The Concrete Blonde

6

The Code Seven had closed its dining room during the recession and somebody put a salad and pizza bar in the space to serve the office workers from the civic center. The Seven’s barroom was still open but the dining room had been the last place within walking distance of Parker Center that Bosch had liked to eat at. So during the lunch break he got his car out of the lot at Parker and drove over to the garment district to eat at Gorky’s. The Russian restaurant served breakfast all day and he ordered the eggs, bacon and potatoes special and took it to a table where someone had left behind a copy of theTimes.

The concrete blonde story had Bremmer’s byline on it. It combined quotes from the opening arguments in the trial with the discovery of the body and its possible connection to the case. The story also reported that police sources revealed that Detective Harry Bosch had received a note from someone claiming to be the real Dollmaker.

There was obviously a leak in Hollywood Division but Bosch knew it would be impossible to trace the person down. The note had been found at the front desk and any number of uniform officers could have known about it and leaked the word to Bremmer. After all, Bremmer was a good friend to have. Bosch had even leaked information to him in the past and on occasion found Bremmer to be quite useful.

Citing the unnamed sources, the story said police investigators had not concluded whether the note was legitimate or if the discovery of the body was connected to the Dollmaker case which ended four years earlier.

The only other point of interest in the story for Bosch was the short history on the Bing’s Billiards building. It had been burned on the second night of the riots, no arrests ever made. Arson investigators said the separations between the storage units were not bearing walls, meaning trying to stop the flames was like trying to hold water in a cup made of toilet paper. From ignition to full involvement of flames was only eighteen minutes. Most of the storage units were rented by movie industry people and some valuable studio props were either looted or lost in the fire. The building was a total loss. The investigators traced the origin to the billiard hall. A pool table had been set on fire and it went from there.

Bosch put the paper down and began thinking about Lloyd’s testimony. He remembered what Belk had said, that the case rode on himself. Chandler must know this as well. She would be waiting for him, ready to make Lloyd’s outing seem like a joy ride in comparison. He grudgingly had to admit to himself that he respected her skill, her toughness. It made him remember something and he got up to use the pay phone out front. He was surprised to find Edgar was at the homicide table and not out eating lunch.

“Any luck on the ID?” Bosch asked.

“No, man, the prints didn’t check. No matches at all. She didn’t have a record. We’re still trying other sources, adult entertainment licenses, stuff like that.”

“Shit.”

“Well, we got something else cooking. Remember that CSUN anthropology professor I was telling you about? Well, he’s been here all morning with a student, painting the plaster face and getting it ready. I got the press coming in at three to show it off. Rojas went out to buy a blonde wig we’ll stick on it. If we get good play on the tube we might crack loose an ID.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Yeah. How’s court? The shit hit the fan in theTimes today. That guy Bremmer has some sources.”

“Court’s fine. Let me ask you something. After you left the scene yesterday and went back to the station, where was Pounds?”

“Pounds? He was-we got back at the same time. Why?”

“When did he leave?”

“A little while later. Right before you got here.”

“Was he on the phone in his office?”

“I think he made a few calls. I wasn’t really watching. What’s going on, you think he’s Bremmer’s source?”

“One last question. Did he close the door when he was on the phone?”

Bosch knew Pounds was paranoid. He always kept the door to his office open and the blinds on the glass partitions up so he could see and hear what was happening in the squad room. If he ever closed either or both, the troops outside knew something was up.

“Well, now that you mention it, I think he did have the door closed a little while. What is it?”

“Bremmer I’m not worried about. But somebody was talking to Money Chandler. In court this morning she knew I had been called out to the scene yesterday. That wasn’t in theTimes. Somebody told her.”

Edgar was silent a moment before replying.

“Yeah, but why would Pounds talk to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe Bremmer. He could have told her, even though it wasn’t in his story.”

“The story says she couldn’t be reached for comment. It’s got to be somebody else. A leak. Probably the same person talked to Bremmer and Chandler. Somebody who wants to fuck me up.”

Edgar didn’t say anything and Bosch let it go for now.

“I better head back to court.”

“Hey, how’d Lloyd do? I heard on KFWB he was the first wit.”

“He did about as expected.”

“Shit. Who’s next?”

