Bosch nodded his approval and I signaled for Maggie to begin. She pulled her laptop over in front of her.

“Okay, a couple of basics first. Because it was a death penalty case, jury selection was the longest part of the trial. Almost three weeks. The trial itself lasted seven days and then there were three days of deliberation on the initial verdicts, then the death penalty phase went another two weeks. But seven days of testimony and arguments-that to me is fast for a capital murder case. It was pretty cut-and-dried. And the defense… well, there wasn’t much of a defense.”

She looked at me as if I were responsible for the poor defense of the accused, even though I hadn’t even gotten out of law school by ’eighty-six.

“Who was his lawyer?” I asked.

“Charles Barnard,” she said. “I checked with the California bar. He won’t be handling the retrial. He’s listed as deceased as of ’ninety-four. The prosecutor, Gary Lintz, is also long gone.”

“Don’t remember either of them. Who was the judge?”

“Walter Sackville. He’s long retired but I do remember him. He was tough.”

“I had a few cases with him,” Bosch added. “He wouldn’t take any shit from either side.”

“Go on,” I said.

“Okay, so the prosecution’s story was this. The Landy family-that was our victim, Melissa, who was twelve, her thirteen-year-old sister, Sarah, mother, Regina, and stepfather, Kensington-lived on Windsor Boulevard in Hancock Park. The home was about a block north of Wilshire and in the vicinity of the Trinity United Church of God, which on Sundays back then drew about six thousand people to its two morning services. People parked their cars all over Hancock Park to go to the church.