The Reversal

Fourteen

Tuesday, February 23, 8:45 P.M .

Each of them worked in silence. Bosch at one end of the dining room table, his daughter at the other. He with the first batch of SIS surveillance logs, she with her homework, her school books and laptop computer spread out in front of her. They were close in proximity but not in much else. The Jessup case had become all-encompassing with Bosch tracing old witnesses and trying to find new ones. He had spent little time with her in recent days. Like her parents, Maddie was good at holding grudges and had not let go of the perceived slight of having been left for a night in the care of an assistant school principal. She was giving Harry the silent treatment and already at fourteen she was an expert at it.

The SIS logs were another frustration to Bosch. Not because of what they contained but because of their delay in reaching him. They had been sent through bureaucratic channels, from the SIS office to the RHD office and then to Bosch’s supervisor, where they had sat in an in basket for three days before finally being dropped on Bosch’s desk. The result was he had logs from the first three days of the surveillance of Jason Jessup and he was looking at them three to six days after the fact. That process was too slow and Bosch was going to have to do something about it.

The logs were terse accounts of the surveillance subject’s movements by date, time and location. Most entries carried only a single line of description. The logs came with an accompanying set of photos as well, but most of the shots were taken at a significant distance so the followers could avoid detection. These were grainy images of Jessup as he moved about the city as a free man.

Bosch read through the reports and quickly surmised that Jessup was already leading separate public and private lives. By day his movements were in concert with the media as he very publicly reacquainted himself with life outside a prison cell. It was about learning to drive again, to choose off a menu, to go for a three-mile run without having to make a turn. But by night a different Jessup emerged. Unaware that he was still being watched by eyes and cameras, he went out cruising alone in his borrowed car. He went to all corners of the city. He went to bars, strip clubs, a prostitute’s trick pad.

Of all his activities, one was most curious to Bosch. On his fourth night of freedom, Jessup had driven up to Mulholland Drive, the winding road atop the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains, which cut the city in half. Day or night, Mulholland offered some of the best views of the city. It was no surprise that Jessup would go up there. There were overlooks that offered north and south views of the shimmering lights of the city. They could be invigorating and even majestic. Bosch had gone to these spots himself in the past.

But Jessup didn’t go to any of the overlooks. He pulled his car off the road near the entrance to Franklin Canyon Park. He got out and then entered the closed park, sneaking around a gate.

This caused a surveillance issue for the SIS team because the park was empty and the watchers were at risk of being seen if they got too close. The report here was briefer than most entries in the log:

02/20/10-01:12. Subject entered Franklin Canyon Park. Observed at picnic table area, northeast corner, blind man trailhead.

02/20/10-02:34. Subject leaves park, proceeds west on Mulholland to 405 freeway and then south.

After that, Jessup returned to the apartment where he was living in Venice and stayed in for the rest of the night.

There was a printout of an infrared photograph taken of Jessup in the park. It showed him sitting at a picnic table in the dark. Just sitting there.

Bosch put the photo print down on the table and looked at his daughter. She was left-handed like he was. It looked like she was writing out a math problem on a work sheet.

“What?”

She had her mother’s radar.

“Uh, are you online there?”

“Yes, what do you need?”

“Can you pull up a map of Franklin Canyon Park? It’s off of Mulholland Drive.”

“Let me finish this.”

He waited patiently for her to complete her computations on a mathematical problem he knew would be light-years beyond his understanding. For the past four months he had lived in fear that his daughter would ask him for help with her homework. She had passed by his skills and knowledge long ago. He was useless in this area and had tried to concentrate on mentoring her in other areas, observation and self-protection chief among them.

“Okay.”

She put her pencil down and pulled her computer front and center. Bosch checked his watch. It was almost nine.

“Here.”

Maddie slid the computer down the table, turning the screen toward him.

The park was larger than Bosch had thought, running south of Mulholland and west of Coldwater Canyon Boulevard. A key in the corner of the map said it was 605 acres. Bosch hadn’t realized that there was such a large public reserve in this prime section of the Hollywood Hills. He noticed that the map had several of the hiking trails and picnic areas marked. The picnic area in the northeast section was off of Blinderman Trail. He assumed it had been misspelled in the SIS log as “blind man trailhead.”

“What is it?”

Harry looked at his daughter. It was her first attempt at conversation in two days. He decided not to miss it.

“Well, we’ve been watching this guy. The Special Investigations Section. They’re the department’s surveillance experts and they’re watching this guy who just got out of prison. He killed a little girl a long time ago. And for some reason he went to this park and just sat there at a picnic table.”

“So? Isn’t that what people do at parks?”

“Well, this was in the middle of the night. The park was closed and he snuck in… and then he sort of just sat there.”

“Did he grow up near the park? Maybe he’s checking out the places where he grew up.”

“I don’t think so. We have him growing up out in Riverside County. He used to come to L.A. to surf but I haven’t found any connection to Mulholland.”

Bosch studied the map once more and noticed there was an upper and lower entrance to the park. Jessup had gone in through the upper entrance. This would have been out of his way unless that picnic area and Blinderman Trail were specific destinations for him.

He slid the computer back to his daughter. And checked his watch again.

“Are you almost done your work?”

“Finished, Dad. Are you almost finished? Or you could say ‘done with.’ ”

“Sorry. Are you almost finished?”

“I have one more math problem.”

“Good. I have to make a quick call.”

Lieutenant Wright’s cell number was on the surveillance log. Bosch expected him to be home and annoyed with the intrusion but decided to make the call anyway. He got up and walked into the living room so he would not disturb Maddie on her last problem. He punched the number into his cell.

“Wright, SIS.”

“Lieutenant, it’s Harry Bosch.”

“What’s up, Bosch?”

He didn’t sound annoyed.

“Sorry to intrude on you at home. I just wanted-”

“I’m not at home, Bosch. I’m with your guy.”

Bosch was surprised.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, the night shift is just more interesting.”

“Where is he right now?”

“We’re with him at a bar on Venice Beach called the Townhouse. You know it?”

“I’ve been there. Is he alone?”

“Yes and no. He came alone but he got recognized. He can’t buy a drink in there and probably has his pick of the skanks. Like I said, more interesting at night. Are you calling to check up on us?”

“Not really. I just have a couple of things I need to ask. I’m looking at the logs and the first thing is, how can I get them sooner? I’m looking at stuff from three days ago or longer. The other thing is Franklin Canyon Park. What can you tell me about his stop there?”

“Which one?”

“He’s been there twice?”

“Actually, three times. He’s gone there the last two nights after the first stop four days ago.”

This information was very intriguing to Bosch, mostly because he had no idea what it meant.

“What did he do the last two times?”

Maddie got up from the dining room table and came into the living room. She sat on the couch and listened to Bosch’s side of the conversation.

“The same thing he did the first night,” Wright said. “He sneaks in there and goes to the same picnic area. He just sits there, like he’s waiting for something.”

“For what?”

“You tell me, Bosch.”

“I wish I could. Did he go at the same time each night?”

“Give or take a half hour or so.”

“Does he go in through the Mulholland entrance each time?”

“That’s right. He sneaks in and picks up the same trail that takes him to the picnic area.”

“I wonder why he doesn’t go in the other entrance. It would be easier for him to get to.”

“Maybe he likes driving on Mulholland and seeing the lights.”

That was a good point and Bosch needed to consider it.

“Lieutenant, can you have your people call me the next time he goes there? I don’t care what time it is.”

“I can have them call you but you’re not going to be able to get in there and get close. It’s too risky. We don’t want to expose the surveillance.”

“I understand, but have them call me. I just want to know. Now, what about these logs? Is there a way for me to get them a little quicker?”

“You can come by SIS and pick one up every morning if you want. As you probably noticed, the logs run six P.M. to six P.M. Each daily log is posted by seven the following morning.”

“Okay, LT, I’ll do that. Thanks for the info.”

“Have a good one.”

Bosch closed the phone, wondering about Jessup in Franklin Canyon and what he was doing on his visits there.

“What did he say?” Maddie asked.

Bosch hesitated, wondering for the hundredth time whether he should be telling her as much as he did about his cases.

“He said my guy’s gone back to that park the last two nights. Each time, he just sits there and waits.”

“For what?”

“Nobody knows.”

“Maybe he just wants to be somewhere where he’s completely by himself and away from everybody.”

“Maybe.”

But Bosch doubted it. He believed there was a plan to almost everything Jessup did. Bosch just had to figure out what it was.

“I’m finished with my homework,” Maddie said. “You want to watch Lost?”

They had been slowly going through the DVDs of the television show, catching up on five years’ worth of episodes. The show was about several people who survived a plane crash on an uncharted island in the South Pacific. Bosch had trouble keeping track of things from show to show but watched because his daughter had been completely taken in by the story.

He had no time to watch television right now.

“Okay, one episode,” he said. “Then you have to go to bed and I have to get back to work.”

She smiled. This made her happy and for the moment Bosch’s grammatical and parental transgressions seemed forgotten.

“Set it up,” Bosch said. “And be prepared to remind me what’s happening.”

Five hours later, Bosch was on a jet that was shaking with wild turbulence. His daughter was sitting across the aisle from him rather than in the open seat next to him. They reached across the aisle to each other to hold hands but the bouncing of the plane kept knocking them apart. He couldn’t grab her hand.

Just as he turned in his seat to see the tail section break off and fall away, he was awakened by a buzzing sound. He reached to the bed table and grabbed his phone. He struggled to find his voice as he answered.

“This is Bosch.”

“This is Shipley, SIS. I was told to call.”

“Jessup’s at the park?”

“He’s in a park, yeah, but tonight it’s a different one.”

“Where?”

“Fryman Canyon off Mulholland.”

Bosch knew Fryman Canyon. It was about ten minutes away from Franklin Canyon.

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s just sort of walking on one of the trails. Just like at the other park. He walks the trail and then he sits down. He doesn’t do anything after that. He just sits for a while and then leaves.”

“Okay.”

Bosch looked at the glowing numbers on the clock. It was two o’clock exactly.

“Are you coming out?” Shipley asked.

Bosch thought about his daughter asleep in her bedroom. He knew he could leave and be back before she woke up.

“Uh… no, I have my daughter here and I can’t leave her.”

“Suit yourself.”

“When does your shift end?”

“About seven.”

“Can you call me then?”

“If you want.”

“I’d like you to call me every morning when you are getting off. To tell me where he’s been.”

“Uh… all right, I guess. Can I ask you something? This guy killed a girl, right?”

“That’s right.”

“And you’re sure about that? I mean, no doubt, right?”

Bosch thought about the interview with Sarah Gleason.

“I have no doubt.”

“Okay, well, that’s good to know.”

Bosch understood what he was saying. He was looking for assurance. If circumstances dictated the use of deadly force against Jessup, it was good to know who and what they would be shooting at. Nothing else needed to be said about it.

“Thanks, Shipley,” Bosch said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

Bosch disconnected and put his head back on the pillow. He remembered the dream about the plane. About reaching out to his daughter but being unable to grab her hand.

Fifteen

Wednesday, February 24, 8:15 A.M .

Judge Diane Breitman welcomed us into her chambers and offered a pot of coffee and a plate of shortbread cookies, an unusual move for a criminal courts judge. In attendance were myself and my second chair, Maggie McPherson, and Clive Royce, who was without his second but not without his temerity. He asked the judge if he could have hot tea instead.

“Well, this is nice,” the judge said once we were all seated in front of her desk, cups and saucers in hand. “I have not had the opportunity to see any of you practice in my courtroom. So I thought it would be good for us to start out a bit informally in chambers. We can always step out into the courtroom to go on the record if necessary.”

She smiled and none of the rest of us responded.

“Let me start by saying that I have a deep respect for the decorum of the courtroom,” Breitman continued. “And I insist that the lawyers who practice before me do as well. I am expecting this trial to be a spirited contest of the evidence and facts of the case. But I won’t stand for any acting out or crossing of the lines of courtesy and jurisprudence. I hope that is clearly understood.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Maggie responded while Royce and I nodded.

“Good, now let’s talk about media coverage. The media is going to be hovering over this case like the helicopters that followed O.J. down the freeway. That is clearly a given. I have requests here from three local network affiliates, a documentary filmmaker and Dateline NBC. They all want to film the trial in its entirety. While I see no problem with that, as long as proper protections of the jury are put in place, my concern is in the extracurricular activity that is bound to occur outside the courtroom. Do any of you have any thoughts in this regard?”

I waited a beat and when no one spoke up, I did.

“Judge, I think because of the nature of this case-a retrial of a case twenty-four years old-there has already been too much media attention and we’re going to have a difficult time seating twelve people and two alternates who aren’t aware of the case through the filter of the media. I mean, we’ve had the accused surfing on the front page of the Times and sitting courtside at the Lakers. How are we going to get an impartial jury out of this? The media, with no lack of help from Mr. Royce, is presenting this guy as this poor, persecuted innocent man and they don’t have the slightest idea what the evidence is against him.”

“Your Honor, I object,” Royce said.

“You can’t object,” I said. “This isn’t a court hearing.”

“You used to be a defense attorney, Mick. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

“He already has been.”

“In a trial the top court in this state termed a travesty. Is that what you want to stand on?”

“Listen, Clive, I’m an attorney and innocent until proven guilty is a measure you apply in court, not on Larry King Live.”

“We haven’t been on Larry King Live-yet.”

“See what I mean, Judge? He wants to-”

“Gentlemen, please!” Breitman said.

She waited a moment until she was certain our debate had subsided.

“This is a classic situation where we need to balance the public’s right to know with safeguards that will provide us an untainted jury, an unimpeded trial and a just result.”

“But, Your Honor,” Royce said quickly, “we can’t forbid the media to examine this case. Freedom of the press is the cornerstone of American democracy. And, further, I draw your attention to the very ruling that granted this retrial. The court found serious deficiencies in the evidence and castigated the District Attorney’s Office for the corrupt manner in which it has prosecuted my client. Now you are going to prohibit the media from looking at this?”

“Oh, please,” Maggie said dismissively. “We’re not talking about prohibiting the media from looking at anything, and your lofty defense of the freedom of the press aside, that’s not what this is about. You are clearly trying to influence voir dire with your pretrial manipulation of the media.”

“That is absolutely untrue!” Royce howled. “I have responded to media requests, yes. But I am not trying to influence anything. Your Honor, this is an-”

There was a sharp crack from the judge’s desk. She had grabbed a gavel from a decorative pen set and brought it down hard on the wood surface.

“Let’s cool down here,” Breitman said. “And let’s hold off on the personal attacks. As I indicated before, there has to be a happy medium. I am not inclined to muzzle the press, but I will issue a gag order against the lawyers in my court if I believe they are not acting in a manner that is responsible to the case at hand. I am going to start off by leaving each of you to determine what is reasonable and responsible interaction with the media. But I will warn you now that the consequences for a transgression in this area will be swift and possibly detrimental to one’s cause. No warnings. You cross the line and that’s it.”

She paused and waited for a comeback. No one said anything. She placed the gavel back in its special holder next to the gold pen. Her voice returned to its friendly tone.

“Good,” she said. “I think that’s understood, then.”

She said she wanted to move on to other matters germane to the trial and her first stop was the trial date. She wanted to know if both sides would be ready to proceed to trial as scheduled, less than six weeks away. Royce said once again that his client would not waive the speedy trial statute.

“The defense will be ready to go on April fifth, provided that the prosecution doesn’t continue to play games with discovery.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t win with this guy. I had gone out of my way to get the discovery pipeline going, but he had decided to take a shot at making me look like a cheater in front of the judge.

“Games?” I said. “Judge, I’ve already turned over to Mr. Royce an initial discovery file. But as you know, it’s a two-way street and the prosecution has received nothing in return from him.”

“He turned over the discovery file from the first trial, Judge Breitman, complete with a nineteen eighty-six witness list. It completely subverts the spirit and the rules of discovery.”

Breitman looked at me and I could see that Royce had successfully scored a hit.

“Is this true, Mr. Haller?” she asked.

“Hardly, Your Honor, the witness list was both subtracted from and added to. Additionally, I turned over-”

“One name,” Royce interjected. “He added one name and it was his own investigator. Big deal, like I didn’t know his investigator might be a witness.”

“Well, that’s the only new name I have at the moment.”

Maggie jumped into the fray with both feet.

“Your Honor, the prosecution is duty-bound to turn over all discovery materials thirty days prior to trial. By my count we are still forty days out. Mr. Royce is complaining about a good-faith effort on the part of the prosecution to provide him with discovery material before it even has to. It seems that no good deed goes unpunished with Mr. Royce.”