“I don’t know. She has Irving and Locke, the shrink, on subpoena. My guess is, it will be Irving. He’ll pick up where Lloyd left off.”

“Well, good luck. By the way, if you’re looking for something to do. This press gig I’m holding will hit the TV news tonight. I’ll be here waiting by the phones. If you want to answer a few, I could use the help.”

Bosch thought briefly about his plan for dinner with Sylvia. She’d understand.

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

The afternoon testimony was largely uneventful. Chandler’s strategy, it seemed to Bosch, was to build a two-part question into the jury’s eventual deliberation, giving her clients two shots at the prize. One would be the wrong-man theory, which held that Bosch had flat-out killed an innocent man. The second question would be the use of force. Even if the jury determined that Norman Church, family man, was the Dollmaker, serial killer, they would have to decide whether Bosch’s actions were appropriate.

Chandler called her client, Deborah Church, to the witness stand right after lunch. She gave a tearful account of a wonderful life with a wonderful husband who fawned over everybody; his daughters, his wife, his mother and mother-in-law. No misogynistic aberrations here. No sign of childhood abuse. The widow held a box of Kleenex in her hand as she testified, going to a new tissue every other question.

She wore the traditional black dress of a widow. Bosch remembered how appealing Sylvia had been when he saw her at her husband’s funeral dressed in black. Deborah Church looked downright scary. It was as if she reveled in her role here. The widow of the fallen innocent. The real victim. Chandler had coached her well.

It was a good show, but it was too good to be true and Chandler knew it. Rather than leave the bad things to be drawn out on cross-examination, she finally got around to asking Deborah Church how, her marriage being so wonderful, her husband was in that garage apartment-which was rented under an alias-when Bosch kicked the door open.

“We had been having some difficulty.” She stopped to dab an eye with a tissue. “Norman was going through a lot of stress-he had a lot of responsibility in the aircraft design department. He needed to expend it and so he took the apartment. He said it was to be alone. To think. I didn’t know about this woman he brought there. I think it was probably his first time doing something like that. He was a naive man. I think she saw this. She took his money and then set him up by calling the police on him and giving the crazy story that he was the Dollmaker. There was a reward, you know.”

Bosch wrote a note on a pad he kept in front of him and slid it over to Belk, who read it and then jotted something down on his own pad.

“What about all of the makeup found there, Mrs. Church?” Chandler asked. “Can you explain that?”

“All I know is that I would have known if my husband was that monster. I would have known. If there was makeup found there, it was put there by somebody else. Maybe after he was already dead.”

Bosch believed he could feel the eyes of the courtroom burning into him as the widow accused him of planting evidence after murdering her husband.

After that, Chandler moved her questioning on to safer topics like Norman Church’s relationship with his daughters and then ended her direct examination with a weeper.

“Did he love his daughters?”

“Very much so,” Mrs. Church said as a new production of tears rolled down her cheeks. This time she did not wipe them away with a tissue. She let the jury watch them roll down her face into the folds of her double chin.

After giving her a few moments to compose herself, Belk got up and took his place at the lectern.

“Again, Your Honor, I will be brief. Mrs. Church, I want to make this very clear to the jury. Did you say in your testimony that you knew about your husband’s apartment but didn’t know about any women he may or may not have brought there?”

“Yes, that is correct.”

Belk looked at his pad.

“Did you not tell detectives on the night of the shooting that you had never heard of any apartment? Didn’t you emphatically deny that your husband even had such an apartment?”

Deborah Church didn’t answer.

“I can arrange to have a tape of your first interview played in court if it will help refresh your-”

“Yes, I said that. I lied.”

“You lied? Why would you lie to the police?”

“Because a policeman had just killed my husband. I didn’t-I couldn’t deal with them.”

“The truth is you told the truth that night, correct, Mrs. Church? You never knew about any apartment.”

“No, that’s not true. I knew about it.”

“Had you and your husband talked about it?”

“Yes, we discussed it.”

“You approved of it?”

“Yes…, reluctantly. It was my hope he would stay at home and we could work this stress out together.”

“Okay, Mrs. Church, then if you knew of the apartment, had discussed it and given your approval, reluctantly or not, why then did your husband rent it under a false name?”

