekend.
“Yes, in one of the interviews I told him that a neighbor out walking the dog in the middle of the night saw him leaving his wife’s apartment building.”
“And that was not true?”
“No, there was no witness.”
“But you lied.”
“Yes.”
“And did Mr. Talbot then break down and confess to the murder of his wife?”
“No, he did not.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I was lying.”
“At which point you began a decades-long quest to put Mr. Talbot in prison, did you not?”
The judge quickly told Bosch not to answer.
“There may be no objection from the state, but I’m going to make one,” Leibowitz said. “The question is argumentative and I’m not going to allow it.”
“Your Honor, may I respond?” Garland said.
“Not right now,” Leibowitz said. “We are going to briefly recess now, and I will see the attorneys in my chambers. The witness is excused and court will be back in session in fifteen minutes.”
Leibowitz left the bench and the attorneys and court reporter followed. Winston looked like she knew that she was about to get a judicial comeuppance.
38
IT WAS FIVE minutes past what the punctual judge had stated would be a fifteen-minute recess, and the lawyers had not yet emerged from chambers.
“Leibowitz must be reaming her out good,” Ballard said. “I’m not even a lawyer and I knew she should’ve been objecting to Garland’s shit.”
She was sitting next to Bosch, who was back in the first row of the gallery, waiting to be recalled to the witness stand.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Bosch said. “Rehashing ancient history, no matter how he does it, isn’t going to help his client.”
“I’ll never get used to state court,” Laffont, the former federal agent, said. “None of this treatment would fly in federal court.”
“That’s because you FBI agents are always coddled by the courts,” Bosch said.
That jab brought Laffont leaning across Ballard to confront Bosch.
“That is bullshit,” he said. “We didn’t get — ”
Laffont shut down the comment when the back door of the courtroom opened and the lawyers came out, led by a noticeably red-faced Winston. She made a beeline for her table; Garland and Ross, much more relaxed, walked to their station. The judge was only a few steps behind them. He quickly took the bench, apologized for the delay, and recalled Bosch to the witness stand. There was no time for Bosch to stop at the prosecution table to confer with Winston and find out what had been discussed in chambers.