The judge held up her hand to stop commentary while she looked at the calendar hanging on the wall to the left of her desk.

“I think Ms. McPherson makes a good point,” she said. “Your complaint is premature, Mr. Royce. All discovery materials are due to both sides by this Friday, March fifth. If you have a problem then, we will take this up again.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Royce said meekly.

I wanted to reach over, raise Maggie’s hand in the air and shake it in victory but I didn’t think that would be appropriate. Still, it felt good to win at least one point against Royce.

After discussion of a few more routine pretrial issues, the meeting ended and we walked out through the judge’s courtroom. I stopped there to talk small talk with the judge’s clerk. I didn’t really know her that well but I didn’t want to walk out of the courtroom with Royce. I was afraid I might lose my temper, which would be exactly what he’d want.

After he went through the double doors at the back of the courtroom I cut off the conversation and headed out with Maggie at my side.

“You kicked his ass, Maggie McFierce,” I said to her. “Verbally.”

“Doesn’t matter unless we kick it at trial.”

“Don’t worry, we will. I want you to take over discovery fulfillment. Go ahead and do what you prosecutors do. Haystack everything. Give him so much material he’ll never see what and who’s important.”

She smiled as she turned and used her back to push through the door.

“Now you’re getting it.”

“I hope so.”

“What about Sarah? He’s got to figure we found her and if he’s smart he won’t wait for discovery. He probably has his own guy looking. She can be found. Harry proved that.”

“There’s not a whole lot we can do about it. Speaking of Harry, where is he this morning?”

“He called me and said he had some things to check out. He’ll be around later. You didn’t really answer my question about Sarah. What should-?”

“Tell her that she might have another visitor, somebody working for the defense, but that she doesn’t have to talk to anybody unless she wants to.”

We headed out into the hallway and then went left toward the elevator bank.

“If she doesn’t talk to them, Royce will complain to the judge. She’s the key witness, Mickey.”

“So? The judge won’t be able to make her talk if she doesn’t want to talk. Meantime, Royce loses prep time. He wants to play games like he did with the judge in there, then we’ll play games, too. In fact, how about this? We put every convict Jessup ever shared a prison cell with on the witness list. That should keep his investigators out of the way for a while.”

A broad smile broke across Maggie’s face.

“You really are getting it, aren’t you?”

We squeezed onto the crowded elevator. Maggie and I were close enough to kiss. I looked down into her eyes as I spoke.

“That’s because I don’t want to lose.”

Sixteen

Wednesday, February 24, 8:45 A.M .

After school drop-off Bosch turned his car around and headed back up Woodrow Wilson, past his house, and to what those in the neighborhood called the upper crossing with Mulholland Drive. Both Mulholland and Woodrow Wilson were long and winding mountain roads. They intersected twice, at the bottom and top of the mountain, thus the local description of upper and lower crossings.

At the top of the mountain Bosch turned right onto Mulholland and followed it until it crossed Laurel Canyon Boulevard. He then pulled off the road to make a call on his cell. He punched in the number Shipley had given him for the SIS dispatch sergeant. His name was Willman and he would know the current status of any SIS surveillance. At any given time, SIS could be working four or five unrelated cases. Each was given a code name in order to keep them in order and so that the real names of suspects did not ever go out over the radio. Bosch knew that the Jessup surveillance had been termed Operation Retro because it involved an old case and a retrial.

“This is Bosch, RHD. I’m lead on the Retro case. I want to get a location on the suspect because I’m about to pull into one of his favorite haunts. I want to make sure I don’t run into him.”

“Hold one.”

Bosch could hear the phone being put down, then a radio conversation in which the duty sergeant asked for Jessup’s location. The response was garbled with static by the time it reached Bosch over the phone. He waited for the sergeant’s official response.

“Retro is in pocket right now,” he promptly reported to Bosch. “They think he’s catching Zs.”

In pocket meant he was at home.

“Then I’m clear,” Bosch said. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

“Any time.”

Bosch closed the phone and pulled the car back onto Mulholland. A few curves later he reached Fryman Canyon Park and turned in. Bosch had talked to Shipley early that morning as he was passing surveillance off to the day team. He reported that Jessup had once again visited both Franklin and Fryman canyons. Bosch was becoming consumed with curiosity about what Jessup was up to and this was only increased by the report that Jessup had also driven by the house on Windsor where the Landy family had once lived.

Fryman was a rugged, inclined park with steep trails and a flat-surface parking and observation area on top and just off Mulholland. Bosch had been there before on cases and was familiar with its expanse. He pulled to a stop with his car pointing north and the view of the San Fernando Valley spread before him. The air was pretty clear and the vista stretched all the way across the valley to the San Gabriel Mountains. The brutal week of storms that had ended January had cleared the skies out and the smog was only now climbing back into the valley’s bowl.

After a few minutes Bosch got out and walked over to the bench where Shipley had told him Jessup had sat for twenty minutes while looking out at the lights below. Bosch sat down and checked his watch. He had an eleven o’clock appointment with a witness. That gave him more than an hour.

Sitting where Jessup had sat brought no vibe or insight into what the suspect was doing on his frequent visits to the mountainside parks. Bosch decided to move on down Mulholland to Franklin Canyon.

But Franklin Canyon Park offered him the same thing, a large natural respite in the midst of a teeming city. Bosch found the picnic area Shipley and the SIS reports had described but once again didn’t understand the pull the park had for Jessup. He found the terminus of Blinderman Trail and walked it until his legs started to hurt because of the incline. He turned around and headed back to the parking and picnic area, still puzzled by Jessup’s activities.

On his return Bosch passed a large old sycamore that the trail had been routed around. He noticed a buildup of a grayish-white material at the base of the tree between two fingers of exposed roots. He looked closer and realized it was wax. Somebody had burned a candle.

There were signs all over the park warning against smoking or the use of matches, as fire was the park’s greatest threat. But somebody had lit a candle at the base of the tree.

Bosch wanted to call Shipley to ask if Jessup could have lit a candle while in the park the night before, but knew it was the wrong move. Shipley had just come off a night of surveillance and was probably in his bed asleep. Harry would wait for the evening to make the call.

He looked around the tree for any other signs that Jessup had possibly been in the area. It looked like an animal had burrowed recently in a few spots under the tree. But otherwise there was no sign of activity.

As he came off the trail and into the clearing where the picnic area was located, Bosch saw a city parks ranger looking into a trash can from which he had removed the top. Harry approached him.

“Officer?”

The man whipped around, still holding the top of the trash can away from his body.

“Yes, sir!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I was… I was walking up on that trail and there’s a big tree there-I think a sycamore-and it looks like somebody burned a candle down at its base. I was wondering-”

“Where?”

“Up on Blinderman Trail.”

“Show me.”

“Actually, I’m not going to go all the way back up there. I don’t have the right shoes. It’s the big tree in the middle of the trail. I’m sure you can find it.”

“You can’t light fires in the park!”

The ranger put the top back on the trash can, banging it loudly to underline his statement.

“I know. That’s why I was reporting it. But I wanted to ask you, is there anything special about that tree that would make somebody do that?”

“Every tree is special here. The whole park is special.”

“Yes, I get that. Can you just tell-”

“Can I see some ID, please?”

“Excuse me?”

“ID. I want to see some ID. A man in a shirt and tie walking the trails with ‘the wrong shoes’ is a little bit suspicious to me.”

Bosch shook his head and pulled out his badge wallet.

“Yeah, here’s my ID.”

He opened it and held it out and gave the ranger a few moments to study it. Bosch saw the nameplate on his uniform said Brorein.

“Okay?” Bosch said. “Can we get to my questions now, Officer Brorein?”

“I’m a city ranger, not an officer,” Brorein said. “Is this part of an investigation?”

“No, it’s part of a situation where you just answer my questions about the tree up on that trail.”

Bosch pointed in the direction he had come from.

“You get it now?” he asked.

Brorein shook his head.

“I’m sorry but you’re on my turf here and it’s my obligation to-”

“No, pal, you’re actually on my turf. But thanks for all the help. I’ll make a note of it in the report.”

Bosch walked away from him and headed back toward the parking clearing. Brorein called after him.

“As far as I know, there’s nothing special about that tree. It’s just a tree, Detective Borsh.”

Bosch waved without looking back. He added poor reading skills to the list of things he didn’t like about Brorein.

Seventeen

Wednesday, February 24, 2:15 P.M .

My successes as a defense attorney invariably came when the prosecution was unprepared for and surprised by my moves. The entire government grinds along on routine. Prosecuting violators of the government’s laws is no different. As a newly minted prosecutor I took this to heart and vowed not to succumb to the comfort and dangers of routine. I promised myself that I would be more than ready for clever Clive Royce’s moves. I would anticipate them. I would know them before Royce did. And I would be like a sniper in a tree, waiting to skillfully pick them off from a distance, one by one.

This promise brought Maggie McFierce and me together in my new office for frequent strategy sessions. And on this afternoon the discussion was focused on what would be the centerpiece of our opponent’s pretrial defense. We knew Royce would be filing a motion to dismiss the case. That was a given. What we were discussing were the grounds on which he would make the motion. I wanted to be ready for each one. It is said that in war the sniper ambushes an enemy patrol by first taking out the commander, the radioman and the medic. If he accomplishes this, the remaining members of the patrol panic and scatter. This was what I hoped to quickly do when Royce filed his motion. I wanted to move swiftly and thoroughly with demoralizing arguments and answers that would put the defendant on strong notice that he was in trouble. If I panicked Jessup, I might not even have to go to trial. I might get a disposition. A plea. And a plea was a conviction. That was as good as a win on this side of the aisle.

“I think one thing he’s going to argue is that the charges are no longer valid without a preliminary hearing,” Maggie said. “This will give him two bites out of the apple. He’ll first ask the judge to dismiss but at the very least to order a new prelim.”

“But the verdict of the trial was what was reversed,” I said. “It goes back to the trial and we have a new trial. The prelim is not what was challenged.”

“Well, that’s what we’ll argue.”

“Good, you get to handle that one. What else?”

“I’m not going to keep throwing out angles if you keep giving them back to me to be prepared for. That’s the third one you’ve given me and by my scorecard you’ve only taken one.”

“Okay, I’ll take the next one sight unseen. What do you have?”

Maggie smiled and I realized I had just walked into my own ambush. But before she could pull the trigger, the office door opened and Bosch entered without knocking.

“Saved by the bell,” I said. “Harry, what’s up?”

“I’ve got a witness I think you two should hear. I think he’s going to be good for us and they didn’t use him in the first trial.”

“Who?” Maggie asked.

“Bill Clinton,” Bosch said.

I didn’t recognize the name as belonging to anyone associated with the case. But Maggie, with her command of case detail, brought it together.

“One of the tow truck drivers who worked with Jessup.”

Bosch pointed at her.

“Right. He worked with Jessup back then at Aardvark Towing. Now he owns an auto repair shop on LaBrea near Olympic. It’s called Presidential Motors.”

“Of course it is,” I said. “What does he do for us as a witness?”

Bosch pointed toward the door.

“I got him sitting out there with Lorna. Why don’t I bring him in and he can tell you himself?”

I looked at Maggie, and seeing no objection, I told Bosch to bring Clinton in. Before stepping out Bosch lowered his voice and reported that he had run Clinton through the crime databases and he had come up clean. He had no criminal record.

“Nothing,” Bosch said. “Not even an unpaid parking ticket.”

“Good,” Maggie said. “Now let’s see what he has to say.”

Bosch went out to the reception room and came back with a short man in his midfifties who was wearing blue work pants and a shirt with an oval patch above the breast pocket. It said Bill. His hair was neatly combed and he didn’t wear glasses. I saw grease under his fingernails but figured that could be remedied before he ever appeared in front of a jury.

Bosch pulled a chair away from the wall and placed it in the middle of the room and facing my desk.

“Why don’t you sit down here, Mr. Clinton, and we’ll ask you some questions,” he said.

Bosch then nodded to me, passing the lead.

“First of all, Mr. Clinton, thank you for agreeing to come in and talk to us today.”

Clinton nodded.

“That’s okay. Things are kind of slow at the shop right now.”

“What kind of work do you do at the shop? Is there a specialty?”

“Yeah, we do restoration. Mostly British cars. Triumphs, MGs, Jags, collectibles like that.”

“I see. What’s a Triumph TR Two-Fifty go for these days?”

Clinton looked up at me, surprised by my apparent knowledge of one of the cars he specialized in.

“Depends on the shape. I sold a beauty last year for twenty-five. I put almost twelve into the restoration. That and a lot of man-hours.”

I nodded.

“I had one in high school. Wish I’d never sold it.”

“They only made them for one year. ’Sixty-eight. Makes it one of the most collectible.”

I nodded. We had just covered everything I knew about the car. I just liked it because of its wooden dashboard and the drop top. I used to cruise up to Malibu in it on weekends, hang out on the surf beaches even though I didn’t know how to surf.

“Well, let’s jump from ’sixty-eight to ’eighty-six, okay?”

Clinton shrugged.

“Fine by me.”

“If you don’t mind, Ms. McPherson is going to take notes.”

Clinton shrugged again.

“So then, let’s start. How well do you remember the day that Melissa Landy was murdered?”

Clinton spread his hands.

“Well, see, I remember it real well because of what happened. That little girl getting killed and it turning out I was working with the guy who did it.”

“Must’ve been pretty traumatic.”

“Yeah, it was for a while there.”

“And then you put it out of your mind?”

“No, not exactly… but I stopped thinking about it all the time. I started my business and everything.”

I nodded. Clinton seemed genuine enough and honest. It was a start. I looked at Bosch. I knew he had pulled some nugget from Clinton that he believed was gold. I wanted him to take over.

“Bill,” Bosch said. “Tell them a little about what was going on with Aardvark at the time. About how business was bad.”

Clinton nodded.

“Yeah, well, back then we weren’t doing so hot. What happened was they passed a law that nobody could park on the side streets off of Wilshire without a resident sticker, you know? Anybody else, we got to tow. So we would go in the neighborhoods on a Sunday morning and hook up cars right and left on account of the church services. In the beginning. Mr. Korish was the owner and we were getting so many cars that he hired another driver and even started paying us for our overtime. It was fun because there were a couple other companies with the same contract, so we were all competing for tows. It was like keeping score and we were a team.”

Clinton looked at Bosch to see if he was telling the right story. Harry nodded and told him to keep going.

“So then it all kind of went bad. The people started getting wise and they stopped parking over there. Somebody said the church was even making announcements: ‘Don’t park north of Wilshire.’ So we went from having too much to do to not enough. So Mr. Korish said he had to cut back on costs and one of us was going to have to go, and maybe even two of us. He said he was going to watch our performance levels and make his decision based on that.”

“When did he tell you this in relation to the day of the murder?” Bosch asked.

“It was right before. Because all three of us were still there. See, he didn’t fire anybody yet.”

Taking over the questioning, I asked him what the new edict did to the competition among tow truck drivers.

“Well, it made it rough, you know. We were all friends and then all of a sudden we didn’t like each other because we wanted to keep our jobs.”

“How was Jason Jessup to work with then?”

“Well, Jason was real cutthroat.”

“The pressure got to him?”

“Yeah, because he was in last place. Mr. Korish put up a tote board to keep track of the tows and he was last place.”

“And he wasn’t happy about it?”

“No, not happy. He became a real prick to work with, excuse my French.”

“Do you remember how he acted on the day of the murder?”

“A little bit. Like I told Detective Bosch, he started claiming streets. Like saying Windsor was all his. And Las Palmas and Lucerne. Like that. And me and Derek-he was the other driver-we told him there were no rules like that. And he said, ‘Fine, try hooking a car on one of those streets and see what happens.’ ”

“He threatened you.”

“Yeah, you could say that. Definitely.”

“Do you remember specifically that Windsor was one of the streets he claimed was his?”

“Yes, I do. He claimed Windsor.”

This was all good information. It would go to the state of mind of the defendant. It would be a challenge getting it on the record if there wasn’t additional corroboration from Wilbern or Korish, if either was still alive and available.

“Did he ever act on that threat in any way?” Maggie asked.

“No,” Clinton said. “But that was the same day as the girl. So he got arrested and that was that. I can’t say I was too upset about seeing him go. Turned out Mr. Korish then laid off Derek ’cause he lied about not having a record. I was the last man standing. I worked there another four years-till I saved up the money to start my place.”

A regular American success story. I waited to see if Maggie had a follow but she didn’t. I did.

“Mr. Clinton, did you ever talk about any of this with the police or prosecutors twenty-four years ago?”

Clinton shook his head.