She didn’t answer. Belk had nailed her. Bosch thought he saw the widow glance in Chandler’s direction. He looked at the lawyer but she made no move, no change in facial expression to help her client.

“I guess,” the widow finally said, “that was one of the questions you could have asked him if Mr. Bosch had not murdered him in cold blood.”

Without Belk’s prompting, Judge Keyes said, “The jury will disregard that last characterization. Mrs. Church, you know better than that.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor.”

“Nothing further,” Belk said as he left the lectern.

The judge called a ten-minute recess.

During the break, Bosch went out to the ash can. Money Chandler didn’t come out but the homeless man made a pass. Bosch offered him a whole cigarette, which he took and put in his shirt pocket. He was unshaven again and the slight look of dementia was still in his eyes.

“Your name is Faraday,” Bosch said, as if speaking to a child.

“Yeah, what about it, Lieutenant?”

Bosch smiled. He had been made by a bum. All except for the rank.

“Nothing about it. I just heard that’s what it was. I also heard you were a lawyer once.”

“I still am. I’m just not practicing.”

He turned and watched a jail bus go by on Spring, heading to the courthouse. It was full of angry faces looking out through the black wire windows. Somebody by one of the back windows made Bosch as a cop, too, and stuck his middle index finger up through the wire. Bosch smiled back at him.

“My name was Thomas Faraday. But now I prefer Tommy Faraway.”

“What happened to make you stop practicing law?”

Tommy looked back at him with milky eyes.

“Justice is what happened. Thanks for the smoke.” He walked away then, cup in hand, and headed toward City Hall. Maybe that was his turf, too.

After the break, Chandler called a lab analyst from the coroner’s office named Victor Amado. He was a very small and bookish-looking man with eyes that shifted from the judge to the jury as he walked to the witness chair. He was balding badly, though he seemed to be no more than twenty-eight. Bosch remembered that four years earlier he had all his hair and members of the task force referred to him as The Kid. He knew Belk was going to call Amado as a witness if Chandler didn’t.

Belk leaned over and whispered that Chandler was following a good guy-bad guy pattern by alternating police witnesses with her sympathetic witnesses.

“She’ll probably put one of the daughters up there after Amado,” he said. “As a strategy, it is completely unoriginal.”

Bosch didn’t mention that Belk’s trust-us-we’re-the-cops defense had been around as long as the civil suit.

Amado testified in painstaking detail about how he had been given all of the bottles and compacts containing makeup that were found in Church’s Hyperion apartment and had then traced them to specific victims of the Dollmaker. He said he had come up with nine separate lots or groupings of makeup-mascara, blush, eyeliner, lipstick, etc. Each lot was connected through chemical analysis to samples taken from the faces of the victims. This was further corroborated by detectives who interviewed relatives and friends to determine what brands the victims were known to use. It all matched up, Amado said. And in one instance, he added, an eyelash found on a mascara brush in Church’s bathroom cabinet was identified as having come from the second victim.

“What about the two victims no matching makeup was found for?” Chandler asked.

“That was a mystery. We never found their makeup.”

“In fact, with the exception of the eyelash that was allegedly found and matched to victim number two, you can’t be one hundred percent sure that the makeup police did supposedly find in the apartment came from the victims, correct?”

“This stuff is mass produced and sold around the world. So there is a lot of it out there, but I would guess that the chances of nine different exact combinations of makeup being found like that by mere coincidence are astronomical.”

“I didn’t ask you to guess, Mr. Amado. Please answer the question I asked.”

After flinching at being dressed down, Amado said, “The answer is we can’t be one hundred percent sure, that is correct.”

“Okay, now tell the jury about the DNA testing you did that connected Norman Church to the eleven killings.”

“There wasn’t any done. There-”

“Just answer the question, Mr. Amado. What about serology tests, connecting Mr. Church to the crimes?”

“There were none.”

“Then it was the makeup comparison that was the clincher-the linchpin in the determination that Mr. Church was the Dollmaker?”

“Well, it was for me. I don’t know about the detectives. My report said-”

“I’m sure for the detectives it was the bullet that killed him that was the clincher.”

“Objection,” Belk yelled angrily as he stood. “Your Honor, she can’t-”

“Ms. Chandler,” Judge Keyes boomed. “I have warned you both about exactly this sort of thing. Why would you go and say something you know full well is prejudicial and out of order?”

“I apologize, Your Honor.”

“Well, it’s a little late for apologies. We’ll discuss this matter after the jury goes home for the day.”

The judge then instructed the jurors to disregard her comment. But Bosch knew it had been a carefully thought out gambit by Chandler. The jurors would now see her even more as the underdog. Even the judge was against her-which he really wasn’t. And they might be distracted, thinking about what just happened, when Belk stepped up to repair Amado’s testimony.

“Nothing further, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

“Mr. Belk,” the judge said.

Don’t say just a few questions again, Bosch thought as his lawyer moved to the lectern.

“Just a few questions, Mr. Amado,” Belk said. “Plaintiff’s counsel mentioned DNA and serology tests and you said they had not been done. Why is that?”

“Well, because there was nothing to test. No semen was ever recovered from any of the bodies. The killer had used a condom. Without samples to attempt to match to Mr. Church’s DNA or blood, there was not much point in running tests. We would have the victims’ but nothing to compare it to.”

Belk drew a line with his pen through a question written on his pad.

“If there was no recovery of semen or sperm, how do you know these women were raped or even had engaged in consensual sexual activity?”

“The autopsies of all eleven of the victims showed vaginal bruising, much more than is considered usual or even possible from consensual sex. On two of the victims there was even tearing in the vaginal wall. The victims were brutally raped, in my estimation.”

“But these women came from walks of life where sexual activity was common and frequent, even ‘rough sex’, if you will. Two of them performed in pornographic videos. How can you be sure they were sexually assaulted against their will?”

“The bruising was such that it would have been very painful, especially for the two with vaginal tears. Hemorrhaging was considered perimortem, meaning at the time of death. The deputy coroners who performed these autopsies unanimously concluded these women were raped.”

Belk drew another line on his pad, flipped the page and came up with a new question. He was doing well with Amado, Bosch thought. Better than Money had. It may have been a mistake for her to have called him as a witness.

“How do you know that the killer used a condom?” Belk asked. “Couldn’t these women have been raped with an object and that account for the lack of semen?”

“That could have happened and it could account for some of the damage. But there was clear evidence in five of the cases that they had had sex with a man wearing a condom.”

“And what was that?”

“We did rape kits. There was-”

“Hold it a second, Mr. Amado. What is a rape kit?”

“It’s a protocol for collecting evidence from bodies of people that may have been the victims of rape. In the case of a woman, we take vaginal and anal swabs, we comb the pubic area looking for foreign pubic hair, procedures such as that. We also take samples of blood and hair from the victim in case there is a call for comparison to evidence found on a suspect. It’s collected together in an evidence kit.”

“Okay. Before I interrupted there, you were going to tell us about the evidence found in five of the victims that was indicative of sex with a man who wore a condom.”

“Yes, we did the rape kits each time we got a Dollmaker victim. And there was a foreign substance found in vaginal samplings in five of the victims. It was the same material in each of the women.”

“What was it, Mr. Amado?”

“It was identified as a condom lubricant.”

“Was this material something that could be identified to a specific brand and style of condom?”

Looking at Belk, Bosch could see the heavy man was chomping at the bit. Amado was answering each question slowly and each time Bosch could see that Belk could barely wait for the answer before plowing ahead with a new question. Belk was on a roll.

“Yes,” Amado said. “We identified the product. It was from a Trojan-Enz lubricated condom with special receptacle end.”

Looking at the court reporter, Amado said, “That’s spelled E-N-Z.”

“And that was the same for all five samples received from the five bodies?” Belk asked.

“Yes it was.”

“I am going to ask you a hypothetical question. Assuming that the attacker of eleven women used the same brand of lubricated condom, how could you account for lubrication being found in the vaginal sampling of only five victims?”

“I believe that a number of factors could be involved. Such as the intensity of the victim’s struggle. But essentially it would be just a matter of how much of the lubricant came off the condom and stayed in the vagina.”

“When police officers brought you the various containers of makeup from the Hyperion apartment rented by Norman Church for analysis, did they bring anything else?”

“Yes they did.”

“What was that?”

“A box of Trojan-Enz lubricated condoms with special receptacle ends.”