“Not really. I mean I spoke to the detective who was in charge back then. He asked me questions. But I wasn’t ever brought to court or anything like that.”

Because they didn’t need you back then, I thought. But I’m going to need you now.

“What makes you so sure that this threat from Jessup occurred on the day of the murder?”

“I just know it was that day. I remember that day because it’s not every day that a guy you’re working with gets arrested for murder.”

He nodded as if to underscore the point.

I looked at Bosch to see if we had missed anything. Bosch took the cue and took back the lead.

“Bill, tell them what you told me about being in the police car with Jessup. On the way to Windsor.”

Clinton nodded. He could be led easily and I took that as another good sign.

“Well, what happened was they really thought that Derek was the guy. The police did. He had a criminal record and lied about it and they found out. So that made him suspect numero uno. So they put Derek in the back of one patrol car and then me and Jason in another.”

“Did they say where they were taking you?”

“They said they had additional questions, so we thought we were going to the police station. There were two officers in the car with us and we heard them talking about all of us being in a lineup. Jason asked them about it and they said it was no big thing, they just wanted guys in overalls because they wanted to see if a witness could pick out Derek.”

Clinton stopped there and looked expectantly from Bosch to me and then to Maggie.

“So what happened?” I asked.

“Well, first Jason told the two cops that they couldn’t just take us and put us in a lineup like that. They just said that they were following orders. So we go over to Windsor and pull up in front of a house. The cops got out and went and talked to the lead detective, who was standing there with some other detectives. Jason and I were watching out the windows but didn’t see any witness or anything. Then the detective in charge goes inside the house and doesn’t come back out. We don’t know what’s going on, and then Jason says to me he wants to borrow my hat.”

“Your hat?” Maggie asked.

“Yeah, my Dodgers hat. I was wearing it like I always did and Jason said he needed to borrow it because he recognizes one of the other cops that was already standing there at the house when we pulled up. He said that he got in a fight with the guy over a tow and if he sees him there’s going to be trouble. He goes on like that and says, let me have your hat.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, I didn’t think it was a big deal on account of I didn’t know what I knew later, you know what I mean? So I gave him my hat and he put it on. Then when the cops came back to get us out of the car, they didn’t seem to notice that the hat was switched. They made us get out of the car and we had to go over and stand next to Derek. We were standing there and then one of the cops gets a call on the radio-I remember that-and he turns and tells Jason to take off the hat. He did and then a few minutes later they’re all of a sudden surrounding Jason and putting the cuffs on him, and it wasn’t Derek, it was him.”

I looked from Clinton to Bosch and then to Maggie. I could see in her expression that the hat story was significant.

“You know the funny thing?” Clinton asked.

“No, what?” I said.

“I never got that hat back.”

He smiled and I smiled back.

“Well, we’ll have to get you a new hat when this is all said and done. Now let me ask you the key question. What you have told us here, are you willing to testify to all of it at Jason Jessup’s trial?”

Clinton seemed to think about it for a few seconds before nodding.

“Yeah, I could do that,” he said.

I stood up and came around the desk, extending my hand.

“Then it looks like we’ve got ourselves a witness. Many thanks to you, Mr. Clinton.”

We shook hands and then I gestured to Bosch.

“Harry, I should have asked you, did we cover everything?”

Bosch stood up as well.

“I think so. For now. I’ll take Mr. Clinton back to his shop.”

“Excellent. Thank you again, Mr. Clinton.”

Clinton stood up.

“Please call me Bill.”

“We will, I promise. We’ll call you Bill and we’ll call you as a witness.”

Everybody laughed in that phony way and then Bosch shepherded Clinton out of the office. I went back to my desk and sat down.

“So tell me about the hat,” I said to Maggie.

“It’s a good connection,” she said. “When we interviewed Sarah she remembered that Kloster radioed from the bedroom down to the street and had them make Jessup take off his hat. That was when she made the ID. Harry then looked through the case file and found a property list from Jessup’s arrest. The Dodgers hat was on there. We’re still trying to track his property-hard to do after twenty-four years. But it might have gone up to San Quentin. Either way, if we don’t have the hat, we have the list.”

I nodded. This was good on a number of levels. It showed witnesses independently corroborating each other, put a crack in any sort of defense contention that memories cannot be trusted after so many years and, last but not least, showed state of mind of the defendant. Jessup knew he was somehow in danger of being identified. Someone had seen him abduct the girl.

“All right, good,” I said. “What do you think about the initial stuff, about how there was competition between them and somebody was going to get laid off? Maybe two of them.”

“Again, it’s good state-of-mind material. Jessup was under pressure and he acted out. Maybe this whole thing was about that. Maybe we should put a shrink on the witness list.”

I nodded.

“Did you tell Bosch to find and interview Clinton?”

She shook her head.

“He did it on his own. He’s good at this.”

“I know. I just wish he’d tell me a little more about what he’s up to.”

Eighteen

Thursday, February 25, 11 A.M .

Rachel Walling wanted to meet at an office in one of the glass towers in downtown. Bosch went to the address and took the elevator up to the thirty-fourth floor. The door to the offices of Franco, Becerra & Itzuris, attorneys-at-law, was locked and he had to knock. Rachel answered promptly and invited him into a luxurious suite of offices that was empty of lawyers, clerks and anybody else. She led him to the firm’s boardroom, where he saw the box and files he had given her the week before on a large oval table. They entered and he walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over downtown.

Bosch couldn’t remember being up so high in downtown. He could see all the way to Dodger Stadium and beyond. He checked out the civic center and saw the glass-sided PAB sitting next to the Los Angeles Times building. His eyes then scanned toward Echo Park and he remembered a day there with Rachel Walling. They had been a team then, in more ways than one. But now that seemed so long ago.

“What is this place?” he said, still staring out and with his back to her. “Where is everybody?”

“There isn’t anybody. We just used this in a money-laundering sting. So it’s been empty. Half of this building is empty. The economy. This was a real law office but it went out of business. So we just sort of borrowed it. The management was happy for the government subsidy.”

“They were washing money from drugs? Guns?”

“You know I can’t say, Harry. I am sure you’ll read about it in a few months. You’ll put it together then.”

Bosch nodded as he remembered the firm’s name on the door. Franco, Becerra & Itzuris: FBI. Clever.

“I wonder if management will tell the next tenants that this place was used by the bureau to take down some bad people. Friends of those bad people could come looking.”

She didn’t respond to that. She just invited him to sit down at the table. He did, taking a good look at her as she sat across from him. Her hair was down, which was unusual. He had seen her that way before but not while she was on duty. The dark ringlets framed her face and helped direct attention to her dark eyes.

“The firm’s refrigerator is empty or I’d offer you something to drink.”

“I’m fine.”

She opened the box and started taking out the files he had given her.

“Rachel, I really appreciate this,” Bosch said. “I hope it didn’t disrupt your life too much.”

“The work, no. I enjoyed it. But you, Harry, you coming back into my life was a disruption.”

Bosch wasn’t expecting that.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m in a relationship and I’d told him about you. About the single-bullet theory, all of that. So he wasn’t happy that I’ve been spending my nights off working this up for you.”

Bosch wasn’t sure about how to respond. Rachel Walling always hid deeper messages in the things she said. He wasn’t sure if there was more to be considered than what she had just said out loud.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “Did you tell him it was only work, that I just wanted your professional opinion? That I went to you because I can trust you and you’re the best at this?”

“He knows I’m the best at it, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s just do this.”

She opened a file.

“My ex-wife is dead,” he said. “She was killed last year in Hong Kong.”

He wasn’t sure why he’d blurted it out like that. She looked up at him sharply and he knew she hadn’t known.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

Bosch just nodded, deciding not to tell her the details.

“What about your daughter?”

“She lives with me now. She’s doing okay but it’s been pretty tough on her. It’s only been four months.”

She nodded and then seemed to lose her grounding as she took in what had just been said.

“What about you? I assume it’s been rough for you, too.”

He nodded but couldn’t think of the right words. He had his daughter fully in his life now, but at a terrible cost. He realized that he had brought the subject up but couldn’t talk about it.

“Look,” he said, “that was weird. I don’t know why I just laid that on you. You mentioned the single bullet and I remember I told you about her. We can talk about it some other time. I mean, if you want. Let’s just get to the case now. Is that okay?”

“Yes, sure. I was just thinking about your daughter. To lose her mother and then have to move so far from the place she knows. I mean, I know living with you will be fine, but it’s… quite an adjustment.”

“Yeah, but they say kids are resilient because they actually are. She’s got a lot of friends already and is doing well in school. It’s been a major adjustment for both of us but I think she’ll come out okay.”

“And how will you come out?”

Bosch held her eyes for a moment before answering.

“I’ve already come out ahead. I have my daughter with me and she’s the best thing in my life.”

“That’s good, Harry.”

“It is.”

She broke eye contact and finished removing the files and photos from the box. Bosch could see the transformation. She was now all business, an FBI profiler ready to report her findings. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his notebook. It was in a folding leather case with a detective shield embossed on the cover. He opened it and got ready to write.

“I want to start with the photos,” she said.

“Fine.”

She spread out four photos of Melissa Landy’s body in the Dumpster, turning them to face him. She then added two photos from the autopsy in a row above these. Photos of a dead child were never easy to look at for Bosch. But these were particularly difficult. He stared for a long moment before coming to the realization that the clutch in his gut was due to the setting of the body in a Dumpster. For the girl to be disposed of like that seemed almost like a statement about the victim and an added insult to those who loved her.

“The Dumpster,” he said. “You think that was chosen as a statement?”

Walling paused as if considering it for the first time.

“I’m actually going at it from a different standpoint. I think that it was an almost spontaneous choice. That it wasn’t part of a plan. He needed a place to dump the body where he wouldn’t be seen and it wouldn’t be immediately found. He knew about that Dumpster behind that theater and he used it. It was a convenience, not a statement.”

Bosch nodded. He leaned forward and wrote a note on his pad to remind himself to go back to Clinton and ask about the Dumpster. The El Rey was in the Wilshire corridor the Aardvark drivers worked. It might have been familiar to them.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to start things off in the wrong direction,” he said as he wrote.

“That’s okay. The reason I wanted to start with the photos of the girl is that I believe that this crime may have been misunderstood from the very beginning.”

“Misunderstood?”

“Well, it appears that the original investigators took the crime scene at face value and looked at it as the result of the suspect’s kill plan. In other words, Jessup grabbed this girl, and his plan was to strangle her and leave her in the Dumpster. This is evidenced by the profile that was drawn up of the crime and submitted to the FBI and the California Department of Justice for comparison to other crimes on record.”

She opened a file and pulled out the lengthy profile and submission forms prepared by Detective Kloster twenty-four years earlier.

“Detective Kloster was looking for similar crimes that he might be able to attach Jessup to. He got zero hits and that was the end of that.”

Bosch had spent several days studying the original case file and knew everything that Walling was telling him. But he let her run with it without interruption because he had a feeling she would take him somewhere new. That was her beauty and art. It didn’t matter that the FBI didn’t recognize it and use her to the best of her abilities. He always would.

“I think what happened was that this case had a faulty profile from the beginning. Add to that the fact that back then the data banks were obviously not as sophisticated or as inclusive as they are now. This whole angle was misdirected and wrong and so no wonder they hit a dead end with it.”

Bosch nodded and wrote a quick note.

“You tried to rebuild the profile?” he asked.

“As much as I could. And the starting point is right here. The photos. Take a look at her injuries.”

Bosch leaned across the table and over the first row of photographs. He actually didn’t see injuries to the girl. She had been dropped haphazardly into the almost full trash bin. There must have been stage building or a renovation project going on inside the theater, because the bin contained mostly construction refuse. Sawdust, paint buckets, small pieces of cut and broken wood. There were small cuts of wallboard and torn plastic sheeting. Melissa Landy was faceup near one of the corners of the Dumpster. Bosch didn’t see a drop of blood on her or her dress.

“What injuries are we talking about?” he asked.

Walling stood up in order to lean over. She used the point of a pen to outline the places she wanted Bosch to look on each of the photos. She circled discolorations on the victim’s neck.

“Her neck injuries,” she said. “If you look you see the oval-shaped bruising on the right side of the neck, and on the other side you have a larger corresponding bruise. This evidence makes it clear that she was choked to death with one hand.”

She used the pen to illustrate what she was saying.

“The thumb here on her right side and the four fingers on the left. One-handed. Now, why one-handed?”

She sat back down and Bosch leaned back away from the photos himself. The idea that Melissa had been strangled with one hand was not new to Bosch. It was in Kloster’s original profile of the murder.

“Twenty-four years ago, it was suggested that Jessup strangled the girl with his right hand while he masturbated with his left. This theory was built on one thing-the semen collected from the victim’s dress. It was deposited by someone with the same blood type as Jessup and so it was assumed to have come from him. You follow all of this?”

“I’m with you.”

“Okay, so the problem is, we now know that the semen didn’t come from Jessup and so the basic profile or theory of the crime in nineteen eighty-six is wrong. It is further demonstrated as being wrong because Jessup is right-handed according to a sample of his writing in the files, and studies have shown that with right-handers masturbation is almost always carried out by the dominant hand.”

“They’ve done studies on that?”

“You’d be surprised. I sure was when I went online to look for this.”

“I knew there was something wrong with the Internet.”

She smiled but was not a bit embarrassed by the subject matter of their discussion. It was all in a day’s work.

“They’ve done studies on everything, including which hand people use to wipe their butts. I actually found it to be fascinating reading. But the point here is that they had this wrong from the beginning. This murder did not occur during a sex act. Now let me show you a few other photos.”

She reached across the table and slid all of the photos together in one stack and then put them to the side. She then spread out photos taken of the inside of the tow truck Jessup was driving on the day of the murder. The truck actually had a name, which was stenciled on the dashboard.

“Okay, so on the day in question, Jessup was driving Matilda,” Walling said.

Bosch studied the three photos she had spread out. The cab of the tow truck was in neat order. Thomas Brothers maps-no GPS back then-were neatly stacked on top of the dashboard and a small stuffed animal that Bosch presumed was an aardvark hung from the rearview mirror. A cup holder on the center console held a Big Gulp from 7-Eleven and a sticker on the glove compartment door read Grass or Ass-Nobody Rides for Free.

With her trusty pen, Walling circled a spot on one of the photos. It was a police scanner mounted under the dashboard.

“Did anybody consider what this means?”

Bosch shrugged.

“Back then, I don’t know. What’s it mean now?”

“Okay, Jessup worked for Aardvark, which was a towing company licensed by the city. However, it wasn’t the only one. There was competition among tow companies. The drivers listened to scanners, picking up police calls about accidents and parking infractions. It gave them the jump on the competition, right? Except that every tow truck had a scanner and everybody was listening and trying to get the jump on everyone else.”

“Right. So what’s it mean?”

“Well, let’s look at the abduction first. It is pretty clear from the witness testimony and everything else that this was not a crime of great planning and patience. This was an impulse crime. That much they’ve had right from the beginning. We can talk about the motivating factors at length in a little while, but suffice it to say, something caused Jessup to act out in an almost uncontrollable way.”

“I think I might have motivating factors covered,” Bosch said.

“Good, I’m eager to hear about it. But for now, we will assume that some sort of internal pressure led Jessup to act on an undeniable impulse and he grabbed the girl. He took her back to the truck and took off. He obviously didn’t know about the sister hiding in the bushes and that she would sound the alarm. So he completes the abduction and drives away, but within minutes he hears the report about the abduction on the police scanner he has in the truck. That brings home to him the reality of what he’s done and what his predicament is. He never imagined things would move so fast. He more or less comes to his senses. He realizes he must abandon his plan now and move into preservation mode. He needs to kill the girl to eliminate her as a witness and then hide her body in order to prevent his arrest.”

Bosch nodded as he understood her theory.

“So what you’re saying is, the crime that occurred was not the crime that he intended.”

“Correct. He abandoned the true plan.”

“So when Kloster went to the bureau looking for similars, he was looking for the wrong thing.”

“Right again.”

“But could there actually have been a plan? You just said yourself that it was a crime of compulsion. He saw an opportunity and within a few seconds acted on it. What plan could there have been?”

“Actually, it is more than likely that he had a complex and complete plan. Killers like these have a paraphilia-a set construct of the perfect psychosexual experience. They fantasize about it in great detail. And as you can expect, it often involves torture and murder. The paraphilia is part of their daily fantasy life and it builds to the point where the desire becomes the urge which eventually becomes a compulsion to act out. When they do cross that line and act out, the abduction of the victim may be completely unplanned and improvisational, but the killing sequence is not. The victim is unfortunately dropped into a set construct that has played over and over in the killer’s mind.”