“How many condoms did the box hold?”

“Twelve separately packaged condoms.”

“How many were still in the box when the police delivered it to you?”

“There were three left.”

“Nothing further.”

Belk returned to the defense table with a triumphant spring in his walk.

“A moment, Your Honor,” Chandler said.

Bosch watched her open a fat file full of police documents. She leafed through the pages and took out a short stack of documents held together with a paper clip. She read the top one quickly and then held it up to leaf through the rest. Bosch could see the top one was the protocol list from a rape kit. She was reading the protocols from all eleven victims.

Belk leaned over to him and whispered, “She’s about to step into some deep shit. I was going to bring this up later, during your testimony.”

“Ms. Chandler?” the judge intoned.

She jumped up.

“Yes, Your Honor, I’m ready. I have a quick redirect of Mr. Amado.”

She brought the stack of protocols with her to the lectern, read the last two and then looked at the coroner’s analyst.

“Mr. Amado, you mentioned that part of the rape kit consisted of combing for foreign pubic hairs, do I have that right?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain that procedure a little more?”

“Well, basically, the comb is passed through the pubic hair of the victim and it collects unattached hairs. Oftentimes, this unattached hair is from the victim’s attacker, or possibly other sexual partners.”

“How’s it get there?”

Amado’s face flushed to a crimson hue.

“Well, uh, it-uh, during sex… there is I guess what you call friction between the bodies?”

“I am asking the questions, Mr. Amado. You are answering.”

There was quiet tittering from the gallery seats. Bosch felt embarrassed for Amado and thought that his own face might be turning red.

“Yes, well, there is friction,” Amado said. “And this causes some transference. Loose pubic hair from one person can be transferred to that of the other.”

“I see,” Chandler said. “Now, you as coordinator of the Dollmaker evidence from the coroner’s office were familiar with the rape kits of all eleven victims, correct?”

“Yes.”

“With how many of the victims did the findings include foreign pubic hair?”

Bosch understood what was happening now and realized that Belk was right. Chandler was walking into the buzz saw.

“All of them,” Amado answered.

Bosch saw Deborah Church raise her head and look sharply at Chandler at the lectern. Then she looked over at Bosch and their eyes met. She quickly looked away but Bosch knew. She, too, knew what was about to happen. Because she, too, knew her late husband the way Bosch had on that last night. She knew what he looked like naked.

“Ah, all of them,” Chandler said. “Now, can you tell the jury how many of these pubic hairs found on these women were analyzed and identified as having been from the body of Norman Church?”

“None of them were from Norman Church.”

“Thank you.”

Belk was up and moving to the lectern before Chandler had time to remove her pad and the rape kit protocols. Bosch watched her sit down and saw the widow Church lean to her and desperately begin whispering. Bosch saw Chandler’s eyes go dead. She held up her hand to tell the widow she had said enough and then leaned back and exhaled.

“Now, let’s clear something up first,” Belk said. “Mr. Amado, you said you found pubic hairs on all of the eleven victims. Were these hairs all from the same man?”

“No. We found a multitude of samples. In most cases, what looked like hair from possibly two or three men on each victim.”

“What did you attribute this to?”

“Their lifestyle. We knew these were women with multiple sexual partners.”

“Did you analyze these samples to determine if there were common hairs? In other words, whether hair from one man was found on each of the victims.”

“No, we did not. There was a huge amount of evidence collected in these cases and manpower dictated that we focus on evidence that would help identify a killer. Because we had so many different samples, it was determined that this was evidence that would be held and then used to link or clear a suspect, once that suspect was in custody.”

“I see, well, then once Norman Church had been killed and was identified as the Dollmaker, did you then match any of the hairs from the victims to him?”

“We did not.”

“And why is that?”

“Because Mr. Church had shaved his body hair. There was no pubic hair to match.”

“Why would he have done that?”

Chandler objected on the grounds that Amado could not answer for Church and the judge sustained it. But Bosch knew it didn’t matter. Everybody in the courtroom knew why Church had shaved himself-so he wouldn’t leave pubic hairs behind as evidence.

Bosch looked at the jury and he saw two of the women writing in the notebooks the marshals had given them to help them keep track of important testimony. He wanted to buy Belk-and Amado-a beer.