Bosch looked at his notebook and realized he had stopped taking notes.

“Okay, but you’re saying that didn’t happen here,” he said. “He abandoned the plan. He heard the abduction report on the scanner, and that took him from fantasy to reality. He realized that they could be closing in on him. He killed her and dumped her, hoping to avoid detection.”

“Exactly. And therefore, as you just noted, when investigators attempted to compare elements of this murder to others’, they were comparing apples and oranges. They found nothing that matched and believed that this was a onetime crime of opportunity and compulsion. I don’t think it was.”

Bosch looked up from the photos to Rachel’s eyes.

“You think he did this before.”

“I think the idea that he had acted out before in this way is compelling. It would not surprise me if you were to find that he was involved in other abductions.”

“You’re talking about more than twenty-four years ago.”

“I know. And since there was no linking of Jessup to known unsolved murders, we are probably talking about missing children and runaways. Cases where there was never a crime scene established. The girls were never found.”

Bosch thought of Jessup’s middle-of-the-night visits to the parks along Mulholland Drive. He thought he might now know why Jessup would light a candle at the base of a tree.

Then a more stunning and scary thought pushed through.

“Do you think a guy like this would use those crimes from so long ago to feed his fantasy now?”

“Of course he would. He’s been in prison, what other choice did he have?”

Bosch felt an urgency take hold inside. An urgency that came with the growing certainty that they weren’t dealing with an isolated instance of murder. If Walling’s theory was correct, and he had no reason to doubt it, Jessup was a repeater. And though he had been on ice for twenty-four years, he was now roaming the city freely. It would not be long now before he became vulnerable to the pressures and urges that had driven him to deadly action before.

Bosch came to a fast resolve. The next time Jessup was seized by the pressures of his life and overcome by the compulsion to kill, Bosch was going to be there to destroy him.

His eyes refocused and he realized Rachel was looking at him oddly.

“Thank you for all of this, Rachel,” he said. “I think I need to go.”

Nineteen

Thursday, March 4, 9 A.M .

It was only a hearing on pretrial motions but the courtroom was packed. Lots of courthouse gadflies and media, and a fair number of trial lawyers were sitting in as well. I sat at the prosecution table with Maggie and we were going over our arguments once again. All issues before Judge Breitman had already been argued and submitted on paper. This would be when the judge could ask further questions and then announce her rulings. I had a growing sense of anxiety. The motions submitted by Clive Royce were all pretty routine and Maggie and I had submitted solid responses. We were also ready with oral arguments to back them, but a hearing like this was also a time for the unexpected. On more than one occasion I had sandbagged the prosecution in a pretrial hearing. And sometimes the case is won or lost before the trial begins with a ruling in one of these hearings.

I leaned back and looked behind us and then took a quick glance around the courtroom. I gave a phony smile and nod to a lawyer I saw in the spectator section, then turned back to Maggie.

“Where’s Bosch?” I asked.

“I don’t think he’s going to be here.”

“Why not? He’s completely disappeared in the last week.”

“He’s been working on something. He called yesterday and asked if he had to be here for this and I said he didn’t.”

“He’d better be working on something related to Jessup.”

“He tells me it is and that he’s going to bring it to us soon.”

“That’s nice of him. The trial starts in four weeks.”

I wondered why Bosch had chosen to call her instead of me, the lead prosecutor. I realized that this made me upset with Maggie as well as Bosch.

“Listen, I don’t know what happened between you two on your little trip to Port Townsend, but he should be calling me.”

Maggie shook her head as if dealing with a petulant child.

“Look, you don’t have to worry. He knows you’re the lead prosecutor. He probably figures you are too busy for the day-to-day updates on what he’s doing. And I’m going to forget what you said about Port Townsend. This one time. You make another insinuation like that and you and I are going to have a real problem.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. It’s just that-”

My attention was drawn across the aisle to Jessup, who was sitting at the defense table with Royce. He was staring at me with a smirk on his face and I realized he had been watching Maggie and me, maybe even listening.

“Excuse me a second,” I said.

I got up and walked over to the defense table. I leaned over him.

“Can I help you with something, Jessup?”

Before Jessup could say a word his lawyer cut in.

“Don’t talk to my client, Mick,” Royce said. “If you want to ask him something, then you ask me.”

Now Jessup smiled again, emboldened by his attorney’s defensive move.

“Just go sit down,” Jessup said. “I got nothing to say to you.”

Royce held his hand up to quiet him.

“I’ll handle this. You be quiet.”

“He threatened me. You should complain to the judge.”

“I said be quiet and that I would handle this.”

Jessup folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

“Mick, is there a problem here?” Royce asked.

“No, no problem. I just don’t like him staring at me.”

I walked back to the prosecution table, annoyed with myself for losing my calm. I sat down and looked at the pool camera set up in the jury box. Judge Breitman had approved the filming of the trial and the various hearings leading up to it, but only through the use of a pool camera, which would provide a universal feed that all channels and networks could use.

A few minutes later the judge took the bench and called the hearing to order. One by one we went through the defense motions, and the rulings mostly fell our way without much further argument. The most important one was the routine motion to dismiss for lack of evidence, which the judge rejected with little comment. When Royce asked to be heard, she said that it wasn’t necessary to discuss the issue further. It was a solid rebuke and I loved it even though outwardly I acted as though it were routine and boring.

The only ruling the judge wanted to discuss in detail was the oddball request by Royce to allow his client to use makeup during trial to cover the tattoos on his neck and fingers. Royce had argued in his motion that the tattoos were all prison tattoos applied while he was falsely incarcerated for twenty-four years. He said the tattoos could be prejudicial when noticed by jurors. His client intended to cover these with skin-tone makeup and he wanted to bar the prosecution from addressing it in front of the jury.

“I have to admit I have not had a motion like this come before me,” the judge said. “I’m inclined to allow it and hold the prosecution from drawing attention to it but I see the prosecution has objected to the motion, saying that it contains insufficient information about the content and history of these tattoos. Can you shed some light on the subject, Mr. Royce?”

Royce stood and addressed the court from his place at the defense table. I looked over and my eyes were drawn to Jessup’s hands. I knew the tattoos across his knuckles were Royce’s chief concern. The neck markings could largely be covered with a collared shirt, which he would wear with a suit at trial. But the hands were difficult to hide. Across the four digits of each hand he had inked the sentiment FUCK THIS and Royce knew that I would make sure it was seen by jurors. That sentiment was probably the chief impediment to having Jessup testify in his defense, because Royce knew I would find a way either casually or specifically to make sure the jury got his message.

“Your Honor, it is the defense’s position that these tattoos were administered to Mr. Jessup’s body while he was falsely imprisoned and are a product of that harrowing experience. Prison is a dangerous place, Judge, and inmates take measures to protect themselves. Sometimes it is through tattooing that is designed to be intimidating or to show an association the prisoner might not actually have or believe in. It would certainly be prejudicial for the jury to see, and therefore we ask for relief. This, I might add, is merely a tactic by the prosecution to delay the trial, and the defense firmly stands by its decision to not delay justice in this case.”

Maggie stood up quickly. She had handled this motion on paper and therefore it was hers to handle in court.

“Your Honor, may I be heard on the defense’s accusation?”

“One moment, Ms. McPherson, I want to be heard myself. Mr. Royce, can you explain your last statement?”

Royce bowed politely.

“Yes, of course, Judge Breitman. The defendant has begun to go through a tattoo removal process. But this takes time and will not be completed by trial. By objecting to our simple request to use makeup, the prosecution is trying to push the trial back until this removal process is completed. It’s an effort to subvert the speedy trial statute which since day one the defense, to the prosecution’s consternation, has refused to waive.”

The judge turned her gaze to Maggie McFierce. It was her turn.

“Your Honor, this is simply a defense fabrication. The state has not once asked for a delay or opposed the defense’s request for a speedy trial. In fact, the prosecution is ready for trial. So this statement is outlandish and objectionable. The true objection on the part of the prosecution to this motion is to the idea of the defendant being allowed to disguise himself. A trial is a search for truth, and allowing him to use makeup to cover up who he really is would be an affront to the search for truth. Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Judge, may I respond?” Royce, still standing, said immediately.

Breitman paused for a moment while she wrote a few notes from Maggie’s brief.

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Royce,” she finally said. “I’m going to make a ruling on this and I will allow Mr. Jessup to cover his tattoos. If he chooses to testify on his behalf, the prosecution will not address this issue with him in front of the jury.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Maggie said.

She sat down without showing any outward sign of disappointment. It was just one ruling among many others and most had gone the prosecution’s way. This loss was minor at worst.

“Okay,” the judge said. “I think we have covered everything. Anything else from counsel at this time?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Royce said as he stood again. “Defense has a new motion we would like to submit.”

He stepped away from the defense table and brought copies of the new motion first to the judge and then to us, giving Maggie and me individual copies of a one-page motion. Maggie was a fast reader, a skill she had genetically passed on to our daughter, who was reading two books a week on top of her homework.

“This is bullshit,” she whispered before I had even finished reading the title of the document.

But I caught up quickly. Royce was adding a new lawyer to the defense team and the motion was to disqualify Maggie from the prosecution because of a conflict of interest. The new lawyer’s name was David Bell.

Maggie quickly turned around to scan the spectator seats. My eyes followed and there was David Bell, sitting at the end of the second row. I knew him on sight because I had seen him with Maggie in the months after our marriage had ended. One time I had come to her apartment to pick up my daughter and Bell had opened the door.

Maggie turned back and started to stand to address the court but I put my hand on her shoulder and held her in place.

“I’m taking this,” I said.

“No, wait,” she whispered urgently. “Ask for a ten-minute recess. We need to talk about this.”

“Exactly what I was going to do.”

I stood and addressed the judge.

“Your Honor, like you, we just got this. We can take it with us and submit but we would rather argue it right now. If the court could indulge us with a brief recess, I think we would be ready to respond.”

“Fifteen minutes, Mr. Haller? I have another matter holding. I could handle it and come back to you.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

This meant we had to leave the table while another prosecutor handled his business before the judge. We pushed our files and Maggie’s laptop to the back of the table to make room, then got up and walked toward the back door of the courtroom. As we passed Bell he raised a hand to get Maggie’s attention but she ignored him and walked by.

“You want to go upstairs?” Maggie asked as we came through the double doors. She was suggesting that we go up to the DA’s office.

“There isn’t time to wait for an elevator.”

“We could take the stairs. It’s only three flights.”

We walked through the door into the building’s enclosed stairwell but then I grabbed her arm.

“This is good enough right here,” I said. “Tell me what we do about Bell.”

“That piece of shit. He’s never defended a criminal case, let alone a murder, in his life.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have made the same mistake twice.”

She looked pointedly at me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind, bad joke. Let’s just stay on point.”

She had her arms folded tightly against her chest.

“This is the most underhanded thing I’ve ever seen. Royce wants me off the case so he goes to Bell. And Bell… I can’t believe he would do something like this to me.”

“Yeah, well, he’s probably in it for a dip into the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We probably should have seen something like this coming.”

It was a defense tactic I had used myself before, but not with such obviousness. If you didn’t like the judge or the prosecutor, one way of getting them off the case was to bring someone onto your team who has a conflict of interest with them. Since the defendant is constitutionally guaranteed the defense counsel of his choice, it is usually the judge or prosecutor who must be disqualified from the trial. It was a shrewd move by Royce.

“You see what he’s doing, right?” Maggie said. “He is trying to isolate you. He knows I’m the one person you would trust as second chair and he’s trying to take that away from you. He knows that without me you are going to lose.”

“Thanks for your confidence in me.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve never prosecuted a case. I’m there to help you through it. If he gets me kicked off the table, then who are you going to have? Who would you trust?”

I nodded. She was right.

“Okay, give me the facts. How long were you with Bell?”

“With him? I wasn’t. We went out briefly seven years ago. No more than two months and if he says differently he’s a liar.”

“Is the conflict that you had the relationship or is there something else, something you did or said, something he has knowledge of that creates the conflict?”

“There’s nothing. We went out and it just didn’t take.”

“Who dropped who?”

She paused and looked down at the floor.

“He did.”

I nodded.

“Then there’s the conflict. He can claim you carry a grudge.”

“A woman scorned, is that it? This is such bullshit. You men are-”

“Hold on, Maggie. Hold on. I’m saying that is their argument. I am not agreeing. In fact, I want-”

The door to the stairwell opened and the prosecutor who took our places when we had gotten up for the recess entered and started up the steps. I checked my watch. Only eight minutes had gone by.

“She went back into chambers,” he said as he passed. “You guys are fine.”

“Thanks.”

I waited until I heard his steps on the next landing before continuing in a quiet tone with Maggie.

“Okay, how do I fight this?”

“You tell the judge that this is an obvious attempt to sabotage the prosecution. They’ve hired an attorney for the sole reason that he had a relationship with me, not because of any skill he brings to the table.”

I nodded.

“Okay. What else?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think… it was remote in time, no strong emotional attachment, no effect on professional judgment or conduct.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah… and what about Bell? Does he have something or know something I have to watch out for?”

She looked at me like I was some sort of traitor.

“Maggie, I need to know so there’s no surprise on top of the surprise, okay?”

“Fine, there’s nothing. He must really be hard up if he’s taking a fee just to knock me off the case.”

“Don’t worry, two can play this game. Let’s go.”

We went back into the courtroom and as we went through the gate I nodded to the clerk so she could call the judge back from chambers. Instead of going to the prosecution table, I diverted to the defense side where Royce was sitting next to his client. David Bell was now seated at the table on the other side of Jessup. I leaned over Royce’s shoulder and whispered just loud enough that his client would hear.

“Clive, when the judge comes out, I’ll give you the chance to withdraw this motion. If you don’t, number one, I’m going to embarrass you in front of the camera and it will be digitally preserved forever. And number two, the release-and-remuneration offer I made to your client last week is withdrawn. Permanently.”

I watched Jessup’s eyebrows rise a few centimeters. He hadn’t heard anything about an offer involving money and freedom. This was because I hadn’t made one. But now it would be up to Royce to convince his client that he had not withheld anything from him. Good luck with that.

Royce smiled like he was pleased with my comeback. He leaned back casually and tossed his pen on his legal pad. It was a Montblanc with gold trim and that was no way to treat it.

“This is really going to get good, yes, Mick?” he said. “Well, I’ll tell you. I’m not withdrawing the motion and I think if you had made me an offer involving release and remuneration I would’ve remembered it.”

So he had called my bluff. He’d still have to convince his client. I saw the judge step out from the door of her chambers and start up the three steps to the bench. I took one more whispered shot at Royce.

“Whatever you paid Bell you wasted.”

I stepped over to the prosecution table and remained standing. The judge brought the courtroom to order.

“Okay, back on the record in California versus Jessup. Mr. Haller, do you want to respond to the defendant’s latest motion or take it on submission.”

“Your Honor, the prosecution wishes to respond right now to… this motion.”

“Go right ahead, then.”

I tried to build a good tone of outrage into my voice.

“Judge, I am as cynical as the next guy but I have to say I am surprised by the defense’s tactics here with this motion. In fact, this isn’t a motion. This is very plainly an attempt to subvert the trial system by denying the People of Cal-”

“Your Honor,” Royce interjected, jumping to his feet, “I strenuously object to the character assassination Mr. Haller is putting on the record and before the media. This is nothing more than grand-”

“Mr. Royce, you will have an opportunity to respond after Mr. Haller responds to your motion. Please be seated.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Royce sat down and I tried to remember where I was.

“Go ahead, Mr. Haller.”

“Yes, Your Honor, as you know, the prosecution turned over all discovery materials to the defense on Tuesday. What you have before you now is a very disingenuous motion spawned by Mr. Royce’s realization of what he will be up against at trial. He thought the state was going to roll over on this case. He now knows that it is not going to do so.”

“But what does this have to do with the motion at hand, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked impatiently.

“Everything,” I said. “You’ve heard of judge shopping? Well, Mr. Royce is prosecutor shopping. He knows through his examination of discovery materials that Margaret McPherson is perhaps the most important part of the prosecution team. Rather than take on the evidence at trial, he is attempting to undercut the prosecution by splintering the team that has assembled that evidence. Here we are, just four weeks before trial and he makes a move against my second chair. He has hired an attorney with little to no experience in criminal defense, not to mention defending a murder case. Why would he do that, Judge, other than for the purpose of concocting this supposed conflict of interest?”

“Your Honor?”

Royce was on his feet again.

“Mr. Royce,” the judge said, “I told you, you will have your chance.”

The warning was very clear in her voice.

“But, Your Honor, I can’t-”

“Sit down.”

Royce sat down and the judge put her attention back on me.

“Judge, this is a cynical move made by a desperate defense. I would hope that you would not allow him to subvert the intentions of the Constitution.”

Like two men on a seesaw, I went down and Royce immediately popped up.

“One moment, Mr. Royce,” the judge said, holding up her hand and signaling him back down to his seat. “I want to talk to Mr. Bell.”

Now it was Bell’s turn to stand up. He was a well-dressed man with sandy hair and a ruddy complexion, but I could see the apprehension in his eyes. Whether he had come to Royce or Royce had come to him, it was clear that he had not anticipated having to stand in front of a judge and explain himself.

“Mr. Bell, I have not had the pleasure of seeing you practice in my courtroom. Do you handle criminal defense, sir?”

“Uh, no, ma’am, not ordinarily. I am a trial attorney and I have been lead counsel in more than thirty trials. I do know my way around a courtroom, Your Honor.”

“Well, good for you. How many of those trials were murder trials?”

I felt total exhilaration as I watched what I had set in motion take on its own momentum. Royce looked mortified as he watched his plan shatter like an expensive vase.

“None of them were murder trials per se. But several were wrongful death cases.”

“Not the same thing. How many criminal trials do you have under your belt, Mr. Bell?”

“Again, Judge, none were criminal cases.”

“What do you bring to the defense of Mr. Jessup?”

“Your Honor, I bring a wealth of trial experience but I don’t think that my résumé is on point here. Mr. Jessup is entitled to counsel of his choice and-”

“What exactly is the conflict you have with Ms. McPherson?”

Bell looked perplexed.

“Did you understand the question?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor, the conflict is that we had an intimate relationship and now we would be opposing each other at trial.”

“Were you married?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“When was this intimate relationship and how long did it last?”

“It was seven years ago and it lasted about three months.”

“Have you had contact with her since then?”

Bell raised his eyes to the ceiling as if looking for an answer. Maggie leaned over and whispered in my ear.

“No, Your Honor,” Bell said.

I stood up.

“Your Honor, in the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Bell has sent Ms. McPherson a Christmas card for the past seven years. She has not responded likewise.”

There was a murmur of laughter in the courtroom. The judge ignored it and looked down at something in front of her. She looked like she had heard enough.

“Where is the conflict you are worried about, Mr. Bell?”

“Uh, Judge, this is a bit difficult to speak of in open court but I was the one who ended the relationship with Ms. McPherson and my concern is that there could be some lingering animosity there. And that’s the conflict.”

The judge wasn’t buying this and everyone in the courtroom knew it. It was becoming uncomfortable even to watch.

“Ms. McPherson,” the judge said.

Maggie pushed back her chair and stood.

“Do you hold any lingering animosity toward Mr. Bell?”

“No, Your Honor, at least not before today. I moved on to better things.”

I could hear another low rumble from the seats behind me as Maggie’s spear struck home.

“Thank you, Ms. McPherson,” the judge said. “You can sit. And so can you, Mr. Bell.”

Bell thankfully dropped into his chair. The judge leaned forward and spoke matter-of-factly into the bench’s microphone.

“The motion is denied.”

Royce stood up immediately.

“Your Honor, I was not heard before the ruling.”

“It was your motion, Mr. Royce.”

“But I would like to respond to some of the things Mr. Haller said about-”

“Mr. Royce, I’ve made my ruling on it. I don’t see the need for further discussion. Do you?”

Royce realized his defeat could get even worse. He cut his losses.

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

He sat down. The judge then ended the hearing and we packed up and headed toward the rear doors. But not as quickly as Royce. He and his client and supposed co-counsel split the courtroom like men who had to catch the last train on a Friday night. And this time Royce didn’t bother stopping outside the courtroom to chat with the media.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” Maggie said when we got to the elevators.

I shrugged.

“You stuck up for yourself. Did you really mean that, what you said about moving on from Bell to better things?”

“From him, yes. Definitely.”

I looked at her but couldn’t read her beyond the spoken line. The elevator doors opened, and there was Harry Bosch waiting to step off.

Twenty

Thursday, March 4, 10:40 A.M .

Bosch stepped off the elevator and almost walked right into Haller and McPherson.

“Is it over?” he asked.

“You missed it,” Haller said.

Bosch quickly turned and hit one of the bumpers on the elevator doors before it could close.

“Are you going down?”

“That’s the plan,” Haller said in a tone that didn’t hide his annoyance with Bosch. “I thought you weren’t coming to the hearing.”

“I wasn’t. I was coming to get you two.”

They rode the elevator down and Bosch convinced them to walk with him a block over to the Police Administration Building. He signed them in as visitors and they went up to the fifth floor, where Robbery-Homicide Division was located.

“This is the first time I’ve been here,” McPherson said. “It’s as quiet as an insurance office.”

“Yeah, I guess we lost a lot of the charm when we moved,” Bosch replied.

The PAB had been in operation for only six months. It had a quiet and sterile quality about it. Most of the building’s denizens, including Bosch, missed the old headquarters, Parker Center, even though it was beyond decrepit.

“I’ve got a private room over here,” he said, pointing to a door on the far side of the squad room.

He used a key to unlock the door and they walked into a large space with a boardroom-style table at center. One wall was glass that looked out on the squad room but Bosch had lowered and closed the blinds for privacy. On the opposite wall was a large whiteboard with a row of photos across the top margin and numerous notes written beneath each shot. The photos were of young girls.

“I’ve been working on this nonstop for a week,” Bosch said. “You probably have been wondering where I disappeared to so I figured it was time to show you what I’ve got.”

McPherson stopped just a few steps inside the door and stared, squinting her eyes and revealing to Bosch her vanity. She needed glasses but he’d never seen her wearing them.

Haller stepped over to the table, where there were several archival case boxes gathered. He slowly pulled out a chair to sit down.

“Maggie,” Bosch prompted. “Why don’t you sit down?”

McPherson finally broke from her stare and took the chair at the end of the table.

“Is this what I think it is?” she asked. “They all look like Melissa Landy.”

“Well,” Bosch said. “Let me just go over it and you’ll draw your own conclusions.”

Bosch stayed on his feet. He moved around the table to the whiteboard. With his back to the board he started to tell the story.

“Okay, I have a friend. She’s a former profiler. I’ve never-”

“For whom?” Haller asked.

“The FBI, but does it matter? What I’m saying is that I’ve never known anybody who was better at it. So, shortly after I came into this I asked her informally to take a look at the case files and she did. Her conclusions were that back in ’eighty-six this case was read all wrong. And where the original investigators saw a crime of impulse and opportunity, she saw something different. To keep it short, she saw indications that the person who killed Melissa Landy may have killed before.”

“Here we go,” Haller said.

“Look, man, I don’t know why you’re giving me the attitude,” Bosch said. “You pulled me in as investigator on this thing and I’m investigating. Why don’t you just let me tell you what I know? Then you can do with it whatever you want. You think it’s legit, then run with it. You don’t, then shitcan it. I will have done my job by bringing it to you.”

“I’m not giving you any attitude, Harry. I’m just thinking out loud. Thinking about all the things that can complicate a trial. Complicate discovery. You realize that everything you are telling us has to be turned over to Royce now?”

“Only if you intend to use it.”

“What?”

“I thought you’d know the rules of discovery better than me.”

“I know the rules. Why did you bring us here for this dog and pony show if you don’t think we should use it?”

“Why don’t you just let him tell the story,” McPherson said. “And then maybe we’ll understand.”

“Then, go ahead,” Haller said. “Anyway, all I said was ‘Here we go,’ which I think is a pretty common phrase indicating surprise and change of direction. That’s all. Continue, Harry. Please.”

Bosch glanced back at the board for a moment and then turned back to his audience of two and continued.

“So my friend the profiler thinks Jason Jessup killed before he killed Melissa Landy, and most likely was successful in hiding his involvement in these previous crimes.”

“So you went looking,” McPherson said.

“I did. Now, remember our original investigator, Kloster, was no slouch. He went looking, too. Only problem was he was using the wrong profile. They had semen on the dress, strangulation and a body dump in an accessible location. That was the profile, so that is what he went looking for and he found no similars, or at least no cases that connected. End of story, end of search. They believed Jessup acted out this one time, was exceedingly disorganized and sloppy, and got caught.”

Harry turned and gestured to the row of photographs on the whiteboard behind him.

“So I went a different way. I went looking for girls who were reported missing and never showed up again. Girls reported as runaways as well as possible abductions. Jessup is from Riverside County so I expanded the search to include Riverside and L.A. counties. Since Jessup was twenty-four when he was arrested I went back to when he was eighteen, putting the search limits from nineteen eighty to ’eighty-six. As far as victim profile, I went Caucasian aged twelve to eighteen.”

“Why did you go as old as eighteen?” McPherson asked. “Our victim was twelve.”

“Rachel said-I mean, the profiler said that sometimes starting out, these people pick from their own peer group. They learn how to kill and then they start to define their targets according to their paraphilias. A paraphilia is-”

“I know what it is,” McPherson said. “You did all of this work yourself? Or did this Rachel help you?”

“No, she just worked up the profile. I had some help from my partner pulling all of this together. But it was tough because not all the records are complete, especially on cases that never got above runaway status, and a lot was cleared out. Most of the runaway files from back then are gone.”

“They didn’t digitize?” McPherson asked.

Bosch shook his head.

“Not in L.A. County. They prioritized when they switched over to computerized records and went back and captured records for major crimes. No runaway cases unless there was the possibility of abduction involved. Riverside County was different. Fewer cases out there so they archived everything digitally. Anyway, for that time period in these two counties, we came up with twenty-nine cases over the six-year period we’re looking at. Again, these were unresolved cases. In each the girl disappeared and never came home. We pulled what records we could find and most didn’t fit because of witness statements or other issues. But I couldn’t rule out these eight.”

Bosch turned to the board and looked at the photos of eight smiling girls. All of them long gone over time.

“I’m not saying that Jessup had anything to do with any of these girls dropping off the face of the earth, but he could have. As Maggie already noticed, they all have a resemblance to one another and to Melissa Landy. And by the way, the resemblance extends to body type as well. They’re all within ten pounds and two inches of one another and our victim.”

Bosch turned back to his audience and saw McPherson and Haller transfixed by the photographs.

“Beneath each photo I’ve put the particulars,” he said. “Physical descriptors, date and location of disappearance, the basic stuff.”

“Did Jessup know any of them?” Haller asked. “Is he connected in any way to any of them?”

That was the bottom line, Bosch knew.

“Nothing really solid-I mean, not that I’ve found so far,” he said. “The best connection that we have is this girl.”

He turned and pointed to the first photo on the left.

“The first girl. Valerie Schlicter. She disappeared in nineteen eighty-one from the same neighborhood in Riverside that Jessup grew up in. He would’ve been nineteen and she was seventeen. They both went to Riverside High but because he dropped out early, it doesn’t look like they were there at the same time. Anyway, she was counted as a runaway because there were problems in her home. It was a single-parent home. She lived with her mother and a brother and then one day about a month after graduating from high school, she split. The investigation never rose above a missing persons case, largely because of her age. She turned eighteen a month after she disappeared. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it an investigation. They more or less waited to see if she’d come home. She didn’t.”

“Nothing else?”

Bosch turned back and looked at Haller.

“So far that’s it.”

“Then discovery is not an issue. There’s nothing here. There’s no connection between Jessup and any of these girls. The closest one you have is this Riverside girl and she was five years older than Melissa Landy. This whole thing seems like a stretch.”

Bosch thought he detected a note of relief in Haller’s voice.

“Well,” he said, “there’s still another part to all of this.”

He stepped over to the case boxes at the end of the table and picked up a file. He walked it down and put it in front of McPherson.

“As you know, we’ve had Jessup under surveillance since he was released.”

McPherson opened the file and saw the stack of 8 × 10 surveillance shots of Jessup.

“With Jessup they’ve learned that there is no routine schedule, so they stick with him twenty-four/seven. And what they’re documenting is that he has two remarkably different lives. The public one, which is carried in the media as his so-called journey to freedom. Everything from smiling for the cameras and eating hamburgers to surfing Venice Beach to the talk-show circuit.”

“Yes, we’re well aware,” Haller said. “And most of it orchestrated by his attorney.”

“And then there’s the private side,” Bosch said. “The bar crawls, the late-night cruising and the middle-of-the-night visits.”

“Visits where?” McPherson asked.

Bosch went to his last visual aid, a map of the Santa Monica Mountains. He unfolded it on the table in front of them.

“Nine different times since his release Jessup has left the apartment where he stays in Venice and in the middle of the night driven up to Mulholland on top of the mountains. From there he has visited one or two of the canyon parks up there per night. Franklin Canyon is his favorite. He’s been there six times. But he also has hit Stone Canyon, Runyon Canyon and the overlook at Fryman Canyon a few times each.”

“What’s he doing at these places?” McPherson asked.

“Well, first of all, these are public parks that are closed at dusk,” Bosch replied. “So he’s sneaking in. We’re talking two, three o’clock in the morning. He goes in and he just sort of sits. He communes. He lit candles a couple times. Always the same spots in each of the parks. Usually on a trail or by a tree. We don’t have photos because it’s too dark and we can’t risk getting in close. I’ve gone out with the SIS a couple times this week and watched. It looks like he just sort of meditates.”

Bosch circled the four parks on the map. Each was off Mulholland and close to the others.

“Have you talked to your profiler about all this?” Haller asked.

“Yeah, I did, and she was thinking what I was thinking. That he’s visiting graves. Communing with the dead… his victims.”

“Oh, man…,” Haller said.

“Yeah,” Bosch said.

There was a long pause as Haller and McPherson considered the implications of Bosch’s investigation.

“Harry, has anybody done any digging in any of these spots?” McPherson asked.

“No, not yet. We didn’t want to go too crazy with the shovels, because he keeps coming back. He’d know something was up and we don’t want that yet.”

“Right. What about-”

“Cadaver dogs. Yeah, we brought them out there undercover yesterday. We-”

“How do you make a dog go undercover?” Haller asked.

Bosch started to laugh and it eased some of the tension in the room.

“What I mean is, there were two dogs and they weren’t brought out in official vehicles and handled by people in uniforms. We tried to make it look like somebody walking their dog, but even that was a problem because the park doesn’t allow dogs on these trails. Anyway, we did the best we could and got in and got out. I checked with SIS to make sure Jessup wasn’t anywhere near Mulholland when we went in. He was surfing.”

“And?” McPherson asked impatiently.

“These dogs are the type that just lie down on the ground when they pick up the scent of human decay. Supposedly they can pick it up through the ground after even a hundred years. Anyway, at three of the four places Jessup’s gone in these parks, the dogs didn’t react. But at one spot one of the two dogs did.”

Bosch watched McPherson swivel in her seat and look at Haller. He looked back at her and there was some sort of silent communication there.

“It should also be noted that this particular dog has a history of being wrong-that is, giving a false positive-about a third of the time,” Bosch said. “The other dog didn’t react to the same spot.”

“Great,” Haller said. “So what does that tell us?”

“Well, that’s why I invited you over,” Bosch said. “We’ve reached the point where maybe we should start digging. At least in that one spot. But if we do, we run the risk that Jessup will find out and he’ll know we’ve been following him. And if we dig and we find human remains, do we have enough here to charge Jessup?”

McPherson leaned forward while Haller leaned back, clearly deferring to his second chair.

“Well, I see no legal embargo on digging,” she finally said. “It’s public property and there is nothing that would stop you legally. No need for a search warrant. But do you want to dig right now based on this one dog with what seems like a high false-positive rate, or do we wait until after the trial?”

“Or maybe even during the trial,” Haller said.

“The second question is the more difficult,” McPherson said. “For the sake of argument, let’s say there are remains buried in one or even all of those spots. Yes, Jessup’s activities seem to form an awareness of what is below the earth in the places he visits in the middle of the night. But does that prove he’s responsible? Hardly. We could charge him, yes, but he could mount a number of defenses based on what we know right now. You agree, Michael?”

Haller leaned forward and nodded.

“Suppose you dig and you find the remains of one of these girls. Even if you can confirm the ID-and that’s going to be a big if-you still don’t have any evidence connecting her death to Jessup. All you have is his guilty knowledge of the burial spot. That is very significant but is it enough to go into court with? I don’t know. I think I’d rather be defense counsel than prosecutor on that one. I think Maggie’s right, there are any number of defenses that he could employ to explain his knowledge of the burial sites. He could invent a straw man-somebody else who did the killings and told him about them or forced him to take part in the burials. Jessup’s spent twenty-four years in prison. How many other convicts has he been exposed to? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many of them were murderers? He could lay this whole thing on one of them, say that he heard in prison about these burial spots and he decided to come and pray for the souls of the victims. He could make up anything.”

He shook his head again.

“The bottom line is, there are a lot of ways to go with a defense like this. Without any sort of physical evidence connecting him or a witness, I think you would have a problem.”

“Maybe there is physical evidence in the graves that connects him,” Bosch offered.

“Maybe, but what if there isn’t?” Haller shot right back. “You never know, you could also pull a confession out of Jessup. But I doubt that, too.”

McPherson took it from there.

“Michael mentioned the big if, the remains. Can they be IDed? Will we be able to establish how long they were in the ground? Remember, Jessup has an ironclad alibi for the last twenty-four years. If you pull up a set of bones and we can’t say for sure that they’ve been down there since at least ’eighty-six, then Jessup would walk.”

Haller got up and went to the whiteboard, grabbing a marker off the ledge. In a clear spot he drew two circles side by side.

“Here’s what we’ve got so far. One is our case and one is this whole new thing you’ve come up with. They’re separate. We have the case with the trial about to go and then we have your new investigation. When they’re separate like this we’re fine. Your investigation has no bearing on our trial, so we can keep the two circles separate. Understand?”

“Sure,” Bosch said.

Haller grabbed the eraser off the ledge and wiped the two circles off the board. He then drew two new circles, but this time they overlapped.

“Now if you go out there and start digging and you find bones? This is what happens. Our two circles become connected. And that’s when your thing becomes our thing and we have to reveal this to the defense and the whole wide world.”

McPherson nodded in agreement.

“So then, what do we do?” Bosch asked. “Drop it?”

“No, we don’t drop it,” Haller said. “We just be careful and we keep them separate. You know what is universally held as the best trial strategy? Keep it simple, stupid. So let’s not complicate things. Let’s keep our circles separate and go to trial and get this guy for killing Melissa Landy. And when we’re done that, we go up to Mulholland with shovels.”

“Done with.”

“What?”

“When we’re done with that.”

“Whatever, Professor.”

Bosch’s eyes moved from Haller’s connected circles on the board to the row of faces. All his instincts told him that at least some of those girls did not get any older than they were in the photos. They were in the ground and had been buried there by Jason Jessup. He hated the idea of them spending another day in the dirt but knew that they would have to wait a little longer.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll keep working it on the side. For now. But there’s also one other thing from the profiler that you should know.”

“The other shoe drops,” McPherson said. “What?”

Haller had returned to his seat. Bosch pulled out a chair and sat down himself.

“She said a killer like Jessup doesn’t reform in prison. The dark matter inside doesn’t go away. It stays. It waits. It’s like a cancer. And it reacts to outside pressures.”

“He’ll kill again,” McPherson said.

Bosch slowly nodded.

“He can visit the graves of his past victims for only so long before he’ll feel the need for… fresh inspiration. And if he feels under pressure, the chances are good he’ll move in that direction even sooner.”

“Then we’d better be ready,” Haller said. “I’m the guy who let him out. If you have any doubts about him being covered, then I want to hear them.”

“No doubts,” Bosch said. “If Jessup makes a move, we’ll be on him.”

“When are you planning on going out with the SIS again?” McPherson asked.

“Whenever I can. But I’ve got my daughter, so it’s whenever she’s on a sleepover or I can get somebody to come in.”

“I want to go once.”

“Why?”

“I want to see the real Jessup. Not the one in the papers and on TV.”

“Well…”

“What?”

“Well, there are no women on the team and they’re constantly moving with this guy. There won’t be any bathroom breaks. They piss in bottles.”

“Don’t worry, Harry, I think I can handle it.”

“Then I’ll set it up.”

Twenty-one

Friday, March 19, 10:50 A.M .

I checked my watch when I heard Maggie say hello to Lorna in the reception room. She entered the office and dropped her case on her desk. It was one of those slim and stylish Italian leather laptop totes that she never would have bought for herself. Too expensive and too red. I wanted to know who gave it to her like I wanted to know a lot of things she would never tell me.

But the origin of her red briefcase was the least of my worries. In thirteen days we would start picking jurors in the Jessup case and Clive Royce had finally landed his best pretrial punch. It was an inch thick and sat in front of me on my desk.

“Where have you been?” I said with a clear note of annoyance in my voice. “I called your cell and got no answer.”

She came over to my desk, dragging the extra chair with her.

“More like, where were you?”

I glanced at my calendar blotter and saw nothing in the day’s square.

“What are you talking about?”

“My phone was turned off because I was at Hayley’s honors assembly. They don’t like cell phones ringing when they are calling the kids up to get their pins.”

“Ah, shit!”

She had told me and copied me on the e-mail. I printed it out and put it on the refrigerator. But not on my desk blotter or into my phone’s calendar. I blew it.

“You should’ve been there, Haller. You would’ve been proud.”

“I know, I know. I messed up.”

“It’s all right. You’ll get other chances. To mess up or stand up.”

That hurt. It would’ve been better if she had chewed my ass out like she used to. But the passive-aggressive approach always got deeper under the skin. And she probably knew that.

“I’ll be at the next one,” I said. “That’s a promise.”

She didn’t sarcastically say Sure, Haller, or I’ve heard that one before. And somehow that made it worse. Instead, she just got down to business.

“What is that?”

She nodded at the document in front of me.

“This is Clive Royce’s last best stand. It’s a motion to exclude the testimony of Sarah Ann Gleason.”

“And of course he drops it off on a Friday afternoon three weeks before trial.”

“More like seventeen days.”

“My mistake. What’s he say?”

I turned the document around and slid it across the desk to her. It was held together with a large black clip.

“He’s been working on this one since the start because he knows the case comes down to her. She’s our primary witness and without her none of the other evidence matters. Even the hair in the truck is circumstantial. If he takes out Sarah he takes out our case.”

“I get that. But how’s he trying to get rid of her?”

She started flipping through the pages.

“It was delivered at nine and is eighty-six pages long so I haven’t had the time to completely digest it. But it’s a two-pronged effort. He’s attacking her original identification from when she was a kid. Says the setup was prejudicial. And he-”

“That was already argued, accepted by the trial court and it held up on appeal. He’s wasting the court’s time.”

“He’s got a new angle this time. Remember, Kloster’s got Alzheimer’s and is no good as a witness. He can’t tell us about the investigation and he can’t defend himself. So this time out Royce alleges that Kloster told Sarah which man to identify. He pointed Jessup out for her.”

“And what is his backup? Supposedly only Sarah and Kloster were in the room.”

“I don’t know. There’s no backup but my guess is he’s riffing on the radio call Kloster made telling them to make Jessup take off his hat.”

“It doesn’t matter. The lineup was put together to see if Sarah could identify Derek Wilbern, the other driver. Any argument that he then told her to put the finger on Jessup is ridiculous. That ID came quite unexpectedly but naturally and convincingly. This is nothing to get worked up about. Even without Kloster we’ll tear this one up.”

I knew she was right but the first attack wasn’t really what I was most worried about.

“That’s just his opening salvo,” I said. “That’s nothing compared with part two. He also seeks to exclude her entire testimony based on unreliable memory. He’s got her whole drug history laid out in the motion, seemingly down to every chip of meth she ever smoked. He’s got arrest records, jail records, witnesses who detail her consumption of drugs, multiple-partner sex and what they term her belief in out-of-body experiences-I guess she forgot to mention that part up in Port Townsend. And to top it all off, he’s got experts on memory loss and false memory creation as a by-product of meth addiction. So in all, you know what he’s got? He’s got us fucked coming and going.”

Maggie didn’t respond as she was scanning the summary pages at the end of Royce’s motion.

“He’s got investigators here and up in San Francisco,” I added. “It’s thorough and exhaustive, Mags. And you know what? It doesn’t even look like he’s gone up to Port Townsend to interview her yet. He says he doesn’t have to because it doesn’t matter what she says now. It can’t be relied upon.”

“He’ll have his experts and we’ll have ours on rebuttal,” she said calmly. “We expected this part and I’ve already been lining ours up. At worst, we can turn this into a wash. You know that.”

“The experts are only a small part of it.”

“We’ll be fine,” she insisted. “And look at these witnesses. Her ex-husbands and boyfriends. I see Royce conveniently didn’t bother to include their own arrest records here. They’re all tweakers themselves. We’ll make them look like pimps and pedophiles with grudges against her because she left them in the dust when she got straight. She married the first one when she was eighteen and he was twenty-nine. She told us. I’d love to get him in the chair in front of the judge. I really think you are overreacting to this, Haller. We can argue this. We can make him put some of these so-called witnesses in front of the judge and we can knock every one of them out of the box. You’re right about one thing, though. This is Royce’s last best stand. It’s just not going to be good enough.”

I shook my head. She was seeing only what was on paper and what could be blocked or parried with our own swords. Not what was not written.

“Look, this is about Sarah. He knows the judge is not going to want to chop our main witness. He knows we’ll get by this. But he’s putting the judge on notice that this is what he is going to put Sarah through if she takes the stand. Her whole life, every sordid detail, every pipe and dick she ever smoked, she’s going to have to sit up there and take it. Then he’ll trot out some PhD who’ll put pictures of a melted brain on the screen and say this is what meth does. Do we want that for her? Is she strong enough to take it? Maybe we have to go to Royce, offer a deal for time served and some kind of payout from the city. Something everybody can live with.”

Maggie flopped the motion onto the desk.

“Are you kidding me? You’re running scared because of this?”

“I’m not running scared. I’m being realistic. I didn’t go up to Washington. I have no feel for this woman. I don’t know if she can stand up to this or not. Besides, we can always take a second bite of the apple with those cases Bosch has been working.”

Maggie leaned back in her chair.

“There’s no guarantee that anything will come out of those other cases. We have to put everything we have into this one, Haller. I could go back up there and hold Sarah’s hand a little bit. Tell her more about what to expect. Get her ready. She already understood it wasn’t going to be pretty.”

“To put it mildly.”

“I think she’s strong enough. I think in some weird way she might need it. You know, get it all out there, expiate her sins. It’s about redemption with her, Michael. You know about that.”

We held each other’s eyes for a long moment.

“Anyway, I think she’ll be more than strong and the jury will see it,” she said. “She’s a survivor and everybody likes a survivor.”

I nodded.

“You have a way of convincing people, Mags. It’s a gift. We both know you should be lead on this, not me.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“All right, go up there and get her prepped for this. Next week, maybe. By then we should have a witness schedule and you can tell her when we’ll be bringing her down.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Meantime, how’s your weekend looking? We have to put together an answer to this.”

I pointed at the defense motion on the desk.

“Well, Harry finally got me a ride-along with the SIS tomorrow night. He’s going, too-I think his daughter has a sleepover. Other than that, I’m around.”

“Why are you going to spend all that time watching Jessup? The police have that covered.”

“Like I said before, I want to see Jessup out there when he doesn’t think anyone is watching. I would suggest that you come, too, but you’ve got Hayley.”

“I wouldn’t waste the time. But when you see Bosch, can you give him a copy of this motion? We’re going to need him to run down some of these witnesses and statements. Not all of them were in Royce’s discovery package.”

“Yeah, he played it smart. He keeps them off his witness list until they show up here. If the judge shoots down the motion, saying Gleason’s credibility is a jury question, he’ll come back with an amended witness list, saying, okay, I need to put these people in front of the jury in regard to credibility.”

“And she’ll allow it or she’ll be contradicting her own ruling. Clever Clive. He knows what he’s doing.”

“Anyway, I’ll get a copy to Harry, but I think he’s still chasing those old cases.”

“Doesn’t matter. The trial is the priority. We need complete backgrounds on these people. You want to deal with him or do you want me to?”

In our divvying up of pretrial duties I had given Maggie the responsibility of prepping for defense witnesses. All except Jessup. If he testified, he was still mine.

“I’ll talk to him,” she said.

She furrowed her brow. It was a habit I’d seen before.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just thinking about how to attack this. I think we throw in a motion in limine, seeking to limit Royce on the impeachable stuff. We argue that the events of her life in between are not relevant to credibility if her identification of Jessup now matches her identification back then.”

I shook my head.

“I would argue that you’re infringing on my client’s sixth amendment right to cross-examine his accuser. The judge might limit some of this stuff if it’s repetitive, but don’t count on her disallowing it.”

She pursed her lips as she recognized that I was right.

“It’s still worth a try,” I said. “Everything is worth a try. In fact, I want to drown Royce in paper. Let’s hit him back with a phonebook to wade through.”

She looked at me and smiled.

“What?”

“I like it when you get all angry and righteous.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet.”

She looked away before it went a step further.

“Where do you want to set up shop this weekend?” she asked. “Remember, you have Hayley. She’s not going to like it if we work the entire weekend.”

I had to think about that for a moment. Hayley loved museums. To the point that I was tired of going to the same museums over and over. She also loved movies. I would need to check and see if a new movie was out.

“Bring her to my house in the morning and be prepared to work on our response. We can maybe trade off. I’ll take her to a movie or something in the afternoon and then you go on and do your thing with the SIS. We’ll make it work.”

“Okay, that’s a deal.”

“Or…”

“Or what?”

“You could bring her over tonight and we could have a little dinner celebrating our kid making second honors. And we might even get a little work on this done.”

“And I stay over, is that what you mean?”

“Sure, if you want.”

“You wish, Haller.”

“I do.”

“By the way, it was first honors. You better have it right when you see her tonight.”

I smiled.

“Tonight? You mean that?”

“I think so.”

“Then don’t worry. I’ll have everything right.”

Twenty-two

Saturday, March 20, 8:00 P.M .

Because Bosch had mentioned that a prosecutor wanted to join the SIS surveillance, Lieutenant Wright arranged his schedule to work Saturday night and be the driver of the car the visitors were assigned to. The pickup point was in Venice at a public parking lot six blocks off the beach. Bosch met McPherson there and then he put a radio call in to Wright, saying they were ready and waiting. Fifteen minutes later a white SUV entered the lot and drove up to them. Bosch gave McPherson the front seat and he climbed into the back. He wasn’t being chivalrous. The long bench seat would allow him to stretch out during the long night of surveillance.

“Steve Wright,” the lieutenant said, offering McPherson his hand.

“Maggie McPherson. Thanks for letting me come along.”

“No sweat. We always like it when the District Attorney’s Office takes an interest. Let’s hope tonight is worth your while.”

“Where’s Jessup now?”

“When I left he was at the Brig on Abbot Kinney. He likes crowded places, which works in our favor. I have a couple guys inside and a few more on the street. We’re kind of used to his rhythm now. He hits a place, waits to be recognized and for people to start buying him drinks, then he moves on-quickly if he isn’t recognized.”

“I guess I’m more interested in his late-night travels than his drinking habits.”

“It’s good that he’s out drinking,” Bosch said from the backseat. “There’s a causal relationship. The nights he takes in alcohol are usually the nights he goes up to Mulholland.”

Wright nodded in agreement and headed the SUV out of the lot. He was a perfect surveillance man because he didn’t look like a cop. In his late fifties with glasses, a thinning hairline and always two or three pens in his shirt pocket, he looked more like an accountant. But he had been with the SIS for more than two decades and had been in on several of the squad’s kills. Every five years or so the Times did a story on the SIS, usually analyzing its kill record. In the last exposé Bosch remembered reading, the paper had labeled Wright “SIS’s unlikely chief gunslinger.” While the reporters and editors behind the story probably viewed that as an editorial putdown, Wright wore it like a badge of honor. He had the sobriquet printed below his name on his business card. In quotes, of course.

Wright drove down Abbot Kinney Boulevard and past the Brig, which was located in a two-story building on the east side of the street. He went two blocks down and made a U-turn. He came back up the street and pulled to the curb in front of a fire hydrant a half block from the bar.

The lighted sign outside the Brig depicted a boxer in a ring, his red gloves up and ready. It was an image that seemed at odds with the name of the bar, but Bosch knew the story behind it. As a much younger man he had lived in the neighborhood. He knew the sign with the boxer was put up by a former owner who had bought out the original owners. The new man was a retired fighter and had decorated the interior with a boxing motif. He also put the sign up out front. There was still a mural on the side of the building that depicted the fighter and his wife, but they were long gone now.

“This is Five,” Wright said. “What’s our status?”

He was talking to the microphone clipped to the sun visor over his head. Bosch knew there was a foot button on the floor that engaged it. The return speaker was under the dash. The radio setup in the cars allowed the surveillance cops to keep their hands free while driving and, more important, helped them maintain their cover. Talking into a handheld rover was a dead giveaway. The SIS was too good for that.

“Three,” a voice said over the radio. “Retro is still in the location along with One and Two.”

“Roger that,” Wright said.

“Retro?” McPherson said.

“Our name for him,” Wright said. “Our freqs are pretty far down the bandwidth and on the FCC registry they’re listed as DWP channels, but you never know who might be listening. We don’t use the names of people or locations on the air.”

“Got it.”

It wasn’t even nine yet. Bosch wasn’t expecting Jessup to leave anytime soon, especially if people were buying him drinks. As they settled in, Wright seemed to like McPherson and liked informing her about procedures and the art of high-level surveillance. She might have been bored with it but she never let on.

“See, once we establish a subject’s rhythms and routines we can react much better. Take this place, for example. The Brig is one of three or four places Retro hits sort of regularly. We’ve assigned different guys to different bars so they can go in while he’s in the location and be like regulars. The two guys I’ve got right now in the Brig are the same two guys that always go in there. And two other guys would go into Townhouse when he’s there and two others have James Beach. It goes like that. If Retro notices them he’ll think it’s because he’s seen them in there before and they’re regulars in the place. Now if he saw the same guy at two different places, he’d start getting suspicious.”

“I understand, Lieutenant. Sounds like the smart way to do it.”

“Call me Steve.”

“Okay, Steve. Can your people inside communicate?”

“Yes, but they’re deaf.”

“Deaf?”

“We’ve all got body mikes. You know, like the Secret Service? But we don’t put in the earpieces when we’re in play inside a place like a bar. Too obvious. So they call in their positions when possible but they don’t hear anything coming back unless they pull the receiver up from under their collar and put it in. Unfortunately, it’s not like TV where they just put the bean in their ear and there’s no wire.”

“I see. And do your men actually drink while in a bar on a surveillance?”

“A guy in a place like that ordering a Coke or a glass of water is going to stand out as suspicious. So they order booze. But then they nurse it. Luckily, Retro likes to go to crowded places. Makes it easier to maintain cover.”

While the small talk continued in the front seat, Bosch pulled his phone and started what some would consider a conversation of small talk himself. He texted his daughter. Though he knew there were several sets of eyes on the Brig and even inside on Jessup, he looked up and checked the door of the bar every few seconds.

Howzit going? Having fun?

Madeline was staying overnight at her friend Aurora Smith’s house. It was only a few blocks from home but Bosch would not be nearby if she needed him. It was several minutes before she grudgingly answered the text. But they had a deal. She must answer his calls and texts, or her freedom-what she called her leash-would be shortened.

Everything’s fine. You don’t have to check on me.

Yes I do. I’m your father. Don’t stay up too late.

K.

And that was it. A child’s shorthand in a shorthand relationship. Bosch knew he needed help. There was so much he didn’t know. At times they seemed fine and everything appeared to be perfect. Other times he was sure she was going to sneak out the door and run away. Living with his daughter had resulted in his love for her growing more than he thought was possible. Thoughts of her safety as well as hopes for her happy future invaded his mind at all times. His longing to make her life better and take her far past her own history had at times become a physical ache in his chest. Still, he couldn’t seem to reach across the aisle. The plane was bouncing and he kept missing.

He put his phone away and checked the front of the Brig again. There was a crowd of smokers standing outside. Just then a voice and the sharp crack of billiard balls colliding in the background came over the radio speaker.

“Coming out. Retro is coming out.”

“This seems early,” Wright said.

“Does he smoke?” McPherson asked. “Maybe he’s just-”

“Not that we’ve seen.”

Bosch kept his eyes on the door and soon it pushed open. A man he recognized even from a distance as Jessup stepped out and headed along the sidewalk. Abbot Kinney slashed in a northwesterly direction across Venice. He was heading that way.

“Where did he park?” Bosch asked.

“He didn’t,” Wright said. “He only lives a few blocks from here. He walked over.”

They watched in silence after that. Jessup walked two blocks on Abbot Kinney, passing a variety of restaurants, coffee shops and galleries. The sidewalk was busy. Almost every place was still open for Saturday-night business. He stepped into a coffee shop called Abbot’s Habit. Wright got on the radio and assigned one of his men to enter it but before that could happen, Jessup stepped back out, coffee in hand, and proceeded on foot again.

Wright started the SUV and pulled into traffic going the opposite direction. He made a U-turn when he was two blocks further down and away from Jessup’s view, should he happen to turn around. All the while he maintained constant radio contact with the other followers. Jessup had an invisible net around him. Even if he knew it was there he couldn’t lose it.

“He’s heading home,” a radio voice reported. “Might be an early night.”

Abbot Kinney, named for the man who built Venice more than a century earlier, became Brooks Avenue, which then intersected with Main Street. Jessup crossed Main and headed down one of the walk streets where automobiles could not travel. Wright was ready for this and directed two of the tail cars over to Pacific Avenue so they could pick him up when he came through.

Wright pulled to a stop at Brooks and Main and waited for the report that Jessup had passed through and was on Pacific. After two minutes he started to get anxious and went to the radio.

“Where is he, people?”

There was no response. No one had Jessup. Wright quickly sent somebody in.

“Two, you go in. Use the twenty-three.”

“Got it.”

McPherson looked over the seatback at Bosch and then at Wright.

“The twenty-three?”

“We have a variety of tactics we use. We don’t describe them on the air.”

He pointed through the windshield.

“That’s the twenty-three.”

Bosch saw a man wearing a red windbreaker and carrying an insulated pizza bag cut across Main and into the walk street named Breeze Avenue. They waited and finally the radio burst to life.

“I’m not seeing him. I walked all the way through and he’s not-”

The transmission cut off. Wright said nothing. They waited and then the same voice came back in a whisper.

“I almost walked into him. He came out between two houses. He was pulling up his zipper.”

“Okay, did he make you?” Wright asked.

“That’s a negative. I asked for directions to Breeze Court and he said this was Breeze Avenue. We’re cool. He should be coming through now.”

“This is Four. We got him. He’s heading toward San Juan.”

The fourth car was one of the vehicles Wright had put on Pacific. Jessup was living in an apartment on San Juan Avenue between Speedway and the beach.

Bosch felt the momentary tension in his gut start to ease. Surveillance work was sometimes tough to take. Jessup had ducked between two houses to take a leak and it had caused a near panic.

Wright redirected the teams to the area around San Juan Avenue between Pacific and Speedway. Jessup used a key to enter the second-floor apartment where he was staying and the teams quickly moved into place. It was time to wait again.

Bosch knew from past surveillance gigs that the main attribute a good watcher needed was a comfort with silence. Some people are compelled to fill the void. Harry never was and he doubted anyone in the SIS was. He was curious to see how McPherson would do, now that the surveillance 101 lesson from Wright was over and there was nothing left but to wait and watch.

Bosch pulled his phone to see if he had missed a text from his daughter but it was clear. He decided not to pester her with another check-in and put the phone away. The genius of his giving McPherson the front seat now came into play. He turned and put his legs up and across the seat, stretching himself into a lounging position with his back against the door. McPherson glanced back and smiled in the darkness of the car.

“I thought you were being a gentleman,” she said. “You just wanted to stretch out.”

Bosch smiled.

“You got me.”

Everyone was silent after that. Bosch thought about what McPherson had said while they had waited in the parking lot to be picked up by Wright. First she handed him a copy of the latest defense motion, which he locked in the trunk of his car. She told him he needed to start vetting the witnesses and their statements, looking for ways to turn their threats to the case into advantages for the prosecution. She said she and Haller had worked all day crafting a response to the attempt to disqualify Sarah Ann Gleason from testifying. The judge’s ruling on the issue could decide the outcome of the trial.

It always bothered Bosch when he saw justice and the law being manipulated by smart lawyers. His part in the process was pure. He started at a crime scene and followed the evidence to a killer. There were rules along the way but at least the route was clear most of the time. But once things moved into the courthouse, they took on a different shape. Lawyers argued over interpretations and theories and procedures. Nothing seemed to move in a straight line. Justice became a labyrinth.

How could it be, he wondered, that an eyewitness to a horrible crime would not be allowed to testify in court against the accused? He had been a cop more than thirty-five years and he still could not explain how the system worked.

“This is Three. Retro’s on the move.”

Bosch was jarred out of his thoughts. A few seconds went by and the next report came from another voice.

“He’s driving.”

Wright took over.

“Okay, we get ready for an auto tail. One, get out to Main and Rose, Two, go down to Pacific and Venice. Everybody else, sit tight until we have his direction.”

A few minutes later they had their answer.

“North on Main. Same as usual.”

Wright redirected his units and the carefully orchestrated mobile surveillance began moving with Jessup as he took Main Street to Pico and then made his way to the entrance of the 10 Freeway.

Jessup headed east and then merged onto the northbound 405, which was crowded with cars even at the late hour. As expected, he was heading toward the Santa Monica Mountains. The surveillance vehicles ranged from Wright’s SUV to a black Mercedes convertible to a Volvo station wagon with two bikes on a rear rack to a pair of generic Japanese sedans. The only thing missing for a surveillance in the Hollywood Hills was a hybrid. The teams employed a surveillance procedure called the floating box. Two outriders on either side of the target car, another car up front and one behind, all moving in a choreographed rotation. Wright’s SUV was the floater, running backup behind the box.

The whole way Jessup stayed at or below the speed limit. As the freeway rose to the crest of the mountains Bosch looked out his window and saw the Getty Museum rising in the mist at the top like a castle, the sky black behind it.

Anticipating that Jessup was heading to his usual destinations on Mulholland Drive, Wright told two teams to break off from the box and move ahead. He wanted them already up and on Mulholland ahead of Jessup. He wanted a ground team with night vision goggles in Franklin Canyon Park before Jessup went in.

True to form, Jessup took the Mulholland exit and was soon heading east on the winding, two-lane snake that runs the spine of the mountain chain. Wright explained that this was when the surveillance was most vulnerable to exposure.

“You need a bee to properly do this up here but that’s not in the budget,” he said.

“A bee?” McPherson asked.

“Part of our code. Means helicopter. We could sure use one.”

The first surprise of the night came five minutes later when Jessup drove by Franklin Canyon Park without stopping. Wright quickly recalled his ground team from the park as Jessup continued east.

Jessup passed Coldwater Canyon Boulevard without slowing and next drove by the overlook above Fryman Canyon. When he passed through the intersection of Mulholland and Laurel Canyon Boulevard he was taking the surveillance team into new territory.

“What are the chances he’s made us?” Bosch asked.

“None,” Wright said. “We’re too good. He’s got something new on his mind.”

For the next ten minutes the follow continued east toward the Cahuenga Pass. The command car was well behind the surveillance, and Wright and his two passengers had to rely on radio reports to know what was happening.

One car was moving in front of Jessup while all the rest were behind. The rear cars followed a continual rotation of turning off and moving up so the headlight configurations would keep changing in Jessup’s rearview. Finally, a radio report came in that made Bosch move forward in his seat, as if closer proximity to the source of the information would make things clearer.

“There’s a stop sign up here and Retro turned north. It’s too dark to see the street sign but I had to stay on Mulholland. Too risky. Next up turn left at the stop.”

“Roger that. We got the left.”

“Wait!” Bosch said urgently. “Tell him to wait.”

Wright checked him in the mirror.

“What do you have in mind?” he asked.

“There’s only one stop on Mulholland. Woodrow Wilson Drive. I know it. It winds down and reconnects with Mulholland at the light down at Highland. The lead car can pick him up there. But Woodrow Wilson is too tight. If you send a car down there he may know he’s being followed.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. I live on Woodrow Wilson.”

Wright thought for a moment and then went on the radio.

“Cancel that left. Where’s the Volvo?”

“We’re holding up until further command.”

“Okay, go on up and make the left on the two wheelers. Watch for oncoming. And watch for our guy.”

“Roger that.”

Soon Wright’s SUV got to the intersection. Bosch saw the Volvo pulled off to the side. The bike rack was empty. Wright pulled over to wait, checking the teams on the radio.

“One, are you in position?”

“That’s a roger. We’re at the light at the bottom. No sign of Retro yet.”

“Three, you up?”

There was no response.

“Okay, everybody hold till we hear.”

“What do you mean?” Bosch asked. “What about the bikes?”

“They must’ve gone down deaf. We’ll hear when they-”

“This is Three,” a voice said in a whisper. “We came up on him. He’d closed his eyes and went to sleep.”

Wright translated for his passengers.

“He killed his lights and stopped moving.”

Bosch felt his chest start to tighten.

“Are they sure he’s in the car?”

Wright communicated the question over the radio.

“Yeah, we can see him. He’s got a candle burning on the dashboard.”

“Where exactly are you, Three?”

“About halfway down. We can hear the freeway.”

Bosch leaned all the way forward between the two front seats.

“Ask him if he can pick a number off the curb,” he said. “Get me an address.”

Wright relayed the request and almost a minute went by before the whisper came back.

“It’s too dark to see the curbs here without using a flash. But we got a light next to the door of the house he’s parked in front of. It’s one of those cantilever jobs hanging its ass out over the pass. From here it looks like seventy-two-oh-three.”

Bosch slid back and leaned heavily against the seat. McPherson turned to look at him. Wright used the mirror to look back.

“You know that address?” Wright asked.

Bosch nodded in the darkness.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s my house.”

Twenty-three

Sunday, March 21, 6:40 A.M .

My daughter liked to sleep in on Sundays. Normally I hated losing the time with her. I only had her every other weekend and Wednesdays. But this Sunday was different. I was happy to let her sleep while I got up early to go back to work on the motion to save my chief witness’s testimony. I was in the kitchen pouring the first cup of coffee of the day when I heard knocking on my front door. It was still dark out. I checked the peep before opening it and was relieved to see it was my ex-wife with Harry Bosch standing right behind her.

But that relief was short-lived. The moment I turned the knob they pushed in and I could immediately feel a bad energy enter with them.

“We’ve got a problem,” Maggie said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“What’s wrong is that Jessup camped outside my house this morning,” Bosch said. “And I want to know how he found it and what the hell he’s doing.”

He came up too close to me when he said it. I didn’t know which was worse, his breath or the accusatory tone of his words. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking but I realized all the bad energy was coming from him.

I stepped back from him.

“Hayley’s still asleep. Let me just go close her bedroom door. There’s fresh decaf in the kitchen and I can brew some fully leaded if you need it.”

I went down the hall and checked on my daughter. She was still down. I closed the door and hoped the voices that were bound to get loud would not wake her.

My two visitors were still standing when I got back to the living room. Neither had gone for coffee. Bosch was silhouetted by the big picture window that looked out upon the city-the view that made me buy the house. I could see streaks of light entering the sky behind his shoulders.

“No coffee?”

They just stared at me.

“Okay, let’s sit down and talk about this.”

I gestured toward the couch and chairs but Bosch seemed frozen in his stance.

“Come on, let’s figure it out.”

I walked past them and sat down in the chair by the window. Finally, Bosch started to move. He sat down on the couch next to Hayley’s school backpack. Maggie took the other chair. She spoke first.

“I’ve been trying to convince Harry that we didn’t put his home address on the witness list.”

“Absolutely not. We gave no personal addresses in discovery. For you, I listed two addresses. Your office and mine. I even gave the general number for the PAB. Didn’t even give a direct line.”

“Then how did he find my house?” Bosch asked, the accusatory tone still in his voice.

“Look, Harry, you’re blaming me for something I had nothing to do with. I don’t know how he found your house but it couldn’t have been that hard. I mean, come on. Anybody can find anybody on the Internet. You own your house, right? You pay property taxes, have utility accounts, and I bet you’re even registered to vote-Republican, I’m sure.”

“Independent.”

“Fine. The point is, people can find you if they want. Added to that, you have a singular name. All anybody would have to do is punch in-”

“You gave them my full name?”

“I had to. It’s what’s required and what’s been given in discovery for every trial you’ve ever testified in. It doesn’t matter. All Jessup needed was access to the Internet and he could’ve-”

“Jessup’s been in prison for twenty-four years. He knows less about the Internet than I do. He had to have help and I’m betting it came from Royce.”

“Look, we don’t know that.”

Bosch looked pointedly at me, a darkness crossing his eyes.

“You’re defending him now?”

“No, I’m not defending anybody. I’m just saying we shouldn’t rush to any conclusions here. Jessup’s got a roommate and is a minor celebrity. Celebrities get people to do things for them, okay? So why don’t you calm down and let’s back up a little bit. Tell me what happened at your house.”

Bosch seemed to take it down a notch but he was still anything but calm. I half expected him to get up and take a swing at a lamp or punch a hole in a wall. Thankfully, Maggie was the one who told the story.

“We were with the SIS, watching him. We thought he was going to go up to one of the parks he’s been visiting. Instead, he drove right by them all and kept going on Mulholland. When we got to Harry’s street we had to hang back so he wouldn’t see us. The SIS has a bike car. Two of them saddled up and rode down. They found Jessup sitting in his car in front of Harry’s house.”

“Goddamn it!” Bosch said. “I have my daughter living with me. If this prick is-”

“Harry, not so loud and watch what you say,” I said. “My daughter’s on the other side of that wall. Now, please, go back to the story. What did Jessup do?”

Bosch hesitated. Maggie didn’t.

“He just sat there,” Maggie said. “For about a half hour. And he lit a candle.”

“A candle? In the car?”

“Yeah, on the dashboard.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Who knows?”

Bosch couldn’t remain sitting. He jumped up from the couch and started pacing.

“And after a half hour he drove off and went home,” Maggie said. “That was it. We just came from Venice.”

Now I stood up and started to pace, but in a pattern clear of Bosch’s orbit.

“Okay, let’s think about this. Let’s think about what he was doing.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Bosch said. “That’s the question.”

I nodded. I had that coming.

“Is there any reason to think that he knows or suspects he’s being followed?” I asked.

“No, no way,” Bosch said immediately.

“Wait a minute, not so fast on that,” Maggie said. “I’ve been thinking about it. There was a near-miss earlier in the night. You remember, Harry? On Breeze Avenue?”

Bosch nodded. Maggie explained it to me.

“They thought they lost him on a walk street in Venice. The lieutenant sent a guy in with a pizza box. Jessup came out from between two houses after taking a leak. It was a close call.”

I spread my hands.

“Well, maybe that was it. Maybe that planted suspicion and he decided to see if he was being followed. You show up outside the lead investigator’s house and it’s a good way to draw out the flies if you’ve got them on you.”

“You mean like a test?” Bosch asked.

“Exactly. Nobody approached him out there, right?”

“No, we left him alone,” Maggie said. “If he had gotten out of his car I think it would’ve been a different story.”

I nodded.

“Okay, so it was either a test or he’s got something planned. In that case, it would’ve been a reconnaissance mission. He wanted to see where you live.”

Bosch stopped and stared out the window. The sky was fully lit now.

“But one thing you have to keep in mind is that what he did was not illegal,” I said. “It’s a public street and the OR put no restrictions on travel within Los Angeles County. So no matter what he was up to, it’s a good thing you didn’t stop him and reveal yourself.”

Bosch stayed at the window, his back to us. I didn’t know what he was thinking.

“Harry,” I said. “I know your concerns and I agree with them. But we can’t let this be a distraction. The trial is coming up quick and we have work to do. If we convict this guy, he goes away forever and it won’t matter if he knows where you live.”

“So what do I do till then, sit on my front porch every night with a shotgun?”

“The SIS is on him twenty-four/seven, right?” Maggie said. “Do you trust them?”

Bosch didn’t answer for a long moment.

“They won’t lose him,” he finally said.

Maggie looked at me and I could see the concern in her eyes. Each of us had a daughter. It would be hard to put your trust in anybody else, even an elite surveillance squad. I thought for a moment about something I had been considering since the conversation began.

“What about you moving in here? With your daughter. She can use Hayley’s room because Hayley’s going back to her mother’s today. And you can use the office. It’s got a sleeper sofa that I’ve spent more than a few nights on. It’s actually comfortable.”

Bosch turned from the window and looked at me.

“What, stay here through the whole trial?”

“Why not? Our daughters will finally get a chance to meet when Hayley comes over.”

“It’s a good idea,” Maggie said.

I didn’t know if she was referring to the daughters meeting or the idea of Bosch and child staying with me.

“And look, I’m here every night,” I said. “If you have to go out with the SIS, I got you covered with your daughter, especially when Hayley’s here.”

Bosch thought about it for a few moments but then shook his head.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because it’s my house. My home. I’m not going to run from this guy. He’s going to run from me.”

“What about your daughter?” Maggie asked.

“I’ll take care of my daughter.”

“Harry, think about it,” she said. “Think about your daughter. You don’t want her in harm’s way.”

“Look, if Jessup has my address, then he probably has this address, too. Moving in here isn’t the answer. It’s just… just running from him. Maybe that’s his test-to see what I do. So I’m not doing anything. I’m not moving. I’ve got the SIS, and if he comes back and so much as crosses the curb out front, I’ll be waiting for him.”

“I don’t like this,” Maggie said.

I thought about what Bosch had said about Jessup having my address.

“Neither do I,” I said.

Twenty-four

Wednesday, March 31, 9:00 A.M .

Bosch didn’t need to be in court. In fact, he wouldn’t be needed until after jury selection and the actual trial began. But he wanted to get a close look at the man he had been shadowing from a distance with the SIS. He wanted to see if Jessup would show any reaction to seeing him in return. It had been a month and a half since they had spent the long day in the car driving down from San Quentin. Bosch felt the need to get closer than the surveillance allowed him to. It would help him keep the fire burning.

It was billed as a status conference. The judge wanted to deal with all final motions and issues before beginning jury selection the next day and then moving seamlessly into the trial. There were scheduling and jury issues to discuss and each side’s list of exhibits were to be handed in as well.

The prosecution team was locked and loaded. In the last two weeks Haller and McPherson had sharpened and streamlined the case, run through mock witness examinations and reconsidered every piece of evidence. They had carefully choreographed the ways in which they would bring the twenty-four-year-old evidence forward. They were ready. The bow had been pulled taut and the arrow was ready to fly.

Even the decision on the death penalty had been made-or rather, announced. Haller had officially withdrawn it, even though Bosch assumed all along that his use of it to threaten Jessup had merely been a pose. He was a defense attorney by nature, and there was no getting him across that line. A conviction on the charges would bring Jessup a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, and that would have to be enough justice for Melissa Landy.

Bosch was ready as well. He had diligently reinvestigated the case and located the witnesses who would be called to testify. All the while, he was still out riding with the SIS as often as possible-nights that his daughter stayed at the homes of friends or with Sue Bambrough, the assistant principal. He was prepared for his part and had helped Haller and McPherson get ready for theirs. Confidence was high and that was another reason for Bosch to be in the courtroom. He wanted to see this thing get started.

Judge Breitman entered and the courtroom was brought to order at a few minutes after nine. Bosch was in a chair against the railing directly behind the prosecution table where Haller and McPherson sat side by side. They had told him to pull the chair up to the table but Harry wanted to hang back. He wanted to be able to watch Jessup from behind, and besides, there was too much anxiety coming from the two prosecutors. The judge was going to make a ruling on whether Sarah Ann Gleason would be allowed to testify against Jessup. As Haller had said the night before, nothing else mattered. If they lost Sarah as a witness, they would surely lose the case.

“On the record with California versus Jessup again,” the judge said upon taking the bench. “Good morning to all.”

After a chorus of good mornings fired back to her, the judge got right down to business.

“Tomorrow we begin jury selection in this case and then we proceed to trial. Therefore today is the day that we’re going to clean out the garage, so to speak, so that we can finally bring the car in. Any last motions, any pending motions, anything anybody wants to talk about in regard to exhibits or evidence or anything else, now is the time. We have a number of motions pending and I will get to them first. The prosecution’s request to redress the issue of the defendant’s use of makeup to cover certain body tattoos is dismissed. We argued that at length already and I do not see the need to go at it further.”

Bosch checked Jessup. He was at a sharp angle to him, so he could not see the defendant’s face. But he did see Jessup nod his head in approval of the judge’s first ruling of the day.

Breitman then went through a housekeeping list of minor motions from both sides. She seemed to want to accommodate all so neither side emerged as a clear favorite. Bosch saw that McPherson was meticulously keeping notes on each decision on a yellow legal pad.

It was all part of the buildup to the ruling of the day. Since Sarah was to be McPherson’s witness to question during trial, she had handled the oral arguments on the defense motion two days earlier. Though Bosch had not attended that hearing, Haller had told him that Maggie had held forth for nearly an hour in a well-prepared response to the motion to disqualify. She had then backed it with an eighteen-page written response. The prosecution team was confident in the argument but neither member of the team knew Breitman well enough to be confident in how she would rule.

“Now,” the judge said, “we come to the defense motion to disqualify Sarah Ann Gleason as a witness for the prosecution. The question has been argued and submitted by both sides and the court is ready to make a ruling.”

“Your Honor, could I be heard?” Royce said, standing up at the defense table.

“Mr. Royce,” the judge said, “I don’t see the need for further argument. You made the motion and I allowed you to respond to the prosecution’s submission. What more needs to be said?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Royce sat back down, leaving whatever he was going to add to his attack on Sarah Gleason a secret.

“The defense’s motion is dismissed,” the judge said immediately. “I will be allowing the defense wide latitude in its examination of the prosecution’s witness as well as in the production of its own witnesses to address Ms. Gleason’s credibility before the jury. But I believe that this witness’s credibility and reliability is indeed something that jurors will need to decide.”

A momentary silence enveloped the courtroom, as if everyone collectively had drawn in a breath. No response followed from either the prosecution or defense table. It was another down-the-middle ruling, Bosch knew, and both sides were probably pleased to have gotten something. Gleason would be allowed to testify, so the prosecution’s case was secured, but the judge was going to let Royce go after her with all he had. It would come down to whether Sarah was strong enough to take it.

“Now, I would like to move on,” the judge said. “Let’s talk about jury selection and scheduling first, and then we’ll get to the exhibits.”

The judge proceeded to outline how she wanted voir dire to proceed. Though each side would be allowed to question prospective jurors, she said she would strictly limit the time for each side. She wanted to start a momentum that would carry into the trial. She also limited each side to only twelve peremptory challenges-juror rejections without cause-and said she wanted to pick six alternates because it was her practice to be quick with the hook on jurors who misbehaved, were chronically late or had the audacity to fall asleep during testimony.

“I like a good supply of alternates because we usually need them,” she said.

The low number of peremptory challenges and the high number of alternates brought objections from both the prosecution and the defense. The judge grudgingly gave each side two more challenges but warned that she would not allow voir dire to get bogged down.

“I want jury selection completed by the end of the day Friday. If you slow me down, then I will slow you down. I will hold the panel and every lawyer in here until Friday night if I have to. I want opening statements first thing Monday. Any objection to that?”

Both sides seemed properly cowed by the judge. She was clearly exerting command of her own courtroom. She next outlined the trial schedule, stating that testimony would begin each morning at nine sharp and continue until five with a ninety-minute lunch and morning and afternoon breaks of fifteen minutes each.

“That leaves a solid six hours a day of testimony,” she said. “Any more and I find the jurors start losing interest. So I keep it to six a day. It will be up to you to be in here and ready to go each morning when I step through the door at nine. Any questions?”

There were none. Breitman then asked each side for estimates on how long their case would take to present. Haller said he would need no more than four days, depending on the length of the cross-examinations of his witnesses. This was already a shot directed at Royce and his plans to attack Sarah Ann Gleason.

For his part, Royce said he needed only two days. The judge then did her own math, adding four and two and coming up with five.

“Well, I’m thinking an hour each for opening statements on Monday morning. I think that means we’ll finish Friday afternoon and go right to closing arguments the following Monday.”

Neither side objected to her math. The point was clear. Keep it moving. Find ways to cut time. Of course a trial was a fluid thing and there were many unknowns. Neither side would be held to what was said at this hearing, but each lawyer knew that there might be consequences from the judge if they didn’t keep a continuous velocity to their presentations.

“Finally, we come to exhibits and electronics,” Breitman said. “I trust that everyone has looked over each other’s lists. Any objections to these?”

Both Haller and Royce stood up. The judge nodded at Royce.

“You first, Mr. Royce.”

“Yes, Judge, the defense has an objection to the prosecution’s plans to project numerous images of Melissa Landy’s body on the courtroom’s overhead screens. This practice is not only barbaric but exploitative and prejudicial.”

The judge swiveled in her seat and looked at Haller, who was still standing.

“Your Honor, it is the prosecution’s duty to produce the body. To show the crime that brings us here. The last thing we want to do is be exploitative or prejudicial. I will grant Mr. Royce that it is a fine line, but we do not plan to step across it.”

Royce came back with one more shot.

“This case is twenty-four years old. In nineteen eighty-six there were no overhead screens, none of this Hollywood stuff. I think it infringes on my client’s right to a fair trial.”

Haller was ready with his own comeback.

“The age of the case has nothing to do with this issue, but the defense is perfectly willing to present these exhibits the way they would’ve-”

McPherson had grabbed his sleeve to interrupt him. He bent down and she whispered in his ear. He then quickly straightened up.

“Excuse me, Your Honor, I misspoke. The prosecution is more than willing to present these exhibits in the manner they would have been presented to the jury in nineteen eighty-six. We would be happy to hand out color photographs to the jurors. But in earlier conversation the court indicated that she did not like this practice.”

“Yes, I find that handing these sorts of photos directly to the jurors to be possibly more exploitative and prejudicial,” Breitman said. “Is that what you wish, Mr. Royce?”

Royce had walked himself into a jam.

“No, Judge, I would agree with the court on this point. The defense was simply trying to limit the scope and use of these photographs. Mr. Haller lists more than thirty photographs that he wants to put on the big screen. It seems over-the-top. That is all.”

“Judge Breitman, these are photographs of the body in the place it was found as well as during autopsy. Each one is-”

“Mr. Haller,” the judge intoned, “let me just stop you right there. Crime scene photographs are acceptable, as long as they come with appropriate foundation and testimony. But I see no need to show our jurors this poor girl’s autopsy shots. We’re not going to do that.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Haller said.

He remained standing while Royce sat down with his partial victory. Breitman spoke while writing something.

“And you have an objection to Mr. Royce’s exhibit list, Mr. Haller?”

“Yes, Your Honor, the defense has a variety of drug paraphernalia alleged to have once been owned by Ms. Gleason on its exhibit list. It also lists photos and videos of Ms. Gleason. The prosecution has not been given the opportunity to examine these materials but we believe they only go to the point that we will be conceding at trial and eliciting in direct examination of this witness. That is that at one time in her life she used drugs on a regular basis. We do not see the need to show photos of her using drugs or the pipes through which she ingested drugs. It’s inflammatory and prejudicial. It is not needed based on the concessions of the prosecution.”

Royce stood back up and was ready to go. The judge gave him the floor.

“Judge, these exhibits are vitally important to the defense case. The prosecution of Mr. Jessup hinges on the testimony of a longtime drug addict who cannot be relied upon to remember the truth, let alone tell it. These exhibits will help the jury understand the depth and breadth of this witness’s use of illegal substances over a lengthy period of time.”

Royce was finished but the judge was silent as she studied the defense exhibit list.

“All right,” she finally said, putting the document aside. “You both make cogent arguments. So what we are going to do is take these exhibits one at a time. When the defense would like to proffer an exhibit, we will discuss it first out of earshot of the jury. I’ll make a decision then.”

The lawyers sat down. Bosch almost shook his head but didn’t want to draw the judge’s attention. Still, it burned him that she had not slapped the defense down on this one. Twenty-four years after seeing her little sister abducted from the front yard, Sarah Ann Gleason was willing to testify about the awful, nightmarish moment that had changed her life forever. And for her sacrifice and efforts, the judge was actually going to entertain the defense’s request to attack her with the glass pipes and accoutrements she had once used to escape what she had been through. It didn’t seem fair to Bosch. It didn’t seem like anything that approached justice.

The hearing ended soon after that and all parties packed their briefcases and moved through the doors of the courtroom en masse. Bosch hung back and then insinuated himself into the group right behind Jessup. He said nothing but Jessup soon enough felt the presence behind him and turned around.

He smirked when he saw it was Bosch.

“Well, Detective Bosch, are you following me?”

“Should I be?”

“Oh, you never know. How’s your investigation going?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Yes, I can’t-”

“Don’t talk to him!”

It was Royce. He had turned and noticed.

“And don’t you talk to him,” he added, pointing a finger at Bosch. “If you continue to harass him, I’ll complain to the judge.”

Bosch held his hands out in a no-touching gesture.

“We’re cool, Counselor. Just making small talk.”

“There is no such thing when it comes to the police.”

He reached out and put his hand on Jessup’s shoulder and shepherded him away from Bosch.

In the hallway outside they moved directly to the waiting huddle of reporters and cameras. Bosch moved past but looked back in time to see Jessup’s face change. His eyes went from the steely glare of a predator to the wounded look of a victim.

The reporters quickly gathered around him.